A  Serious Joke:

Apuleius between Religion and Philosophy

4.13.05

Steven M. Wasserstrom

Read and wonder; but first I shall answer your query, who is this man?

Outline:

 

1. Apuleius's life, identity, trial

2. Apuleius as Platonist and as novelist

3. Hermetism and the "reading Mystery"

4. Apuleius and the daimones

5. Apuleius jokester

6. Curiosity, secrecy and the joke

7. The Golden Ass as counter-gospel

8. Life is a Dream

 

Terms:

 

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

 

Mystery religions = "secret cults in the Mediterranean world during the Greco-Roman period"

 

Initiation rituals = "induction into an age group, secret society or religious office or community"

 

Mystery initiation  = 1. confession, 2. judgment and 3.  forgiveness

 

Hermetism = "philosophical and religious practices and speculations associated with the Hellenistic Greco-Egyptian deity Hermes Tristmegistos"

 

philosophical religion (Religio Mentis, see Fowden, 95-115)

 

Lesemysterium, "Reading Mystery", an initiation by means of a book.

 

Daimon = a special class of  divine beings, "the incalcuable non-human element in phenomena... [daimon] commonly denotes also the protecting spirit of a family or individual and acquires the meaning of an angel guardian and almost of an astral self"  (Nock, p. 222)

 

Quotations:

 

...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 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

 

"The jokes were horse-play.  The songs were uproar, the wit was smut" (92) 

 

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

 

"Do not open or peep into the box you carry and repress all curiosity as to the imprisoned Treasure of Divine Beauty" (139)

 

            "...you often find that visions of the night go by contraries in what they express"  (p. 104)

 

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

 

 The 'gospel' as I have described it stands in the closest relation to the joke which has been recently described by Mary Douglas as:

"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

 

"Perhaps, curious reader, you are keen to know what was said and done.  I would tell you if I were permitted to tell" (249)  

 

 "an introductory smile" (63)

 

"a toast to the God Laughter" (69)

 

...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,

 

            "The Tale of the Old Woman" (= Cupid and Psyche, 105-142)

 

 "some pretty fablings and old wives tales" (104)

 

 "visions of the nights go by contraries in what they express" (104)

 

"I immersed my head seven times because (according to the divine Pythagoras) that number is specially suited for all ritual acts" (235)

 

"The populace stood in blinking wonder; and the devotees adored the Goddess for the miraculous revelation of her power in a metamorphosis which partook of the shifting pageantry of a dream."  (243)

 

            "a dark glow" (237)

 

"the beatitude of release" (243) 

 

 

 

 

 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago and London: The University of  Chicago Press, 1999.

Douglas, Mary. "The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception." Man III. 1968.

Festugière, André-Jean. Personal Religion Among the Greeks. Berkeley  and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954.

Flint, Valerie. "The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan Religions."  Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Ed.  Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

Fowden, Garth. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Griffiths, John Gwyn. The divine verdict : a study of divine judgment in the ancient religions. Leiden; New York : E.J. Brill, 1991

Hägg, T. The Novel in Antiquity. Oxford, 1983

Harrison, S. J. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. London: Paladin, 1970.

Millar, Fergus. "The World of the Golden Ass." Oxford Readings in The Roman Novel. Ed. S.J. Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Nock, A. D. "The Opposite Current." Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo. London: Oxford University Press, 1933.

Smith, Jonathan Z. Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Turcan, Robert. The Cults of the Roman Empire. 1992. Trans. Antonia Nevill. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996

Wind, Edgar.  Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance 2^nd Edition, Penguin, 1967

Wlosok, Antonie. "On the Unity of Apuleius' Metamorphoses." Oxford Readings in The Roman Novel. Ed. S.J. Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.