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The Golden Ass of Apuleius
• First complete novel in the Western world
• written by an North African – Apuleius of
Madaurus
• modern-day Algeria; most likely a Berber
• ancient Romans were practically color-blind
• slaves and emperors could be of ANY ethnicity
• Regardless of birth and native language, the
people of the Empire were proud to be
SPQRomans.
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So
The SPQRoman World ca. 150 AD
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P. Terentius Afer (195-159 BC)
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Philip the Arab (244-249 AD)
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Apuleius Madaurensis
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Apuleius was a proud Roman citizen
Lived from 125-180 AD
Wealthy family
Studied philosophy at Athens
Studied rhetoric at Rome
also a lawyer, magician, scholar, author
Performed speeches to great assplause
“Golden Ass” actually entitled
“Metamorphoses”
• better known because of its hero Ass-Lucius
• Incidentally a big honking katabasis story
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The Golden Ass as katabasis
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Lucius begins as a college-age kid
curious but about all the wrong things
turned into an Ass for his curiosity
Ass’s eye view of the world = symbolic hell
gets
as an Ass
going into the Cave is a katabasis
Cupid and Psyche = katabasis within a
katabasis
Lucius resolves to be less of an Ass in his real
life
finally manages to de-assify himself
De-assified Lucius becomes a priest of Isis
shows
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Allegory
• Metaphor = uses a image, an object, or a story
to represent a complex or obscure idea
• “Life is like a box of chocolates.” – F. Gump
• Allegory is an extended metaphor, usually a
story, in which characters can stand for
complex or obscure ideas.
• Can also be associated with the “parable”
• Parable of the Good Shepherd (Luke15.3-7)
explains God’s love for all creation
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Republic 7)
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?
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Prometheus’s Bad Career Move
• Prometheus = Titan, “Mr. Foresight”
• teaches Mankind how to sacrifice an animal
while saving the meat and skin
• Pile A = guts and gristle covered with fat
• Pile B = steak and hide covered with entrails
• Zeus picks pile A, gets mad, takes away FIRE
• Prometheus steals FIRE and brings it back
• Prometheus punished by being chained to a
rock
• Gutter eagle eats his gizzard every day
• It’s all good, though. Prommy knows he’ll get
off
• Mankind punished by creation of… WOMEN
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The Creation of Womankind
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Gods and Goddesses create the first woman
Pandora = name means “all gifts”
She gets beauty and charm
Lots of misogynistic “qualities”
Heart of a bitch, mind of a thief, etc
Given a jar filled with all of the evils in the
world: hate, death, suffering, lies, Plain White
T’s
Told not to open it under ANY circumstances
Hooks up with Epimetheus = “Mr. Hindsight”
Lets all the evils out of the jar
Only “Hope” remains inside
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The Creation of Womankind
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•
•
•
Gods and Goddesses create the first woman
Pandora = name means “all gifts”
She gets beauty and charm
Lots of misogynistic “qualities”
Heart of a bitch, mind of a thief, etc
Given a jar filled with all of the evils in the
world: hate, death, suffering, lies, Plain White
T’s
Told not to open it under ANY circumstances
Hooks up with Epimetheus = “Mr. Hindsight”
Lets all the evils out of the jar
Only “Hope” remains inside
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Pandora’s Jar
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Pandora’s Jar
• Dates back to Hesiod, ca. 800 BC
• Basically misogynistic: blame the woman for
everything wrong
• “Pandora” can also mean “All-giving”
• Jar is metaphorically the womb: thanks, Mom
• Only Hope remains: good or bad?
• Good: hope is all we have at times, and it
helps
• Bad: hope is delusional, and causes only pain
• What was the Greek Weltanschauung ca. 800
BC?
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Allegory of the Cave
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Socrates and Plato
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Allegory of the Cave
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The Assification of Lucius
• Lucius – traveling on business and for
education
• stays with family friends in Hypata (Thessaly)
• family friend’s wife Pamphile is an evil witch
• Lucius wants to fly like an eagle, to the sea
• Lucius “befriends” slave girl Fotis “Light”
• thinks he is going to turn into a bird
• turned into an Ass instead = DYSTOPIA
• the real world is the scene of Ass-Lucius’s
katabasis
• Ass-Lucius gets
• sees the world as everyday people see it
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Isis as archetype of Great Goddess
• Ancient Egyptians - ancient to Greex and
Romans
• Isis and Osiris royal couple of Ancient Egypt
• Osiris – king of dead – originally more
important
• Isis became popular to Greex and Romans
• combination of ALL goddesses – archetype
• sometimes known as the Great Goddess
• Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus, Cybele, Madonna
(etc)
• Romans were tolerant of most other religions
• Greex and Romans alike loved Egyptian stuff
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The Ancient Greek Sphinx
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The Ancient Egyptian Sphinx
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Setting of Cupid and Psyche
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Ass-Lucius and his owners are kidnapped
forced into a deep cave by the robbers
shout-out to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
old woman begins to tell story (wisdom figure)
Female wisdom figures = Anticleia, Siduri
Cupid and Psyche = allegory
Cupid – Latin cupido, “lust”
Psyche – Greek ψυχή, “soul”
Voluptas – Latin voluptas, “pleasure” (best
sense)
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Plucky Princess Psyche
• Psyche is so beautiful that Venus is jealous
• Venus tells Cupid to make Psyche falls in love
with the worst scumbag on earth
• Psyche gets sick, oracle tells Psyche’s dad to
marry her off of the mountain top
• “an evil beast shall claim her bed’ (Cupid)
• Plucky young princess goes up the mountain
and waits for something worse than death
• Wind gently wafts her down to a pleasant
glade
• She feels better and falls asleep
• In the distance she sees a palace
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Happy Married Life
• Palace is filled with invisible servants who do
her every bidding
• Falls asleep in big comfy bed
• At midnight Psyche’s “husband” comes by in
the dark and makes love to her
• They keep sexing but she can never see him
• Husband finally agrees to let her sisters come
for a visit: by now she is pregnant
• Sisters trick Psyche into looking at him after he
falls asleep
• One night she looks at him with a lamp: OMG!
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A Tight Spot
• Cupid berates Psyche and kicks her out of the
palace
• She tries to drown herself but the river god
refuses to cooperate
• She cajoles both of her sisters into jumping off
of the mountain
• Venus ties into Cupid for not obeying her
orders
• Venus asks for hints on punishing him, but
Juno and Ceres don’t want to offend Cupid
• Psyche cleans Ceres’s temple and pleads for
help but Ceres doesn’t want to offend Venus
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Welcome to Symbolic Hell
• Venus gives Psyche four tasks
• Sort out huge pile of mixed grains (ants help
her out)
• Collect wool from man-eating sheeples (reeds
give her advice)
• Collect water from a waterfall which is sourced
by the river STYX (eegull fetches it)
• Bring back a box of Persephone’s beauty
(friendly tower gives her advice on how to get
to the underworld)
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Music Break
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The predictably happy ending
• Poor Psyche opens the beauty box
• Cupid comes in to save her
• Jupiter to the rescue: orders all the gods and
goddesses to attend a banquet
• Cupid and Psyche are married, Psyche drinks
ambrosia to become immortal
• They become parents of a daughter named
Voluptas
• Soul + Lust; Greek + Roman; Female + Male
• Traditional Greek deities are reality trash
• Isis, on the other hand, ROCKS
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