The Golden Ass [Paperback]

Apuleius' The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. Composed in the second century, this picaresque work tells the tale of Lucius, a man whose curiosity in magic and indulgence of sexual pleasures leads him to accidently transform himself into an ass. What follows are the various trials and hardships he endures as well as the tales he hears throughout his travels. It is not until the intervention of the goddess Isis that Lucius is transformed back into a man, and he devotes the rest of his life to her cult.

Apuleius' storytelling is lively, witty, an often sexually explicit. Indeed, many forms of fetish are showcased within the pages, including beastiality. More often than not, the novel indulges readers in their guilty curiosities while also providing hilarious and adventurous prose, with a splash of red-streaked violence thrown in for good measure. However, despite being written nearly two-thousand years ago, what may shock the modern reader most is how approachable and familiar is not only the humor but also the sentiments and sensuality of these Roman characters. It is not difficult to imagine Lucius' world.

The Golden Ass offers readers a romp through ancient Rome through the eyes of a contemporary while also entertaining. It is also a highly revealing documentation of religion and magical belief in Greco-Roman polytheism, and contains the only complete description of the initiation into a Mystery cult. The true essence of the novel is that it is a fable culminating in the religious transformation of the individual and the embrace of salvation (soteria). However, the pagan salvation was not one of the afterlife, but of this life, and involved changing one's perspective of the world and also of life and death. The ass in the ancient world was seen as the most base of animals, an utter slave to its desires, and Lucius' transformation at the end should be read as symbolizing his overcoming of those passions.

The Golden Ass is bawdy and shocking, but also intelligent and satisfying. Graves' translation is fluid and easy to follow. The prose is as enjoyable (and perhaps rewarding) to read today as it no doubt was nearly two-millennia ago.

I consider myself a connosieur of the classics, so when I heard of an ancient novel concerned with sex, illicit sex, and illicit donkey sex, I decided to take a closer look.

And I'm glad that I did. At the back end of the classical Western literary tradition of silliness, which includes such hallowed humorists as Chaucer, Bocaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, and, in its divine form, Shakespeare, we find the one tale that may have excited them all--Lucius Apuleius's Golden Ass.

The Golden Ass is filled with adventure, suspense, humor, and nonsense. I had a grin on my face most of the way through, and I got the feeling that the author did too. Tip o' the hat to Robert Graves for delivering an authentic translation that brings us Apuleius in his bawdy best.

The only thing I found occasionally irritating was that, like Cervantes, Apuleius has a tendency to digress. Big time. He inserts the entire myth of Cupid and Psyche right into the middle of the narrative, for example. Does this add to the mythological message of the whole? Probably, but it subtracts from the fantastic flow of the story. My urgent plea to Apuleius, were he alive today, would be, "Stick to the ass!"

There are a number of reasons that traditionally bring people to this book: to study Classical Rome, classic literature, mythology, psychology... maybe you're curious about the intimate lives of donkeys. Whatever has brought you to this novel, now that you're going to read it, perhaps the best thing to do is to take the advice of the author himself, who says, "Read on and enjoy yourself!"

I was glad at least one reviewer recognised that the 'Golden Ass' culminates in the story of Lucius' initiation into the divine 'Mysteries.' At this point the entire feeling tone changes, shifting into another key - along with the language. W.Y. Evans-Wentz, famous for his Tibetan Buddhist studies, regarded the 'Golden Ass' in its entirety as an expression of the Western Mystery tradition.

Tales of magical metamorphoses are the very stuff of antiquity, and while Apuleius 'Golden Ass' more or less occupied a category of light-reading - akin to the modern novel (novella), it is worth bearing in mind that 'magic' was real enough for Apuleius' and his contemporaries. At one point in his life, Apuleius had to appear in court to defend himself against charges of using magic to profit his circumstances. Most translators touch on this. Thessaly was renowned for its witches and witchcraft - and Lucius' fascination with it, in the story, probably typified how many young people actually felt. The counter-point and climax in the story, Lucius' initiation into the Isiac religion, regaining human form, transformed in outlook, also reflected a shift in the contemporary outlook. It is hard for us to understand today, but Apuleius - a Platonist, probably subscribed to the Isiac religion. In fact, the beatific vision conveyed in the story of Lucius' conversion - borders on a theosophical vision of totality, Isis - as a formless-form.

Reviewers inevitably pick up on the bawdy element, bestiality etc., and while this may not be the sort of book you would want to read to children, the 'raunchy' side of it has been exaggerated. As Robert Graves remarked, when Lucian takes on assinine form, his rich Pasiphae "is no mere bestialist, but shows her genuine love for the ass by planting pure, sincere, wholly unmeretricious kisses on his scented nose " - which puts a rather different perspective on things. Still, there can be little doubt that - for Lucius, acquiring the form of an ass signifies a kind of fallen state. It has sometimes been said that the 'religious' element - Lucius' initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, was inserted as a kind of dupe, something to appease moralists and put them off track. But the juxtaposition of profane and sacred imagery in the story is one of a piece.

St. Augustine read the 'Golden Ass' and was influenced by it. There are obvious allusions to the Metamorphoses in Boccacio, and Shakespeare. There are no fixed rules about reading this book, but it is worth looking at Robert Graves' remarks about the symbolism. Seen in its earlier religious context, the Ass was also a religious symbol. Marie-Louise von Franz wrote a whole 'Jungian' commentary on this Roman fable. Other people have taken a less elevated view, seeing the metamorphoses of Lucius as nothing more than a ripping read, full of bizarre imagery and fantastic scenes. But Roman fables have connected meaning, which will not become apparent if we take them literally. Unravelling the symbolic attributes of this tale is a kind of long term project you might take on, if you enjoy the book. I recommend reading several translations, because Apuleius' Latin is as tricky as it is interesting. Besides Robert Graves' translation, there is Jack Lindsay's version, the old Loeb edition by Gaselee (basically a reworked version of Adlington's text (1566) - and, so I hear, a new Loeb edition (haven't checked that out yet).