Apuleius Consolation of Philosophy.

I enjoyed reading all your comments on Apuleius and his somewhat strange romp through the
ancient word. I was generally impressed with the mature and deliberate way you approached this
text. Despite its at times chaotic nature, and the many distractions he throws in your way, you
were as a group able to look beyond all of this and see how Apuleius is commenting upon the
human condition. Now that you have tried your hand at patterning some meaning on these wild
pages, I thought I would give you just a very few thoughts to help in your further thinking about
this text.
Some of you might have been surprised that we were reading such an uproarious book. Like a
Hollywood producer, he is careful not to lose sight of crowd appeal. He certainly is not afraid of
going for the coarse joke, and he is careful to keep the action coming in a more or less steady
stream. Do not let any of this fool you, though, for he was an eloquent and widely read author
who had very serious philosophic ends in mind. I cannot do better here than to quote Julia Haig
Gaisser:
Apuleius is best known today for his racy novel, the Golden Ass ( Asinus Aureus ), or
Metamorphoses (both titles were current in antiquity); but he also gained celebrity and
fortune in his own time as a Platonic philosopher and skillful rhetorician. He claimed to
cultivate both philosophy and the nine Muses (Fl. 20.6), and the diversity of his writings
is so great that one can almost believe him. (1)
In the context of Apuleius platonic philosophy, this is a story about disordered human desires:
how the things we crave are really just the flickering and shifting shadows of the true good to be
found in a realm above. It is perhaps surprising to our sensibilities that this point is made by
portraying intellectual curiosity as the most wanton of our aberrant human desires. I suppose few
would be surprised that sexual appetite would come off as depraved or exploitative in this
context, but starting at the very beginning of the novel, this sexual lust is connected to Lucius
insatiable appetite for magic and marvels.
I think this might be a bit surprising to some of us because we live in a time that generally
approves of intellectual appetite in any form. Curiosity is a sign of a healthy, active mind, and
any notion that there might be something we should not know about is dangerously repressive.
Curiositas
In Apuleius time, however, curiosity was a much more ambiguous notion. Certainly, an active,
inquiring mind was a good thing, but there was also such a thing as bad curiosity (this idea
continued on through the Middle Ages, by the way). Thus the first century Plutarch characterizes
mala curiositas (bad curiosity) as the drive that leads a man to inquire into a neighbors
business, to be hungry for hearing and repeating news, tales, gossip, and novelties, to be ever
searching for the ugly and the abnormal (19). The cure for interests is both self-knowledge and

a resolve to channel that curiosity toward learning and science (19).1 You might notice that this
involves Apuleius in something of paradox, for on the one hand he is showing us the evils of
such untrammeled curiosity while at the same time obviously catering to his readers desire for
tales, gossip, and novelties (not to mention the
with all his wild and seedy tales. It is a
similar predicament to modern filmmakers who spend 2 hours spattering the screen with bold
and filling it with various explosions while solemnly lecturing us how their film is intended as a
message against violence.
For Apuleius curiositas represents a kind of profanation: an unhallowed intrusion into the divine
nature. Just as his character Lucius finds his salvation in the mystery cult of Isis, Apuleius
himself was an initiate in a mystery cult, and these were defined around rigidly guarded secrets.
One had to be initiated into the inner circle to learn the holy mysteries. Thus Lucius informs the
reader that he cannot tell the inner mysteries of his cult, even as he works to arouse our curiosity.
Then, after the uninitiated had withdrawn to a distance and I had donned a new linen
gown, the priest grasped my hand and conducted me into the Holy of Holies.
Perhaps, curios reader, you are keen to know what was said and done. I would tell you if it
were permitted to tell. But both the ears that heard such things and the tongue that told
them would reap a heavy penalty for such rashness. (249)
The very definition of sacredness is its exclusionto be holy is to be set apart, which is why so
many religions have prohibitions against entering certain places, saying certain names, or witness
witnessing particular rites. That is what is wrong with magic from Apuleius point of view, for it
is an attempt to coerce the divine as it wereto capture its mystery and grandeur like a firefly in
a jar that it may flash and shine for our amusement.
Before I leave this idea, I want to point out that the ambivalent status of curiositas remained an
issue all the way through the Middle Ages. The influential Augustine ,for instance, speaks of the
sacrilegious curiosity of his early education (Confessions 3.3), and wondering what draws
gaping crowds to the horrible spectacle of a mutilated corpse, or how his thoughts can be turned
so readily from worthy deliberations, he identifies the lust of the eyes; a craving for the
sensory that far exceeds what is usually implied by trite references to the sins of the flesh.2 And
I think that Plutarchs old distinction still lurks in the background of Augustines scorn for a
people curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own (Confessions 10.3).
Aquinas associated it with sloth and a restlessness of mind that he contrasted with studiositas, or
in Zachers paraphrase, a scholarly diligence tempered by spiritual vigilance (28).3
This Kind of lust of the eyes is particularly pertinent for our consideration of wonder
narratives like Mandevilles Travels, for such a curiosity was seen as a sinful, grasping stance
towards the world instead of a stance of devout gratitude. Wonder invites us to contemplate the
majesty of Gods creation and to learn from it. Curiosity, at best, offers but the cheap thrill of
1

Taken from his essay De Curiositate translated as On Being a Busybody by W. C. Helmbold in Plutarchs
Moralia, The Loeb Classical Library, eds. T. E. Page, et. al., 15 vols. (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1939)
6.473-517.
2
Concupiscentia oculorum forms one of the Johannine triad the other two branches of which are concupiscentia
carnis and superbia vitae. Confessions 10.35; see also Zacher 21-2.
3
See the Summa Theologica 2a2ae.35.4.

novelty, and at worst it is a form of appropriation as the world becomes something for us to use
instead of a sign to read.

Warnings
These themes all come together when Lucius is confronted with that elaborate statue of Diana
and Actaeon at his aunt Byrrhaenas house. As many of you noted, Lucius (and the reader) are
given a number of warnings early in the novel, all of which he ignores in his heedless rush to
find some magic. Thus the Tale of Aristomenes prefigures Lucius with its magic, humiliation,
and sexual exploitation. This story also serves to illuminate our heros character, for he shouts
down the other companion to hear this story, even offering a dinner to Aristomenes as an
inducement to make him talk (34). We are shortly to be reminded of this tale when Lucius
receives his most direct warning from Byrrhaena. We are immediately put in mind of Meroe
when she cautions him about his hostess magical prowess and describes her antics as a sexual
predator. the message is clear: he is well n the way to becoming a victim just like Socrates. His
response is delightful, as he of course is only spurned on by his relations admonition.
Thus Byrrhaena warned me, apprehensively enough, but she merely excited my interest.
For as soon as I heard her mention the Art of Magic, than which nothing was nearer to my
hearts desire, I was so far from shuddering at Pamphile that a strong compulsion made me
yearn to attain the desired mastery, though I should have to pay heavy fees for it, though I
should fling myself with a running jump into the very Abyss. (53)
He certainly is not one for subtlety, our young Lucius, and he loses no time in pursuing his all
consuming passion: Trembling with distracted haste, I extricated myself from Byrrhaenas
grasp as if from shackles, blushed, and bidding her farewell dashed excitedly off to the house of
my host Milo (53).
This brings us back to Diana and Actaeon. As Lucius enters his friends house, he sees an
elaborate display of the story of Diana and Actaeon, and this is described in such loving detail
that we are alerted to its authorial significance. There is a technical term for when a poet or
author spends time to describe a visual work in such detailekphrasisand there is another
good example in the Beginning of Book II of the Metamorphoses, when Ovid describes the
doors to the Suns palace. When an author takes over a page to describe an artwork sitting
around a character s house, that generally means you should b paying attention. In any case, if
you are at all familiar with the story, the significance of this work stands out all the more.
Briefly, Actaeon was a hunter who stumbled upon the chaste huntress, Diana, while she was
preparing to bathe. Because he looked upon the nakedness of the goddess, she punished him by
transforming him into a stag, and he was consequently devoured by his own hounds. If you had
continued on past our assigned reading, you could have seen how Ovid milks this scene for all
the pathos he can get, as he names each of Actaeons beloved hounds one by one as they devour
their erstwhile master who, Ovid makes sure to point, tries to cry out, but as a stag is robbed of
all speech but a groan (see Metamorphoses III.131-253). Almost immediately after Lucius sees
this image of Actaeon staring hungrily at the goddess, the horns up-curling from his brow(53)
he is confronted with Byrrhaenas stern warning about his hostess. This puts us in mind of
3

Lucius insatiable appetite for magic and marvels, and so the first application of this scene
becomes clear. As I say above, curiosity can be a kind of sacrilege, and this would seem to be
literally depicted in this mythological scene: as Actaeon violates the sanctity of Diana, Lucius
attempt to look into mysteries that are not fit consumption for human eyes.
Symmetry Symmetry
By warning our hero about Pamphile, Byrrhaena also manages to connect her to this statues
scene, and this actually serves as a good examples of a couple of important characteristics of
Apuleius style. The first of these is Apuleius somewhat wicked sense of humor. If his aunts
warning identify his with Actaeon, then the first person to take Dianas place is Pamphile herself.
The comparison is intentionally parodic. In the first case is the beautiful goddess who is the
patroness of chastity and young maidens, while in the second we have the hardened old
campaigner who, we are told, sexually enslaves young men, using her magic to manipulate,
torment, and frighten others. Actaeon is transformed into a stag for seeing the first naked, while
after Lucius witnesses Pamphile undressing to effect her spell, he is turned into an ass (an animal
whose name had the same connotations is still does today). Students are sometimes surprised that
such a broad and freewheeling novel as this would so pointedly have a theological or
philosophical point. Similarly, in the face of all the cruelty and violence he portrays, students are
also sometimes in danger of losing sight of the fact that Apuleius has a sense of humor . He is
deliberately making a lot of this ridiculous, even as he drives the novel towards his serious point.
We must remember that Apuleius is a great stylist in the late classical tradition, and that not only
helps us appreciate his rather self-conscious seriousness, but his artistic aspirations bring me to
the second point as well. One of his artistic flourishes was a love of symmetry, and so one often
sees characters or situations in one part of the novel reflected back in another. These pairings are
sometimes along the lines of a reflection in which the two images complement each other, while
at other times, the emphasis would seem to be on the contrast. In either case, the two examples
combine to give us a fuller picture of the concept. Thus, the corrupt and glutinous priests serve as
an ironic counterpoint to the noble priests at the end who guide him in his initiation into the
mysteries of Isis. To return to my point above, one could similarly point out that Actaeon the
hunter beholding the naked goddess and being transformed into a noble stag is satirically
reflected in the in the image of the peeping tom Lucius being transformed into an Ass as he spies
upon the shriveled skin of the ancient witch. Or you might appreciate the detail that Diana was
the goddess of the moon while Lucius prays to the moon at the end. Actaeon is thus punished by
the moon and made into a beast while Lucius is redeemed by the moon and restored back into his
human shape. 4 On a larger scale, you might have noticed how Actaeons violation not only
recalls Lucius unhealthy curiosity but it brings to mind Psyches desecration of Cupid as well.
She literally pries back what a medieval mystic might have called the holy darkness of the god,
laying open his nakedness to her unhallowed gaze.
This similarity draws attention to the interpretative importance of the Cupid and Psyche episode,
for as I have indicated, this is story acts as a sort of interpretative lens, mirroring the action of the
novel as a whole. More specifically, it can (and often has been) read as a little allegory. The
4

This use of the moon is more significant than it might at first seem, by the way. See the note at the end for more on
the cultural significance of the moon.

names of the main characters certainly lend themselves to this sort of interpretation. Psyche
means soul, or perhaps in the modern understanding mind (as in psychology). Cupid (or Eros in
the Greek) is love, but what a love he is. Cupid often represents love or desire at its worst
driving gods and men insane with his infamous shafts. Thus, in our selection from Ovid, we see
even the mighty Apollo fall victim to his arrows. This little tale that Apuleius gives us is quite
extraordinary, then, in the way it portrays this mischievous, for though his fateful arrows do
make an appearance, he has suddenly become respectable. I hope to offer more comment on this
later, but for now I will content myself with pointing out that in A strange inversion occurs in
The Golden Ass. It is Venus who represents love in its most degraded and destructive forms
throughout the novel, while Cupid offers us a glimpse of a sort of heavenly love. He is the sort of
love that leads the soul to the divine, as in the story he literally saves Psyche by rousing her from
her deathlike trance, and by interceding with Jupiter he not only frees her from Venus
persecutions, but he enables psyche herself to become immortal. This is why Psyche was often
portrayed as a butterfly, for as the caterpillar miraculously emerges from its seeming death as
this beautiful creature that can fly upwards, so too can our soul emerge from its slumbers here
below to take its place (like the character psyche) at the banquet table of the gods. In the
language of the medieval period we could say Cupid is a redeemera Christ figure of sorts
who works our salvation. You might have noticed at the end of the tale that the two give birth to
Voluptas or joy as our translation names her. In its broadest terms, we can apply this story to
Lucius at a glance, for like Psyche he too goes through a period of wandering and exile, and he
too ultimately finds redemption. This last part is important: it does surprise me how often
students fail to consider the end of Lucius adventures when trying to make sense of this novel,
but this is to ignore what was (from Apuleius point of view) the whole point of the exercise
the moment when like Psyche he emerges from the cocoon and opens his wings to something
greater than he had ever known.
Daemon Seed
Apuleius was a philosopher in the Platonic tradition, and he elsewhere gives us some idea of how
important a figure Cupid is and how he fits into the larger aims of the book. To begin, I should
explain that in the Platonic school, Cupid was not considered a god like Apollo and (or Jupiter if
you prefer). Rather, he was a daemon or daimon. I give this word the old spellings and not our
modern demon because I do not want you to misunderstand. These are not the same creatures we
find in the Judeo-Christian tradition. They are not the condemned legions of fallen angels who
serve the devil. They are instead intermediary divinities who serve as go-betweens or
connections between the lofty realm of the divine and the messy world of us humans. When
Socrates spoke at his trail of having to obey the voice of the god within him, rather than the
dictates of a frenzied populace, Apuleius felt he was referring to just such a being, and he wrote a
work of Platonic philosophy, named after this guide: On the God of Socrates. He there describes
the role of these beings:
It is not a task for the gods of heaven to descend to things here below. This lot befalls the
intermediate gods, who abide in those regions of the air that are adjacent to the earth and no
less so on the borders of heaven, just as in every part of the world there are animals
peculiar to that partin the air those that fly, and on the ground those that walk. (7-8)

Apuleius tells us it is through these that both our desires and our deserts pass on the way to the
gods(6). These creatures whom the Greeks call by the name of daimones can serve a variety
of functions as they bring us in contact with the larger supernatural world:

Messengers between the inhabitants of earth and of heaven, they carry from one to the
other prayers and gifts, supplications and assistance; they are interpreters and bearers of
greetings for both. Through these same demons, as Plato affirms in his Symposium, are
directed all revelations, the various miracles of magicians, and all kinds of predictions. (6)
Indeed, we learn there is a hierarchy of daemons, with some being relegated to comparatively
minor roles. Among others, Cupid and, interestingly, Sleep (Somnus) belong to the first order,
for : Love rouses to consciousness, Sleep lulls to rest (16). By referring to the Symposium,
Apuleius is highlighting what proved to be key text in the Platonic schools thinking about love.
In a remarkable passage, Diotima instructs Socrates on the nature of love, and on top of
everything else it is nice to see Socrates answering the question for a change (201d-212c).
During this exchange, Diotima makes the point that love (if properly followed) raises one from
the admiration of one individual body to a love of every lovely body(210b). After this he
must grasp that the beauties of the body are as nothing to the beauties of the soul(210c). This
helps one realize that the beauty of the body is not, after all, of so great moment(210c). There
follows a recognition of the beauty of every kind of knowledge (210d), and finally through the
discipline of reasoned discourse, our lover will come to the contemplation of the immutable
source of all that we hold lovely.
Nor will his vision of the beautiful take the form of a face, or of hands, or of anything that
is of the flesh. It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in
something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is
but subsisting of itself and in itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every lovely
thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be
neither more or less, but still the same inviolable whole (211b).
How can shadows hold any luster when you have seen the things themselves? Or rather, the
thing itself, for in Platos vision all is rooted in a divine unity, and Diotima asks the philosopher
to imagine how it would be to gaze on beautys very selfunsullied, unalloyed, and freed from
the mortal taint that haunts the frailer loveliness of flesh and blood(211e).
This, then, is the journey Lucius makes. We see him enslaved to that frailer loveliness, and as
the novel opens Apuleius is quick to join the lusts of the flesh with the lusts of the mind, as, for
instance, with his seduction of Fotis, or the abusive sexuality of Meroe and Pamphile. The
ugliness with which eroticism is portrayed is a function of Lucius dawning awareness. Once he
is robbed of his humanity he is able to observe people in a whole new way. Not that he learns
very quickly or consistently as his vain complaisance with the rich and respected lady in book
10 shows (224), but the bloom has come off the rose, and with the glamour of desire removed he
begins to see things more clearly. This is the world presided over by Venus: think of all the
countless betrayals, murders, tortures, and self mutilations that pass before us and how this
whole assembly grows out of an unregenerate eroticisma love that stays rooted in the lowly
6

things here below rather than the exalted ends offered in the symposium. This identification of
Venus with this lowly love reaches its climax, fittingly enough, right before Lucius recovers his
own form and commits himself to chastity forever. At the end of book 10 he finds himself in the
arena with a woman who had been condemned for torturing, poisoning, and framing others for
murder in the name of love. As a final display of the twisted inversions of Venus love, Lucius is
in the arena with this woman because part of her punishment is to be raped by Lucius (still in his
Ass form) before being consumed by wild beasts. Lucius worries that the animals will not know
to stop with the prisoner and will devour him as well (an image that should remind the alert
reader once again of the statue of Actaeon and Diana). In case we had forgotten the spiteful
image of Venus from Psyches tale, these festivities are begun with a crowd of beautiful boys
and girls in the bloom of youth, gorgeously clad who enact a dramatic scene for the
delectation of the assembled throng (230). The scene that these youths portray just so happens to
be the Judgment of Paris. When the young Paris chooses Venus over her rivals (thereby
condemning the Greek world to the Trojan war), this gives the narrator a chance to reflect upon
her malign influence upon human affairs.
O why do you wonder after this if those dregs of humanity, those forensic cattle, those
gowned vultures, the judges now sell their decisions for cash? Even at the worlds infancy
a bribe could corrupt judgment in a question agitated between gods and men; and a young
fellow (a rustic and a shepherd) appointed judge by the counsels of great Jove sold the first
judicial decision for the lucre of lust, thereby entailing damnation on mankind. (232)
There is of course so much more to be said about the man Apuleius, the times in which he lived,
and the remarkable book he wrote. I can imagine that it is already quite a chore to work your way
through all of this, so I will wrap up. I hope at least I have given you some concepts to guide
your own investigation of this novel. The reading I have given here I think fairly reflects the
general thrust of Apuleius main concerns, but there is a lot going on in this novel, and there are
lots of other directions you could take an inquiry.
Give me your tired and your poor
To give just one brief example, many commentators have pointed out that this novel is so
extraordinary in that it gives such broad vision of the society of its time, and in particular it
offers such a sympathetic view of the poor and disposed. Of course, in some ways, this is all a
part of that view he is offering us of human society corrupted by Venus malign influence. Still,
within this larger framework, there does seem to be a consistent theme of exploring how
arbitrary, cruel, corrupt, and corrupting the exercise of power had become in the Roman world.
Without elaborating very much, I will just point out some of the best examples. Thus we are
early on introduce to the old school chum Pythias who is now local official with truly unique
ideas about how to regulate the market place (Apuleius humor is on fine display here). There is
also that overbearing legionary who mistreats the poor gardener (208 ff.) The Most famous
scene in this regard is our view of the bakers mill, in which the slave toil in a Dickensian
nightmare:
Yet I was so solicitously drawn by my undampable interest in life that I neglected the food
set out before me and observed with a sort of pleasure the routine of the wretched
7

mannikins I saw. Their skin was striped all over with livid scourge-scars; their wealed
backs were crusted rather than clothed with their patchwork rags; some had no more
covering than a bit of dangled apron; and every shirt was so tattered that the body was
visible through the rents. Their brows were branded; their heads were half-shaved; irons
clanked on their feet; their faces were sallow and ugly; the smoky gloom of the reeking
overheated room had bleared and dulled their smarting eyes; and (like boxers who fight
befouled with the dust of the arena) their faces were wanly smeared with the dirtied flour.
(192)
This sort of thing is really extraordinary for an ancient work, as these works usually relegated
such characters to the background with a cheerful indifference. Note how even here, by the way,
we see Lucius callous disregard for others and his all consuming curiosity, both of which we
painfully apparent in the incident with the gardener, for it was his curiosity that literally
betrayed the gardener, and he can hardly be bothered to consider what happened to the poor man
in his excitement at being led off in such state by the soldiers. While on this theme we might also
mention the persistent anxiety over trails and the oft threatened miscarriages of justice. And we
are given harsh look at the naked power grabs that underlie the social order in the story of the
Oppressive Landlord (206 ff). I think Apuleius sure handed treatment of this material shows
in the fact that he does not sentimentalize the poor: they are often just as cruel and greedy as
their social betters, and as we see with Charites servants, such figures are often quite willing to
lie and cheat for their own advantage.
Addendum on the moon
The moon is important because of its place in the ancient cosmology. As you might remember,
before the Copernican revolution, the universe was regarded as a series of concentric spheres or
circles in the middle of which was set the earth. Thus looking at a starry sky at night, one would
be literally looking up through the ascending layers of these spheres. The Moons sphere was the
first of these which meant it served as the border or frontier between our mortal world and the
realm of those heavenly creatures whose dance we can admire in the night sky. (In case you are
interested the spheres, in ascending order, are the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Juptier,
Saturn, the sphere of the fixed stars, the Primum Mobile (whose motion sets the rest of them
going), and finally outside of all these one finds heaven in the spiritual sense. Or, as some old
diagrams put it, Coelum Empireum Habitaculum Dei et Omnium ElectorumThe Kingdom of
Heaven, the Abode of God and of the Elect).
The moon thus became an important symbol of the mortality and strife which marks the human
condition. The first century Plutarch writes, for instance, that the part of the world which
undergoes reproduction and destruction is contained underneath the orb of the moon, and all
things in it are subjected to motion and to change through the four elements: fire, earth, water,
and air (On Isis and Osiris 376e) Beneath the moon man was the sport of pure chance or
fortune. All changeable mortal things, which grow and die and vary, were under its sway. Edwyn
Bevan refers to the fact that beneath the moon was for a large part of the later classical world
the inscription of despair over the portals of life. Man was born into illogical trouble (136). The
world beneath the moon, in other words, was just such a place as Ovids transformations might
take place, or in which a man is liable to find he has (literally) made an ass of himself. In a
8

Platonic vein, it is the kind of place in which the appearances of things can be deceptive and in
which nothing lastsas opposed to the immutable realm above in which the True, the Good, and
the Beautiful find their unity.
This idea continued on through the Middle Ages and even the Renaissance. For instance, in John
Lydgates allegorical Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (circa 1426) Nature squares off against
Grace Dieu (the Grace of God). Offended at the others incursions into her territory, she
proposes that the circle of the moon should serve as the demarcation zone between the two of
them:
And yiff ye lyst to lerne yt sone,
The cercle off the colde moone,
Atwyxen yow & me for evere
The boundys trewly doth dysseuere*
And yiveth to euerych hys party;
(3415-19)
*[disseveren is a verb that means to part company, separate, remove, islotate]
[everyone his part]
Chaucers vicaire general, as Nature calls herself in the Physicians Tale, would seem to agree
to this boundary: and eche thyng in my cure is/Under the moone, that may wane and
waxe (6.20,22-3). This is why Spencer, when he wanted to reflect upon the themes of change
and permanence at the end of his FQ, invented a mythological figure, Mutability, who ascends to
the moon in her attempt to take over the realm above. She pleads a persuasive case to Lady
Nature:
Lo, mighty mother, now be iudge and say,
Whether in all thy creatures more or lesse
CHANGE doth not raign & beare the greatest sway:
For, who sees not, that Time on all doth pray?
But Times do change and moue continually.
So nothing here long standeth in one stay:
Wherefore, this lower world who can deny
But to be subiect still to Mutabilitie?
Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Mutabilitie 7.47.2-9
This idea became such a commonplace, that it lent itself to a word in our language, sublunary,
and you have probably already seen this ideas application to the courses theme of marvels and
wonder, for marvels can, by definition, only exist in a world of change, and wonder is the test of
our response to these surprising sights and our ability to follow them as signs from the contingent
world here below the moon to the eternal spaces above. Indeed, looking ahead to Mandeville, it
is telling that when he describes the earthly paradise which is the unattainable goal of his quest,
he describes how it is found on the highest place of erthe at is in all the world. And it is so
high at it toucheth nygh to the cercle of the mone (202 or 184 in our edition). Poised at the
border of two worlds, Paradise is the one spot on the medieval map that threatens to pierce the
9

veil and touch the eternal heart of things. Appropriately enough, the moon is also, for
Mandeville, the fatal influence that drives the English to be a nation of wanderers. And in oure
contrey is all the contrarie, For wee ben in the seuenthe clymat at is of the mone. And the mone
is of lyghtly mevyng + the mone is planete of weye. And for at skyll it eueth vs will of kynde
for to meue lightly + for to go dyuerse weyes + to sechen strange thinges + oer dyuersitees of
the world (108 or 120 in our edition).
In which the author takes his leave
In closing I would like to once again quote Gaisser.
Apuleius was a quintessential product of his time, for both were bicultural, prosperous,
nostalgic for the classical past, and enamored of display. The predominant cultural
phenomenon of the age was the movement called the Second Sophistic, whose
distinguishing feature was what we might describe as oratory for entertainment. (2)
With his knack for storytelling and his penchant for showy rhetoric, Apuleius has crafted a
wildly entertaining if occasionally appalling book that yet manages to highlight his elegance as a
writer. A skilled rhetorician, he shows the mastery of his craft and earns his credentials as an
intellectual celebrity. An as Gaisser points out there was a lot at stake acquiring that kind of
clat, for of these celebrities The more successful ones were highly paid, achieved fame well
beyond their native cities, and attracted large numbers of followers. Sometimes they attained
public office or positions of high status and influence(3). This is not to suggest that his work is
frivolous, or that he was only acting on what our modern sensibilities would term mercenary
motives. He is what we would term a serious writer, and his larger philosophic aims lie behind
every witty escapade and rhetorical flourish, for he has written a book about escaping this world
even as he describes it so vividly. To achieve his status as public intellectual he had to master the
very philosophic discourse which taught him the worthlessness of such distinctions. It is not an
uncommon irony, and at least he has the grace to offer some humorous reflection of his own
situation in the person of Lucius, ,for he must use his old rhetorical skills to pay is way as he
enters the service of the goddess. And we are invited to share his befuddlement as he learns that
there is ever yet another level of enlightenment which he must pay for and be initiated into.
Sources:
Bevan, Edwyn. Later Greek Religion. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton, 1927.
Gaisser, Julia Haig. The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008.
Joyce, Michael, trans. Symposium. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Eds. Edith Hamilton and
Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. 526-74.
Mandevilles Travels. Ed. P. Hamelius. 2 Vols. EETS, o.s. 153-4. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1919.

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Tatum, James. Apuleius and The Golden Ass. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Walsh, P. G. The Roman Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Zachar, Christian K. Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in FourteenthCentury England. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

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