1. Apuleius’s life, identity, trial

"serious joke" (Serio Ludere, see Wind 58-60, 236-7)

…one of submission and faith and joy fortified by contemplation of the image of the goodness by dream revelations of her will, and by the daily round of the Divine Office. Nock, 155

… is the high-water mark of the piety which grew out of the mystery religions. Nock, 138

The whole novel as a story of sin and redemption, conversion in the proper sense of the word–the passage from a sinner’s miserable condition to a pure and sanctified life. Festugière, 72

…the only full testimony of religious experience left by an adherent of ancient paganism. Lindsay, 21

The Golden Ass does offer us a complex and significant portrait of a provincial society: the network of relationships among the provincial aristocracy; the political functions, displays and generosities of the rich, as acted out in front of their local communities; the crude accumulation of wealth side by side with extreme poverty; an economy which was both monetized on the one hand and gave a large place to hunting in the wild on the other; a world where brigandage was rife but where society could close ranks to exert force where it was needed, and was fully armed to do so. Millar 267

Lucius and Apuleius seem to have a good deal in common: both belong to a provincial elite, both have connections with Platonic philosophy, both have a first-class education including study at Athens and visits to Rome, both have Greek intellectual credentials as well as seeking a literary or rhetorical career in Latin, both are subject to jealous rivalries in that career, both have been initiated into several Greek mystery-cults, both receive honorific statues, and both are trained orators and emerge successfully from defending themselves in a trial in which the charges can be seen as fabricated. These resemblances do not require that the Metamorphoses should be read as a fictionalized autobiography, though there were apparently ancient readers who thought Apuleius himself might really have been turned into an ass. Harrison, 218

Primary among intertexts for the Metamorphoses are the great epic poems of Greece and Rome. One fundamental reason for this is clearly the display of the authors paideia, the literary learning which was the stock-in-trade of sophists and elite intellectuals: in the second-century Roman empire, as now, the epics of Homer and Vergil held a central place in literary and educational culture, and to demonstrate close acquaintance with them was to demonstrate the basic standard of learning for a man of letters. Harrison, 222

…. well represents the sort of milieu in which Hermetic ideas most easily took root. Apuleius fancied himself a Platonist philosopher; and his fellow-citizens knew no better, since they dedicated a statue to him, ‘[ph]ilosopho [Pl]atonico’. But his philosophical culture was not so profound that it would have hindered him from taking the Hermetica seriously; and he also enjoyed a wide acquaintance with mystery religions and magic. His famous account of an Isiac initiation at the end of the Metamorphoses guarantees first-hand acquaintance with the rites of the Egyptian goddess; while his Apologia reveals a strong, sincere attachment to Hermes-Mercury, not merely as patron of magic and learning, but also as ruler of the whole universe — as Hermes Trismegistus (though he does not use the title). Indeed, Apuleius’s possession of a wooden image of the god provided the basis for one of the principal counts against him at the famous magic-trial where the Apologia was delivered. Apuleius was also an enthusiastic devotee of Asclepius, who was of course an important figure in the Hermetic pantheon. Perhaps it is significant too that Apuleius was on his way to Egypt when he was accused of being a magician. Fowden, 199

If the Kaguru think it witty to throw excrement at certain cousins or the Lodagaba to dance grotesquely at funerals or the Dogon to refer to the parents’ sexual organs when they meet a friend, then to recognize the joke that sends all present into huge enjoyment we need not retreat into cultural relativism and give up a claim to interpret. Douglas, 365

Apuleius designed the tale as a kind of mythic projection of the story of Lucius…Curiositas, curiosity about the kind of knowledge which is not for man, leads to destruction…Psyche finally yielding to the will of Venus is meant to prefigure Lucius’ final submission and initiation into the mysteries. Hägg, 183

"Magic is the exemplary area of human curiositas, which in its blind and perverse drive for knowledge is reaching out towards powers held by the divine." Wlosok, 154

Apuleius, one of our main transmitters of the Platonic view of ‘daimon’, was in fact (unsuccessfully) prosecuted for it in the second century A.D. He was supposed to have secured his rich wife by this means, and was charged with magic by a competitor for her fortune (Apologia 47). Interestingly, Augustine himself defends Apuleius hotly from this charge (Epistulae 138 to Marcellinus). Flint, 320

As a counterweight to Apuleius, Augustine denounces Hermes for being too well-disposed towards them, and for lamenting the impending abolition of their worship. The bishop of Hippo concludes that "certainly he [Hermes] had much to say…about the one true God, the creator of the world — much that corresponds to the teaching of the truth. And yet …he sank low enough to wish men to remain forever subject to gods who… are the creations of men… as if there were any unhappier situation than that of a man under the domination of his own inventions." Fowden, 210

For those figures for whom an ultimate religious claim is made (e.g. son of god), their biographies will serve as apologies against outsiders’ charges that they were merely magicians and against their admirers’ sincere misunderstanding that they were merely wonder-workers, divine men or philosophers…the characteristic of every such religious biography (and associated autobiographical and dogmatic materials) of Late Antiquity is this double defense against the charge of magic–against the calumny of outsiders and the sincere misunderstanding of admirers. Smith, 193

"A play upon form. It brings into relation disparate elements in such a way that one accepted pattern is challenged by the appearance of another which in some way was hidden in the first…The joke affords opportunity for realizing that an accepted pattern has no necessity." Smith, 206

…that the Metamorphoses shows an undoubtedly detailed knowledge of Isiac religion, but that this interest is used for cultural and intellectual display and satirical entertainment rather than to assert any ideological or personal commitment". Harrison,

…the central aspiration of the Hermetist to attain knowledge of God…the only truly useful knowledge is that of the way of immortality. Fowden,

It sometimes happens, however, that the spoil-sports in their turn make a new community with rules of its own. The outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist or member of a secret society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain element of play is prominent in all their doings. Huizinga,30

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