The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses)

Golden Ass. There is little evidence either for or against this hypothesis, which is a good example of the type of explanation to which scholars resort out of an ingrained reluctance to believe that any classical writer ever thought of anything for himself. There is no solid reason to withhold from our author the credit of originality regarding the way in which he chose to finish his book. Whether the result of combining this and the other disparate elements—the cautionary tales and Milesian stories, Cupid and Psyche, and the rest—in the framework of the ass-narrative can be considered successful is another matter. Certainly, the whole undertaking was an ambitious one, unlike anything else in the way of prose fiction that has survived from classical antiquity.

Most readers probably feel that the story holds together well enough until the end of book 10. Although loose ends and minor inconsistencies abound where the author has not taken sufficient pains to mesh the added material into the original fabric, the reader is irresistibly carried along by the sweep of the narrative and the stories within the story. This is the secret of the classic novel: the trick of maintaining an even flow of narration, moving steadily forward no matter how dense and rich the content may be. If a man can do this instinctively—and, let me add, very few men can—then God intended him to be a novelist.

There is no doubt that God intended the author of The Golden Ass to be a novelist. The book is indeed “thick and rich” with interwoven matter, but the weaving is done with skill and élan flair/enthusiasm. This is particularly evident in what has been called the “Charite-complex” (4.23–8.14), in which the fates of Charite and Tlepolemus, Cupid and Psyche, and Lucius himself are integrated into a complex counterpoint. It is only now and then, as in the case of the tale of the delinquent slave (8.22), that a story is casually tossed in simply because it seemed too good to lose. In general, the inserted stories and episodes significantly reinforce and illustrate the main narrative and the characterization of the hero.

Of the inserted episodes preceding Lucius’ metamorphosis, the one involving the Festival of Laughter, his encounter with the “robbers,” and his public humiliation in his spoof trial for murder (2.31–3.18) has provoked much discussion. It can be read as a warning of what is in store for him if he persists in his obsessive interest in witchcraft: it is a mistake on the part of Photis, the sorceress’s apprentice, that leads to the unplanned transformation of the wineskins and its sequel, and it is a second mistake of hers that precipitates