Apuleius

From Philosopedia

Apuleius (c. 123/125 - 180)

A Roman writer, satirist, and rhetorician, Luciu Apuleius was born in Madaura, Numidia. He studied at Carthage and Athens, travelled widely, and was nitiated into numerous religious mysteries.

Having married a wealthy widow, Aemilia Pudentilla, he was charged by her relatives with having employed magic to gain her affections. He wrote Apologia to vindicate himself.

In Carthage, he taught philosophy and rhetoric. Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass, is a satire on the vices of the age, especially those of the priesthood and of quacks.

Benjamin Slade has a biographical study of Apuleius's The Metamorphoses, which he describes as being

• simultaneously a blend of erotic adventure, romantic comedy, and religious fable, it is one of the truly seminal works of early European literature, with a distinctly Eastern flavouring and a very modern feel. There are very few works with the pleasurable impact of the Golden Ass. Apuleius's images retain their vitality from almost 2000 years ago, losing nothing of their colour and magic. Indeed, the promise of the closing words of the Prologue: Lector, intende: laetaberis - 'Lend me your ear, reader: you shall enjoy yourself' are amply fulfilled. Over the centuries, the Golden Ass has brought pleasure and inspiration to generations of readers and writers, from Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie. A copy of the Golden Ass was one of the few things T.E. Lawrence ('of Arabia') carried in his saddle-bags throughout the Arab Revolt.

• The modernity of The Golden Ass originates from the timelessness of the text. This is true of the humour--what we found amusing two thousands years ago we still do today--but also of the non-comic aspect of the work: the continual struggle of individuals to come to grips with and function in a largely unintelligible world. The transformation of man into ass provides a well-lit stage for the drama of this struggle to play upon; his form of an ass allows the narrator a unique vantagepoint from which he is able to better gather together the threads of the mundane world to weave his fantastic tale. But the story remains that of man and his place in the world. This is not to say that Apuleius was not a believer in magic--he had been initiated into the mysteries of Isis and is reputed to have himself performed miracles necessitating the mastery of magic and sorcery.

However, The Golden Ass is not a story about magic, the supernatural of the novel is a convience subordinate to the spinning of a story about man and the struggle of life in a world of limited resources. Magic in The Golden Ass may change a man too an ass, but it does not transform the Finite into the Infinite:-- it does not eliminate the 'need' for slaves, make all of the poor men rich or all the hungry satiated. Magic forms part of Apuleius's natural world:-- the world in which it is winter during those months in which Ceres's daughter dwells in Hades; a world in which the earth is not always bountious, not matter how much one propriates the Gods with burnt offerings and other sacrifices. Spells and witchcraft do not change these facts.

Part of the inherent struggle depicted in The Golden Ass is that of arises from man's own inner desires for pleasure. In this we find one of the 'Eastern' elements of Apuleius's work, the journey to escape from the bonds of desire endured by Lucius is similar to the Hindu concept of moksha ("release"), the Bhagavad-Gita dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna being an excellent expression of this philosophy. This is not to say that the Golden Ass is by any means a moralistic tale of a libertine who realises the 'ungodliness' of his ways and reforms in order to secure a seat in the heavens. Apuleius celebrates the sensual aspects of life and his vivacious descriptions of erotic scenes illustrate his possession of the 'cavalier-poet' virtue of living life to the fullest, both the pleasurable and the painful. Just as there is a Tantric school of Hinduism which does not strive to avoid the sensuous side of experience, Apuleius's is a tale of maturation and the attainment of the wisdom needed to survive one's desires.

(See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Religion's discussion of the ancient logical writings of Apuleius.)