The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses)

And in Cupid and Psyche, he displays Venus and Cupid in these dual Platonic guises contending for the human soul. The actual battle is carried on between Venus in her lower (II, Vulgaris = Aphrodite Pandemos) and Cupid in his higher guise (Amor I, Caelestis = Eros Uranios), 41 just as Venus in both guises, personified by Photis and Isis, contends for mastery over Lucius. The role of Cupid and Psyche in the economy of the novel as a philosophical commentary on the main narrative is central to an understanding of the book as a whole.

Contemporary awareness of Plato largely centered on the more popular and accessible dialogues. These included, in addition to the Symposium, the Phaedrus and the Phaedo. Psyche’s pursuit of Cupid and her fall to earth (5.24) recall the Phaedrus: “When the soul is unable to follow God and fails to see, and through some misfortune grows heavy, being filled with forgetfulness and wickedness, it loses its wings 42 and falls to earth” (248c). In the Phaedo, what is said about the need for the soul to purge itself of the defilements of bodily pleasure if it is to attain to eternal life with the gods (81a–c) is clearly relevant to both Psyche and Lucius; and the transformation which in the Onos appears to have no special significance takes on a new, metaphorical dimension in The Golden Ass in the light of Socrates’ suggestion that “those who have thoughtlessly given themselves over to gluttony and violence and drunkenness are likely to be clothed in the shapes of asses and similar beasts” (81e).

We may also detect Plutarch behind the part played in the stories of both Psyche and Lucius by what the priest of Isis calls “ill-starred curiosity,” curiositas improspera (11.15). In his treatise on curiosity or importunate meddling, Plutarch appeals to a standard philosophical distinction between proper objects of investigation, such as natural science, and things that are attractive merely because they are hidden (De curiositate, 5). Apuleius himself draws a similar distinction when rebutting accusations of sorcery in his Apology (29–41), and it is implicit in the contrast between the pursuits for which Lucius’ family connections and educational advantages should have equipped him (1.2, 1.4 and notes) and his prurient obsession with the unclean secrets of witchcraft. Philosophy, as Plutarch had emphasized (On Isis and Osiris, 68), was the only true guide to the mysteries. These higher and lower forms of curiosity can also be seen as corresponding to the higher and lower forms of love that war for the souls of Psyche and Lucius.

In the light of these various hints, the attentive reader postulated in the Prologue can hardly fail to sense the lurking presence of the Platonic philosopher in The Golden Ass, and to suspect that Apuleius has taken a