The Golden Ass
Lucius Apuleius of Madaura
Number of Reviews: 2
Average rating: 
Reviewed by: Dave dcymbalisty@hotmail.com Date: 15 January 2002
A Fantastic Four-Footed Fable.
I thought only cats were supposed to have nine lives, but this donkey has at least that many. This book is great fun, I couldn't put it down for too long, and it is incredible that something written so long ago (18 centuries?) can be so accessible, captivating, and hilarious to a modern reader. The events in The Golden Ass resemble the ribald, bawdy exuberance of the Decameron, and no doubt Boccaccio was somewhat inspired by the writings of Apuleius. According to the introduction, the adjective "golden" in the title implies "the ass par excellence" or "the best of all stories about an ass." The story follows the misadventures of Lucius, an enterprising young man who gets far too close to the world of magic, is transformed into a donkey and is constantly thwarted in his attempt to procure the antidote to his assness. It's human mind... trapped in donkey bawdy! Totally imaginative, classically written, hilarious fun. As a writer, Apuleius was MILLENNIUMS ahead of his time! (Note: my review is based on the Robert Graves translation)
@
Reviewed by: Michael Sympson michaelsympson@prodigy.net Date: 15 September 2001
"... give me a copper and I'll tell you a golden story ..."
Fans use to hail Lady Murasaki's "Prince Genji" as the world's first novel. Well, if we don't count Petron's "Satyricon" because of its fragmented condition, then Apuleius must be a strong candidate. His book predated Murasaki by more than 800 years. And of course there is extant an even older example - "Chaireas and Callirhoe" by Chariton (some time in the first century BC. or AD.) Not to mention the bashfully lewd novel "Daphnis and Chloe" from the 3rd century. (The most interesting aspect of this book is not the sex - but that the two shepherds can see their animals doing it all the time and still be so completely clueless before the last page.) And experts on Egyptian literature may actually be able to push even further back into the past the advent of the novel as a genre.
So the biblical Joseph story could very well be the retelling of an Egyptian original. All that is needed is the mindset of an urban middle-class, some sort of rudimentary public education, a comparably accessible and inexpensive technology of writing, and a viable network of dissemination. All of this was present in Egypt, millennia before it fell under Macedonian protectorate. On the other hand it is not very likely to find tales of novel length written in cuneiform or in Chinese before the introduction of ink and paper, when text was still singed on bundled bamboo slabs with an iron needle in a painfully slow procedure. I have a suspicion that the very earliest novels had been the promptbooks for professional storytellers on the bazaars and marketplaces.
A suspicion confirmed by Pliny the Younger and shared by Robert Graves who retranslated "The Golden Ass" for the modern reader. He based his hunch on the outlandish and weirdly archaic diction of the original and compared it to oral traditions in Wales, which in Grave's time was still a living craft. In Grave's opinion, the Author deliberately emulated and travestied the style of oral storytelling. In the Bible, 1 King 13 might be another example for this sort of thing. In fact we can be pretty certain that Lucius Apuleius of Madaura (124 - after 170) meant to mock an established narrative pattern, and not only because his style is so different from Chariton's and Petronius' elegance and lucidity. But the very source for his story was originally written in a trim and witty diction.
The story of Lucius who brought on himself bad luck by starting a love affair with a slave girl and was transformed into a donkey, has come to us in two versions. The other version is by Lucian of Samosata (c.120 - c.190) a Syrian from Antioch, who travelled widely the Empire before he settled in Alexandria. His tale is much shorter and lacks all the intimate touches and folklore we find in Apuleius. The two writer's outlook on religion couldn't be any more different. Where Apuleius wholeheartedly embraced pagan worship, the "Syrian Voltaire," lambasted with equal zeal pagan superstition and religion in any form. Some scholars speculate that Apuleius got the idea for his novel from Lucian. But if we look at the data of their biographies this seems to be not very likely. In fact if anybody of the two could have been aware of the other fellow's existence, it would have been Lucian rather than Apuleius.
But then again, why should the elegant and cosmopolitan Lucian even bother of taking notice of a comparably obscure Roman writer who lived in the African province? So the inevitable conclusion seems to be, that both authors used a common source, now lost, from the stockpile of Greek pulp fiction or "Milesian Tales" which had been around for at least three centuries. Knowledgeable scholars mention a certain Lucius of Patra. In Apuleius' hands, despite its episodic structure, this story became a genuine novel. The author used all the narrative ploys and plot cliches available, but he also spliced in materials from his own life, from his travels and spiritual adventures, and presents us with a brew of folklore and biographical detail as the vehicle for a moving story of genuine transformation and penance.
Graves might overdo it a bit when he stresses the moral aspect in Apuleius' story, but it is true: the protagonist's transformation is no less genuine and moral as the conversion story of St. Augustine, who had read Apuleius, before he composed his "Confessions." The difference however speaks volumes. As practically every Christian apologist in Antiquity, the African saint is utterly lacking in humor, thus following the great example of the bible itself. The pagan Apuleius, on the other hand, has no such inhibitions, and invites us to laugh with him, even at the gods. This is good pagan tradition. Just recall the unbelievably uncouth obscenities and ribald insults, which such undoubtedly conservative and deeply religious author as Aristophanes, was capable of throwing at the deities.
In a different time and under a different religion it would have meant a public barbecue of the author on a slowly turning spit. But in the liberal atmosphere of Athen's democracy and pagan laissez-faire, nobody batted an eyelid. The "Golden Ass" though not quite so ribald has its moments too, moments that carried over into Boccaccio's "Decamerone." But the allegorical bedtime story of "Amor and Psyche" is recognized as a marvel of its kind. Adlington's Elizabethan translation is still interesting, but surprisingly a bit coy on the sex; Graves' translation remains a reliable staple, J. Arthur Hanson's new rendition in Havard's Loeb Classics is accurate and elegant - none of them reproduces the rough edges of the original. But it is a remarkable fact that all early translations into French, German, and English had become landmark events in the development of elegant writing.
Apuleius was a magician - in more than one respect.
What do you think about this book?
Write a review and give your opinion and analysis!
If this web site has been useful to you and if you would like to contribute to its maintenance then please buy your books through the links provided here. Thank you for helping keep ReadLiterature.Com alive.