VIII _A COMPARISON OF THE GREEK ROMANCES AND APULEIUS'_ METAMORPHOSES
Apuleius, the author of the greatest ancient novel extant, might, if hehad chosen, written his book in Greek instead of Latin. Though he wasborn in North Africa (at Madaura) he was educated in Athens as well asRoman Carthage and Rome, indeed was completely bi-lingual. The letterfrom his wife produced as evidence in his trial for having won heraffections by magic was in Greek. And private correspondencedemonstrates fluency in the language even more than does the fact of histranslation of a work by Plato and his Latin style richly colored byGreek syntax and vocabulary.
Some reader may now ask as Apuleius anticipated: "Who is this man?"[364]So I must refer all to my other writings about him and brieflycharacterize him here for the uninformed.[365] Apuleius was born aboutA.D. 125 in the Roman colony of Madaura where his father was a leadingcitizen and official. He was educated at Carthage, Athens and Rome, wascertainly bi-lingual and probably tri-lingual as he must have knownPunic as well as Latin and Greek. Returning to Africa, he practicedsuccessfully the art of a sophist, giving public discourses, many ofthem impromptu. Specimens of these are extant in a collection ofextracts from his speeches called the _Florida_. He married a wealthywidow, mother of a university friend at Athens, and was promptly sued byhis in-laws for having gained her hand by magic practices. The brilliantspeech in which he defended himself at Sabrata against their charges,the _Apologia_, is extant and constitutes his autobiography. St.Augustine called him a Platonist and he did indeed try to convey Plato'sideas to his contemporaries in works on _The God of Socrates_, _Platoand his Doctrine_ and other lost writings. His fame when he was aliverested on his oratory and it was so great that he was honored by statuesand made priest of Aesculapius at Carthage. But his undying glory comesfrom his novel, the _Metamorphoses_. The date of its composition isuncertain as indeed are most of the dates of his life. He lived fromabout A.D. 125 to A.D. 171, that is, in the time of Antoninus Pius andMarcus Aurelius. He was therefore a contemporary of Lucian and may havemet him as Walter Pater imagines in _Marius the Epicurean_. Whatconcerns us here is his novel and its relation to the Greek Romances.
The _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius is a long story written in eleven books.It is an ego-romance with Lucius a Greek acting as narrator and hero.
"The plot is simple. The hero Lucius who is greatly interested in magic is enabled by the aid of the maid-servant of a witch to achieve transformation. But a mistake in the use of the unguents changes him not into a bird as he had planned, but into an ass. Although he knows that the antidote is a meal of roses, he is kept by Fortune from securing release through long months and meets various adventures until at last through the aid of the goddess Isis Lucius the Ass becomes again Lucius the Man."[366]
The similarity of this plot to that of the Greek _Lucius or Ass_ isapparent at once. But its unique differences caused by diversificationof anecdotes and long additions become clear as we read the narrative.
Lucius in the beginning was travelling in Thessaly riding his whitehorse over the high mountains when he fell in with two other travellers.One of these as they rode on together related a horrible story of howhis friend Socrates saw a companion murdered by a witch. The scene ofthe story was set in Hypata, the very city to which Lucius was going.And the narrative of it by its effect on Lucius reveals all hiscredulity and curiosity about witchcraft.
Lucius was entertained at the house of Milo to whom he brought a letterof introduction and soon he learned from a relative in Hypata, namedByrrhaena, that Milo's wife Pamphile was a witch. Hypata was full ofstories of marvellous happenings and soon Lucius heard another of thesethrillers at a dinner-party given by Byrrhaena. It was the story told bya guest Tlelyphron of how he watched a corpse for pay and therebysuffered mutilation of his face by a foul beldam. It was on the way homefrom the party that Lucius, jittery and drunk, fought his fatal battlewith three bold robbers who afterwards, at his trial for murder at theFestival of Risus, god of laughter, were proved to be wine-skins!
Now Lucius was determined to investigate magic rites by personalexperience so he made ardent love to Pamphile's servant Fotis until theenamored girl consented to let him peer through a crack in the door ofPamphile's bed-room and see her mistress transform herself into an owl.This marvel witnessed, nothing would satisfy Lucius but to attempt asimilar transformation. Unfortunately Fotis gave him the wrong unguentfor the necessary lubrication of his body and he became not a bird, butan ass! The careless maid swore that the antidote was simple, merely ameal of roses, and if he would quietly spend the night in the stable, inthe morning she would bring him a breakfast of the flowers.Unfortunately before dawn robbers arrived, pillaged the house and stole,along with Lucius' own horse and Milo's ass, Lucius the ass to carry theplunder. This was the beginning of a long series of adventures for theman-ass before he could achieve re-transformation.
In the robbers' hide-out in the mountains Lucius heard the robbers tellthree fine stories of their brave chieftains. There too he saw a band ofrobbers bring in a captive beauty Charite and heard her piteous tale ofhow she was kidnapped on her wedding-night for ransom. To cheer thisweeping girl the old woman who cooked for the robbers told in theirabsence the story of Cupid and Psyche.
An old wives' tale she called it, but Apuleius lifted the folk-tale tothe realm of the Olympian gods by making it the love romance of Venus'son Cupid and Psyche, a mortal maid. Venus herself was the cruelstep-mother who tried to separate the lovers and set all sorts ofimpossible tasks for Psyche. But the heroine triumphed over every taskby the aid of Cupid's minions on earth and in air. Finally the king ofheaven, Jupiter himself, called Psyche to his high throne to receive thegift of immortality and summoned all the great gods and goddesses tocelebrate her nuptials with the god of love himself.
This happy love romance diverted Charite only briefly, but soon herlover disguised as a robber came and rescued her and after causing thedestruction of all the robber band carried her away with Lucius tosafety. Charite's story, however, unlike Psyche's was not to endhappily. For after her marriage to her Tlepolemus, a former suitorThrasyllus because of jealousy made way with her husband in a boar hunt,pretending his death was an accident. Later when the villain was makingardent love to the widow, the shade of her husband appeared andrecounted his murder at the hands of his friend. Charite by subtle planswas able to put out Thrasyllus' eyes for vengeance and then stabbedherself over her husband's tomb. Thrasyllus in repentance starvedhimself to death.
Lucius the Ass again left to the mercy of Fortune had a series ofdegrading adventures which tended to make him a pessimist. He witnessedthe obscene orgies of a lewd band of Syrian priests. He heard fournaughty Milesian Tales of corrupt women: "The Lover under the Tub," "TheBaker's Wife," "The Sandals under the Bed," "The Fuller's Wife." TheseMilesian Tales of triangular sex episodes are succeeded in the novel byanother group of tragic stories which stir deeper waters. The first is arecord of the terrible oppression of the poor by an arrogant youngnobleman and how three fine young brothers who went to the defense ofthe poor family lost their lives in a noble cause. Then follows a tragicstory of an amorous step-mother and her attempt to poison herunresponsive step-son. And finally comes the awful narrative of fivemurders committed by one sadistic woman. Book Ten concludes with theplan to display Lucius the ass in obscene union with this condemnedcriminal at a public exhibition. To avoid this horror, Lucius ran awayfrom Corinth to the sea-shore at Cenchreae and there found hissalvation.
For lying asleep on the sea-shore that night he had a vision in themoonlight of the goddess Isis. In all her refulgent beauty she told himof herself and gave him hope. For she assured him that at the springfestival of the launching of her sacred vessel she would give himcertain aid. And indeed it was at that festival in the midst of all itsbrilliant pageantry that the priest of Isis offered the ass a garland ofroses and munching them he became man again. No wonder that after thatLucius had only one desire: to serv
e his savior.
Night after night he had new visions of the goddess and under thedirection of her priest he fulfilled all the arduous preparations forthe initiation into her rites. Finally one night left alone in hertemple he was vouchsafed that mystic experience which only the elect mayachieve, death, rebirth, revelation.
"I approached the borderland of death, trod the threshold of Proserpina, was borne through all the elements and returned; at midnight I saw the sun shining with a brilliant light; I approached the gods of the nether and the upper world and adored them in person near at hand."[367]
After such exaltation Lucius consecrated himself forever to the serviceof Isis. Soon going to Rome he continued his worship at her temple thereand by her direction was twice initiated into the mysteries of the godOsiris though the expense was great for "this poor man of Madaura."Under the blessing of Osiris he prospered greatly as an advocate in theRoman Forum and finally under the god's direction he was allowed tobecome one of the Pastophores or high-priests of the cult. So ends hismetamorphosis and the novel.
Let us now return to the beginning. In the first chapter Apuleiusannounced that he is telling a Greek story. The main outline of his plotis indeed identical with that of the Greek _Lucius or Ass_, which as wehave seen, is an epitome of the Greek _Metamorphoses_ by Lucian.Apuleius' novel is clearly later than Lucian's because of rich andnotable additions to the plot of the epitome _Lucius or Ass_. Theseadditions are Milesian Tales, the Cupid and Psyche story and the greateleventh book portraying the worship of Isis, who redeemed Lucius fromass to human shape.
The change in the tone of telling the whole story is significant forwhile the earthy character of the original folk-tale occasionallyappears and there are recurrent glimpses of Lucianic wit and satire,Apuleius' _Metamorphoses_ is neither a comic romance nor a satire asLucian's clearly was. Apuleius wrote a serious novel, a sort ofPilgrim's Progress of the Ass-Man in his quest for knowledge of marvels.Whereas Lucian through satire degraded a simple folk-tale, Apuleiusexalted it by making the journeyings of Lucius a search for thespiritual meaning of life. His hero walks alone. The love romance in hisstory, the Cupid and Psyche tale, starts with the Platonic conception ofthe relation of Eros and Psyche, Love and the Soul, and therefrom islifted to the realm of the Olympian gods. And finally theretransformation of Lucius is no chance event, but a salvation wroughtout by the mystic worship of Isis.
The subjectivity infused in the plot by these additions is enhanced bythe fact that the hero-narrator Lucius is identified with the author,implicitly at first in the Preface and in incidental comment of authorto reader; in the last book by the identification of Lucius with "thepoor man of Madaura" so that the whole narrative becomes personalexperience. This fact involves another difference from the structure ofthe Greek love romances. The action of these love romances, as Riefstahlpoints out,[368] is a "closed" one: in the misfortunes which threatenthe lovers through Fortune, they must always remain faithful to eachother and stout-hearted in order to be re-united. So the circle of theaction is "closed," for it is a great cycle in the life of the herowhich places him at the end just where he was in the beginning. Theaction in Apuleius is "open," for the hero is bound and pledged tonothing. He goes through his adventures with a light heart. He does notneed to prove his faith to any one. He does not need to stand up to atest or even to remain true to himself. He must needs wander, but thereis no set purpose in his journeyings. His sufferings are as spiritual ascorporeal. He is aware too of the misery of others in the world. And inprofound despair he must beg divine aid.
It is absurd to compare the plot of the whole novel with the typicalpattern of the Greek love romances and Fotis with their heroines asRiefstahl does.[369] The only great human love-story in Apuleius' mainplot, that of Charite, is a tragedy. It is like the Greek Romances inbeing a story of high life and in this too is unique among Apuleius'novelle. But it is utterly different from the Greek love romances instructure and tone. The only parallel to them is to be found in theinset story of Cupid and Psyche. Here the tale is of two young loversunhappily separated by the cruelty not of Fortune but of a greatergoddess, Venus herself. And only after the hard testing of one of thepair, this time the lady, are the two lovers reunited. Thus theconventional happy ending of the plot is achieved. But for the author'sphilosophical mind such a beautiful story must start with a touch ofPlatonic symbolism in the very names of the lovers, Cupid and Psyche,and must be concluded in high heaven, for only among the immortals maysuch perfect happiness be won forever.
From this account of Apuleius' _Metamorphoses_ it is already clear thathis great novel is a synthesis of various types of Greek Romances. Itsclosest parallel is in the Greek _Lucius or Ass_, for the bare outlineof the plot of the first ten books is like that of the Greek work. Butall recent research tends to prove that Lucian's original_Metamorphoses_ was satiric in character, therefore very different intone from Apuleius' serious work. So although they share thecharacteristics of a romance of adventure, with stories of magic and ofrobbers forming principal episodes, the motivation and the aim of thetwo romances are utterly different. This difference is emphasized byApuleius' two longest and most startling additions to the plot, thelove-story of Cupid and Psyche and the story of Lucius and Isis.
Apuleius writes a love romance like the Greek only in the story of Cupidand Psyche. For the episode with Fotis is a sex-story of convenience andthe Milesian Tales added to the plot of _Lucius or Ass_ carry out thisFotis-motif of sex and lechery.[370] The one long love-story of humanbeings, Charite's story, is indeed a love romance of a noble lady andher noble lord, but it is a complete tragedy in episodes, tone andending. Only the Cupid and Psyche story is the true type of Greek loveromances.
The third great interest in the Greek Romances besides adventure andlove was religion. To this Apuleius gave a new emphasis and a newimportance. In the center of his novel in the inset story of Cupid andPsyche he pictures the old familiar Olympian gods in their conventionalmythological characters, but as realistically and with as implicit asatire as Lucian used in his "Dialogues of the Gods." Venus is a veryjealous and cruel step-mother. Jupiter is a lusty, amorous, irresistibleking. Cupid is at first undutiful, mischievous and wanton. The story ofLucius and Isis is, however, a serious story of a great religiousexperience. Through prayer, visions, priestly instruction, ceremonials,initiation and communion Apuleius becomes one with the goddess to whomhe is to devote the rest of his life. The worship of Isis is picturedspiritually from the depths of experience by Apuleius who according tohis own statements had actually been many times initiated in hercult.[371]
Throughout these three parts of Apuleius' novel with their successiveemphasis on adventure, love and religion, virtually all the conventionaldevices of the Greek Romances are employed. In the stories of adventurethere are rapidly shifting scenes, though in a more limited spatialarea. The Greek love romances lie according to the time of their actionin the geography of the colonies of great Greece or within theboundaries of the hellenistic-oriental world from Byzantium to Egypt,from Sicily to Babylon. The action is carried out through long seavoyages, varied with storms and shipwreck. The wide world, the spatialseparations are overcome only through the faithfulness of the lovers.The Ass-story takes place in narrower compass, in old Greece betweenPatrae, Hypata and Corinth. To Lucian's geographical set Apuleius addsRome. In these two versions of the Ass-story all the life of mankind isrepresented concretely and in close perspective. The action concernslittle people living in one locality or for purposes of trade takingshort journeys hither and thither on land.[372] Other conventionaldevices in Apuleius' stories of adventure are the introduction asimportant characters of robbers and robber chieftains, narratives withemphasis on external events, descriptions like that of the robbers'cave.
In the love-story of Charite the interest centers in a lover and hislass; both are persons in high life, both are faithful. A dreamfurnishes an apparition of the dead husband. But the villainy of atreacherous friend makes the story a trag
edy involving murder andsuicide. The story of Cupid and Psyche, true to the type of the Greeklove romance, starts with a religious beginning, the worship of a mortalgirl Psyche as the goddess of love; is motivated by a Greek oracle;describes at length the proving of the heroine in tasks imposed by thewill of an unfriendly deity; depicts Psyche's apparent sleep of death;and finally consummates a happy ending for the lovers through a savinggod, who is Cupid the hero himself. A pastoral note which affiliates thestory with _Daphnis and Chloe_ is introduced by the presence of thefriendly god Pan, who acts as a wise old adviser and comforter to Psychein her great despair. And the conventional use of _excursus_ creates anew pictorial character in brilliant descriptions of Venus chariotedover the sea, of the Palace of Cupid, of Cupid asleep, of the weddingbanquet of the lovers.
In the story of Lucius and Isis in Book Eleven, many of the conventionaldevices of the Greek Romances appear: dreams, epiphanies, religiousfestivals, a _dea ex machina_. So in Chariton Aphrodite and Fortunecontend for the control of the lovers; in Xenophon of Ephesus Artemisand Isis are the two saving goddesses; in Heliodorus Apollo and Isis areprominent though the philosophies of the Gymnosophists and of theNeo-Pythagoreans have a share in the plot; in Achilles Tatius Artemisreigns supreme; in Longus Pan and the Nymphs guide the destinies of theyoung lovers. The difference in Apuleius is that the whole quest of thehero is for some meaning in life and when magic, adventure, mythologyand human amours can not supply it, he finds through conversion a unionwith a mystic goddess who sublimates his emotion and absorbs his lifeinto her service.
The greater subjectivity of the Apuleius' romance as compared to theGreek Romances is attained by the aloneness of the hero, his quest andits implicit meaning, his individual satisfaction. This subjectivity isintensified by the complete adoption of the ego-narrative. Far moreattention is paid by Apuleius than by the Greek romancers to thenarrator and to his point of view in telling the whole romance. AchillesTatius was afterwards to attempt the use of this device of narration inthe first person, but he soon lost sight of the narrator in thenarrative and even at the end he never let him reappear. Lucian adoptedcompletely the _ich-roman_ form, but, as far as can be known, withoutrich characterization of the teller. Apuleius uses to the full theadvantage of having a man-ass as narrator, for his composite hero has aduplex view-point of man and animal and displays a double humor, of manand beast. All this keeps the hero-narrator before our eyes and webecome ever more and more interested in the effect of the eventsnarrated on his inner life and on his final solution of life.
Riefstahl points out that in the Greek love romances there is somestriving after subjectivity in the presentation of external events. Thepossibility of expression is not yet rich, but by soliloquies, bydescriptions of emotions, by reflections on events expressed in {gnomai}the romancers are working from objective to subjective presentation oftheir material. The soul is treated as an individual entity separatedfrom the body and contrasted to it. On this foundation in the loveromances rests the inner structural arch of spatial separation andspiritual fidelity. The relation of the objective and the subjectivecreates somehow the scale on which all these romances take their place.The love romances are at the objective end of the scale, the older onesparticularly, dynamic events holding writer and reader spell-bound. InLongus a peaceful atmosphere is created because there are few excitingevents, little travel, only the study of the development of love in twoadolescents in a quiet pastoral setting, but the expression is notadequate. Longus senses the dual conception of Eros, in man and innature, for the love of the two young shepherds is set in the teeming,growing life of the outer world, but he does not develop fully thissubtle implication. Achilles Tatius inclines toward the subjectivedirection through his attempted use of the ego-narrative. But thefullest subjective treatment is found in Apuleius. In Achilles Tatius asin Apuleius, the aim of the hero is a {mysterion} but with him it is the{mysterion} of love; in Apuleius it is the _sacrorum arcana_.[373] Thepowerful cosmic force of love appears only in Apuleius and there it isembodied in the personality of Isis. The goddess describes herself toLucius as "the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess ofall the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powersdivine, queen of all that are in hell, the principal of them that dwellin heaven, manifested above and under one form of all the gods andgoddesses."[374]
The whole story of Apuleius pictures, according to Riefstahl, thestriving of the individual towards the All. The cosmic Eros has takenthe place of the ancient Greek Eros, who was a terrible power, oftenidentified with the blind, cruel {Tyche}. To this cosmic Eros Apuleiushas given the name of Isis.[375] Riefstahl to be sure pushes too far histheory of an underlying philosophical content in Apuleius, representingthe romance "as an artistic unit ... and as an issue of the writer'sintellectual interests and personality," "ein kuenstlerisch gestaltetesAnschauungsbild der existenziellen Lebensgrundlage desNeuplatonismus."[376] Yet he does point out astutely the fundamentaldifference in Apuleius which makes his _Metamorphoses_ another distincttype of romance, the subjective philosophical.
A word now in retrospect. By the end of the second century A.D., thisnew genre of literature, the romance, had developed to full stature.Already besides the author of the Ninus romance, Chariton, Lucian andApuleius had written their stories, and perhaps also Xenophon ofEphesus. The different types of romance were already established: thehistorical romance, the love romance with its secondary interests ofadventure and religion, satirical romance, the subjective philosophicalromance. The pastoral was soon to be added. That is, in the secondcentury of our era, a new type of literature was created, a type whichwas to be the most popular in the modern world.[377]
It is strange to find that so distinguished and perceptive an historianas Rostovtzeff in his histories of Rome does not recognize thesignificance for the early empire of this new literary form. Indescribing the second century, he writes:[378]
"Except for the troubled reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empire under the Antonines enjoyed profound peace, broken only by distant wars on the frontier. Within the empire life appeared to be, as it had been in the first century, a steady forward movement for the diffusion and enrichment of civilization. The creative power of Rome seemed to have reached its zenith. There was, however, one disquieting symptom: after the brilliant age of the Flavians we note an almost complete sterility in literature and art. After Tacitus, and after the artists who worked for Trajan ... the decades that followed failed to produce a single great writer or a single notable monument of art....
"Even before the time of war and pestilence in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, we mark in the whole of intellectual life not merely a pause but even a backward movement. The only exception is a revival of Greek rhetorical prose, perfect in form but monotonous in substance. Its chief representative is the sophist and rhetorician, Aristides, and his best work is his _Panegyric_ on Rome. The _Dialogues_ of Lucian are witty and interesting; he was a sceptic and a humorist who mocked all ideals both new and old. In the West there are only two names to be quoted, that of the satirist Juvenal, a gloomy and bitter observer of the dark side of human life, and that of Pliny the Younger, a shallow orator and a brilliant representative of the epistolary style. The rest both in Greece and in Italy are writers of handbooks, text-books, and of miscellaneous collections of entertaining stories for the amusement and instruction of the reader."
Rostovtzeff's omission of all reference to the Greek Romances (even toLucian's) and to Apuleius shows how completely they have beendisregarded. Yet for a picture of the social life of the second and thethird centuries and of the psychology of the men of the time the GreekRomances and Apuleius are a revelation.
The Roman empire had checked both political activity and oratory, indeedthe orator had been succeeded by the rhetor in Greece and Rome. In theunified Mediterranean world trade had developed greatly and travellershad followed traders from one country to another, among them thelecturing sophists. The new lands visi
ted had their curiosities andsplendors so travellers' tales multiplied with descriptions often worthyof a natural history. Men, diverted from the aims of personal ambitionwhich military conquest or a democratic state had afforded, now soughtrelease and excitement in the personal relations. Women achieved a newfreedom and a new importance. The emotional life came to have a newinterest and this led to the development of the prose romance.
From the east came, with rich material resources, a wealth of new ideas,a mingling of superstition, magic, religion and philosophy. Just asman's emotions were turned inward so was his thought. The greatest newadventure became the quest for a solution of life itself. The romancesof the early empire whatever their type reflect the age: its craving forexcitement, its desire for adventure, its dread of brigands, itscuriosity about the new, its interest in art, its wish for fulfillmentof emotion in romantic love, its awareness of unsolved mysteries in manand the universe. With even the partial re-dating of the Greek Romancesall sorts of subjects open up for investigation such as the apparatus ofreligion in the use of oracles, dreams, epiphanies; the interest inworks of art; the new position of women. At any time in the future newfragments of romances may be discovered, or new dating of some of theold ones may be made possible. But even now while archaeologicaldiscoveries are suspended and publication of new editions is delayed, wemay read and re-read these amazing old stories and see what escapeliterature was in the second and third centuries. The Greek Romanceshave much to tell us of the psychology of their authors, theircharacters, and their readers. They have a deep human value.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto."