1

Cupid & Psyche: A Question of the Vision of Apuleius

Ken Dowden: The University of Birmingham
1. Apuleius Sincerity
There is no doubt that the author of the Golden Ass professed Platonism. This is not
something which we need to read out of his text, as we might in the case of
Heliodoros (Dowden 1996). We know that the real Apuleius propagated Platonic ideas
in his Carthaginian period, that he translated the Phaedo, knew his Platonic texts -
and other philosophical texts - in detail and generally, as Hijmans has shown,
1
saw
Platonism and philosophy as a way of life, a bios. Perhaps the likeliest assumption is
that he adopted Platonism, taking it to his heart in some way, at that formative stage
of his education, in Athens. This gives us a lifelong portrait of Apuleius philosophus
Platonicus. It begins in Athens and continues through his Roman period, where I
have argued that he wrote the Golden Ass in the early 150s (Dowden 1994); it then
goes on past the philosophus formonsus ('pretty philosopher') of Oea, onward to the
megastar of Carthage and the author of surely authentic books de Platone to Faustino
filio ('On Plato - to his son
2
Faustinus').
Yet, Platonism in the novel lies outside the mainstream of modern criticism and is
perhaps disagreeable to a 'stakeholder' culture where individual readers cease to be
educated by literature (or 'the Greek achievement') and prefer to engage
2
democratically in its activities. These shifts in focus may indeed have the advantage
of constantly renewing our literature and describing what these works can do for
people of our age, but there is also an attendant danger of excluding Apuleius own
design from his novel. On some theories this may not matter, but it is surely an
analytic truth that it should matter to any student of the ancient world. In any case, it
will be seen that this biographically derived world-view and 'mythology' informs the
text.
What was Apuleius like? He seems to me rather 'Victorian', if not so stiff. When, as a
sophist, he performs his Platonic pieces, he stands in a position of authority in front of
his audience, dictating views. Most exactly, he perpetuates the master-pupil
relationship, or extends the guru-disciple relationship, of Athenian philosophers to the
Gelliuses and Apuleiuses of the young cultural lite. More impressionistically, he
resembles one great Victorian expression of authority - the conductor wielding the
newly-invented baton before an internal audience (the orchestra) and the audience
proper. In the world of Gellius and Lucian it was the job of self-professed
philosophers to lead and guide their audiences, as we can see from Gellius
pilgrimage to the hut (ashram?) of Peregrinus outside Athens and from Lucian's
vitriolic testimony to the very special character of Peregrinus.
If, then, we find areas of Apuleius novel where religious and philosophical
3
issues are
in some way raised, what interest might Apuleius have in these ideas - and what
interest should we ourselves take in them? Cupid and Psyche, the structural
equivalent of Aeneas katabasis (descent to the underworld), is the crucial point for
this decision. Perhaps it is a folk-tale, a popular story of some sort engagingly
incorporated into high literature, or perhaps we should pay attention to the hellenistic
3
literary colour and enjoy this souvenir dApollonius. Though Fehling exploded the idea
of Grimm-style folk-tale in Apuleius,
4
it is doubtless true that both folklorist and
hellenistic approaches uncover something of value in the text. At the same time both
approaches conform to modern critical culture and both evade the question of
meaning. Even, however, if a Platonic dimension is admitted in Cupid and Psyche,
will we be prepared to talk of more than just another colour on Apuleius palette, part
of the literary texture and surface gloss? That restrictive approach, comfortable for
our irreverent if aesthetic age, is in some danger, maybe, of disparaging Apuleius
commitment and the faith he - and others of his age - lived by.
5
It is a convenient fiction, which scholars of religion now challenge, that the faith of the
pagan Roman aristocracy was in some way less than that of the emerging Christian
competition.
6
Apuleius the committed Platonist is not an isolated phenomenon: I
have drawn attention elsewhere to the similarities between Justin, who slipped from
Platonism to Christianity, and Apuleius and also to the conflict between Justin and
that Roman establishment to which Apuleius was personally attached (Dowden 1994,
429-30). Fronto sniped at the Christians in the course of an oration in the Senate and
Marcus Aurelius had no time for them and their martyrs (11.3.2). Christians were
found so offensive that we can be sure of the depth of pagan conviction.
7
Despite the indiscriminacy of characterising a whole age at once, we can still affirm
that the age in which Apuleius lived was one which was particularly concerned to
reassert traditional and historic values - the resurrection of the vocabulary of Ennius
and Plautus is not so very different from Herodes Atticus declaiming on the theme of
Nicias in Sicily (Philostratus, Vit.Soph. 574). Faced with the challenge of new
developments, notably in religion and philosophy, Antonine intellectuals could either
4
incorporate the new into authorised traditional discourse or, if as in the case of
Christianity this was impossible, reject it outright. One feels the force behind that
rejection in the case of the Miller's Wife (9.14) whose monotheism is firmly attached to
her flagitia ('crimes' - so Apuleius is no Pliny) and also in the case of the Dea Syria
(8.27), a cult firmly rejected also by Florus. Conversely however, Isis is
accommodated into appropriate discourse through that ambitious myrionymity (11.5,
which nevertheless is careful to exclude the Dea Syria) which reached out through the
figure of the moon ultimately to a philosophical divinity. So too the priest Mithras is a
deliberately dissonant note to emphasise the broader applicability of these cults when
correctly understood in establishment language.
To sum up my rather general argument so far: we should not be tempted by priorities
in modern criticism or by our own personal disinclinations to cast aspersions on the
commitment of Apuleius to Platonic philosophy. His was a committed age on whose
firm rocks Justin and other Christians shipwrecked themselves.
2. Ideas in Dialogue (Rome in the 150s): Psyche and the
Valentinians
Rome in the early 150s was philosophically and religiously alive. This was the
environment in which Marcus Aurelius was growing to maturity - appreciating the
dour stoicism of Claudius Maximus (M. Aur. 1.15.1, 1.16.3). The influence of Sextus
nephew of Plutarch still lingered on (as we can see, e.g., from Met. 1.2). Apuleius, if I
am right, was busy on the Golden Ass - and if I am wrong was all the same in Rome
5
at a formative intellectual age, allowed only to write nugae ('Trivia') by evolutionist
criticism. Christians irritated Lollius Urbicus the praefectus urbi and Justin in
particular complains to him in his Second Apology about the martyrdom of
Ptolemaeus, an event which may underlie Apuleius' tale of the Miller's Wife.
8
At this
same time Valentinus was preaching and writing up an esoteric Gnostic soteriology
and already had his followers: he had arrived in Rome a Christian around 136-40, but
split with the more orthodox Christians probably on the accession of Pius I in 142. He
and his followers nevertheless remained within the church, despite hostility from
people like Justin and, in the next generation, from Irenaeus of Lyon who catalogued
and denounced gnostic heresies. Valentinus himself was still in Rome in the time of
Pope Anicetus (155-66).
9
It is not clear to me how small a place intellectual Rome
was, or how ideas were disseminated between very different intellectual camps: public
lectures like those of Maximus a generation later
10
and public disputes, like that
between Justin and the cynic Crescens, are clearly an important part. It is likely that
these camps were aware of each other and that their membership even overlapped
and, on occasion, defected. Valentinus platonised and gnosticised Christianity (just as
Lucian's Peregrinus abandoned it) and appears from his fragments to be, in Stead's
words, 'a biblical Platonist'; indeed, Chadwick has called him 'the most obviously
Platonic of all known gnostics'.
11
Conversely, Justin (and others like him)
12
moved on
from Platonism to conservative Christianity though he still wore Platonic clothing. How
did Apuleius view Valentinus? The more acceptable face of Christianity? And then
there is Valentinus' disciple Ptolemaeus who could just have been the very same
person as the Christian martyred around 152 (above).
6
What exactly Valentinus, as opposed to his followers, taught is not easy to state
definitively.
13
But what is of interest for us is the system attributed to his pupil
Ptolemaeus by Irenaeus, which doubtless draws heavily on Valentinus' original myth.
Heinrici (1897, 410-17) found substantial similarities between Ptolemaeus'
development
14
of Valentinus' myth of Sophia and Cupid and Psyche in an article
which I myself built on in 1980.
15
These similarities go beyond coincidence and
represent something more specific than Heinrici's (416) dieselbe Sehnsucht nach
Erlsung, as may be seen from the following analysis of Ptolemaeus' myth under
headings emphasising shared features.
Vocabulary
Aeon an immaterial, intellectual, godlike being
Achamoth the 'Anxiety' of Sophia
Pleroma the Plenitude, Gnostic heaven, where deficiencies do not exist
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psyche an intermediate substance between nous (the higher, intellectual and
moral part of us) and worldly material (e.g., body).
1. the story centres on a heroine - both are Soul;
There is one Sophia in Valentinus himself,
17
but two, with characteristic Gnostic
proliferation, in Ptolemaeus - Sophia
18
and, a sort of avatar, Sophia Achamoth. On any
Platonic reading, Sophia is the World-Soul and necessarily a prototype for our soul.
19
One reason for this depiction is that, in the ideology of traditional Mediterranean
cultures, a single female is obviously deficient and requires a husband, a ouuyo (cf
Scopello 1985, 120).
2. the fall of Sophia/Psyche is caused by a culpable act of trying to apprehend
God;
20
7
'Silence' restrains Nous from the attempt to reveal the limitless character of God to the
aeons, but Sophia tries to grasp it anyway and this is where trouble begins; this was a
fit of passion without the participation of her husband, and it consisted in the
g:goi :o\ o:po (Iren. adv.haer. 1.2.1-2).
3. the soul is rescued as the result of an act of grace,
21
by the intervention of a
divine redeemer;
WITHIN THE PLEROMA: Christ and the Holy Spirit are sent to bring the Aeons to an
understanding of the Father (Iren. 1.2.5).
OUTSIDE THE PLEROMA: Achamoth, deserted by the Logos, searches for the light (of the
Pleroma) and suffers woefully (Iren. 1.4.1). The Paraclete 'i.e. the Saviour' (standing in
for Christ) is sent to rescue her (Iren. 1.4.5).
4. the soul is married to the redeemer and has offspring.
22
WITHIN THE PLEROMA: the Aeons are now all transformed into Noes (nous's, Iren.
1.2.6).
OUTSIDE THE PLEROMA: Achamoth is cured of her passions and, receiving with joy the
vision of the lights of the Paraclete's attendant Angels, becomes pregnant by them.
(Iren. 1.4.5).
AT THE END: 'When all the seed (of the Church) is perfected, Achamoth its mother will
move from the place of Middleness and come within the Pleroma and receive her
bridegroom the Saviour who is born from all (the aeons?) so that there may be a
marriage of Saviour and Sophia Achamoth ... and the Pneumatics, taking off their souls
and becoming intellectual spirit (vcuo:o vocpo), entering imperceptibly and unseen
within the Pleroma will be given away as brides to the Angels about the Saviour ... for
nothing of soul-character (quixov) may enter the Pleroma.' (Iren. 1.7.1)
23
.
This is not just the sort of system that was in the air. It is a specific system of
appropriate date
24
whose rhythm and intention correspond significantly with that of
Cupid and Psyche. Notably, curiositas causes the Fall - a feature distinctive to this
gnostic system.
25
8
There is much that is unknown and much that requires further research here.
Curiositas or periergia in the sense of culpable looking requires an agreed history of
its own,
26
but it does appear to be new at around this time in a myth of a Fall and the
Latin word, as is well known, only breaks through with Apuleius. Conceptually, it
clearly belongs to mystery religion, as a corollary of the secrecy which is its defining
characteristic. The act of grace surely belongs here too:
27
the ancestor is Demeter
saving Kore from the world of death into which she has fallen through her own fault;
and another comparand is Isis saving Osiris from death. But there may be another
comparand that produces the gender distribution and marriage that we have in our
two myths - Dionysos and Ariadne.
What we are seeing is the reconciliation of alternative discourses. Plato himself is
somewhat godless. The soul must rise through its internal efforts, though it has the
natural force of the divine love to draw it up. The language of the Symposium or of
wings and white horse in the Phaedrus do not supply Apuleius with the moment of
grace - or indeed the Isiac last book. The one exception may be that moment in the
Politicus (273de) when the resumption of control of a faltering universe by its
demiurge provides a distant ancestor for Apuleius episode. Conversely, the language
of Eleusinian or Isiac myth does not on its own supply intellectual demands of the
highest form of Greek religion until it is myth-interpreted, first by 'Orphic' thinkers,
28
but
most influentially through the Platonic intellectual koine. Thus the function, for
instance, of Plutarchs Isis and Osiris is to draw the Isis religion into Platonic and
intellectual discourse - it is an aggressive, and authorising, act of interpretation.
29
Equally, Gnosticism is about discourse or it is about nothing. In it are blended
Platonic-koine cosmology (e.g., from the Timaios), doctrine of the soul (presumably
9
from the mysteries, translated into para-Platonic intellectual language)
30
, and the
jargon-delight of eastern and Egyptian magico-mysticism - whence Barbelo and
Achamoth and so on. This multiplicity of sources matters because it has the effect of
cumulating authority.
Cupid and Psyche's relationship to Valentinian discourse is close enough for
differences to be identified. The multiple cosmic levels and beings have largely been
stripped out. What is left is Venus as elementorum origo initialis ('first principle of the
elements',
31
4.30 - in Gnostic-speak perhaps the arkhe of the Aeons). This is a light
and ironic touch, given her characterisation in the text, but it is a revealing one.
Venus is the driving force behind this myth as Isis, equally saeculorum origo initialis
('first principle of the Aeons'?, 11.5), will be for the whole novel. What looks like jest
now becomes serious later, as the process of metamorphosis of Venus into Isis
charges Venus retrospectively with significance. The female appears thrice over in
Ptolemaeus (Ennoia is the consort of the ultimate, original god; Sophia falls and is
recovered, leaving behind only Achamoth): in Apuleius Psyche is confused with
Venus - and Isis somehow lies behind Fortuna. In the foreground for Apuleius' story,
however, is the individual Psyche, more human, less cosmic.
I attempted to discern the detail of the Platonic discourse in my Psyche on the Rock
of 1982. That article attempted to read Cupid and Psyche as a Philo, a Plutarch (1.2,
2.3) or, later, a Plotinos would have read it - even if its allegorical method seemed to
recreate the critical approach of Fulgentius, anathema to a sensitive and learned
modern scholar.
32
Yet, if Apuleius was a serious Platonist (and who are we to deny
that he was, accusing him of empty posturing and hypocritical gamesmanship?) and if
he was acquainted with the discourses in which intellectuals described the mysteries
10
and in which Valentinus and his friends described cosmogony and the soul, then he
would have understood Psyche on the Rock. I do not believe, however, that it is a
complete account of the Platonism of our myth. One obvious lack is that it does not
take account of the particular vices which the sisters show, worldly ones as Carl
Schlam emphasised (Schlam 1992, 96), or the particular virtues which Psyche
attempts to learn progrediens ad modestiam ('on her first steps to decency and
propriety'), something which it might be illuminating to do in the company of de
Platone, Bk 2.
So, Cupid and Psyche must have some place in this dialogue of ideas. Otherwise,
paradoxically it would be necessary to suppose that Apuleius, an expert in Platonic
discourse and a person initiated in religions, had found this story in some more or less
contemporary author and used only its folksy shell, emptying out its religio-
philosophical contents. Where, then, does it fit in the stemma of mid-2nd century
ideas? Given the way in which Ptolemaeus and Valentinus built on their
predecessors, it is practically impossible that these gnostics were influenced by a
youthful Apuleius. There remain two possibilities: either there was a common source
for the introduction of curiositas (a mystery-source? Aristophontes of Athens?), or
Apuleius is re-setting gnostic mythology. In either case, what Apuleius is in effect
doing is to transpose the Valentinian myth into discourse culturally acceptable to the
Roman establishment. Thus Cupid and Psyche is a conservative work, but it all the
same colonises new religious ground. Platonic or mystic thesis, confronted with
gnostic antithesis yields Apuleian synthesis.
Apuleius is not alone in working up a soul story with Gnostic affiliation. Amongst the
Nag Hammadi texts (II, 6) is the Exegesis of the Soul, a story of the soul's fall,
11
disgrace, suffering, longing, marriage and redemption, with what Scopello identifies as
novelistic characteristics.
33
Its date is unclear: the Coptic manuscript could be
around 330/340,
34
but the Greek original could be almost any date before that -
maybe not so much later than Apuleius and Valentinus. Plainly this text, with its
striking analogies to Apuleius' story, has a philosophical and cultic purpose, rather like
the one which Lucretius' persona advances, to sugar the pill. Apuleius' story on the
other hand imbues a work of literature with meaning. But, whatever the differences in
how one weights content and delectation, the Exegesis adds to the evidence for the
context and interpretation of Apuleius' central tale. It is full of suggestive detail, of
which I list some as I do not have time here for a complete review:
1. it uses the model of Odysseus' return
Odysseus is recalled, on Kalypso's island weeping, suffering, deceived, desiring return
and needing the indispensable help of heaven (Athena) to do so. EA 136.27-35,
Scopello 1985, 27 f.
2. it stresses the need for suffering and prayer as preliminaries to salvation
It cites Odysseus' need to call on Athena and John 6.44 (EA 135,1) (Scopello 1985, 30).
These details are relevant to Cupid saving Psyche and Isis saving Lucius.
3. the primordial condition of the soul is as a virgin beside the Father
EA 127.22-24, Scopello 1985, 45. This recalls the funeral procession of Psyche and
suggests her kingly father should hint at God, as in Fulgentius' interpretation, a detail
which even I (cf. Moreschini 1994, 64 and my n. 00 above!) had not been ready to adopt
at 1982, 338.
4. the soul is depicted as a slave
EA 128. 7-11, Scopello 1985, 45.
5. c:ovoio (change-of-mind) is the opg (beginning) of salvation, a definitive
and instant change of mentality
EA 135.21, Scopello 1985, 83 f., citing also Philo de mutatione 123 and quod deterius
95. The instant nature of mind-change may resolve some Apuleian difficulties, namely
12
(1) the understanding of why Psyche at 6.5 simply renounces hope and gives herself up
to the police; (2) why the salvation of Lucius the ass is not so much a gradual,
Tendenzroman, business but a matter of perception, despair and prayer and 11.1.
3. Metamorphoses: cosmos, love and sleep
It is no surprise that metamorphosis turns out to be the key to the novel and its parts.
A welcome tendency in criticism focused on the word 'intertextuality' has been to
increase our sensitivity to evocation and mutation. It is therefore an entirely logical
consequence that Apuleius' Metamorphoses, both because of the allusive nature of
the author's writing and thinking and because of its subject and thematic method,
should be renewed by this type of critical attention. There is now no longer any need
to be worried by the different senses apparently given to the theme of curiositas or the
variable blameworthiness of sleep in the novel. Nor perhaps do we need to worry
about the conflicting levels of seriousness invited by the author or suggested by his
material. Nor does 'Psyche on the Rock' need to be difficult to assimilate: it explores
a particular area of the intertextuality of Cupid and Psyche, one which will not
correspond to the reading of many modern critics, though I allege that it does
correspond to the reading and intellectual environment of Apuleius himself. Even
'folk-tale' is an important intertext for the post-Grimm Nachleben of Apuleius, though I
allege that Apuleius would not have understood the concept of 'folk-tale', and that,
had it been explained to him, he would have viewed it with patrician contempt.
Cupid and Psyche is a vital stepping-stone in the metamorphosis of themes towards
their ultimate significance. The cosmic power of Isis (which a Valentinus would
certainly highlight) is already present in Venus, and is in fact prefigured in the portrait
13
of the witches. In 1.8, an important chapter for the themes of the novel, the cosmic
powers of Meroe are described (caelum deponere - 'bringing the sky down' - and so
on) and culminate in the ability Tartarum ipsum inluminare ('to illuminate Tartarus
itself'). This is a skill also, apparently, possessed by Pamphile (2.5) and will recur,
transfigured, in the final book at the heart of Lucius' mystery experience - nocte media
vidi solem candido coruscantem lumine ('in the middle of the night I saw the sun
gleaming with bright light', 11.23)
35
- and Lucius himself will appear ad instar Solis
exornatus ('decked out like the Sun', 11.24). This dazzling light in the darkness is,
then, long thematised by the time that Psyche illicitly approaches Cupid, lamp in hand,
and beholds the radiant hair of Cupid, splendore nimio fulgurante ('flashing with
extreme brilliance', 5.22).
36
The sexual nature of the witches - voluptas Veneria
(Venus pleasure, sexual pleasure) with Meroe (1.8), the danger of nexus Venerius
(sexual liaison) with Pamphile (2.6) - prepare the crucial metamorphosis of the love
theme into longing for the divine in Cupid and Psyche, which makes possible the
asexual ardor for Isis in Book 11.
37
Sleep too metamorphoses during the novel. Up to Cupid and Psyche sleep can be
culpable. The clearest illustration is in the story of Thelyphron (perhaps one of
Sisenna's Milesian Tales)
38
where his job is to vigilare ('stay awake', 2.22) over the
cadaver that turns out to bear his name. But a somnus profundus ('deep sleep') takes
hold of him and he looks as dead as the corpse (2.25). Thus the witches gain access
and he himself is mutilated. So, it seems, you are safe from witches if you are awake,
an interesting proposition, which also seems to drive the story of Socrates and
Aristomenes.
39
There is no hope for Socrates, who iam sopitus stertebat altius ('by
now was fast asleep and snoring deeply', 1.11). Aristomenes on the other hand
14
'through fear stays awake (invigilo) at first for some while'. Then he drops off and like
latrones ('brigands', another theme waiting to take off)
40
, the witches break in. This
takes us to Psyche's second sleep, at 6.21. Psyche opens the box she has gained
from her katabasis, breaching mystic rules as any Liberi patris mysta - initiate into the
rites of Father Dionysos (Apol. 55) - would know. Psyche herself must also know if
she is aware of Demeter's tacita secreta cistarum ('silent secrets of the boxes', Met.
6.2).
41
Immediately she is overwhelmed by culpable sleep, infernus somnus ac vere
Stygius ('hellish sleep and truly Stygian'); she is nihil aliud quam dormiens cadaver
('nothing other than a sleeping corpse', Thelyphron and the corpse now merged). A
metamorphosis has taken place: no longer is failure of vigilance the fault; rather, it is
the opposite excess, too much looking (curiositas). But the principal difference is
Psyche's unlooked-for and unexpected rescue by Cupid - alias Amor the polar
opposite of Somnus, Amor who has the power of vigilandi.
42
Psyche's first sleep (5.1) is refreshing and comes as she leaves the mortal world (at
'death') and enters the divine world. Both sleeps seem incorporated, transmuted, into
the pivotal sleep of Lucius at 11.1. Distanced now from the bustle of the profane
world (the Judgment of Paris that gives the prize to Venus, cf. that other Venus in
Cupid and Psyche), Lucius finds himself at the sea shore, as Justin once had,
43
at his
moment of conversion. Exhausted, he lays himself down in quodam mollissimo
harenae gremio ('in a very gentle lap of sand', 10.35, cf. Psyche's florentis cespitis
gremio, 'lap of luxuriant grass', 4.35) and he is overwhelmed by a dulcis somnus
('sweet sleep', cf. dulce conquievit, 'she took a sweet rest', 5.1)
44
. He is about to enter
his own Cupid's palace. But now he wakes and feels the divinity is at hand; he does
not actually hear voices, like Psyche or the middle-Platonic Socrates
45
. Like Psyche
15
(5.3), if with more religious intensity, he washes. He prays and now, as for Psyche at
her second sleep, an act of grace occurs: the agent is no longer the intermediary
daimon Cupid, but Isis the transmuted Venus, the very rerum naturae parens ('parent
of the universe', 11.5).
These instances of sleep are the transition to another world, or to otherworldliness.
That other world is, in several representations such as, maybe, that of Heliodoros, our
real home and the prototype for the journey is the return of Odysseus, allegorised (cf
Dowden 1996, esp. 280). The echoes of Cupid and Psyche are peculiarly dense at
the moment when Odysseus arrives home at Ithaca after all his trials. Conveyed by
the supernatural skill of the Phaeacians (cf Zephyrs), alone of his comrades (whose
atasthalie was their undoing, cf. Psyche's sisters), he is left in a mysterious landscape
surrounded by wealth. At this key moment of transition from one world to another,
Odysseus - in a remarkable and beautiful inspiration of antiquity's greatest poet - is
asleep. Dulce conquievit. As the Phaeacians arrive with Odysseus, there is an
ekphrasis with something iconic about it. It is the harbour of Phorkys (Odyssey
13.96), a portum Quietis (harbour of Rest, Met. 11.15) if ever there was one, and it is
here that we find Porphyry's Cave of the Nymphs (Od. 13.103), with bees and their
honey, ever-flowing water and the entrances for men (to the North wind) and gods (to
the South wind). When Odysseus wakes, he meets the goddess Athene herself, her
identity concealed only a little longer, and he is Home - though some trials await him.
This, of course, is Odysseus' second (significant) sleep. I shall return to his first
presently.
16
4. Philo, Gnostics and the Platonic Mainstream
Philo's method in interpreting the Old Testament, broadly, is to highlight themes and
(very often) to assign them a significance in the light of the soul's journey through life
and its attempt to return where it belongs. We are perhaps not inclined to associate
ourselves with his reading of these texts, though if he had written the Old Testament
we might be obliged to. The case is not dissimilar for the allegorising of Homer to
which Philos method is very obviously indebted and in both cases the function of this
style of interpretation is to map soteriological material onto texts which the interpreter
wishes to be vehicles of authority. In the case of Homer this is to borrow the authority
which Greek culture generally assigned to the author; in the case of the Old
Testament, this is to accredit non-Greek scripture by bringing it within accepted Greek
intellectual discourse and values.
46
It is important for Philo that the discourse which he adopts is one which is shared and
recognised by the Greek soteriological theoreticians. This is vital for us, because so
far from Philo displaying some deviant mode of interpretation, he is in fact the most
copious evidence for what had been a widespread type of reading, in an area of
shortage of surviving evidence (otherwise I should have had to rely on such limited
texts as Pseudo-Herakleitos, Cornutus, Numenios and, proleptically, Porphyry on the
Cave of the Nymphs). It is a difficult problem for scholars of Philo to decide quite how
to describe the relationship subsisting between Philo and what we generally term
gnosticism, but there is no doubt of the relationship.
47
So, for instance, Stead once
observed that 'One can reconstruct most of the presuppositions of Valentinus merely
by rearranging Philo's mental furniture'.
48
It is equally clear that this is more than just
17
a question of apparently marginal Philo and Gnostics: the third term is the
mainstream source of accreditation which these marginal thinkers lean on, again
difficult to describe with precision. Layton has characterised this as 'a non-Christian
esoteric philosophy somewhat resembling gnostic myth and imagery' (Layton 1987,
xvi). Wlosok, in the words of Pearson,
argues that (at the latest) by the time of the beginning of the Empire, there
existed a Platonizing pagan mystery-theology in which cult-myths and mystery-
rites were interpreted allegorically, in the light of a Platonism coloured by Neo-
Pythagoreanism ... Philo is a product of this development and its most important
representative.
49
Alexandria clearly had a particular importance in these developments, representing a
melting-pot where Jewish, Platonic, mystic and early Gnostic ideas might meet and
cross-fertilise.
50
It could even be that these feminine heroics in soul-stories such as
Apuleius Cupid and Psyche are in some measure influenced by the Jewish tradition
of figures such as Esther, Judith and Susanna, as Scopello (1985, 51) argues in the
case of Gnostic soul stories.
My thesis for Apuleius Cupid and Psyche is that Apuleius the Middle-Platonist and
man with an interest in the soul and mystery-religion, represents the mainstream on
which Philo and Valentinus drew (indeed Valentinus may also have known Philo
directly
51
- and Apuleius could well have heard and read Valentinus) and which they
and others like them in turn probably modified. The difference from our interpretative
point of view, however, is that Philo may not have written the Old Testament, but
Apuleius did write Cupid and Psyche and it therefore authentically bears the sorts of
meanings which Philo foists onto the Old Testament and which a Pseudo-Herakleitos
18
foists onto Homer (though perhaps Vergil did too?).
52
It is therefore entirely intelligible
why Cupid and Psyche looks so very similar to the Valentinian myth of Sophia and
why it responds, as I shall now show, to important elements in a Philonic reading.
5. Philo, Gnostics and the Platonic Mainstream on Sleep
One key theme to which Philo assigns a value is sleep. The asketes ('trainee'),
making earnest steps towards virtue, has good days and bad days, sometimes living
and awake, sometimes dead or asleep (de somniis 1.150). Those who lead a life of
luxury mistakenly think themselves fortunate, but in fact their whole life is sleep and
dream (de somniis 1.121). Deep and resounding sleep, by which every worthless
man is held fast, robs the mind of true perceptions and fills it with false images and
untrustworthy apparitions (de somniis 2.162). Happy those who, like people rising
from a deep sleep, suddenly, effortlessly and with no trouble see the whole kosmos'
(quod Deus immutabilis sit 97). Indeed the image of deep sleep is common in Philo,
where it had been unknown in Plato.
53
And the five daughters of Zelophahad
(Numbers 27), an allegory for the senses, pointed out that their father had no sons,
only daughters, 'since that which is inclined to remember, being naturally up and
awake, begets males, but that which is inclined to forget, allowing sleep of the
logismos ('reasoning faculty'), begets females' (de migratione 206). 'Sleep is a blind
thing' (de migratione 222). 'If the mind is harm-free and unimpaired, harassed by
none of the iniquities or feelings that produce the derangement of drunkenness, it will
renounce sleep, which implants forgetfulness and hesitation in the face of what needs
to be done, and welcoming wakefulness will be sharp-sighted for all that needs to be
19
seen' (de sobrietate 5). However, the most relevant passage comes in the de somniis
at 1.165:
All you souls who have tasted divine erotes ('passionate loves', 'Eroses'), rise
up as though from deep sleep and dispel the mist: hurry to the admired sight,
setting aside the slow and dithering hesitation (oknos), so that you can
perceive all the sights and sounds which the master of ceremonies has put on
for your benefit.
Philos attitude to sleep comes rather suddenly as a settled image (though he of
course knows other, less symbolic, uses of the word). It is clearly building on
something in the Hellenistic interpretative tradition that is not fully visible to us. Some
obiter dicta of Plato have evidently been taken up - a passage of the Republic that we
shall consider later and Laws 808b-c where night-time activity is recommended:
A lot of sleep is not naturally suitable for our bodies or for our souls or for
actions in this situation. People asleep are useless and might as well be
dead.
54
To this, I very much suspect, is added a reading of Odysseus first (significant) sleep,
as his crew open the bag of winds (a sort of cista on this reading), an action which
prevents his return to his fatherland.
Other more centrally Greco-Roman writers knew this theme. I know of two instances
in Plutarch. In an important passage which looks from our limited knowledge like the
stepping stone between the Politicus and Apuleius, Plutarch talks of how the World-
Soul goes to sleep and forgets its duties, dragged down by body and its own nature,
55
but its better aspect rouses it again towards the example of god (de animae
20
procreatione 1026e-f).
56
The second example, in his Amatorius, exhibits 'waking'
amidst other related motifs: giving in effect an exegesis of the Phaedrus (esp. 250a-
256e), he talks about how Eros helps the soul recall what it has forgotten (764e).
57
This is an experience like awakening to a great light. In fact the soul's waking time,
says Plutarch waxing Plotinian, is Yonder (764f). Love 'raises the soul and escorts it
up, in a kindly way (cf. grace) like a mystagogos beside one in a mystery-rite (765a).
58
There indeed is something reminiscent of ritual about the episode of sleep and raising
in the Psyche story.
By the time of the generation after Apuleius stay in Rome,
59
in a series revealingly
given in Rome, Maximus of Tyre gave a lecture (10 If Instances of Learning are
Recall) on soul, nous, the association of soul with worthy daimon (10.9). There he
talks of 'much darkness and deep sleep overtaking the conceptions of the soul' (10.6)
and remarks how life is for our souls 'a long dream lasting many years' (10.1).
The theme recurs frequently in the Gnostics: 'of the most constant and widest use is
the image of sleep' (JONAS 69), belonging with 'drunkenness' and 'oblivion' as
characteristics of the soul in its earthly existence, an existence which takes on the
characteristics of a former underworld (JONAS 68). Jonas cites inter alia the Hymn of
the Pearl (which Merkelbach used to illuminate the sense of Heliodoros) and the
Corpus Hermeticum 1.27 which reproaches 'earthborn men' for 'giving themselves to
drunkenness, sleep and the ignorance of God'. Most startlingly, the Gospel of Truth,
a work which authors (e.g., Dawson) often attribute to Valentinus himself, presents the
Aeons as falling from the godhead through an ignorance depicted insistently as
equivalent to being sunk in sleep - a sleep from which the Spirit must come and wake
21
them, so rescuing them.
60
This is clearly by now very close indeed to Psyches sleep
and Cupids awakening of her.
Perhaps this image is best explained, a hundred years after Apuleius, by Plotinos:
So the soul dies, in the sense that a soul can, and its death is, still plunged in
the body, to sink in material (hyle) and to be filled with it and, emerging, to lie
there until it can somehow leap up and get its face out of the mud. This is what
is meant by 'arriving in Hades to fall asleep'.
Plotinos, Ennead 1.8.13 fin.
'This passage', said Thomas Taylor (1790/1), 'doubtless alludes to the antient and
beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche, in which Psyche is said to fall asleep in Hades;
and this through rashly attempting to behold corporeal beauty: and the observation of
Plotinos will enable the profound and contemplative reader to unfold the greater part
of the mysteries contained in this elegant fable.'
61
But as Thomas Taylor also goes on
to observe, the ultimate source for this motif (as my quotation marks around 'arriving
in Hades to fall asleep' show) is Plato himself. At Republic 534c, the Good is under
discussion: unless people have a reasoned understanding of the Good, they have no
knowledge of it, or of anything good, at all. They may have opinion but 'dreaming and
dozing through their present life, before ever they wake up here, they have arrived in
Hades and have fallen totally asleep'. This is by no means what Apuleius or these
other authorities have been saying, but it looks as though it may well be a passage
that has developed in commentary within the Platonic koine into the standard
symbolic account which we see explicitly given by Plotinos (within which after all he
incorporates a souvenir of it). It is striking also that in Apuleius the arrival in Hades of
Psyche is so closely associated with her sleep, as though this passage of Plato was at
some level in Apuleius' mind as he wrote.
22
6. Psyche and Mythology: Ariadne, Andromeda, Sappho
It is difficult to accommodate Satyrs and Maenads within an account of Greek
mythology because they are mainly generic, decorative figures, without a myth.
62
Eros and Psyche likewise seem to be primarily decorative characters but for Apuleius'
novel - otherwise their story is not on general release, though Plotinos and Fulgentius
allude to tellings.
63
This leads in the LIMC article on 'Psyche' to a mistaken attempt to
structure generic representations (admittedly sometimes incorporated by Apuleius or
his source into the story) around Apuleius' account as though his account was 'the
myth'.
64
The full curiosity of this situation has not been grasped. For Apuleius it is artificial (if it
is not taboo) to tell a story of Cupid and Psyche. The story-vacuum of these genre-
figures can only suck in motifs that characterise other stories according to the
intended dynamics of the Cupid and Psyche tale. Thus, more than ever, Cupid and
Psyche needs to be interpreted by the intertexts that flow in to fill the void. But there
is another aspect too: why and where are Cupid and Psyche, as genre figures, so
very important? Naturally, they appear in many different artistic contexts and not
always with the same significance (Schlam 1976). But a crucial role for them is on
sarcophagi, where they are evidently well suited to express eschatological hope in the
light of the Platonic koine.
23
The situation of Apuleius bears an interesting resemblance to the situation of
Valentinus as perceived by Dawson in a recent book on the development of
allegorical reading. For Dawson, Philo represents a first stage in which allegory is
used to reconstruct an existing text. But Valentinus represents a new and more
advanced stage, where the tendency to allegory leads to the construction of a new
text that derives its power from other, implicitly allegorised, texts.
Curiously enough, this mode of interpretation as composition gains much of its
effectiveness precisely because the new story contains oblique, sometimes
nearly subliminal, echoes of the old story.
Dawson 1992, 130.
I have suggested above that an obvious mythic intertext for Psyche's second sleep is
Ariadne - asleep, but rescued and immortalised by Dionysos. This does more than fill
the story-vacuum: it puts a slant on the Cupid and Psyche story which Apuleius (or
his source) is constructing. Cista, Ariadne, and flagellation alla Villa Item
65
(with
another depiction of Dionysos and Ariadne) suggest the Dionysos-mysteries in which
we know, do not guess, that Apuleius was initiated (Apol. 55) and which may well
have been popular in Rome at this time, if we can judge from the Torre Nova
inscription.
66
Doubtless this Dionysiac mystic context does not explain all, but equally
it is impossible to exclude it as an element in the complex that Apuleius is putting
forward. This is supported especially strongly by the sarcophagi. Koch and
Sichtermann observe that in the city of Rome the discovery of Ariadne by Dionysos is
the most frequent Dionysiac myth depicted, occurring some 23 times.
67
It is not
difficult to see why this should be an especially appropriate theme for sarcophagi: the
soul, now asleep in death, is taken up to heaven. As Icard-Gianolio's analysis in
LIMC shows,
68
Psyche is common in Bacchic processions,
69
is found in the legend of
24
Dionysos and Ariadne, and in one particular sarcophagus 'Amor tient une torche prs
de Bacchus banquetant avec Ariane qui Psych apporte une guirlande'.
Regardless of Apuleius' expertise in monumental masonry, we can see the climate of
ideas that surrounded him and how mythology, including Psyche's second sleep,
might be read. One further, extraordinary, example demands our attention: in the
tomb in Rome on the Viale Manzoni there is a figure depicted as Ariadne, who
appears to require interpretation in a Gnostic context. This Ariadne, Carcopino once
suggested (1956,126), is in fact the fallen Sophia of the Valentinians awaiting the
Redeemer.
What then of Psyche on the rock (4.32-35)? Here she is clearly Andromeda, from the
involvement of parents, hybristic comparison with the divinity and punishment by
exposure to a monster.
70
In this case, the part of the winged Perseus is played by
Cupid, though he transmutes into the monster in the sisters' febrile imagination - as
evidence that they cannot 'read' Cupid. It is worth noting that a painting of
Andromeda is found in two other novels. In Achilles it figures in the author's game of
cat and mouse with the reader, pointing ultimately to Leukippe's capture and
release.
71
In Heliodoros, it underpins the whole story - with whatever significance one
is prepared to attribute to it (I consider there are Platonic depths here - Dowden
1996). But in any case this is another myth that, given the right context is a salvation
myth ('Verheissung einer Rettung der Seele durch Gott', in the words of Merkelbach
1962, 11), and the casting of Psyche, the Soul, as both Andromeda and Ariadne gives
away the agenda. In fact Perseus and Andromeda are rare on sarcophagi, though in
Roman art as a whole Perseus and Andromeda is more popular than the Medusa
episodes.
72
For a real parallel, one needs to go, as Merkelbach (1962, 12 n.1) has
25
said, to the depiction of the similar story of Herakles and Hesione on the vault of the
Basilica at the Porta Maggiore.
A final intertext, observed by Kernyi,
73
should be taken fully into account. Psyche is
not chained to her rock (as you might expect from Andromeda). She is 'stood' on a
high peak, in summo cacumine statutam, and left crying. As she weeps, the aura
molliter spirantis Zephyri ('breeze of a Zephyr blowing gently') carries her gradually
down. Has she jumped? Perhaps not - it is left for her sisters to display their
temeritas by going that far (5.14, cf. 5.27). But the intertext remains Sappho leaping
from the rock of Leukas, an icon which formed the centrepiece of all the mythology
assembled by Pythagoreans for the roof of their basilica at the Porta Maggiore. The
rock is sacred to Apollo, god of Psyche's oracle. Sappho, as can be seen from Ovid
Heroides 15,
74
has come for rebirth and pour vaincre l'amour profane dont elle tait
consume. It is the aurae ('breezes') which Sappho invokes (177) to save her in her
fall. Tu quoque, mollis Amor, pennas suppone cadenti ('You too, gentle Eros, place
wings beneath me as I fall', 179).
75
Thus the fourth book closes and Psyche lands in
the fifth.
7. Conclusion
Cupid and Psyche, then, is a part of Apuleius' work that bears a non-coincidental
resemblance to Ptolemaeus' myth of Sophia Achamoth. Its significance must be
judged, not only by the literary context from which modern critics tend to arrive, but by
the actual environment of ideas, so far as we can reconstruct it, which immersed
26
Apuleius himself. The Valentinian Christians are one testimony to that environment.
Others include the mythic themes of sarcophagi, pagan religion (notably that of
Dionysos) and philosophy, the type of views held by opinion-leaders and intellectual
outcasts (notably the orthodox Christians) in Rome in Apuleius' day.
Where contemporary evidence runs out, rather than judge too much by that portion of
the iceberg which we can see, we should take soundings to gauge the character of
that part which we cannot see. Here Philo may be a century earlier, may be a Jew
and may be in Alexandria, but there are indisputable intellectual links to Philo's world
which Valentinus and his disciples demonstrate. Later, Plotinos delivers a developed
version of this tradition. Where the line from Philo to Plotinos crosses the 150s, there
stands Apuleius. My contention is simply that the Cupid and Psyche of this middle
Platonist needs to be interpreted in the light of that tradition and that, displaying the
themes it does, it evidently must be. 'One feels', said Henry Chadwick (in Layton
1980, 13), 'that gnosticism would have exercised powerful attractions over such a
man, with his strong interests in religion, sex and magic'. Maybe so, but gnosticism is
not a marginal quirk for which our Apuleius must be made to sign up: it is a visible
offshoot of the Platonising mystery thought to which mainstream authors might be
expected to subscribe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANRW = H. Temporini & W. Haase (edd.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rmischen
Welt (Berlin).
27
EA = Exegesis of the Soul (see Scopello 1985).
LIMC = Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zrich).
J. Carcopino, De Pythagore aux aptres: tudes sur la conversion du monde romain,
Paris 1956.
D. Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria, Berkeley
1992.
J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, London 1977.
K. Dowden, 'Psyche and the Gnostics', Symposium Apuleianum Groninganum,
Groningen 1981, 157-65.
K. Dowden, 'Psyche on the Rock', Latomus 41 (1982) 336-52.
K. Dowden, 'Apuleius' Roman Audience', in J.A. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the
Ancient Novel, Baltimore 1994, 419-34.
K. Dowden, 'Heliodoros: Serious Intentions', Classical Quarterly n.s. 46 (1996) 267-
85.
M.J. Edwards, 'The Tale of Cupid and Psyche', ZPE 94 (1992) 77-94.
W. Foerster, Gnosis, Eng. tr., 2 vols., Oxford 1972.
P. Habermehl, 'Quaedam divinae mediae potestates: Demonology in Apuleius' de deo
Socratis', GCN 7 (1996) 117-42.
G. Heinrici, 'Zur Geschichte der Psyche. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Skizze.', PrJ 90
(1897) 390-417, reprinted in: G. Binder & R. Merkelbach, Amor und Psyche ( = Wege
der Forschung, bd 126), Darmstadt 1968, 56-86.
B.L. Hijmans Jr., 'Apuleius, Philosophus Platonicus', in: ANRW II.36.1 (1987) 395-
475.
H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos: histoire du culte de Bacchus, Paris 1951.
28
H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. The message of the alien God and the beginnings of
Christianity
2
, Boston 1963.
E.J. Kenney (1990a), 'Psyche and her Mysterious Husband', in: D.A. Russell (ed.)
Antonine Literature, Oxford 1990.
E.J. Kenney (1990b), Apuleius: Cupid & Psyche, Cambridge 1990.
G. Koch & H. Sichtermann, Rmische Sarkophage ( = Handbuch der Archologie 6),
Mnchen 1982.
B. Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, Vol. 1 The School of Valentinus ( =
Numen, Suppl. 41.1), Leiden 1980.
B. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: a new translation with annotations and
introductions, New York 1987.
R. Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, Mnchen 1962.
C. Moreschini, Il mito di Amore e Psiche in Apuleio: Saggio, testo di Apuleio,
traduzione e commento, Napoli 1994.
L. Painchaud (ed.), LEcrit sans titre: trait sur lorigine du monde ( = Bibliothque
copte de Nag Hammadi: Textes 21), Louvain and Paris 1995.
B.A. Pearson, 'Philo and Gnosticism', ANRW II 21.1 (1984) 295-342.
G. Quispel, 'The Original Doctrine of Valentine', VC (1947) 43-73.
G.N. Sandy, The Greek World of Apuleius; Apuleius and the Second Sophistic ( =
Mnemosyne, Suppl. 174), Leiden 1997.
A. Schiesaro, 'La tragedia di Psiche: nota ad Apuleio met. IV 28-35', Maia 40
(1988) 141-50.
C.C. Schlam, Cupid and Psyche: Apuleius and the Monuments, University Park,
Pennsylvania 1976.
29
C.C. Schlam, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: on Making an Ass of Oneself, London
1992.
M. Scopello, LExgse de lme: Nag Hammadi Codex II, 6: introduction, traduction
et commentaire ( = Nag Hammadi Studies 25), Leiden 1985.
G.C. Stead, 'The Valentinian Myth of Sophia', JTS n.s. 20 (1969) 75-104.
R. van den Broek, Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity ( = Nag
Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 39), Leiden 1996.
J. Whittaker, 'Platonic Philosophy in the Early Empire', ANRW II.36.1 (1987) 81-123.
A. Wlosok, Laktanz und die philosophische Gnosis: Untersuchungen zu Geschichte
und Terminologie der gnostischen Erlsungsvorstellung, Heidelberg 1960.
30
ENDNOTES
1
Hijmans 1987, passim but eg 396-7, 416-7, 422, and esp. 470, a compelling vision.
2
This is what the Latin says though scholars have tried to evade the obvious meaning
and to allege, for instance, a fictional addressee - see Hijmans 1987, 414 for more
information.
3
Philosophy and religion are scarcely separable, cf. Hijmans 1987, 397 and n.7, and
Dowden 1996, 268-9 (on Heliodoros).
4
D. Fehling, Amor und Psyche: Die Schpfung des Apuleius und ihre Einwirkung auf
das Mrchen, eine Kritik der romantischen Mrchentheorie, Wiesbaden 1977.
5
Why exactly does Kenney 1990, 193 n.59 feel it necessary to argue that Apuleius
need not have studied his Phaedrus very closely or approve the idea that 'a vague
knowledge of Eros in the Phaedrus' was just part of the rhetorician's stock-in trade?
And why does Edwards 1992, 93 feel it necessary to distance Apuleius from the world
of gnostic ideas and to dub him 'only an occasional philosopher'? Would we say such
things to Apuleius' own face? For a sensitive and balanced assessment of the nature
and depth of Apuleius' Platonism - and how he acquired it - now see Sandy 1997, 22-
36 and ch. 5.
6
Eg, R.L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, New Haven and
London 1984, ch. III 'The Piety of the Persecutors'.
7
On hostility to Christians, see, eg, M. Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire,
Eng.tr., London 1988, 160-1. Fronto's speech concerned with Christians probably
only in passing, R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, Harmondsworth 1986, 427.
31
8
Dowden 1994, 429-30. B. Baldwin, 'Apuleius and the Christians', LCM 14.4 (1989)
55.
9
Dawson 1992,127; Foerster 1972, i.121 (with slightly different dates). 'Remained
until Anicetus': Irenaeus Haer. 3.4.3.
10
Under Commodus in the 90s; full title: Maximus of Tyre, Lectures Given in Rome
during his First Visit (Moiou 1upiou :cv cv Pc iocccv :g pc:g cigio).
11
G.C. Stead in Layton 1980, 78. Intriguingly, he sees Valentinus' Aeons as a
development of the Platonic Forms (ibid. 88). Chadwick in Layton 1980, 11-12.
12
Tatian, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria - Wlosok 1960, 113-4 and nn.
13
See, eg, G.C. Stead in Layton 1980, 75ff, G. Quispel ibid. 123-5; Quispel 1947;
Stead 1969.
14
Both Heinrici 1897 and Dowden 1981 make the mistake of attributing Ptolemaeus'
system, without further thought, to Valentinus.
15
Gnostic ideas are taken up again, apparently without knowledge of Heinrici 1897 or
Dowden 1981 (or Dowden 1982), by Edwards 1992, 87-92.
16
For a study of pleroma, see V. MacDermot, The Concept of Pleroma in
Gnosticism, in: M. Krause (ed.), Gnosis and Gnosticism ( = Nag Hamadi Studies 17),
Leiden 1981, 76-81.
17
Quispel 1947, 45, based on Iren. adv.haer. 1.11.1. Cf. Stead 1969, 88-89, with the
qualification 'one erring Sophia'.
18
Surprisingly, Sophia is declared to be the 'father' of (female) Achamoth at Iren.
1.4.1; even more curiously, Sophia is declared 'male and a father' at Philo, de fuga
52. Generally on Philo as a seedbed for the Gnostic Sophia, see Stead 1969, 96-7
and Pearson 1984, 314, discussing R.M. Wilson, The Gnostic Problem: a study of the
32
relations between Hellenistic Judaism and the Gnostic Heresy, London 1958, 183-
202.
19
World-Soul, cf. Plotinus 2.9 (Against the Gnostics) 4, with H. Chadwick in Layton
1980, 12. 'She represents the evil (i.e. responsible for the origin of evil) world-soul,
which is also the prototype of the human soul which falls from its true home through
attachment to matter' (my parentheses), Stead 1969, 100 - thus both Venus-Isis and
Psyche.
20
This transcendence of God is familiar also in Philo, cf. Pearson's account of Jonas
(Pearson 1984, 304-6), and is an important feature of the new Pythagoreanising
Platonism of Eudoros which may underlie the mainstream which I discuss in section
4 below, cf. Wlosok 1960, 53, Dillon 1977, 127-8.
21
Kenney 1990b,14 usefully stresses the strictly undeserved character of the
salvation of both Psyche and Lucius. Scopello 1985, 30 comments, on EA 135.4-15
(see below), bien que la collaboration de lme soit ncessaire, cest par la grce
quon obtient le salut.
22
This coresponds to the doctrine (G.C. Stead in Layton 1980, 92) that the elect will
be united with heavenly bridegrooms and enter the pleroma (Gnostic
heaven/Olympus) 'becoming themselves intelligible Aeons' (Clement, Excerpta ex
Theodoto 64.1). The acutal offspring, Voluptas (Met. 6.24), is parallelled in the
Treatise without Title (Nag Hammadi II.5) 109.16-22 (Painchaud 1995, 174-5) where
Eros, descending to the level of earth, begets govg (the Greek word is actually in
the Coptic text); Painchaud (1995, 364) implausibly derives the Gnostic use from
Apuleius version du conte, but usefully compares Philo, de Opificio 161.
23
Also, with significant implications for ascribing this element to Valentinus, in
Clement, Excerpta ex Theodoto 63.1, cf. Quispel 1947, 72-73, 44.
33
24
Evidently, if Ptolemaeus was the martyr of c. 152. But equally the system is
reported already in Irenaeus in 180.
25
Cf. Stead 1969, 78 (characteristic of his version A), and Plotinos 2.9.4 (not
mentioned); Scopello 1985, 66 comes straight out and calls this Valentinian cause of
the fall curiositas. Particular to Valentinus: 'The nature of Sophia's fault is one of the
most variable features of the myth', Stead 1969, 102.
26
The bibliography on Apuleian curiositas is of course sizeable, but I draw particular
attention to C. Moreschini, Apuleio e il Platonismo, Firenze 1978, ch. iii for his balance
between technical philosophic reference and wider reference.
27
Edwards 1992, 81-2 cites Plotinos 3.5.9 for the moment of salvation: psyche living
with nous (= Cupid, cf. Dowden 1982), separated from nous, and then once again
begin filled (plerotheisa cf. the Gnostic pleroma) with logoi. But inasmuch as Plotinos
here calls to mind a moment of salvation (and it is very abstract - how exactly does a
soul get a logoi-refill?), he is reflecting religious tradition.
28
F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens, Berlin 1974.
29
Similarly later Julians Hymn to the Mother of the Gods 166b makes her acceptable
to thinking circles by depicting her as the source of the intellectual and demiurgic
gods.
30
Dillon 384-9, if unsympathetically, charts something of the use Gnostics such as
Valentinus made of Plato. Whittaker 1987, 121-3 accommodates Gnosticism more
generously within the developing climate of ideas that also included Middle Platonism.
31
'Elements' include such things as Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Sun, Moon, and
even the Aeon, cf. R. Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3rd ed.,
Stuttgart 1927, 225; there is also a discussion in J.G. Griffiths, The Isis Book, Leiden
1975, 301-3.
34
32
'Tanto vale, allora, riprendere il metodo e le conclusioni del Dowden che
richiamano, l'uno e latre, Fulgenzio ... Credo che non sia necessario dar toppo peso a
questo revival di Fulgenzio', Moreschini 1994, 63-4. Is the problem perhaps that
Cupid & Psyche actually requires, in part, a particularly literal form of intertextuality
(allegory) to which modern critics find it hard to subscribe (though late antiquity and
the renaissance could do so readily, cf. Moreschini 1994, 26)? So, to say that 'Charite
is Dido' is interesting and provocative because obviously approximate and tantalising,
but to say that 'Psyche is soul and Cupid her personal daimon, Platonic Love' is to be
wooden, literal, and 1500 years out of date like Fulgentius. Cupid & Psyche perhaps
exhibits what one might term the intertextuality of the matrix. This, I think, explains the
striking paradox that a Moreschini who writes brilliantly on Apuleio e il platonismo
(Firenze 1978) must reject a part, or too large a part, for Platonism in the novel and in
its central myth/mise en abyme. Apuleius philosophica too can be related to Gnostic
thought: see, on the de Platone 190-1 and such issues as negative theology, van den
Broek 1996, ch.3.
33
Scopello 1985, 46-48, 96, clearly under the influence of M. Philonenko, whose
Joseph et Asneth (Leiden 1968) had been distinguished by its knowledge of novel
material. We need to think, however, of a much less antiseptic world than one where
the Greek novel itself is the source for the supposedly novelistic characteristics of this
reworking of the soul story; this type of fiction is already in a way present in Philo's
Old Testament and has a complex and contaminated near-Eastern tradition as well as
Greco-Roman; Scopellos focus on an Alexandrian milieu for the author of the
Exegesis (1985, 97, 100) is obviously beneficial. I am grateful to an anonymous
reader for drawing my attention to Scopellos excellent volume.
34
Scopello 1985, 1; clearly not composed in Coptic, cf. ibid. 13-16.
35
35
The brilliant light is used in a verbal echo in de deo Soc. 3 (coruscamine lumen
candidum) to evokes the transcendent god, so impossible to apprehend, of Platos
Timaeus 28c (Wlosok 1960, 226).
36
'The whole chapter is crowded with suggestions of brilliant light and splendour', as
a referee remarks, cf. also Kenney 1990b, 169.
37
This is, of course, a dialectic between Heavenly and Pandemic love, cf. Kenney
1990, 176-7.
38
Pupillus ego Mileto profectus, 2.21.
39
Cf. also Lucius, who must evigilare in the house of Pamphile (2.6).
40
K. Dowden, 'The Unity of Apuleius' Eighth Book and the Danger of Beasts', in H.
Hofmann (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, Vol. 5, 1993, 91-109 at pp. 97-8,
104-6.
41
On the cista mystica see Merkelbach 43, who notes its appearance in funerary art
and, notably in view of the thesis I am presenting on foreshadowing, its appearance
as the cista secretorum capax at 11.11. Demeter's cista is highlighted by Heinrici
1897, 406.
42
This, admittedly, in a rather bathetic passage of the de deo Socratis (155), cf.
Habermehl 1996, 122, attempting with some difficulty (n.25) to link this surely relevant
binary opposition to Cupid and Psyche. J. Beaujeu, Apule: Opuscules
philosophiques, Paris 1973, 237 n.3 refers to their presence in the iconography of a
Louvre sarcophagus, an interesting context (cf. below).
43
Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 2-3. Dowden 1994, 429, 433-4.
44
I find it hard not to refer this rest to the Gnostic ovoouoi - the repose that
results from union with the divine (Scopello 1985, 78) - on which a book can be, and
36
has been, written: J. Helderman, Die Anapausis im Evangelium Veritatis ( = Nag
Hammadi Studies 18), Leiden 1984.
45
Apuleius, de deo Socratis; Plutarch, de genio Socratis; Maximus of Tyre, Or. 8-9.
46
Of course it also does much more than this ideologically, see Dawson 1992, 113.
47
Precisely where one positions the following in relation to each other is a matter of
scholarly dispute, well outlined by Pearson 1984 and visible throughout the ANRW II
21.1 volume: Philo, mythological Gnosis, philosophical Gnosis, mainstream
philosophy, and whatever doctrine was believed by participants in various mystery
religions.
48
Stead 1969, 90, cf. Stead in Layton 1980, 93-4, clearly perceiving Philo and the
Gnostics as sharing a particular Platonic vision. See also G. Quispel, 'Philo und die
altchristliche Hresie', ThZ 5 (1949) 429-36.
49
Pearson 1984, 310, with convenient brevity reporting Wlosok 1960, esp. 48-179.
50
Cf van den Broek 1996, ch.7 (Jewish and Platonic Sepculations in early
Alexandrian Theology: Eugnostus [Eugnostus the Blessed is a Nag Hammadi text],
Philo, Valentinus, and Origen, and 127: the Valentinian Ogdoad depends on a
Platonized amplified Jewish-gnostic myth of Anthropos and Sophia of the type found
in Eugnostus.
51
Dawson (1992, 18) and Layton (1987, xvi) think that Valentinus may have known
Philo's work - he did after all live for the first 35-40 years of his life in Alexandria (cf.
Dawson 127). Chronologically, Valentinus could without difficulty have heard Philo.
52
On writer as allegorist, see further section 6 below.
53
From the TLG CD-ROM: no combinations of po0u and \vo in Plato, but plenty in
Philo, eg Cher. 62, Deus immutabilis 39, Abraham 70.
37
54
The passage is cited by H. Balz, s.v. \vo in: G. Friedrich (ed.) Theologisches
Wrterbuch zum Neuen Testament, vol. 8 pp. 545-556 at p. 547.
55
The fact that the baser elements are innate in the soul and that the higher are an
apport from god is reflected in the sisters being Psyches family, but her husband
Cupid not being so.
56
The theme is also found in Albinos 14, as is noted by Dillon 1977, 205-6, who finds
the provenance of the idea puzzling. Stead 1969, 101 emphasises the particular
closeness of the de procreatione to Valentinian thought.
57
In addition this obviously requires connection with Apuleius himself on Amor and
Somnus (see above).
58
Cited by Kenney 1990, 193.
59
Dating to Commodus in the Souda s.v. Maximos; Eusebios confuses him with
Claudius Maximus the stoic gentleman (cf. M.B. Trapp, Maximus Tyrius (sic)
Dissertationes, Stuttgart & Leipzig 1994, lvi).
60
Gospel of Truth 29-30 in J.M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library, Leiden
1977, 43.
61
From Th. Taylor, 'A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries', reprinted
in K. Raine & G.M. Harper, Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings, London
1969, 348-9.
62
K. Dowden, Uses of Greek Mythology, London 1992, 166.
63
Plotinus, Ennead 3.5.2-3, 6.9.9 'which is why Eros and Psyche are paired together
both in art and in myth'; Fulgentius, Mythologiae 3.6 on Aristophontes of Athens who
told the same story as Apuleius enormi verborum circuitu in the course of his
Dysaresteia.
38
64
I am in the good company of Carl Schlam (1976, 32): Virtually none of the
representations can be interpreted reliably as illustrating a narrative ... Some incidents
in the tale may, on the other hand, reflect representations.
65
Cf Merkelbach 1962, 48-9.
66
AJA 37 (1933) 232-3. Jeanmaire 1951, 470-1. Agripinilla's son was consul in 150;
her family came from Lesbos and the inscription has been drawn into connection with
Longus, not only by Merkelbach 1962, 192-4.
67
Koch-Sichtermann 1982, 193. 'L'art tardif manifestera une prdilection pour le motif
de la rencontre d'Ariane endormie ...', Jeanmaire 1951, 345.
68
LIMC 7.1 p. 572, cf. Koch-Sichtermann 1982, 215 on 'die Darstellung des
schlafenden Paares von Eros und Psyche neben der schlafenden Ariadne auf
dionysischen Sarkophagen'. See also Schlam 1976, ch. v, esp. p. 22.
69
The monuments associate Eros and Psyche most closely with Dionysos among the
divinities, Schlam 1976, 23.
70
See, eg, Merkelbach 1962, 11 (Kenney 1990b, 19 n.81 rightly stresses the oddity of
my mssing this point in Dowden 1982). Schiesaro 1988, 147 also cites Andromeda
(as well as Iphigeneia, Dido and Medea, intertexts which are less close and less
useful for interpretation), signalling notably the account of Manilius 5.538 ff. and esp.
545 ff.
71
S. Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel, Princeton 1989, ch.2.
72
Rare, Koch-Sichtermann 180; Andromeda not Medusa, L.J. Roccos in LIMC 7.1 p.
347, cf. K. Schauenburg in LIMC I.1 pp. 778-84.
73
C. Kernyi, Der Sprung vom Leukasfelsen: Zur Wrdigung des unterirdischen
Kultraumes von Porta Maggiore in Rom, ARW 24 (1926) 61-72 at p. 70-1;
Merkelbach 1962, 13.
39
74
Carcopino 1956,10-11. It looks to me as though Apuleius has been reading
Heroides 15, as it includes, though not in a comparable structure, a number of the
elements of Cupid and Psyche: the silva where Sappho rests her lassos artus (143-
62) has some of the characteristics of the grove at Cupid's palace; mollis Amor and
his pennae appear at 179, Zephyri at 208, Venus orta mari at 213, and Cupido at 215;
in addition, Phaon (cf. Cupid) is the missing master of the grove.
75
The fact of 'Pythagorean' speculation about Sappho and Phaon is attested by Pliny,
HN 22.20.