THE GOLDEN ASS

APULEIUS (we do not know his other names) was born about AD 125 in
Madaura or Madauros, a Roman colony in North Africa, now Mdaourouch
in Algeria. His father, from whom he inherited a substantial fortune, was
one of the two chief magistrates (duouiri) of the city. For his education
Apuleius was sent first to Carthage, the capital of Roman North Africa, and
then to Athens. During his time abroad he travelled widely, spending some
time in Rome, where he practised as a pleader in the courts. While detained
by illness on his way home at Oea in Tripoli, he met and married the
wealthy widow Pudentilla. This was at the instance of one of her sons,
whom he had known at Rome; but other members of her family objected to
the marriage and prosecuted Apuleius on various charges, principally that
of winning Pudentilla’s affections by magic. Their accusations were
brilliantly, and it would seem successfully, rebutted in his speech De Magia
or Apology, delivered in or shortly before AD 160. He appears to have spent
the rest of his life in Carthage, where he became a notable public figure,
holding the chief priesthood of the province and receiving other public
honours.
The age in which Apuleius lived was that of the Antonine emperors
Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, described by his contemporary the
Greek sophist Aelius Aristides in his oration To Rome as a period of
unexampled prosperity and felicity, a verdict echoed by Gibbon in the
opening chapters of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. It was an age in which success in public speaking offered a
passport to fame, and Apuleius owed his contemporary reputation to the
mastery of language deployed both in his many display speeches, of which
we have excerpted specimens in his Florida, and in the Neoplatonic
philosophical writings which earned him a statue in his native city. Of these
the most important which survive are On the God of Socrates (De Deo
Socratis) and On Plato and his Doctrine (De Platone et eius Dogmate). An
imposing range of other writings in both prose and verse we know of only
from fragments and references in other authors. The modern world knows
him best as the author of the great serio-comic novel The Golden Ass or
Transformations (Metamorphoses), which he is generally thought to have
written after his return to Carthage. He probably died about AD 180.

E. J. KENNEYis Emeritus Kennedy Professor of Latin in the University of

Cambridge. He was born in 1924 and was educated at Christ’s Hospital and
Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was Scholar and Fellow. In the
Second World War he served in the Royal Signals in the United Kingdom
and India, being commissioned in 1944. From 1953 to 1991 he was a
Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, where at various times he held the
offices of Director of Studies in Classics, Senior Tutor, Librarian and
Domestic Bursar. His publications include a critical edition of Ovid’s
amatory works (1961; second edition, 1995) and editions with commentary
of Lucretius’ De rerum natura III (1971), Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche
(1990) and Ovid’s Heroides XVI–XXI (1996); and he is currently preparing
a commentary on Books VII–IX of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, to appear in a
five-volume edition of the entire poem. In 1968 he was Sather Professor of
Classical Literature at the University of California at Berkeley; his lectures
were published in 1974 as The Classical Text (Italian translation, 1995). He
is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Member of the Royal
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a past President of the
Joint Association of Classical Teachers and of the Classical Association,
and is currently President of The Horatian Society.
APULEIUS

The Golden Ass

or Metamorphoses
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
E. J. KENNEY

PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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www.penguin.com
First published 1998
Reprinted with revisions 2004
17
Copyright © E. J. Kenney, 1998, 2004
All rights reserved
The moral right of the translator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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EISBN: 978–0–141–90450–4
Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

Further Reading

A Note on the Text

map1

map2

map3

map4

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map6

caption

figure

THE GOLDEN ASS or METAMORPHOSES

Appendix: The Onos and The Golden Ass

A Note on Money
Notes

Index
Acknowledgements

For various advice and information generously given I am indebted to Dr

James Carleton Paget, Dr Gillian Clark, Professor John Crook and Dr Emily
Gowers.
My most fundamental debt, however, is a very old one, to the framers of
the Cambridge Classical Tripos as it was in 1946–8. In those days Part I had
no syllabus of prescribed texts, and its unstructured character encouraged
the discursive exploration of Greek and Latin literature. Unprompted, I then
first read The Golden Ass, as its author intended, for pleasure; a pleasure
which, half a century later, it has been a delight to renew, and which I hope
this translation may help a new generation of readers to share.
Abbreviations

OCD S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical

Dictionary, 3rd edn. (Oxford, 1996).

OLD P. G. W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1982).

Introduction

Apuleius is the most whimsical of authors and is a law to himself. H. E.

BUTLER

… the [Golden Ass] is a puzzle, J. J. WINKLER

Apuleius is determined to confuse us. M. GRANT1

What is conventionally termed the Prologue2 to The Golden Ass ends with
an apparently straightforward promise of entertainment in store. Lector,
intende: laetaberis – ‘Give me your ear, reader: you will enjoy yourself.’
That promise is amply fulfilled. This is the most continuously and
accessibly amusing book that has come down to us from classical antiquity.
But in The Golden Ass appearances more often than not turn out to be
deceptive, and there is a good deal more in this short Prologue than
immediately meets the eye.
The two words intende: laetaberis are more suggestive than they seem.
Intendo connotes directed effort; the reader is to be intentus, attentive,
serious, switched on.3 The coordinate structure of the Latin phrase stands,
as often, for a conditional clause: if you give your mind to what follows,
you will be made happy. The implication is that the amount, and possibly
the quality, of the reader’s enjoyment will depend on the degree of attention
brought to bear on the book. What has preceded, however, is calculated to
puzzle the really attentive reader. The Prologue begins with an address to
some unidentified person in a chatty and informal style suggesting a
conversation already in progress: ‘Now (to get down to business), what I
am going to do…’. First we are promised ‘a series of different stories’
strung together in a ‘Milesian discourse’. This points to a collection of tales
of the kind associated with Aristides of Miletus (fl. c. 100 BC): anecdotes,
more often than not scabrous, culled from the illimitable subliterary
repertoire of traditional popular storytelling and embellished for an
educated audience. This class of literature was not considered edifying.
After the battle of Carrhae in 53 Be the victorious Parthians were, or
affected to be, scandalized by the discovery of Aristides’ Milesiaca in the
baggage of the defeated Roman army (Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 32).
According to the author of the Ufe of Clodius Albinus in the Historia
Augusta, that emperor was criticized for frittering away his time on ‘his
countryman Apuleius’ Milesian stories and other literary trivialities’
(Historia Augusta, 12. 12. 12). This is ‘amusing gossip’,4 which will
‘charm the ear’. However, this anodyne programme is immediately
qualified by the following request not to ’scorn’ Egyptian paper written on
with a sharp pen from the Nile. These disparate stories, it seems, have some
sort of Egyptian flavour and are in some way pointed (see 1.1 and note).
Moreover, they have after all a common theme, metamorphosis,
transformation of men’s shapes and fortunes.
At this point a voice is heard asking Quis ille?, ‘Who is this?’ We may
well retort the question: who is supposed to be asking it? The writer
himself, anticipating the reader’s curiosity? The reader, in words put into
his mouth by the writer? A third party? The possibilities, given more
particularly that ancient scribal conventions knew nothing of quotation
marks and such devices, shade into one another: the blurring of identities
which so much preoccupies critics of The Golden Ass has begun. The
answer to the question is not altogether precise. Corinth, Athens, and Sparta
together make up the speaker’s ‘ancient ancestry’, but their respective parts
in his formation only emerge later (1.1 and note). The verb used to describe
his Latin studies at Rome is ambiguous: excolui can mean, not merely
‘cultivated’, but ‘developed’, ‘improved’, ‘adorned’.5 Such apologies for
insufficiency prefacing a book or a speech are commonly disingenuous, as
the following comparison with the trick-rider shows this one to be. This
collection of stories, it is insinuated, is to be a stylistic tour deforce by a
Greek who can teach native Romans a thing or two about how to handle
their own language.
But one more surprise is in store. In two crisp words we learn that what
is about to unfold is a single tale, fabulam Graecanicam, ‘a Grecian story’.
It seems that after all this is not some sort of anthology of anecdotes, but
one story translated or adapted from a single Greek6 original. The reader is
for the time being left to wonder – and wonder has been promised as well as
pleasure – about this apparent discrepancy. That will eventually be resolved
when The Golden Ass turns out to be both these things. For the surprise that
is ultimately in store not even the most attentive of first-time readers can
have been prepared. Clairvoyance rather than concentration would have
been needed to foresee that.

We have not long to wait for the first of the promised metamorphoses. The
figure of the author, manipulating with almost insolent assurance his
diverse literary materials and the two languages of which he is self-
proclaimed master, now fades into and is lost in that of a narrator, the hero
of the fabula Graecanica – the plaything of Fortune, the slave of his
passions, controlled by the events of the story which as author he had
purported to control.7 He identifies himself as one Lucius – though his
name is only revealed casually towards the end of book 18 – a young man
of good provincial family from Corinth, on his way when the story opens to
Thessaly ‘on particular business’. This proves to be an obsessive interest in
witchcraft (for which Thessaly was famous); and it turns out that his hostess
at Hypata, where he is bound with letters of introduction, is a renowned
sorceress. With the help of her maid Photis he obtains access to her devil’s
smithy, where by mischance he is changed, not as planned into a bird, but
into a donkey. Before he can get at the antidote to the spell, which is to eat
some roses, he is carried off by a gang of robbers; and the tale of his
ensuing adventures, misadventures, and narrow escapes from death as he
passes from one owner to another takes up the rest of the first ten books of
the novel.
The narrative is bulked out by stories heard by Lucius both before and
after his metamorphosis, making up some sixty per cent of the text of books
1 – 10. This is the ‘Milesian’ element heralded in the Prologue, but an
attentive reader will perceive that there is more to it than ‘amusing gossip’,
though that is how Lucius himself invariably accepts it. These stories are
clearly intended to form an integral part of the literary structure of the book,
providing what is in effect a commentary on the experiences, sufferings,
and final deliverance of the hero. Their allegorical character (using the
word in its broadest sense) is most obviously evident in the tale of Cupid
and Psyche, set off from the rest by its length, elaborate literary texture, and
central placing in the narrative framework (4.28–6.24).9 This is yet another
surprise: the implicit undertaking to combine ‘different stories’ and a single
‘Grecian story’ is fulfilled in a way which their separate mention at the two
extremes of the Prologue could hardly have led any reader, however
attentive, to expect.

In order to tell his story, Lucius must survive his adventures and regain his
human shape. It required no excessive ingenuity on the author’s part to
contrive a plausible opportunity for him to find the prescribed remedy, for
by the end of book 10 it is once more spring and roses are available. It is
now that events take the most startling turn of all. With the last of his series
of owners Lucius has apparently fallen on his feet. Thiasus (‘Mr Revel’)
discovers by chance that this ass of his possesses almost human tastes and
intelligence, and ‘trains’ him to display his capabilities in public. A rich
woman falls in love with him and bribes his keeper to allow her to spend a
night with him. This is a great success, and when Thiasus gets wind of it he
decides to exhibit Lucius in the role of lover in the games he is about to
hold at Corinth. On learning of this and of the atrocious crimes of the
woman who is to be his partner in the spectacle, Lucius despairs.
Confronted with what he sees as the ultimate in degradation and fearing,
reasonably enough, that the beasts in the arena are unlikely to distinguish
between the innocent and the guilty parties, he decides to make a break for
freedom. He escapes and prepares to spend the night on the seashore a few
miles from Corinth. So ends book 10, with the hero in a state of physical
and spiritual prostration.
To him at this nadir of his fortunes rescue now comes, in a way that the
most percipient and attentive reader could not have guessed. He suddenly
awakes from sleep to see the full moon rising in all her unearthly brilliance
from the sea, and prays to her for deliverance. Nothing has prepared the
reader for his instant conviction10 that here is his salvation, that she –
invoked simultaneously as Ceres, Venus, Diana, and Proserpine–is the
supreme governing power of the universe and that she and she alone can
save him. This unexplained revelation comes, as is the nature of revelation,
out of the blue. The goddess answers his prayer, not in any of the guises
under which he has invoked her, but in one that subsumes and transcends
them all. After enumerating the names under which she is worshipped
throughout the world, she discloses her real identity: Isis, truly venerated
under that name in Egypt – and the mind of the reader is immediately
transported back to the mysterious hints in the Prologue.11 She promises
him release from his sufferings and gives him exact instructions for
achieving it: in return he is to devote the rest of his life to her service.
All goes according to plan. Lucius is duly restored to human shape,
receives a public lecture from Isis’ priest on the significance of what has
happened to him, and is initiated into the cult of the goddess. He moves to
Rome, undergoes further initiations, and the end of the story finds him an
apparently respectable member of society, simultaneously pursuing a
secular career as a successful barrister and following a religious vocation as
a shaven-headed official of an ancient priestly college. The emergence of
the story into the light of common day finally reveals the nature and
purpose of the over-arching metamorphosis from which The Golden Ass
itself has emerged, and, so to say, gives the literary game away. Lucius has
turned out to be a mask for the author himself, his story taken over, as will
appear (below, §4), and allegorically transformed so as to illuminate an
(ostensibly) actual spiritual experience, just as centrally within the book the
tale of Cupid and Psyche is taken over and transformed to illuminate his
own fictional case (see below, §9). The distinctly prosaic note on which the
book ends, anticlimactic as it may seem after the excitements that have
preceded, is functionally motivated, a deliberate underlining of the author’s
intentions.
Nevertheless the sense of anticlimax continues to nag. The first fifteen
chapters of book 11 constitute the longest sequence of consistently elevated
writing in the novel, writing as brilliant and compelling as anything in Latin
literature. That glory of revelation and rebirth tails off into a workaday
account of successive initiations and the shifts to which Lucius has to resort
to meet the necessary expenses. The demands of God and Mammon,
however, are finally reconciled when, under the special protection of Osiris,
he is enabled to work up a flourishing legal practice. And so, to adapt the
famous though possibly apocryphal dictum of Thomas Gaisford, Dean of
Christ Church, Oxford, we see that ‘the advantages of serving Isis and
Osiris are twofold – it enables us to look down with contempt on those who
have not shared its advantages,12 and also fits us for places of emolument
not only in this world, but in that which is to come’. Is this really what Isis
meant when she prophesied that under her protection Lucius would ‘live
gloriously’ (11.6)?

A book which began by seemingly promising nothing but entertainment,

with only the faintest of hints that some reading between the lines might be
required, has abruptly, and without anything that can reasonably be called
warning, modulated at its end into fervent religiosity tempered by
meritocratic self-satisfaction. To some critics book 11 has seemed too
loosely attached thematically to the first ten, and too sharply contrasted
with them in tone and feeling, for The Golden Ass to be convincingly
defended as an integrated literary whole. A work in eleven books is in itself
an anomaly: the preference was for even numbers or multiples of five. The
author could perfectly well have incorporated the ‘extra’ element in a ten-
book structure; the ‘Isis-Book’ draws attention to itself by being, literally,
extraordinary, extra ordinem. Ideally the problem ought perhaps to be
tackled without reference to anything but the book as we have it. That view
is expressed robustly by George Saintsbury:

Origins… and indebtedness and the like, are, when great work is concerned,
questions for the study and the lecture-room, for the literary historian and
the professional critic, rather than for the reader, however intelligent and
alert, who wishes to enjoy a masterpiece, and is content simply to enjoy it.13

However, in this case it happens that, whether fortunately or unfortunately,

we do possess a good deal of information external to The Golden Ass, both
as to its author and as to its sources, models, and literary congeners. This is
something we can hardly affect to ignore. In attempting to arrive at a proper
appreciation of the author’s genius and the merits and failings of his
creation, and of what it has to say to us, that material cannot be left out of
account, even if examination of it raises more questions than it answers.
 The Milesian element in The Golden Ass is referred to twice in the book,
once, as we have seen, in the Prologue, and again in a facetious authorial
apology for reporting an oracle of Apollo in Latin verse. This latter
allusion, however, is opportunism of a kind one soon learns to recognize,
prompted by the fact that the oracle in question is the one at Miletus (4.32
and note). There is nothing remotely Milesian about the story of Cupid and
Psyche. The fabula Graecanica we can identify. Transmitted among the
works of the Greek satirist Lucian (fi. c. AD 165) is a piece entitled ‘Lucius
or the Ass’ (Loukios ē Onos; henceforth Onos). This is a first-person
narrative by one Lucius, who is changed into an ass by a spell which
miscarries and after various adventures is changed back again: a version of
our story lacking certain episodes, most notably that of the Festival of
Laughter, the stories heard or reported by Lucius, Cupid and Psyche, and
the Isiac sequel. The close correspondences between The Golden Ass and
the Onos leave no room for doubt that they derive from a common original
(see Appendix). What this was we learn from the Bibliotheca of the
Byzantine scholar Photius (c. AD 850), who records having read both the
Onos and another book distinct from it called ‘Various tales (or books) of
Metamorphosis by Lucius of Patrae’. Photius’ testimony, when critically
examined, is less precise than might be wished, but there is general
agreement that

(i) The Golden Ass is an adaptation and the Onos an abridgement of that
lost work (henceforth Met.).
(ii) The Onos is not, as it stands, the work of Lucian.
(iii) The ascription of Met. to ‘Lucius of Patrae’ is due to confusion on
Photius’ part between author and fictional narrator.
(iv) Met. may have been by Lucian, though several other candidates have
been proposed.14
(v) Most or all of the material in The Golden Ass that does not figure in the
Onos did not figure in Met. either. It is hardly conceivable that Cupid and
Psyche can have done.

The chief question mark is that hanging over book 11 of The Golden Ass
and Lucius’ ‘conversion’. In the Onos Lucius, now restored to human
shape, again presents himself to the lady whose favours he had enjoyed as
an ass and is humiliatingly rebuffed because his genital equipment no
longer measures up to her requirements. Some have thought that this
broadly farcical denouement has replaced an original ending on a more
serious note which served as model or inspiration for book 11 of The
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
from 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 as regards the way in which he chose to
round off 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, like nothing else in the way of prose fiction that has
survived from classical antiquity.

Most readers probably feel that down to the end of book 10 the story hangs
together well enough. Though loose ends and minor inconsistencies
abound,15 where the author has not taken sufficient pains to dovetail the
added material into the original fabric, the reader is irresistibly carried
along by the sweep of the narrative and the narratives within the narrative.
This is the secret of the classic novel,

the trick of maintaining an even flow of narration, steadily moving on no

matter how thick and rich it 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.16

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. 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.17 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 that of his
involvement with 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
metamorphosis of the wineskins and its sequel, and it is to be a second
mistake of hers that precipitates the disaster of Lucius’ own transformation.
The mockery which he suffers during the ‘trial’ is then a foretaste of his lot
as an ass, proverbially a subject of ridicule for ugliness and stupidity. There
are obvious technical flaws in the conduct of the story (3.13 and note), and
it is difficult to know how exactly to interpret the manifest irony of
Byrrhena’s invitation to Lucius to ‘provide a diversion’ (2.31 and note). She
is a more ambiguous character than Abroea, her prototype in the Onos; is
she, like Milo, a willing party to the deception?
The other inserted episodes and stories in books 1–3 are, in contrast,
transparently cautionary, reinforcing the warning explicitly given by
Byrrhena (2.5). Read or reread in the light of the priest’s homily after
Lucius’ retransformation (11.15), they can all be seen as underlining his –
proleptically asinine – perseverance in the courses that ultimately cause his
downfall. Of the stories that he hears as ass, that of Cupid and Psyche
stands in a class by itself and calls for separate consideration. The others
constitute a running commentary on the world of which he is now a feeling
but inarticulate spectator. It is in fact the same world as that which he
formerly inhabited when he was a privileged individual who would
contemplate life de haut en bas. Now he sees it from below and is duly
appalled by what he sees.

Provincial life in second-century Greece as depicted in The Golden Ass is in

many ways so anarchic, legally, socially, and morally, that it is natural to
question the historical accuracy of the picture, and to ask whether the writer
has taken the novelist’s freedom to create his own world – a travesty or
caricature of reality – to enhance the impact of his narrative and to point the
moral of his book. No more than poets are novelists bound to tell the truth –

oh, creative poetic licence

Is boundless, and unconstrained
By historical fact –18

and The Golden Ass was not written as social history. However, unlike most
of the Greek romances, but like the Onos and Petronius’ Satyricon, the
setting of the book is firmly contemporary, and as far as we can tell from
the available evidence would have been recognized by contemporary
readers as broadly realistic.
There is no doubt, for instance, that outside the larger centres law
enforcement in the provinces of the Roman Empire was by and large of the
do-it-yourself order.19 Large landowners policed their estates themselves
with their own retainers; it is the insensate rage of the tyrannical plutocrat
rather than the arbitrary nature of his conduct that would have seemed
exceptional (9.35–8). Brigandage, prominent in the plots of other romances
and central in that of The Golden Ass, was a fact of life, controlled, in so far
as it was controlled, by ad hoc punitive action (7.7) rather than by
systematic policing. In point of fact the only effective police were the
soldiers at the disposition of the provincial governor. Hypata boasts a town
guard (3.3), but in the absence of government troops the city was evidently
powerless to curb the activities of the local Mohocks (2.18). This may be a
case of authorial inadvertence, but rings true in the light of what Juvenal
has to say about street crime in Rome itself some half a century earlier
(Satires, 3. 278–314). Whether a court other than that of the governor was
legally competent to try a Roman citizen20 on a capital charge is debatable,
but many contemporary readers may have been no more certainly informed
than modern scholars on such points, and it would probably have occurred
to few to think about a question which the hero himself does not raise. Nor
again would most readers stop to wonder why the doctor in the trial of the
evil stepmother delays giving his crucial evidence until the very last
moment (10.8), instead of aborting the proceedings at the outset. That
would indeed have spared the innocent defendant much anguish, but it
would have deprived the reader of his pleasure. Court-room scenes were a
standard feature of ancient romance precisely because of their dramatic
potentialities, and the essence of drama is suspense.
It is against this on the whole recognizable background that the inserted
stories in books 8–10 are projected. They present a grim composite picture
of a world motivated by deceit, spite, greed, and lust. Increasingly it is the
themes of adultery and murder, often by poisoning, that come to
predominate. The colouring of the picture is self-consciously literary: so the
story of the incestuous stepmother is acknowledged as lifted from Greek
tragedy and embellished with allusions to the Latin poets (10.2 and note).
Nevertheless it will not do to write them off as too literary and too highly
coloured to be credible. A glance at a typical morning’s newspaper
headlines suffices to make the point: infidelity and murder, often in bizarre
circumstances, are as much part of the fabric of everyday life as they were
eighteen centuries ago. The mother whom Juvenal, ironically expecting to
be disbelieved, arraigns for poisoning her own children (Satires, 6.629–46)
actually existed, and there were others like her. When he proclaims that
Posterity can add
No more, or worse, to our ways; our grandchildren will
act
As we do, and share our desires. Truly every vice
Has reached its ruinous zenith,21

he no doubt exaggerates the peculiar wickedness of his own age, but what
he says would have corresponded, as such portrayals still do, with
contemporary perceptions. The scene of moral chaos of which Lucius,
willy-nilly, is a fascinated and revolted spectator and in which he is forced
in the end to participate, formed part of the mental furniture of the age. It is
to escape from this nightmare world that, quite unexpectedly, he throws
himself on the protection of the saviour goddess Isis.

In the Onos Lucius manages at the eleventh hour, when he is actually in the
theatre and about to perform his act, to snatch a bite at some roses and
regain his human shape. This he accomplishes without divine assistance,
but the intervention of the governor is needed to save him from possible
untoward consequences (54).22 In The Golden Ass the role of the governor
is taken by Isis, the implication being that only under her special protection
can the reverse metamorphosis be safely achieved. But why Isis? In the
popular consciousness as interpreted by the Greek writer Artemidorus (ft. c.
AD 175) in his handbook on the interpretation of dreams, Isis and other
Egyptian gods stood for salvation of those in extreme peril (Onirocritica, 2.
39). That of course cuts two ways: in invoking her protection Lucius might
appear to some to be a credulous victim of superstition. Credulity has all
along been one of his leading characteristics and has contributed heavily to
his downfall. Will he fare any better as a devotee of Isis than he did as a
devotee of witchcraft?
The beauty and the fervour of the language in which his experiences and
sentiments are described may seem to rule out irony, or they could
conceivably be taken to underline it. Striking correspondences with
historically attested cases, particularly that of St Augustine, can be cited in
support of the thesis that this is the authentic narrative of an actual
conversion – that this is autobiography. For the effect that the sight of the
full moon has on Lucius, Nancy Shumate has compared what was felt by
the former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, also on a Mediterranean
seashore.23 This is not an isolated instance. At the age of fourteen Gerald
Brenan underwent a similar experience, though it ended less dramatically
than Cleaver’s, which culminated in a vision of Christ. This was at Dinard
on the coast of Brittany:

Going into my bedroom one night after dinner I discovered the full moon
pouring in through the double windows and filling the little box-like space
with its light. It seemed to be distending and pushing apart the walls with its
brightness, to be filling the room, the bed, the cupboard to bursting. I stood
gazing at it for a moment. Then, stepping out onto the balcony, I looked
down on the long glittering path it had laid on the water and heard the
waves splashing softly far below. All at once a feeling I find it difficult to
describe came over me – a sense of some enormous force and beauty
existing around me: a presence, a state that promised unspeakable delight
and happiness if only I could join myself to it. But I could not so join
myself. I was my ordinary self, carried suddenly into an over-charged, over-
resplendent world. For a time I stood there, overcome by the sheer
transcendency of the spectacle, then gradually the impression faded and I
went away.24

Brenan’s vision in fact has more in common with Lucius’ than does that of
Cleaver; particularly interesting is the suddenness of his ‘sense of some
enormous force and beauty existing around me’, which closely parallels
Lucius’ instant conviction that what he sees is a manifestation of the
goddess whose power controls the workings of the whole universe (11.1).
Even more interesting, perhaps, is the contrast between Lucius’ voluntary
submission to the dominion of the goddess and Brenan’s stalwart refusal to
abdicate his selfhood.
No less apparently authentic is the lyrical description of the spring
morning to which Lucius awakes after his vision (11.7). This sense of
rebirth, of the newness of everything, can also be paralleled in conversion
narratives, but is not exclusive to them. It can be brought about by a sudden
reprieve – from sentence of death by execution or cancer, for instance – or
by anything which takes one right out of oneself, such as being in love:

It was not the first time they had seen trees, blue sky, green grass, not the
first time they had heard running water and the wind blowing through the
leaves; but certainly they had never yet admired it all as though nature had
only just come into existence, or only begun to be beautiful since the
gratification of their desires.25

It can be convincingly expressed by any writer with experience of life who

has the gift of identifying with the emotions of his characters. This was
what Dickens, who was an accomplished actor and less like a miser than
any man who ever lived, did with Scrooge:

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist;
clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to;
Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious!
Glorious!26

No writer has ever more faithfully obeyed Horace’s precept:

Before you can move me to tears,

 you must grieve yourself.27

His is an extreme, but not an uncommon instance. The reader who has been
moved by the poignancy of Wordsworth’s ’Solitary Reaper’ may be
disconcerted to discover that the poet’s source for the plaintive song of the
Highland lass was not his own experience but a book.28 That does not rob
the poem of its value, but it is a salutary warning against drawing
biographical inferences from imaginative literature.
Most of the Latin books that have come down to us were written by men
who had been through the mill of an educational system which was
grounded in the study and practice of classical rhetoric. This was essentially
the art of persuasion, its aim plausibility. For a writer trained from
childhood in its techniques it was not necessary actually to have been
vouchsafed a vision of Isis or undergone initiation into her cult to be able to
describe such things vividly and convincingly.29 Since we chance to know
that Lucius in The Golden Ass is not an original literary creation but a
character taken over from the Onos, and that his adventures up to the
moment of his purported conversion largely reproduce those of the Greek
model, we might well suspect that the sequel too has been borrowed –
perhaps with ulterior motives – from some lost narrative of a purported
mystic experience. It therefore comes as something of a shock when at the
very end of the novel it is authenticated by the sudden re-emergence of the
author who had made so fleeting an appearance in the Prologue and then
faded inconspicuously into the fictional narrator. Indeed he not only
resurfaces but as good as names himself

That the author of The Golden Ass was one Apuleius of the North African
city of Madaura we know both from the manuscripts of his book and from
the testimony of, among others, St Augustine. It is indeed Augustine who is
our authority for the tide under which it is best known, The Golden Ass,
which he expressly states (City of God, 18.18) was that given it by Apuleius
himself. In the manuscripts it is called Metamorphoses, ‘Transformations’,
on the face of it a more obviously appropriate tide. The Prologue’s
announcement of it as a tale of changes of shape and vicissitudes of fortune
points up its affinity to Ovid’s great poem of the same name, which also
depicts a world in which ‘no event or character… can be trusted to remain
what it may first seem to be’.30 Apuleius clearly knew his Ovid, as can be
seen, to take one particularly striking example, in his portrayal of Psyche’s
agonized indecision over whether to kill her husband (5.21 and note). It has
never on the other hand been convincingly explained in what sense Lucius-
as-ass is ‘golden’; the Latin word should connote worth or splendour,31 not
qualities which can plausibly be attributed to him. To Isis the ass, identified
in her cult with the malign Seth-Typhon, her enemy and the murderer of her
husband Osiris, was a hateful beast (11.6); and Lucius’ behaviour in that
guise does nothing to redeem its reputation or his own character. The
mischievous suggestion of Paula James that Apuleius’ (if it was his)
alternative tide for his book was not Asinus Aureus but Asinus Auritus, ‘the
ass with ears’, the listening or attentive ass,32 is perilously attractive. That
would be in the best vein of Apuleian irony, the ambiguity of auritus
underlining the contrast between the efficiency of Lucius’ ears as receptors
(9.15) and his consistent inability to profit from what they tell him ( and
note).
To return to the author himself. After his brief and shadowy appearance
in the Prologue, he becomes more or less invisible, apart from the joking
apology for the language of Apollo’s oracle (above, §4) and occasional arch
reminders of the literary quality of what the reader is enjoying (2.12, 6.25,
6.29, 8.1 and notes), until the dream of the significantly named Asinius. To
him it is revealed by Osiris himself that the candidate for the last and most
important of his series of initiations is ‘a man from Madaura’ (11.27). This
offhand identification of Lucius with his creator has rattled scholars; some
have even emended Apuleius’ text to eliminate it. Are we in fact obliged to
take it seriously? Writers sometimes do this sort of thing just for fun.
Evelyn Waugh’s novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold ends with ‘Pinfold’
sitting down to record his adventures, and beginning by transcribing the
title page and the first chapter-heading of the book that the reader has just
come to the end of, minus in this case the name of the real author. This is a
technically elegant device, a witty acknowledgement of what Waugh’s
friends at least were well aware of, that the book was based on his own
experiences. In the case of The Golden Ass it is arguable that the author’s
sudden appearance represents a variation on the common literary device of
the so-called sphragis or seal, an allusive registration of authorship
incorporated in the text of the book itself.33 In other words, is this perhaps
simply an arch way of saying ‘Apuleius wrote this book’? If so, he chose a
way of doing so that was calculated, not merely to flutter the critical
dovecotes centuries later, but to give his contemporary readers something to
wonder about.
In identifying himself in this way Apuleius, as would not have been the
case had he simply named himself, was deliberately drawing attention to his
public persona. He was a notable figure in his province, the recipient of
numerous civic honours and holder of an important priesthood. His
reputation rested on two pillars, his oratorical powers and his status as a
Platonic philosopher. St Augustine calls him ‘the famous Platonist’.34 His
native place was clearly proud of her distinguished son; there has survived
the base of a statue put up there at public expense ‘To the Platonic
philosopher’, which can hardly commemorate anybody but Apuleius.35
Lucius is not a Platonic philosopher, but he boasts (1.2 and note) of his
descent from Plutarch, who was a declared Platonist and who had written a
work On Isis and Osiris, in which he set out to make philosophical sense of
the gruesome Egyptian myth of the murder and dismemberment of Osiris
by Typhon.36 He had also written a treatise On curiosity,37 very much to
Lucius’ address. Obviously the author of The Golden Ass cannot be
identified tout court with its narrator,38 but equally the ass and the Platonic
philosopher cannot be considered to have nothing to do with each other. A
strong argument to the contrary is the presence in the book of the story of
Cupid and Psyche, its structural and thematic centrepiece.

Though often, for understandable reasons, detached and edited or translated

separately, Cupid and Psyche is an organic and integral part of The Golden
Ass. Structurally it is firmly anchored in the ‘Charite-complex’ (above, §5),
the story being continued across the divisions between books 4–5 and 5–6,
another technique characteristic of Ovid in the Metamorphoses.39
Thematically the story of a, or rather the, human soul in quest of salvation
through union with the divine is a parable for what is happening to Lucius
even as he listens to it, though as with everything else he sees, hears, and
suffers, it all goes in at one of his ass’s ears and out at the other. It calls
attention to itself as a unique feat of literary combination: a fairytale plot of
a traditional type transformed into a universal allegory by the symbolic
status of its protagonists, Love and the Soul, and presented in terms of a
Platonizing duality.40
It is this last element that is important in the present context. In his
contribution to the discussion in Plato’s Symposium Pausanias had
distinguished between two Aphrodites, Urania or Heavenly, and Pandemos
or Vulgar, and two Eroses to correspond, their respective provinces being
the love of souls and bodies (180d2– 181b8). Apuleius was familiar with
the passage, which he paraphrases in his Apology (ch. 12); 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 centred 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 wings42 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.

10

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
leaf out of the book of another Latin poet whom he evidently knew and
admired, Lucretius. He, in a famous passage of the De rerum natura, twice
repeated, had compared the poetry in which he had clothed the teachings of
Epicurus to the honey smeared by the doctor on a cup of bitter medicine to
induce children to drink it, an image which Apuleius could also have come
across in Plato’s Laws (De rerum natura, i. 936–47, 4. 11 –22; Laws, 659e).
Thus the pleasure promised in the Prologue is a means to an end, the honey
on the astringent cup of edification.
Apuleius’ strategy, however, is more subtle than this suggests. The
pleasure experienced by the irreflective reader of these amusing 43 stories is
not, as in the case of Lucretius, morally neutral. It is implicitly on a par with
that experienced by their narrator and with his slavish enjoyment of Photis.
Plutarch taxes those of a prying disposition with shunning scientific
research because ‘there is nothing in it’ and preferring ‘histories’ of which
the staple is misfortune; and the catalogue of such ‘histories’ that follows is
almost identical with the subjects of the inserted stories in The Golden Ass
(De curiositate, 5). Our ideally alert and perceptive reader cannot, like
Lucius, be a mere spectator of these events, but is, so to say, on his literary
honour to participate in the book’s dialectic and to make judgements of a
moral order on what he reads. Whereas Lucius remains impervious
throughout to the implications for himself of what is happening to him,
even at one point going out of his way to remark that his experiences have
left him no wiser (9.13 and note), and cannot be said to have earned his
salvation by repentance, greater self-awareness, or (pace Nancy Shumate)
intellectual enlightenment, the reader has no excuse, with the example of
Lucius before him, for not perceiving that there is in all this some sort of
moral, a lesson to be learned.
Nancy Shumate has argued eloquently that Lucius’ ‘conversion’ is
intellectually rather than morally motivated. It is difficult to extract this
from the text. It is emotion – a combination of fear and disgust – rather than
reason44 that precipitates his flight from the world of confusion and
disintegration into which his metamorphosis had plunged him to the vision
of cosmic order embodied in the omnipotent and all-embracing godhead of
Isis. The realization that she and she alone rules the destinies of mankind
(11.1) is not arrived at by any process of ratiocination and has not been
prepared for: it simply happens. The relationship of Fortune, Providence
and Isis-as-Fortune/Providence remains as nebulous after the revelations of
the priest as it was before (11.15 and note). For Lucius it is enough that he
has found security. Nothing in the subsequent account of his devotions and
initiations indicates the existence of an intellectual component in his
religious experiences. The ‘harbour of Tranquillity’ into which he has been
received (11.15) is a final resting-place, not a point of embarkation for a
voyage of philosophical discovery. Moreover it must again be emphasized
that Lucius has done nothing to earn his salvation, as the ignorant
comments of the crowd ironically remind us (11.16 and note). A Platonic
philosopher would surely have held that enlightenment had to be actively
sought and worked for.
If The Golden Ass was seriously intended to edify, the conclusion to
which the narrative of Lucius’ experiences as a soul in quest of salvation
ultimately comes is an unexpected one. That this indeed is what the book
must be about is demonstrated by the presence in it of the story of Cupid
and Psyche; its allegorical implications and its bearing on the story of
Lucius himself clinch the matter. But did Apuleius, the famous ‘Platonic
philosopher’, really mean to offer devotion to the cult of Isis and Osiris as
the way to the highest good for a man? What would his contemporary
admirers have made of that idea? Centuries later we find Macrobius
expressing surprise that he had indulged himself in the composition of
‘fictitious love-stories’ (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, 1. 2. 8). That,
one would think, was nothing to the surprise that would have been felt by
Apuleius’ fellow citizens at the gloss that they were evidently expected to
put on those stories. Were they, however, his intended audience?
The composition and publication of The Golden Ass is generally dated to
the later period of his life, when he had returned from Rome and settled in
Africa.45 It is tempting to wonder whether he wrote it as a young man
during his residence in Rome. Appeals to its style cut both ways:
exuberance is no more a reliable sign of youth (Nabokov) than technical
assurance is of maturity (Lucan, Macaulay). More cogent is the argument
that this may seem more like the sort of book that would appeal to a
metropolitan readership rather than to staider provincial tastes. The
intrusive allusions, rather in the manner of Plautus, to matters specifically
Roman and to legal quibbles (2.16, 4.18, 5.26, 5.29, 6.8, 6.22, 6.29, 9.10,
9.27, 10.29 and notes) may be thought to point in the same direction. One
objection to this earlier dating is the presence in The Golden Ass of apparent
references to the Apology.46 About the circumstances in which this speech
was delivered we are better informed. On his way home from Rome
Apuleius was detained by illness at a place called Oea in Tripoli, where he
married a wealthy widow, Pudentilla. This was at the instance of one of her
sons, whom he had met in Rome, but other members of her family, who had
an interest in the disposition of her fortune, prosecuted Apuleius on various
charges, principally one of gaining Pudentilla’s affections by magic. The
Apology, a brilliantly witty and apparently effective rebuttal of these
accusations, was delivered in about AD 160. That does not rule out the
possibility that The Golden Ass was originally written at Rome to be read to
selected audiences there, and that the passages containing the apparent
allusions to the Apology were touched in later. There is, after all, nothing to
show that the book was given to the world in Apuleius’ lifetime. He might
well not have wished his public image to be compromised by a youthful jeu
d’esprit in which Platonism is harnessed to Oriental superstition.
That argument is weakened if in fact the tendency of the book is in the
end to undermine rather than to proselytize. Lucius’ uncritical raptures at
his first initiation and his emotional parting from the Cenchrean Isis and her
priest (11.24–5) are succeeded by surprise and a certain impatience on his
part when he discovers that he is not as yet safely berthed in the harbour of
Tranquillity. More initiations, and more expense, are needed before he can
count himself really of the elect. It is natural to wonder if he is being taken
for a ride, as at one point he himself suspects (11.29). It has been suggested
that the original Greek Metamorphoses was a satire on credulity and
superstition.47 Is there an echo of this in Apuleius’ adaptation? There is
more than a hint of naivety in the satisfaction which Lucius takes in the
resplendent get-up and the statuesque pose in which he is displayed to the
congregation (11.24). However, it could be maintained that these ironies, if
they were so intended, would have come across more sharply in Rome than
in Madaura. In the eyes of educated Romans what sort of figure would a
shaven-headed Isiac hierophant have cut in the Forum? Would Lucius’
gleaming pate (11.10) have, as Winkler suggests, identified him in that
setting as a buffoon?48 Temples of Isis were scattered all over the Greek and
Roman world, but that in Rome was particularly frequented by women and
had a louche reputation (11.26 and note). Did Apuleius really mean his
readers to feel that Lucius’ final state is a truly enviable one? Or is he, when
we take our leave of him, living in a fool’s paradise? Is he as much of an ass
as ever? And if so, how far down the garden path have we allowed
ourselves to be led along with him by Apuleius’ storytelling genius?

11

The Golden Ass is a fictional romance. Papyrus discoveries have greatly

enlarged our notions of the range and variety in subject-matter, treatment,
and style of ancient Greek fiction.49 Apuleius’ book, viewed against this
background, is not sui generis; it shares more of the characteristics of the
genre – if this is not too precise a term for this diverse and fluid category of
writing – than has been generally supposed. All narratives of separation,
travel, and reunion of lovers look back to the Odyssey, as Lucius’
ruminations in the mill acknowledge (9.13 and note), and as is even more
explicitly and repeatedly signalled in Petronius’ Satyricon.50 Digressions
and inserted narratives were a standard feature of epic as of prose romance.
Pirates and bandits figure prominently in the novels; what is unusual about
Apuleius’ treatment of this theme is the comic disparity between the grim
stronghold and warlike pretensions of his robber band and their often
farcical incompetence in action. Is this a mild literary send-up?51 Egypt had
always fascinated the Greeks: the scene of Xenophon’s Ephesiaca, Achilles
Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, and Heliodorus’ Ethiopica is set partially
in Egypt, and a war between Persia and Egypt figures in Chariton’s
Chaereas and Callirhoe. The Egyptian element in The Golden Ass reflects
this fascination and may have been incorporated by Apuleius for literary
rather than autobiographical reasons. It may be that scholars have been too
ready to take his evidence as to the details of Isiac cult at its face value and
make insufficient allowance for his exuberant fancy (11.10, 16,17, 30 and
notes).
A pervasive theme in the Greek romances is the influence of Fortune.
Fortune (Tyche) was widely worshipped in Greece, and her prominence in
shaping the lives of the characters in the novels is often taken to reflect a
general sense of insecurity in the life of ordinary people. In The Golden Ass
this role is greatly enhanced. Fortune, not always distinguished from
Providence, controls every turn of events.52 She is not merely capricious,
but actively malevolent, persecuting Lucius as Poseidon and Juno had
persecuted the heroes of the Odyssey and Aeneid, and as Priapus had
persecuted Encolpius in the Satyricon. Eventually her function in the
scheme of things as anti-Isis, blind as opposed to (fore) seeing Fortune, is
revealed in the priest’s homily. Though the theological implications of this
dichotomous or Manichaean conception of Fortune are never made clear
(11.15 and note), here again Apuleius can be seen taking a theme from the
common stock of romantic fiction and manipulating and exploiting it with
some freedom for his own purposes. That what emerges from the process is
not entirely clear or consistent – what for instance is the relationship of the
Providence that watches over Psyche to that which rescues Lucius? – is
something that by now we have perhaps come to expect.
If in the final analysis the reader is left wondering what The Golden Ass
is really about, what exactly Apuleius is getting at, that may be just what its
author intended. What he promises in the Prologue is enjoyment and
wonder. The Latin word for ‘wonder’, miror, can connote bewilderment as
well as admiration.53 Like all great works of art, The Golden Ass stoutly
resists simplification. In this it resembles that other great Latin narrative of
changed fortunes, travel, heroic endurance, separation, union, and
homecoming, Virgil’s Aeneid. When we part company with Lucius he is
enjoying himself, as we have been. Much of the pleasure of reading and
rereading this great book is that of being kept guessing.

12

In another particular Apuleius turns out to have dealt faithfully with his
readers. The promise of a literary tour de force conveyed in the image of the
circus-rider, leaping from horse to horse in mid-gallop, is amply redeemed.
The Golden Ass is a dazzling combination of parable, allegory, satire, robust
humour, sex, violence, Grand Guignol, confession and buffoonery, a unique
feat of creative fantasy. Its rich literary texture is matched by a linguistic
exuberance and stylistic versatility that confronts the translator with a
succession of thorny, sometimes insuperable, problems. How Apuleius
himself handled the task of translation can be seen from comparison with
the Onos.54 He rarely renders the original word for word for long at a
stretch, but subjects it to a process for which it is difficult to find a better
term than souping up. Most of his innovations are by way of verbal
amplification and the addition of picturesque detail, but the characterization
is also enriched, and sometimes, as with Milo and Photis, radically revised.
The general effect is to impart life and colour to a comparatively jejune
original. This is typical of Roman treatment of Greek literary models,
reminiscent for instance of what the comic dramatists, Plautus especially,
did with their exemplars: what was called uertere, ‘turning’, something not
adequately described by the word ‘translation’.
Liberties of this sort are not for the translator nowadays, but it is
interesting to note that one writer in modern times produced a ‘version’ of
The Golden Ass which took more than Apuleian freedoms with the book. In
1708 one Charles Gildon, a well-known Grub Street figure of the time,
published anonymously what he called The New Metamorphosis; or, The
Pleasant Transformation: being The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius of
Medaura. Alter’d and Improv’d to the Modern Times and Manners55– as
indeed it had been with a vengeance. This purported to be a translation from
the Italian of ‘Carlo Monte Socio, Fellow of the Academy of the
Humanities in Rome’; his account of the scandalous goings-on attributed to
‘Nuns, Fryars, Jesuits’, who are substituted for the dissolute priests of
Atargatis, is no doubt not unconnected with the fact that Gildon himself had
been educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood but had subsequently
lapsed into deism. He made one ingenious and effective concession to
plausibility by having the hero transformed into a lapdog rather than a
donkey, and so freely admitted to the drawing-rooms and bedchambers of
the society ladies whose licentious behaviour he so feelingly depicts.
Though more than once reprinted, Gildon’s book has been little noticed.
The version most familiar to educated Englishmen, which held the field
until comparatively recently, is that of William Adlington, first published in
1566. Though the language inevitably sounds unfamiliar to those not
brought up on the King James version of the Bible, it can still be read with
pleasure; and in one respect both Adlington’s and Gildon’s versions have a
useful lesson to teach. Any attempt to reproduce Apuleius’ peculiar
Latinity, its idiosyncratic mixture of colloquial, poetic, and archaizing
vocabulary, which includes many words coined by Apuleius himself, its
often wilfully contorted phraseology, and its elaborately balanced
rhythmical structures – let alone to render it literally – would involve
something like the creation of a new dialect of English. One feature of his
writing, however, can be reproduced in modern English, and that is its
fluency; and this is something that both Adlington and Gildon achieve and
that has eluded some of their successors. Classical Latin writers – Cicero,
Livy, even in his own way Tacitus – cultivated the periodic style, in which
the utterance is built up from interdependent and interlocking clauses into a
syntactical structure designed to postpone the full comprehension of the
sense until the reader has reached the end of the sentence: a circular rather
than a linear arrangement. Apuleius’ sentence-structure is serial: the clauses
do not as a rule interlock but succeed each other, and this, added to his habit
of repeating and varying his expression for effect or emphasis, creates a
flow and momentum in his prose analogous to the flow achieved by Ovid in
the more strictly ordered medium of the epic hexameter. A student coming
to him fresh from Cicero or Livy may well find his style disconcerting at
first; but if one discounts its more rococo embellishments his is an easier
and racier Latinity, with its roots reaching further back, a truly native style.
The periodic sentence was a Greek importation and had to be painfully
learned; some respectable writers, such as the Elder Pliny, never really got
the hang of it. With Apuleius the reader is in contact with a late flowering
of a tradition of free-flowing discourse that goes back to the very
beginnings of Latin culture.
 The present version, therefore, aims above all at doing justice to the
movement of Apuleius’ Latin in idiomatic contemporary English. It takes as
its motto the words of Michael Grant: ’Simplicity… is the only hope…
English must be readable, and readable today.’56 This is in the tradition of
Adlington, whose English is characterized in the anonymous Preface of the
Abbey Classics edition of 1922 as ’simple, direct and fresh’. Occasionally,
where Apuleius becomes, even for him, obtrusively mannered, some
compromise with this principle must be allowed. If then here and there the
English expression seems not altogether natural, it is likely to be because
the expression of the Latin is so Apuleian that it would denature it
altogether to reduce it to a blandly current idiom.

13

The widespread literary fame which Lucius promises himself, or rather his
creator (2.12, 4.32, 6.25, 6.29 and notes), was in fact slow to materialize.
Between the sixth and the thirteenth centuries The Golden Ass was largely
lost to view, and it was as a magician that its author was celebrated.
Augustine, in his discussion of the place of demons in the scheme of things
(City of God, 8. 12–22), repeatedly cites Apuleius as prime witness of the
Platonic position, and his uncertainty as to whether he had actually
undergone metamorphosis (above, n. 38) evidently betokens acceptance of
the fact that such things were possible. That would also have been true of
many if not most of Apuleius’ contemporaries. The picture that emerges
from the Apology is that of a society where religion and magic perforce co-
existed, however uneasily, and where people believed in and regulated their
lives by both.57 The very fact of the prosecution’s being brought at all and
the elaborate character of Apuleius’ defence shows that these matters were
taken seriously. Nor was this true only of Oea.58 There was thus little or
nothing in Lucius’ narrative, with the possible exception of the dragon (8.21
and note), that even an educated reader would have necessarily found
incredible.
It was at the Renaissance that Apuleius came into his own as a
storyteller, when he was rediscovered by Boccaccio. Artistic exploitation of
The Golden Ass speedily took off in a number of directions.59 Its rich store
of inserted tales was plundered by, among others, Boccaccio himself in the
Decameron, Cervantes in Don Quixote, and Le Sage in Gil Bias. The ass-
story lent itself readily to allegorical and satirical development. It is,
however, unsurprisingly, through the tale of Cupid and Psyche that
Apuleius’ book has exerted its greatest influence. The story has been a
perennial source of inspiration to poets, dramatists, composers for opera
and ballet, and artists. That Shakespeare had read it in Adlington’s
translation appears from several plays, most notably A Midsummer Night’s
Dream and Othello.60 Keats, Morris, and Bridges all fell under the spell.
Perhaps, however, the peculiar charm of Apuleius’ storytelling genius has
been most tellingly communicated to English readers in the languorous
prose of Walter Pater’s recreation of the tale in Marius the Epicurean.
These are only some, and by no means the last, of the multifarious
transformations undergone by The Golden Ass during the six and a half
centuries since it emerged from the long obscurity of the Dark and Middle
Ages. It is this endless capacity for metamorphosis that truly identifies
Apuleius as a magician.61

NOTES

1. H. E. Butler and A. S. Owen (eds.), Apulei Apologia sive Pro se de magia

(Oxford, 1914), p. x, n. 4; Winkler, Auctor & Actor, p. 227; Grant, revision
of Graves, p. xiv.
2. In the author’s manuscript there would have been nothing by way of
titling or numbering or paragraphing to set it off from what follows.
3. OLD s.vv. intendo11, intentus 1a, 2a.
4. lepido susurro; on the recurrence of the word lepidus in the novel see 1.1
and note.
5. OLD s.v. excolo 2b, 3; the prefix ex- is intensive.
6. Graecanicam, not Graecam. Some detect a nuance, ‘Greekish’ or
‘Greeklike’. It is hard to see the point, and more likely that this is one of
many examples of the author’s preference for the recherché to the familiar.
7. Here an interesting analogy suggests itself with Ovid in exile. Repeatedly
in the Tristia he compares his tribulations to those of the epic heroes
Ulysses and Aeneas, which as a poet he had shaped and manipulated. The
resemblance may be fortuitous, but Ovid’s influence is strongly felt in The
Golden Ass: see Krabbe, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, pp. 37–81, and
below, nn. 9, 16, 17.
8. At 1.24. Similarly Psyche is not named until her story is well under way
(4.30).
9. The manner in which the story straddles the divisions between books 4–5
and 5–6 and in which the divisions are used to mark important stages in the
action and focus attention on the situation of the heroine is strongly
reminiscent of Ovid’s technique in the Metamorphoses. See above, n. 7.
10. He is certus, assured, confident, having certain knowledge: OLD s.v. 11,
12a.
11. They had been reinforced, or so it has been held, in a specifically Isiac
way by the part played in Thelyphron’s story by the Egyptian priest
Zatchlas. If that was the author’s intention, the message has been
compromised by the association with necromancy (2.28 and note).
12. So the priest of Isis: ‘Let the infidels behold, let them behold and know
their error’ (11.15).
13. Introduction to the Everyman edition (1910) of Henry Fielding, Joseph
Andrews.
14. All of them more or less obscure. It is perhaps worth remarking that if
Met. was by Lucian, it might have seemed a bold undertaking to translate
and liberally embellish – some might say travesty – the work of a writer of
his stature.
15. Some examples are givenin the Notes, but it would be tedious and
unprofitable to attempt to compile a complete catalogue. Some can be more
or less plausibly explained away, but most must be ascribed to simple
carelessness. The average reader is unlikely to be much worried by them,
and they nowhere seriously impair the impact of the story. For examples of
inconsistencies, loose ends and some sheer absurdities in nineteenth-century
English fiction see J. Sutherland, Is Heathcliffa Murderer? (Oxford, 1996)
and id., Can Jane Eyre be Happy? (Oxford, 1997).
16. J. B. Priestley, Margin Released. A writer’s reminiscences and
reflections (1963), p. 174. The same could be said, mutatis mutandis, of
Ovid’s Metamorphoses; see above, n. 7.
17. See Schlam, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, pp. 34–6. Here too The
Golden Ass recalls Ovid: the manner in which the stories at 9.14–31 are
inset (see Appendix) recalls Ovid’s ‘Chinese-box’ technique in, for
instance, the Arethusa episode (Metamorphoses, 5. 337–678). See above, n.
7.
18. Ovid, Amores, 3. 12. 41–2, trans. Peter Green.
19. W. Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 100–
112.
20. As from his name it is to be inferred that Lucius is. The author of the
Onos is more categorical: there both Lucius and his brother Gaius have the
three names that identify them as Romanized Greeks (ch. 55).
21. Satires, 1. 147–9, trans. Peter Green.
22. That is, of being taken for a sorcerer. In one of the Apuleian additions to
his original Lucius foresees and avoids this danger (3.29), from which he is
finally secured by Isis (11.6 and note).
23. Shumate, Crisis and Conversion, p. 311, n. 19.
24. Gerald Brenan, A Life of One’s Own. Childhood and Youth (Cambridge,
1979), pp. 77–8. Coleridge had a similar experience (R. Holmes, Coleridge.
Darker Reflections (1998), p. 38).
25. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part 3, ch. 3, trans. Geoffrey Wall.
26. A Christmas Carol, Stave V.
27. Art of Poetry, 102–3, trans. Niall Rudd.
28. J. Beer, Wordsworth and the Human Heart (1978), pp. 134–5.
29. Shumate, Crisis and Conversion, pp. 327–8.
30. Tatum, Apuleius and ‘The Golden Ass’, p. 21.
31. OLD s.v. aureus 5.
32. OLD s.v. auritus 1. See Paula James, ‘Fool’s gold… renaming the ass’,
Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 4 (Groningen, 1991), pp. 155–72. In the
capital script in which the book would have been first written the two words
could be easily confused.
33. So, at the end of the first book of his elegies, Propertius tells his readers
where he comes from without actually naming himself (1. 22). Virgil’s
identification of himself at the end of the Georgics is more explicit (4. 559–
66).
34. Platonicus nobilis (City of God, 8. 12).
35. Tatum, Apuleius and ‘The Golden Ass’, pp. 105–8. For his philosophical
writings see Walsh (1994), pp. xv–xvii.
36. D. A. Russell, Plutarch (1972), pp. 75–6, 82.
37. So usually described after the Latin tide De curiositate, but
‘meddlesomeness’ is perhaps a more accurate rendering of the Greek
polypragmosyne.
38. A question on which Augustine was evidently in two minds: did
Apuleius record his experiences or make them up (City of God, 18. 18)?
39. See above, n. 9.
40. For a full analysis see Kenney, Cupid and Psyche, pp. 12–22.
41. For one of the odder metamorphoses in the book, Cupid’s unexpected
reversion at the end of the story to Amor II, see 6.22 and note. For a full
analysis of the plot on these lines see Kenney, ‘Psyche and her mysterious
husband’, in D. A. Russell (ed.), Antonine Literature (Oxford, 1990), pp.
175–98.
42. Here Apuleius can be seen adroitly fudging things. In art Psyche is
winged; the butterfly, called in Greek psyche, is a common symbol for the
soul. In Apuleius’ fairytale she is a human princess; the momentarily
Platonic Psyche-as-soul in a manner, by clinging on to Cupid, acquires
wings which she loses by letting go of him.
43. On the recurrence of this term to describe the inserted tales see 1.1 and
note.
44. The thoughts that pass through his mind at that moment (10.34) hardly
amount to the revaluation of his activities detected by Shumate (Crisis and
Conversion, p. 38).
45. There is little firm evidence: see Walsh, The Roman Novel, pp. 248–51.
46. See, for instance, 6.9 and note.
47. Perry, The Ancient Romances, pp. 211–35.
48. Winkler, Auctor & Actor, pp. 225–6.
49. Stephens and Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels, pp. 3–19.
50. Walsh, The Roman Novel, pp. 36–43.
51. The account of the robbers’ carouse (4.8, 22) offers striking similarities
with a fragment of Lollianus’ Phoenicica. Unfortunately it cannot be shown
who is borrowing from whom (Stephens and Winkler, Ancient Greek
Novels, pp. 322–5).
52. As in Fielding’s Tom Jones, where Fortune intervenes some twenty-odd
times. Is there any other English novel where her role is so prominent?
53. OLD s.v. 1, 2.
54. About the relationship of the Onos as we have it to Met. scholars differ.
It is here assumed that its author abridged rather than rewrote his original.
55. Two volumes, London, 1708, printed for S. Brisco and sold by J.
Morphew. Reprinted, two volumes, London, 1821, for E. Wheatley. Other
editions, in 1709 and 1724, are recorded by the New Cambridge
Bibliography of English Literature (Cambridge, 1971), 11, 1049.
56. Grant, revision of Graves, p. xvii.
57. J. H. W. G. Liebeschütz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
(Oxford, 1979), PP. 217–20.
58. OCD s.v. magic; Liebeschütz, op. cit., pp. 126–39; A. A. Barb, ‘The
survival of magic arts’, in A. Momigliano (ed.), The Conflict between
Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), pp. 100–
125.
59. See Elizabeth H. Haight, Apuleius and His Influence (New York, 1927),
pp. 111–81.
60. Walsh (1994), pp. xlvi–xlvii.
61. Apuleius lived during the heyday of the period commonly called the
Second Sophistic (see OCD, s.v.) when declamatory rhetoric exerted a
dominating influence over education, literary culture and public life. Chairs
of rhetoric were established by the emperors in major centres, and rhetorical
skill was frequently an avenue to high civic or provincial office. Travelling
lecturers, the so-called Sophists, could attract huge audiences to hear
elaborate harangues on historical or popular philosophical and ethical
topics. The Second Sophistic was an almost exclusively Greek
phenomenon; Apuleius is its only clearly identifiable Latin representative
(E. Bowie, Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd edn, vol. XI (2000), pp. 920–
1). On his complementary personae as Platonic philosopher and sophist see
Sandy, Greek world; Harrison, Apuleius; Kenney, ‘In the mill…’.
Further Reading

The following list is severely selective and is restricted to works in English.

The secondary literature on Apuleius and the ancient novel is large and
constantly growing. Most of the books listed here contain bibliographies;
those in the Groningen commentaries of Hijmans et al. are particularly
ample.

TRANSLATIONS

Adlington, W., The xi bookes of the Golden Asse, conteininge the

Metamorphosie of Lucius Apuleius with the Mariage of Cupid and
Psiches (London, 1566 and frequently reprinted).
—id., revised by S. Gaselee, Loeb Classical Library (New York and
London, 1915).
Butler, H. E., The Metamorphoses or Golden Ass of Apuleius of Madaura, 2
vols. (Oxford, 1910). (Expurgated.)
Graves, R., The Transformations of Lucius otherwise known as The Golden
Ass by Lucius Apuleius (Harmondsworth, 1950).
—id., revised with a new Introduction by M. Grant (Harmonds worth,
1990).
Hanson, J. A. See below, A Note on the Text.
Walsh, P. G., Apuleius. The Golden Ass (Oxford, 1994; World’s Classics,
1995).
For the Onos see the text and translation by M. D. Macleod in vol. VIII
of the works of Lucian in the Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.
and London, 1967).

COMMENTARIES
Scobie, A., Apuleius Metamorphoses (Asinus Aureus) I. A Commentary
(Meisenheim am Glam, 1975).
van der Paardt, R. T., L. Apuleius Madaurensis. The Metamorphoses. A
Commentary on Book III with Text & Introduction (Amsterdam, 1971).
Hijmans, B. L., et al., Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses. Book IV 1–
27. Text, Introduction and Commentary (Groningen, 1977).
—Books VI 25–32 and VII (Groningen, 1981).
—Book VIII (Groningen, 1985).
—Book IX (Groningen, 1995).
Zimmerman, M., Book X (Groningen, 2000).
Gwyn Griffiths, J., Apuleius of Madauros. The Isis-Book (Metamorphoses,
Book XI) (Leiden, 1975).
Purser, L. C, The Story of Cupid and Psyche as related by Apuleius [IV 28–
VI 24] (London, 1910; repr. New Rochelle, 1983).
Kenney, E. J., Apuleius. Cupid and Psyche [IV 28–VI 24], Cambridge
Greek and Latin Classics (Cambridge, 1990).

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Hägg, T., The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford, 1983).

Harrison, S.J. (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel (Oxford, 1999).
—Apuleius. A Latin Sophist (Oxford, 2000).
James, Paula, Unity in Diversity. A study of Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’
with particular reference to the narrator’s art of transformation and the
metamorphosis motif in the tale of Cupid and Psyche (Hildesheim–
Zürich–New York, 1987).
Kahane, A., and Laird, A. (eds.), A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’
Metamorphoses (Oxford, 2001).
Kenney, E. J., ‘In the mill with slaves: Lucius looks back in gratitude’,
Transactions of the American Philological Society 133 (2003), pp. 159–
92.
Krabbe, Judith K., The Metamorphoses of Apuleius (New York–Bern–
Frankfurt am Main–Paris, 1989).
Perry, B. E., The Ancient Romances. A literary-critical account of their
origins (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967).
Sandy, G. N., The Greek World of Apuleius. Apuleius and the Second
Sophistic (Leiden–New York–Cologne, 1997).
Schlam, C. C, Cupid and Psyche. Apuleius and the monuments (University
Park, Pa., 1976).
—The Metamorphoses of Apuleius. On making an ass of oneself (London,
1992).
Shumate, Nancy, Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’
(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996).
Stephens, Susan A., and Winkler, J. J., Ancient Greek Novels: the
Fragments (Princeton, N.J., 1995).
Tatum, J., Apuleius and ‘The Golden Ass’ (Ithaca and London, 1979).
Walsh, P. G., The Roman Novel. The ’Satyricon’ of Petronius and the
‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius (Cambridge, 1970).
Winkler, J. J., Auctor & Actor. A nanatological reading of Apuleius’s
‘Golden Ass’ (Berkeley–Los Angeles–London, 1985).
A Note on the Text

The text of The Golden Ass depends on a manuscript written at Monte

Cassino in Italy in the eleventh century and now in the Biblioteca Mediceo-
Laurentiana at Florence, Laurentianus 68. 2 (F). From it all other extant
copies derive. Where its original readings have been defaced by wear and
tear or correction, they can often be restored from another Florentine
manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century, Laurentianus 29. 2 (ф),
which was copied from F when it was more legible than it is now. As to
how faithfully F transmits what Apuleius wrote, scholars are divided. Some,
most notably the Groningen commentators, adopt a highly conservative
approach; others, of whom the present translator is one, believe that
correction is needed in a good many places. Fortunately it is not often that
the sense is seriously in doubt, however editors may disagree about the
form of the expression; and textual comment in the Notes has been kept to a
minimum.
The most important critical editions are those of

van der Vliet, J., Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1897).

Helm, R., 3rd edn. with supplement, Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Leipzig,
1992).
Robertson, D. S., 3 vols., Collection Budé (Paris, 1940–45). With French
translation by P. Vallette.
Hanson, J. A., 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass, and
London, 1989). With English translation.
The Groningen commentaries include a text which generally follows
that of Helm, with occasional variations. They also incorporate in the
commentary a paragraph-by-paragraph English translation.
This translation in the main follows the text of Robertson, but the
readings of other editors and critics have been occasionally preferred. The
book divisions are authorial. The chapter divisions given in the margin of
the text, to which the notes are keyed, are editorial and modern, designed
primarily to facilitate reference. The paragraphing is the translator’s.
John Price (Latinized as Pricaeus) was born of Welsh parents in London in
1600. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford,
though as a Roman Catholic he was ineligible to matriculate or graduate.
He spent much of his life abroad, living and working at various times in
Paris, Vienna, Florence and Pisa, where he was for a time Professor of
Greek. He died in about 1676 and was buried in the Augustinian monastery
in Rome. His commentaries on Apuleius and the New Testament gained him
a high reputation among his contemporaries; and his edition of The Golden
Ass, published at Gouda in 1650, is still a valuable resource.
Contents

BOOK 1

Prologue in which the author introduces himself – Lucius follows

suit – on the way to Thessaly – Aristomenes’ story – arrival at
Hypata and reception by Milo – a puzzling experience in the
market – hungry to bed

BOOK 2

In quest of witchcraft – meeting with Byrrhena – warned

against his hostess the witch Pamphile – makes love to the maid
Photis instead – dinner with Byrrhena – Thelyphron’s story –
promises to contribute to the Festival of Laughter – encounters
and slays three desperate robbers

BOOK 3
Tried for murder – all a joke which he does not appreciate –
Photis explains – watches Pamphile change herself into an owl
and tries to follow suit – is turned into an ass instead –
inhospitable reception in the stable – frustrated in attempt to
break the spell – carried off by robbers

BOOK 4
The robbers’ stronghold – stories of their recent exploits – arrival
of the kidnapped girl Charite – the robbers’ housekeeper tells
her the story of Cupid and Psyche to comfort her – the story
begun

BOOK 5

The story of Cupid and Psyche continued

BOOK 6

The story of Cupid and Psyche concluded – Lucius is lamed

and condemned to death by the robbers – makes a break for
freedom with Charite on his back – recaptured – Charite
condemned to death with him
BOOK 7

Haemus appears and takes command – revealed as Charite’s

lover Tlepolemus in disguise – she is rescued and the robbers
exterminated – she makes much of Lucius – he is sent out to
grass – yoked to the mill – attacked by the stallions – persecuted
by a cruel boy – threatened with castration – blamed for the
boy’s death

BOOK 8

Tragic deaths of Charite and Tlepolemus – their slaves decamp

in panic with the animals – misadventures on the way – Lucius
sold to the priests of Atargatis – their scandalous activities –
another death sentence

BOOK 9

A lucky escape – the story of the lover and the jar – the priests
arrested for theft – Lucius sold to a miller – in the mill again –
the miller’s evil wife – more stories of adultery – death of the
miller – sold to a market-gardener – the story of a house
destroyed – commandeered by the military

BOOK 10

The story of the wicked stepmother – sold again – the

pastrycook and the chef – caught in the act – Lucius the almost
human – the noble mistress and the ignoble substitute –
degraded to make a Corinthian holiday – the Judgement of
Paris – escape to Cenchreae

BOOK 11

Vision on the seashore – appeal to Isis – the goddess appears

and promises rescue – her festival – Lucius himself again –
devotes himself to the goddess’s service – initiated – goes to
Rome – two further initiations – promised a distinguished
future as an advocate and admitted to office in an ancient
priestly college by Osiris himself – happy at last
BOOK 1

Prologue in which the author introduces himself – Lucius follows

suit – on the way to Thessaly – Aristomenes’ story – arrival at
Hypata and reception by Milo – a puzzling experience in the
market – hungry to bed

1 Now, what I propose in this Milesian discourse is to string together for

you a series of different stories and to charm your ears, kind reader, with
amusing gossip – always assuming that you are not too proud to look at
an Egyptian book written with the sharpness of a pen from the Nile; and
to make you marvel at a story of men’s shapes and fortunes changed into
other forms and then restored all over again. So I’ll begin. But who is
this? In brief: Attic Hymettus, the Isthmus of Corinth, and Spartan
Taenarus, fruitful lands immortalized in yet more fruitful books, these
make up my ancient ancestry. It was there that I served my earliest
apprenticeship to the language of Athens. Later, arriving in Rome a
stranger to its culture, with no teacher to show me the way, by my own
painful efforts I attacked and mastered the Latin language. That then is
my excuse, if as an unpractised speaker of the foreign idiom of the
Roman courts I should stumble and give offence. In fact this linguistic
metamorphosis suits the style of writing I have tackled here – the trick,
you might call it, of changing literary horses at the gallop. It is a Grecian
story that I am going to begin. Give me your ear, reader: you will enjoy
yourself.
2 I was on my way to Thessaly – for on my mother’s side our family
goes back there, being proud to number among our ancestors the
 distinguished philosopher Plutarch and his nephew Sextus – I was on my
way, I say, to Thessaly on particular business. I had negotiated a
succession of steep passes, muddy valleys, dewy pastures, and sticky
ploughlands, and like me, my horse, who was native-bred, a pure white
animal, was getting pretty tired. Thinking I might shake off my own
saddle-weariness by a little exercise, I dismounted, wiped my horse
down, rubbed his forehead scientifically, caressed his ears, and took off
his bridle; then I led him on at a gentle pace, to let him get rid of his
fatigue through the natural restorative of a snack. And so, while he, with
his head turned to the verges as he passed, was taking his breakfast on
the hoof, I caught up with two fellow wayfarers who happened to have
gone on a short way ahead. As I began to eavesdrop, one was roaring
with laughter and saying: ‘Do give over lying like that – I’ve never
heard anything so utterly absurd.’
At that I, thirsting as always for novelty, struck in: ‘No, please,’ I said,
‘let me in on this – not that I’m nosy, it’s just that I’m the sort of person
who likes to know everything, or at least as much as I can. And an
agreeable and amusing yarn or two will lessen the
steepness of this hill we’re climbing.’ ‘Yes,’ said the first speaker, ‘these
3 lies are just as true as it would be to say that because of magic rivers can
suddenly reverse their flow, the sea be becalmed, the winds cease to
blow, the sun stand still, the moon be milked of her dew, the stars
uprooted, the daylight banished, the night prolonged.’ Then I,
emboldened, said: ‘You, sir, who began this story, please don’t be
annoyed or too disgusted to tell us the rest’; and to the other man, ‘But
what you are stupidly refusing to listen to and stubbornly pooh-poohing
may very well be a true report. Really, I think you are being ignorant and
perverse when you account as a lie anything you’ve never heard of or
aren’t familiar with the sight of or just find too difficult for your
understanding to grasp. If you look into these things a little more closely,
you’ll find out that they
aren’t only reliably attested but can easily happen. Look at me, yesterday
4 evening: trying desperately to keep my end up at dinner, I rashly tried to
cram down a piece of cheesecake that was too big, and the gooey stuff
lodged in my throat and blocked my windpipe – I was very nearly a
goner. Then again, when I was in Athens only the other day, in front of
the Painted Porch, I saw with these two eyes a juggler swallow a sharp
 cavalry sabre, point first; and then the same man, encouraged by a small
donation, lowered a hunting spear right down into his inside, lethal point
first. And then, lo and behold, above the blade of the lance, where the
shaft of the inverted weapon entered the man’s throat and stood up over
his head, there appeared a boy, pretty as a girl, who proceeded to
wreathe himself round it in a bonelessly sensuous dance. We were all
lost in amazement; you’d have thought it was Aesculapius’ own rough-
hewn staff, with his sacred serpent twining sinuously round it. But sir,
please do go on with your story. I promise you I’ll believe it even if our
friend here won’t, and at the first inn we come to I’ll stand you lunch –
there’s your payment secured.’
5 ‘Very kind of you,’ he said, ‘but I’ll start my story again in any case,
thanks all the same. First however let me swear to you by this all-seeing
divine Sun that what I’m going to tell you really happened; and if you
get to the next town in Thessaly, you’ll be left in no doubt; all this was
done in public and everyone there is still talking about it. But to let you
know who I am, and where I come from: my name is Aristomenes, from
Aegium. Let me tell you how I get a living: I travel all over Thessaly
and Aetolia and Boeotia in honey and cheese and suchlike innkeeper’s
staples. So, hearing that at Hypata – it’s the most important place in
Thessaly – there was some new and particularly tasty cheese on offer at
a very reasonable price, I hurried off there to put in a bid for the lot. But
as tends to happen, I got off on the wrong foot and was disappointed in
my hope of making a killing: a wholesaler called Lupus had bought it all
the day before.
‘So, worn out by my useless hurry, I took myself off at sundown
to the public baths; and who should I see there but my old friend
6 Socrates. He was sitting on the ground, half wrapped in a tattered old
coat, his face sickly yellow so that I hardly recognized him, miserably
thin, looking just like one of those bits of Fortune’s flotsam one sees
begging in the streets. Seeing him looking like this, though as I say I
knew him extremely well, it was with some hesitation that I went up to
him. “Socrates, my dear fellow,” I said, “what’s up? Why are you
looking like this? What have they done to you? Back home you’ve been
mourned and given up for dead; and your children have been assigned
guardians by the court. Your wife has given you a formal funeral; and
now, disfigured by months of grieving and having wept herself nearly
 blind, she’s being urged by her parents to cheer up the family
misfortunes by getting happily married again. And here are you, looking
like a ghost and putting us all to shame.”
‘“Aristomenes,” he said, “you just don’t understand the deceitful twists
and turns of Fortune, her surprise attacks, her reversals of direction,”
and as he spoke he covered his face, which had become red with shame,
with his rags and patches, leaving himself naked from navel to groin. I
couldn’t bear the pitiful sight of his distress,
and tried to pull him to his feet. But he, keeping his head covered, cried:
7 “Leave me alone, leave me, and let Fortune go on enjoying the spectacle
of this trophy that she’s set up.” However, I got him to come with me,
and taking off one of my tunics I dressed or at least covered him up with
it, and took him off to the baths. I got him oil and towels and with much
effort scrubbed off the horrible filth he was encrusted with; and then
when he had been thoroughly put to rights (by which time I was worn
out myself and was hard put to it to hold him up), I took him back to my
inn, put him to bed to recover, gave him a good dinner and a relaxing
glass or two of wine, and chatted to him to calm him down.
‘He was just beginning to talk freely, to crack the odd joke, even to get
mildly flippant and answer back, when suddenly, heaving an
excruciating sigh from the depths of his chest and passionately slapping
his forehead, he broke out: “Gods, what miserable luck! It was only
because I went in search of a bit of pleasure, to see a gladiatorial show
I’d heard a lot about, that I got into this dreadful mess. As you know, I’d
gone to Macedonia on business. I’d been hard at it there for nine
months, and having made a decent profit I was on my way home. Not
far from Larissa, where I was planning to see the show on my way
through, I was waylaid in a wild and watery glen by a gang of bandits –
absolute monsters – and robbed of everything I had, though in the end I
escaped with my life. Reduced to this desperate state, I took shelter at an
inn kept by a woman called Meroe, not at all bad-looking for her age. I
told her everything, why I’d been away so long, my anxiety to get home,
and the lamentable story of the robbery. She welcomed me more than
kindly, treating me first to a good dinner, free gratis and for nothing, and
then to a share of her bed – she really was on heat. And that’s how I
came to grief: that first night with her was the start of a long and
 degrading association. Even the rags which the robbers had generously
left me to cover myself with, even those I made over to her, along with
the pittance I earned as a porter while I was still fit enough for the work.
And that’s how this worthy wife, so called, and the malevolence of
Fortune between them have reduced me to what you saw just now.”
‘“Well, damn it,” I said, “you deserve anything you get and worse than
8 that, for preferring the pleasure of fornicating with a leathery old hag to
your home and children.” But he put his finger to his lips and looked
utterly horrified. “Shh, quiet,” he said, looking round to see that we
weren’t overheard. “Don’t talk like that about a woman with
superhuman powers, or your rash tongue will get you into trouble.”
“Really?” I said. “What sort of woman is this mighty tavern-queen?” “A
witch,” he answered, “with supernatural powers; she can bring down the
sky, raise up the earth, solidify springs, dissolve mountains, raise the
dead, send the gods down below, blot out the stars, and illuminate Hell
itself.” “Come on,” I said, “spare me the histrionics and let’s have it in
plain language.” “Well,” he said, “do you want to hear one or two of her
exploits? There are lots I could tell you about. It’s not only our own
people that she can make fall madly in love with her, but the Indians, the
Ethiopians – both lots – even the Antipodeans; that’s nothing, the merest
ABC of her art. But let me tell you what she did in full view of a crowd
of eyewitnesses.
9 ‘“When one of her lovers was unfaithful to her, with a single word she
turned him into a beaver, because when they’re afraid of being caught
beavers escape their pursuers by biting off their balls – the idea being
that something like that would happen to him. An innkeeper, who was a
neighbour and therefore a trade rival, she changed into a frog; and now
the poor old chap swims around in a barrel of his own wine and greets
his old customers with a polite croak as he squats there in the lees.
Another time she changed a lawyer who appeared against her in court
into a ram, and it’s as a ram that he now pleads his cases. Again, the
wife of another of her lovers she condemned to perpetual pregnancy for
being witty at her expense; she shut up the woman’s womb and halted
the growth of the foetus, so that it’s now eight years (we’ve all done the
sum) that this unfortunate creature has been swollen with her burden, as
if it was an elephant that she was going to produce.
10
 ‘“This sort of thing kept happening, and a lot of people suffered at her
hands, so that public indignation grew and spread; and a meeting was
held at which it was decided that on the following day she should
receive drastic punishment by stoning to death. However, she thwarted
this move by the strength of her spells – just like the famous Medea
when, having obtained a single day’s grace from Creon, she used it to
burn up the old king’s palace, his daughter, and himself, with the crown
of fire. Just so Meroe sacrificed into a trench to the powers of darkness
(she told me all this the other day when she was drunk), and shut up the
whole population in their houses by silent supernatural force. For two
whole days they couldn’t undo their bolts or get their doors open or even
break through their walls, until in the end they came to an agreement
among themselves and all called out, swearing by what they held most
sacred, that they would not lay a finger on her and that if anybody had
other ideas they would come to her assistance. So she was appeased and
let them all off, except for the man who had convened the public
meeting. Him she whisked off at dead of night, with his whole house –
walls, foundations, the ground it stood on – still shut up, a hundred miles
away to another town which was situated on the top of a rocky and
waterless mountain. And since the houses there were too closely packed
to allow room for another one, she simply dumped it outside the town
gates and decamped.”
11 ‘“My dear Socrates,” I said, “what you tell me is as ghastly as it’s
astonishing. You really have made me very uneasy – no, you’ve terrified
me. It’s not just a pinprick of anxiety but a positive spearthrust that
you’ve inflicted – the fear that the old woman may invoke some
supernatural aid as she’s done before to eavesdrop on this conversation.
So let’s get to bed straight away, and when we’ve slept off our fatigue
let’s get as far as possible away from here before it’s light.” Before I had
finished offering this advice, my friend, who had been tried to the limit
by so many wearing experiences and more wine than he was used to,
was fast asleep and snoring noisily. So I closed the door and shot the
bolts firmly, and also wedged my bed hard up against the hinges and lay
down on it. At first my fear kept me awake for a time, but then about
midnight I dropped off. Hardly had I done so when suddenly (you
wouldn’t think a whole gang of robbers could manage such an
onslaught) the door was thrown open, or rather broken down and torn
 right off its hinges and sent crashing to the ground. My bed, which was
only a cot, with a foot missing and riddled with worm, was overturned
by this violent shock, and I was hurled out of it and rolled on to the floor
with the bed upside down on top of me and hiding me.
12 ‘Then I discovered that some emotions naturally express themselves by
their opposites. Just as one very often weeps tears of joy, so then, utterly
terrified as I was, I couldn’t help laughing at the idea of myself as a
tortoise. Grovelling there in the dirt I was able from under the protection
of my resourceful bed to get a sideways view of what was happening. I
saw two elderly women, one carrying a lighted lamp, the other a sponge
and a naked sword. So arrayed, they stood on either side of Socrates,
who was still sound asleep. The one with the sword spoke first: “There
he is, sister Panthia, my beloved Endymion, my Ganymede, who by
night and day has played fast and loose with my tender youth, who
scorns my love, and not content with calumniating me is trying to escape
me. I take it I’m supposed to play abandoned Calypso to his wily
Ulysses, left to mourn in perpetual solitude?” And then she pointed and
indicated me to Panthia: “But here we have our friend Aristomenes the
Counsellor, who is the author of this escape plan and now lies on the
ground under that bed within a hair’s-breadth of death, watching all this
and thinking that the injuries he has done me will go unpunished. One
day – what am I saying, now, this very moment – I’ll make him sorry for
his past impudence and his present curiosity.”
13 ‘Hearing this I was in agony, drenched in an icy sweat and shaking all
over, so that the bed too was convulsed by my shudders and heaved up
and down on top of me. Then said the amiable Panthia: “Now, sister,
shall we take this one first and tear him limb from limb like Bacchantes,
or tie him down and castrate him?” But Meroe – for she it was, as I
realized from what Socrates had told me – said: “No, let him survive to
give a modest burial to the body of his poor friend,” and twisting
Socrates’ head to one side she buried her sword up to the hilt in the left-
hand side of his throat, catching the blood that spurted out in a leather
bottle so neatly that not a drop was spilled. This I saw with my own
eyes. Next dear Meroe, wanting I suppose to keep as closely as possible
to the sacrificial forms, plunged her hand into the wound right down to
his entrails, rummaged about, and pulled out my poor friend’s heart. At
this he let out through the wound in his throat, which the violent stroke
 of the sword had totally severed, an inarticulate whistling sound, and
gave up the ghost. Then Panthia, blocking the gaping wound with her
sponge, “Now, sponge,” she said, “you were born in the sea – take care
not to cross a river.” With these words they left, but first they pulled the
bed off me and squatted down and emptied their bladders over my face,
leaving me soaked in their filthy piss.
14 ‘The moment they had gone the door reverted to normal: the hinges
flew back into position, the bars returned to the doorposts, and the bolts
shot back into the slot. As for me, I remained where I was, grovelling on
the floor, fainting, naked, cold and drenched in piss, just like a new-born
child – or rather half dead, a posthumous survivor of myself, an
absolutely certain candidate for crucifixion. “What’s going to happen to
me,” I said to myself, “when he’s found in the morning with his throat
cut? I can tell the truth, but who’ll believe me? I can hear them now.
‘Couldn’t you at least have called for help if you couldn’t cope with a
woman – a big chap like you? A man murdered before your eyes, and
not a peep out of you? And how is it that you weren’t likewise made
away with by these female desperadoes? Why should their cruelty have
spared a witness who could inform against them? So, you escaped
Death; now go back to him!’”
‘While I was going over this in my mind again and again, the night
wore on. The best plan then seemed to be to get clear surreptitiously
before dawn and to take the road, though I had no very clear idea where
to go. So I shouldered my luggage and tried to undo the bolts; but the
upright and conscientious door, which earlier had unbarred itself so
readily, now only opened with much
reluctance and after many turnings of the key. Then, “Hey, porter,” I
15 called, “where are you? Open the front door. I want to be off early.” The
porter was lying on the ground behind the door and was still half asleep.
“Have some sense,” he said. “Don’t you know the roads are stiff with
robbers, and you want to start out at this time of night? You may have
some crime on your conscience that makes you eager to die, but I’m not
such a fathead as to want to take your place.” “It’s nearly light,” I said,
“and anyway, what can robbers take away from a traveller who’s got
nothing? Don’t be stupid: you know that ten wrestlers can’t strip a naked
man.” But he, drowsy and half asleep, turned over in bed and muttered:
“Anyway, how do I know you haven’t murdered your companion that
 you came in with last night and aren’t trying to save yourself by doing a
bunk?”
‘At that moment, I remember, I saw the earth opening and the depths of
Hell, and Cerberus hungering for me; and I realized that it wasn’t in pity
that dear old Meroe had spared my life, but in a
spirit of sadism, saving me for the cross. So I went back to my room to
16 mull over the form my suicide was to take. Since the only lethal weapon
provided by Fortune was my bed, “Now, now, O bed,” I cried, “my
dearest bed, thou who hast endured with me so many sufferings,
confidant and beholder of the night’s happenings, the only witness to my
innocence that I can call against my accusers, do you provide me as I
hasten to the shades with the weapon that shall save me.” With these
words I set about undoing the cord with which it was strung and made
one end of it fast to a beam which jutted out under the window; the other
end I knotted firmly into a noose, and then climbing on the bed and
mounting to my doom I put my head into the halter. But when I kicked
the support away, so that the rope, tightened round my throat by my
weight, should cut off the function of my breathing – at that moment the
rotten old rope broke, and I fell from where I was standing on to
Socrates,
who lay nearby, and rolled with him on to the floor. And precisely at that
17 very same moment the porter burst abruptly in, shouting: “Where are
you? You wanted to be off at dead of night, and now you’re back in bed
and snoring!” At this, aroused either by my fall or the porter’s raucous
bellowing, Socrates was on his feet first, remarking: “No wonder
travellers hate all innkeepers! Look at this officious oaf, shoving in
where he’s not wanted – to see what he can steal, I expect – and waking
me up with his noise when I was fast asleep and still tired out.”
‘I then got up too, happily revived by this unexpected stroke of luck.
“There, O most faithful of porters,” I said, “you see my companion and
brother, the one that last night, when you were drunk, you accused me of
murdering”; and as I spoke I embraced Socrates and kissed him. He was
shocked by the smell of the foul fluid with which the witches had
drenched me, and pushed me violently away, shouting “Get off me, you
stink like the worst kind of urinal”, and then proceeded to ask me
facetiously why I smelled like that. Embarrassed and on the spur of the
 moment I cracked some stupid joke to divert his attention to another
subject. Then, slapping him on the back, I said: “Come on, let’s be off
and enjoy an early start.” So, shouldering my traps, I paid the bill, and
we set out.
18 ‘When we had gone some way the sun rose; and now that it was fully
light, I looked very closely at my friend’s neck where I had seen the
sword go in, and I said to myself: “You’re crazy; you were dead drunk
and had a horrible dream. There’s Socrates whole, sound and unharmed.
Where’s the wound? Where’s the sponge? And where’s the fresh deep
scar?” Aloud I said: “The doctors are quite right when they tell us that
eating and drinking too much causes nightmares. Look at me; I had a
drop too much yesterday evening, and I passed a night of such dreadful
threatening dreams that I still can’t believe I’m not spattered and defiled
with human gore.” He smiled and said: “It’s not blood but piss you were
drenched with. But to tell the truth, I too had a dream, that my throat
was cut; I had a pain there, and I thought the heart was plucked out of
me – and even now I feel faint, my knees are trembling and I can’t walk
properly. I think I need something to eat to put the life back in me.”
“Right,” I answered, “I’ve got some breakfast all ready for you,” and
taking off my knapsack I quickly gave him some bread and cheese,
adding, “let’s sit down under that plane tree.”
19 ‘This we did, and I too had a little something. He was eating greedily,
but as I watched him, I saw that his face was becoming drawn and waxy
pale, and his strength seemed to be ebbing away. Indeed he was so
altered by this deathly change of complexion that I panicked, thinking of
those Furies of last night; and the first piece of bread I’d taken, not a
very big one, lodged right in my throat and refused either to go down or
to come back up. What increased my alarm was that there was almost
nobody about. Who was going to believe that one of a pair of
companions had been done in without foul play on the part of the other?
Meanwhile Socrates, having made short work of the food, became
desperately thirsty, as well he might, having wolfed down the best part
of a first-rate cheese. Not far from the plane tree there flowed a gentle
stream, its current so slow that it looked like a placid pool, all silver and
glass. “There,” I said, “quench your thirst in that limpid spring.” He got
up, and finding a place that sloped down to the water, he knelt and
leaned over eagerly to drink. He had hardly touched the surface with his
 lips when the wound in his throat gaped wide open to the bottom and the
sponge shot out, followed by a little blood. His lifeless body nearly
pitched headlong into the water, but I managed to get hold of one foot
and drag him laboriously up the bank. There, after mourning him as best
I could in the circumstances, I covered my unfortunate friend with the
sandy soil to rest there for ever by the river. Then, panic-stricken and in
fear of my life, I made my escape through remote and pathless
wildernesses; and like a man with murder on his conscience I left
country and home to embrace voluntary exile. And now I have
remarried and live in Aetolia.’
20 That was Aristomenes’ story. His companion, who from the start had
remained stubbornly incredulous and would have no truck with what he
told us, broke out: ‘Of all the fairytales that were ever invented, of all
the lies that were ever told, that takes the biscuit’; and turning to me,
‘But you,’ he said, ‘to judge from your dress and appearance you’re an
educated man – do you go along with this stuff?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘my
opinion is that nothing is impossible and that we mortals get whatever
the Fates have decided for us. You, I, everybody, we all meet with many
amazing and unprecedented experiences, which aren’t believed when
they’re told to somebody who lacks first-hand knowledge of them. But I
do, I assure you, believe our friend here, and I’m most grateful to him
for diverting us with such a charming and delightful story. Here I’ve got
to the end of this long and rugged road without effort and haven’t been
bored. I believe my horse too thinks you’ve done him a favour, for
without tiring him I see I’ve reached the city gates transported not on his
back but, you might say, by my ears.’
21 That was the end both of our conversation and of our companionship,
since they now turned off to the left towards a nearby farm, while I went
into the first inn I saw and questioned the old woman who kept it. ‘Is
this town Hypata?’ I asked. She nodded. ‘Do you know somebody called
Milo – one of your foremost citizens?’ She laughed and said: ‘Yes, you
could call him foremost all right – he lives right outside the city wall.’
‘Joking apart, mother,’ I said, ‘tell me, please, who he is and where he
lives.’ ‘Do you see those windows at the end there,’ she replied, ‘that
look outwards towards the city, and on the other side a door giving at the
back on to the neighbouring alleyway? That’s his house. He’s
enormously rich, with money to burn, but he’s a public disgrace, the
 lowest kind of miser, and lives in total squalor. He’s a usurer on the
grand scale and only accepts gold and silver as pledges; he shuts himself
up in that tiny house and broods over the corroded coins that are his
ruling passion. He has a wife to share his miserable existence, but his
whole household consists of one slave-girl, and he always dresses like a
beggar.’
This made me laugh. ‘It’s a really good turn my friend Demeas did me
when I set out on my travels,’ I said, ‘giving mean introduction to a man
like that. At least I needn’t fear annoyance from kitchen
smokes and smells!’ So saying I walked on and came to the door of the
22 house, which I found firmly bolted. I proceeded to bang on it and shout,
and at last a girl appeared. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘after all that energetic
knocking, what security are you offering for a loan? You must be aware
that the only pledges we accept here are gold and silver.’ ‘God forbid,’ I
said; ‘what I want to know is whether your master is at home.’ ‘Yes, he
is,’ said she, ‘but why do you want to know?’ ‘I’ve got a letter for him
from Demeas of Corinth.’ ‘Stay where you are,’ she said, ‘and I’ll tell
him,’ and bolting the door again she disappeared. Presently she
reappeared and unbolted it, saying: ‘He says, come in.’
In I went, and found him reclining on a very small couch and just
beginning dinner, with his wife sitting at his feet. By them stood a table
with nothing on it, and indicating this, ‘Welcome to our guest,’ said he.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and gave him Demeas’ letter, which he read quickly.
‘I’m most grateful to my friend Demeas,’ he
said, ‘for sending me so distinguished a guest,’ and making his wife get
23 up he invited me to sit down in her place. When I modestly hesitated, he
pulled me down by the tunic, saying: ‘Sit here. We are so afraid of
burglars that we can’t provide couches or proper furniture.’ I did so, and
he went on: ‘I should have guessed rightly that you were of good family
from your gentlemanly appearance and your – if I may say so – virginal
modesty, even if my friend Demeas hadn’t told me so in his letter. So,
please don’t despise my humble shack. There’s a bedroom just here
where you’ll be decently accommodated; enjoy your stay with us. By
honouring our house with your presence you’ll enhance its reputation,
and you’ll be following a glorious example by putting up with a humble
lodging and so emulating the achievements of the hero Theseus after
 whom your father is named – he, you remember, didn’t despise old
Hecale’s frugal hospitality. Photis,’ he said, calling the maid, ‘take our
guest’s luggage and stow it safely in his room, and then quickly get out
of the store-cupboard some oil and towels for massage and drying, and
anything else he needs, and show our guest the way to the nearest baths.
He’s had a long hard journey and must be worn out.’
24 Hearing this, and bearing in mind Milo’s character and his meanness, I
decided to get further into his good books. ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I don’t
need any of those things, which I always take with me on my travels;
and I can easily ask the way to the baths. It’s my horse that is the
important thing; he’s carried me well. Here’s some money, Photis;
please get him some hay and barley.’ That done, and my things stowed
in my room, I set off for the baths on my own; but wanting first to see
about something for our supper, I made for the provision market. Seeing
some fine fish offered for sale I asked the price, which was a hundred
sesterces; I demurred, and got them for eighty. I was just leaving when I
met Pytheas, a fellow student at Athens. Recognizing me with delight
after such a long time he rushed at me and embraced and kissed me
affectionately. ‘My dear Lucius,’ he said, ‘it’s ages since we last saw
each other, not indeed since we left Clytius’ class. But what are you
doing here so far from home?’ ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ I said. ‘But
what’s all this? My congratulations – for I see you with attendants and
fasces and everything about you that befits a magistrate.’ ‘I’m an
aedile,’ he said. ‘I regulate prices; if you want to do any shopping here,
I’ll take care of it.’ I declined the offer, as I had provided myself amply
with fish for supper. But Pytheas, looking at my basket and shaking up
the fish to get a better sight of them, asked: ‘What did you give for this
rubbish?’ ‘I had a job,’ I said, ‘to get the fishmonger to take eighty
sesterces.’
25 When I said this, he immediately seized me by the arm and took me
back again to the market. ‘Who did you buy this muck from?’ he asked.
I showed him an old man sitting in a corner, and he began to upbraid
him sharply in his inspectorial capacity. ‘So,’ he said, ‘this is the way
you impose on my friends and visitors in general, putting ridiculous
prices on your rubbishy fish and reducing our town, the pride of
Thessaly, to a barren wilderness by making food so dear. But you’re not
getting away with it: I’ll show you how roguery is going to be checked
 under my regime,’ and emptying my basket on the ground he ordered his
clerk to tread on my fish and trample them to pulp. Then, pleased with
this display of severity, my friend Pytheas sent me on my way with the
words: ‘I think, Lucius, that that old man has been properly put in his
place.’ Astonished and completely bemused by all this, I took myself off
to the baths, deprived of both my money and my supper by the energetic
measures of my sagacious fellow student. Having had my bath, I came
back to Milo’s house and went to my room.
26 The maid Photis now appeared, saying: ‘The master is asking for you.’
Knowing Milo’s parsimonious habits I made polite excuses, saying that
it was sleep rather than food I felt I needed to restore me after the wear
and tear of my journey. This message produced Milo himself. Taking me
by the arm he tried gently to make me accompany him; and when I
hesitated and put up a mild resistance, he said: ‘I won’t leave the room
unless you come with me,’ backing his words with an oath. Yielding
reluctantly to his persistence I was led to that couch of his and sat down.
‘Now,’ he asked, ‘how is my friend Demeas? and his wife? and the
children? and the servants?’ I gave him all the details. Then he
questioned me about the reasons for my journey. I told him all that. Then
it was my home town, its leading men, the governor himself, that were
the subjects of minute inquiries. Finally, realizing that, on top of the
stresses and strains of my journey, the additional fatigue of this long
conversation was making me nod off in the middle of my sentences and
that I was so worn out that I was muttering disconnected words that
made no sense, he at last let me go to bed. So, not before time, I escaped
from this tiresome old man and the interrogation plus starvation that was
his idea of entertainment; and weighed down, not with food but sleep,
having dined solely on conversation, I went back to my room and
surrendered myself to the repose that I was longing for.
BOOK 2

In quest of witchcraft – meeting with Byrrhena – warned against

his hostess the witch Pamphile – makes love to the maid Photis
instead – dinner with Byrrhena – Thelyphron’s story – promises
to contribute to the Festival of Laughter – encounters and slays
three desperate robbers

1 The moment the sun put the darkness to flight and ushered in a new day,
I woke up and arose at once. Being in any case an all too eager student
of the remarkable and miraculous, and remembering that I was now in
the heart of Thessaly, renowned the whole world over as the cradle of
magic arts and spells, and that it was in this very city that my friend
Aristomenes’ story had begun, I examined attentively everything I saw,
on tenterhooks with keen anticipation. There was nothing I looked at in
the city that I didn’t believe to be other than what it was: I imagined that
everything everywhere had been changed by some infernal spell into a
different shape – I thought the very stones I stumbled against must be
petrified human beings, I thought the birds I heard singing and the trees
growing around the city walls had acquired their feathers and leaves in
the same way, and I thought the fountains were liquefied human bodies. I
expected statues and pictures to start walking, walls to speak, oxen and
other cattle to utter prophecies, and oracles to issue suddenly from the
very sky or from the bright sun.
2 So, spellbound and in a daze of tormented longing I went on prowling,
though nowhere did I meet with the slightest trace of what I hoped to
find. While wandering from house to house like some reveller out on the
 town, I found myself unexpectedly in the provision market. There I saw
a woman passing by with a train of attendants, and hurried to overtake
her. From her gold-mounted jewellery and the gold embroidery on her
dress it was clear that she was a person of some consequence. Walking
with her was an old man; the moment he saw me, ‘My God,’ he cried,
‘it’s Lucius for sure,’ and he embraced me and whispered in the
woman’s ear something I didn’t catch. ‘Now,’ he said to me, ‘won’t you
come and greet your foster-mother?’ ‘No, really,’ I answered, ‘I don’t
know the lady,’ and I hung back blushing and shamefaced. But she
looked at me and said: ‘Yes, he’s his sainted mother Salvia all over – it
shows in his breeding and modesty. And his looks – it’s uncanny, he
couldn’t be more like her: moderately tall, slim but muscular, nice
complexion, a natural blond, simple hairstyle, eyes grey but alert and
bright, really like an eagle’s, a blooming countenance, a
graceful but unaffected walk.’ And she went on: ‘It was I, Lucius, who
3 brought you up with my own hands – naturally, being not only related to
your mother but having shared a common upbringing. Both of us are
descended from Plutarch, and we had the same wet-nurse and grew up
together in the bond of sisterhood. The only difference between us is one
of rank: she made a brilliant marriage, I a modest one. Yes, I’m
Byrrhena: I expect you’ve often heard my name mentioned as that of one
of those who brought you up. So you needn’t hesitate to accept the
hospitality of my house – or rather of your own, for yours it now is.’
While she was speaking I had had time to recover from my confusion.
‘My dear mother,’ I said, ‘I can’t very well throw over my present host
Milo, having no cause for complaint, but I’ll do my best consistently
with my obligation to him. Whenever I can find a reason for coming this
way in future, I’ll always stay with you.’ Chatting like this we came
after a short walk to Byrrhena’s house.
4 There was a magnificent entrance-hall, with a column at each of its
four corners supporting a statue of Victory. Each of these, wings
outspread, appeared to hover without alighting on the unstable foothold
of her rolling ball, which her dewy feet just brushed, not standing fixed
but seemingly poised in flight. In the exact centre of the hall stood a
Diana in Parian marble. It was a brilliant tour de force of sculpture: as
one entered the room the goddess with flowing tunic seemed to be
coming straight at one in her swift course, inspiring awe by her powerful
 godhead. To right and left she was flanked by hounds, also of marble.
Their look was menacing, their ears pricked, their nostrils flaring, their
jaws ravening, and if any barking were heard nearby, you’d think it
came from those stony throats. The crowning achievement of this
accomplished sculptor’s craftsmanship was that, while the hind feet of
the dogs were braced firmly against the ground as they sprang forward,
their front feet seemed to be running. Behind the goddess there arose a
rock in the shape of a grotto, with moss and grass and leaves and
branches, vines here and shrubs there, a whole plantation in stone. From
inside the grotto the statue was reflected back in all its brilliance by the
polished marble. Round the edge of the rock there hung grapes and other
fruits so cunningly modelled that art had outdone nature in making them
seem real. One would think that when at the time of the vintage the
breath of autumn had ripened and coloured them, they could be picked
and eaten; and when one stooped to look at the spring which gushed out
at the goddess’s feet and rippled away in a gentle stream, one would
think the hanging clusters were not only real in every other way but
were actually moving. From the middle of the foliage there peered out a
figure of Actaeon in stone with his prurient gaze fixed on the goddess,
the transformation into a stag already begun; one could see both him and
his reflection in the spring as he waited for Diana to take her bath.
5 As I was examining every detail of the group with the utmost
enjoyment, ‘Everything you see,’ said Byrrhena, ‘is yours’; and so
saying she took the others aside and told them to leave us. When they
had gone she turned to me, saying: ‘My dearest Lucius, I’m terribly
worried about you – for I look on you as a son and want to see you
securely provided for. Do, I implore you by Diana there, do be warned
by me: watch out for the wicked wiles and criminal enticements of that
woman Pamphile, the one that’s married to Milo, him you call your host.
Never lower your guard. They say she’s a top-class witch, mistress of
every kind of graveyard spell. By merely breathing on twigs or pebbles
or any kind of small object she can plunge the light of the starry heavens
above us into the depths of Tartarus and primeval chaos. The moment
she sees a handsome young man, she becomes possessed by his charms
and has no eyes or thoughts for anything else. She lavishes endearments
on him, moves in on his heart, and binds him in everlasting bonds of
insatiable love. And anyone who won’t cooperate or gets written off for
 not fancying her, she instantly turns into a rock or a sheep or some other
animal, and some she simply eliminates. That’s what I’m afraid of for
you, and what I’m telling you to beware of. She’s always on heat, and
you with your youth and looks would be just what the doctor ordered.’
6 Byrrhena’s words showed how worried she was for me. However, with
my usual curiosity, directly I heard the magic word ‘magic’, so far from
resolving to steer clear of Pamphile, I itched to enrol myself as her pupil
and to pay handsomely for the privilege – in a word to take a running
leap right into the abyss. So in a delirium of impatience I extracted
myself from Byrrhena’s embrace as if her hands had been manacles and
bidding her a hasty goodbye I hurried off at speed back to Milo’s. As I
rushed along like a maniac, ‘Now, Lucius,’ I said to myself, ‘watch your
step and keep a cool head. Here’s the chance you’ve dreamed of, what
you’ve always wanted. You’ll be able to enjoy wonderful stories to your
heart’s content. Never mind childish fears, get to grips with the thing
bravely. Granted, you’d better keep clear of any amorous involvement
with your hostess and religiously respect the virtuous Milo’s marital
couch, but Photis the maid – you can go all out to make a conquest of
her. She’s a pretty little thing, likes a joke, and is no fool. Why, when
you went to bed last night, how sociably she took you to your room,
how sweetly she helped you into bed, how lovingly she tucked you up
and kissed your forehead! You could see from her face how reluctant she
was to leave you; and she kept stopping to look back at you. It may be
risky, but I’ll have a go at Photis, and good luck to us!’
7 While I was arguing the matter out with myself I had arrived at Milo’s
door, and proceeded, as they say, to vote with my feet. I found neither
Milo nor his wife at home, but only my dear Photis. She was getting
dinner ready: pork rissoles, a succulent stew… and – I could smell it
from outside – a splendidly savoury pâté. She was wearing a neat linen
tunic, with a bright red waistband seductively gathered up high under
her breasts. Her pretty hands were engaged in stirring the pot with a
brisk circular movement, to which her whole body kept time in a
sinuous response, while her hips and supple spine swayed in a delightful
undulating rhythm. I stood in amazement, my attention riveted, admiring
the sight; and something else stood to attention as well. Finally I said:
‘How prettily, darling Photis, you’re stirring that pot, and what a jolly
rearguard action! That’s a delicious stew that you’re cooking! It’d be a
 lucky chap with nothing more to wish for in this world that you allowed
to dip his finger in there.’ To which the witty little baggage answered:
‘You stay away, right away, from my little hearth, or it’ll be the worse
for you. You’ve only to be touched by my tiniest spark, and you’ll take
fire and burn deep down inside you – and nobody will be able to put out
the flames but me. I know all the recipes, and I’m equally good at
keeping things on the move in the kitchen and in bed.’
8 As she said this, she looked at me and laughed. But I lingered there to
drink in every detail of her appearance. As to the rest of her, I’ve
nothing to say: it’s only a woman’s head and her hair that I’m really
interested in. It’s what I like to feast my eyes on first in the street, and
then enjoy in private indoors. There are good and positive reasons for
this preference. The hair is the dominant part of the body: it’s placed in
the most obvious and conspicuous position and is the first thing we
notice. The rest of the body achieves its effect through brightly coloured
clothes, the hair through its natural sheen. In fact most women, when
they want to show off their personal attractions, discard their clothes
altogether and remove all covering, eager to display their beauty naked,
and reckoning that rosy skin will please better than gold fabric. If on the
other hand – though it’s blasphemy even to mention it, and I devoutly
hope that such a thing will never happen to make the point – if you were
to despoil the head of even the most beautiful of women of its hair and
rob her face of its natural adornment, though she had come down from
heaven, though she had been born from the sea and reared among the
waves, I say though she were Venus herself, escorted by her choir of all
the Graces and the whole tribe of Cupids, wearing her cestus, fragrant
with cinnamon and dripping with perfumes – if
she were bald, not even her Vulcan would love her. Then there is the
9 fascination of its colour and sheen: now vivid enough to outshine the
rays of the sun, now gently reflecting them; or varying its charm as its
colour varies and contrasts – sometimes bright gold shading down into
pale honey, sometimes raven-black with dark blue highlights like those
on the necks of doves; or when, perfumed with Arabian essences and
delicately parted, it is gathered behind to give back to the lover’s gaze a
more flattering reflection; or again when it is so abundant that it is piled
high on top of the head, or so long that it flows right down the back. In a
nutshell, hair is so important that whatever adornments a woman may
 appear in – gold, jewels, fine clothes – unless she’s made the most of her
hair, you can’t call her properly dressed. As for my dear Photis, it wasn’t
that she had taken great pains with her hairstyle – it was its casualness
that was so fetching. Her luxuriant tresses were carelessly flung back,
hanging down her neck and over her shoulders; where they just touched
the upper edge of her tunic she had gently looped them up and gathered
the ends together into a knot on the top of her head.
10 I couldn’t stand this exquisite agony of pleasure any longer, and
leaning over her I planted the most honey-sweet of kisses just where her
hair began its climb to the top. She turned her head, and looking at me
sideways with fluttering lashes, ‘Steady on, youngster,’ she said, ‘that’s
a bittersweet morsel you’re sampling there. Watch out that too much
sweet honey doesn’t bring on a chronic case of acidity.’ ‘I’ll risk it,
sweetheart,’ I said; ‘just refresh me with a single kiss, and I’m all ready
to be spitted and roasted over that fire of yours,’ and so saying I hugged
her tight and began to kiss her. By now her passion was beginning to
match and rival my own; her mouth opened wide, and her perfumed
breath and the ambrosial thrust of her tongue as it met mine revealed her
answering desire. ‘This is killing me,’ I said. ‘I’m really done for unless
you’re going to be kind to me.’ Kissing me again, ‘Keep calm,’ she said,
‘I feel just the same, and I’m all yours, body and soul. Our pleasure
shan’t be put off any longer; I’ll come to your room at dusk. Now that’s
enough; go and prepare yourself, for it’s going to be a non-stop battle all
night long, with no holds barred.’
11 After a few more endearments of this kind we parted. Midday arrived,
and there came from Byrrhena a welcoming present in the shape of a fat
piglet, five pullets, and a flagon of vintage wine. ‘Look,’ I said, calling
Photis, ‘here’s Bacchus come of his own accord as Venus’ supporter and
squire. We’ll drink every drop of this tonight; it’ll put paid to any
shyness or backwardness on our part and tune our desires to concert
pitch. When one embarks for Cythera the only provisions one needs for
a wakeful voyage are plenty of oil in the lamp and wine in the cup.’
The rest of the day was taken up with bath and dinner; for I had been
invited to take my place at my friend Milo’s elegant table and sample his
delicate fare. Remembering Byrrhena’s warnings I avoided his wife’s
gaze as much as I could, dropping my eyes before hers as if in fear of
the bottomless pit. However, I kept encouraging myself by glancing over
 my shoulder at Photis, who was waiting on us. When evening began to
fall, Pamphile looked at the lamp and said: ‘We’ll have a cloudburst
tomorrow’; and when her husband asked her how she knew she just said
that the lamp had predicted it. Milo laughed at this, saying: ‘That’s quite
a prophetess that we keep here, this lamp which observes everything that
happens in the heavens from her stand – or should I say her
observatory?’
12 At this I struck in. ‘That’s just the ABC of this method of divination,’ I
said. ‘In fact it’s not surprising that this little flame, though it’s produced
by human agency, has divine foreknowledge of what that greater
celestial fire is going to bring about in high heaven and is able to
communicate it to us, being, so to speak, its offspring and sharing
consciousness with it. Why, at this very moment there is a Chaldean
staying in Corinth, where I come from, who’s throwing the whole city
into turmoil by his wonderful oracles, and publishing the secrets of Fate
to all and sundry for cash down. He’ll tell you the best day for making a
lasting marriage or building a wall that won’t fall down, the most
suitable for business, the safest for a journey, the most appropriate for a
sea voyage. When I asked him how this trip of mine would turn out he
told me all sorts of different things, all equally marvellous: that I should
win a brilliant reputation and become a legend, an incredible romance in
several volumes.’
13 Milo smiled. ‘What does this Chaldean of yours look like?’ he asked,
‘and what’s he called?’ ‘He’s tall,’ I said, ‘and rather dark-
complexioned. His name’s Diophanes.’ ‘That’s him,’ said Milo, ‘the
very man. He came here too and uttered a great many prophecies to a
great many people. He did quite well, indeed he made a very tidy thing
out of it, but then he unfortunately came into collision with Fortune in
her most perverse, or rather adverse, mood. He was issuing his
predictions one day in the middle of a dense crowd of bystanders when a
businessman called Cerdo came up wanting to know the best day for a
journey. He got his answer, and had taken out his purse, produced his
money and counted out a hundred denarii as the fee for the prophecy,
when a fashionable young man came up quietly behind Diophanes and
twitched his cloak. When he turned round he found himself embraced
and affectionately kissed. He kissed the young man back and asked him
to sit down beside him; and being taken completely aback by this
 sudden arrival forgot the business he was engaged in. “I’ve been
expecting you,” he began; “have you been here long?” “Only since
yesterday evening,” the other answered. “But tell me, my dear fellow,
how your land and sea journey went after you had to leave Euboea in
such a hurry.”
14 ‘At this our worthy Chaldean Diophanes, still confused and not 14
master of himself, “It was frightful,” he answered, “positively Ulyssean
– I wouldn’t have wished it on my worst enemy. The ship we were on
was so battered by storms and winds from every quarter that she lost
both her rudders and was driven on to the further shore, which she just
made before sinking. We lost all our possessions and had to swim for
our lives. Then everything that charitable strangers and kind friends had
contributed was taken from us by a gang of robbers; and when my only
brother Arignotus tried to resist their violence, he was murdered before
my eyes.” Before he had finished this lamentable story, Cerdo swept up
the money he had intended for the fee and left abruptly. Only then did
Diophanes come to his senses and realize what he had lost through his
lack of forethought, seeing all us bystanders doubled up with laughter.
However, master Lucius, let’s hope that our Chaldean told you the truth
for once, and the best of luck to you for your journey.’
15 While Milo continued to hold forth in this vein, I was inwardly
groaning, horribly annoyed with myself for having gone out of my way
to start this series of irrelevant anecdotes, and so wasting a good part of
the evening and its delightful enjoyments. In the end I said to him
bluntly: ‘Well, Diophanes must take his chance. I only hope that what he
plunders from the public he again bestows in equal shares on land and
sea. As for me, I’m still dog-tired from yesterday, so if you’ll excuse me,
I’ll go to bed early.’ So, saying goodnight, I left them and went to my
room, where I found everything most elegantly arranged for our supper.
Beds had been made up on the ground for the slaves some way from the
door, to keep them from overhearing the sounds of our lovemaking. By
my bed was a table with all the nicest left-overs from dinner, good-sized
cups already half full of wine only waiting to be diluted, and the flagon
standing by opened and all ready to pour – just what was needed to
prepare lovers for the duels to come.
16 I had only just got into bed when Photis, having seen her mistress
settled for the night, appeared smiling, with a wreath of roses in her hair
 and a bunch of blooms tucked in her breast. She kissed me lovingly,
garlanded me, and scattered blossoms over me; then she took a cup of
wine and pouring warm water into it offered it to me. Before I had quite
finished it she gently took it from me and drank what was left in a most
bewitching manner, sipping in minute instalments and gazing at me as
she did so. A second and a third cup passed back and forth between us,
followed by several others, until at last I was well under the influence.
Mind and body alike were throbbing with desire, and finally I couldn’t
control the impatience that was killing me. Lifting my tunic for a
moment I showed Photis that my love could brook no more delay. ‘Have
pity on me,’ I said, ‘and come to my rescue – fast. That war that you
declared without any diplomatic overtures will break out any minute
now, and you can see I’m standing to arms and fully mobilized for it.
Since I got cruel Cupid’s first arrow right in the heart, my own bow has
been strung so hard that I’m afraid it’s overstrung and may break. But if
you really want to please me, let your hair down when you come to bed
so that it flows in waves all over us.’
17 Without more ado she quickly cleared away the table and whipped off
every stitch of clothing; then with her hair loose in delightful disarray
she was prettily transformed before my eyes into Venus Anadyomene,
shading her smooth femininity with her rosy fingers – more from a
desire to provoke than to protect her modesty. ‘Now fight,’ she said,
‘and fight stoutly; I shan’t give ground or turn tail. Attack head on, if
you call yourself a man; no quarter given; die in the breach. There’ll be
no discharge in this war.’ Then climbing on the bed she let herself down
slowly on top of me; and rising and falling at a brisk trot and sinuously
rocking her supple body backwards and forwards she regaled me to
repletion with the delights of Venus in the saddle, until exhausted and
totally drained in body and soul alike we simultaneously collapsed,
panting for breath, in each other’s arms. In encounters of this kind we
passed the whole night until dawn without a wink of sleep, from time to
time resorting to the wine cup to reinvigorate ourselves, stimulate our
desire and renew our pleasure. That was the pattern for many subsequent
nights.
18 One day Byrrhena insisted that I should have dinner with her, and
though I made all sorts of excuses she would not take no for an answer.
So I had to go to Photis and as it were take the auspices from her. She
 was reluctant to let me out of her sight, but kindly granted me a short
furlough from our campaign of love. ‘But look here,’ she said, ‘mind
you get back early. There’s a gang of young idiots of good family
disturbing the public peace just now. You can see murdered men lying in
the open street, and the provincial police are stationed too far away to
save the city from these killings. You’re well off and an obvious target,
and as you’re a stranger they won’t be bothered about repercussions.’
‘Don’t worry, Photis dear,’ I said. ‘Apart from the fact that I’d have
preferred my pleasures at home to dining out, I’ll set your fears at rest
by coming back early. And I shan’t go alone either. My trusty sword will
be strapped to my side, so I shall be carrying the wherewithal to protect
my life.’
19 So equipped and forewarned I went out to dinner. I found a large
company there and, as you would expect in the house of such a great
lady, the pick of local society. The sumptuous tables were of polished
citron-wood and ivory, and the generous wine cups were all alike
valuable in their different styles of beauty. Some were of glass skilfully
decorated in relief, some of flawless crystal, some of shining silver or
gleaming gold or amber hollowed out with wonderful art, and there were
gems to drink from – you name it, it was there, possible or not. Great
numbers of footmen in splendid liveries were deftly serving one ample
course after another, while boy slaves, curly-haired and prettily dressed,
kept on offering vintage wine in cups fashioned from whole gemstones.
Now the lamps had been brought in, and the convivial talk reached a
crescendo, with hearty laughter and witty quips and pleasantries flying
back and forth. At this point Byrrhena asked me: ‘Are you enjoying your
stay here? My own belief is that when it comes to temples and public
baths and buildings of that kind we needn’t fear competition from any
other city, and as for basic necessities we have all we want and more.
The man of leisure can relax here, while the man of affairs will find all
the bustle of Rome; and the visitor of limited means can enjoy rural
seclusion. In fact, we’re the pleasure-resort for the whole province.’
20 ‘Very true,’ I said; ‘and I don’t think I’ve ever felt freer anywhere than
I have here. But I really dread the dark and inescapable haunts of the
magic arts. They say that even the dead aren’t safe in their graves, but
that their remains are gathered from tombs and funeral pyres, and pieces
are snipped from corpses in order to destroy the living; and that at the
 very moment of the funeral preparations old hags of sorceresses will
swoop down to snatch a body before its own people can bury it.’ To this
another guest added: ‘Round here even the living aren’t spared.
Somebody we know had a similar experience which left him mutilated
and totally disfigured.’ At this the whole company burst into helpless
laughter, and everybody’s eyes turned to a man sitting in the corner. He
was put out by this unwelcome attention and muttering indignantly got
up to go. ‘No, do stay for a bit, my dear Thelyphron,’ said Byrrhena,
‘and like the good fellow you are tell us your story again, so that my son
Lucius here can enjoy your agreeable and amusing tale.’ ‘You, dear
madam,’ he answered, ‘are always kind and considerate, but some
people’s rudeness is intolerable.’ He was evidently upset, but when
Byrrhena persisted and pressed him, unwilling though he was, to tell his
story as a personal favour to her, he eventually did as she asked.
21 So having piled the coverlets into a heap and reclining half upright on
one elbow, Thelyphron stretched out his right hand like a man making a
formal speech, with the third and fourth fingers bent, the other two
extended, and the thumb raised slightly as if in warning, and began. ‘I
had not yet come of age when I left Miletus to see the Olympic games.
Then I wanted to visit this part of your famous province, and so after
touring all over Thessaly I came in an evil hour to Larissa. My money
was running low, and I was looking round the town in search of some
remedy for my poverty, when I saw in the public square a tall old man.
He was standing on a stone and loudly announcing that if anybody was
willing to watch a corpse, he would negotiate a price. “What’s this?” I
asked a passer-by. “Are corpses here in the habit of running away?”
“No, no,” he said. “A mere boy and a stranger like you obviously can’t
be expected to realize that this is Thessaly you’re in, where witches
regularly nibble pieces off the faces of the dead to get supplies for their
magic art.”
22 ‘“But tell me, please,” I said, “about this business of watching over the
dead.” “First of all,” he said, “you have to stay wide awake for the entire
night; you mustn’t close your eyes for a second but must keep them
firmly fixed on the body. You mustn’t let your attention wander or even
steal a sidelong glance: these dreadful creatures, who can change
themselves into anything, will take on the shape of any animal you like
to name and creep up on you in stealth – it’s no trouble to them to outwit
 the eyes even of the Sun or Justice herself. They can take on the forms
of birds or dogs or mice or even flies. Then they lull the watchers to
sleep with their infernal enchantments. There’s no end to the tricks that
these vile women contrive to work their wicked will. But the fee for this
deadly job isn’t as a rule more than five or six gold pieces. Oh, I nearly
forgot: if the body isn’t intact when it’s handed over in the morning,
whatever’s been removed or mutilated has to be made good from the
watcher’s own person.”
23 ‘Having taken this on board, I summoned up my courage and went up
to the crier. “You can stop shouting,” I said. “Here’s a watcher all
prepared. Name the price.” “You’ll get a thousand sesterces,” he said.
“But look here, young fellow: this is the son of one of our chief citizens
who’s died, and you must guard his body faithfully against the evil
Harpies.” “Nonsense,” I said, “don’t give me that rubbish. You see
before you a man of iron, who never sleeps, sharper-eyed than Lynceus
or Argus, eyes all over him.” I had hardly finished speaking when he
took me straight off. The house to which he brought me had its front
door closed, and he ushered me in through a small back door, then into a
shuttered room where he showed me in the gloom a weeping woman in
deep mourning. Standing by her, “Here’s a man,” he said, “who has
engaged himself to guard your husband and is confident he can do the
job.” She parted the hair that hung down in front to reveal a face that
was beautiful even in grief. Looking at me, she said: “Please, I beg you,
do your duty with all possible alertness.” “You need not worry,” I said,
“just so long as the fee is satisfactory.”
24 ‘Agreement reached, she rose and took me into another room. There
was the body draped in snow-white linen, and when seven witnesses had
been brought in she uncovered it herself. After weeping over it for some
time she invoked the good faith of those present and proceeded to call
off meticulously every feature of the body while one of the witnesses
carefully wrote down a formal inventory. “Here you are,” she said.
“Nose all there, eyes intact, ears entire, lips undamaged, chin in good
shape. I ask you, fellow citizens, to note and attest this.” The tablets with
the list were then sealed and she made to leave the room. But I said:
“Please, madam, will you give orders for me to be supplied with
everything I’ll need?” “What might that be?” she asked. “A large lamp,”
I said, “and enough oil to last until dawn, and warm water with flagons
 of wine and a cup, and a plate of left-overs from dinner.” She shook her
head. “You talk like a fool,” she said, “asking for suppers and left-overs
in a house of mourning where there hasn’t even been a fire lit for days
and days. Do you think you’re here to enjoy yourself? You would do
better to remember where you are and look sad and tearful.” With these
words she turned to a maid. “Myrrhine,” she said, “make haste and get a
lamp and some oil, and then lock up the room and leave him to his
watch.”
25 ‘Left alone with the corpse for company I rubbed my eyes to arm them
for their watch, and began to sing to encourage myself. Dusk came, and
darkness fell, and time wore on until it was the dead of night. My fear
was at its height when there suddenly glided in a weasel which stood in
front of me and fixed me with a piercing stare. I was alarmed at seeing
this tiny animal so bold. “Get out,” I shouted, “you filthy beast, get back
to your rat friends before I give you something to remember me by. Will
you get out?” It turned and left the room, at which moment I was
abruptly plunged into a bottomless abyss of sleep; the god of prophecy
himself couldn’t have told which of the two of us lying there was
deader, so lifeless was I. Indeed I needed somebody to mount guard over
me, since I might just as well have been elsewhere.
26 ‘The crowing of the crested company was singing truce to darkness
when I at last woke up. With my heart in my mouth I rushed over to the
body with the lamp, uncovered its face and checked off all the features:
they were all there. Now the poor weeping widow, in great anxiety,
came bursting in with yesterday’s witnesses and fell on the body,
covering it with kisses. Then after examining every detail by the light of
the lamp she turned and called her steward Philodespotus. Having
ordered him to pay over the fee immediately to their trusty watchman,
which was done then and there, she added: “We are most grateful to you,
young man; and what’s more, for this faithful service we shall from now
on count you as a particular friend.” Delighted at this unexpected
windfall and spellbound by the shining gold, which I was now jingling
in my hand, “Madam,” I said, “count me rather as one of your servants,
and whenever you need my services, don’t hesitate to command me.”
The words were scarcely out of my mouth when the whole household,
cursing the evil omen, fell on me with every weapon they could lay their
hands on. One punched me on the jaw, another thumped me across the
 shoulders, and a third jabbed me viciously in the ribs; they kicked me,
they pulled out my hair, they tore my clothes. So, bloodied and ripped
apart like another Pentheus or Orpheus, I was thrown out of the house.
27 ‘While I was getting my breath back in the street outside, I belatedly
realized how thoughtless and ill-omened my words had been, and
admitted to myself that I had got off more lightly than I deserved. At this
point I saw that the final lamentations and last goodbyes had been
uttered, and the corpse had now left the house. As was traditional for a
member of an aristocratic family, it was being given a public funeral.
The procession was passing through the city square when there appeared
an old man in black, weeping and tearing his handsome white hair.
Seizing the bier with both hands he cried loudly, his voice choked by
sobs: “Citizens! I charge you, as you are true men and loyal subjects, to
avenge a murdered fellow citizen and punish this wicked woman as she
deserves for her horrible crime. She, and no one else, to please her lover
and get her hands on the estate, has poisoned this unfortunate young
man, my sister’s son.” These tearful complaints the old man loudly
directed now to this individual and now to that. The crowd began to turn
ugly, the probability of the thing leading them to believe his accusation.
They called for fire, and started picking up stones and egging on the
street-urchins to kill her. She burst into tears (which were obviously
rehearsed), and by all that she held sacred called on the gods to witness
that she denied this awful crime.
28 ‘Then the old man said: “Suppose we leave the proof of the truth to
divine Providence. We have here in Zatchlas of Egypt a prophet of the
first rank. He has already agreed with me a large fee to bring back the
soul of the deceased from the Underworld for a short while and restore
his body to life.” So saying he led forward a young man dressed in a
linen tunic and palm-leaf sandals with his head shaved bare. Repeatedly
he kissed the man’s hands and touched his knees in supplication. “Have
pity, O Priest,” he said, “have pity by the stars of heaven, by the infernal
powers, by the natural elements, by the silences of night and the
sanctuaries of Coptos, and by the risings of Nile and the secrets of
Memphis and the sistrums of Pharos. Grant him a brief enjoyment of the
sun and let a little light into those eyes which are closed for ever. We do
not seek to resist Fate or to deny Earth what is rightfully hers; we beg
only for a short spell of life so that we may find consolation in
 vengeance.” The prophet, propitiated, laid some sort of herb on the
corpse’s mouth and another on his breast. Then turning eastwards he
silently invoked the majesty of the rising sun, arousing among the
witnesses of this impressive performance excited expectations of a great
miracle.
29 ‘I joined the crowd, and taking up a position on a tall stone just 29
behind the bier I watched the whole scene curiously. The corpse’s chest
began to fill, its pulse to beat, its breath to come; it sat up and the young
man spoke. “Why, why,” he said, “have you called me back for these
few moments to life and its obligations, when I have already drunk the
water of Lethe and embarked on the marshes of the Styx? Leave me, I
beg you, leave me to my rest.” To these words of the corpse the prophet
returned a sharp answer: “Come now, tell the people everything and
clear up the mystery of your death. Don’t you know that my incantations
can call up Furies and that your weary body can still be tortured?” The
man on the bier answered and with a deep groan addressed the people:
“I died by the wicked arts of my new wife; doomed to drink her
poisoned cup I surrendered my marriage bed to an adulterer before it
had grown cold.” At this the exemplary widow put on a bold front and
began to bandy words with her husband in a blasphemous attempt to
rebut his accusations. The people were swayed this way and that, some
calling for this abominable woman to be buried alive along with her
husband’s body, others holding that the corpse was lying and should not
be believed.
30 ‘However, the young man’s next words put an end to their doubts. With
another deep groan he said: “I will give you the clearest proof that I
speak nothing but the truth, and I will tell you something that nobody
else could know or predict.” Then he pointed at me. “There is the man,”
he said, “who guarded my body. He performed his duties with the
utmost alertness, so that the hags who were waiting to plunder my
corpse, though they changed themselves into all sorts of shapes to
achieve their purpose, failed to outwit his vigilance. At last they
wrapped a cloud of sleep round him, and while he was buried in deep
oblivion they kept calling me by name, until my numbed limbs and
chilled body made reluctant efforts to obey their magic summons. But at
this point he heard his own name, which is the same as mine, and being
in fact alive, though sleeping like the dead, got up without knowing
 what he was doing and like a lifeless ghost walked mechanically over to
the door. Though it had been carefully bolted, there was a hole in it, and
through that they cut off first his nose and then his ears; so he suffered
the mutilation that was meant for me. Then, so as not to give the game
away, they made shapes of his missing ears and nose in wax and fitted
them exactly in place. And there he stands, poor devil, paid not for his
work but for his disfigurement.” Horrified at what I had heard, I started
to feel my face. I took hold of my nose, and it came off; I tried my ears,
and so did they. Everybody was pointing at me, turning round to look at
me, and there was a roar of laughter. Bathed in a cold sweat I slunk
away through the crowd, and since then I’ve not been able to face
returning home to be mocked, looking like this. So I’ve grown my hair
long to hide my missing ears, and my shameful nose I keep decently
covered with this linen pad.’
31 Directly Thelyphron had finished his story the guests again broke into
drunken guffaws. While they were calling for the traditional toast to the
god of Laughter, Byrrhena turned to me. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘we have
a festival which is as old as the city and unique to us, when we propitiate
the god of Laughter with happy and joyful ritual. That you’re here will
make it even more agreeable. It would be nice if you could provide
some witty diversion in honour of the god that would enhance our
celebration of his great power.’ ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’ll do as you ask. I’d
love to devise some suitably lavish adornment for this great god.’ Then,
reminded by my servant that night was coming on, and having by now
had more than enough to drink, I got up and with a brief good-night to
Byrrhena began to make my way unsteadily home.
32 But no sooner were we in the street than the torch on which we were
relying was blown out by a gust of wind, leaving us hardly able to see
our way in the sudden darkness and stubbing out toes on the stones in
our fatigue as we continued on our homeward course, holding on to each
other as we went. We were nearly there when suddenly there appeared
three strapping fellows who hurled themselves violently at our front
door. Our arrival, so far from deterring them, made them redouble their
attacks in competition with each other. Both of us, I in particular,
naturally took it that they were robbers of the most savage description,
and I at once drew from under my cloak the sword I had brought with
me for just such an emergency. Without wasting time I charged into the
thick of them, and taking on each in turn as he confronted me I buried it
in him to the hilt, until at length, riddled with many gaping wounds, they
expired at my feet. When the battle was over, Photis, who had been
woken up by the noise, opened the door, and panting and sweating I
dragged myself into the house, where, as exhausted as if I had
slaughtered Geryon himself rather than three robbers, I fell into bed and
passed out.
BOOK 3

Tried for murder – all a joke which he does not appreciate –

Photis explains – watches Pamphile change herself into an owl
and tries to follow suit – is turned into an ass instead –
inhospitable reception in the stable – frustrated in attempt to
break the spell – carried off by robbers

1 Rosy-fingered Dawn was just launching her crimson-caparisoned team

heavenwards when I started up from my peaceful sleep to find that night
had given place to day. My mind was in turmoil as I recollected my
exploits of the night before. Squatting on the bed with my feet drawn up
and my hands clasped on my knees I dissolved into a flood of tears. I
imagined the square, the court, the verdict, the executioner. ‘Where shall
I find a jury mild and lenient enough to acquit me, covered in gore from
a triple murder and stained with the blood of all these citizens? So this
was the triumphant journey so confidently predicted by Diophanes the
Chaldean!’
I was going over these thoughts again and again and bewailing my
wretched luck, when there was a banging on the front door and
much shouting outside. Immediately it was opened, and in they rushed,
2 filling the whole house with magistrates and their attendants and a
motley crowd of other people. At an order from the magistrates two of
their attendants immediately arrested me – naturally I didn’t resist – and
began to take me off. We were hardly outside the door when the whole
town turned out to follow us in a dense throng. I was trudging along
 despondently with my head bowed downwards to the ground – to hell,
rather – but what I saw out of the corner of my eye totally astonished
me. In all that huge crowd of people that surged around me there was
nobody who wasn’t in fits of laughter. At length, when we had passed
through every street and I had been led in procession round every corner
of the city, like one of those victims that are paraded from place to place
before being sacrificed to expiate some threatening portent, we came to
the square, and I found myself at the bar of the court. The magistrates
had taken their places up on the bench, and the clerk of the court was
proclaiming silence, when suddenly there was a general demand for this
important trial to be adjourned to the theatre – everybody shouting that
this huge mob was dangerous and that people would be crushed in it. At
once the whole lot of them rushed off and in no time at all had
completely filled the auditorium. People were packed into the
passageways like sardines and were all over the roof; some were
clinging to columns or hanging on to statues; some could be half
glimpsed peering through windows or the coffering of the ceiling.
Nobody was paying the slightest attention to his safety; everybody was
madly eager to see. The officers of the court led me like some sort of
sacrificial victim out across the stage and placed me in the middle of the
orchestra.
3 Now once more the stentorian voice of the clerk was heard calling on
the prosecutor. An elderly man came forward; but first, to time his
speech, a jar was filled with water; this had holes like a filter, through
which the water ran off drop by drop. He then addressed the people:
‘Worshipful citizens, this is a very important case. It concerns the peace
of our whole community and will constitute a weighty precedent. It is
therefore the solemn duty of each and every one of you to see to it, for
the honour of the city, that this wicked killer does not escape punishment
for the butchery, the series of bloody murders, that he has committed. I
would not have you think that I am actuated by private hostility or
personal anger. I am the commander of the night watch, and to this day I
believe no one has been able to find fault with my alertness and attention
to duty. Let me then put you in possession of the facts and tell you
exactly what happened last night. It was past midnight, and I was
making my rounds from house to house in the city, paying careful
attention to every detail, when I saw this bloodthirsty young fellow with
 drawn sword, dealing death and destruction all around him. Already
three – yes, three – victims of his savagery were breathing their last,
weltering in gore, at his feet. Overcome, as well he might be, by the
guilt of his terrible crime, he at once took to his heels and under the
cover of darkness slipped into a house where he hid for the rest of the
night. But in the morning, thanks be to divine Providence, which never
suffers the wrongdoer to escape justice, before he could evade me by
some secret byway I cornered him and have had him brought before this
august and solemn tribunal. He stands before you, a criminal polluted by
repeated murders, caught red-handed, a foreigner. Be firm therefore and
condemn this interloper for a crime which even if committed by a fellow
citizen you would punish with severity.’
4 With these words my stern accuser ended his brutal indictment. The
clerk then told me, if I had anything to say in reply, to begin. At first I
could only weep, not so much because of the prosecutor’s harshness as
because of the reproaches of my own conscience. At last, however, some
heaven-sent impulse emboldened me to answer: ‘I am only too well
aware how difficult it is, when the bodies of three citizens are lying there
for all to see, for a man accused of their murder, even though he tells the
truth and freely admits that he did it, to persuade this great assembly of
his innocence. But if in your kindness you will grant me a short hearing,
I shall have no trouble in proving that it is not my fault that I stand here
in peril of my life, but that it is because of the unforeseen consequences
of an outburst of justifiable indignation that I am subjected to this false
and odious accusation.
5 ‘I was coming back rather late from dinner, a little drunk, I admit – that
charge I will not deny – when at the front door of my lodging – I am
stopping with your fellow citizen, the worthy Milo – I saw a number of
ferocious brigands trying to effect an entry. They were competing with
each other to force the front door by tearing it off its hinges, and as they
wrenched violently at the bolts, which were firmly shot, they were
already debating among themselves how to dispose of the occupants.
One of them, the largest and the most violent, was encouraging the
others thus: “Come on, lads, to the attack while they’re asleep, with
manly courage and lively force. Banish all hesitation, all cowardice from
your hearts; let slaughter with drawn sword stalk the house. If anybody’s
asleep, cut his throat where he lies; if he tries to resist, strike to kill.
 We’ll escape alive only if nobody escapes us.” I admit, gentlemen, that,
thinking to do my duty as a good citizen and being in great apprehension
for my hosts and myself, armed with the sword that I had with me for
just such an emergency, I set about routing these desperate villains and
putting them to flight. But, savages and brutes that they were, though
they saw me sword in hand, so far from making off they boldly stood
their ground.
6 ‘The battle-lines were drawn up. First their commander and standard-
bearer charged me with all his strength, and grabbing me by the hair
with both hands and bending me backwards was going to brain me with
a stone; but while he was shouting for somebody to give him one, I ran
him through with certain aim and left him for dead. Then the second,
who was clinging to my legs like a limpet, I accounted for by a nicely
judged thrust between the shoulders; and the third, as he ran headlong at
me, I transfixed through the chest. So as defender of the peace and
protector of my host’s house and of the common safety I thought that, so
far from being punished, I would be publicly commended. For I have
never before had even the most trivial brush with the law; I have always
been highly respected in my own city and reckoned an unblemished
character the greatest of all blessings. I am at a loss to understand why I
am now arraigned like this as a criminal for the just vengeance which I
was impelled to take on these abandoned ruffians. Can anybody show
that they were personal enemies of mine, or indeed that I had ever set
eyes on them before? Or if greed for gain might plausibly have induced
me to commit so heinous a crime, where are the profits from it? Produce
them – if you can.’
7 I ended my plea by again bursting into tears and stretching my hands
out in supplication, invoking the people’s pity and everything they held
most dear, imploring now this group, now that in my wretchedness.
Then, when I thought their sympathies had been aroused and their pity
stirred by my tears, I called the eyes of the Sun and of Justice to witness,
and was just committing myself and my fate to divine Providence, when
I happened to look up and found that everybody in sight was helpless
with laughter, and that my excellent host and second father Milo was
absolutely doubled up. Seeing this I said to myself: ‘So much for good
faith! So much for conscience! Here am I, having killed to save my host
 and on trial for my life; and he, so far from taking my part and
comforting me, actually mocks me in my extremity.’
8 At this point a woman ran out from the audience. Weeping, clad in
black, she was carrying a small child in her arms; and she was followed
by an old woman swathed in dirty rags and like her in tears. Both were
waving olive branches. They embraced the bier where the bodies of the
dead men lay covered and set up a howl of mourning and lamentation.
‘As you are creatures of compassion,’ they cried, ‘as you are fellow
human beings, pity these young men so shamefully done to death, and
grant us, widowed and bereaved, the consolation of vengeance.
Whatever you do, assist this unfortunate child, left an orphan on life’s
threshold, and atone for this affront to your laws and public order with
this brigand’s life.’
There then arose the senior magistrate and addressed the people thus:
‘The crime itself, which must be severely punished, even the perpetrator
cannot deny. However, one other matter still concerns us: to discover
who else was implicated in this monstrous deed. We cannot be expected
to believe that a single individual killed those three strong men. So the
truth must be extracted from him by torture. The slave who was with
him has made off and cannot be found: we have no choice but to put him
to the question and force him to identify his accomplices, so that all fear
of this dreadful gang can be utterly rooted out.’
9 Thereupon they began to carry in, Greek-style, fire, the wheel, whips of
all kinds. This increased, nay doubled, my misery: I was not even to be
allowed to die in one piece. But the old woman whose tears had created
so much excitement now spoke up again. ‘First, noble citizens,’ she said,
‘before you crucify this brigand who murdered these unfortunate
children of mine, allow the bodies of the slain to be revealed, so that as
you contemplate their youth and beauty your just indignation may be
further inflamed, and the ferocity of your revenge proportioned to the
enormity of the crime.’ Her words were greeted with applause, and the
magistrate then ordered me to uncover the bodies myself, as they lay on
the bier, with my own hand. For a long time I resisted and refused to
give a repeat performance of yesterday’s deed by this new display of it.
However, the officers, on the orders of the magistrates, would take no
denial; and in the end they forced my hand from where it hung beside
me and made me stretch it out to its own ruination over the bodies. At
 last, having no choice, I gave in and reluctantly drew back the pall to
reveal the corpses. Gods, what a sight! What a miracle! What a sudden
alteration in my fortunes! One moment I was already an item of
Proserpine’s property, one of the household of Orcus, the next the whole
aspect of things was reversed and I stood dumb-founded. Words fail me
when I try to give an adequate account of what I now saw before me.
For those ‘bodies’ of the slaughtered men were three inflated wineskins
gashed open in various places, and, as I recalled my nocturnal battle, the
gashes were exactly where I had wounded the robbers.
10 Hitherto some had been managing to hold in their laughter; now it
broke out and took the whole crowd by storm. Some were hooting
wildly with glee, others were clasping their stomachs in silent agony. All
of them were in an ecstasy of joy, and kept turning to look at me as they
made their way out of the theatre. All this time, ever since taking hold of
the pall, I had stood like one of the statues or columns in the theatre as if
congealed to stone. It was only when Milo came up to me that I returned
to life; though I tried to shake him off, bursting into a fresh flood of tears
and convulsive sobs, he gently made me take his arm and, choosing
unfrequented streets and byways, brought me back to his house. I was
still in a state of shock, and though he did his best to comfort me with
miscellaneous chit-chat, nothing he could say or do could alleviate my
feeling of outrage at the indignity I had suffered, so deeply had it sunk
into my heart.
11 But now the magistrates entered in state and laid themselves out to
appease me. ‘Master Lucius,’ they said, ‘we are well aware of both your
rank and your ancestry. Your illustrious family is famous throughout
Thessaly. These mortifying experiences were not designed as an insult.
Banish this sadness from your heart and forget your distress of mind.
This diversion, which we ceremoniously stage every year as a public
tribute to the kindly god of Laughter, always relies on some fresh stroke
of invention for its success. You, as both author and actor of his rites,
will from now on wherever you go enjoy his favour and loving
companionship; he will never let you suffer grief in your heart but will
always make glad your countenance in serenity and grace. For this
service the city has unanimously conferred on you its highest honours: it
has enrolled you among its patrons and has voted you a statue in
bronze.’ My reply was brief: ‘To this most illustrious of all the cities of
 Thessaly I return for these great honours appropriate thanks; but as for
statues and images, those I ask you to reserve for my elders and betters.’
12 With these modest words and a smile which I summoned up in an
attempt to look cheerful, I took a polite leave of the magistrates. Now a
slave entered in a hurry. ‘A reminder from your aunt Byrrhena,’ he said.
‘You agreed yesterday to dine with her, and it’s almost time.’ Dismayed
and horrified at the mere thought of her house, I answered: ‘Tell her that
I wish I could oblige her, but I can’t break my word to my host. Milo has
made me swear by the god who presides over today’s festival to dine
with him tonight, and he’s with me now and won’t let me out of his
sight. I promise her it’s only a postponement.’ I hadn’t finished speaking
before Milo took me firmly by the arm and, ordering the bathing-gear to
follow, led me off to the nearby baths. I avoided people’s eyes and
shrank from the laughter of the passers-by – laughter for which I was
responsible – and walked by his side doing my best to escape notice.
How I bathed, how I dried myself, how I got home again, shame
prevents me from remembering; all those stares and nods and pointing
fingers had reduced me to a state of mental collapse.
13 So, having quickly disposed of Milo’s meagre supper, I pleaded a
severe headache brought on by continual weeping, and no difficulty was
made about letting me go to bed. I threw myself down and was gloomily
recalling every detail of what had happened, when at last Photis
appeared, having seen her mistress settled for the night. This was a very
different Photis, not smiling and saucy but with wrinkled forehead and a
downcast expression. At last, slowly and timidly, she spoke: ‘It was me,
I’ve got to confess it; I brought all this trouble on you’; and so saying
she took out a strap from her dress and gave it to me. ‘Take it,’ she said,
‘take it, and avenge yourself on a traitress; and don’t stop at beating me
– no punishment would be too severe. But please, don’t think it was my
idea to devise this ordeal for you – God forbid that you should suffer the
least anxiety because of me! If any misfortune threatens you, I’ll shed
my life’s blood to avert it. It was through sheer bad luck on my part that
what I was made to do for quite another reason resulted in your
humiliation.’
14 This revived my habitual curiosity, and eager to get to the bottom of the
matter I said: ‘As for this most wicked and audacious of straps which
you meant me to beat you with, it will perish cut to ribbons at my hands
 before it touches your soft creamy skin. But tell me truthfully: what was
it you did that Fortune perversely turned to my undoing? For I swear by
your head that I love so much that nothing and nobody, not even
yourself, will persuade me that you ever meant me any harm. And if no
harm is intended there can be no blame, whatever accident or mischance
may do.’ With these words I pressed my lips to my dear Photis’ half-
closed eyes, and with thirsty kisses drank my fill as they melted and
fluttered and brimmed over with yearning desire.
15 This cheered her up. ‘First,’ she said, ‘let me shut the door firmly, for if
I’m overheard indiscreetly revealing these secrets I shall be held guilty
of a great crime.’ When she had shot the bolts and firmly secured the
latch, she came back to me and putting both arms round my neck she
began in a low and almost inaudible voice. ‘I’m scared,’ she said, ‘and
frankly terrified to disclose what this house conceals and to lay bare my
mistress’s secrets. But I know I can rely on your character and training:
you are a man of noble birth and lofty intellect and have been initiated in
several cults, so you well understand when silence is a sacred duty.
Whatever secrets therefore I commit to the sanctuary of your pious
heart, I beg you to enclose and guard them in that precinct, and repay the
frankness of my story by never, never divulging it. In the whole world
only I know these things, and it is only because of the love that binds me
to you that I reveal them. Now you shall learn what this house really is,
now you shall learn my mistress’s wonderful secret powers: through
them the dead obey her, the stars change course, the gods do her
bidding, the elements are her slaves. But she never resorts more eagerly
to her art than when some handsome young man has caught her eye –
something that often happens to her.
16 ‘Just now she is dying for love of a very good-looking young Boeotian,
and she is furiously bringing all the tricks and devices of her art to bear
on him. Only last night I heard her with my own two ears threatening the
Sun himself with foggy gloom and everlasting darkness because he had
been too slow in setting and giving way to night for her to be able to
practise her enchantments. She had happened to catch sight of this
young man yesterday at the barber’s, while she was on her way back
from the baths, and she told me to glean some of his hair surreptitiously
from where it had fallen on the floor from the scissors. I was collecting
it as ordered when the barber caught me in the act. We are already
 notorious all over the city as witches, so he at once pounced on me,
shouting and threatening: “You scum, will you stop stealing the young
gentlemen’s hair? You know it’s a crime, and if you don’t lay off, I’ll
have you up before the magistrates – I mean it.” And adding action to
words, he reached right into my bosom to search me and angrily pulled
out the hair I’d hidden there. This upset me terribly; knowing what my
mistress is like and how when she hasn’t got her way in something like
this she’s lost her temper and beaten me black and blue, I was thinking
of running away; then I remembered you and gave that idea up.
17 ‘I was coming away disconsolate at having to go home empty handed ,
when I noticed a man shearing three goatskin bags. They were hanging
up, tightly tied and inflated, and the hair was lying on the ground. It was
fair, just like that of the young Boeotian; so I carried some of it off and
gave it to my mistress without telling her where it really came from.
Then, at nightfall, before you came back from dinner, Pamphile, who
was now quite beside herself, climbed up to her eyrie. This is on a
wooden roof at the back of the house, open to the winds and having
views in every direction, particularly towards the east. This is her secret
hide-out, admirably suited to her magical practices. First she set out all
the usual apparatus of her infernal laboratory: every kind of strong-
smelling drug, metal plaques inscribed with mysterious characters, the
remains of birds of ill omen, and a whole array of different parts of dead
and buried bodies – here noses and fingers, there nails from gibbets with
flesh sticking to them, elsewhere a store of blood from men who have
died a violent death, and skulls snatched half eaten from the jaws of
wild beasts. Next she intoned a spell over some still quivering entrails
18 and made offerings of various fluids: spring water, cow’s milk, mountain
honey, and finally honey and wine mixed. Then she knotted and plaited
the goat-hair together and threw it with many different perfumes on to
the live coals to burn. Immediately, through the irresistible force of her
magic art and the hidden power of the deities that she controls, the
bodies whose hairs were crackling in the flame took on human life: they
felt and heard and walked, and came here, drawn by the reek of their
burning hair. It was they, instead of the young man from Boeotia, who
were attacking the door in their eagerness to get in. And it was at that
moment that you came on the scene drunk, and deceived by the blind
darkness of night drew your sword and sprang to arms like another Ajax;
 but he only attacked and massacred a flock of sheep – you were much
braver and slew three blown-up goatskins. You laid low your enemies
without shedding a drop of blood, so I now embrace not a homicide but
an utricide.’
19 This pleasantry of Photis’ made me laugh, and I took up the joke. ‘In
that case,’ I said, ‘I can count this as the first of my own heroic exploits,
on the model of the Labours of Hercules – for laying low three
wineskins is surely equivalent to dealing with three-bodied Geryon or
three-headed Cerberus. But I’m happy and willing to forgive you for
what you did and what I suffered in consequence – on one condition.
Will you do as I earnestly ask you, and show me your mistress when she
is actually practising her supernatural arts? I want to see her when she
invokes the gods, particularly when she changes shape; for I have a
passionate longing to see magic done with my own eyes. You yourself,
I’m sure, aren’t by any means a novice or amateur in these matters. I
know that very well; for though up to now I’ve always despised the idea
of affairs even with women of my own class, you, with those sparkling
eyes and cherry lips and shining hair and open-mouthed kisses and
sweet-smelling breasts, have absolutely made a slave and chattel of me –
and I love it. Now indeed I don’t miss my home or want to go back
there; a night with you is worth the lot.’
20 ‘I’d love to do as you ask, Lucius,’ Photis answered; ‘but she’s
suspicious by nature and she always shuts herself up in absolute solitude
when she performs these secret rituals. But to meet your wishes I’ll
disregard my own safety, and I’ll be on the lookout for a suitable
opportunity to do just what you want. But, as I said before, this is deadly
serious, and you must be religiously discreet about it.’ During these
whispered exchanges our desire for each other had inflamed our minds
and bodies alike. Tearing off our clothes we hurled ourselves stark naked
into a Bacchic frenzy of love; and when I was worn out, Photis, by way
of encore, generously and unprompted, offered herself to me like a boy.
Finally, when our eyes were drooping from lack of sleep, oblivion came
upon us and held us fast until it was broad day.
21 We had passed a few more nights of pleasure in this style, when Photis
came to me one day in a great state of excitement to tell me that her
mistress, having got nowhere in her love-affair by other means, was
going that night to feather herself as a bird and fly off to her beloved in
 that shape, and to warn me to prepare myself, taking due precautions, to
watch this great event. So shortly after nightfall, noiselessly and on
tiptoe, she took me to the upper room and told me to watch through a
crack in the door. This is what I saw. First Pamphile completely stripped
herself; then she opened a chest and took out a number of small boxes.
From one of these she removed the lid and scooped out some ointment,
which she rubbed between her hands for a long time before smearing
herself with it all over from head to foot. Then there was a long muttered
address to the lamp during which she shook her arms with a fluttering
motion. As they gently flapped up and down there appeared on them a
soft fluff, then a growth of strong feathers; her nose hardened into a
hooked beak, her feet contracted into talons – and Pamphile was an owl.
Hooting mournfully she took off and landed once or twice to try her
wings; then she launched herself in full flight out of the house and away
high into the sky.
22 So Pamphile used her magic arts deliberately to transform herself;
whereas I, unenchanted, was so transfixed with amazement simply by
this extraordinary scene that I seemed to be anything rather than Lucius.
I was completely out of my mind, unhinged with astonishment, not
knowing if I was awake or dreaming. For ages I kept rubbing my eyes to
see if I was really awake; finally I came to my senses and took Photis by
the hand. Putting it to my eyes, ‘Please,’ I said, ‘while we have the
opportunity, I implore you, my darling, by those breasts of yours, allow
me to enjoy this great and unique proof of your love: give me a little of
that ointment. Bind me as your slave for ever by a boon that I can never
repay, and make me able to stand beside my Venus as a winged Cupid.’
‘Oh, crafty!’ she said, ‘my lover tells me to make a rod for my own
back. Even as you are, I’m hard put to it to keep the local wolf-pack off
you; once you’re a bird you’ll disappear and I’ll never see you again.’
23 ‘No,’ I said, ‘heaven preserve me from a crime like that. Though I
soared aloft on eagle’s wings and roamed through the whole sky as
Jove’s faithful messenger and proud esquire, I’d leave those exalted
honours behind and return without fail to my little nest. I swear by the
knot with which you have bound your hair and my heart that Photis is
the only girl for me. And then – I’ve just thought of it – if I’m magicked
into that kind of bird, I shall have to give all houses a wide berth. A fine
lover for a woman to enjoy an owl would be! Remember that, if such
 night-birds do get into a house, we see people rush to catch them and
nail them to the door to make them expiate by their torments the
destruction which their ill-omened flight portends to the family. But I
nearly forgot to ask: what shall I have to do or say to shed my wings and
return to being Lucius again?’ ‘So far as that goes, you’ve nothing to
worry about,’ she said. ‘My mistress has shown me exactly how to
restore to human shape anybody who is transformed in this way – not
because she is especially fond of me, but so that when she returns home
I can administer the antidote. But it’s a strange thing that the herbs
which produce this great effect are so humble and ordinary: you soak a
sprig of dill and some laurel leaves in spring-water, which you then
bathe in and drink.’
24 She repeated this recipe several times, then very apprehensively she
slipped into the room and took the box out of the chest. I seized it and
kissed it, praying that it would grant me good luck on the wing; then I
tore off my clothes, and plunging my hands into it scooped out a
generous portion of the ointment and rubbed it all over myself; then I
flapped my arms up and down in imitation of a bird. But no down or
feathers appeared; instead my hair became coarse and shaggy, my soft
skin hardened into hide, my fingers and toes lost their separate identity
and coalesced into hooves, and from the end of my spine there protruded
a long tail. My face became enormous and my mouth widened; my
nostrils dilated and my lips hung down; and my ears became
monstrously long and hairy. The only redeeming feature of this
catastrophic transformation was that my natural endowment had grown
too – but how could I embrace
Photis like this? In this hapless state I looked myself over and saw that I
25 was now no bird, but an ass; and when I wanted to complain about what
Photis had done, I couldn’t speak or point like a human being. All I
could do was to let my mouth hang open and my eyes fill with tears and
look at her sideways in silent reproach. Seeing me like this, Photis hit
herself frantically in the face, exclaiming: ‘Oh God, that’s torn it. I was
in such a hurry and so confused that I mistook the box. Never mind,
there’s an easy way to put things right and change you back. All you
need to do is to eat some roses and in a moment the ass will vanish and
you’ll be back as you were – my Lucius. If only I’d made us some
garlands last night as usual, then you needn’t have had to put up with
 this even for as long as one night. But directly it’s light I’ll rush the
remedy to you.’
26 And so she carried on. I meanwhile, though I was now the complete ass
and what had been Lucius was a beast of burden, still felt and thought
like a man. I wondered long and hard whether I ought to set about this
vile and infamous creature with my hooves and teeth and batter her to
death. However, I thought better of this rash plan when I remembered
that her death would also spell the death of my prospects of rescue. So,
lowering and shaking my head, and swallowing my temporary
humiliation, I bowed to my harsh fate and took my place by the side of
my own horse, who had carried me so well; and there in the stable I also
found another ass belonging to my former host Milo. I imagined that if
there were some sort of unspoken natural bond among brute beasts, that
horse of mine would have recognized and pitied me and given me the
red-carpet treatment as his guest. So much, however, for the gods of
hospitality and good faith! That exemplary steed of mine and the ass
immediately put their heads together and agreed to do for me. I suppose
they were afraid for their own rations, for hardly had they seen me
coming towards their manger when down went their ears and they set on
me furiously with violent kicks, driving me away from the barley which
only last night I had served out with my own hands to this ungrateful
servant of mine.
27 Finding myself received in this way I left them to it and retreated into a
corner of the stable. While I was thinking about the behaviour of these
colleagues of mine and rehearsing the punishment I would hand out to
my faithless horse when the roses had come to my aid and I was Lucius
once more, I noticed, halfway up the central pillar which held up the
stable roof, an image of Epona sitting in a shrine – and it had been
lovingly adorned with garlands of fresh roses! Perceiving my salvation,
all eager and hopeful I reared up with a great effort as far as my front
feet would reach, and stretching out my neck and pushing out my lips I
strained every muscle to get at them. But luck was not on my side. My
slave, who had the job of looking after the horse, suddenly saw what I
was doing and jumped up indignantly. ‘How long, for God’s sake,’ he
shouted, ‘are we going to put up with this miserable brute? First it was
the other animals’ food, now it’s the very images of the gods that he’s
after. But I’ll smash the sacrilegious devil, I’ll cripple him.’ He started
 looking round for a weapon and found a bundle of wood that happened
to be lying there. Sorting out a leafy branch that was larger than all the
others he proceeded to give me a fearful thrashing, only leaving off
when there was a sudden uproar outside and a violent banging at the
door; and as the whole neighbourhood echoed to a cry of ‘Thieves!’, he
fled in terror.
28 Suddenly the doors burst open and there rushed in a gang of robbers,
filling the house and surrounding every part of it with cordons of armed
men, while others deployed themselves to resist the rescuers who came
running from all sides. They were equipped with swords and torches,
which lighted up the night; steel and flame gleamed like the rising sun.
In the middle of the house there was a storeroom, strongly bolted and
barred and crammed with all Milo’s treasures. This they attacked and
broke into with violent blows of their axes. Having made several
openings they brought out all the contents, which they quickly tied up in
bundles and shared out among themselves. There was more there than
they could carry, but they were not checkmated by this superfluity of
riches; they hauled us two asses and my horse out of the stable, loaded
us to the limit with the heavier bundles, and drove us from the ransacked
house with threats and blows. Leaving one of their number behind to
report on any investigation of the crime, they beat us on over untrodden
mountain passes at a steady trot.
29 By this time, what with my heavy load and the steep climb up the
mountain and the length of the journey, I was practically expiring. At
this point, rather late in the day, I had the bright idea of invoking my
civil rights and freeing myself from all my troubles by appealing to the
sacred name of the Emperor. So when, it being now broad daylight, we
were passing through a largeish town with a busy market and a crowd all
round us, I tried to call on the august name of Caesar in my native
Greek. I did indeed produce a clear and convincing ‘O’, but the name
‘Caesar’ itself I couldn’t manage. My discordant bray was not
appreciated by the robbers, who laid into my wretched hide from all
sides until there wasn’t enough of it left to make a sieve. But great
Jupiter did unexpectedly save me from one fatal mistake. We had passed
a number of farms and cottages when I saw a delightful garden where
among other attractive plants there were blooming roses fresh with
morning dew. Open-mouthed and joyful, with eager hopes of
deliverance, I made up to them; but just as I was reaching out with
slavering lips I had second and wiser thoughts. If the ass disappeared to
reveal me as Lucius, I should certainly meet my death at the hands of the
robbers, either on suspicion of being a wizard or as a possible informer
if they were ever brought to justice. So, yielding to necessity, I turned
away from the roses and resigning myself to my present situation I
behaved as an ass should and munched my bit instead.
BOOK 4

The robbers’ stronghold – stories of their recent exploits – arrival

of the kidnapped girl Charite – the robbers’ housekeeper tells her
the story of Cupid and Psyche to comfort her – the story begun

1 At about midday, when it was beginning to get hot under the blazing
sun, we stopped at a village with some elderly people who were clearly
on good terms with the bandits. Even an ass could see this from their
instant recognition and exchange of greetings and long conversations,
and from the fact that the robbers presented them with some things they
took off my back, and were evidently telling them in a confidential
whisper that they were the fruits of brigandage. Then they unloaded us
and the other animals and turned us into a nearby field to graze. The
prospect of sharing a meal with the other ass and my horse was not
attractive, especially as I was still unused to dining off grass. However,
just behind the stable I saw a kitchen-garden, and this, as I was now
perishing with hunger, I boldly invaded. Having stuffed myself with
vegetables, raw as they were, I invoked the whole company of heaven
and began to prospect the surrounding area to see if I could find roses in
bloom anywhere in the neighbouring gardens. There was nobody else
about, so I was pretty confident that if I could sneak away and eat the
necessary remedy while hidden in the undergrowth, I could quit my
stooping four-footed posture and stand up straight again as a human
being without any witnesses.
2 Then while I was tossing about on this sea of thought, I saw a little way
off a shady glen in a wood, and there, among all the different plants and
 luxuriant greenery, was the gleam of bright red roses. This grove I
thought – for my mind was not wholly that of an ass – must belong to
Venus and the Graces, seeing the royal splendour of that festive flower
glowing there in its dark recesses. So, invoking the benign and
propitious god of Success, I took off for the place with such a turn of
speed that I felt more like a racehorse than an ass. But all my nimble and
heroic efforts were powerless to outrun the perverse malignity of my
Fortune. For when I got there it was not roses I saw, delicate and fresh,
dripping with divine dew and nectar, sprung from happy briars with
blessed thorns, nor was there a glen anywhere in sight, only a river-bank
edged with a dense belt of trees. These trees have luxuriant foliage like
the laurel and produce long cup-shaped flowers, pale red in colour; in
spite of their total lack of smell the country people, knowing no better,
call them laurel-roses. To all animals they are deadly poison.
3 Finding myself trapped in this way by Fate, I madly resolved to
renounce my hopes of salvation and take this ‘rose’-poison of my own
free will. But while I was hesitantly moving to pluck them, a young
man, who was presumably the gardener whose vegetables I had
plundered, had discovered the damage and came running at me in a fury
with a big stick. He grabbed me and showered blows on me, so that my
life would have been in danger if I had not eventually had the wit to
come to my own assistance. Raising my haunches I let fly at him again
and again with my rear hooves and then made my getaway, leaving him
lying badly battered on the adjoining slope. But now there appeared over
the hilltop a woman, evidently his wife; seeing him stretched out there
half dead she rushed down to him wailing and weeping. Her pitiful
outcry was likely to be my undoing then and there, for all the villagers,
alarmed by her cries, whistled up their dogs and sicked them on from
every quarter to tear me apart in their rage. At that moment I was sure I
faced death, seeing this pack of huge hounds, capable of taking on bears
or lions, bearing furiously down on me. Faced with this situation I gave
up my plan of escape and galloped back to our stable. However, the
villagers, having with some difficulty restrained their dogs, seized me
and tied me to a ring with a stout rope; and would undoubtedly have
finished me off with the beating which they proceeded to inflict, had not
my belly, stuffed as it was with raw vegetables and so in a highly liquid
state, contracted under the pain of the blows and shot out a jet of dung at
 them. Showered with this noisome fluid and repelled by the stench, my
tormentors were driven off, leaving me and my battered behind to
ourselves.
4 Soon after this, as evening came on, the robbers led us out of the stable
and loaded us, me especially, more heavily than ever. We were well into
the next stage of our journey when I came to a decision. I was exhausted
with marching, sinking under the weight of my load, worn out by
beating, and my sore hooves were making me limp and stumble. We had
arrived at a little gently gliding river, and I thought this offered me the
opportunity I needed: I would deliberately let my legs go and collapse,
resolutely determined not to get up and go on however hard they beat
me, prepared indeed to die under their blows or even their sword-thrusts.
I reckoned that in my weak and enfeebled state I was entitled to a
discharge on medical grounds; surely the robbers would not want to
hang around, but would be so eager to press on with their escape that
they would divide my load between the other animals and then, as a
more severe punishment than any they could devise, leave me a prey to
the wolves and vultures.
5 This admirable plan, however, was thwarted by a piece of shocking bad
luck. The other ass, as if guessing and anticipating my design, suddenly
feigned exhaustion, and collapsing under his load lay as if dead. Though
they beat and goaded him and tried every way of getting him back on his
feet, hauling him by the tail or the ears or the legs, he made no attempt
to rise. At last, becoming weary of such a hopeless business, they put
their heads together and decided not to delay their escape by dancing
attendance any longer on an ass that was as good as dead or petrified.
Dividing his load between me and the horse they drew their swords and
cut all his hamstrings, then hauled him a little way off the road and
threw him still breathing off the edge of the cliff into the valley below.
With the fate of my unfortunate comrade before my eyes I then and there
decided to abandon all tricks and deceits and to present myself to my
masters in the role of a model ass. For I had overheard them telling each
other that our next stopping-place was not far off and that this would
bring our journey to a peaceful end, since it was their permanent
headquarters. So, having climbed a gentle slope, we arrived at our
destination, where our loads were taken off and stowed inside, and free
 at last from my burden I tried to shake off my weariness with a roll in
the dust in lieu of a bath.
6 The subject and the occasion itself demand that I here set out a
description of the locality and the cave that was the robbers’ abode. This
will be an opportunity to put my literary talent to the proof, and also to
enable you to judge accurately whether my mind and perceptions were
those of an ass. There stood a mountain, wild and rugged, covered with
dense woods and towering to a peak. Its steep sides, encircled by sharp
and inaccessible crags, were traversed by deep ravines, full of gullies
and choked with thorny vegetation; facing as they did every way they
provided a natural defence. From the summit there gushed out an
abundant spring which flowed down the slope in a cascade of silvery
ripples; then, spreading out into many different branches, it filled the
ravines with standing pools, so enclosing the whole area with a sort of
landlocked sea or slow-moving river. Above the cave, on the lower
slopes of the mountain, arose a high tower. By way of a wall, a stout
palisade of closely woven hurdles, such as are used for sheep-pens, ran
all round it, leaving a narrow entrance in front. A real bandits’
reception-room it was, believe you me. There was nothing else there but
a small hut roughly thatched with reed where, as I later discovered, a
sentry-group of robbers chosen by lot mounted guard each night.
7 One by one the robbers doubled themselves up and crept into the cave,
leaving us securely tied up just outside the entrance. An old woman,
bent with age, who seemed to be in sole charge of the welfare and
comfort of all these young men, now appeared, and was instantly the
target of violent abuse. ‘All right,’ they shouted, ‘you undertaker’s
leavings, you disgrace to the human race, you reject of hell, are you
going to sit there twiddling your thumbs and amusing yourself? What
about some late-night refreshment to put heart into us after all our toils
and dangers? All you ever do night and day is pour down neat wine
without stopping for breath into that insatiable belly of yours.’ Shaking
with fear the old woman answered in a piping voice: ‘But, gentlemen,
my most valiant and faithful protectors, look what I’ve got waiting for
you. There’s quantities of savoury stew, done to a turn, all the bread you
can eat, and lashings of wine poured out into the cups, which I’ve
polished up specially; and the hot water’s all ready as usual for a bath
the moment you want it.’
 She had hardly finished speaking before they all stripped off and stood
naked; after reviving themselves in the warmth of a blazing fire, they
washed thoroughly in the hot water and rubbed themselves down with
oil. Then they took their places at a dinner-table heaped
high with good things. They had scarcely done so when there arrived a
8 much larger group of men, also robbers as anybody could see, since like
the others they carried in a mass of booty – gold and silver coin and
plate, and gold-embroidered silks. After likewise bathing and refreshing
themselves, they joined their comrades at table, and some, chosen by lot,
served the meal. As they ate and drank, it was every man for himself:
they put away meat in mounds, bread in heaps, and wine non-stop by the
gallon. Shouts and jests, talking and singing, abuse and badinage, were
the order of the day – it was the Lapiths and Centaurs all over again.
In the middle of all this, one of them, the burliest of the lot, began to
orate. ‘Here’s to us!’ he proclaimed. ‘We gallantly stormed the house of
Milo of Hypata, we’ve a heap of booty won by our courage, and on top
of that we’ve got back to base without losing a man – and, if it comes to
that, with eight more feet on the strength. As for the rest of you, the
Boeotian towns contingent, you’ve come back with heavy casualties and
without your brave leader Lamachus, though I’d rate his life as more
valuable than this stuff you’ve brought. What did for him, however it
happened, was that he was too brave for his own good. But he was a
hero, who will be held in remembrance and honour along with the great
kings and generals of legend; whereas you, model brigands that you are,
just go sneaking furtively round bath-houses and old women’s hovels,
ignominiously filching bits of rubbish for your flea-market.’
9 The challenge was immediately taken up by one of the second group.
‘You know perfectly well,’ he answered, ‘that large houses are much
easier targets. That’s because, even though there are servants all over a
large house, every one is more concerned to look after himself than to
safeguard his master’s possessions. Simple people who live on their
own, if they have any property, large or small, keep it dark, hide it away,
and guard it fiercely, defending it with their lives. What happened to us
will bear out what I’m saying. Directly we arrived at seven-gated
Thebes we carried out the first step of our professional drill, a careful
reconnaissance of the wealth of the locals. We found out that there was
an enormously rich banker called Chryseros who took great pains to
 conceal his opulence for fear of being landed with the expense of public
office. He lived on his own in seclusion, making do with a small but
well-secured little house, sleeping in dirt and rags on bags of gold. So
we decided to attack him first, scouting the idea of serious resistance
from a lone individual and expecting to carry off all his wealth without
exerting ourselves.
10 ‘That very night, as soon as it was dark, we mustered in front of the
house. We decided not to try to slip the bolts or force the door, let alone
break it down, since the noise might rouse the neighbourhood, when we
should be done for. Then it was that our noble leader Lamachus,
confident in his tried and tested courage, stealthily inserted his hand into
the keyhole, intending to wrench the bar loose by force. But meanwhile,
if you please, that blot on the human race Chryseros had been awake and
taking it all in, and now, slowly creeping up with noiseless footsteps in
total silence, he suddenly with one mighty blow fastened our leader’s
hand to the panel of the door by a huge nail. Then, leaving him there
fatally crucified, he climbed to the roof of his hovel and shouted at the
top of his voice to summon the neighbours; calling each one by name he
gave out that his house had suddenly caught fire, reminding them that
this involved the safety of them all. So everybody, frightened by the
danger next door, came running in alarm to help.
11 ‘Now we found ourselves faced with two equally painful alternatives,
to let ourselves be captured or to desert our comrade. On the spur of the
moment we hit on a drastic solution: with one carefully directed blow
we cut our leader’s arm right off at the elbow joint, and leaving the rest
of it there we tied up the wound with a thick bandage so that there
should be no trail of blood to show which way we went, and hurriedly
made off with what remained of Lamachus. We desperately wanted to
do our duty by him, but we were hurried into headlong flight by the
menacing roar of the crowd and fear of the danger that threatened us,
while he could neither keep up with us nor be safely left behind. That
hero, lofty of soul and pre-eminent in courage, repeatedly begged and
prayed and tearfully adjured us, by the right hand of Mars, by our oath
of loyalty, to save a faithful comrade from both torture and capture. How
could a brave brigand outlive the loss of his hand, which was his only
means of plunder and murder? He would count himself supremely lucky
to die willingly by a comrade’s hand. But when nothing he could say
 would induce any of us to commit this self-elected parricide, he drew his
sword with his other hand, kissed it lingeringly, and with a mighty thrust
drove it straight into his heart. Then we, having paid tribute to our great-
hearted leader’s valour, wrapped what remained of him carefully in a
linen sheet and entrusted it to the sea to hide. And so now our Lamachus
is at rest with a whole element as his tomb.
12 ‘He then ended his life in a manner worthy of his manly virtues.
Alcimus, however, could not persuade cruel Fortune to favour his
cunning enterprise. He had broken into an old woman’s hovel while she
was asleep and gone upstairs into her bedroom; but instead of disposing
of her then and there by throttling her as he should have done, he chose
to throw out her things item by item through the window, which was a
largeish one, for us to carry off – at least that was the idea. Having done
a thorough job of heaving everything else out, he decided even to
include the bed where the old girl was lying asleep. So he tipped her out
of it and pulled off the bedclothes, which he was just going to send
down after the rest, when the old bitch fell at his feet and pleaded with
him: “Look, my son, why are you making a present of a poor old
woman’s miserable ragged bits and pieces to my rich neighbours? It’s
their house that this window overlooks.” Hearing this, Alcimus was
taken in by her cunning ruse and believed every word she said. Of
course he was alarmed by the thought that not only what he had already
thrown out but also what he had been going to throw out before he
realized his mistake might be finding its way, not to his comrades, but
into somebody else’s house. So he craned out of the window to have a
good look round, particularly to try to assess the wealth of this next-door
house that the old woman talked of. This was an enterprising but
imprudent move; while he was in this precarious position, with no eyes
for anything but what he was looking at, the evil old hag gave him a
sudden and unexpected push; feeble as it was, it was enough to send him
hurtling down head first. This was from a considerable height, and also
he fell on a large stone which lay underneath. His rib-cage was shattered
and split open, and he vomited up torrents of blood from deep inside
him; he did not suffer long, but died after telling us what had happened.
We buried him as we had Lamachus, a worthy attendant on his leader.
13 ‘Discouraged by this double bereavement we now abandoned our
Theban campaign and went on up to Plataea, the nearest town. There we
 found everybody talking about someone called Demochares and the
gladiatorial show he was going to put on. He was a man of noble birth,
enormously rich and correspondingly generous, who was in the habit of
providing popular entertainments of a splendour that matched his
fortune. It would take more wit and eloquence than I am master of to do
justice to each and every aspect of all his various preparations. There
were gladiators renowned for their fighting prowess, hunters of proven
speed and agility, and desperate criminals with nothing to lose who were
being fattened up to fatten the beasts in their turn. There was an
elaborate timber structure of several stories like a movable house, and
brightly decorated enclosures for the wild-beast show. The number and
variety of the animals beggared description, for Demochares had gone to
endless trouble to import exotic species to serve as tombs for the
condemned. On top of the rest of the outfit for this splendid show he had
pretty well used up everything he possessed in procuring a large number
of huge bears. Some of these had been caught locally, some bought for
vast sums, and some were contributed by the competitive generosity of
different friends; all of them he was feeding and looking after with no
expense spared.
14 ‘However, these fine and lavish preparations to entertain the public did
not escape the baleful glance of Envy. The bears, exhausted by their
prolonged captivity, wilting in the summer heat, and enfeebled by lack
of exercise, were attacked by a sudden infection to which nearly every
one of them succumbed. On pretty well every street you could see the
stranded corpses of these beasts lying half dead. The common people,
whose life of squalid poverty forbade them to be fastidious in matters of
diet and who had perforce to stay their shrunken stomachs with
whatever free food they could find, however repellent, naturally fell on
this feast which lay there for the taking. Seeing this, Eubulus here and I
hit on an ingenious plan. Choosing a particularly large specimen, we
carried off one of the bears to our hideout as if to prepare it for eating.
There we skinned it neatly, taking special care to preserve the claws, and
leaving the animal’s head intact down to the neck-line; we scraped down
the whole skin thoroughly, sprinkled it with fine ash, and laid it in the
sun to dry. While the moisture was being drawn out of it by the blazing
heat, we meanwhile had a fine feed on the meat and issued orders for the
coming operation. It was decided that one of us, not just the strongest,
 but also the bravest, and who above all must be a volunteer, should dress
in the bear’s skin, and in that guise get himself introduced into
Demochares’ house. Then, at the right moment, at dead of night, it
would be easy for him to open the door and let us in.
15 ‘Excited by this ingenious scheme many of our valiant brotherhood
volunteered for the assignment. Of these Thrasyleon was chosen by
popular acclaim to brave the dangers of this perilous stratagem; and, the
skin being now pliant and soft to handle, he got into it with a cheerful
expression. Then with minute stitches we sewed together the edges of
the skin, covering over the seam, which in fact was scarcely noticeable,
with the thick hair which surrounded it. We got Thrasyleon to push his
head up through the top end of the animal’s gullet where the neck had
been hollowed out, and made small holes near the nostrils and eyes for
him to see and hear through. Then we took our brave comrade, now
every inch a bear, to a cage which we had picked up cheap, and into this
he immediately marched with strong and steadfast step.
‘These preliminaries taken care of, we addressed ourselves to the
rest of our masquerade. We had got hold of the name of a Thracian
16 called Nicanor, who was an intimate friend of Demochares, and
concocted a letter which purported to come from him, saying that he had
dedicated the first fruits of his hunting to embellish his old friend’s
games. Late in the evening, taking advantage of the darkness, we
presented Demochares with the caged Thrasyleon and the spurious letter.
Lost in admiration of the beast’s size and delighted by his friend’s timely
generosity, he at once ordered ten gold pieces to be paid from his coffers
to us, the bearers of these (as he thought) joyful tidings. People are
naturally attracted by new and unexpected sights, so great crowds
flocked to admire the beast; while Thrasyleon cleverly discouraged too
close an inspection by frequent threatening charges at the bars. The
whole town joined in celebrating the good fortune and happiness of
Demochares, who after the wholesale loss of his animals had somehow
managed with this fresh supply to outface Fortune.
‘He now ordered the bear to be transferred immediately with all due
care to his park in the country. Here, however, I intervened.
“This bear,” I said, “is tired out from the hot sun and the long journey. I
17 would advise you, sir, not to introduce it into the company of a lot of
 other animals – who, I’m told, aren’t in very good health. Wouldn’t it be
better to look around for some open and well-ventilated place in your
house, if possible next to a pond, where it’s cool? As I’m sure you know,
this type of animal always makes its home in woods and damp caves and
by pleasant springs.” Demochares was alarmed by my warning, and
remembering how many animals he had previously lost he agreed
without more ado, and readily allowed us to choose a place for the cage.
“And what’s more,” I said, “we are quite happy to mount guard by the
cage all night. The bear is worn out with heat and harassment, and we’ll
do a more careful job of feeding and watering it at the proper time and in
the way it’s used to.” “No, thanks,” he answered, “we don’t need any
help from you. Most of my people have had plenty of practice in feeding
bears.”
18 ‘After this we took our leave. As we emerged from the city-gate we
noticed a large tomb standing at some distance from the road in a retired
and unfrequented spot. We found there a number of mouldering and
half-closed coffins, the dwelling-places of men long turned to dust and
ashes, and some of these we opened up as hiding-places for the booty
we were expecting. In accordance with professional practice, we waited
for the moon to set, the time when sleep, mounting its first and most
vigorous offensive, attacks and overpowers the minds of men. Then,
when the time came, our party armed itself and mustered outside
Demochares’ front door to keep our appointment with plunder.
Thrasyleon was equally punctual in picking the exact time of night for
banditry. Creeping out of his cage he lost no time in dispatching with his
sword every one of the attendants who were sleeping nearby. Then he
dealt similarly with the doorkeeper, and possessing himself of the man’s
key he opened the doors for us. In a moment we were inside and had
taken complete possession of the house, and he was showing us the
strongroom, where he had been quick to note a quantity of silver plate
being put away the evening before. We at once broke it open by a
concerted charge, and I told off the rest of the party to take as much gold
or silver as they could carry and entrust it quickly to the incorruptible
safekeeping of the dead, and then to come back at the double for another
load. I meanwhile would act in the general interest by taking up a
position near the front door and keeping a careful lookout in all
directions while they were away – for I thought that the sight of the bear
 careering around the house would be enough to deter any of the
household we might happen to wake up. Anybody, however strong and
brave, encountering such a huge beast, especially at dead of night,
would certainly take to his heels, lock the door of his room in a panic,
and stay there.
19 ‘All this sound and careful planning, however, was thwarted by Ill
Success. While I was on tenterhooks waiting for my comrades to return,
a slave, woken up I suppose by the noise – no doubt divine influence
was at work – quietly emerged and saw the bear running about all over
the house. Without making a sound he withdrew and managed to pass on
what he had seen to the entire household. Within seconds the whole
place was filled with hordes of slaves. The darkness vanished in a blaze
of light from torches, lamps, tapers, candles, and everything else you can
think of. Every man jack of them emerged with a weapon of some kind;
each one equipped with a cudgel or a spear or even a drawn sword, they
blocked off all the entrances. At the same time they were sicking on
their hunting-dogs – long-eared shaggy brutes – to bring the beast down.
As the uproar grew I began to beat a gradual retreat, but as I was hiding
20 behind the door I had a fine view of the wonderful show that Thrasyleon
was putting up against the dogs. Though he knew his last hour had
come, he remained true to himself, his comrades, and the courage which
never left him, fighting back with the jaws of Cerberus yawning before
him. Indeed, as long as the breath was in his body he kept up the role for
which he had volunteered: with various bear like postures and
movements he would now retreat, now stand at bay, until finally he
managed to get clear of the house. However, even in the open street he
could not escape, for all the dogs from the neighbourhood – a large and
ferocious pack – appeared in a body to join forces with the hunting-dogs,
who had likewise followed hot on his heels. It was a grim and pitiful
spectacle to see our friend Thrasyleon surrounded and beset by these
packs of ravening dogs and torn apart by innumerable bites.
‘Finally I couldn’t bear this painful sight any longer, and worming my
way into the milling crowd I tried to assist my comrade discreetly in the
only way possible by dissuading the leaders of the hunt. “This is an
outrage!” I shouted. “This is a magnificent animal, and a valuable
one, that we’re destroying.” However, my artful intervention did not
21 help my unfortunate friend, for there now ran out of the house a tall
 strong fellow who without a moment’s hesitation thrust a spear right into
the bear’s vitals. Another immediately followed suit, and then several
more mastered their fears and competed with each other to come to close
quarters and plunge in their swords. As for Thrasyleon, the pride and
glory of our band, his great spirit, ever worthy to be held in honour, was
finally taken by storm, but there was no surrender. True to his oath he let
no human cry or scream escape him, but horribly mauled and grievously
wounded as he was he went on bellowing and growling like a beast, and
endured his inevitable doom with noble fortitude. And so his life he
surrendered to destiny, but his glory he kept for himself. However, so
great was the terror and awe that he had inspired in the mob that it was
dawn – broad day, indeed – before anybody dared even to touch the
beast, motionless as it was. Finally in fear and trembling a butcher, more
daring than the rest, slit open the beast’s belly and stripped our hero of
his bear’s skin. Thus Thrasyleon was lost to us, but in his glory he will
live on. The rest of us hurriedly packed up the bundles which the faithful
dead had been guarding for us and left the territory of Plataea by forced
marches. On our way we pondered in our minds this fact: it is no wonder
that Good Faith is nowhere to be found in this life, for she has gone to
live among the spirits of the dead in disgust at human perfidy. And so,
every man worn out with our heavy loads and the rough road, and
mourning the loss of three comrades, we have brought back the booty
you see.’
22 At the end of this story they pledged the memory of their dead
comrades in arms in neat wine drunk from gold cups; then they sang
some hymns to Mars to propitiate him, and went to sleep for a while. To
us the old woman doled out quantities of fresh barley without stint. My
horse thought this generous spread, which he had all to himself, a real
Salian banquet. As for me, I had only ever eaten barley finely milled and
in the form of porridge, so I investigated the corner where the surplus
bread was stored, and there I gave my jaws, which had become
enfeebled and cobwebbed from long fasting, a good work-out. But then
late at night the robbers woke up and took the field again; variously
equipped, some armed with swords, some got up as ghosts, they
marched off at a smart pace. As for me, not even the onset of sleep could
check my steady and steadfast munching. When I was Lucius, I could
leave the table content with one or two rolls; now, enslaved to my
 bottomless belly, I was already on my third basketful. I was still intent
on my task when broad day found me at it.
23 In the end, however, I was induced by my asinine sense of fitness to
tear myself reluctantly away and slake my thirst at a nearby stream. Just
then the robbers reappeared in an unusual state of excitement and
agitation. They were carrying nothing whatever in the way of loot, not
so much as a rag or bone; having turned out every man on the strength,
armed to the teeth, all they had brought back was one young girl. You
had only to look at her to see that she was of high birth, one of the
provincial nobility, as her dress indicated – and extremely desirable,
even to an ass like me. They brought her into the cave, sobbing and
tearing her hair and clothes, and tried to calm her distress with soothing
words. ‘You needn’t be alarmed,’ they told her, ‘either about your life or
your honour. It’s only the pressure of poverty that has driven us to this
calling. Just be patient while we realize our profit – it won’t be very
long. Your parents are enormously rich, and however miserly they may
be, they’ll soon come up with a proper ransom for their own flesh and
blood.’
24 They went on with this sort of soft soap for some time, but it did
nothing to assuage her grief. She simply put her head between her hands
and sobbed and sobbed. They then called the old woman in and told her
to sit by the girl and comfort her as best she could with soothing chit-
chat while they went about their usual business. But nothing the old
woman could say would divert the girl from her grief: she bewailed her
fate with even more piercing cries and her whole body shook with her
sobs – I too was forced to weep in sympathy. ‘Haven’t I a right to be
miserable?’ she cried. ‘Torn away from my beautiful home, my host of
attendants, my dear servants, my honoured parents, made the booty and
chattel of a calamitous robbery, imprisoned like a slave in this rocky
dungeon, this torture-chamber, despoiled of all the luxuries to which I
was born and bred, in peril of my life, among all these robbers and this
horrible gang of cutthroats – how can I stop weeping or even go on
living?’
She continued lamenting like this until, sick at heart, hoarse with
crying, and completely worn out, she let her eyelids droop and
dozed off. But her eyes had hardly closed when she suddenly started up
25 from sleep like a madwoman and fell on herself even more violently,
 belabouring her breast with fierce blows and punching that lovely face
of hers. The old woman pressed her to explain this fresh outbreak of
grief; but all she would say, with an even deeper sigh, was: ‘No, no, this
is the end; I’m finished now, completely done for – goodbye now to all
hope of rescue. A noose or a sword or a clifftop, that’s the only way left
for me.’ This irritated the old woman, and looking at her crossly she
asked her what in God’s name she was crying for and why when she had
just got off nicely to sleep she should all of a sudden start up these
overdone wailings again. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said;
‘you’re planning to do the lads out of the handsome profit they expect
from your ransom. If you keep this up, I’ll see to it myself, for all your
tears – and they don’t cut much ice with robbers – that you’re burned
alive.’
26 The girl was frightened by this and kissed the old woman’s hands.
‘Have mercy on me, mother,’ she said, ‘and of your kindness and pity
help me a little in my desperate plight. For, full of years as you are, I
can’t believe, when I look at your venerable white hairs, that
compassion has altogether withered away in you. Now, listen to my
story; it’s a real tragedy. Imagine a handsome young man, the leader of
his age-group. The city has unanimously elected him a Son of the
People; he’s also my cousin, just three years older than me. We were
brought up together as children, and we grew up as inseparable
companions in the same house, even sharing a room and a bed. We were
pledged to each other by chaste affection on both sides, and we had for a
long time been engaged to be married. Our parents had given their
consent, he was named in the marriage-contract as my husband, and
surrounded by a crowd of friends and relations who had come to honour
the occasion he was sacrificing in the temples and shrines of the city.
The whole house, a bower of laurel and ablaze with torchlight, was
resounding to the marriage-hymn. My unhappy mother was embracing
me and arraying me in my bridal finery, and with many loving kisses
and many an anxious prayer was already looking forward to
grandchildren – when at that moment there was a sudden invasion of
armed men, a scene of savage warfare, the glittering menace of naked
blades. They did not set themselves to kill or plunder, but burst straight
into our room in a tightly packed mass. None of our servants fought
back or put up the least resistance, and they snatched me, half dead with
 pitiful fright and overcome by cruel terror, from my mother’s arms. And
that is how my marriage, like those of Attis and Protesilaus, was
broken up and brought to nothing. But now my wretchedness has been
27 renewed and redoubled by a dreadful nightmare. I thought I had been
rudely snatched from my home, my room, my bridal chamber, and my
bed, and was lost in the wilderness calling the name of my unfortunate
husband; and he, just as he was when torn from my arms, perfumed and
garlanded, was following in my tracks while I fled from him on feet over
which I had no control. As he was loudly lamenting the rape of his
beautiful wife and calling on the people to help him, one of the robbers,
enraged by this troublesome pursuit, seized a large stone from the
ground and with it killed my unhappy young husband. It was because I
was terrified by this ghastly vision that I woke up in a sudden panic from
my ill-omened sleep.’
The old woman was sighing in sympathy with the girl’s tears. ‘Cheer
up, little lady,’ she answered, ‘and don’t be frightened by an empty
dream – it doesn’t mean anything. Everybody says that daytime dreams
are untrue; and what’s more important, night-time dreams generally
foretell the opposite of what actually happens. So weeping or being
beaten, or sometimes even being murdered, is a promise of money and
profit, whereas smiling or stuffing yourself with sweetmeats or meeting
a lover is a sign that grief or illness and all sorts of other misfortunes are
in store. But come, now let me take your mind off your troubles: here’s a
pretty fairytale, an old woman’s story’ – and with that she began

The Story of Cupid and Psyche

28 There was once a city with a king and queen who had three beautiful
daughters. The two eldest were very fair to see, but not so beautiful that
human praise could not do them justice. The loveliness of the youngest,
however, was so perfect that human speech was too poor to describe or
even praise it satisfactorily. Indeed huge numbers of both citizens and
foreigners, drawn together in eager crowds by the fame of such an
extraordinary sight, were struck dumb with admiration of her unequalled
beauty; and putting right thumb and forefinger to their lips they would
offer outright religious worship to her as the goddess Venus. Meanwhile
the news had spread through the nearby cities and adjoining regions that
 the goddess born of the blue depths of the sea and fostered by its
foaming waves had made public the grace of her godhead by mingling
with mortal men; or at least that, from a new fertilization by drops from
heaven, not sea but earth had grown another Venus in the flower of her
virginity.
And so this belief exceeded all bounds and gained ground day by day,
29 ranging first through the neighbouring islands, then, as the report made
its way further afield, through much of the mainland and most of the
provinces. Now crowds of people came flocking by long journeys and
deep-sea voyages to view this wonder of the age. No one visited Paphos
or Cnidos or even Cythera to see the goddess herself; her rites were
abandoned, her temples disfigured, her couches trampled, her worship
neglected; her statues were ungarlanded, her altars shamefully cold and
empty of offerings. It was the girl to whom prayers were addressed, and
in human shape that the power of the mighty goddess was placated.
When she appeared each morning it was the name of Venus, who was far
away, that was propitiated with sacrifices and offerings; and as she
walked the streets the people crowded to adore her with garlands and
flowers.
This outrageous transference of divine honours to the worship of a
mortal girl kindled violent anger in the true Venus, and unable to contain
her indignation, tossing her head and protesting in deep
bitterness, she thus soliloquized: ‘So much for me, the ancient mother of
30 nature, primeval origin of the elements, Venus nurturer of the whole
world: I must go halves with a mortal girl in the honour due to my
godhead, and my name, established in heaven, is profaned by earthly
dirt! It seems that I am to be worshipped in common and that I must put
up with the obscurity of being adored by deputy, publicly represented by
a girl – a being who is doomed to die! Much good it did me that the
shepherd whose impartial fairness was approved by great Jove preferred
me for my unrivalled beauty to those great goddesses! But she will rue
the day, whoever she is, when she usurped my honours. I’ll see to it that
she regrets this beauty of hers to which she has no right.’
So saying, she summoned that winged son of hers, that most reckless of
creatures, whose wicked behaviour flies in the face of public morals,
who armed with torch and arrows roams at night through houses where
 he has no business, ruining marriages on every hand, committing
heinous crimes with impunity, and never doing such a thing as a good
deed. Irresponsible as he already was by nature, she aroused him yet
more by her words; and taking him to the city and showing him Psyche
– this was the girl’s name – she
laid before him the whole story of this rival beauty. Groaning and crying
31 out in indignation, ‘By the bonds of a mother’s love,’ she said, ‘I
implore you, by the sweet wounds of your arrows, by the honeyed burns
made by your torch, avenge your mother – avenge her to the full. Punish
mercilessly that arrogant beauty, and do this one thing willingly for me –
it’s all I ask. Let this girl be seized with a burning passion for the lowest
of mankind, some creature cursed by Fortune in rank, in estate, in
condition, someone so degraded that in all the world he can find no
wretchedness to equal his own.’
With these words, she kissed her son with long kisses, open-mouthed
and closely pressed, and then returned to the nearest point of the
seashore. And as she set her rosy feet on the surface of the moving
waves, all at once the face of the deep sea became bright and calm.
Scarcely had she formed the wish when immediately, as if she had
previously ordered it, her marine entourage was prompt to appear. There
came the daughters of Nereus singing in harmony, Portunus with his
thick sea-green beard, Salacia, the folds of her robe heavy with fish, and
little Palaemon astride his dolphin. On all sides squadrons of Tritons
cavorted over the sea. One softly sounded his loud horn, a second with a
silken veil kept off the heat of her enemy the Sun, a third held his
mistress’s mirror before her face, and others yoked in pairs swam
beneath her car. Such was the retinue that escorted Venus in her progress
to Ocean.
32 Psyche meanwhile, for all her striking beauty, had no joy of it.
Everyone feasted their eyes on her, everyone praised her, but no one,
king, prince, or even commoner, came as a suitor to ask her in marriage.
Though all admired her divine loveliness, they did so merely as one
admires a statue finished to perfection. Long ago her two elder sisters,
whose unremarkable looks had enjoyed no such widespread fame, had
been betrothed to royal suitors and achieved rich marriages; Psyche
stayed at home an unmarried virgin mourning her abandoned and lonely
state, sick in body and mind, hating this beauty of hers which had
 enchanted the whole world. In the end the unhappy girl’s father,
sorrowfully suspecting that the gods were offended and fearing their
anger, consulted the most ancient oracle of Apollo at Miletus, and
implored the great god with prayers and sacrifices to grant marriage and
a husband to his slighted daughter. But Apollo, though Greek and
Ionian, in consideration for the writer of a Milesian tale, replied in Latin:

33 On mountain peak, O King, expose the maid

For funeral wedlock ritually arrayed.
No human son-in-law (hope not) is thine,
But something cruel and fierce and serpentine;
That plagues the world as, borne aloft on wings,
With fire and steel it persecutes all things;
That Jove himself, he whom the gods revere,
That Styx’s darkling stream regards with fear.
The king had once accounted himself happy; now, on hearing the
utterance of the sacred prophecy, he returned home reluctant and
downcast, to explain this inauspicious reply, and what they had to do, to
his wife. There followed several days of mourning, of weeping, of
lamentation. Eventually the ghastly fulfilment of the terrible oracle was
upon them. The gear for the poor girl’s funereal bridal was prepared; the
flame of the torches died down in black smoke and ash; the sound of the
marriage-pipe was changed to the plaintive Lydian mode; the joyful
marriage-hymn ended in lugubrious wailings; and the bride wiped away
her tears with her own bridal veil. The whole city joined in lamenting
the sad plight of the afflicted family, and in sympathy with the general
grief all public business was immediately suspended.
34 However, the bidding of heaven had to be obeyed, and the unfortunate
Psyche was required to undergo the punishment ordained for her.
Accordingly, amid the utmost sorrow, the ceremonies of her funereal
marriage were duly performed, and escorted by the entire populace
Psyche was led forth, a living corpse, and in tears joined in, not her
wedding procession, but her own funeral. While her parents, grief-
stricken and stunned by this great calamity, hesitated to complete the
 dreadful deed, their daughter herself encouraged them: ‘Why do you
torture your unhappy old age with prolonged weeping? Why do you
weary your spirit – my spirit rather – with constant cries of woe? Why
do you disfigure with useless tears the faces which I revere? Why by
tearing your eyes do you tear mine? Why do you pull out your white
hairs? Why do you beat your breasts, those breasts which to me are
holy? These, it seems, are the glorious rewards for you of my
incomparable beauty. Only now is it given to you to understand that it is
wicked Envy that has dealt you this deadly blow. Then, when nations
and peoples were paying us divine honours, when with one voice they
were hailing me as a new Venus, that was when you should have
grieved, when you should have wept, when you should have mourned
me as already lost. Now I too understand, now I see that it is by the
name of Venus alone that I am destroyed. Take me and leave me on the
rock to which destiny has assigned me. I cannot wait to enter on this
happy marriage, and to see that noble bridegroom of mine. Why should I
postpone, why should I shirk my meeting with him who is born for the
ruin of the whole world?’
35 After this speech the girl fell silent, and with firm step she joined the
escorting procession. They came to the prescribed crag on the steep
mountain, and on the topmost summit they set the girl and there they all
abandoned her; leaving there too the wedding torches with which they
had lighted their path, extinguished by their tears, with bowed heads
they took their way homeward. Psyche’s unhappy parents, totally
prostrated by this great calamity, hid themselves away in the darkness of
their shuttered palace and abandoned themselves to perpetual night. Her,
however, fearful and trembling and lamenting her fate there on the
summit of the rock, the gentle breeze of softly breathing Zephyr,
blowing the edges of her dress this way and that and filling its folds,
imperceptibly lifted up; and carrying her on his tranquil breath smoothly
down the slope of the lofty crag he gently let her sink and laid her to rest
on the flowery turf in the bosom of the valley that lay below.
BOOK 5

The story of Cupid and Psyche continued

1 In this soft grassy spot Psyche lay pleasantly reclining on her bed of
dewy turf and, her great disquiet of mind soothed, fell sweetly asleep.
Presently, refreshed by a good rest, she rose with her mind at ease. What
she now saw was a park planted with big tall trees and a spring of
crystal-clear water. In the very centre of the garden, by the outflow of the
spring, a palace had been built, not by human hands but by a divine
craftsman. Directly you entered you knew that you were looking at the
pleasure-house of some god–so splendid and delightful it was. For the
coffering of the ceiling was of citron-wood and ivory artfully carved, and
the columns supporting it were of gold; all the walls were covered in
embossed silver, with wild beasts and other animals confronting the
visitor on entering. Truly, whoever had so skilfully imparted animal life
to all that silver was a miracle-worker or a demigod or indeed a god!
Furthermore, the very floors were divided up into different kinds of
pictures in mosaic of precious stones: twice indeed and more than twice
marvellously happy those who walk on gems and jewellery! As far and
wide as the house extended, every part of it was likewise of inestimable
price. All the walls, which were built of solid blocks of gold, shone with
their own brilliance, so that the house furnished its own daylight, sun or
no sun; such was the radiance of the rooms, the colonnades, the very
doors. The rest of the furnishings matched the magnificence of the
building, so that it would seem fair to say that great Jove had built
himself a heavenly palace to dwell among mortals.
2 Drawn on by the delights of this place, Psyche approached and,
becoming a little bolder, crossed the threshold; then, allured by her joy
in the beautiful spectacle, she examined all the details. On the far side of
the palace she discovered lofty storehouses crammed with rich treasure;
there is nothing that was not there. But in addition to the wonder that
such wealth could exist, what was most astonishing was that this vast
treasure of the entire world was not secured by a single lock, bolt, or
guard. As she gazed at all this with much pleasure there came to her a
disembodied voice: ‘Mistress, you need not be amazed at this great
wealth. All of it is yours. Enter then your bedchamber, sleep off your
fatigue, and go to your bath when you are minded. We whose voices you
hear are your attendants who will diligently wait on you; and when you
have refreshed yourself
a royal banquet will not be slow to appear for you.’ Psyche recognized
3 her happy estate as sent by divine Providence, and obeying the
instructions of the bodiless voice she dispelled her weariness first with
sleep and then with a bath. There immediately appeared before her a
semicircular seat; seeing the table laid she understood that this provision
was for her entertainment and gladly took her place. Instantly course
after course of wine like nectar and of different kinds of food was placed
before her, with no servant to be seen but everything wafted as it were
on the wind. She could see no one but merely heard the words that were
uttered, and her waiting maids were nothing but voices to her. When the
rich feast was over, there entered an invisible singer, and another
performed on a lyre, itself invisible. This was succeeded by singing in
concert, and though not a soul was to be seen, there was evidently a
whole choir present.
4 These pleasures ended, at the prompting of dusk Psyche went to bed.
Night was well advanced when she heard a gentle sound. Then, all alone
as she was and fearing for her virginity, Psyche quailed and trembled,
dreading, more than any possible harm, the unknown. Now there entered
her unknown husband; he had mounted the bed, made her his wife, and
departed in haste before sunrise. At once the voices that were in waiting
in the room ministered to the new bride’s slain virginity. Things went on
in this way for some little time; and, as is usually the case, the novelty of
her situation became pleasurable to her by force of habit, while the
sound of the unseen voice solaced her solitude.
 Meanwhile her parents were pining away with ceaseless grief and
sorrow; and as the news spread her elder sisters learned the whole story.
Immediately, sad and downcast, they left home and competed
with each other in their haste to see and talk to their parents. That night
5 her husband spoke to Psyche – for though she could not see him, her
hands and ears told her that he was there – as follows: ‘Sweetest Psyche,
my dear wife, Fortune in yet more cruel guise threatens you with mortal
danger: I charge you to be most earnestly on your guard against it. Your
sisters, believing you to be dead, are now in their grief following you to
the mountain-top and will soon be there. If you should hear their
lamentations, do not answer or even look that way, or you will bring
about heavy grief for me and for yourself sheer destruction.’ She agreed
and promised to do her husband’s bidding, but as soon as he and the
night had vanished together, the unhappy girl spent the whole day crying
and mourning, constantly repeating that now she was utterly destroyed:
locked up in this rich prison and deprived of intercourse or speech with
human beings, she could not bring comfort to her sisters in their sorrow
or even set eyes on them. Unrevived by bath or food or any other
refreshment and weeping inconsolably she retired to rest.
6 It was no more than a moment before her husband, earlier than usual,
came to bed and found her still in tears. Taking her in his arms he
remonstrated with her: ‘Is this what you promised, my Psyche? I am
your husband: what am I now supposed to expect from you? What am I
supposed to hope? All day, all night, even in your husband’s arms, you
persist in tormenting yourself. Do then as you wish and obey the ruinous
demands of your heart. Only be mindful of my stern warning when – too
late – you begin to be sorry.’ Then with entreaties and threats of suicide
she forced her husband to agree to her wishes: to see her sisters, to
appease their grief, to talk with them. So he yielded to the prayers of his
new bride, and moreover allowed her to present them with whatever she
liked in the way of gold or jewels, again and again, however, repeating
his terrifying warnings: she must never be induced by the evil advice of
her sisters to discover what her husband looked like, or allow impious
curiosity to hurl her down to destruction from the heights on which
Fortune had placed her, and so for ever deprive her of his embraces.
Psyche thanked her husband and, happier now in her mind, ‘Indeed,’ she
said, ‘I will die a hundred deaths before I let myself be robbed of this
 most delightful marriage with you. For I love and adore you to
distraction, whoever you are, as I love my own life; Cupid himself
cannot compare with you. But this too I beg you to grant me: order your
servant Zephyr to bring my sisters to me as he brought me here’ – and
planting seductive kisses, uttering caressing words, and entwining him
in her enclosing arms, she added to her endearments ‘My darling, my
husband, sweet soul of your Psyche.’ He unwillingly gave way under the
powerful influence of her murmured words of love, and promised to do
all she asked; and then, as dawn was now near, he vanished from his
wife’s arms.
7 The sisters inquired the way to the rock where Psyche had been left and
hurriedly made off to it, where they started to cry their eyes out and beat
their breasts, so that the rocky crags re-echoed their ceaseless wailings.
They went on calling their unhappy sister by name, until the piercing
noise of their shrieks carried down the mountainside and brought Psyche
running out of the palace in distraction, crying: ‘Why are you killing
yourselves with miserable lamentation for no reason? I whom you are
mourning, I am here. Cease your sad outcry, dry now your cheeks so
long wet with tears; for now you can embrace her for whom you were
grieving.’ Then she summoned Zephyr and reminded him of her
husband’s order. On the instant he obeyed her command and on his most
gentle breeze at once brought them to her unharmed. Then they gave
themselves over to the enjoyment of embraces and eager kisses; and
coaxed by their joy the tears which they had restrained now broke out
again. ‘But now,’ said Psyche, ‘enter in happiness my house and
home and with your sister restore your tormented souls.’ With these
8 words she showed them the great riches of the golden palace and let
them listen to the retinue of slave-voices, and refreshed them
sumptuously with a luxurious bath and the supernatural splendours of
her table. They, having enjoyed to the full this profusion of divine riches,
now began deep in their hearts to cherish envy. Thus one of them
persisted with minute inquiries, asking who was the master of this
heavenly household and who or what was Psyche’s husband. Psyche,
however, scrupulously respected her husband’s orders and did not allow
herself to forget them; she improvised a story that he was a handsome
young man whose beard had only just begun to grow and that he spent
most of his time farming or hunting in the mountains. Then, fearing that
 if the conversation went on too long some slip would give away her
secret thoughts, she loaded them with gold plate and jewellery,
immediately summoned Zephyr, and handed them over to him for their
return journey.
9 No sooner said than done. The worthy sisters on their return home were
now inflamed by the poison of their growing envy, and began to
exchange vociferous complaints. So then the first started: ‘You see the
blindness, the cruelty and injustice of Fortune! – content, it would seem,
that sisters of the same parents should fare so differently. Here are we,
the elder sisters, handed over to foreign husbands as slaves, banished
from our home, our own country, to live the life of exiles far from our
parents, while she, the youngest, the offspring of a late birth from a
worn-out womb, enjoys huge wealth and a god for husband. Why, she
doesn’t even know how to make proper use of all these blessings. You
saw, sister, all the priceless necklaces, the resplendent stuffs, the
sparkling gems, the gold everywhere underfoot. If this husband of hers
is as handsome as she says, she is the happiest woman alive. Perhaps,
though, as he learns to know her and his love is strengthened, her god-
husband will make her a goddess too. Yes, yes, that’s it: that explains her
behaviour and her attitude. She’s already looking to heaven and fancying
herself a goddess, this woman who has voices for slaves and lords it
over the winds themselves. And I, God help me, am fobbed off with a
husband older than my father, bald as a pumpkin and puny as a child,
who keeps the whole house shut up with bolts and bars.’
10 Her sister took up the refrain: ‘And I have to put up with a husband
bent double with rheumatism and so hardly ever able to give me what a
woman wants. I’m always having to massage his twisted, stone-hard
fingers, spoiling these delicate hands of mine with stinking compresses
and filthy bandages and loathsome plasters – so that it’s not a dutiful
wife I look like but an overworked sick-nurse. You must decide for
yourself, sister, how patiently – or rather slavishly, for I shall say frankly
what I think – you can bear this; as for me, I can no longer stand the
sight of such good fortune befalling one so unworthy of it. Do you
remember the pride, the arrogance, with which she treated us? How her
boasting, her shameless showing off, revealed her puffed-up heart? With
what bad grace she tossed us a few scraps of her vast wealth and then
without more ado, tiring of our company, ordered us to be thrust – blown
 – whistled away? As I’m a woman, as sure as I stand here, I’ll hurl her
down to ruin from her great riches. And if you too, as you have every
right to do, have taken offence at her contemptuous treatment of us, let
us put our heads together to devise strong measures. Let us not show
these presents to our parents or to anybody else, and let us pretend not to
know even whether she is alive or dead. It’s enough that we’ve seen
what we wish we hadn’t, without spreading this happy news of her to
them and to the rest of the world. You aren’t really rich if nobody knows
that you are. She is going to find out that she has elder sisters, not
servants. Now let us return to our husbands and go back to our homes –
poor but decent – and then when we’ve thought things over seriously let
us equip ourselves with an even firmer resolve to punish her insolence.’
11 The two evil women thought well of this wicked plan, and having
hidden all their precious gifts, they tore their hair and clawed their
cheeks (no more than they deserved), renewing their pretence of
mourning. In this way they inflamed their parents’ grief all over again;
and then, taking a hasty leave of them, they made off to their homes
swollen with mad rage, to devise their wicked – their murderous – plot
against their innocent sister. Meanwhile Psyche’s mysterious husband
once more warned her as they talked together that night: ‘Don’t you see
the danger that threatens you? Fortune is now engaging your outposts,
and if you do not stand very firmly on your guard she will soon be
grappling with you hand to hand. These treacherous she-wolves are
doing their best to lay a horrible trap for you; their one aim is to
persuade you to try to know my face – but if you do see it, as I have
constantly told you, you will not see it. So then if those vile witches
come, as I know they will, armed with their deadly designs, you must
not even talk to them; but if because of your natural lack of guile and
tenderness of heart you are unequal to that, at least you must refuse to
listen to or answer any questions about your husband. For before long
we are going to increase our family; your womb, until now a child’s, is
carrying a child for us in its turn – who, if you hide our secret in silence,
will
be divine, but if you divulge it, he will be mortal.’ Hearing this, Psyche,
12 blooming with happiness, clapped her hands at the consoling thought of
a divine child, exulting in the glory of this pledge that was to come and
rejoicing in the dignity of being called a mother. Anxiously she counted
 the growing tale of days and months as they passed, and as she learned
to bear her unfamiliar burden she marvelled that from a moment’s pain
there should come so fair an increase of her rich womb.
But now those plagues, foulest Furies, breathing viperine poison and
pressing on in their devilish haste, had started their voyage; and once
more her transitory husband warned Psyche: ‘The day of reckoning and
the last chance are here. Your own sex, your own flesh and blood, are
the enemy, arrayed in arms against you; they have marched out and
drawn up their line, and sounded the trumpet-call; with drawn sword
your abominable sisters are making for your throat. What disasters press
upon us, sweetest Psyche! Have pity on yourself and on us both;
remember your duty and control yourself, save your home, your
husband, and this little son of ours from the catastrophe that threatens
us. You cannot call those wicked women sisters any longer; in their
murderous hatred they have spurned the ties of blood. Do not look at
them, do not listen to them, when like the Sirens aloft on their crag they
make the rocks ring with their deadly voices.’
13 As she replied, Psyche’s voice was muffled by sobs and tears: ‘More
than once, I know, you have put my loyalty and discretion to the proof,
but none the less now you shall approve my strength of mind. Only once
more order our Zephyr to do his duty, and instead of your own sacred
face that is denied me let me at least behold my sisters. By those fragrant
locks that hang so abundantly, by those soft smooth cheeks so like mine,
by that breast warm with hidden heat, as I hope to see your face at least
in this little one: be swayed by the dutiful prayers of an anxious
suppliant, allow me to enjoy my sisters’ embrace, and restore and
delight the soul of your devoted Psyche. As to your face, I ask nothing
more; even the darkness of night does not blind me; I have you as my
light.’ Enchanted by her words and her soft embrace, her husband dried
her tears with his hair, promised to do as she asked, and then left at once
just as day was dawning.
14 The two sisters, sworn accomplices, without even visiting their parents,
disembarked and made their way at breakneck speed straight to the well-
known rock, where, without waiting for their conveying wind to appear,
they launched themselves with reckless daring into the void. However,
Zephyr, heeding though reluctantly his royal master’s commands,
received them in the embrace of his gentle breeze and brought them to
 the ground. Without losing a second they immediately marched into the
palace in close order, and embracing their victim these women who
belied the name of sister, hiding their rich store of treachery under
smiling faces, began to fawn on her: ‘Psyche, not little Psyche any
longer, so you too are a mother! Only fancy what a blessing for us you
are carrying in your little pocket! Think of the joy and gladness for our
whole house! Imagine what pleasure we shall take in raising this
marvellous child! If he is, as he ought to be, as fair as his parents, it will
be a real Cupid that will be born.’
15 With such pretended affection did they little by little make their way
into their sister’s heart. Then and there she sat them down to recover
from the fatigues of their journey, provided warm baths for their
refreshment, and then at table entertained them splendidly with all those
wonderful rich eatables and savoury delicacies of hers. She gave an
order, and the lyre played; another, and there was pipe-music; another,
and the choir sang. All these invisible musicians soothed with their
sweet strains the hearts of the listeners. Not that the malice of the
wicked sisters was softened or quieted even by the honeyed sweetness of
the music; directing their conversation towards the trap their guile had
staked out they craftily began to ask Psyche about her husband, his
family, his class, his occupation. She, silly girl that she was, forgetting
what she had said before, concocted a new story and told them that her
husband was a prosperous merchant from the neighbouring province, a
middle-aged man with a few white hairs here and there. However, she
did not dwell on this for more than a moment or two, but again returned
them to their aerial transport loaded with rich gifts.
16 No sooner were they on their way back, carried aloft by Zephyr’s calm
breath, than they began to hold forth to each other: ‘Well, sister, what is
one to say about that silly baggage’s fantastic lies? Last time it was a
youth with a fluffy beard, now it’s a middle-aged man with white hair.
Who is this who in a matter of days has been suddenly transformed into
an old man? Take it from me, sister, either the little bitch is telling a
pack of lies or she doesn’t know what her husband looks like.
Whichever it is, she must be relieved of those riches of hers without
more ado. If she doesn’t know his shape, obviously it is a god she has
married and it’s a god her pregnancy will bring us. All I can say is, if
she’s called – God forbid – the mother of a divine child, I’ll hang myself
 and be done with it. Meanwhile then let us go back to our parents, and
we’ll patch together the most colourable fabrication we can to support
what we’ve agreed on.’
17 On fire with this idea they merely greeted their parents in passing; and
having spent a disturbed and wakeful night, in the morning they flew to
the rock. Under the protection as usual of the wind they swooped down
in a fury, and rubbing their eyelids to bring on the tears they craftily
accosted the girl: ‘There you sit, happy and blessed in your very
ignorance of your misfortune and careless of your danger, while we
can’t sleep for watching over your welfare, and are suffering acute
torments in your distress. For we know for a fact, and you know we
share all your troubles and misfortunes, so we cannot hide it from you,
that it is an immense serpent, writhing its knotted coils, its bloody jaws
dripping deadly poison, its maw gaping deep, if only you knew it, that
sleeps with you each night. Remember now the Pythian oracle, which
gave out that you were fated to wed a wild beast. Many peasants and
hunters of the region and many of your neighbours have seen him
coming back from feeding and
bathing in the waters of the nearby river. They all say that it won’t be for
18 long that he will go on fattening you so obligingly, but that as soon as
the fullness of your womb brings your pregnancy to maturity and you
are that much more rich and enjoyable a prize, he will eat you up. Well,
there it is; it’s you who must decide whether to take the advice of your
sisters who are worried for your life, and escape death by coming to live
in safety with us, or be entombed in the entrails of a savage monster.
However, if a country life and musical solitude, and the loathsome and
dangerous intimacy of clandestine love, and the embraces of a venomous
serpent, are what appeals to you, at all events your loving sisters will
have done their duty.’
Then poor Psyche, simple and childish creature that she was, was
seized by fear at these grim words. Beside herself, she totally forgot all
her husband’s warnings and her own promises, and hurled herself
headlong into an abyss of calamity. Trembling, her face bloodless and
ghastly, she scarcely managed after several attempts to whisper
from half-opened lips: ‘Dearest sisters, you never fail in your loving
19 duty, as is right and proper, and I do not believe that those who have told
you these things are lying. For I have never seen my husband’s face and
 I have no idea where he comes from; only at night, obeying his voice, do
I submit to this husband of unknown condition – one who altogether
shuns the light; and when you say that he must be some sort of wild
beast, I can only agree with you. For he constantly terrifies me with
warnings not to try to look at him, and threatens me with a fearful fate if
I am curious about his appearance. So if you can offer some way of
escape to your sister in her peril, support her now: for if you desert me at
this point, all the benefits of your earlier concern will be lost.’
The gates were now thrown open, and these wicked women stormed
Psyche’s defenceless heart; they ceased sapping and mining, drew the
swords of their treachery, and attacked the panic-stricken
thoughts of the simple-minded girl. First one began: ‘Since the ties of
20 blood forbid us to consider danger when your safety is at stake, let us
show you the only way that can save you, one that we have long
planned. Take a very sharp blade and give it an additional edge by
stropping it gently on your palm, then surreptitiously hide it on your side
of the bed; get ready a lamp and fill it with oil, then when it is burning
brightly put it under cover of a jar of some kind, keeping all these
preparations absolutely secret; and then, when he comes, leaving his
furrowed trail behind him, and mounts the bed as usual, as he lies
outstretched and, enfolded in his first heavy sleep, begins to breathe
deeply, slip out of bed and with bare feet taking tiny steps one by one on
tiptoe, free the lamp from its prison of blind darkness; and consulting the
light as to the best moment for your glorious deed, with that two-edged
weapon, boldly, first raising high your right hand, with powerful stroke,
there where the deadly serpent’s head and neck are joined – cut them
apart. Our help will not be wanting; the instant you have secured
yourself by his death, we shall be anxiously awaiting the moment to fly
to you; then we will take all these riches back along with you and make
a desirable marriage for you, human being to human being.’
21 Their sister had been on fire; these words kindled her heart to a fierce
flame. They immediately left her, fearing acutely to be found anywhere
near such a crime. Carried back as usual on the wings of the wind and
deposited on the rock, they at once made themselves scarce, embarked,
and sailed away. But Psyche, alone now except for the savage Furies
who harried her, was tossed to and fro in her anguish like the waves of
the sea. Though she had taken her decision and made up her mind, now
 that she came to put her hand to the deed she began to waver, unsure of
her resolve, torn by the conflicting emotions of her terrible situation.
Now she was eager, now she would put it off; now she dared, now she
drew back; now she was in despair, now in a rage; and, in a word, in one
and the same body she loathed the monster and loved the husband.
However, when evening ushered in the night, she hurried to prepare for
her dreadful deed. Night came, and with, it her husband, who, having
first engaged on the field of love, fell into a deep sleep.
22 Then Psyche, though naturally weak in body, rallied her strength with
cruel Fate reinforcing it, produced the lamp, seized the blade, and took
on a man’s courage. But as soon as the light was brought out and the
secret of their bed became plain, what she saw was of all wild beasts the
most soft and sweet of monsters, none other than Cupid himself, the fair
god fairly lying asleep. At the sight the flame of the lamp was gladdened
and flared up, and her blade began to repent its blasphemous edge.
Psyche, unnerved by the wonderful vision, was no longer mistress of
herself: feeble, pale, trembling and powerless, she crouched down and
tried to hide the steel by burying it in her own bosom; and she would
certainly have done it, had not the steel in fear of such a crime slipped
and flown out of her rash hands. Now, overcome and utterly lost as she
was, yet as she gazed and gazed on the beauty of the god’s face, her
spirits returned. She saw a rich head of golden hair dripping with
ambrosia, a milk-white neck, and rosy cheeks over which there strayed
coils of hair becomingly arranged, some hanging in front, some behind,
shining with such extreme brilliance that the lamplight itself flickered
uncertainly. On the shoulders of the flying god there sparkled wings,
dewy-white with glistening sheen, and though they were at rest the soft
delicate down at their edges quivered and rippled in incessant play. The
rest of the god’s body was smooth and shining and such as Venus need
not be ashamed of in her son. At the foot of the bed lay a bow, a quiver,
and arrows, the gracious weapons of the great god.
23 Curious as ever, Psyche could not restrain herself from examining and
handling and admiring her husband’s weapons. She took one of the
arrows out of the quiver and tried the point by pricking her thumb; but
as her hands were still trembling she used too much force, so that the
point went right in and tiny drops of blood bedewed her skin. Thus
without realizing it Psyche through her own act fell in love with Love.
 Then ever more on fire with desire for Desire she hung over him gazing
in distraction and devoured him with quick sensuous kisses, fearing all
the time that he might wake up. Carried away by joy and sick with love,
her heart was in turmoil; but meanwhile that wretched lamp, either
through base treachery, or in jealous malice, or because it longed itself to
touch such beauty and as it were to kiss it, disgorged from its spout a
drop of hot oil on to the right shoulder of the god. What! Rash and
reckless lamp, lowly instrument of love, to burn the lord of universal fire
himself, when it must have been a lover who first invented the lamp so
that he could enjoy his desires for even longer at night! The god, thus
burned, leapt up, and seeing his confidence betrayed and sullied, flew
off from the loving embrace of his unhappy wife without uttering a
word.
24 But as he rose Psyche just managed to seize his right leg with both
hands, a pitiful passenger in his lofty flight; trailing attendance through
the clouds she clung on underneath, but finally in her exhaustion fell to
the ground. Her divine lover did not abandon her as she lay there, but
alighting in a nearby cypress he spoke to her from its lofty top with deep
emotion: ‘Simple-minded Psyche, forgetting the instructions of my
mother Venus, who ordered that you should be bound by desire for the
lowest of wretches and enslaved to a degrading marriage, I myself flew
to you instead as your lover. But this I did, I know, recklessly; I, the
famous archer, wounded myself with my own weapons and made you
my wife – so that, it seems, you might look on me as a monster and cut
off this head which carries these eyes that love you. This is what I again
and again advised you to be always on your guard against; this is what I
repeatedly warned of in my care for you. But those worthy counsellors
of yours shall speedily pay the price of their pernicious teaching; your
punishment shall merely be that I shall leave you.’ And with these last
words he launched himself aloft on his wings.
25 Psyche, as she lay and watched her husband’s flight for as long as she
could see him, grieved and lamented bitterly. But when with sweeping
wings he had soared away and she had altogether lost sight of him in the
distance, she threw herself headlong off the bank of a nearby stream. But
the gentle river, in respect it would seem for the god who is wont to
scorch even water, and fearing for himself, immediately bore her up
unharmed on his current and landed her on his grassy bank. It happened
 that the country god Pan was sitting there with the mountain nymph
Echo in his arms, teaching her to repeat all kinds of song. By the bank
his kids browsed and frolicked at large, cropping the greenery of the
river. The goat-god, aware no matter how of her plight, called the
lovesick and suffering Psyche to him kindly and caressed her with
soothing words: ‘Pretty child, I may be a rustic and a herdsman, but age
and experience have taught me a great deal. If I guess aright – and this
indeed is what learned men style divination – from these tottering and
uncertain steps of yours, and from your deathly pallor, and from your
continual sighing, and from your swimming eyes, you are desperately in
love. Listen to me then, and do not try to destroy yourself again by
jumping off heights or by any other kind of unnatural death. Stop
weeping and lay aside your grief; rather adore in prayer Cupid, greatest
of gods, and strive to earn his favour, young wanton and pleasure-loving
that he is, through tender service.’
26 These were the words of the herdsman-god. Psyche made no reply, but
having worshipped his saving power went on her way. But when she had
wandered far and wide with toilsome steps, as day waned she came
without realizing it by a certain path to the city where the husband of
one of her sisters was king. On discovering this, Psyche had herself
announced to her sister. She was ushered in, and after they had
exchanged greetings and embraces she was asked why she had come.
Psyche replied: ‘You remember the advice you both gave me, how you
persuaded me to kill with two-edged blade the monster who slept with
me under the false name of husband, before he swallowed me up, poor
wretch, in his greedy maw. I agreed; but as soon as with the conniving
light I set eyes on his face, I saw a wonderful, a divine spectacle, the son
of Venus himself, I mean Cupid, deeply and peacefully asleep. But as I
was thrilling to the glorious sight, overwhelmed with pleasure but in
anguish because I was powerless to enjoy it, by the unhappiest of
chances the lamp spilt a drop of boiling oil on to his shoulder. Aroused
instantly from sleep by the pain, and seeing me armed with steel and
flame, “For this foul crime,” he said, “leave my bed this instant and take
your chattels with you. I shall wed your sister” – and he named you –
“in due form.” And immediately he ordered Zephyr to waft me outside
the boundaries of his palace.’
27
 Before Psyche had finished speaking, her sister, stung by frantic lust
and malignant jealousy, concocted on the spot a story to deceive her
husband, to the effect that she had had news of her parents’ death, and
immediately took ship and hurried to the well-known rock. There,
though the wind was blowing from quite a different quarter, yet besotted
with blind hope she cried: ‘Receive me, Cupid, a wife worthy of you,
and you, Zephyr, bear up your mistress’, and with a mighty leap threw
herself over. But not even in death did she reach the place she sought:
for as she fell from one rocky crag to another she was torn limb from
limb, and she died providing a banquet of her mangled flesh, as she so
richly deserved, for the birds of prey and wild beasts. The second
vengeance soon followed. For Psyche again in her wanderings arrived at
another city, where her second sister likewise lived. She too was no less
readily taken in by her sister’s ruse, and eager to supplant her in an
unhallowed marriage she hurried off to the rock and fell to a similar
death.
28 Meanwhile, as Psyche was scouring the earth, bent on her search for
Cupid, he lay groaning with the pain of the burn in his mother’s
chamber. At this point a tern, that pure white bird which skims over the
sea-waves in its flight, plunged down swiftly to the very bottom of the
sea. There sure enough was Venus bathing and swimming; and perching
by her the bird told her that her son had been burned and lay suffering
from the sharp pain of his wound and in peril of his life. Now
throughout the whole world the good name of all Venus’ family was
besmirched by all kinds of slanderous reports. People were saying: ‘He
has withdrawn to whoring in the mountains, she to swimming in the sea;
and so there is no pleasure anywhere, no grace, no charm, everything is
rough, savage, uncouth. There are no more marriages, no more mutual
friendships, no children’s love, nothing but endless squalor and
repellent, distasteful, and sordid couplings.’ Such were the slanders this
garrulous and meddlesome bird whispered in Venus’ ear to damage her
son’s honour. Venus was utterly furious and exclaimed: ‘So then, this
worthy son of mine has a mistress? You’re the only servant I have that I
can trust: out with it, the name of this creature who has debauched a
simple childish boy – is it one of the tribe of the Nymphs, or one of the
number of the Hours, or one of the choir of the Muses, or one of my
attendant Graces?’ The voluble bird answered promptly: ‘I do not know,
 my lady; but I think it’s a girl called Psyche, if I remember rightly,
whom he loves to distraction.’ Venus, outraged, cried out loud: ‘Psyche
is it, my rival in beauty, the usurper of my name, whom he loves?
Really? I suppose my lord took me for a go-between to introduce him to
the girl?’
29 Proclaiming her wrongs in this way she hurriedly left the sea and went
at once to her golden bedchamber, where she found her ailing son as she
had been told. Hardly had she passed through the door when she started
to shout at him: ‘Fine goings-on, these, a credit to our family and your
character for virtue! First you ride roughshod over your mother’s – no,
your sovereign’s – orders, by nottormenting my enemy with a base
amour; then you, a mere child, actually receive her in your vicious
adolescent embraces, so that I have to have my enemy as my daughter-
in-law. I suppose you think, you odious good-for-nothing lecher, that
you’re the only one fit to breed and that I’m now too old to conceive?
Let me tell you, I’ll bear another son much better than you – better still,
to make you feel the insult more, I’ll adopt one of my household slaves
and give him those wings and torch, and bow and arrows too, and all
that gear of mine, which I didn’t give you to be used like this – for there
was no allowance for this outfit from your father’s estate. But you were
30 badly brought up from a baby, quarrelsome, always insolently hitting
your elders. Your own mother, me I say, you expose and abuse every
day, battering me all the time, despising me, I suppose, as an unprotected
female – and you’re not afraid of that mighty warrior your stepfather.
Naturally enough, seeing that you’re in the habit of providing him with
girls, to torment me with his infidelities. But I’ll see to it that you’re
sorry for these games and find out that this marriage of yours has a sour
and bitter taste. But now, being mocked like this, what am I to do?
Where am I to turn? How am I to control this reptile? Shall I seek
assistance from Sobriety, when I have so often offended her through this
creature’s wantonness? No, I won’t, I won’t, have any dealings with
such an uncouth and unkempt female. But then the consolation of
revenge isn’t to be scorned, whatever its source. Her aid and hers alone
is what I must enlist, to administer severe correction to this layabout, to
undo his quiver, blunt his arrows, unstring his bow, put out his torch, and
coerce him with some sharper corporal medicine. I’ll believe that his
insolence to me has been fully atoned for only when she has shaved off
 the locks to which I have so often imparted a golden sheen by my
caressing hands, and cut off the wings which I have groomed with nectar
from my own breasts.’
31 With these words she rushed violently out in a fury of truly Venerean
anger. The first persons she met were Ceres and Juno, who seeing her
face all swollen with rage, asked her why she was frowning so grimly
and spoiling the shining beauty of her eyes. To which she answered:
‘You’ve come just at the right moment to satisfy the desire with which
my heart is burning. Please, I beg you, do your utmost to find that
runaway fly-by-night Psyche for me, for you two must be well aware of
the scandal of my house and of what my son – not that he deserves the
name – has been doing.’ They, knowing perfectly well what had
happened, tried to soothe Venus’ violent rage: ‘Madam, what has your
son done that’s so dreadful that you are determined to thwart his
pleasures and even want to destroy the one he loves? Is it really a crime,
for heaven’s sake, to have been so ready to give the glad eye to a nice
girl? Don’t you realize that he is a young man? You must have forgotten
how old he is now. Perhaps because he carries his years so prettily, he
always seems a boy to you? Are you, a mother and a woman of sense, to
be forever inquiring into all his diversions, checking his little escapades,
and showing up his love-affairs? Aren’t you condemning in your fair
son your own arts and pleasures? Gods and men alike will find it
intolerable that you spread desire broadcast throughout the world, while
you impose a bitter constraint on love in your own family and deny it
admission to your own public academy of gallantry.’ In this way, fearful
of his arrows, did they flatter Cupid in his absence with their ingratiating
defence of his cause. But Venus took it ill that her grievances should be
treated so lightly, and cutting them short made off quickly in the other
direction, back towards the sea.
BOOK 6

The story of Cupid and Psyche concluded — Lucius is lamed and

condemned to death by the robbers — makes a break for freedom
with Charite on his back — recaptured — Charite condemned to
death with him

1 Psyche meanwhile was wandering far and wide, searching day and night
for her husband, and the sicker she was at heart, the more eager she was,
if she could not mollify him by wifely endearments, at least to appease
his anger by beseeching him as a slave. Seeing a temple on the top of a
steep hill, ‘Perhaps,’ said she, ‘my lord lives there’; at once she made for
it, her pace, which had flagged in her unbroken fatigues, now quickened
by hope and desire. Having stoutly climbed the lofty slopes she
approached the shrine. There she saw ears of corn, some heaped up,
some woven into garlands, together with ears of barley. There were also
sickles and every kind of harvesting gear, all lying anyhow in neglect
and confusion and looking, as happens in summer, as if they had just
been dropped from the workers’ hands. All these things Psyche carefully
sorted and separated, each in its proper place, and arranged as they ought
to be, thinking evidently that she should not neglect the shrines or
worship of any god, but should implore the goodwill and pity of them
all.
2 She was diligently and busily engaged on this task when bountiful
Ceres found her, and with a deep sigh said: ‘So, poor Psyche! There is
Venus in her rage dogging your footsteps with painstaking inquiries
through the whole world, singling you out for dire punishment, and
 demanding revenge with the whole power of her godhead; and here are
you taking charge of my shrine and thinking of anything rather than your
own safety.’ Psyche fell down before her, and bedewing her feet with a
flood of tears, her hair trailing on the ground, she implored the goddess’s
favour in an elaborate prayer: ‘I beseech you, by this your fructifying
hand, by the fertile rites of harvest, by the inviolate secrets of the
caskets, by the winged chariot of your dragon-servants, by the furrows
of the Sicilian fields, by the car that snatches and the earth that catches,
by your daughter Proserpine’s descent to her lightless wedding and her
return to bright discovery, and all else that the sanctuary of Attic Eleusis
conceals in silence: support the pitiful spirit of your suppliant Psyche.
Allow me to hide for only a very few days among these heaps of corn,
until the great goddess’s fierce anger is soothed by the passing of time or
at least until my strength is recruited from the fatigues of long suffering
by an interval of rest.’ Ceres answered: ‘Your tearful prayers
indeed move me and make me wish to help you; but I cannot offend my
3 kinswoman, who is a dear friend of long standing and a thoroughly good
sort. So you must leave this place at once, and think yourself lucky that
you are not my prisoner.’
Disappointed and rebuffed, the prey of a double sadness, Psyche was
retracing her steps, when in the half-light of a wooded valley which lay
before her she saw a temple built with cunning art. Not wishing to
neglect any prospect, however doubtful, of better hopes, but willing to
implore the favour of any and every god, she drew near to the holy
entrance. There she saw precious offerings and cloths lettered in gold
affixed to trees and to the doorposts, attesting the name of the goddess to
whom they were dedicated in gratitude for her aid. Then, kneeling and
embracing the yet warm altar, she
wiped away her tears and prayed: ‘Sister and consort of great Jove,
4 whether you are at home in your ancient shrine on Samos, which alone
glories in having seen your birth, heard your first cries, and nourished
your infancy; or whether you dwell in your rich abode in lofty Carthage,
which worships you as a virgin riding the heavens on a lion; or whether
by the banks of Inachus, who hails you now as bride of the Thunderer
and queen of goddesses, you rule over the famous citadel of Argos; you
who are worshipped by the whole East as Zygia and whom all the West
calls Lucina: be in my desperate need Juno who Saves, and save me,
 worn out by the great sufferings I have gone through, from the danger
that hangs over me. Have I not been told that it is you who are wont to
come uncalled to the aid of pregnant women when they are in peril?’ As
she supplicated thus, Juno immediately manifested herself in all the
awesome dignity of her godhead, and replied: ‘Believe me, I should like
to grant your prayers. But I cannot for shame oppose myself to the
wishes of my daughter-in-law Venus, whom I have always loved as my
own child. Then too I am prevented by the laws which forbid me to
receive another person’s runaway slaves against their master’s wishes.’
5 Psyche was completely disheartened by this second shipwreck that
Fortune had contrived for her, and with no prospect of finding her
winged husband she gave up all hope of salvation. So she took counsel
with herself: ‘Now what other aid can I try, or bring to bear on my
distresses, seeing that not even the goddesses’ influence can help me,
though they would like to? Trapped in this net, where can I turn? What
shelter is there, what dark hiding-place, where I can escape the
unavoidable eyes of great Venus? No, this is the end: I must summon up
a man’s spirit, boldly renounce my empty remnants of hope, give myself
up to my mistress of my own free will, and appease her violence by
submission, late though it will be. And perhaps he whom I have sought
so long may be found there in his mother’s house.’ So, prepared for
submission with all its dangers, indeed for certain destruction, she
thought over how she should begin the prayer she would utter.
6 Venus, however, had given up earthbound expedients in her search, and
set off for heaven. She ordered to be prepared the car that Vulcan the
goldsmith god had lovingly perfected with cunning workmanship and
given her as a betrothal present — a work of art that made its impression
by what his refining tools had pared away, valuable through the very
loss of gold. Of the many doves quartered round their mistress’s
chamber there came forth four all white; stepping joyfully and twisting
their coloured necks around they submitted to the jewelled yoke, then
with their mistress on board they gaily took the air. The car was attended
by a retinue of sportive sparrows frolicking around with their noisy
chatter, and of other sweet-voiced birds who, singing in honey-toned
strains, harmoniously proclaimed the advent of the goddess. The clouds
parted, heaven opened for his daughter, and highest Aether joyfully
 welcomed the goddess; great Venus’ tuneful entourage has no fear of
ambushes from eagles or rapacious hawks.
7 She immediately headed for Jove’s royal citadel and haughtily
demanded an essential loan — the services of Mercury, the loud-voiced
god. Jove nodded his dark brow, and she in triumph left heaven then and
there with Mercury, to whom she earnestly spoke: ‘Arcadian brother,
you know well that your sister Venus has never done anything without
Mercury’s assistance, and you must be aware too of how long it is that I
have been trying in vain to find my skulking handmaid. All we can do
now is for you as herald to make public proclamation of a reward for her
discovery. Do my bidding then at once, and describe clearly the signs by
which she can be recognized, so that if anybody is charged with illegally
concealing her, he cannot defend himself with a plea of ignorance’; and
with these words she gave him a paper with Psyche’s name and the other
details. That done, she returned straight home.
8 Mercury duly obeyed her. Passing far and wide among the peoples he
carried out his assignment and made proclamation as ordered: ‘If any
man can recapture or show the hiding-place of a king’s runaway
daughter, the slave of Venus, by name Psyche, let him report to Mercury
the crier behind the South turning-point of the Circus, and by way of
reward for his information he shall receive from Venus herself seven
sweet kisses and an extra one deeply honeyed with the sweetness of her
thrusting tongue.’ This proclamation of Mercury’s and the desire for
such a reward aroused eager competition all over the world. Its effect on
Psyche was to put an end to all her hesitation. As she neared her
mistress’s door she was met by one of Venus’ household named Habit,
who on seeing her cried out at the top of her voice: ‘At last, you
worthless slut, you’ve begun to realize you have a mistress? Or will you
with your usual impudence pretend you don’t know how much trouble
we’ve had looking for you? A good thing you’ve fallen into my hands;
you’re held in the grip of Orcus, and you can be sure you won’t have to
wait long for the
punishment of your disobedience.’ So saying, she laid violent hands on
9 Psyche’s hair and dragged her inside unresisting. As soon as Venus saw
her brought in and presented to her, she laughed shrilly, as people do in a
rage; and shaking her head and scratching her right ear, ‘So,’ she said,
‘you have finally condescended to pay your respects to your mother-in-
 law? Or is it your husband you’ve come to visit, who lies under threat of
death from the wound you’ve dealt him? But don’t worry, I will receive
you as a good daughter-in-law deserves.’ Then, ‘Where are my
handmaids Care and Sorrow?’ she asked. They were called in, and
Psyche was handed over to them to be tormented. In obedience to their
mistress’s orders they whipped the wretched girl and afflicted her with
every other kind of torture, and then brought her back to face the
goddess. Venus, laughing again, exclaimed: ‘Look at her, trying to
arouse my pity through the allurement of her swollen belly, whose
glorious offspring is to make me, thank you very much, a happy
grandmother. What joy, to be called grandmother in the flower of my age
and to hear the son of a vile slave styled Venus’ grandson! But why am I
talking about sons? This isn’t a marriage between equals, and what’s
more it took place in the country, without witnesses, and without his
father’s consent, and can’t be held to be legitimate. So it will be born a
bastard, if indeed I allow you to bear it at all.’
10 With these words, she flew at Psyche, ripped her clothes to shreds, tore
her hair, boxed her ears, and beat her unmercifully. Then she took wheat
and barley and millet and poppy-seed and chick-peas and lentils and
beans, mixed them thoroughly all together in a single heap, and told
Psyche: ‘Now, since it seems to me that, ugly slave that you are, you can
earn the favours of your lovers only by diligent drudgery, I’m now going
to put your merit to the test myself. Sort out this random heap of seeds,
and let me see the work completed this evening, with each kind of grain
properly arranged and separated.’ And leaving her with the enormous
heap of grains, Venus went off to a wedding-dinner. Psyche did not
attempt to touch the disordered and unmanageable mass, but stood in
silent stupefaction, stunned by this monstrous command. Then there
appeared an ant, one of those miniature farmers; grasping the size of the
problem, pitying the plight of the great god’s bedfellow and execrating
her mother-in-law’s cruelty, it rushed round eagerly to summon and
convene the whole assembly of the local ants. ‘Have pity,’ it cried,
‘nimble children of Earth the all-mother, have pity and run with all
speed to the aid of the sweet girl-wife of Love in her peril.’ In wave
after wave the six-footed tribes poured in to the rescue, and working at
top speed they sorted out the whole heap grain by grain, separated and
distributed the seed by kinds, and vanished swiftly from view.
11 At nightfall Venus returned from the banquet flushed with wine,
fragrant with perfume, and garlanded all over with brilliant roses. When
she saw the wonderful exactness with which the task had been
performed, ‘Worthless wretch!’ she exclaimed, ‘this is not your doing or
the work of your hands, but his whose fancy you have taken — so much
the worse indeed for you, and for him’; and throwing Psyche a crust of
coarse bread she took herself to bed. Meanwhile Cupid was under strict
guard, in solitary confinement in one room at the back of the palace,
partly to stop him from aggravating his wound through his impetuous
passion, partly to stop him from seeing his beloved. So then the two
lovers, though under the same roof, were kept apart and endured a
melancholy night. As soon as Dawn took horse, Venus called Psyche
and said: ‘You see that wood which stretches along the banks of the river
which washes it in passing, and the bushes at its edge which look down
on the nearby spring? Sheep that shine with fleece of real gold wander
and graze there unguarded. Of that precious wool see that you get a tuft
by hook or by crook and bring it to me directly.’
12 Psyche set out willingly, not because she expected to fulfil her task, but
meaning to find a respite from her sufferings by throwing herself from a
rock into the river. But then from the river a green reed, source of sweet
music, divinely inspired by the gentle whisper of the soft breeze, thus
prophesied: ‘Psyche, tried by much suffering, do not pollute my holy
waters by your pitiable death. This is not the moment to approach these
fearsome sheep, while they are taking in heat from the blazing sun and
are maddened by fierce rage; their horns are sharp and their foreheads
hard as stone, and they often attack and kill men with their poisonous
bites. Rather, until the midday heat of the sun abates and the flock is
quietened by the soothing breeze off the river, you can hide under that
tall plane which drinks the current together with me. Then, when their
rage is calmed and their attention is relaxed, shake the branches of the
nearby trees, and you will find the golden wool which sticks everywhere
in their entwined stems.’
13 So this open-hearted reed in its humanity showed the unfortunate
Psyche the way to safety. She paid due heed to its salutary advice and
acted accordingly: she did everything she was told and had no trouble in
helping herself to a heaped-up armful of the golden softness to bring
back to Venus. Not that, from her mistress at least, the successful
 outcome of her second trial earned her any approval. Venus bent her
brows and with an acid smile said: ‘I am not deceived: this exploit too is
that lecher’s. Now, however, I shall really exert myself to find out
whether you have a truly stout heart and a good head on your shoulders.
You see the top of the steep mountain that looms over that lofty crag,
from which there flows down the dark waters of a black spring, to be
received in a basin of the neighbouring valley, and then to water the
marshes of Styx and feed the hoarse streams of Cocytus? There, just
where the spring gushes out on the very summit, draw off its ice-cold
water and bring it to me instantly in this jar.’ So saying she gave her an
urn hollowed out from crystal, adding yet direr threats.
14 Psyche eagerly quickened her pace towards the mountain-top,
expecting to find at least an end of her wretched existence there. But as
soon as she approached the summit that Venus had shown her, she saw
the deadly difficulty of her enormous task. There stood a rock, huge and
lofty, too rough and treacherous to climb; from jaws of stone in its midst
it poured out its grim stream, which first gushed from a sloping cleft,
then plunged steeply to be hidden in the narrow channel of the path it
had carved out for itself, and so to fall by secret ways into the
neighbouring valley. To left and right she saw emerging from the rocky
hollows fierce serpents with long necks outstretched, their eyes enslaved
to unwinking vigilance, forever on the watch and incessantly wakeful.
And now the very water defended itself in speech, crying out repeatedly
‘Be off!’ and ‘What are you doing? Look out!’ and ‘What are you
about? Take care!’ and ‘Fly!’ and ‘You’ll die!’ Psyche was turned to
stone by the sheer impossibility of her task, and though her body was
present her senses left her: overwhelmed completely by the weight of
dangers she was powerless to cope with, she could not even weep, the
last consolation.
15 But the suffering of this innocent soul did not escape the august eyes of
Providence. For the regal bird of almighty Jove, the ravisher eagle,
suddenly appeared with outspread wings, and remembering his former
service, how prompted by Cupid he had stolen the Phrygian cupbearer
for Jupiter, brought timely aid. In honour of the god’s power, and seeing
his wife’s distress, he left Jove’s pathways in the heights, and gliding
down before the girl he addressed her: ‘Do you, naive as you are and
inexperienced in such things, hope to be able to steal a single drop of
 this most holy and no less terrible spring, or even touch it? You must
have heard that this water of Styx is feared by the gods themselves, even
Jupiter, and that the oaths which mortals swear by the power of the gods,
the gods swear by the majesty of Styx. Give me that urn’ — and seizing
and holding it he took off, and poising himself on his mighty hovering
wings he steered to left and right between the raging jaws and flickering
three-forked tongues of the dragons, to draw off the waters, though they
resisted and warned him to retreat while he could do so in safety — he
pretending meanwhile that he had been ordered to fetch it by Venus and
that he was in her service; and thus it was a little easier for him to
approach.
16 Psyche joyfully received the full urn and took it back at once to Venus.
Even then, however, she could not satisfy the wishes of the cruel
goddess. Threatening her with yet worse outrages, she addressed Psyche
with a deadly smile: ‘I really think you must be some sort of great and
profoundly accomplished witch to have carried out so promptly orders
like these of mine. But you still have to do me this service, my dear.
Take this casket’ (giving it to her) ‘and be off with you to the
Underworld and the ghostly abode of Orcus himself. Present it to
Proserpine and say: “Venus begs that you send her a little of your
beauty, enough at least for one short day. For the supply that she had,
she has quite used up and exhausted in looking after her ailing son.”
Come back in good time, for I must make myself up from it before
going to the theatre of the gods.’
17 Then indeed Psyche knew that her last hour had come and that all
disguise was at an end, and that she was being openly sent to instant
destruction. So much was clear, seeing that she was being made to go on
her own two feet to Tartarus and the shades. Without delay she made for
a certain lofty tower, meaning to throw herself off it: for in that way she
thought she could most directly and economically go down to the
Underworld. But the tower suddenly broke into speech: ‘Why, poor
child, do you want to destroy yourself by a death-leap? Why needlessly
give up at this last ordeal? Once your soul is separated from your body,
then indeed you will go straight to the pit of Tartarus, but there will be
no coming back for
you. Listen to me. Not far from here is Sparta, a famous city of Greece.
18 Near to it, hidden in a trackless countryside, you must find Taenarus.
 There you’ll see the breathing-hole of Dis, and through its gaping portals
the forbidden road; once you have passed the threshold and entrusted
yourself to it, you will fare by a direct track to the very palace of Orcus.
But you must not go through that darkness empty-handed as you are;
you must carry in your hands cakes of barley meal soaked in wine and
honey, and in your mouth two coins. When you have gone a good way
along the infernal road you will meet a lame donkey loaded with wood
and with a lame driver; he will ask you to hand him some sticks fallen
from the load, but you must say nothing and pass by in silence. Directly
after that you will come to the river of death. Its harbourmaster is
Charon, who ferries wayfarers to the other bank in his boat of skins only
on payment of the fee which he immediately demands. So it seems that
avarice lives even among the dead, and a great god like Charon, Dis’s
Collector, does nothing for nothing. A poor man on his deathbed must
make sure of his journey-money, and if he hasn’t got the coppers to
hand, he won’t be allowed to expire. To this unkempt old man you must
give one of your coins as his fare, making him take it himself from your
mouth. Then, while you are crossing the sluggish stream, an old dead
man swimming over will raise his decaying hands to ask you to haul him
aboard; but you
must not be swayed by pity, which is forbidden to you. When you are
19 across and have gone a little way, some old women weavers will ask you
to lend a hand for a moment to set up their loom; but here too you must
not become involved. For all these and many other ruses will be inspired
by Venus to make you drop one of your cakes. Don’t think the loss of a
paltry barley cake a light thing: if you lose one you will thereby lose the
light of the sun. For a huge dog with three enormous heads, a monstrous
and fearsome brute, barking thunderously and with empty menace at the
dead, whom he can no longer harm, is on perpetual guard before the
threshold and dark halls of Proserpine, and watches over the empty
house of Dis. Him you can muzzle by letting him have one of your
cakes; passing him easily by you will come directly to Proserpine, who
will receive you kindly and courteously, urging you to take a soft seat
and join her in a rich repast. But you must sit on the ground and ask for
some coarse bread; when you have eaten it you can tell her why you
have come, and then taking what you are given you can return. Buy off
the fierce dog with your other cake, and then giving the greedy ferryman
 the coin you have kept you will cross the river and retrace your earlier
path until you regain the light of heaven above. But this prohibition
above all I bid you observe: do not open or look into the box that you
bear or pry at all into its hidden store of divine beauty.’
20 So this far-sighted tower accomplished its prophetic task. Psyche
without delay made for Taenarus, where she duly equipped herself with
coins and cakes and made the descent to the Underworld. Passing in
silence the lame donkey-driver, paying her fare to the ferryman, ignoring
the plea of the dead swimmer, rejecting the crafty entreaties of the
weavers, and appeasing the fearsome rage of the dog with her cake, she
arrived at Proserpine’s palace. She declined her hostess’s offer of a soft
seat and rich food, and sitting on the ground before her feet, content with
a piece of coarse bread, she reported Venus’ commission. The box was
immediately taken away to be filled and closed up in private, and given
back to Psyche. By the device of the second cake she muzzled the dog’s
barking, and giving the ferryman her second coin she returned from the
Underworld much more briskly than she had come. Having regained and
worshipped the bright light of day, though in a hurry to complete her
mission, she madly succumbed to her reckless curiosity. ‘What a fool I
am,’ said she, ‘to be carrying divine beauty and not to help myself even
to a tiny bit of it, so as perhaps to please my beautiful
lover.’ So saying she opened the box. But she found nothing whatever in
21 it, no beauty, but only an infernal sleep, a sleep truly Stygian, which
when the lid was taken off and it was let out at once took possession of
her and diffused itself in a black cloud of oblivion throughout her whole
body, so that overcome by it she collapsed on the spot where she stood
in the pathway, and lay motionless, a mere sleeping corpse.
But Cupid’s wound had now healed and, his strength returned, he could
no longer bear to be parted for so long from Psyche. He escaped from
the high window of the room in which he was confined; and, with his
wings restored by his long rest, he flew off at great speed to the side of
his Psyche. Carefully wiping off the sleep and replacing it where it had
been in the box, he roused her with a harmless prick from one of his
arrows. ‘There, poor wretch,’ he said, ‘you see how yet again curiosity
has been your undoing. But meanwhile you must complete the mission
assigned you by my mother with all diligence; the rest I will see to.’ So
 saying, her lover nimbly took flight, while Psyche quickly took back
Proserpine’s gift to Venus.
22 Meanwhile Cupid, eaten up with love, looking ill, and dreading his
mother’s new-found austerity, became himself again. On swift wings he
made his way to the very summit of heaven and pleaded his cause as a
suppliant with great Jupiter. Jupiter took Cupid’s face in his hand, pulled
it to his own, and kissed him, saying: ‘In spite of the fact, dear boy, that
you have never paid me the respect decreed me by the gods in council,
but have constantly shot and wounded this breast of mine by which the
behaviour of the elements and the movements of the heavenly bodies are
regulated, defiling it repeatedly with lustful adventures on earth,
compromising my reputation and character by low intrigues in defiance
of the laws, the Lex Julia included, and of public morals, changing my
majestic features into the base shapes of snakes, of fire, of wild animals,
of birds and of farmyard beasts — yet in spite of all, remembering my
clemency and that you grew up in my care, I will do what you ask. But
you must take care to guard against your rivals; and if there is now any
pre-eminently lovely girl on earth, you are bound to pay me back with
her for this good turn.’
23 So saying, he ordered Mercury to summon all the gods immediately to
assembly, proclaiming that any absentees from this heavenly meeting
would be liable to a fine of ten thousand sesterces. This threat at once
filled the divine theatre; and Jupiter, towering on his lofty throne,
announced his decision. ‘Conscript deities enrolled in the register of the
Muses, you undoubtedly know this young man well, and how I have
reared him with my own hands. I have decided that the hot-blooded
impulses of his first youth must somehow be bridled; his name has been
besmirched long enough in common report by adultery and all kinds of
licentious behaviour. We must take away all opportunity for this and
confine his youthful excess in the bonds of marriage. He has chosen a
girl and had her virginity: let him have and hold her, and embracing
Psyche for ever enjoy his beloved.’ Then turning to Venus, ‘Daughter,’
he said, ‘do not be downcast or fear for your great lineage or social
standing because of this marriage with a mortal. I shall arrange for it to
be not unequal but legitimate and in accordance with the civil law.’ Then
he ordered Psyche to be brought by Mercury and introduced into
heaven. Handing her a cup of ambrosia, ‘Take this, Psyche,’ he said,
 ‘and be immortal. Never shall Cupid quit the tie that binds you, but this
marriage shall be perpetual for you both.’
24 No sooner said than done: a lavish wedding-feast appeared. In the place
of honour reclined Psyche’s husband, with his wife in his arms, and
likewise Jupiter with his Juno, and then the other gods in order of
precedence. Cups of nectar were served to Jove by his own cupbearer,
the shepherd lad, and to the others by Liber; Vulcan cooked the dinner;
the Seasons made everything colourful with roses and other flowers; the
Graces sprinkled perfumes; the Muses discoursed tuneful music. Then
Apollo sang to the lyre, and Venus, fitting her steps to the sweet music,
danced in all her beauty, having arranged a production in which the
Muses were chorus and played the tibia, while a Satyr and a little Pan
sang to the shepherd’s pipe.
Thus was Psyche married to Cupid with all proper ceremony, and when
her time came there was born to them a daughter, whom we call
Pleasure.

25 That then was the tale told by the drunken garrulous old woman to the
captive girl. I meanwhile was standing close by, vexed that I lacked the
means of writing down such a pretty story. At this point the robbers
returned loaded with plunder, having evidently been involved in some
serious fighting. However, I gathered that some of the more enterprising
of them were in a hurry to go back and retrieve the rest of their booty
from where they had hidden it in some cave or other, leaving the
wounded behind to look after their injuries. So they wolfed down some
supper, and then brought me and my horse out to go with them and
collect the stuff, urging us on our way with a rain of blows. The road was
long, hilly, and winding, and it was evening when we finally came,
exhausted, to the cave, where, without allowing us the least breathing-
space, they loaded us heavily and drove us back at full speed. They were
in such a hurry and beat me on so savagely that I stumbled over a stone
by the roadside and fell. This provoked further beating, but enfeebled as
I now was and lame on both sides, they had the utmost difficulty
in getting me on my feet again. ‘How long,’ said one of them, ‘are we
26 going to go on wasting fodder on this clapped-out ass? Now he’s lame
into the bargain.’ ‘Yes,’ said another, ‘it’s an ill-omened beast. Ever
since we got him we’ve had no gains worth mentioning, only wounds
 and the loss of our bravest comrades.’ ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ said
another, ‘he’ll deliver these bundles whether he likes it or not, and then
I’ll pitch him over a cliff for the vultures to enjoy.’
While these paragons of humanity were still arguing about how to
dispose of me, we had arrived back home — for fear had lent wings to
my hooves. Our loads were quickly taken off; and then, with no regard
for the welfare of their animals or the question of my death, they pressed
into service the wounded who had previously been left behind, to go
with them and bring back the rest of the plunder, being, as they said, fed
up with our slowness. Meanwhile I was the prey of desperate anxiety as
I thought about the death that threatened me. ‘Come on, Lucius,’ I said
to myself, ‘why stand about waiting for the end? Death — and a horrible
one — is what these brigands have decided is in store for you. It won’t
be any trouble to carry out the sentence: there are those ravines over
there bristling with jagged rocks — they’ll pierce you through and tear
you apart before you reach the bottom. That wonderful magic of yours
has equipped you with an ass’s shape and an ass’s hard life, but not his
thick skin; yours is as thin as a leech’s. So, why not play the man at last
and save your life while you can? This is your last chance to escape,
while the robbers are out of the way. You surely aren’t afraid of a guard
that consists of an old woman with one foot in the grave? Lame though
you are, you can finish her off with one kick. But where in the world are
you to flee to, and who will take you in? A silly question, a really
asinine one: any passer-by will be glad to carry off a mount to carry him
on his way.’
27 And with a vigorous pull I broke my halter and took off at a gallop. I
didn’t however succeed in eluding the kite-like vision of that crafty old
hag. Seeing me free, with a boldness that belied her age and sex she
grabbed my halter and tried as hard as she could to wrench my head
round and bring me back. Remembering the robbers’ atrocious
intentions, I had no compunction about lashing out at her with my hind
hooves and dashing her to the ground. But even sprawled on the ground
she hung on doggedly and trailed along behind me in my flight for quite
a distance, at the same time screaming loudly for help from some
stronger hand. Her shouting and weeping had no effect, as there was
nobody there who could help her, except for the captive girl. Alarmed by
the outcry, she ran out and beheld a truly memorable scene: a Dirce in
 the shape of an old woman, fastened not to a bull but to an ass. With a
man’s resolution she brought off a superbly daring exploit: tearing the
bridle from the old woman’s hands she slowed me down in my flight
with soothing noises, vaulted nimbly on my back, and then urged me
once more into a gallop.
28 My own desire to escape and my eagerness to rescue the girl, not
forgetting the occasional touches of the whip with which she encouraged
me, all combined to send me flying along with thundering hooves at
racehorse speed. As we went, I was trying to whinny endearments to her,
and every now and then, while pretending to scratch my back, I would
turn my head to nuzzle her pretty feet. She meanwhile, sighing deeply
and looking anxiously up to heaven, was praying: ‘You gods above,
assist me in my desperate peril, and you, cruel Fortune, let there now be
an end to your savagery: I have surely suffered and sorrowed enough to
appease you. As for you, protector of my life and liberty, if you bring me
home and restore me unharmed to my parents and my handsome
bridegroom, you shall have all the thanks, all the honours, all the food,
that are mine to bestow. The first thing I shall do is to comb this mane of
yours nicely and adorn it with my girlish jewellery; then I’ll curl your
fringe and plait it becomingly; then I’ll give your tail, which is rough
and matted for want of washing, a thorough grooming; and in a
caparison glittering with a myriad gold studs like the stars in heaven you
shall process in triumph amid the rejoicings of the people. Every day I
shall bring you nuts and other delicacies
in a fold of my silk gown, and feed you, my deliverer, myself. But fine
29 food and endless leisure and utter material well-being will not be all:
glory and honour shall also be yours, for I shall signalize the memory of
today’s happy events and the intervention of divine Providence by a
testimony that will outlive us. In the hall of my house I shall dedicate a
picture of this flight of ours. People will come to see it, and the artless
story of “The Princess who escaped from Captivity on the back of an
Ass” will be told around the world and immortalized in the pages of the
learned. You too will join the catalogue of the Wonders of Old, and your
true example will lead us to believe that Phrixus really did make his
crossing on the ram, that Arion rode the dolphin, and that Europa
perched on the bull. And if it was in fact Jupiter who bellowed in the
 guise of the bull, well, perhaps there lurks in this ass of mine the shape
of a man or the form of a god.’
While the girl was going on in this vein, her prayers repeatedly
intermingled with sighs, we had come to a crossroads. She was hauling
on my bridle in a determined effort to make me go to the right, because
that was her way home. I knew that this was also the road that the
robbers had taken to recover the rest of their plunder, and stoutly
resisted, protesting silently in my mind: ‘Unhappy girl, what are you
doing, for God’s sake? Do you want to go straight to perdition? Why
make me take you there? It’s not just you, it’s me you’re going to do
for.’ And while we were pulling in opposite ways like this, like
neighbours at law with each other over boundaries — though in this case
it was apportionment of the road rather than the ownership of land that
was in dispute — the robbers appeared loaded with their spoils and
caught us fair and square, having seen us already from some way off by
the light of the moon.
30 They greeted us with mocking laughter, and one of them hailed us:
‘Whither away? What’s this hasty moonlight flit? Aren’t you afraid of
ghosts and bogies at this time of night? You must have been in a great
hurry, dutiful daughter that you are, to see your parents! Better let us
protect your solitary state and show you the shortest way back home.’
And suiting the action to the word he seized my bridle and wrenched my
head around, not sparing me the usual beating from the knotty stick he
carried. Now that I was being forced to return to imminent death, I
remembered my sore hooves and began to limp with drooping head.
‘So!’ said the man who had tugged me round, ‘you’re stumbling and
limping again, are you? Those feeble feet of yours can gallop, but they
can’t walk — only a moment ago you were out flying Pegasus.’ While
my amiable friend, with whacks from his stick, was joking in this way
with me, we had come to the outer defences of their stronghold. There
what should we find but the old woman hanging by the neck from a
branch of a tall cypress tree. They simply took her down and threw her
as she was, noose and all, over the cliff; then they fettered the girl and
fell like starving animals on the supper which the old woman, diligent
even in death, had left ready for them.
31 While they were voraciously dispatching everything in sight they
started to deliberate about our punishment and their revenge. As usual in
 such an unruly crowd there was lively disagreement. One wanted the
girl to be burned alive, another said she should be thrown to the beasts, a
third thought she should be crucified, and a fourth was all for torturing
her to death; the one point on which they were unanimous was that die
she must. Then, when the hubbub had died down, one quietly took up
the running. ‘It is repugnant,’ he said, ‘both to our principles as
professionals and our humanity as individuals, not to mention my own
ideas of moderation, to allow you to punish this crime more savagely
than it merits. Rather than invoking the beasts or the cross or fire or
torture, or even giving her a quick death, if you will be guided by me
you will grant the girl her life — but in the form that she deserves. You
won’t, I’m sure, have forgotten what you’ve already decided to do with
that bone-idle ass that does nothing but eat; deceitful too, shamming
lame and aiding and abetting the girl’s escape. My proposal therefore is
that tomorrow we slaughter him, remove his insides, and sew the girl up
in his belly naked — since he prefers her company to ours — with just
her head showing and the rest of her hugged tight in his bestial embrace.
Then we’ll leave this dainty dish of stuffed donkey on
some rocky crag to cook in the heat of the sun. In that way both of them
32 will undergo all the punishments to which you have so justly sentenced
them. The ass will die as he richly deserves; the girl will be torn by
beasts when the worms gnaw her, she will be roasted when the blazing
sun scorches the ass’s belly, and she will be gibbeted when the dogs and
vultures drag out her entrails. And think of all her other sufferings and
torments: to dwell alive in the belly of a dead animal, to suffocate in an
intolerable stench, to waste away and die of prolonged fasting, and not
even to have her hands free to compass her own death.’
He had hardly finished before the robbers carried his motion by
acclamation without troubling to vote. As for me, listening to this with
every inch of my long ears, I could do nothing but mourn for the corpse
that I would be next morning.
BOOK 7

Haemus appears and takes command – revealed as Charite’s

lover Tlepolemus in disguise – she is rescued and the robbers
exterminated – she makes much of Lucius – he is sent out to
grass – yoked to the mill – attacked by the stallions – persecuted
by a cruel boy – threatened with castration – blamed for the boy’s
death

1 The darkness was just giving way to daylight and the sun’s shining
chariot was just beginning to brighten the world when another robber
appeared on the scene – at least so he must have been from the greetings
that passed. He sat down at the entrance to the cave, and when he had
got his breath back he made the following report to his colleagues:
‘So far as the business of plundering Milo’s house is concerned, we can
dismiss our worries and relax. After you had bravely cleared the place
out and returned to camp, I mingled with the crowd of townspeople,
pretending to share their anger and indignation, so as to discover and
report back to you, as you had ordered, what was going to be decided
about investigating the affair and how far the search for the perpetrators
was to be taken. The whole lot of them were agreed that the obvious
culprit was some man called Lucius. This was not mere guesswork, the
evidence was plain: within the last few days he had passed himself off to
Milo as a respectable character by a forged letter of introduction, and
had so successfully won his confidence that he was received into his
house as a guest and treated as an intimate friend. In the course of a few
 days he had wormed his way into the affections of Milo’s maid by
pretending to fall in love with her. That enabled him to carry out a
thorough inspection of the lock on the front door and to reconnoitre the
part
of the house where all the family property was stored. As a conclusive
2 proof that he was the villain of the piece it was pointed out that he had
disappeared that night at the very moment of the robbery and had not
been seen since. To assist his escape and to enable him to foil his
pursuers and hole up at a safe distance, he had the means at hand in the
shape of the white horse that he had brought with him to aid his getaway.
They had found his slave still in the house and had of course arrested
him and imprisoned him on the order of the magistrates, expecting him
to provide evidence of his master’s nefarious plans. However, when next
day he had been put to all kinds of tortures, though he nearly died in the
process, he made no admission of any kind. Nevertheless several
messengers had been dispatched to Lucius’ home town to find him and
bring him to justice.’
Listening to this story and comparing Lucius as he had been and his
former happy condition with the woes of the wretched ass that he now
was, I groaned within myself. The learned men of old, I reflected, knew
what they were talking about when they envisaged and portrayed
Fortune as totally blind. It is invariably on the wicked and undeserving, I
thought, that she bestows her favours; her choices are never grounded on
reason, indeed she goes out of her way to frequent the company of those
she ought to avoid like the plague if she could see. And the worst of it is
that she distributes reputation so capriciously, indeed downright
perversely: the evildoer glories in the character of a man of virtue, while
the innocent is branded as a
criminal. Here was I, cruelly attacked and transformed by her into the
3 shape of a beast, and one of the lowest sort at that, reduced to a
condition which might inspire grief and pity in my worst enemy, accused
of robbing a dear friend and host – indeed parricide would be a more
accurate name for it than robbery. And I was not in a position to defend
myself or to utter a single word of denial. However, I thought that if I
stayed silent when such a heinous charge was brought against me in my
presence, it might seem that I assented to it because I had a guilty
conscience. This I could not endure, and I tried at least to call out ‘No, I
 didn’t do it!’ The ‘No’ I did utter again and again at the top of my voice,
but the rest I couldn’t manage; try as I might to round out the vigorous
vibration of my hanging lips, I couldn’t get beyond the first word and
just went on braying ‘No, no’. But what is the point of stringing out
complaints against the perversity of Fortune? She even had no
compunction about allowing me to become the fellow slave and
yokemate of the horse who had formerly been my servant and mount.
4 Harassed by such thoughts as these, I was suddenly struck by a more
pressing anxiety, when I recollected the robbers’ decision to sacrifice me
to Charite’s ghost; and I kept looking down at my belly and imagining
myself already pregnant with the wretched girl. Meanwhile the fellow
who had just reported this false indictment against me produced a
thousand gold pieces that he had hidden by sewing them into his
clothing, which he said he had taken off various wayfarers, and by way
of demonstrating his honesty paid them into the common treasury. Then
he began to ask earnestly after the fate of his comrades. On learning that
several of them, the bravest indeed, had been lost in various ways on
active service, he proposed that they should give the roads a spell of
peace for a time and declare a truce in their campaigning in order to
concentrate on recruiting, so as to restore their forces to full strength and
fighting efficiency by a new intake of manpower. The reluctant could be
terrified into enlisting, the willing would be attracted by the prospect of
loot, and there would be many who would be happy to renounce a
downtrodden and slavish existence for a life of almost princely power.
He himself had just met a man who was tall, young, heftily built,
muscular and vigorous, and after some urging had persuaded him to turn
to more profitable employment powers which had for too long been idle
and torpid, to make the most of the boon of good health while he could,
and to use those strong hands of his for raking in riches rather than
holding them out for charity.
5 This was unanimously carried, and they agreed to enrol this man, as he
seemed to have the right qualifications, and to beat up for more recruits
to bring the company up to strength. His proposer went out and shortly
returned bringing with him a young man of immense size, just as he had
promised; nobody else there could hold a candle to him, for he was not
only massively built but taller by a head than anybody present – this
though his beard was only just beginning to sprout. He was dressed in a
 motley collection of rags, precariously stitched together, which only half
covered him, so that his midriff with its thick layer of muscle could be
seen peeping through.
That was how he looked as he stood there. ‘Votaries of mighty Mars
and fellow soldiers, as I may already call you,’ he said, ‘I salute you.
Receive me as readily as I come to you, a man of dash and daring, one
who would rather take hard blows on his body than hard cash in his
hand, one who defies the death that others dread. Don’t think me a
beggar or an outcast, or judge my worth from these rags. I was captain
of a valiant company and I have laid waste all Macedonia; I am the
famous bandit Haemus of Thrace, whose name is feared throughout the
Empire. My father Theron was an equally renowned robber; I was
nourished on human blood and brought up in the ranks of our band to be
the heir and rival of my
father’s prowess. But I lost every one of my brave comrades and all my
6 riches in a matter of moments. In an evil hour I had attacked as he
passed by an Imperial commissioner (he had been a two-hundred-
thousand man but had been dismissed in disgrace) – but I had better
make things clear by starting at the beginning.
‘This man had held a number of offices at court, in which he had won
distinction, and he was held in high regard by the Emperor himself. On
false charges cunningly trumped up by certain individuals he was sent
into exile, the victim of cruel Envy. However, his wife Plotina, a woman
of altogether exceptional loyalty and chastity, who had given him ten
children, rejecting in disdain the pleasures and luxuries of the city, went
with him in his flight and shared his ruin. She cut her hair, dressed
herself in men’s clothes, and stowed in her girdle her most valuable
jewellery and some gold money; then moving undismayed among armed
guards and drawn swords she shared all her husband’s dangers, watching
over his life with sleepless vigilance and enduring countless hardships
with the fortitude of a man.
‘After undergoing many trials along the way and braving the terrors of
the sea, they were making for Zacynthus, which had been
assigned by the decree of destiny as their temporary residence. They had
7 put in near Actium just when we, having come down from Macedonia,
were operating in those parts, and had taken refuge from the sea in a
 little inn near where they had landed. Late that night we fell on the place
and made a clean sweep of the contents, but it was only by the skin of
our teeth that we escaped. The moment Plotina heard the first sounds of
our entry, she rushed into the outer room and filled the whole place with
cries of alarm, calling on the soldiers and servants by name and
summoning the whole blessed neighbourhood to the rescue. It was only
because of the general panic, each man skulking to save his own skin,
that we were able to get away unscathed.
‘But this most noble lady, for so I must call her, this paragon of loyalty,
lost no time in using the influence her exemplary behaviour had won
her: she successfully petitioned the Emperor’s divinity for an immediate
pardon for her husband and condign punishment for his assailants. That
was that: the Emperor willed that Haemus the robber’s company should
cease to exist, and cease to exist it did. Such is the power of a great
prince’s mere wish. Our entire band was hunted down, cut to pieces, and
exterminated by detachments of soldiers; I alone just managed to escape
from the very jaws of
Orcus, which I did as follows. I put on a woman’s dress, brightly
8 coloured and hanging in loose folds, covered my head with a gauze
turban, and slipped on my feet a pair of those thin white shoes that
women wear. So disguised as a member of the weaker sex and riding an
ass loaded with barley I made my getaway through the enemy ranks.
They allowed free passage to what they thought was a mere donkey-
woman – and indeed at that time my complexion was still that of a boy
and my cheeks were smooth and hairless.
‘Since then I have been true to my father’s renown and my own
prowess. Surrounded as I was by hostile swords, I felt somewhat
nervous; but in solitary raids on farmhouses and villages under the cover
of my disguise I have scraped together a little journey-money’ – and
with that he opened his rags and poured out a couple of thousand gold
pieces. ‘There,’ he said, ‘is my contribution – my dowry if you like; I
freely offer it to your company, and along with it myself, if you will
agree, as your trusty commander, one who will very soon transform this
house of stone into a house of gold.’
9 Without a moment’s hesitation the robbers unanimously voted to confer
the leadership on him, and produced a rather more elegant robe for him
 to put on in place of the rags which had turned out to be so rich. So
transformed he embraced every man individually; then he took the seat
of honour at the table and was formally installed with great feasting and
carousing. In the course of conversation he heard about Charite’s escape,
how I had carried her, and the horrible death they planned for us. He
asked where she was and was taken to see her. At the sight of her loaded
with chains he came back wrinkling his nose in disapproval. ‘It would
be stupid and rash of me,’ he said, ‘to veto your decision, but I shall not
be able to face the accusations of my conscience if I don’t tell you what
I really think. First of all, please believe me when I say that it is for your
interests that I am concerned; and after all, if you don’t like my
proposition, you can always revert to your original plan. My own view
is that robbers, at least those who know their business, should count
nothing more important than their own profit, not even revenge, which
has a habit of rebounding on its author. If you dispose of this girl inside
the ass, you will have achieved nothing except to give vent to your
resentment. What I would suggest is that we take her to some city or
other and sell her there. A pretty young girl like that will fetch a good
price. It so happens that I have a number of friends who are pimps, and
one or other of them, I’ve no doubt, can well afford to pay a hefty sum
for her, one in keeping with her high birth. She will then be consigned to
a brothel (and she won’t be allowed to escape a second time), and you
will have your revenge into the bargain, and a hugely satisfactory one,
when she is serving her sentence there. That I honestly hold to be the
most expedient course; but the decision and the conduct of your affairs
must rest with you.’
10 In this manner did our Treasury Pleader, this admirable protector of
both girl and ass, present our case. The others, however, debated for a
long time, putting my heart to the torture by their protracted discussions;
indeed I all but expired in my agony. Finally they agreed to the
newcomer’s proposal, and at once released the girl from her fetters. As
soon as she saw Haemus and heard what they were saying about pimps
and brothels, she became elated and began laughing merrily. That, I felt,
justified me in condemning the entire female sex, when I saw this girl
who had pretended to be in love with her betrothed and to be pining for
a chaste marriage, now suddenly delighted by the mention of a filthy
 sordid brothel. At that moment the whole race of women and their
morals hung in the balance, with an ass holding the scales.
However, the young man now went on: ‘Should we not,’ he asked, ‘at
once propitiate Mars the Comrade in Arms, before we set out to sell the
girl and find recruits? But so far as I can see we haven’t any animals for
sacrifice or even enough wine to drink, let alone a surplus. Choose ten
men to go with me; they will be all I shall need to attack the nearest
village and bring back a real Salian banquet for you.’ He then set out,
while the rest of them built up a huge fire and made an altar to Mars
from green turf.
11 The foraging party soon returned carrying skins full of wine and
driving before them a herd of animals. From these they chose a large he-
goat, old and hairy, to sacrifice to Mars, Helper and Comrade. They then
prepared a sumptuous supper. The new arrival spoke up again. ‘You
must look to me,’ he said, ‘to give you a vigorous lead, not only in your
expeditions and plunderings but also in your pleasures’; and he set to
work energetically, attending to every detail with extraordinary
efficiency. He swept the floor, laid the table, cooked, arranged the
various dishes, served them dextrously, and above all plied every man
with bumper after bumper until they were all awash. Meanwhile, on the
pretext of fetching and carrying fresh supplies, he was constantly at the
girl’s side, smilingly offering her filched titbits and sips of wine from his
own cup. She for her part eagerly accepted these attentions, and when he
several times offered to kiss her she kissed him back with ardour. This
emphatically displeased me. ‘So, young lady,’ I said to myself, ‘you’ve
forgotten your marriage and the lover whom you love, and you prefer
this stranger, this bloodstained assassin, to that new husband, whoever
he is, to whom your parents wed you? Doesn’t your conscience prick
you, or are you happy to trample true love under foot and play the whore
here among spears and swords? Suppose the other robbers notice what’s
happening? It’ll be back again to death by donkey for you, and you’ll
take me to perdition along with you. It’s somebody else’s hide you’re
gambling with.’
12 However, while I was silently rehearsing these slanderous charges in
high indignation, I became aware from some words that passed between
them – ambiguous but clear enough to an intelligent ass – that this was
not in fact Haemus the notorious robber but her husband Tlepolemus.
 For as they went on talking, ignoring me as if I were really dead, he
raised his voice a little. ‘Cheer up, sweetest Charite,’ he said. ‘Very soon
these enemies will be your prisoners’, and drunk as they already were
and full to overflowing, he reapplied himself even more insistently to
thrusting wine on them, now serving it neat and slightly mulled. He
himself didn’t touch a drop. I really couldn’t help suspecting that he was
adding some soporific drug to their cups, for finally the whole lot of
them, every man jack, lay overcome with wine as if dead. Then it was
the easiest thing in the world for him to tie them all up and completely
immobilize them; after which he mounted the girl on my back and set
off for home.
13 On our arrival the whole city turned out to see this longed-for sight.
There were parents, relatives, dependants, children, servants, all with
happiness in their faces and joy in their hearts. There was to be seen a
crowd of both sexes and all ages escorting this novel and never-to-be-
forgotten spectacle, a virgin riding in triumph on an ass. I myself played
my part manfully in the rejoicing, and not to seem out of place or out of
harmony with the proceedings, I pricked up my ears, inflated my
nostrils, and brayed vigorously – or indeed a better word would be
thunderously. Charite was taken straight to her room, where her parents
made much of her, while Tlepolemus took me and a large number of
other pack-animals and townspeople back again at a great pace. I was by
no means unwilling to go, for my usual curiosity was whetted by my
desire to see the robbers taken prisoner. We found them still
immobilized, more by the wine than by their bonds. All their plunder
was unearthed and carried outside; and the gold and silver and the rest of
the loot was loaded on to us. Some of the robbers, tied up as they were,
they dragged to the edge of a nearby ravine and threw over; the others
they dispatched with their own swords and left them where they lay.
Delighted with our vengeance we returned joyfully to the city. The
treasure was consigned to public safekeeping, and Tlepolemus
was restored to the legitimate possession of his bride. The new wife at
14 once proclaimed me her saviour and took generous care of me; on her
wedding day she ordered my manger to be filled to overflowing with
barley, and had enough hay served out to me to feed a Bactrian camel.
You can imagine how horribly I cursed Photis for having turned me into
an ass and not a dog, when I saw the whole canine population gorged
 and bloated with the leavings and filched morsels of that lavish
marriage-feast. The unique night and her first experience of love came
and went, and the new bride never stopped talking to her parents and
husband of her thankfulness to me, until they promised to invest me with
supreme honours. Finally a group of solid citizens was convened to
decide on the most suitable way of rewarding me. One of them
suggested that I should be kept in the house to lead a life of leisure, fed
richly on choice barley and beans and vetch. However, another was
concerned for my liberty, and his opinion carried the day: he proposed
that I should be allowed to run loose in the fields to take my pleasure
with the horses, so that I could mount the mares and from these superior
matings produce many mules for my masters to rear.
15 Accordingly the head stableman was summoned, and after a long
recommendation I was handed over to him to be taken off. I was indeed
happy and carefree as I trotted ahead of him: I could, I thought, now say
goodbye to carrying baggage and other burdens, and having gained my
freedom I should be sure when spring came and the fields were in bloom
to find roses somehow or other. And then another thought struck me: if
all these thanks and honours had been bestowed on me when I was an
ass, how much more lavishly should I be feted and rewarded when I
regained my human shape! However, once that herdsman had got me
well away from the city, there were no comforts awaiting me; I wasn’t
even set free. His wife, an odious grasping creature, yoked me to a
rotary mill, and by repeatedly beating me with a leafy branch she
proceeded to get bread for herself and her family at the expense of my
hide. Moreover, she was not satisfied with over tasking me like this
merely for her own needs; she hired out my circumambulations to the
neighbours to grind their grain for them as well. To make matters worse,
I wasn’t allowed even the usual ration of food for these hard labours. My
barley, crushed and ground by the selfsame mill that I was turning, she
sold to the farmers round about; I, for a whole day of hard work fastened
to that machine, was not fed until the evening, and then what she served
out to me was just the husks, unsifted and full of dirt and grit.
16 Ground down as I was by these troubles, cruel Fortune then delivered
me over to fresh torments – to enable me, I suppose, to boast of glory
earned for deeds of valour at home and abroad. Rather late in the day the
worthy herdsman finally recollected his masters’ orders and turned me
 loose among the horses. Free at last, ass that I was, I rejoiced and kicked
up my heels; and parading around with dainty steps I began to choose
out the mares that I thought would make the best concubines. However,
these agreeable prospects ended in disaster. It was the breeding season,
and the stallions had for weeks been thoroughly fattened up and fed to
bursting. Formidable at the best of times and stronger than any ass, they
regarded me in the light of a threat, and to prevent what they saw as an
adulterous debasement of the breed, and setting the divine law of
hospitality at naught, they fell on me in a fury of hatred. One reared his
great chest in the air, and with his head and crest towering above me
battered me with his front hooves; another turned his rump on me,
bulging with muscles, and attacked me with his heels; a third, whinnying
spitefully, threatened me with ears laid back, and baring his gleaming
teeth like so many hatchets nipped me all over. It was just like the story I
had once read of the king of Thrace who consigned unfortunate
strangers to his wild horses to rend and devour; that powerful tyrant was
so sparing of his barley that he assuaged the hunger of his voracious stud
by largesse of human flesh.
17 Finding myself similarly attacked and savaged by all these horses, I
began hankering for my old round in the mill. However, Fortune’s
appetite for tormenting me was unappeased, and she now visited me
with a fresh plague. I was told off to carry wood down from the
mountain, and the boy who was put in charge of me was without
question the most objectionable specimen of boyhood there ever was.
Not only did I exhaust myself climbing the steep slopes of the mountain
and wear out my hooves traversing its sharp-edged rocks; I was so
incessantly thrashed by blow after blow from his stick that the pain of
the cuts penetrated the marrow of my bones. By perpetually aiming his
blows at one particular place on my right flank he split the skin and
opened up a gaping sore – a pit, a crevasse; and still went on beating the
wound until it ran with blood. He piled such a weight of faggots on my
back that you’d have thought it a load for an elephant rather than an ass.
And whenever the load became unbalanced and slipped sideways,
instead of relieving me by removing some faggots from the heavier side
and so taking off some of the pressure, as he should have done, or at
least evening up the load by transferring them to the other side, his
 remedy for the imbalance was to pile stones on top. As if these
tribulations were
not enough, the size of my load still did not satisfy him; huge though it
18 was, when we had to cross the stream which ran alongside the road, to
save his boots from a wetting he would jump up and perch on my back –
a trivial addition, I suppose he thought, to my enormous burden. The
river bank was muddy and slippery, and from time to time I would
overbalance under my load and go down in the mire. A good driver
would have lent a hand, would have held me up by the bridle or hauled
me up by the tail, or at least taken off some of my vast load until I could
get to my feet again. Not he: so far from offering to help me in my
exhaustion, he would beat every inch of me with his great stick, starting
at my head and not forgetting my ears, until his blows acted as a kind of
medical treatment to get me up again.
Yet another torture did he devise for me. He made up a bunch of thorns
with formidably sharp and poisonous prickles and fastened it to my tail
to hang there and torment me, so that as I walked it would swing about
and hurt me cruelly with its deadly spikes. So
either way I was in trouble. If I put on speed to escape his savage blows,
19 the thorns pricked me harder than ever; and if I slowed down for a
moment to ease the pain, I was thrashed into a gallop once more. This
detestable boy seemed to have no other object in life but to finish me off
one way or another, and indeed he more than once threatened and swore
to do just that. Then something happened to goad his abominable malice
to fresh lengths. One day he was behaving so outrageously that my
patience gave way and I let fly at him with a vigorous kick. This was
what he then planned to do to me. He loaded me with a large bundle of
tow which he roped tightly to my back, and then drove me on to the
road. He then helped himself to a burning coal from the first farm he
came to and pushed it into the middle of my load. In a moment the loose
mass had ignited and burst into flame, enveloping me in its lethal heat
with no apparent hope of escaping from the fatal menace or of saving
my
life; a fire like that allows no delay or time to think things over. In this
20 calamity Fortune for once smiled on me; no doubt she was saving me for
future dangers, but now at least she delivered me from instant and
 certain death. Catching sight of a muddy pool of water from yesterday’s
rain by the roadside, without stopping to think I plunged into it head
over ears. Then, when the flames were finally extinguished, I emerged,
relieved of my load and delivered from destruction. But that dreadful
boy had the effrontery to blame his vile deed on me, telling all his fellow
herdsmen that I had stumbled on purpose when passing the neighbour’s
stove and had deliberately set myself on fire, adding with a laugh, ‘So
how long are we going to go on wasting fodder on this incendiary ass?’
Only a few days later he played an even worse trick on me. Having
sold the wood I was carrying at a nearby cottage he was leading me back
unloaded when he started to proclaim that he could no longer cope with
my wicked ways and that he had had enough of such a thankless task.
This was the style of the complaint that he had
concocted: ‘Look at this ass – lazy, idle, too asinine to be true. On top of
21 all the other shocking things he’s done, now he’s getting me into fresh
trouble and danger. Every time he sees a passer-by, whether it’s a pretty
woman, a young girl, or a handsome boy, in a second he’s sent his load
flying, and often his saddle as well, and makes a mad rush at them – a
lover like this in search of a human mate! Slavering with desire, he hurls
them to the ground as he attempts to indulge his unlawful pleasures and
unspeakable lusts, urging them to bestial unions while Venus looks away
in horror. He even distorts his shameless mouth into a parody of a kiss as
he butts and bites his victims. These goings-on are likely to involve us in
serious lawsuits and quarrels, and probably criminal prosecutions as
well. Only just now, catching sight of a respectable young woman, he
threw off his load of wood and scattered it all over the place, went for
her in a frenzy and had her down in the mud, did our merry philanderer,
and then and there in full view of everybody did his level best to mount
her. It was only because some passers-by were alarmed by her screams
and rushed to the rescue that she was freed and pulled out from right
under his hooves; otherwise the unhappy woman would have been
trampled and torn apart – an agonizing end for her and the prospect of
the death penalty as her legacy to us.’
22 These lies he interspersed with all sorts of other stories, all the more
galling to me because I had to stay modestly silent. They aroused in the
herdsmen a violent determination to do for me. ‘Let’s make a sacrifice
of this public husband,’ said one, ‘this adulterer to the community; that’s
 what his monstrous marriages deserve. Come on, young fellow,’ he
added, ‘cut his throat here and now, throw his guts to the dogs, and keep
the meat for the workforce’s dinner. We’ll sprinkle his skin with ash and
dry it to take back to our masters; we can easily pretend that he was
killed by a wolf.’
Without more ado my delinquent accuser constituted himself
executioner of the herdsmen’s sentence, and gleefully mocking my
misfortunes and still resenting my kick – how I regretted that it
hadn’t been more effective! – started to whet a sword. But one of the
23 rustics in the crowd intervened. ‘It would be a shame,’ he said, ‘to kill
such a fine ass and lose his labour and valuable services by passing this
sentence on his amatory excesses. If we castrate him, that will put paid
to his lovemaking for good and relieve you of all fear of danger, and
he’ll be much the stouter and stronger for it. I’ve known not merely
many idle asses but lots of very unruly horses with an excessive sexual
drive which made them wild and unmanageable, but after this operation
they at once became tame and docile, quite suitable as pack-animals and
submissive to any other kind of work. So, unless you strongly disagree,
give me a day or two – I’ve got to be at the next market meanwhile – to
fetch the instruments I need for the operation from home and come
straight back to you; then I’ll whip this nasty brute of a lover’s thighs
open and take out his manhood, and you’ll find him as meek and mild as
an old bell-wether.’
24 By this decision I was snatched from the hands of Orcus, but only to be
reserved for a fate almost worse. I began to lament and mourn myself as
dead – for that was what I should be without my latter end. So I started
to look round for ways of destroying myself, by a hunger-strike or
jumping off a cliff – I’d still be dead, but at least I’d be dead in one
piece. I was still undecided about my choice of ending when the next
morning that assassin of a boy once more led me up the mountain by the
usual route. He tied me to a branch that hung down from a huge ilex,
while he climbed a little way up above the path with a hatchet to cut the
wood he had to fetch. At that moment there emerged from a nearby cave
the huge towering head of a deadly she-bear. The instant I saw her I
panicked; terrified by this sudden apparition I reared back with the
whole weight of my body on my hind legs and my head high in the air,
snapped my tether, and took off at top speed. Headlong and hell for
 leather downhill I went, hurling myself bodily through the air with my
feet hardly touching the earth, until I reached the level ground below; all
I wanted was to escape that monster of a bear and that even worse
monster of a boy.
25 At this point a passer-by, seeing me straying ownerless, grabbed hold
of me, jumped on my back, and beating me with the stick he carried
rode off with me along an unfamiliar side road. I was more than willing
to cooperate in any course that would save me from the butchery of my
virility; and the blows did not much bother me, used as I was to regular
beatings. However, Fortune, determined as ever to persecute me, in her
lamentable readiness to thwart my lucky escape now laid a fresh trap for
me. My herdsmen had been scouring the countryside in search of a lost
heifer, and now they happened to run into us and at once recognized me
and seized my bridle in an attempt to take possession of me. My rider,
however, boldly and stoutly resisted them, calling men and gods to
witness and shouting: ‘What’s the meaning of this? Why this violence?
Why are you attacking me?’ ‘Oh,’ said they, ‘so we’re treating you
uncivilly, when you’ve stolen our ass and are making off with him? It
would be more to the point to confess where you’ve hidden the boy who
was in charge of him – obviously you’ve murdered him.’ And with that
they pulled him to the ground and beat and thumped him with fists and
feet, while he swore that he’d seen no driver; he’d merely come across
an ass that was wandering about loose and caught it for the sake of the
reward, fully intending to restore it to the owner. ‘If only the ass
himself,’ he said, ‘(and I wish I’d never set eyes on him) could speak
and bear witness to my innocence: you’d be sorry for mistreating me
like this.’
These protestations got him nowhere. Those vexatious herdsmen took
him into custody and brought him to the wooded mountainside
which was the boy’s usual beat. He was nowhere to be seen, only
26 fragments of a body, torn limb from limb and scattered all over the
hillside. I knew perfectly well that it was the teeth of that she-bear that
had done this, and I should certainly have told them what I knew had I
had the power of speech. As it was, all I could do was silently to
congratulate myself on my belated revenge. The boy’s body was in
pieces all over the place, but in the end with some difficulty they found
it all and reassembled it, and then buried it on the spot. My Bellerophon
 they declared clearly guilty of theft and bloody murder, tied him up, and
took him to their village for the night, meaning, they said, to bring him
before the magistrates early next day to pay the penalty for his crime.
Meanwhile the boy’s parents were mourning him with tears and
lamentations, when the farmer turned up true to his promise and
proposed to operate on me. ‘Well,’ said one of the herdsmen, ‘our loss
today was nothing to do with him; but tomorrow we can if we feel like it
relieve this pestilent ass not just of his genitals but of his head. You
won’t lack for helpers.’
27 So it happened that my doom was postponed to the morning, and I
thanked my friend for granting me at any rate one day’s stay of
execution by his death. However, I wasn’t left in peace to congratulate
myself for very long; the boy’s mother burst into my stable, lamenting
her son’s untimely death with floods of tears. Dressed in black, ash on
her head, tearing her grey hair with both hands, she wailed and protested
endlessly, violently thumping and battering her breast. ‘Look at him,’
she screamed, ‘lying there in his stall without a care in the world,
indulging his gluttony and stuffing his insatiable bottomless belly – eat,
eat, eat, with no pity for me in my affliction, no thought of his dead
master’s horrible fate. Yes, he scorns and despises my feeble old age and
thinks he’ll get away with this monstrous crime and come off scot free.
Of course he takes it for granted that he’s not guilty; your really
desperate villains always defy conscience and expect to get away with it.
In God’s name, you miserable animal, if you could speak for a moment
or two, how could you persuade even a complete idiot that you weren’t
to blame for this atrocity? You could have defended the poor child with
your hooves, you could have protected him with your teeth. Often and
often you’d lashed out at him with your heels – no trouble; why weren’t
you as eager to rescue him from death? You could at least have carried
him off on your back and snatched him from the bloody clutches of that
savage robber. How could you make off alone and desert and leave in
the lurch your fellow slave, your master, your comrade, your good
shepherd? Don’t you know that anybody who refuses to help those in
danger of death is guilty of antisocial behaviour and is liable to
punishment on that score? But you aren’t going to exult over my
misfortunes much longer, murderer. I’ll make you realize that nature
lends strength to misery and grief.’
28 So saying, she pulled off her breastband and tied up my feet as tightly
as she could with it, so that I should have no way of retaliating; then she
seized the pole which was used to hold the stable door shut, and only
stopped beating me with it when her strength gave out and the pole fell
from her hands under its own weight. Then, complaining that her arms
had tired so quickly, she rushed to the fire and took out a glowing brand,
which she thrust right into my groin; whereat I resorted to the only
defence that was left to me and ejected a stream of liquid filth which
befouled her face and eyes. So, by blindness and stench, my doom was
finally averted; otherwise, like another Meleager, an ass would have
perished by the firebrand of an insane Althaea.
BOOK 8

Tragic deaths of Charite and Tlepolemus – their slaves decamp in

panic with the animals – misadventures on the way – Lucius sold
to the priests of Atargatis – their scandalous activities – another
death sentence

1 That night at cockcrow a young man arrived from the city who looked to
me like a slave of Charite’s, the girl who had suffered along with me at
the hands of the robbers. He brought strange and dreadful news: she was
dead and her whole house destroyed. He told his tale sitting by the fire
with all his fellow slaves clustered around him: ‘Grooms, shepherds,
cowherds: our mistress Charite is no more; the poor child has perished
by the cruellest of fates, but when she went down to the realm of ghosts
it was not alone. But so that you may know the whole story, let me tell
you everything that happened from the beginning; it deserves to be
written down and shaped into a formal narrative by some scholar on
whom Fortune has conferred the gift of writing.
‘There lived in the city next to ours a young man of very distinguished
family, a prominent figure on that account and very wealthy, but a
confirmed debauchee, gourmandizing, whoring and drinking all day.
This life-style had led him into bad company, and he was in league with
gangs of robbers, and his hands were stained with human blood.
Thrasyllus was his name, and he lived
up to his reputation. When Charite came of marriageable age, he was
2 one of her principal suitors, and he put everything he knew into his
 wooing. However, though he outranked all his noble competitors and
tried to win over her parents by rich gifts, they objected to his character,
and he had to suffer the humiliation of being turned down. And even
after my masters’ daughter had been wedded to the excellent
Tlepolemus, Thrasyllus, still obviously nursing the love that had been
brought so low and brooding resentfully on the marriage that had been
denied him, never ceased to watch for the chance of a bloody revenge.
Finally he hit on a convenient opportunity of being on the spot, and
made his preparations for the crime that he had been planning for so
long. On the day when Charite had been rescued from the deadly swords
of the robbers by her astute and valiant husband, he drew attention to
himself by his exuberant behaviour as he mingled with the crowd who
had come to offer their congratulations, expressing his delight at seeing
the newly-married couple safely rescued, and at the prospect of children
to come. In honour of his distinguished family, he was received into our
house as one of the principal guests and treacherously masqueraded as a
faithful friend while all the time dissembling his wicked purpose. He
constantly frequented their society and was often invited to dine and
drink with the family; so he had become by degrees ever more dear to
them and had gradually and insensibly plunged into a deep abyss of
desire. What else was to be expected? The first warmth of cruel Love,
while his flame is still small, is delightful; but when it is fed by habit it
flares up and consumes us in its uncontrollable blaze.
3 ‘Thrasyllus was for a long time perplexed. He could discover no
opportunity for a secret meeting and saw that the possible openings for
an adulterous intrigue were being increasingly blocked off: the couple’s
new and growing affection constituted a bond that had become
unbreakable, and even if, which was inconceivable, the girl were
willing, she was too closely guarded for any attempt at seduction to be
practicable. Nevertheless it was this impossible goal to which his
destructive passion drove him on, as if it were possible. What at first he
had thought difficult, now, as his love daily grew in strength, seemed
easy to accomplish. See, all of you, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, the
lengths to which the frenzy of desire can drive a man.
4 ‘A day came when Tlepolemus took Thrasyllus with him to hunt wild
beasts, if roe deer may be so described; for Charite would not let her
husband go after anything with teeth or horns. They had come to a
 thickly wooded hill where the dense foliage hid the quarry from their
sight, and sent in the hounds, specially bred for scenting, to flush the
deer from where they lay couched. At once, faithful to their careful
training, the dogs divided up and covered all the approaches; at first
there was only the odd whimper, then on a sudden signal they gave
tongue and filled the wood with their wild and discordant barking. But it
was not a roe deer or a panic-stricken fallow deer or a hind, meekest of
all animals, that started up, but a wild boar, a fearsome animal – nothing
like it had ever been seen before. Its muscles bulged under its tough
hide, its coat was thick and rough, the bristles stood erect along its hairy
spine; it foamed at the mouth as it loudly whetted its tusks, its eyes
glared blazing menace, and the savage onrush of its ravening jaws was
like a thunderbolt. Such of the more daring hounds as closed with it, it
mangled and killed with sideways thrusts of its tusks, then it trampled
down the nets which had slowed its first charge, and took off.
5 ‘The rest of us were all panic-stricken, being used to hunting only
harmless animals and having no means of offence or defence, and hid
ourselves in the undergrowth or behind the trees for protection.
Thrasyllus, however, saw this as an opportunity to carry out his
treacherous plan, and appealed artfully to Tlepolemus: “Why are we
standing here in amazement and groundless panic like these grovelling
slaves or timorous women? Are we going to let this choice prize slip
from our grasp? Quick! Let’s mount and go after him! Here, you take a
boar-spear and I’ll take a lance.” The next moment they had leapt on to
their horses and were off in hot pursuit. The boar, following its fighting
instincts, turned to bay, hot with savage rage, and stood eyeing them,
undecided which to charge and gore first. Tlepolemus took the lead and
hurled his spear at the beast’s back. Thrasyllus ignored the boar and with
a thrust from his lance hamstrung Tlepolemus’ horse. Unable to help
itself, it collapsed and lay wallowing in its blood, throwing its master to
the ground. In a moment the maddened boar was on him as he lay,
repeatedly savaging first his clothes, then Tlepolemus himself as he tried
to rise. So far from his good friend’s feeling any remorse for his wicked
exploit, his cruelty was not appeased by the sight of his victim in this
mortal danger. That by no means satisfied him; as Tlepolemus, in his
desperation at the boar’s attacks, was trying unavailingly to protect his
lacerated legs and calling piteously for help, Thrasyllus speared him in
 the right thigh, reckoning confidently that a spear-thrust would be
indistinguishable from the wounds inflicted by the boar. Then he
likewise adroitly dispatched the boar itself.
6 ‘So young Tlepolemus was dead, and we all came out of hiding. Sadly
his household gathered at the spot; Thrasyllus, though delighted to have
achieved his purpose and to see his enemy laid low, dissembled his joy,
put on a mournful expression, and feigned grief. Lovingly embracing the
corpse that was of his own making, with scrupulous hypocrisy he
performed all the observances of mourning – only the tears would not
come. So he produced an imitation of our real grief, fastening the blame
for his own crime on the boar.
‘The evil deed was scarcely done before Fame spread the report of it
abroad. It found its way first to the house of Tlepolemus, where it fell on
the ears of his ill-starred bride like a thunderbolt: beside herself at the
news, the worst she was ever to hear, she launched out madly, like a
Bacchante, on a wild course through the crowded city streets and the
countryside around, proclaiming her husband’s fate with frenzied
shrieks. Groups of mourning citizens assembled, and all who met her
followed her, sharing her grief; the city was emptied of its people, so
eager were they to see. And now her husband’s corpse appeared;
fainting she threw herself on it and very nearly gave up to him then and
there the life she had vowed to him. However, she was with much ado
torn away by her attendants and reluctantly stayed alive, while the body
was carried in solemn procession and escorted to its resting-place by the
entire population.
7 ‘Thrasyllus meanwhile threw off all restraint. He cried and lamented,
and shed the tears – no doubt of joy – that he had not been able to
command in his first demonstration of grief. Truth herself might have
been hoodwinked by the profusion of his endearments: this was the
friend he had grown up with, his comrade – in his mourning invocations
he even added the name of brother. He was constantly with Charite,
restraining her from beating her breast, calming her grief, quieting her
lamentations, blunting the pangs of bereavement with soothing words,
and consoling her by citing a string of examples to show that nobody is
immune from misfortune. But all these kindnesses and this pretended
friendship were merely an excuse to caress the girl, and his perverse
attempts to please her only fed his odious love. However, directly the
 funeral rites had been performed, Charite was at once eager to join her
husband in the world below, and tried every way she knew, especially
the gentle and peaceful one which requires no weapons but resembles
tranquil sleep. So the poor girl starved and neglected herself, hiding
away in darkness and squalor and bidding farewell to the light of day.
But Thrasyllus, partly by his own continued persistence, and partly
working through other friends and relatives, not least her parents, forced
her in the end, when she was deathly pale, filthy, and on the verge of
collapse, to revive herself with a bath and food. Being the dutiful
daughter that she was, she submitted, though unwillingly, to the
demands of filial piety, and went about the business of life as they bade
her, looking not exactly cheerful but somewhat less disturbed. Deep
down inside, however, in the inmost core of her being, she was eating
her heart out with grief and sorrow. All her days and nights were passed
in mourning her loss; she had images of the dead man made as the god
Liber, which she worshipped with divine honours, giving herself wholly
over to this service – a consolation that was itself a torment.
8 ‘But Thrasyllus, always hasty and as rash as his name, could not wait
for her to weep away her grief, for her distraction and frenzy to subside,
and for her sorrow to exhaust itself by its very excess. While she was
still lamenting her husband, still rending her clothes, still tearing her
hair, he had the hardihood to propose marriage to her, and the
imprudence to reveal the inmost secrets of his heart and his unspeakable
treachery. Charite recoiled in loathing from these hideous disclosures;
like one struck by a thunderclap or a meteor or Jupiter’s lightning she
collapsed bodily in a dead faint. After a short while she gradually came
to, crying out repeatedly like a wounded animal; and now that she saw
through the wicked Thrasyllus’ plot, she put off her eager suitor to give
herself time to perfect a plan. Meanwhile the ghost of the foully
murdered Tlepolemus, his face bloodstained, pale and disfigured,
appeared to his wife as she lay chastely asleep. “Wife,” he said, “I call
you by the name which only I have a right to use, if any memory of me
still remains in your heart. But if my untimely death has caused you to
forget the ties of our love, marry whom you will and be happier than I
could make you; only do not accept Thrasyllus’ impious hand. Have
nothing to do with him, shun his bed and board. Fly from the
bloodstained hand of my assassin; do not enter into marriage with a
 murderer. The wounds from which you washed the blood with your tears
are not those of the boar’s tusks; it was Thrasyllus’ spear that took me
from you” – and he told her the rest, revealing the whole enactment of
the crime.
9 ‘For a time Charite slept on, with her face pressed into the pillow and
the tears streaming down her face, just as when she had first dropped off
in her grief. Then, starting up in torment from her unrestful rest, she
broke into fresh lamentations and prolonged wailing, tearing her
nightdress and beating her shapely arms with savage blows. She told
nobody of her dream but kept the information of the crime entirely to
herself, resolving secretly to punish the wicked murderer and to put an
end to her own life of suffering. Now once more the odious Thrasyllus,
still recklessly pursuing his pleasure, appeared to thrust his proposal of
marriage on her deaf ears. This time she rebuffed his approach gently,
responding to his pressing endearments and humble solicitations with a
remarkably clever piece of acting. “Until now,” she said, “the fair face
of your brother and my dearest husband has lingered before my eyes; I
still sense the balmy fragrance of his heavenly body, and beautiful
Tlepolemus still lives in my heart. Your most considerate course,
therefore, will be to grant an unhappy woman the period of mourning
that is necessary and customary, and to wait until a year is up. That will
safeguard my honour and also your own interests and safety; by
marrying too soon we might stir up my husband’s vengeful ghost to
destroy you in his just resentment.”
10 ‘So far from being sobered down by her words or comforted by this
temporizing promise, Thrasyllus persisted in pressing his shameless
blandishments on her, going on and on until finally Charite pretended to
yield. “But one thing, Thrasyllus,” she said, “I must earnestly ask, and
you cannot refuse me: for the time being, until the rest of the year has
passed, our lovers’ meetings must be a secret known only to ourselves
and to nobody else in our families.” Thrasyllus, outmanoeuvred,
assented to her crafty proposal, willingly agreeing to keep their
lovemaking secret. Forgetting everything else in his single-minded
eagerness to possess her, he could not wait for night and the cover of
darkness. “Now listen,” said Charite. “Cover yourself completely in
your cloak and bring nobody with you. Come to my door at nightfall
without making a sound, and whistle just once, then wait for my nurse –
 you know her – who will be waiting just inside the door for you to
arrive. She will open up and let you in, then she will bring you to my
room, and there will be no lamp to share our secret.”
‘Thrasyllus was pleased with the arrangements for his fatal wedding. He
11 suspected nothing, but on edge with anticipation complained only that
the day was so long and evening so slow in coming. When the sun
finally gave place to night, he appeared dressed in accordance with
Charite’s instructions, and entrapped by the nurse’s watchful craft
entered the bedroom in eager hope. Then, following her mistress’s
orders, the old woman slyly produced wine cups and a jar of wine mixed
with a narcotic drug. Cajoled by her he thirstily drank off cup after cup,
suspecting nothing, while she explained that her mistress was delayed by
having to sit up with her father, who was ill. So it was easy for her to lay
him to rest; then, as he lay sprawled there exposed to whatever anyone
might do to him, she summoned Charite, who flew at the murderer,
raging with manlike
spirit and deadly intent. Standing over him, “Look at you,” she said,
12 “there you lie – my husband’s loyal comrade, the noble hunter, my dear
betrothed. This is the hand that shed my blood, this the breast which
contrived those treacherous schemes for my ruin, these the eyes in which
I have found an unholy favour – eyes that already anticipate the coming
punishment as they begin to experience the darkness that awaits them.
Sleep well! Sweet dreams! It is not the sword, not cold steel, that I shall
take to you; perish the thought that in the manner of your death you
should be my husband’s equal. You will live, but your eyes will die, and
only asleep shall you see. I shall have seen to it that your enemy’s death
seems more fortunate to you than your life. This is your fate: you will
never again see the light, you will need an attendant to lead you, you
will not have Charite, no happy marriage will be yours. You will neither
rest in the peace of death nor enjoy the pleasures of life, but you will be
a ghost wandering uncertainly between hell and heaven. You will forever
search in vain for the hand that put out your eyes, and your worst
misfortune of all will be that you will never know whom to blame. With
your eyes’ blood I shall pour a libation at the tomb of my Tlepolemus,
and your sight shall be an offering to appease his sainted shade. But why
this delay? Why grant you a respite from the torment that you deserve,
while you perhaps are dreaming of my fatal embraces? Quit now the
 darkness of sleep and awaken to another darkness, that of your
punishment. Raise your empty eyes, know your doom, understand your
calamity, reckon up your sufferings. This is how you have found favour
with a chaste woman, this is how the marriage-torches have lighted your
bridal chamber. Your matrons of honour shall be the avenging Furies,
and blindness your best man, and the prick of conscience will haunt you
to eternity.”
‘So she prophesied; then, taking a hairpin from her head, she plunged it
13 deep into both eyes, leaving him totally blinded. While this as yet
uncomprehended pain was shaking him out of his drunken sleep, she
seized the naked sword that Tlepolemus had always worn and rushed off
through the city, setting her frenzied course straight for her husband’s
tomb, obviously intent on some dreadful deed. We, indeed the whole
population, all left our houses and followed her as fast as we could,
urging each other to wrest the sword from her maddened grasp. But
Charite stood by Tlepolemus’ coffin and kept us all off with her
gleaming blade. Then, seeing us all weeping profusely and lamenting,
“No tears!” she cried. “They have no place here. No grieving! Grief has
nothing to do with what I have accomplished. I have taken vengeance on
my husband’s bloodstained assassin, I have punished the murdering
ruffian who destroyed my marriage. Now it is time for me to seek with
this
sword the way down to my Tlepolemus.” And then, having related
14 everything that her husband had told her in her dream and the ruse with
which she had ensnared Thrasyllus, she ran herself through under the
right breast and collapsed; lying in a pool of her own blood she muttered
some incoherent words and breathed out her manly spirit. Her attendants
quickly washed the unhappy Charite’s body with great care and restored
her to her husband to lie with him in the same tomb as his wife for ever.
Thrasyllus, when he had heard everything that had happened, thinking
immediate extinction an inadequate punishment and knowing that even
death by the noose could not match the heinousness of his crime, went
of his own accord to the tomb. Crying repeatedly “You angry ghosts,
here is a willing victim for you”, he shut the doors tightly behind him,
resolved to put an end by starvation to a life on which he himself had
passed sentence of execution.’
15
 That was his story, told with many deep sighs and tears. His rustic
audience were profoundly moved by it, and in their heartfelt grief at
their masters’ domestic calamities and their fear of what a change of
ownership might bring about, they decided to decamp. The head
stableman, he to whose care I had been consigned with such pressing
recommendations, loaded on to me and the other pack-animals
everything of value that he had stored in his house, and left his home
taking it all with him. We were carrying children, women, fowls, cage-
birds, kids, puppies – anything that might have slowed down our flight
because it was weak on its own feet was conveyed on ours. The weight
of my load, huge as it was, did not trouble me: I was too glad to get
away from that awful fellow who was proposing to castrate me.
After negotiating a steep pass over a wooded mountainside and
traversing a wide and remote plain, we came as evening was closing in
on us to a large and prosperous village. The inhabitants tried to
discourage us from going on that night or indeed the next day, telling us
that the whole countryside around was infested by great packs of
wolves, beasts of monstrous size and savage ferocity that were
accustomed to plundering at their pleasure. It had got to the point where,
just like bandits, they lay in ambush at the roadside and set on travellers;
mad with ravening hunger they actually took the neighbouring
farmhouses by storm, and human beings now found themselves
threatened with the same fate as their defenceless flocks. Why, all along
the road we should have to take there were lying half-eaten human
bodies and whitening bones denuded of their flesh. This, they said,
should be a warning to us. We should never relax our guard and take
particular care not to travel until it was broad day and the sun was well
up and shining brightly. In that way we should avoid their concealed
ambushes, since the aggressive instincts of these fearsome beasts were
blunted by daylight. Also we should not straggle on the march but move
in a compact phalanx. With these precautions we ought to be able to
negotiate the hazards safely.
16 However, our absconding leaders, damn them, were in too much of a
blind hurry and too fearful of possible pursuit to heed these salutary
warnings. Not even waiting for daylight they loaded us up and drove us
on our way while it was still dark. I got as nearly as I could into the
middle of the crowd, since by unobtrusively ensconcing myself in
 among the mass of animals I reckoned I would protect my behind from
the attacks of the wolves. Everybody was amazed to see the pace I set,
outstripping even the horses. That, however, was a symptom of fear
rather than zeal: I thought to myself that it was fear that made a flier out
of the great Pegasus and that it made sense for him to be represented
with wings, seeing that it was in terror of the jaws of the fire-breathing
Chimaera that he went bounding aloft to heaven itself. Meanwhile the
herdsmen who were leading us had armed themselves in warlike
fashion. One carried a lance, one a hunting-spear, another a javelin;
some had clubs, some stones, of which there was a plentiful supply
along our rocky route, and some brandished sharpened stakes; most
relied on flaming torches to keep off the wolves. We only needed a
trumpeter to complete the military picture.
But though these fears turned out to be quite baseless, we now became
involved in a much more serious predicament. The wolves, possibly
deterred by the noise from our serried ranks or more probably by the
blaze of light, or possibly because they were on the rampage elsewhere,
did not attack us, and indeed did not put in an
appearance. However, the workers on an estate which we happened to be
17 skirting, thinking from our numbers that we were bandits, in their
anxious concern for their property were thrown into a state of panic, and
set their dogs on us with hunting cries and a general hullabaloo. These
were ferocious great animals, as savage as any wolf or bear, specially
reared as guard-dogs. Fierce as they were by nature, they were now
further enraged by the uproar made by their masters, and flew at us,
attacking from all quarters, tearing at beasts and men alike, until at
length their violence had left most of our company down on the ground.
The sight was not so much memorable as miserable: this great pack of
infuriated dogs, some seizing on those who tried to escape, some
grappling with those who stood their ground, some standing over the
fallen, rending and ranging through the length and breadth of our
caravan. This was bad enough, but worse was to follow. From the
rooftops and from a hill nearby the peasants began to hurl down at us a
barrage of stones, so that we were hard put to it to know which danger to
beware of more, the dogs at close quarters or the stones at long range.
One of the latter indeed suddenly hit the woman who was riding me on
 the head. Her tears and cries of pain immediately brought her husband,
the
head groom, to her aid. He loudly invoked the gods, and as he wiped
18 away her blood he protested at the top of his voice: ‘What is this
barbarity? Why attack and stone distressed travellers, human beings like
yourselves? What plunder are you hoping for? What wrongs have you to
avenge? You aren’t wild animals or savages, denizens of caves or rocks,
that you should take pleasure in shedding human blood.’
He had scarcely uttered these words when the rain of stones stopped,
the fierce dogs were called off, and the tumult died down. Then one of
the villagers called out from the top of a cypress: ‘We’re not brigands
and we don’t want to plunder you – we thought you were, and that was
the danger we were trying to beat off. Now you can go on your way
safely in peace.’ That was all very well, but it was with heavy casualties
all round that we set out again, some bruised by stones, some displaying
bites – nobody had escaped injury. After we had gone some distance we
came to a grove of tall trees and green grass, a pleasant spot, where our
leaders decided to rest and recuperate for a time while they attended
carefully to their various injuries. First they all collapsed and lay on the
ground to recover from their fatigue; then they set about applying
appropriate remedies to their wounds. One was washing off the blood
with water from a nearby stream, another was putting a vinegar
compress on his bruises, another was bandaging an open wound. So
each man took thought for his own welfare.
19 Meanwhile an old man was watching us from the top of a neighbouring
hill, obviously a shepherd, for there were goats grazing around him. One
of our men asked him whether he had any milk for sale, either fresh or
in the form of new cheese. For a long time he merely shook his head. At
last, ‘Are you thinking,’ he asked, ‘of food or drink or any kind of
refreshment now? Haven’t you any idea where you’ve chosen to stop?’
And so saying he rounded up his flock, turned about, and left the scene.
His words and his disappearance greatly alarmed our herdsmen. Panic-
stricken, they were anxiously asking each other what sort of a place this
was and finding nobody to tell them, when there appeared on the road
another old man, this one tall but bowed down by age, leaning heavily
on a staff and wearily dragging his feet, and weeping profusely. When
 he saw us he burst out crying, and supplicating each man in turn he
uttered the following appeal:
20 ‘I implore you by your Fortunes and your Guardian Spirits, if you hope
to reach my age in health and happiness, come to the aid of an old man
in his bereavement, rescue my little boy from death and restore him to
his white-haired grandfather. My grandson, my darling travelling-
companion, was trying to catch a bird that was singing in the hedgerow,
and fell into a yawning pit in the bottom of the thicket. Now he is in
peril of his life; I know he is alive, for I can hear him crying and calling
“Grandfather” over and over again, but as you see I am too feeble in
body to be able to rescue him. But you are young and strong, and it will
be no trouble to you to help a poor old man and to restore to me this
child, the last of my line and all the family I have left.’
21 As he uttered this plea and tore his white hair, everybody pitied him.
Then one of them, braver and younger and stronger than the rest, the
only one who had come off unscathed from the recent battle, jumped up
eagerly and asked where exactly the boy had fallen in. The old man
pointed out a thicket not far away, and the volunteer went off briskly
with him. After a while, when we animals had grazed and the men had
seen to themselves and felt restored, they all began to pack up and get
ready to move off. First of all they called the volunteer by name, with
loud and repeated shouts; then alarmed by the prolonged delay they sent
a messenger to find him and warn him that it was time to leave, and
bring him back. Almost immediately the messenger reappeared, deathly
pale and terrified, with dreadful news of his fellow servant. He had
found him lying half-eaten, with a monstrous serpent crouched over him
and devouring him, and of the poor old man not a sign anywhere.
Hearing this and recollecting what the old shepherd had said, they
realized that this indeed was the fierce denizen of the region that he had
been threatening them with, and at once quitted the pestilential place and
fled precipitately, urging us animals on with continual
beating. So after a long stage at top speed we came to a village where we
22 rested for the night. At this place there had been perpetrated a deed that
was so memorable that I propose to put it on record.
It concerned a certain slave to whom his master had confided the whole
management of his household and who was the steward of the large
estate where we had stopped. He had as his consort another slave from
 the household, but he was madly in love with somebody else, a free
woman who was not a member of the family. His wife was so enraged
by his infidelity that she made a bonfire of all her husband’s account-
books and the entire contents of the barns and storehouses. Then, not
thinking this enough of a revenge for the affront to her marriage-bed,
she turned her fury against her own flesh and blood: passing a noose
around her neck, with the same rope she tied to herself the little boy that
she had had by her husband, and threw herself down a deep well,
dragging the child down with her. Their master, greatly upset by her
death, arrested the slave whose lust had been the cause of such a crime,
had him stripped naked and smeared all over with honey and lashed
tightly to a fig-tree. This had in its hollow trunk an ants’ nest, swarming
and seething with their multitudinous comings and goings. Directly they
sensed the sweet honeyed scent of the man’s body they battened on it
with their tiny jaws, nibbling endlessly away in their thousands until
after many days of torture they had devoured him completely, entrails
and all, leaving his bones bare; only his gleaming white skeleton,
stripped of flesh, was left fastened to the fatal tree.
23 Leaving its inhabitants in deep mourning we quitted this abominable
place and set out again across the plain. At evening we arrived tired out
at a certain large and famous city. Here the herdsmen decided to take up
permanent residence; they thought it a secure refuge from even the most
determined pursuit, and, an added attraction, provisions were good and
plentiful. They allowed three days for feeding us animals up, so as to be
more saleable, and then they took us to market. The auctioneer called
out the price of each animal in a loud voice, and the horses and the other
asses were knocked down to prosperous buyers; I alone was left,
contemptuously passed over by nearly everybody. In the end I became
tired of being handled by people trying to calculate my age from my
teeth, and when one of them started scraping my gums with his filthy
fingers, I clamped my jaws on his dirty stinking hand good and hard.
After that none of the bystanders would venture to make an offer for
such a savage animal. So the auctioneer, at the top of his voice and to the
detriment of his vocal chords, started to make fun of me and my
unfortunate condition. ‘How long,’ he shouted, ‘have I got to waste my
time trying to sell this clapped-out old hack? Look at him: his hooves
are so worn he can hardly stand, he’s deformed by ill-treatment, he’s as
 vicious as he’s idle, he’s nothing but a sieve on four legs. All right: I’ll
make a present of him to anybody who doesn’t mind wasting fodder.’
24 With jokes of this kind the auctioneer kept the crowd in fits of laughter.
But now my cruel Fortune, whom, though I fled never so far afield, I
had not been able to escape or appease by all that I had suffered, once
again turned her blind eyes on me and, wonderful to relate, produced a
buyer who could not have suited my unhappy circumstances more
perfectly. Let me describe him: he was a real old queen, bald apart from
a few grizzled ringlets, one of your street-corner scum, one of those who
carry the Syrian Goddess around our towns to the sound of cymbals and
castanets and make her beg for her living. He was keen to buy me and
asked the auctioneer where I came from. He pronounced me to be a
genuine Cappadocian and quite a strong little beast. Then he asked my
age; the auctioneer answered humorously: ‘Well, an astrologer who cast
his horoscope said he was in his fifth year, but the beast himself could
tell you better from his tax return. I know I’d be liable to the penalties of
the Cornelian law if I sold you a Roman citizen as a slave, but here’s a
good and deserving servant who can be of use to you both at home and
abroad. Won’t you buy him?’ But my tiresome purchaser persisted with
one question after another,
wanting particularly to know if he could warrant me tractable. ‘Why,’
25 said the man, ‘this here isn’t a donkey, it’s an old bell-wether: he’s
placid, will do anything you want, he doesn’t bite or kick – you’d think
it was a well-behaved man dwelling in an ass’s skin. You can easily find
out – put your face between his thighs, and you’ll soon discover the
extent of his patience.’
These witticisms at the old guzzler’s expense were not lost on him, and
putting on a great show of indignation he retorted: ‘You zombie, you
stuffed dummy, damn you and your auctioneer’s blether, may the
almighty mother of all, she of Syria, and holy Sabadius and Bellona and
the Idaean Mother and queen Venus with her Adonis strike you blind for
the coarse buffoonery I’ve had to take from you. You bloody fool, do
you think I can entrust the goddess to an unruly beast who might
suddenly upset the divine image and throw it off, leaving its unfortunate
guardian to run about with her hair all over the place looking for a
doctor for her goddess lying on the ground?’ When I heard this I
wondered if I shouldn’t suddenly start bucking as if possessed, so that
 seeing me in a savage temper he would break off the negotiation.
However, he was so anxious to buy me that he paid the price down on
the nail and nipped that idea in the bud. My master, I suppose, was so
pleased to see the last of me that he readily took seventeen denarii for
me, and handed me over with a bit of rope for bridle to Philebus, that
being my new owner’s name.
26 Taking delivery of this new member of the family he led me off home,
where as soon as he got indoors he called out: ‘Look, girls, at the pretty
little slave I’ve bought and brought home for you.’ But these ‘girls’ were
a troupe of queens, who at once appeared jumping for joy and squealing
untunefully in mincing effeminate tones, in the belief that it really was a
human slave that had been brought to serve them. When they saw that
this was not a case of a hind substituting for a maiden but an ass taking
the place of a man, they began to sneer and mock their chief, saying that
this wasn’t a servant he’d brought but a husband for himself. ‘And
listen,’ they said. ‘You’re not to gobble up this nice little nestling all on
your own – we’re your lovey-doveys too, and you must let us have a
share sometimes.’ Exchanging badinage of this sort they tied me up next
to the manger. They also had in the house a beefy young man, an
accomplished piper, whom they had bought in the market from the
proceeds of their street collections. Out of doors he tagged along playing
his instrument when they carried the goddess around, at home he was
toyboy in ordinary to the whole establishment. As soon as he saw me
joining the household, without waiting for orders he served me out a
generous ration of food and welcomed me joyfully. ‘At last,’ he said,
‘here’s somebody to spell me in my loathsome duties. Long life to you!
May you please our masters and bring relief to my exhausted loins!’
When I heard this I began to picture to myself the ordeals that lay ahead
of me.
27 Next day they all put on tunics of various hues and ‘beautified’
themselves by smearing coloured gunge on their faces and applying eye-
shadow. Then they set forth, dressed in turbans and robes, some saffron-
coloured, some of linen and some of gauze; some had white tunics
embroidered with a pattern of purple stripes and girded at the waist; and
on their feet were yellow slippers. The goddess, draped in silk, they
placed on my back, and baring their arms to the shoulder and
brandishing huge swords and axes, they capered about with ecstatic
 cries, while the sound of the pipes goaded their dancing to frenzy. After
calling at a number of small houses they arrived at a rich man’s country
estate. The moment they entered the gates there was bedlam; they
rushed about like fanatics, howling discordantly, twisting their necks
sinuously back and forth with lowered heads, and letting their long hair
fly around in circles, sometimes attacking their own flesh with their
teeth, and finally gashing their arms with the weapons they carried. In
the middle of all this, one of them was inspired to fresh excesses of
frenzy; he began to gasp and draw deep laboured breaths, feigning
madness like one divinely possessed – as if the presence of a god
sickened and enfeebled men instead of making them better!
28 Anyway, let me tell you how heavenly Providence rewarded him.
Holding forth like some prophet he embarked on a cock-and-bull story
about some sacrilegious act he accused himself of having committed,
and condemned himself to undergo the just punishment for his crime at
his own hands. So, seizing a whip such as these effeminates always
carry about with them, its lashes made of twisted wool ending in long
tassels thickly studded with sheep’s knucklebones, he laid into himself
with these knotted thongs, standing the pain of the blows with
extraordinary hardihood. What with the sword-cuts and the flogging, the
ground was awash with the contaminated blood of these creatures. All
this worried me a good deal: seeing all these wounds and gore all over
the place I was afraid that, just as some men drink asses’ milk, this
foreign goddess might conceive an appetite for asses’ blood. Finally,
however, exhausted or sated with lacerating themselves, they gave over
the carnage, and started to stow away in the roomy folds of their robes
the coppers, indeed the silver money, that people crowded round to
bestow on them – and not only money but jars of wine and milk and
cheeses and a quantity of corn and wheat; and some presented the bearer
of the goddess with barley. They greedily raked in all this stuff,
crammed it into the sacks that they had ready for these acquisitions, and
loaded it on my back, so that I was carrying a double load, a walking
barn and temple combined.
29 In this way they roved about plundering the whole countryside. In one
village they enjoyed a particularly lavish haul and decided to celebrate
with a banquet. As the price for a fake oracle they got a fat ram from one
of the farmers, which they said was to be sacrificed to appease the
 hungry goddess. Having made all the arrangements for dinner they went
off to the baths, whence having bathed they brought back with them to
share their dinner a robust young peasant, finely equipped in loin and
groin. Dinner was hardly begun and they had scarcely started on the
hors-d’ œuvre when the filthy scum became inflamed by their
unspeakable lusts to outrageous lengths of unnatural depravity. The
young man was stripped and laid on his back, and crowding round him
they made repeated demands on his services with their loathsome
mouths. Finally I couldn’t stand the sight and tried to shout ‘Romans, to
the rescue!’; but the other letters and syllables failed me and all that
came out was an ‘O’ – a good loud one, creditable to an ass, but the
timing was unfortunate. It so happened that some young men from the
next village were looking for an ass that had been stolen that night and
were conducting a thorough search of all the lodging-houses. Hearing
me braying inside and believing that their quarry was hidden away there,
they burst in unexpectedly in a body to reclaim their property then and
there, and caught our friends red-handed at their vile obscenities. They
immediately called all the neighbours to witness this shocking scene,
ironically praising the priests for their spotless virtue.
30 Demoralized by this scandal, news of which soon spread and naturally
got them loathed and detested by one and all, they packed up everything
and left the place surreptitiously at about midnight. By sunrise they had
covered a good many miles, and by the time it was broad day they found
themselves in a remote and desolate area. There they stopped and held a
long discussion, as a result of which they prepared to kill me. They
removed the goddess from my back and placed her on the ground,
stripped me of all my accoutrements, and tied me to an oak-tree; then
with that whip with its bone-studded thongs they scourged me almost to
death. One of them threatened to hamstring me with his axe for having
(he said) made a shameful conquest of his unblemished honour; but the
rest of them, thinking not so much of my welfare as of the goddess lying
there on the ground, voted for sparing my life. So they loaded me up
again, and threatening me with the flat of their swords, they arrived at a
certain important city. There one of the principal citizens, an extremely
devout and godfearing man, came running out to meet us, roused by the
clash of cymbals and the beating of tambourines and the seductive
strains of the Phrygian music; being under a vow to welcome and
 receive the goddess, he allowed us to camp in the precincts of his large
house and laid himself out to propitiate her godhead with pious worship
and rich sacrifices.
31 It was in this place, I remember, that I had the narrowest of all my
escapes from death. It happened that one of the tenants had been hunting
and sent his master the fat haunch of a fine stag as his share of the kill.
This was carelessly left hanging up within reach near the kitchen door,
where one of the dogs, itself a hunter, got at it unnoticed and hastily
made off in triumph with his booty without anybody spotting him. When
the cook discovered his loss he cursed himself for his carelessness and
wept many unavailing tears; then when his master started to ask when
dinner would be ready, he said goodbye to his little son, took a rope, and
was preparing to hang himself. When his faithful wife grasped her
husband’s desperate intention, she tore the fatal noose out of his hands.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ she demanded. ‘Has this calamity unnerved
you so much that you can’t see the remedy that divine Providence is
offering out of the blue? If this misfortune hasn’t left you too dizzy to
see sense, snap out of it and listen to me. Take this ass that’s just arrived
to somewhere out of the way and slit his throat. You can cut off a
haunch to match the one we’ve lost, and if you cook it skilfully and
season it well with savoury herbs you can serve it to the master instead
of the venison.’ The brute approved this plan to save his life at the
expense of mine, damn him, and loudly praising his consort’s ingenuity
he began to sharpen his knives for the intended butchery.
BOOK 9

A lucky escape – the story of the lover and the jar– the priests
arrested for theft – Lucius sold to a miller – in the mill again –
the miller’s evil wife – more stories of adultery – death of the
miller – sold to a market-gardener – the story of a house
destroyed – commandeered by the military

1 While my infamous executioner was thus arming his ungodly hands

against me, I did not waste time in protracted thought: the danger was
too acute and immediate to allow of indecision, and I resolved to escape
from the butchery that threatened me by flight. Without more ado I
wrenched myself free of my tether and took off at full gallop, covering
my retreat by a vigorous rearguard action with my hind hooves, and
passing at speed through the connecting colonnade I catapulted myself
into the dining-room where the master of the house was holding a
sacrificial feast with the priests. My headlong entry sent everything
flying, plates, dishes, tables, torches, the lot. Our host was greatly put out
by this unsightly havoc and my inopportune intrusion, and handed me
over to an attendant with strict orders to shut me up safely somewhere
where I wouldn’t disturb their peaceful gathering with any more such
skittishness. Protected by this clever plan of mine and wrested from the
butcher’s clutches, I was quite happy to be locked up in prison safe and
sound.
But it’s a dead certainty that nothing can go right for any human being
if Fortune sets her face against him, and no decision, however prudent,
 no counter-measures, however cunning, can upset or change what divine
Providence has decreed and ordained. In my case the very scheme which
I thought had saved my bacon for the time being now gave rise to a new
and alarming peril, sheer destruction
indeed, from another quarter. For as the guests were quietly conversing
2 there now suddenly burst into the dining-room a slave, his face
convulsed with terror, who reported to his master that a rabid bitch had
just rushed violently in at the back door and had in a frenzy attacked the
pack of hounds; then she had invaded the stable next door and similarly
savaged many of the animals there, and finally the staff themselves had
not escaped. Myrtilus the muleteer and Hephaestio the cook and
Hypnophilus the groom of the chambers and Apollonius the doctor and a
number of others had all been bitten in different places while trying to
drive her away. It was, he said, clear that many of the animals had been
infected by her poisonous bites and must likewise be rabid.
This news greatly alarmed everybody, and believing that I too had
taken the infection and was mad they grabbed whatever weapons came
to hand, and exhorting each other to combine against the common peril
– though they were the ones who were really mad – they came after me.
They would certainly have hacked me limb from limb with their lances
and spears and even hatchets which the servants hurried to supply, had I
not grasped the danger of this whirlwind assault and at once rushed into
the room where the priests were lodged. They immediately shut and
bolted the door after me and mounted guard outside, preserving
themselves from contact with me and leaving me to succumb to the
devouring and inexorable madness of the fatal infection. Thus, free at
last, I embraced the solitude granted me by Fortune, and lying down on
a proper bed I slept the first human sleep I had enjoyed for many a long
day.
3 It was broad daylight when I got up; I was in excellent form, my
weariness dispelled by the softness of my bed. I could hear the people
who had been on watch outside all night wondering how I was. ‘Do you
think the poor beast is still raging mad?’ ‘No, it’s more likely that the
poison has increased in violence and that he’s dead.’ They decided to
settle the difference of opinion by having a look, and peeping through a
crack they found me standing there quietly, sane and composed. Then
they ventured to open the door wider to see if I were now quite docile.
 However, one of them, whom I must regard as a saviour sent to me from
heaven, explained to the others how to prove whether I was sane or not.
It was to offer me a bucketful of fresh water to drink: if I drank it
eagerly and without any sign of fear as usual, they could be sure I was
sane and wholly free of the infection. If on the other hand I backed away
and panicked at the sight or touch of water it would be clear that the
madness persisted. This was the standard test, recorded in the ancient
authorities.
4 They agreed, and quickly fetched a large pail of sparkling water from
the nearest fountain, which they offered me, though still with some
hesitation. I, however, far from hanging back, came forward to meet
them, stretched out my neck thirstily, plunged my head right into that
literally life-saving water, and drank up every drop of it. Then I quietly
let them pat me and fondle my ears and lead me by the bridle and test
me in any other way they liked, until I had proved to everybody’s
satisfaction that, contrary to their insane assumption, I was completely
docile. And that was how I escaped from my double danger. The next
day I was loaded up again with the goddess and her attributes and led
out to the sound of the castanets and cymbals on my beggar’s progress.
After visiting a number of cottages and hamlets we came to a village
built in the ruins of what the inhabitants told us had once been a
flourishing city. There we put up at the first inn we came to, where we
heard an amusing story of how a poor man was cuckolded, which I
should like you to hear too.
5 This man was extremely poor; he made his living by hiring himself out
as a day-labourer at very low wages. He had a wife, as poor as himself,
but notorious for her outrageously immoral behaviour. One day, directly
he had left early for the job he had in hand, there quietly slipped into the
house her dashing blade of a lover. While they were busily engaged with
each other, no holds barred, and not expecting visitors, the husband,
quite unaware of the situation, and not suspecting anything of the kind,
unexpectedly came back. Finding the door closed and locked he
commended his wife’s virtue, and knocked, whistling to identify
himself. The cunning baggage, who was past mistress in goings-on of
this kind, disentangled her lover from her tight embraces and quietly
ensconced him in an empty storage-jar which stood half hidden in a
corner. Then she opened the door, and before her husband was well
 inside she greeted him acidly. ‘So,’ said she, ‘I’m to watch you strolling
about idly, doing nothing and with your hands in your pockets instead of
going to work as usual and seeing about getting us something to live on
and buy food with? Here am I wearing my fingers to the bone night and
day with spinning wool, just to keep a light burning in our hovel! Don’t
I wish I was Daphne next door, rolling about in bed with her lovers and
already tight by breakfast-time!’
6 Her husband was put out. ‘What’s all that for?’ he asked. ‘The boss has
got to be in court, so he’s given us the day off; but I have done
something about today’s dinner. You know that jar that never has
anything in it and takes up space uselessly – doing nothing in fact but
get in our way? I’ve just sold it to a man for six denarii, and he’s coming
to pay up and collect his property. So how about some action and
lending me a hand for a minute to rout it out and hand it over?’ The
crafty minx was quite equal to this and shrieked with laughter. ’Some
husband I’ve got! Some bargainer! He’s disposed of it for six, and I, a
mere woman, I’ve already sold it for seven without even leaving the
house!’ Her husband was delighted by the increased price. ‘Where is
this chap who’s made such a good offer?’ he asked. ‘He’s inside it,
stupid,’ she answered, ‘giving it a good going-over to see if it’s sound.’
7 Her lover did not miss his cue. Emerging at once, ‘If you want me to be
frank, ma’am,’ he said, ‘this jar of yours is pretty antique, and there are
yawning cracks all over it’; and turning to the husband as if he had no
idea who he was, ‘Come on, chum, whoever you are, get cracking and
fetch me a light, so I can scrape away all the inside dirt and see if the
thing’s fit to use – money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.’ Her
admirable husband, sharp fellow, suspected nothing, and at once lighted
a lamp. ‘Come out, old man,’ he said. ’Sit down and make yourself
comfortable, and let me get it cleaned out properly for you.’ So saying,
he stripped and taking the lamp in with him started to scrape the
encrusted deposits off the rotten old jar. Meanwhile her smart young
gallant made the man’s wife lean face downwards across the jar, and
without turning a hair gave her too a good going-over. She lowered her
head into the jar and enjoyed herself at her husband’s expense like the
clever whore she was, pointing at this place or that or yet another one
that needed scouring, until both jobs were finished. Then the unfortunate
 artisan took his seven denarii and was made to carry the jar himself to
the adulterer’s house.
8 Having stayed in this place for a few days, fattened by public charity
and stuffed with the ample proceeds of their prophesying, these most
chaste of priests devised a new way of making money. They composed
one all-purpose oracle and used it to bamboozle the crowds of people
who came to consult them about all sorts of things. This was how it
went:

The yokèd oxen drive the furrow now,

So that one day luxuriant crops shall grow.
Then if somebody consulted them, say, about getting married, they
would answer that it was obvious: the couple should yoke themselves in
wedlock and raise a crop of children. If somebody asked about buying
an estate, there it was in so many words, oxen and yokes and flourishing
crops. If somebody was worried about undertaking a journey and sought
divine guidance, the answer was that the tamest beasts in the world were
harnessed and ready to start and that the luxuriant crops meant profit. If
somebody was going on military service or on an expedition against
bandits and wanted to know whether their enterprise would succeed,
they declared that victory was absolutely guaranteed by the oracle: the
necks of the enemy would bow beneath the yoke and there would be a
rich and fruitful yield in the shape of plunder.
By this crafty method of divination they raked in a good deal of
money. However, under the ceaseless flow of questions they began to
9 run short of answers, and set off on their travels again. This road was
much worse than any we had journeyed over yet, potholed and rutted,
sometimes leading through standing pools, sometimes slimy and
slippery with mud. I lost count of the number of times I stumbled and
fell; I knocked myself about so much that when we finally reached level
ground I was almost too tired to go on. At that moment we were
suddenly overtaken by a troop of armed horsemen; reining in their
horses with difficulty from their wild gallop, they fell on Philebus and
his colleagues and seized them by the scruff of the neck, accusing them
of sacrilege and worse and pummelling them with their fists as they
spoke. Then they fettered them all and began to harangue them
insistently, pressing them to ‘produce the gold cup. Come on,’ they said,
 ‘produce it, produce the proceeds of your crime. You filched it from the
innermost sanctum of the Mother of the Gods while you pretended to
perform your secret ceremonies – and then as if you could escape the
punishment of so heinous a
crime by a moonlight flit, you left the town before daybreak.’ And
10 suiting the action to the word one of them laid hold of me, and
rummaging in the very bosom of the goddess whom I carried found the
gold cup and displayed it to everybody. However, it would have taken
more than this revelation of their iniquity to abash or dismay such lost
souls as these. They simply laughed and affected to make a joke of it.
‘See how wrong and unjust you can get!’ they said. ‘As usual, it’s the
innocent who are accused and put at risk! All because of one little goblet
which the Mother of the Gods presented to her Syrian sister-goddess as a
memento of her stay, respectable priests are to be treated like criminals
on a capital charge!’
All this nonsense and a lot more like it got them nowhere; the villagers
took them back and confined them in chains in the local Clink. The cup
and the image which I was carrying they consecrated and deposited in
the temple treasury. The next day they brought me out and put me up for
sale once again, and I was knocked down to a miller from a
neighbouring village for seven sesterces more than Philebus had paid for
me. He immediately loaded me heavily with some corn that he had just
bought and led me by a steep path, strewn with stones and stumps of all
kinds, to his mill.
11 In this place a large number of animals were employed in turning round
and round mills of various sizes. It was not only by day but all night
long that they kept the machinery in perpetual motion and burned, so to
speak, the midnight oil to produce their nightly quota of flour. I,
however, was treated as a distinguished guest by my new master, I
suppose because he thought that if I were immediately initiated into this
slavery I should cut up rough. So he gave me my first day off, and my
manger was abundantly supplied with food. This life of leisure and
happy repletion lasted for just that one day. Early next morning I was
harnessed to what seemed to be the largest of the mills, blindfolded, and
immediately forced round the circular track, restricted by the revolving
motion, and so walking back and forth and always retracing my
footsteps, wandering but never deviating in my wanderings. However,
 acute and sensible as ever, I declined to submit tamely to this
apprenticeship. Though, when I was a man among men, I had often seen
this sort of machinery in operation, I now pretended to have no
experience or knowledge of such work and stood stock still in feigned
bewilderment. I thought, you see, that I would be considered unsuited to
this kind of employment and absolutely useless at it, and be set to some
lighter work or even be left to feed in idleness. My cleverness got me
nowhere – far from it, for several of them at once armed themselves
with sticks and standing in a circle – being blindfolded I had no idea
what was happening – at a given signal they all shouted and laid into
me. I was so startled by the commotion that I totally jettisoned all my
plans, and scientifically throwing my weight into the collar I broke
into a brisk trot. This abrupt change of policy occasioned general
12 merriment.
The day was nearly over and I was pretty well worn out when they
undid my harness, released me from my attachment to the mill, and
tethered me to my manger. But, fatigued as I was and desperately
needing to restore my strength – I was indeed nearly dying of hunger –
yet my natural curiosity possessed me, and neglecting my plentiful
supply of food I became totally absorbed in studying, with a kind of
pleasure, the routine of this unpleasant establishment. As to the human
contingent – what a crew! – their whole bodies picked out with livid
weals, their whip-scarred backs shaded rather than covered by their
tattered rags, some with only a scanty loin-cloth by way of covering, and
all of them showing through the rents in what clothes they had. There
were branded foreheads, half-shaven heads, and fettered ankles; their
faces were sallow, their eyes so bleared by the smoky heat of the
furnaces that they were half blind; and like boxers, who sprinkle
themselves with dust before fighting, they were dirty white all over with
a floury powder.
13 When I turn to my fellow inmates in the stable, words almost fail me.
What an array of old mules and clapped-out nags of horses! Their heads
down in the trough, they were gobbling up great quantities of chaff;
there they stood, with suppurating sores on their sagging necks, their
nostrils dilated with perpetual coughing, their chests galled by the
continual rubbing of their harness, their ribs laid bare by countless
 beatings, their hooves monstrously enlarged by their endless circlings,
and their coats dirty and rough and mangy from starvation.
Seeing this lamentable household I feared a similar fate for myself, and
remembering Lucius as he was in happier days and with the end now
finally staring me in the face, I let my head hang down and abandoned
myself to grief. The only comfort I had in this wretched existence was
the entertainment furnished by my inborn curiosity, since everybody
behaved and spoke with complete freedom in front of me, paying no
attention to my presence. Very rightly did the divine originator of
ancient Greek poetry, when he wished to define a consummately wise
man, sing of one who attained supreme virtue by visiting many cities
and acquainting himself with many peoples. Speaking for myself, I am
devoutly grateful to the ass that I once was, for it was he, when I was
concealed under his hide and was buffeted by so many tribulations, who
rendered me, no wiser, I must admit, but very widely informed.
14 Now, let me present to you an exceptionally good story, a prettily
polished production. The miller who had bought me was himself an
honest and thoroughly decent man, but the wife who had fallen to his lot
was a dreadful woman, the worst of her sex, and made his bed and board
such a misery to him that even I silently groaned at what he had to put
up with. Not a single vice was wanting in this abominable woman’s
make-up; her heart was like a slimy cesspit in which every kind of moral
turpitude had collected. She was hard-hearted, perverse, man-mad,
drunken, and stubborn to the last degree. Tight-fisted in the squalid
pursuit of gain, lavish in spending on debauchery, she had no use for
loyalty and was a sworn enemy to chastity. Worse still, she had rejected
and spurned the heavenly gods, and in place of true religion she had
falsely and blasphemously set up a deity of her own whom she
proclaimed as the One and Only God; and having bamboozled the world
in general and her husband in particular by meaningless rituals of her
own invention, she was able to give herself over to a day-long course of
drinking and prostitution.
15 That then was his wife, and she persecuted me with extraordinary
venom. Before dawn, while she was still in bed, she would call for the
new ass to be harnessed to the mill; and as soon as she was up and about
she would come and stand there and order them to thrash me as hard as
they could while she watched. When it was time for dinner and the other
 animals were released, she would not let me be taken to the manger until
much later. This cruel treatment whetted my natural curiosity about her
behaviour. I was aware that there was a young man who regularly visited
her bedroom, and I very much wanted to see his face, if my eyes ever
got a moment’s freedom from their blindfold – for my resourcefulness
would have been entirely adequate to uncover, somehow or other, this
detestable woman’s delinquencies. There was an old crone, her
accomplice in her debauchery and the go-between in her affairs, who
was in her company all day and every day. The two of them would
breakfast together, and then over their neat wine they would conspire to
plan their next campaign, devising tortuous schemes and treacherous
plots for the undoing of her unfortunate husband. Though I was still very
angry with Photis for her mistake in making me an ass instead of a bird,
I had this one consolation in my woeful deformity, that the long ears
with which I was equipped enabled me to follow everything that was
happening even at a considerable distance.
16 One day then this old woman’s voice came hesitantly to my ears.
‘Madam,’ she said, ‘of course it’s your affair entirely; it was you who
acquired, without consulting me, this slug, this poltroon of a lover, who
supinely dreads the frown of that tiresome and obnoxious husband of
yours and, his passion enfeebled and slackened by fear, hurts you by his
failure to respond to your willing embraces. What a contrast to
Philesitherus! He’s young, handsome, generous and vigorous, a stalwart
match for any husband’s useless precautions. He deserves, if any man
does, to enjoy the favours of every wife, he deserves a crown of gold if
only for the masterly scheme he recently devised against a jealous
husband. Let me tell you about it, and you’ll
see how different lovers can be. You know Barbarus, one of our town
17 councillors – the people call him the Scorpion because he’s so sharp in
his ways. He had a wife of good family and great beauty whom he kept
locked up at home under extraordinarily strict guard.’ Here the miller’s
wife struck in: ‘Of course, I know her well; Arete was at school with
me.’ ‘Then,’ said the old woman, ‘I suppose you know the whole story
of her and Philesitherus?’ ‘Not at all,’ she answered, ‘but I’m dying to
hear it. Please, mother, tell me everything just as it happened.’ At once
the garrulous old gossip began: ‘Barbarus, having to be away from home
and wishing to protect his beloved wife’s chastity with the utmost care,
 gave secret instructions to a slave called Myrmex whom he knew to be
completely trustworthy, and assigned to him the entire responsibility for
looking after his mistress. He threatened him with perpetual
imprisonment and a slow death by starvation if he allowed anybody
whatever to so much as touch her in passing; and he confirmed his threat
with an oath by all the gods. And so, leaving the terrified Myrmex in
close attendance on his wife, Barbarus departed with his mind quite at
ease.
‘Worried sick, Myrmex absolutely refused to let his mistress leave the
house, declining to be parted from her even when she was busy with her
woolwork. When in the evening she had to go out to the baths, he
attached himself firmly to her, holding on to the hem of her robe; and in
this way with admirable keenness he faithfully
fulfilled the assignment with which he was entrusted. But the noble
18 dame’s beauty did not escape the watchful eye of the susceptible
Philesitherus. The fame of her virtue and the excessive strictness with
which she was guarded were enough in themselves to provoke and
inflame his desire: ready to do or die in the attempt he mustered all his
forces to take the citadel by storm. Knowing full well that men’s loyalty
is a frail thing, that no obstacle is proof against money, and that gold will
force open even gates of steel, he contrived to get Myrmex on his own,
revealed his love, and begged and prayed him to relieve his torments.
His mind, he said, was firmly made up: if he did not achieve his desire
soon, he would kill himself without more ado. Not, he added, that
Myrmex had anything to be afraid of: the thing was easy – he could slip
into the house alone at evening safely concealed and protected by the
darkness, and leave again in a matter of moments. To these and similar
persuasions he added finally a powerful lever, calculated to uproot and
overturn the slave’s rock-like determination: holding out his hand he
showed him thirty bright new gold pieces, twenty for the girl and ten, in
the goodness of his heart, for Myrmex himself.
19 ‘Myrmex was horrified at this outrageous proposal and rushed away
stopping his ears. But he was haunted by the fiery vision of that
gleaming gold, and though he made haste to remove himself from the
scene and made off home at speed, he still kept on seeing the beautiful
sheen of the coins, and could think of nothing else but that rich booty.
For many hours the unfortunate man, tormented and distracted, was
 vacillating, his purpose driven this way and that like a wave-tossed boat:
loyalty on the one hand, gain on the other, torture on that side, pleasure
on this. Finally gold overcame his fear of death; and so far from his lust
for that lovely money abating with the passing of time, the plague took
over and preoccupied his nights: though his master’s threats kept him at
home, the gold was beckoning him outside. In the end he swallowed his
scruples, and without more ado took the message to his mistress. She,
fickle like all women, acted in character and agreed to sell her honour
for the accursed metal. Myrmex, overjoyed, flew off to accomplish the
downfall of his loyalty, lusting not merely to possess but actually to hold
the money that he had seen and that was to be his undoing. Happy and
excited, he announced to Philesitherus that, thanks entirely to his
Herculean efforts, what he so much longed for was accomplished, and in
the same breath demanded the agreed reward. Then Myrmex’ hand
grasped gold coins – a hand hitherto unconversant even with copper.
20 ‘So at dead of night he brought the adventurous lover, alone and with
his head well muffled, to the house and ushered him into his mistress’s
bedroom. The two of them lost no time in making an offering of their
embraces to Love the Raw Recruit, and, stripped for action, were just
beginning their first campaign under Venus’ banner, when quite
unexpectedly, having stolen a march under cover of night, her husband
suddenly presented himself at the door of the house. He knocked, he
shouted, he banged on the door with a stone, and as every moment’s
delay heightened his suspicions he began to threaten Myrmex with dire
punishment. He, totally confused by this unforeseen calamity and not
knowing what to do in his distraught state, made the only excuse he
could think of, that the door-key had been so carefully hidden that he
could not find it in the dark. Meanwhile Philesitherus, hearing the noise,
quickly huddled on his tunic, but in his hurry to leave the room ran out
barefoot. Then Myrmex finally unlocked and opened the door and let his
master in, still invoking the gods; and while he made straight for the
bedroom, Philesitherus was quietly and quickly let out. With him clear
of the threshold, Myrmex locked up the house and went back to bed
with nothing (so he thought) to worry about.
21 ‘But when day came and Barbarus got up, he saw under the bed a pair
of sandals that he did not recognize, the ones that Philesitherus had worn
on his visit, and immediately guessed what had been going on. However,
 he said nothing of his anguished suspicions either to his wife or to any
of the household, but quietly picked up the sandals and hid them in his
clothes. Then, merely ordering his fellow slaves to tie Myrmex up and
bring him to the public square, he rapidly made his own way there,
stifling his repeated groans, certain that the evidence of the sandals
would enable him to uncover the adulterer’s tracks without any
difficulty. But as the angry Barbarus was coming down the street, all
scowls and frowns, with Myrmex behind him loaded with chains –
though he had not been caught red-handed, he was demoralized by his
guilty conscience and was trying ineffectually to arouse pity by frantic
weeping and wailing – at that moment Philesitherus met them on his
way to an appointment elsewhere about quite a different matter. Though
startled by this unexpected sight he was not dismayed. He immediately
realized the mistake he had made in his hurried departure and acutely
guessed what must have happened; summoning up his habitual
assurance, he pushed aside the escorting slaves and fell on Myrmex
shouting at the top of his voice and pretending to pummel his face
unmercifully. “Thief! Perjurer!” he bawled. “May your master here, may
all the gods in heaven, that you had the nerve to call as witnesses to your
oath, damn you to hell! It was you who stole my slippers yesterday in
the baths! By God, you deserve to keep those chains on you until you’ve
worn them out – you really ought to be in the dark behind bars.” The
enterprising lover’s timely ruse took Barbarus in and indeed left him
quite happy and credulous as before. On his return home he called
Myrmex, gave him the slippers, and without more ado forgave him
completely, urging him to restore them to their owner that he had stolen
them from.’
22 At this point in the old woman’s chatter the wife interrupted: ‘Lucky
her, free to enjoy so steadfast a friend! What a contrast to me, landed
with a lover who trembles at the sound of the mill or the sight of that
mangy ass there.’ The old woman answered: ‘Leave it to me: I’ll talk
him over and put heart into him, and I’ll go bail for his appearance –
you’ll find him a really sprightly lover.’ With that she left the room,
promising to return that evening. Meanwhile this chaste wife set to and
prepared a regular Salian banquet, decanting rare wines and garnishing
freshly cooked ragouts with preserved delicacies. Having set the table
thus lavishly she awaited the arrival of her paramour as of some god.
 (Luckily it happened that her husband was dining out that evening with
one of his neighbours, a fuller.) It was now nightfall, and I had at last
been unharnessed and left to relax and refresh myself. However, I was
congratulating myself less on being freed from my labours than on the
fact that, my eyes being now uncovered, I had an uninterrupted view of
all this woman’s carryings-on. Now the sun had sunk beneath the waves
of Ocean and was lighting the subterranean regions of the world, when
the evil old crone reappeared with the dashing adulterer in tow. He was
no more than a lad, fresh-complexioned and smooth-chinned, himself
still an adulterer’s delight. The wife welcomed him with a shower of
kisses and invited him to sit down to dinner.
23 However, the young man had scarcely sipped his first cup of wine and
nibbled the hors-d’ œuvre when the husband arrived back long before he
was expected. The virtuous wife, consigning him to perdition and
wishing he would break both legs, hastily hid her lover, panic-stricken
and white with fear, under a wooden trough used for husking grain,
which happened to be near at hand. Then, passing off her infamous
behaviour with the cunning of her sex and feigning nonchalance, she
asked her husband why he had left his good friend’s dinner and come
back so early. He answered despondently and with many a sigh: ‘It was
because I couldn’t stand the shocking misconduct of that abandoned
woman that I came away. Ye gods, how could a virtuous and well-
conducted wife like that besmirch and disgrace herself so foully? I swear
by holy Ceres over there that with women like that around I don’t trust
my eyes any more.’ Her interest excited by her husband’s words, his
audacious wife was eager to hear all about it and kept on and on at him
to tell the whole story from beginning to end. She persisted until he gave
in and, unaware of what was going on under his own roof, proceeded to
recount the misfortunes of another man’s house.
24 ‘My friend the fuller’s wife, ’ he said, ‘was a woman, so it seemed, of
unimpeachable chastity and shining reputation, presiding virtuously over
her husband’s house. She had, however, secretly fallen for a lover, and
lost no opportunity of clandestine meetings with him. At the very
moment that we arrived for dinner after our bath, she and the young man
were making love. Alarmed by our unexpected appearance, she had a
bright idea, and hid him under a wickerwork frame, a sort of wigwam on
which cloth is draped to be bleached with sulphur fumes. Having
 ensconced him there, safely as she thought, she joined us at table
without a care in the world. Meanwhile, however, the young man,
choked and stifled by the pungent fumes of the sulphur, began to
suffocate and – the usual effect of
this potent chemical – began to emit a series of loud sneezes. At first,
25 when he heard these sneezes coming from his wife’s direction, her
husband thought they were hers and said the usual “bless you”, but when
this had happened several times he began to think that it was rather too
much of a good thing, and finally guessed the true state of affairs.
Pushing the table abruptly aside he whipped off the frame and revealed
her lover, who was now almost at his last gasp. Burning with rage at this
affront he called for a sword and was hell-bent on accelerating the man’s
end by cutting his throat. However, I managed with some difficulty to
restrain his fury, reckoning that we should all be in danger as
accessories, and pointing out that his enemy would soon die in any case
from the violent effects of the sulphur without any help from us. He
calmed down, not so much because of anything I said as because of the
hard facts of the situation, the man being already half dead, and dragged
him out and left him in the neighbouring alley. Meanwhile I gave his
wife some discreet advice, and finally got her to leave the shop for a
while and get herself taken in by one of her women friends, to give her
husband’s anger time to cool down. He was so red-hot and mad with
rage that he was clearly thinking of doing both himself and her some
fatal mischief. That was my friend’s dinner-party, and that’s why I’ve
left it and come back home in disgust.’
26 All the while the miller was telling his story, his brazen-faced wife was
heaping abuse on the fuller’s wife, calling her faithless, shameless, a
disgrace to her sex, who had held her virtue cheap, who had trampled on
the bond of the marriage-bed, who had dishonoured her husband’s house
by turning it into a brothel, and had thrown away the dignity of a wife
by exchanging it for the name of whore. Women like that, she added,
deserved to be burned alive. She was, however, uneasily aware of her
own secret amour and her guilty conscience, and wanting to release her
lover from his uncomfortable refuge as soon as possible, she repeatedly
suggested to her husband that it was high time for bed. But he had had
his dinner cut short and had come away practically starving, so he
politely said he would like something to eat. She at once produced
 supper, though with a bad grace, having intended it for somebody else.
As for me, I was deeply upset to contemplate this abominable woman’s
misdeeds and the way in which she was now brazening the thing out;
and I thought carefully how I might assist my master by uncovering and
disclosing her deceit, and how by knocking over the trough under which
he lay tortoise-like, I might display her lover to the eyes of the world.
27 While the thought of the indignity inflicted on my master was
tormenting me, Providence for once smiled on me. There was a lame old
man who was in charge of the stable, and as it was now time for us to be
watered he came to lead us all out together to the nearby pond. This
gave me the perfect opportunity for the revenge on which I was set. As I
was going by I saw the man’s fingers sticking out from under the edge
of the trough, which was rather too narrow for him; and treading
sideways on them as hard as I could I ground them to pulp. Unable to
bear the pain he yelled aloud and threw off the trough, and being thus
restored to public view he uncovered this vile woman’s charade. The
miller, however, did not seem unduly put out by this affront to his
honour. Regarding the pale and trembling boy with an expression of
calm benevolence he spoke soothingly to him. ‘Don’t be afraid, my
boy,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to be harsh with you. I’m no barbarian or
brutish peasant; and I’m not going to follow the fuller’s cruel example
and suffocate you with the deadly fumes of sulphur. I certainly shan’t
invoke the severity of the law on adultery and demand the death
sentence for such a pretty little lad as you. All I’m going to do is share
you equally with my wife. I shan’t sue for the division of family
property but for its common enjoyment, so that without controversy or
dispute the three of us agree together in one bed. I’ve always lived so
harmoniously with my wife that, as the wise recommend, our views on
everything have always coincided. However, equity forbids the wife to
have more authority than the husband.’
28 With mocking blandishments of this sort he led the boy, who did not
want to come but had no choice but to follow, to bed. His chaste wife he
locked in another room; and then alone in bed with the boy he enjoyed a
most gratifying revenge for the ruin of his marriage. As soon as it was
light he called for two of his strongest slaves and had the boy hoisted
aloft and tied up. Then he took a cane and thrashed him, saying: ‘What
business has a delicate little creature like you, a mere child, to be
 cheating your lovers of the enjoyment of your youthful beauty and to be
chasing women – free women at that – and breaking up legal marriages
and usurping the name of adulterer before you’re of age?’ After a lot
more to the same effect, all to the accompaniment of a thorough beating,
he threw the boy out of the house. So our valiant seducer made off very
sorry for himself, having unexpectedly escaped with his life, but with
that white bottom of his a good deal the worse for wear after the
experiences of both the night and the morning. The miller then followed
suit with his wife, serving notice of divorce and throwing her too out of
the house.
29 She, however, on top of her natural malevolence was infuriated by this
insult, richly though she deserved it, and took to her old ways again,
resorting in her anger to the familiar arts of her sex. She took great pains
to discover a certain old woman, past mistress of her profession, who it
was believed could bring about anything by her curses and spells, and
loading her with gifts she begged her earnestly to do one of two things:
either to pacify her husband and reconcile him to her, or if that proved
impossible, to send in a ghost or some evil spirit to put a violent end to
his life. The witch, who could control the gods themselves, in her first
offensive deployed only the light arms of her nefarious art, trying to
soften the husband’s grievously wounded feelings and revive his love.
When that did not succeed as she had expected, she took umbrage at the
infernal powers, and incited as much by their lack of cooperation as by
the reward she had been promised, she mounted an attack on the
unfortunate man’s life, and raised the ghost of a woman who had died a
violent death to destroy him.
30 But perhaps at this point the attentive reader will start to pick holes in
my story and take me up on it. ‘How is it, you clever ass you,’ they will
say, ‘that while you were confined in the mill you were able, as you say,
to know what these women were doing in secret?’ All right: let me tell
you how a man of an inquiring turn of mind in the guise of a beast of
burden found out the whole story of this plot against the miller’s life.
Round about midday a woman suddenly appeared at the mill got up as if
she were on trial for her life, strangely disfigured and woebegone, barely
covered in pitiful rags, barefoot, deathly pale and drawn, her grizzled
hair dishevelled, dirty and sprinkled with ash, hanging down in front and
hiding most of her face. This apparition gently laid hold of the miller
 and, as if wishing to talk to him in private, drew him into his room and
shut the door. Nothing was then heard for a long time. Meanwhile the
instalment of grain which the mill-hands had been grinding was
finished, and they needed to ask for more. The slaves stood by the door
and called their master, asking for a fresh supply. When they got no
response from him to their loud and repeated shouts, they began to
knock hard on the door; finding it tightly barred they feared an accident
or foul play, and by breaking and dislodging the hinges with a violent
heave they finally gained an entry. They saw no sign of the woman
anywhere, but there was their master hanging from a beam, strangled
and lifeless. They released him from the noose and took him down, and
with much weeping and lamentation washed the body and performed the
last rites, then carried him to the grave followed by a long train of
mourners.
31 The next day the miller’s daughter, who was married and lived in a
nearby village, arrived in mourning, tearing her disordered hair and
beating her breast. She already knew the whole story, but not from any
messenger; her father’s ghost had appeared to her in a dream in pitiable
guise, with the noose still around his neck, and had told her all about her
stepmother’s crimes, her adultery and witchcraft, and how the evil spirit
had possessed him and carried him down to hell. For a long time she
tortured herself with weeping, but finally, restrained by the friends who
rallied round her, she allowed her grief to subside. When after the
canonical nine days the ceremonies at the tomb had been duly
performed, as heiress to the estate she put everything, slaves, plant and
animals, up for auction. So Fortune, irresponsible as ever, through the
unpredictable operation of a sale scattered the whole establishment to
the four winds. As for me, I was bought by a poor market-gardener for
fifty sesterces – an awful lot of money, as he said, but he hoped that with
the two of us on the job he could eke out a living for himself.
32 At this point the subject demands that I expound the routine of my new
service. Each morning my master would load me up with produce and
take me to the nearest town, and having consigned his wares to the
retailers he would ride home on my back. Then, while he slaved away at
digging and watering and all his other chores, I meanwhile had nothing
to do and could recuperate in peace and tranquillity. But the stars had
now performed their ordained revolutions and the year had again come
 full circle; leaving behind autumn and the pleasures of the vintage, it had
now entered Capricorn with its winter frosts. What with the continual
rain and the heavy dews at night, I was suffering agonies of cold,
confined as I was to a stall that was open to the elements. My master
was so poor that he could not afford bedding of any kind or even the
scantiest of coverings for himself, let alone for me; he had to be content
with what shelter his small thatched hut offered. On top of this, morning
would find me standing barefoot in freezing mud and splinters of ice and
dying of cold; and I couldn’t even fill my belly with my usual food.
Dinner was exactly the same for both my master and me, and meagre
enough it was: nasty old lettuces that had bolted and gone bad; they had
run to seed and looked like large brooms, and their juice was bitter and
foul.
33 One night a proprietor from a nearby village who had lost his way in
the dark, there being no moon, and had got soaked in a downpour,
finding himself benighted and his horse tired out, stopped at our place.
He received a friendly reception, the best our circumstances allowed,
and though his entertainment was far from luxurious he at least got the
rest he needed. Wishing to requite his host’s kindness, he promised to
give him some corn and olive oil and two jars of wine as well from his
estate. The very next day my master, armed with a sack and two empty
wineskins, mounted me bareback, and we set off on our journey, a
matter of some seven miles. We arrived and found the farm as directed,
where his amiable host at once sat my master down to an excellent
dinner. While they were chatting over their wine there occurred a truly
remarkable portent. One of the flock of fowls was running about the
barnyard loudly clucking as a hen usually does before laying an egg.
Seeing her, ‘Faithful and fruitful servant!’ said the master. ‘You’ve never
failed to supply us with our eggs every day, and I can see that you’re
proposing to give us a treat now. Here, boy,’ he called, ‘put the laying-
basket in the usual corner.’ The slave did as he was told, but the hen
ignored her usual nesting-apartment and gave birth right at her master’s
feet – a premature birth, and a very worrying one: for it was no egg as
we know it, but a perfectly formed pullet complete with wings, feet,
eyes and voice which immediately began to follow its mother around.
34 On top of this there followed a much more sinister happening, which
caused general consternation, as well it might. Right there, under the
 table, which still had the remains of dinner on it, a yawning gap
appeared in the floor which spurted a veritable fountain of blood, the
spray from which drenched the table in gore. Then, while everybody
was rooted in astonishment and terror at this warning from heaven, a
servant ran in from the cellar to announce that all the wine which had
some time ago been racked off had become scalding hot and boiled over
out of every cask as if it had a blazing fire underneath it. Meanwhile
outside the house there had been seen a weasel dragging a dead snake
along in its mouth; a small green frog had jumped out of the mouth of
one of the sheepdogs; and the same dog had been attacked by a ram that
was standing nearby and throttled with a single bite. The master and the
entire household were petrified with fear and thrown into the depths of
despair by all these events, at a loss to know what to do first and what
next, what to do and what not to do, which and what sort of victims
should be sacrificed in expiation to avert these threats from heaven.
35 While everyone was still numbed by apprehension and dread, a slave
arrived bringing his master news of complete and utter disaster. He had
three grown-up sons, well educated and irreproachably behaved, who
were his pride and joy. They had for some time been friendly with a
poor man who owned a small cottage. Bordering on this cottage was a
large and prosperous estate owned by a powerful neighbour. This was a
rich young man of noble family, who by trading on his proud ancestry
had become an influential figure in city politics and got his own way in
everything. This man declared war on his humble neighbour and harried
his poor little domain, killing his animals, driving off his cattle, and
trampling down his young crops. Having despoiled him of all his modest
fortune, he determined to evict him from his land, and by cooking up a
spurious lawsuit about boundaries he laid claim to his entire property.
Unassertive as he was, the farmer, stripped of everything by this rich
man’s greed, still wanted to keep at least his ancestral plot to be buried
in, and in great fear and trembling had enlisted the aid of a number of
friends to testify formally as to the boundaries. These included the three
brothers, who had come to give what help they could to their friend in
his misfortune.
36 So far from being deterred or put out of countenance in the slightest by
such a crowd of citizens, this madman was no less violent in his
language than in his acts of brigandage. When they tried to reason with
 him gently and pacify his hot temper with conciliatory words, he burst
out with a solemn oath by his own life and the life of all those dear to
him that he did not give a damn for all these mediators, and that as for
this neighbour of his, his slaves were going to take him by the ears and
send him packing then and there. This statement caused outrage in the
minds of all who heard it. One of the brothers immediately and now
without mincing his words answered that it was no use his relying on his
wealth to carry off his threats and his tyrannical arrogance: under the
free protection of the laws even poor men were secured against the
insolence of the rich. Like oil on flames, like sulphur on a blaze, like a
whip laid on a Fury, so these words fed the man’s savagery. Enraged to
outright madness, he shouted that all of them and the laws as well could
go to hell; and ordered his dogs to be loosed and sicked on to attack and
kill them. These were herdsmen’s dogs from his estate, huge fierce
brutes that were used to feeding on corpses left lying about the
countryside and had been trained to savage passing wayfarers
indiscriminately. At once, their fury kindled by the herdsmen’s usual
signal, they rushed at the people in a mad frenzy and fell on them with
dreadful discordant baying, wounding, tearing, and lacerating them all
over.
37 In the midst of this carnage and the jostling of the panic-stricken crowd
the youngest brother caught his foot on a stone and fell headlong to the
ground, so providing the savage pack with an atrocious repast; finding
him lying there a helpless prey, in a moment they were rending him limb
from limb. His brothers heard his cries of agony, and ran in anguish to
his assistance; wrapping their cloaks round their left hands they tried to
defend him and drive off the dogs with a volley of stones. They were,
however, powerless to frighten or beat off the savage beasts, and the
unfortunate young man was torn in pieces and died adjuring them with
his last breath to take vengeance for their younger brother’s death on
that rich villain. They, not so much in desperation as not caring whether
they lived or died, rushed blazing with anger at the rich man and
attacked him with a furious salvo of stones. But the bloodstained
assassin, schooled in many an earlier outrage of the same kind, hurled
his spear and transfixed one of them through the chest. But though killed
outright, the young man did not fall to the ground, for the spear had been
hurled so violently that it passed right through him and, sticking out
 behind for most of its length, lodged firmly in the ground, leaving his
body balanced in mid-air. Then one of the slaves, a large hefty fellow,
came to the aid of his cutthroat master and at long range aimed a stone at
the third brother’s right arm. The stone, however, unexpectedly missed
and fell harmlessly after merely grazing his fingertips.
38 This happy accident offered the astute young man a faint hope of
revenge. Pretending that his hand was disabled he addressed his cruel
enemy: ‘Very well: exult in the destruction of our whole house, glut your
insatiable cruelty with the blood of three brothers, triumph gloriously
over your humiliated fellow citizens–but remember this, that though you
can strip poor men of their possessions and push your boundaries wider
still and wider, you will always have a neighbour. As for this hand of
mine, which should have cut off your head, through the injustice of fate
it is bruised and useless.’ Angry as he was already, these words
maddened the ruffian; and sword in hand he rushed furiously at the
hapless youth to dispatch him. But the man he had challenged was no
less tough than he, and he met with a resistance that he had by no means
expected. With a grip of iron the young man seized his right hand, and
wielding his sword with all his strength with blow upon blow he
expelled the rich villain’s polluted soul from his body. Then, to escape
the crowd of retainers who were coming at him, he cut his own throat on
the spot with the blade that still dripped with his enemy’s blood.
These were the events that the portents had foretold; this was what the
unfortunate master had been warned of. With these calamities thick upon
him, the old man could not utter a single word or even shed a silent tear.
Seizing the knife with which he had just been helping his guests to
cheese and other eatables, he followed the example of his unhappy son
and plunged it repeatedly into his throat; then collapsing forwards on to
the table he washed away the bloodstains from the portent in a fresh
torrent of blood.
39 The gardener was left pitying the plight of this house, thus brought low
in a matter of hours, but also sadly lamenting his own misfortune – tears
as the price of his dinner and empty hands which he could only wring
over and over again. There was nothing to do but mount me and go back
the way we had come, but even that was not accomplished safely. A
burly individual, apparently from his dress and behaviour a legionary
soldier, accosted us and asked in overbearing and arrogant language
 where he was going with that unloaded ass? My master, still grieving
and bemused, and in any case not understanding Latin, was passing on
without answering. At this the soldier’s natural insolence flared up, and
angry at his silence, which he took as an insult, he knocked him off my
back with a blow of the vine-staff which he carried. The gardener
humbly answered that he didn’t know the language and couldn’t
understand what he was saying. So in Greek the soldier asked: ‘Where
are you taking that ass?’ The gardener said he was going to the next
town. ‘But I need his services,’ said the soldier. ‘He’s wanted to carry
my commander’s gear from the fort over there with the rest of the
baggage-animals’: and with that he laid hold of my bridle and began to
lead me away. The gardener, wiping off the blood that was flowing from
the blow he had received to the head, begged him, calling him ‘mate’, to
behave more civilly and kindly, reinforcing his pleas by invoking all his
hopes of professional success. ‘And in any case,’ he added, ‘it’s a
useless beast with a vicious disposition, and it’s on its last legs with
some horrible disease; it has just about enough life and breath in its body
to carry the odd bundle of vegetables from my garden here without
collapsing – it’s certainly not fit to bear anything heavier.’
40 However, seeing that the soldier, so far from being mollified by any
entreaties, was becoming exasperated and looked like doing him a
mischief, seeing him indeed preparing to reverse his cudgel and brain
him with the knob, the gardener resorted to desperate measures.
Pretending that he was going to touch his knees to stir him to pity, he
crouched down low, then suddenly laying hold of both his feet he lifted
him high in the air and threw him heavily to the ground; then at once he
attacked him with his fists, his elbows, his teeth, and even with a stone
snatched from the road, battering him all over, face, hands, and body.
The soldier, once stretched on the ground, was powerless to fight back
or defend himself, but kept on threatening that if he once got up he
would cut him in little bits with his sword. That gave the gardener an
idea: he drew the sword himself and threw it well away, then resumed
his attack, beating him even more savagely. The soldier, prostrated and
handicapped by his injuries, resorted to his only remaining hope of
survival and shammed dead. Then the gardener took the sword, got on
my back, and posted straight to town, where, without troubling even to
call in at his garden, he went to a friend’s house. He told him the whole
 story and begged for help in his peril, asking him to hide the two of us
for a little while; two or three days’ concealment would allow him to
escape prosecution on a capital charge. The man was mindful of their
old friendship and at once took him in. I had my feet tied together and
was hoisted up a ladder into the loft; the gardener stayed downstairs in
the shop, where he took refuge in a chest with the lid fastened down
over him.
41 The soldier, however, as I learned later, did in the end recover
consciousness, with all the symptoms of a severe hangover, and in great
pain from his wounds and supporting himself with difficulty on his stick,
made his way with uncertain steps to the town. He was too much
ashamed of his violent behaviour and the poor show he had put up to say
anything about the affair to the townspeople, but swallowed his
resentment until he came across some fellow soldiers, to whom he
confided the story of his disaster. It was decided that he should secrete
himself in his quarters for a while – for quite apart from his personal
humiliation he feared that the loss of his sword was a sacrilegious
breach of his military oath – while his comrades, who had taken careful
note of our particulars, should spare no pains to track us down and exact
vengeance. They soon found a treacherous neighbour, who told them
exactly where we were hidden. The soldiers summoned the magistrates
with a yarn that they concocted about a valuable silver cup belonging to
their commander that they had lost on the road and how a certain
gardener had found it and refused to give it up, and was now hiding in a
friend’s house. On hearing of the loss and the commander’s name the
magistrates appeared before the door of the house where we were and
loudly called on our host to hand us over – ‘we know they’re in there’,
they shouted – if he wanted to save his own skin. He was not in the least
frightened but was concerned only to safeguard the friend he had sworn
to protect: he denied all knowledge of us and said he had not set eyes on
the gardener for days. The soldiers maintained that he was hiding there
in that very place, and swore it by the Emperor’s genius. At last, as the
man persisted in his stubborn denial, the magistrates decided to get at
the truth by a search. The constables and other public officers were
accordingly sent in with orders to investigate carefully every corner of
the house, and they reported that not a soul, and certainly no ass, was to
be found inside.
42 Then the dispute waxed hotter on both sides, the soldiers asserting that
they knew perfectly well that we were in there and repeatedly invoking
the name of Caesar, while our host persisted in denying it, calling for his
part the divine powers to witness. Hearing this noisy argument, curious
as usual and, like an ass, brash and impatient, I angled my neck out of a
little window, eager to see what the hubbub was all about. It happened
that one of the soldiers at that moment caught a glimpse of my shadow
and called his comrades to look. There was a great to-do, and some of
them immediately climbed the ladder, grabbed me, and hauled me down
like a prisoner. There was now no hesitation: every nook and cranny was
minutely scrutinized, the chest was uncovered, and the wretched
gardener was pulled out and arraigned before the magistrates. He was
carried off to the town prison, it was assumed to certain execution; while
there was much merriment and endless jokes on the subject of my
peeping out. This was the origin of the common proverb about ‘The
peeping ass and his shadow’.
BOOK 10

The story of the wicked stepmother – sold again – the pastrycook

and the chef – caught in the act – Lucius the almost human – the
noble mistress and the ignoble substitute – degraded to make a
Corinthian holiday – the Judgement of Paris – escape to
Cenchreae

1 What happened next day to my master the gardener I never found out.
Nobody objected when I was taken off by the soldier whose outrageous
violence had earned him such a sound thrashing to what I took to be his
quarters and loaded up with his personal gear. When he led me out on to
the road I was arrayed in full military panoply: I was carrying a
brilliantly polished helmet and a shield that was visible for miles, plus a
spear with a remarkably long point. These arms were carefully set out
and displayed on the top of the heap of gear in proper campaigning style,
not of course for genuine military reasons but to put the fear of God into
unfortunate wayfarers. We came by a quite easy road through flat
country to a small town, where we put up, not at an inn, but at the house
of one of the town councillors. The soldier handed me over to one of the
servants and immediately went in accordance with his orders to report to
his commanding officer, who was in charge of a thousand men.
2 A few days later I remember that there was committed in that place a
particularly wicked and horrible crime: which I write down so that you
too can read about it. The master of the house had a young son, to whom
he had given so excellent an education that he was all that a dutiful and
modest boy ought to be, just such a son as you, dear reader, would wish
 to have yourself. His mother had died years before, and the husband had
remarried and had another son by his second wife, who was now in his
thirteenth year. His stepmother, who owed the powerful position she
occupied in her husband’s home more to her looks than her morals,
whether because she was unchaste by nature or whether it was Fate that
impelled her to this ultimate infamy, cast lustful eyes on her stepson.
And with that, dear reader, you know that it’s a tragedy, no mere tale,
that you’re reading: from the sock we mount the buskin.
So long as the infant passion was still in the early stages of its growth,
the woman was easily able to resist Cupid’s as yet feeble power and
control her blushes in silence. But when the frenzy blazed up and took
entire possession of her, when Love raged and seethed unrestrained deep
in her breast, then she yielded to the cruel god and, pretending to feel ill,
passed off the wound in her heart as bodily indisposition. As everybody
knows, the outward signs and symptoms of sickness and lovesickness
are identical: a sickly pallor, languid eyes, no strength in the legs,
sleepless nights, and sighs which grow ever deeper as the torment is
prolonged. One might have thought that it was merely the heat of fever
that made her toss and turn, were it not that she also wept. ‘Alas, th’
unknowing minds of – doctors!’ What do you make of the case,
gentlemen? The throbbing pulse, the hectic flush, the laboured
breathing, the constant tossing from side to side in bed? For God’s sake,
isn’t the diagnosis obvious to anybody who’s taken a course in the
school of Venus, even if he doesn’t have a medical diploma, when you
see somebody on fire without a temperature?
3 So finally, unable to control the passion which shook her to the core,
she broke silence and sent for her son – though she would have
preferred, had it been possible, not to call him by that name, which was
a reminder of her shame. The boy instantly obeyed his sick mother’s
command, and, as his duty to his father’s wife and his brother’s mother
demanded, came to her room wearing a worried frown that was older
than his years. For a long time in her distress and torment she could not
utter a word; aground, as it were, on the shoals of indecision, every time
anything occurred to her that fitted the occasion, she would have second
thoughts, and with her chastity still poised in the balance she hesitated,
not knowing how best to begin. The boy, who as yet suspected nothing
amiss, took the initiative and respectfully asked what was the matter
 with her. They were alone together: embracing the fatal opportunity she
threw caution to the winds, and veiling her face in her robe and weeping
bitterly she spoke to him briefly in a trembling voice: ‘The cause and the
source of my pain, but also the only remedy and cure for it – is you, you
yourself. It is your eyes that have shot through mine to the depths of my
heart and kindled a fierce blaze in my inmost being. Pity then her who is
dying because of you, and do not be held back by scruples about duty to
your father. You will be saving a wife for him who would otherwise die.
It is his likeness that I see in you: no wonder I love you. We are alone,
and have nothing to worry about; the opportunity is here – you cannot
refuse. What nobody knows about to all intents and purposes hasn’t
happened.’
4 The young man was aghast at this bombshell, but though his first
reaction to the idea of such a crime was one of horror, he thought it
better to calm the situation by delaying tactics – diplomatic promises
rather than an abrupt and outright refusal, which would only aggravate
matters. So he heaped assurances on her, urging her insistently to cheer
up and to concentrate on getting well again, and to wait until his father
had to be away, when they would be free to enjoy themselves. Then as
soon as he could he removed himself from his stepmother’s loathed
presence. Thinking that in this dire family crisis there was need of expert
advice, he went straight to the wise and experienced old man who had
been his tutor. After much deliberation it was decided that the best
course was to escape the disastrous rage of Fortune by an immediate
departure. The wife, however, could not endure any delay, however
short, and inventing some pretext or other with amazing artfulness
quickly managed to persuade her husband to hurry off to visit some
outlying estates. With his departure, in a frenzy at the realization of her
hopes, she immediately demanded that the boy fulfil his promise and
gratify her lust. He, with one excuse after another, contrived to put off
the abominable rendezvous, until she realized that all these contradictory
messages meant that he was clearly not going to keep his promise. At
this with lightning fickleness her wicked love was transformed to yet
more wicked hate. She at once enlisted the aid of a villainous slave, part
of her dowry, a fellow to whom crime had become a way of life, and to
him she confided her treacherous plans. It was decided that the best
course was to murder the unfortunate young man. Accordingly this
 villain was sent to obtain a particularly deadly poison, and this was
carefully mixed with wine and laid by for the destruction of her innocent
stepson.
5 But while these vile creatures were considering when would be the best
opportunity to administer the drink, it so happened that the younger boy,
this dreadful woman’s own son, came back home one day after his
morning lessons, ate his lunch, and felt thirsty. Finding the cup of wine
with the poison lurking in it, unaware of the danger, he drained it at a
draught; and having drunk the death that had been prepared for his
brother, he fell lifeless to the ground. His attendant, terrified by the boy’s
sudden seizure, set up a piercing outcry which brought his mother and
the whole household on to the scene. As soon as it was realized that the
poisoned drink was responsible for his death, everybody began to accuse
everybody else of this fearful crime. However, that she-devil, that
unique exemplar of step-motherly malignity, so far from being moved
by her son’s untimely death, or the guilt of murder, or the calamity to
their house, or her husband’s grief, or the distress of the funeral, was
interested only in using the family disaster to further her revenge. She
immediately sent a courier to find her husband and announce to him the
ruin of his house; and when he returned, which he did at once, she put
on a breathtakingly bold front and charged her stepson with the crime of
poisoning her son. This was not totally untrue, in so far as the one boy
had anticipated the death meant for the other; but she pretended that her
stepson had made away with his younger brother because she had
refused to yield to his criminal lust and resisted his attempt to rape her.
Even these monstrous lies did not satisfy her: she added that he had also
threatened her with his sword for denouncing his crime. The wretched
father, reeling from the loss of two sons, was tossed to and fro on a
stormy sea of suffering. His younger son he had to see buried before his
eyes, and the elder must inevitably, it seemed, be condemned to death
for incest and fratricide. On top of this, the wife whom he loved all too
dearly was all the time, with her vocal pretence of heartfelt grief,
inciting him to a relentless hatred of his own flesh and blood.
6 Scarcely was the funeral over and his son buried than the poor old man
went straight from the pyre, his face still streaming with tears and his
white hair torn and smeared with ash, to the market-place. There,
weeping and pleading and embracing the knees of the town councillors,
 ignorant as he was of his wicked wife’s treachery, he set himself, with
all the passion at his command, to secure his remaining son’s
destruction. He was, he said, incestuous – he had violated his father’s
bed; a parricide–he had murdered his brother; an assassin – he had
threatened to cut his stepmother’s throat. His grief kindled such pity and
anger, not only in the council but also in the townspeople, that they were
all for dispensing with the tedious formality of a trial, the presentation of
the evidence by the prosecution, and the carefully rehearsed twists and
turns of the defence, clamouring for instant public vengeance on this
public menace by stoning.
Meanwhile, however, the magistrates became alarmed at the possible
consequences to themselves if these minor manifestations of anger were
allowed to develop into riots and the total subversion of public order in
the city. Some of them therefore reasoned with the councillors, while
others calmed down the crowd, and got them to agree to hold a regular
trial in the traditional manner and arrive at a verdict and sentence
according to law after the allegations on both sides had been properly
examined. That, they said, was surely preferable to condemning a man
unheard, in the manner of a savage tribe or an irresponsible despot; in a
time of peace and tranquillity that would set a shocking example and be
a blot on the age.
7 This sensible advice carried the day, and the herald was at once ordered
to convene the council. As soon as the members had taken their usual
seats in order of precedence, the voice of the herald was again heard,
and the accuser entered. Then the accused was summoned and appeared
in his turn; and following Athenian legal practice as observed in the
court of the Areopagus, the herald formally reminded the advocates that
introductory speeches and appeals to pity were not allowed. All this I
learned from overhearing various conversations. However, the exact
words used by the prosecutor in urging his case and the precise terms
used by the defendant in rebuttal, the various speeches and exchanges,
all that, not having been in court but tied up to my manger, I don’t know
and am in no position to report to you; what I did reliably learn, I will
set down in this account.
Directly the speeches on both sides were over, it was agreed that the
truth and credibility of the charges in such an important case must be
established by reliable proofs, not on the basis of mere guesswork and
 suspicions; and that the first priority was to put on the stand the slave
who was supposed to be the only person who knew what had really
happened. That gallows-meat was not in the slightest degree perturbed
either by the uncertain outcome of a trial such as this or the sight of the
packed court, let alone the consciousness of his crime. He launched
straight into his totally fictitious story, stoutly and repeatedly affirming
the truth of what he was saying. The young man (so it ran), angry at
being rebuffed by his stepmother, had enlisted his help; in revenge for
that indignity he had told him off to murder her son; he had promised a
large sum of money as the price of his silence; he had threatened him
with death when he refused to cooperate; he had mixed the poison with
his own hands and given it to him to administer to his brother; finally,
suspecting that he was disobeying his orders and holding on to the cup
of poison as evidence, he had poisoned the boy himself. All this the
villain trotted out as plausibly as you please, with a show of
nervousness; and that concluded the trial.
8 By now not a single councillor remained impartial; all were agreed that
the young man was clearly guilty of parricide and deserved to be sewn
up in the sack. The unanimous votes, every one bearing the word
‘Guilty’, were about to be dropped into the bronze urn in accordance
with immemorial custom – and once that was done, it was all up with
the defendant; there was no going back, and his life was delivered into
the hands of the executioner – when there arose a senior councillor, a
man noted for his integrity and a highly respected doctor. He covered the
mouth of the urn with his hand to prevent any votes being cast
prematurely, and addressed the council as follows.
‘It has been a great satisfaction to me, gentlemen, in the course of a
long life, to have earned your esteem; and therefore I cannot allow the
murder – for that is what it amounts to – of a man falsely accused, or
allow you, who are sworn to reach a just verdict, to be led to perjure
yourselves by the lies of a despicable slave. Speaking for myself, I
cannot trample on the reverence I owe the gods or break faith with my
conscience by giving an untrue verdict. So, learn from me the real facts
of this case.
9 ‘This scoundrel came to me not long ago, anxious to purchase an
instantaneous poison, for which he offered a hundred gold pieces. His
story was that he needed it for a sick man who was in the lingering
 agony of an incurable illness and wanted desperately to be quit of a life
that was mere torture. However, I saw through the scoundrel’s patter and
his clumsy explanations, and had no doubt that he was hatching some
diabolical crime or other. So I gave him his potion all right; but with the
possibility of a subsequent inquiry in mind I declined to take the money
then and there. “Just in case,” I said to him, “any of these coins turn out
to be counterfeit or below standard, let them stay in the bag and seal it
with your signet, and then later on we can get a banker and have him test
them.” He was persuaded and sealed up the money; and directly he was
called as a witness I sent one of my staff post-haste to fetch it from my
office and bring it to me – and, gentlemen, here it is, and I now show it
to the court. Let him look at it and acknowledge his seal. How can the
brother be taxed with the poison, when it was this fellow who procured
it?’
10 At this the scoundrel was seized with panic: his natural complexion
became deathly pale and a cold sweat broke out all over him; he shuffled
his feet back and forth and scratched his head all over; and mouthing
through half-closed lips he stuttered out a lot of nonsense – nobody
could reasonably have believed him innocent. Then, however, his
natural cunning reasserted itself, and he stoutly denied everything and
persisted in calling the doctor a liar. He, quite apart from his juror’s oath,
seeing his private honour publicly impugned, pressed home his
accusations against the scoundrel even more vehemently. Finally the
magistrates ordered the public officers to examine the villain’s hands, on
which they found an iron ring, which they compared with the seal on the
bag; the comparison confirmed everybody’s suspicions. The wheel and
the rack, as usual in Greece, were immediately brought into action, but
he held out against torture with extraordinary obstinacy, and neither
flogging nor even the fire made him give in.
11 Finally the doctor spoke out: ‘No, I will not allow it, I will not allow
you to punish this innocent young man and let this fellow escape the
penalty for his crime and make a mockery of justice. I will give you a
clear proof of the real state of affairs. When this rascal was so eager to
buy a deadly poison, I thought it improper for one of my profession to
provide anybody with the means of death. I had been taught that
medicine had been invented to save life, not destroy it. However, I
feared that if I declined to give it to him, I should merely be aiding and
 abetting his crime and do more harm than good by my refusal; he would
acquire his deadly potion from somebody else or in the last resort carry
out his abominable plan with a sword or some other weapon. So I gave
him his “poison”; but it was a soporific draught of mandragora, a proven
narcotic, as you know, which induces a sleep indistinguishable from
death. You need not be surprised that this desperate villain, knowing that
he must suffer the extreme penalty of the law as laid down by our
ancestral custom, braves these tortures as light in comparison. But if
what the boy drank was really the drink that I compounded, he is alive
and sleeping peacefully, and soon he will shake off his torpor and return
to the light of day. If, however, death has claimed him, we must look for
the cause elsewhere.’
12 The old man’s speech carried conviction, and not a moment was lost in
hastening to the tomb where the boy’s body had been laid. The whole
council, all the chief citizens, in fact the entire population, converged on
the spot, in a fever of curiosity. It was the father himself who removed
the lid of the coffin with his own hands; and at once the boy shook off
his deathlike lethargy and sat up, risen from the dead. His father
gathered him into his arms and embraced him, speechless for the
moment with joy, and showed him to the people. Just as he was, still
wrapped in his grave-clothes, the boy was carried back to the court. So
finally the crimes of the wicked slave and the even wickeder stepmother
were brought to light, and naked Truth came forward for all to see. The
woman was sentenced to perpetual exile and the slave to crucifixion. All
agreed that the good doctor should be allowed to keep the gold, as the
price of that timely sleep. As for the old man, his famous, indeed
fabulous, experience ended in a way worthy of divine Providence: in a
matter of moments, seconds indeed, he was rescued from the prospect of
total childlessness and suddenly found himself the father of two young
sons.
13 As for me, I was once again launched on my fated voyage. The soldier
who had bought me from no vendor and paid nothing for me received
orders from his commanding officer to take a letter to the Emperor at
Rome, and so sold me to two brothers for eleven denarii. These were the
slaves of a rich master: one was a pastrycook, who produced bread and
sweet cakes, the other a chef, who concocted savoury dishes seasoned
with delicious sauces. They lived together and maintained a joint
 establishment; they had bought me to transport the large numbers of
containers required for various purposes by their master, who travelled
about a good deal. So I was admitted as a third member of this
partnership, and never before or since did I find myself so well off.
Every evening, after a luxurious dinner splendidly served, my masters
would take home generous portions of the food. The chef brought back
large helpings of pork, chicken, fish, and all sorts of ragouts; the
pastrycook brought rolls, biscuits, cakes, fritters and pastries of all
shapes and sizes, and various sweetmeats. Then when they locked up
their quarters and went to the baths to refresh themselves, I would gorge
myself on this heaven-sent banquet; for I was not such a fool or an
actual ass as to reject this delicious food and make my dinner on rough
spiky hay.
14 For some time my artful thievery went swimmingly; I was cautious and
only stole a little from the plenty that was on offer, and they never
thought of suspecting an ass of pilfering. But as I grew confident of
avoiding detection I began to wolf down all the particularly choice bits
and single out the most delicious sweetmeats to lick up, and that
disturbed the brothers, who became extremely suspicious. Though even
then they did not connect me with the matter, they set out to try to
discover who was responsible for this daily thieving. In the end they
began to tax each other with this sordid plundering, and they redoubled
their precautions, maintaining an even stricter supervision and counting
and checking off every dish. At last one could no longer contain himself
and spoke out: ‘It really isn’t fair what you’re doing – it’s no way for a
man to behave – to make away with the choice bits every day and sell
them so as to increase your own nest-egg on the sly, and then claim an
equal share of what’s left. If you’re dissatisfied with our partnership, we
can go on being brothers in everything else, but give up this sharing
arrangement. I can see that this dispute about our losses is going to get
out of hand and provoke a disastrous quarrel between us.’ To this his
brother replied: ‘I admire your nerve, I really do. Every day you’ve been
quietly filching all the choice morsels, and now you get in ahead of me
with the very complaint that I’ve held back all this time, suffering in
secret because I didn’t want to be seen accusing my brother of this
squalid thieving. But it’s just as well to thrash it out between us and look
 for a solution together; if we go on bottling up our feelings one of us
might end up doing an Eteocles.’
15 After more recriminations of this kind, each swore solemnly that he
was innocent of any deceit or theft; and they agreed that what they had
to do was discover by fair means or foul the thief who was responsible
for their common loss. The ass, they reasoned, the only other occupant
of the premises, could not be attracted by this kind of food, but
nevertheless the best bits were disappearing every day, and it couldn’t be
the flies that were invading the place – they would have to be as big as
the Harpies that used to carry off Phineus’ dinner. Meanwhile, on this
rich and lavish diet of human food I had rounded out and grown fat, my
hide had become soft and supple, and my coat long and sleek. But my
handsome appearance brought about shame and confusion for me. The
brothers were struck by my increased bulk, and noticing that my daily
ration of hay was untouched, they concentrated their attention on me.
One evening they locked up the house at the usual time as if they were
going to the baths, and then, looking through a small crack in the wall
they saw me tucking in to the array of eatables. They were no longer
bothered about their loss, only lost in wonder at this unnatural
gourmandise on the part of an ass; roaring with laughter they called their
fellow slaves one by one until there was a whole crowd of them there,
and showed them this unheard-of vagary of appetite in a brute beast of
burden.
Their laughter was so loud and hearty that it came to their master’s
ears as he was passing. He asked what they all found so comical; and
16 when he was told he looked through the hole himself. He was highly
amused and in fact laughed so much that he got a pain in his inside. He
then had the door opened and came in to observe at close quarters.
Seeing that Fortune was at last relenting to some degree and smiling on
me, and reassured by the general hilarity, I was not in the least put out
but went on eating at my ease. In the end the master was so pleased by
this unusual spectacle that he ordered me to be brought into the house,
indeed he conducted me into the dining-room himself, and had the table
set out and laid with every kind of eatable and dish, all whole and intact.
Though I was already pretty full, I wanted to play up to him and get into
his good books, and so I fell to greedily on the assembled delicacies.
They had taken great pains to work out what an ass would find most
 uncongenial, in order to see how domesticated I really was; so they
served me meat seasoned with silphium, capons liberally peppered, and
fish swimming in exotic sauces. All the while the whole company were
in fits of laughter. Then said a wag who was present: ‘Give our friend
here some wine – neat.’ The master took him up: ‘Not such a bad idea of
yours, you rascal,’ he said. ‘It’s quite possible that our guest would like a
cup of honey-wine with his dinner’, and turning to a slave, ‘You there,
wash out that gold bowl carefully, mix and fill it, and offer it to my guest
– and when you do so, tip him the wink that I’ve drunk his health.’ The
other guests were all agog. I was not in the slightest degree abashed, but
quite at my ease and in convivial style I shaped the ends of my lips into
a ladle and drank off the whole of this large bowl at a draught. This was
greeted with
a shout as all present with one voice wished me good health. The master
17 was highly delighted, and calling in the slaves who had bought me
ordered them to be given four times what they had paid; and he handed
me over to his confidential freedman, a person of some substance, with
orders to look after me well.
This man treated me with great humanity and kindness, and to
ingratiate himself with his patron, he took great pains to entertain him
with my clever tricks. First he taught me to recline at table on my elbow,
then to wrestle and even to dance on my hind legs, and what was
thought most extraordinary, to answer when spoken to, by nodding
upwards for ‘no’ and downwards for ‘yes’; and when I was thirsty to
look at the wine-waiter and ask for drink by opening and shutting my
eyes. I had no trouble in learning my lessons, for of course I could have
done all these things without being shown. However, I was afraid that if
I behaved untaught in too human a fashion, they would think this a
sinister omen and kill me and consign me to the vultures to feast on as a
monster and a prodigy. Meanwhile the news got around, and my master
had become a public figure on account of my wonderful performances.
Everybody had heard of him as the man who had an ass as boon
companion, an ass that could wrestle and dance and understand human
speech and express himself by nodding.
18 But first I should do what I ought to have done in the first place and tell
you now who my master was and where he was from. His name was
Thiasus and he came from Corinth, the capital of the province of
 Achaea. As one would expect of a man of his birth and rank, he had
passed through the different grades of office to the quinquennial
magistracy; and to honour the occasion in a suitably brilliant manner and
by way of displaying his munificence to the full he had undertaken to
provide a three-day gladiatorial show. So eager indeed was he for
popularity that he had been as far afield as Thessaly to procure wild
beasts and celebrated gladiators, and now that he had acquired and
arranged all he needed he was preparing to return to Corinth. His
luxurious carriages and splendid covered and uncovered wagons were
left to trail along ignominiously at the rear of the procession, as were his
Thessalian horses and Gaulish ponies and the rest of his expensive
bloodstock. It was I whom he bestrode – I, tricked out in golden
ornaments and richly dyed saddle-cloths and purple housings and silver
reins and embroidered girths and sweetly chiming bells – all the time
addressing me in terms of affectionate endearment and declaring that
what pleased him most of all was that in me he had both a companion
and a conveyance.
19 When, after a journey partly on land and partly by sea, we reached
Corinth, great crowds of citizens turned out, not so much, it seemed, in
honour of Thiasus as because they were dying to have a look at me. In
fact I had become so famous in those parts also that my keeper did
extremely well out of me. Seeing the numbers of those who could not
contain their eagerness to watch my performances, he barred the doors
and only let them in one at a time, and the tips that he took every day
added up to a tidy sum.
There was in that select company a certain noble and wealthy lady who
like everybody else paid to see me and was delighted by all my various
antics. Gradually her continued admiration of me changed to an
extraordinary passion for me. For this unnatural lust the only remedy she
could devise was to play Pasiphae, this time with an ass for lover. Her
whole heart thus set on enjoying my embraces, she finally offered my
keeper a large fee for one night with me. He, not in the least worried
about whether the affair would turn out agreeably for me, but only
happy at the prospect of profit for himself, agreed.
20 So having dined we left the master’s table and found the lady in my
apartment, where she had been waiting for some time. Ye gods, what
splendid preparations she had made! Four eunuchs busied themselves in
 making a bed for us on the ground with a heap of pillows puffed up
airily with the finest down, over which they carefully draped a coverlet
embroidered with gold and dyed with Tyrian purple; and on top of all
they scattered an ample supply of smaller pillows, dainty affairs such as
those on which elegant ladies are accustomed to rest their heads. Then,
without delaying their mistress’s pleasure by lingering any longer, they
withdrew and shut the door, leaving the room brilliantly lit by candles
whose flames illuminated the darkness for us.
21 Now the lady removed every stitch of clothing, even the band
confining her beautiful breasts, and standing by one of the lamps she
anointed herself with quantities of balsam from a pewter vessel, which
she also rubbed generously over me, paying special attention to my
nostrils. Next she kissed me lovingly, not the sort of kisses that pass
current in the brothel, those of whores eager to extract money or clients
as eager to withhold it; hers were the real thing and heartfelt, as were her
endearments – ‘I love you’, ‘I want you’, ‘You’re the only one I love’, ‘I
can’t live without you’, and all the other things women say to excite men
and prove how much they care for them. Then she took hold of my
halter and got me to lie down in the way I had learned. That was a
simple matter: what I had to do presented itself to me as neither novel
nor difficult, especially when after all this time I was about to go to bed
with so beautiful and so willing a mistress. Moreover I had drunk
copiously of the wine, which was extremely fine, and the sweet ointment
had also aroused my desire.
22 No, what worried me a great deal as I thought about it was this – how
was I, with my four clumsy legs, to mount this exquisite lady? How
could I embrace her soft white body, all milk and honey, with my horny
hooves? How could I kiss those delicate red lips, fragrant as ambrosia,
with my great ugly mouth and its teeth like a row of rocks? And how –
and this was what really troubled me – though I was on fire to get
started, every inch of me – how was she going to cope with my immense
organ? I was already mourning for myself: thrown to the beasts as an
item in my master’s games for splitting a patrician lady in two!
Meanwhile she went on murmuring endearments and kissing me
repeatedly and moaning tenderly and fluttering her eyelids seductively,
and then finally, ‘I have you,’ she cried, ‘I have you, my dove, my
sparrow’, and with that she showed how empty and foolish my worries
 and fears had been. For holding me tightly embraced she welcomed me
in – all of me, and I mean all. Every time I pulled myself back in an
effort to go easy on her, she would thrust violently forward in her frenzy,
and grasping my back would cling to me even more closely. I really
believed that I might prove inadequate to satisfy her desires; and I could
quite see how the mother of the Minotaur had found so much pleasure
with a lowing lover. After a sleepless and laborious night she left me
while it was still dark to avoid detection, having first agreed to pay the
same price for another night.
23 My keeper was more than happy to allow her to enjoy me as often as
she wanted, partly because he was making a very good thing out of it,
and partly because here was a way of providing his master with a fresh
spectacle. He therefore lost no time in letting him into the secret of our
erotic performances. The master rewarded his freedman liberally and
decided to make a public exhibition of me. Since, however, my noble
‘wife’ was ineligible because of her rank, and nobody else could be
found to take her place at any price, he brought in a degraded creature
whom the governor had condemned to the beasts to prostitute her virtue
with me in front of the people – this, he reckoned, was sure to pack the
theatre. I found out why she had been condemned; the story was as
follows.
Her husband’s father, having to be away on a journey, left instructions
with his wife, her mother-in-law, who was pregnant, that if the child
turned out to be a member of the weaker sex, it should be put to death at
birth. While he was away a girl was born; but mother-love was too
strong for her, and disobeying her husband’s orders she entrusted the
child to neighbours to bring up. On his return she told him that it was a
daughter and had been duly put to death. Meanwhile the girl grew up to
be of marriageable age, but as she could not be given a dowry suitable to
her rank without her father’s knowledge, the wife did the only thing she
could and revealed the secret to her son. There was also the fear, which
worried her greatly, that by some mischance he might be carried away
by the warmth of a young man’s feelings and become involved with the
girl, neither of them realizing that they were brother and sister. The
young man, a model son and brother, behaved with scrupulous and
dutiful respect towards both his mother and his sister. He consigned
these family secrets to the safekeeping of religious silence, and passed
 off what he proceeded to do as an act of mere common decency,
fulfilling his duty to his kin by taking his sister under his protection and
receiving her into his house simply as a girl from the neighbour-hood
who had no family or parents to protect her. His next move was to marry
her to a close friend to whom he was deeply attached, giving her a
generous dowry from his own resources.
24 Admirable and entirely innocent as these arrangements were, they
could not escape the deadly malevolence of Fortune, and at her
prompting there came to the young man’s house cruel Jealousy. At once
his wife, the woman condemned to the beasts because of this business,
began first to suspect the girl as a rival who would supplant her in her
husband’s bed, then to hate her, and finally to lay a cruel and murderous
trap for her. This was what she devised.
She surreptitiously possessed herself of her husband’s ring and went to
one of his country houses. From there she sent a slave who was as loyal
to her as he was disloyal to Loyalty herself, with a message to the girl
that the young man was at the place and wanted her to join him, adding
that she was to come quite alone and as quickly as she could. In case the
girl should hesitate about coming, she gave him the stolen ring to show
her as authenticating the message. In obedience to her brother’s orders
(as she but nobody else knew him to be) and the sight of the ring, the
girl at once did exactly as she was told and came unaccompanied as fast
as she could. But directly the horrible trap closed on her and she was
enmeshed in the snare, this admirable wife, goaded to inhuman frenzy
by lustful fury, had her husband’s sister stripped naked and flogged her
to within an inch of her life; then, though the girl kept crying out, what
was the truth, that there was no reason for her to be angry, that there had
been no adultery, that he was her brother, her brother – the woman called
her a liar who had made all this up, and thrusting a white-hot firebrand
between her thighs put her to a most cruel death.
25 At the news of the girl’s grievous death her brother and husband came
in haste and buried her with much mourning and lamentation. The
brother could not come to terms with his sister’s death, so pitiful and so
little deserved; shaken to the core by grief and possessed by destructive
passions, in his anger and melancholy he burned with a raging fever, so
that he himself was clearly in need of medical help. His wife – though
she had long ago forfeited her right to that name along with her honour –
 consulted a doctor, a notorious rascal with many victorious battles and
many notable trophies of his prowess to his credit. She offered him fifty
thousand sesterces if he would sell her an instant poison, thus enabling
her to purchase her husband’s death. This was agreed; what he made up
purported to be a famous specific, one scholars call the Life giver, for
calming internal disorders and eliminating bile. Instead what was
administered was rather a Lifetaker. So, with the family and a number of
friends and relatives all gathered around, the doctor carefully mixed the
draught and was about to offer it to the sick man.
26 At this point, however, the shameless woman, thinking at once to
eliminate her accomplice and save the money she had promised, laid
hold of the cup before them all. ‘Dear doctor,’ she said, ‘you shall not
give this medicine to my dearest husband until you yourself have drunk
a good half of it. How do I know that there isn’t a deadly poison lurking
in it? I know that a sensible professional man like yourself won’t be
offended by this expression of a devoted wife’s care for her husband’s
health and the duty she must feel towards him.’ Such an unexpected and
outrageous ploy by this monstrous creature took the doctor totally by
surprise. All his ideas deserted him, and there was no time for him to
reflect; so at once, before any sign of agitation or hesitation could betray
his guilty conscience, he took a deep draught of the medicine. Thus
reassured, the young man took the cup from him and emptied it. His
business done, the doctor was impatient to get home at top speed, in a
hurry to cancel the deadly effect of the poison he had swallowed with an
antidote. The audacious woman, however, would not be deflected from
the wicked course on which she had embarked and forbade him to stir
from her side, ‘until,’ she said, ‘the medicine has been digested and we
see its effects.’ In the end, however, she allowed him to wear her down
by his repeated pleas and entreaties and was reluctantly prevailed on to
let him go. But all this time the hidden plague had been raging
throughout his vitals and had penetrated to his very marrow; desperately
ill and already sunk deep in a deathly torpor he barely got himself home.
There he just managed to tell his wife the whole story and charge her at
least to demand the agreed price for two deaths, not one, before in a
violent paroxysm this ornament to his profession gave up the ghost.
27 The young man had maintained his grip on life no longer than the
doctor, but expired in the same manner amid the feigned tears and
 pretended lamentations of his wife. After his funeral and the interval of a
few days in which the last respects are paid to the dead, the doctor’s
widow appeared to claim payment for the two deaths. The woman, true
to herself, dissembling her evil purposes under a show of good faith,
answered her pleasantly with a whole series of promises, and undertook
to pay the stipulated price directly – all she asked was a little more of the
potion to finish off what she had begun. In short, the widow fell into her
wicked trap and readily agreed, immediately fetching the entire stock of
the poison and handing it over to the woman. She, being now furnished
with ample materials for criminality, proceeded to stretch her
bloodstained hands far and wide.
28 She had a small daughter by her murdered husband. This child was by
law her father’s heir, a fact that the woman bitterly resented; avid to take
the whole of her daughter’s inheritance she planned to take her life as
well. Knowing that a mother stood to inherit from a child prematurely
deceased, she showed herself just such a parent as she had been a wife.
At a dinner specially arranged for the occasion she poisoned at one
stroke both the doctor’s widow and her own daughter. The little girl’s
weak chest and delicate stomach succumbed at once to the deadly
poison; the widow, feeling the noxious effects of the abominable draught
spreading through her lungs like a hurricane, began to suspect the truth.
Then, as she started to suffocate, she knew for certain, and made her
way at speed to the house of the governor of the province, where with
loud cries she invoked his protection, causing a noisy crowd to gather.
On hearing of the dreadful crimes that she had come to reveal, the
governor at once let her in and listened to her story. She told it all from
the beginning of the cruel wife’s atrocities; and then she fainted,
overcome by a sudden vertigo, and tightly closing her half-open lips and
grinding her teeth she let out a prolonged groan and fell dead at the
governor’s feet. An experienced administrator who did not let the grass
grow under his feet, he lost no time in dealing with this fiendish
poisoner’s long series of crimes. He at once had the woman’s personal
attendants arrested and got the truth out of them under torture. The
woman herself he sentenced to be thrown to the beasts – a better fate
than she deserved, but nobody could devise a more suitable punishment
for her.
29
 This then was the woman with whom I was to be publicly joined in
holy matrimony. It was with feelings of deep distress and painful
anticipation that I looked forward to the day of the games. More than
once I was minded to do away with myself rather than be defiled by
contact with this wicked woman and be put to shame and disgraced by
being made a public spectacle. However, lacking as I did hands and
fingers, I could find no way with my stubby rounded hooves of drawing
a sword. My one consolation and ray of hope – slender enough – in my
desperate plight was that spring had come once more. Everywhere there
was colour: flowers were in bud, the meadows were putting on their
bright summer garments, and roses were just beginning to break out of
their thorny coverings and diffuse their fragrant scent – the roses which
could make me once again the Lucius I had been.
Now the day of the games had arrived, and I was led to the theatre in
ceremonial procession, escorted by crowds of people. While the show
was being formally inaugurated by a troupe of professional dancers, I
was left for a while outside the gate, where I had the pleasure of
cropping the lush grass which was growing in the entrance. At the same
time, as the gates were left open, I was able to feast my eyes on the very
pretty sight inside.
First I saw boys and girls in the very flower of their youth, handsome
and beautifully dressed, expressive in their movements, who were
grouping themselves to perform a pyrrhic dance in Greek style. In the
graceful mazes of their ballet they now danced in a circle, now joined
hands in a straight line, now formed a hollow square, now divided into
semi-choruses. Then a trumpet-call signalled an end to their complicated
manoeuvres and symmetrical interweavings, the curtain was raised and
the screens folded back to reveal the stage.
30 There was a hill of wood in the shape of that famous mount Ida sung
by the poet Homer. It was a lofty structure, planted with shrubs and
living trees, and on its summit the architect had contrived a spring from
which a stream flowed down. Some goats were browsing on the grass;
and a young man got up as the Phrygian shepherd Paris in a handsome
tunic, draped in a mantle of oriental style, with a golden tiara on his
head, was playing herdsman. To him there entered an extremely pretty
boy, naked except for a cloak such as teenage boys wear over his left
shoulder. From his blond hair, a striking sight, there projected a
 matching pair of little golden wings; the wand he carried identified him
as Mercury. He danced forward and extended to the actor who
represented Paris an apple plated with gold which he was carrying in his
right hand, while with a nod he conveyed Jupiter’s orders; then he
gracefully retired and left the stage. Next there appeared a handsome girl
representing Juno, with a shining diadem on her head and carrying a
sceptre. She was followed by another girl, who could only be Minerva;
she wore on her head a gleaming helmet with a wreath of olive round it
and held aloft a shield and brandished a spear, just as she appears in
battle.
31 After them there entered a third girl, the loveliest of the three,
proclaimed as Venus by her ravishing ambrosial complexion, Venus as
she was when still a virgin. She was completely naked, showing off her
beauty in all its perfection, except for a wisp of thin silk that covered her
pretty secrets. This little bit of material, however, the prurient wind in its
amorous play now wafted aside to reveal the blossom of her youth and
now skittishly flattened against her to cling closely and outline every
detail of her voluptuous figure. The white colour of the goddess’s skin,
symbolizing her descent from heaven, contrasted with the blue of her
dress, recalling her connection with the sea.
Each of the girls enacting the goddesses had a supporting escort. Juno
was attended by actors impersonating Castor and Pollux, wearing egg-
shaped helmets with a star for crest. This actress with restrained and
natural gestures performed a dignified piece of miming, moving to an
accompaniment of airs on the Ionian pipe, in which she promised to
confer on the shepherd, if he adjudged the prize of beauty to her,
dominion over Asia. The girl whose warlike get-up had made a Minerva
of her was flanked by two boys, the armed attendants of the goddess of
battles, Terror and Fear, leaping about with naked swords. Behind them
a Dorian piper sounded a martial strain, alternating bass notes with
strident trumpet-like tones to stimulate their brisk and vigorous dancing.
This goddess, tossing her head and glaring threateningly, with rapid and
complicated gestures indicated vividly to Paris that if he awarded her the
victory in the beauty contest, he would with her aid be a great warrior
with a glorious roll of battle-honours.
32 But now Venus, to immense applause from the audience, took centre
stage. Surrounded by a throng of happy little boys, she stood sweetly
 smiling, an enchanting sight. These chubby children with their milk-
white skin were for all the world like real Cupids just flown in from the
sky or the ocean. Their little wings and their little bows and arrows and
the rest of their costume made the resemblance perfect; and as if their
mistress was on her way to a wedding-breakfast they lighted her
footsteps with flaming torches. Next there entered a crowd of pretty
unmarried girls, on this side the gracefullest of Graces, on that the
loveliest of Hours, strewing garlands and flowers in honour of their
goddess and in the intricacies of their artful dance essaying to delight the
queen of heaven with all the rich bounty of the spring. Now the pipes
breathed sweet Lydian harmonies; and while these were seducing the
hearts of the spectators, Venus, even more seductive, began to dance.
Advancing with slow and deliberate steps, her supple figure gently
swaying and her head moving slightly in time to the music, she
responded to the languishing melody of the pipes with elegant gestures.
Now her eyes fluttered provocatively, now they flashed sharp menaces,
and at times she danced only with them. As soon as she appeared before
the judge it was plain from the movement of her hands that she was
promising that, if she were preferred to the other goddesses, she would
give Paris a wife of pre-eminent loveliness matching her own. At this
the Phrygian youth readily handed the girl the golden apple he was
holding as the token of her victory.
33 Now, you sweepings of humanity, you beasts of the bar, you gowned
vultures, do you wonder that nowadays all judges and juries put their
verdicts up for sale, when in the very dawn of time, in a suit between
gods and men, the course of justice was perverted by corruption and
subornation? When a judge chosen by the wisdom of great Jupiter, a
rustic shepherd-boy, sold the first judicial decision in history to gratify
his lust and destroyed his whole race into the bargain? Yes, and there
was that later case between the two famous Greek generals, when the
wise and learned Palamedes was falsely accused of treason and
condemned to death and Ulysses was preferred to Ajax, greatest and
most valiant of warriors. And what about that verdict that was returned
by the Athenians, those acute lawgivers with their encyclopedic
learning? An old man of godlike understanding, whom the Delphic
oracle had pronounced the wisest of all human beings, ensnared by the
malignant envy of a vile faction on the charge of corrupting the young,
 whom he had always curbed and restrained, was put to death by the
deadly juice of a poisonous weed, leaving his fellow countrymen
bearing the stigma of perpetual shame –when now, all those years later,
distinguished philosophers embrace his doctrines as holy writ and in
their devoted pursuit of happiness swear by his name. But I have
allowed myself to be carried away by my indignation, and my readers
may be objecting – ‘Do we now have to put up with an ass playing the
philosopher?’ So I will come back to where I digressed in my story.
34 The Judgement of Paris being over, Juno and Minerva left the stage,
looking glum and angry and expressing by their gestures their
indignation at losing; while Venus, happy and smiling, manifested her
delight in a dance with the whole troupe. Then at the top of the mountain
there burst forth from a hidden jet a shower of wine mixed with saffron,
which rose high in the air and then drifted down over the browsing goats
and drenched them in its sweet-smelling spray, so that beautified by this
variegation they changed from their usual white colour to saffron
yellow. Then the wooden mountain was swallowed up and disappeared
into the ground, leaving the whole theatre perfumed with the sweet
fragrance.
Now, in response to the demands of the crowd, a soldier came out and
along the street to fetch the woman who, as I said, had for her series of
crimes been condemned to the beasts and was to partner me in these
brilliant nuptials of ours. Already what was to be our marital bed was
being lovingly made up, an affair of polished Indian tortoiseshell,
heaped high with cushions stuffed with down and bright with silken
coverlets. Apart from the shame of having to do this act in public, and
apart from the pollution of contact with this loathsome and detestable
woman, I was in acute and grievous fear for my life. For I thought: there
we should be, locked together in a loving embrace, and whatever animal
was let loose to devour the woman was hardly likely to be so
discriminating or well trained or so firmly in control of its appetites as to
tear to pieces the woman at my side and spare me as the uncondemned
and innocent party.
35 It was therefore no longer my honour but my life about which I was
concerned. My master was fully occupied in seeing that the bed was
properly set up, and the slaves were all either engaged in looking after
the animals or lost in admiring enjoyment of the spectacle. That left me
free to come to a decision. Nobody thought that much of a watch need
be kept on so docile an ass; so I began to move step by step towards the
nearest door, then once outside I took off at my fastest gallop and kept it
up for six whole miles, until I arrived at Cenchreae. This town belongs
to the famous colony of Corinth and lies beside the Aegean sea, on the
Saronic gulf. It is a very safe harbour for shipping and has a large
population. I steered clear of the crowds and found a secluded spot on
the shore; and there in a soft sandy hollow near the breaking waves I
stretched out and rested my weary limbs. By now the sun’s chariot had
covered the last leg of its course, and surrendering myself to the evening
hush I was overcome by sweet sleep.
BOOK 11

Vision on the seashore – appeal to Isis – the goddess appears and

promises rescue – her festival – Lucius himself again – devotes
himself to the goddess’s service – initiated – goes to Rome – two
further initiations – promised a distinguished future as an
advocate and admitted to office in an ancient priestly college by
Osiris himself– happy at last

1 It was not yet midnight when I awoke with a sudden start to see the full
moon just rising from the sea-waves and shining with unusual brilliance.
Now, in the silent secrecy of night, was my opportunity. Knowing that
this greatest of goddesses was supremely powerful; that all human life
was ruled by her Providence; that not only all animals, both tame and
wild, but even lifeless things were animated by the divine power of her
light and might; that as she waxed and waned, so in sympathy and
obedience every creature on earth or in the heavens or in the sea was
increased or diminished; and seeing that Fate was now seemingly
satiated with my long tale of suffering and was offering me a hope,
however late in the day, of rescue: I decided to beg for mercy from the
awesome manifestation of the goddess that I now beheld. At once,
shaking off my sluggish repose, I jumped up happily and briskly, and
eager to purify myself I plunged into the sea. Seven times I immersed
my head, since that is the number which the godlike Pythagoras has told
us is most appropriate in religious rituals, and then weeping I uttered my
silent prayer to the all-powerful goddess.
2 ‘Queen of heaven, whether you are Ceres, nurturing mother and creatrix
of crops, who in your joy at finding your daughter again set aside the
ancient acorn, fodder for wild beasts, and taught man the use of civilized
food, and now fructify the ploughlands of Eleusis; or whether you are
Venus Urania, who in the first beginnings of the world by giving birth to
Love brought together the opposite sexes and so with never-ending
regeneration perpetuated the human race, and now are worshipped in the
sanctuary of sea-girt Paphos; or whether you are Phoebus’ sister, who by
relieving women in labour with your soothing remedies have raised up
many peoples, and now are venerated in your shrine at Ephesus; or
whether you are Proserpine of the fearful night-howling and triple
countenance, you who hold back the attacks of ghosts and control the
gates of hell, who pass at will among the sacred groves and are
propitiated with many different rites; you who brighten cities
everywhere with your female light and nourish the fertile seeds with
your moist warmth and dispense according to the motions of the Sun an
ever-changing radiance; by whatever name, in whatever manner, in
whatever guise it is permitted to call on you: do you now at last help me
in this extremity of tribulation, do you rebuild the wreck of my fortunes,
do you grant peace and respite from the cruel misfortunes that I have
endured: let there be an end of toils, an end of perils. Banish this
loathsome animal shape, return me to the sight of my friends and family,
restore Lucius to himself; or if I have offended some power that still
pursues me with its savagery and will not be appeased, then at last let me
die if I may not live.’
3 Such were the prayers that I poured forth, accompanied with pitiful
lamentations; then sleep once more enveloped my fainting senses and
overcame me in the same resting-place as before. I had scarcely closed
my eyes when out of the sea there emerged the head of the goddess,
turning on me that face revered even by the gods; then her radiant
likeness seemed by degrees to take shape in its entirety and stand,
shaking off the brine, before my eyes. Let me try to convey to you too
the wonderful sight that she presented, that is if the poverty of human
language will afford me the means of doing so or the goddess herself
will furnish me with a superabundance of expressive eloquence.
First her hair: long, abundant, and gently curling, it fell caressingly in
spreading waves over her divine neck and shoulders. Her head was
 crowned with a diadem variegated with many different flowers; in its
centre, above her forehead, a disc like a mirror or rather an image of the
moon shone with a white radiance. This was flanked on either side by a
viper rising sinuously erect; and over all was a wreath of ears of corn.
Her dress was of all colours, woven of the finest linen, now brilliant
white, now saffron yellow, now a flaming rose-red. But what above all
made me stare and stare again was her mantle. This was jet-black and
shone with a dark resplendence; it passed right round her, under her right
arm and up to her left shoulder, where it was bunched and hung down in
a series of many
folds to the tasselled fringes of its gracefully waving hem. Along its
4 embroidered border and all over its surface shone a scattered pattern of
stars, and in the middle of them the full moon radiated flames of fire.
Around the circumference of this splendid garment there ran one
continuous garland all made up of flowers and fruits. Quite different
were the symbols that she held. In her right hand was a bronze sistrum, a
narrow strip of metal curved back on itself like a sword-belt and pierced
by a number of thin rods, which when shaken in triple time gave off a
rattling sound. From her left hand hung a gold pitcher, the upper part of
its handle in the form of a rampant asp with head held aloft and neck
puffed out. Her ambrosial feet were shod with sandals woven from
palm-leaves, the sign of victory. In this awesome shape the goddess,
wafting over me all the blessed perfumes of Arabia, deigned to answer
me in her own voice.
5 ‘I come, Lucius, moved by your entreaties: I, mother of the universe,
mistress of all the elements, first-born of the ages, highest of the gods,
queen of the shades, first of those who dwell in heaven, representing in
one shape all gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights
of heaven, the health-giving sea-winds, and the mournful silences of
hell; the entire world worships my single godhead in a thousand shapes,
with divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-
born of mankind, call me the Pessinuntian Mother of the gods; the native
Athenians the Cecropian Minerva; the island-dwelling Cypriots Paphian
Venus; the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana; the triple-tongued Sicilians
Stygian Proserpine; the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; some call me
Juno, some Bellona, others Hecate, others Rhamnusia; but both races of
Ethiopians, those on whom the rising and those on whom the setting sun
 shines, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with
the worship which is truly mine and call me by my true name: Queen
Isis. I am here in pity for your misfortunes, I am here with favour and
goodwill. Cease now your weeping, put an end to your lamentation,
banish your grief: now by my Providence the day of your release is
dawning. Attend therefore with your whole mind to the orders I give
you.
‘The day which will be born of this night has been consecrated to me
by immemorial religious usage. It is the day on which the tempests of
winter have abated and the stormy sea-waves have subsided, when the
ocean is again navigable and my priests sacrifice a brand-new ship as
the first-offering of the season’s trade. It is this ceremony that you must
await without anxiety and without unholy
thoughts. My priest has been warned by me; he will be carrying in his
6 right hand as part of his processional equipment a sistrum wreathed with
a garland of roses. You must not hesitate, but make your way briskly
through the crowd and join the procession, relying on my goodwill.
Approach the priest and, as if kissing his hand, gently take a bite of the
roses, and in a moment you will divest yourself of the hide of this vile
beast that has always been so hateful to me. Do not fear that anything I
tell you to do will be difficult. At the very moment that I am appearing
to you, I am also present to my priest while he sleeps, telling him what
must be done next. At my orders the serried ranks of the crowd will give
you passage, and amid the joyful ceremonies and festive spectacles no
one will be repelled by that ugly appearance you wear or put a sinister
construction on your sudden change of shape and make spiteful
accusations against you.
‘But this you must remember well and keep forever stored up in your
inmost heart: the remaining course of your life right up until your last
breath is now solemnly promised to me. It is only just that you should
make over all the rest of your time on earth to her by whose beneficence
you will be made human again. And you will live happily, you will live
gloriously under my protection; and when you have completed your
lifespan and descend to the shades, there also in that subterranean
hemisphere I, whom you now behold, shall be there, shining amidst the
darkness of Acheron and reigning in the secret depths of Styx, and you
 shall dwell in the Elysian Fields and constantly worship me and be
favoured by me. But if by diligent observance and pious service and
steadfast chastity you shall have deserved well of my godhead, know
that I alone also have the power to prolong your life beyond the bounds
fixed for you by your Fate.’
7 The awesome prophecy was ended, and the invincible goddess
withdrew into herself. I at once awoke from sleep and arose with mixed
feelings of fear and joy, followed by a mighty sweat. Greatly wondering
at the way in which the powerful goddess had manifested herself to my
sight, I bathed in the sea and, attentive to her august commands, began
to con over her instructions point by point. As soon as the golden sun
arose to dispel the dark clouds of night, all the streets were immediately
filled with bustling crowds. There was a feeling of holy exhilaration in
the air; quite apart from my private happiness, everything seemed to me
so gay and cheerful that I felt that even the various animals, the houses,
the day itself, wore an air of serene enjoyment. Yesterday’s frost had
been swiftly followed by a calm sunny morning: the springlike warmth
had brought out all the songbirds, who in tuneful chorus were
propitiating the mother of the stars, the parent of the seasons, the
mistress of the whole world, with their pretty greetings. Then the trees
too, both the fertile with their yield of fruit and the infertile with only
shade to offer, were all bright with budding leaves as they opened out in
the south wind, which rustled sweetly in their gently waving branches.
The huge roaring of the tempests had abated, the swelling turmoil of the
waves had subsided, and the sea was quietly lapping the shore. The
clouds had scattered and the sky shone out in all its clear bright
luminous brilliance.
8 And now there began to appear the curtain-raiser to the great
procession. This consisted of men finely got up, each according to his
fancy: one was girt with a sword-belt and represented a soldier;
another’s short cloak, boots and spear identified him as a hunter; while
another, dressed in gilded slippers and a silk gown, wearing expensive
ornaments and a wig, swung his hips as he walked in imitation of a
woman. Yet another was conspicuous in greaves, shield, helmet and
sword, straight out of a gladiatorial school. There was one with a purple
robe and fasces playing the magistrate; one who with cloak and stick
and sandals and goatlike beard passed himself off as a philosopher; and
 there were a pair carrying their respective rods, one impersonating a
fowler complete with birdlime, the other a fisherman with hook and line.
I also saw a tame bear dressed as a lady and being borne along in a litter;
a monkey in a cloth cap and saffron-coloured Phrygian dress to look like
Ganymede the shepherd-boy and holding a gold cup; and an ass with a
pair of wings fastened to him walking along with a lame old man,
recognizable as Pegasus and Bellerophon respectively, a comic duo.
9 While these popular sports and diversions were going on all over the
place, the saviour goddess’s own procession was getting under way.
First came women in shining white attire, proudly displaying the
different symbols they bore and garlanded with spring flowers, who
strewed the street along which the sacred procession passed with flowers
from the folds of their robes. Others held shining mirrors behind them to
render homage to the goddess as she advanced. Others again carried
ivory combs and with movements of their arms and fingers imitated the
combing and dressing of the royal hair; and others sprinkled the streets
with drops of festive balsam and other perfumes. There was also a large
group of both sexes with lamps, torches, candles and every kind of man-
made light to do honour to her from whom spring the stars of heaven.
Next came tuneful bands of music, pipes and recorders sounding sweet
melodies. They were followed by a specially chosen choir of handsome
young men resplendently dressed in their best snow-white robes who
were singing a charming hymn composed and set to music by a skilful
poet favoured by the Muses, its text preluding the solemn prayers that
were to come. Then came pipers in the service of great Sarapis, playing
on their instruments, which extended to their right ears, the strain
belonging to the god and his temple; and a number of others whose role
was to call on the crowd to give free passage to the procession.
10 Then came the throng of those initiated in the mysteries, men and
women of all ranks and ages in shining robes of pure white linen. The
women’s hair was perfumed and covered with a transparent veil, the
men had their heads clean-shaven and gleaming, and their sistrums of
bronze or silver or in some cases gold combined to produce a clear shrill
strain. There followed the earthly stars of the great faith, the priests of
the cult, those grandees, clad in tightly-fitting white linen from breast to
ankle and displaying the symbols of the most mighty gods in all their
glory. The first held up a lamp burning with a bright flame, not one like
 those which light our dinner-tables at night, but a boat-shaped vessel of
gold feeding a more ample flame from its central opening. The second
was similarly attired, but carried in both hands one of those altars called
Altars of Succour, so named from the succouring Providence of the
sovereign goddess. A third came bearing aloft a golden palm-branch of
delicate workmanship and a copy of Mercury’s caduceus. A fourth
displayed an image of Justice, a model of a left hand with palm
outstretched: this hand, as naturally inactive and unendowed with
cleverness or contrivance, being thought more apt to symbolize justice
than the right. He was also carrying a gold vessel rounded in the shape
of a breast from which he poured libations of milk. A fifth carried a
golden basket heaped with laurel branches, and a sixth a large jar.
11 Next appeared the gods who deigned to proceed on human feet. First
was the dread messenger between the gods above and the Underworld,
his dog’s head held high aloft, his face now black, now gold: Anubis,
holding a caduceus in his right hand and brandishing a green palm-leaf
in his left. Hard on his heels followed a cow standing upright, the fertile
image of the All-Mother, proudly borne on the shoulders of one of her
blessed priests. Another was carrying a chest containing mystic
emblems and securely concealing the secrets of the glorious faith.
Another carried in his fortunate embrace the worshipful image of the
supreme divinity. It was not in the shape of a domestic animal or a wild
beast or even a human being, but one that claimed veneration from the
very originality of its ingenious inspiration, an inexpressible symbol of a
loftier faith to be shielded in profound silence. This was the form it took:
a small urn of bright gold, artfully shaped with a well-rounded body and
decorated outside with wonderful Egyptian figures; it had a short neck
with a long projecting spout, opposite which was fixed a handle which
also projected in a sweeping curve. Its finial was a coiled asp with
striped scaly neck puffed up and held high.
12 And now the promised beneficence of the ever-present goddess drew
near, and there appeared the priest who held in his hands my fate and my
salvation. Equipped exactly as she had ordained and promised, he
carried in his right hand a sistrum for the goddess and for me a garland –
rather a crown, as befitted the victory vouchsafed me by the great
goddess’s Providence, after enduring so much suffering and
surmounting so many dangers, over the malignant onslaughts of
 Fortune. However, deeply moved though I was with sudden joy, I did
not press forward roughly, fearing that the abrupt incursion of an animal
would disturb the peace and order of the ceremony. Moving cautiously
at an even, almost human, pace, I gradually insinuated myself sideways
into the crowd, which made way for me as if (as indeed it was) divinely
prompted.
13 The priest, mindful, as I could tell from his actions, of last night’s
prophecy and marvelling at how exactly everything agreed with his
instructions, at once stopped and of his own accord held the garland to
my lips. Nervously, my heart pounding, I greedily took the plaited
wreath of lovely roses in my mouth and in my passionate longing for the
fulfilment of the promise gulped it down. The goddess was true to her
word: in a moment my hideous beastly shape fell away. First there
vanished my rough coat, then my thick hide became thin skin, my
swelling belly drew itself in, fingers and toes emerged from my hooves,
my hands were feet no longer but, as I stood up, extended to perform
their proper function, my long neck contracted, my face and head
became round, my huge ears reverted to their former size, my boulders
of teeth returned to human proportions, and – what had been my chief
cross – my tail was no longer there. The people were amazed, and the
faithful bowed down before this public manifestation of the power of the
great goddess, the ease with which the transformation was accomplished
and its miraculous conformity with the nocturnal visions; and raising
their hands to heaven, loudly and with one voice they bore witness to the
goddess’s marvellous beneficence.
14 As for me, I stood transfixed in silent stupefaction. My mind could not
take in this sudden overwhelming joy, and I did not know what I ought
to say first, how I should begin to use my new gift of speech, which
would be the most auspicious expression with which to celebrate the
rebirth of my tongue, what were the most suitable words in which to
utter my thanks to so great a goddess. However, the priest, who had been
apprised through the divine revelation of the whole tale of my
misfortunes and who was himself greatly affected by this signal miracle,
silently indicated that I should be given a linen garment to cover me up;
for from the moment that I was stripped of the ass’s hateful integument,
I had kept my legs tightly closed and my hands clasped carefully in front
of me, maintaining decency, so far as I could being stark naked, with
 this natural covering. At once one of the crowd of worshippers took off
his outer tunic and quickly wrapped me in it. That done, the priest,
gazing intently at me with a benevolent expression and the air of one
inspired, addressed me as follows.
15 ‘Many and various are the sufferings you have endured, and fierce the
tempests and storm-winds of Fortune by which you have been tossed;
but at last, Lucius, you have come to the harbour of Tranquillity and the
altar of Pity. Neither your birth, nor yet your rank, nor even your pre-
eminent learning were of the slightest help to you, but in the
unsteadiness of your green youth you lowered yourself to servile
pleasures and reaped a bitter reward for your ill-starred curiosity. But in
spite of all, Fortune in her blindness, all the while that she was
tormenting and cruelly imperilling you, has by the very exercise of her
unforeseeing malignity brought you to this state of holy felicity. Now let
her go, let her vent her mad rage elsewhere and find some other subject
for her cruelty; against those whose lives our sovereign goddess has
claimed for her service mischance cannot prevail. Brigands, wild beasts,
slavery, journeys hither and thither along rugged roads, the daily fear of
death – of what avail were these to her malevolence? You have now
been received into the protection of Fortune, but a Fortune that can see,
whose shining light illumines even the other gods. Put on now a happier
look in keeping with the bright dress you wear, and with exultant step
join the procession of the saviour goddess. Let the infidels behold, let
them behold and know their error: see, delivered from his former
tribulations by the Providence of great Isis, here is Lucius rejoicing and
triumphing over his Fortune. But for your greater safety and protection,
enrol yourself a soldier in this sacred service to which you were just now
called to swear allegiance; dedicate yourself now to the discipline of our
faith, and submit yourself as a volunteer to the yoke of our ministry. For
once you begin to serve the goddess, then you will really experience the
enjoyment of your liberty.’
16 Having uttered this inspired speech, the worthy priest, exhausted and
breathing heavily, fell silent. I then joined the throng of the devotees and
escorted their sacred charge, the cynosure of the whole city, as they all
pointed me out to one another. Nobody could talk of anything else:
‘That’s him, the one that the august power of the goddess has just
restored to human shape. Happy man indeed, and thrice blessed to have
 deserved such glorious favour from heaven! It can only be the reward of
a blameless and pious life; no sooner is he, as it were, born again than
he’s pledged to the sacred service.’
During all this, amid a roar of joyful invocations, our gradual progress
had brought us to the seashore, to the very spot where as an ass I had
been stabled the night before. The images of the gods were first set out
as the ritual prescribed. There stood a ship, a triumph of craftsmanship,
its sides decorated with marvellous Egyptian paintings: the high priest,
after first pronouncing a solemn prayer from his chaste lips, with the
utmost ceremony purified it with a flaming torch, an egg, and sulphur,
named it, and consecrated it to the great goddess. The resplendent sail of
this happy vessel displayed letters embroidered in gold repeating the
prayer for the new sailing season and successful navigation. The mast,
shaped from a pine-trunk, was already stepped and towered aloft, a
splendid sight with its distinctive top. The poop was curved in a goose-
neck and was plated with shining gold, and the whole hull was of citrus-
wood, highly polished to a glowing finish. All the people, initiates and
uninitiated alike, then vied with each other to pile up on board baskets
heaped with perfumes and other similar offerings, and also poured
libations of milk-porridge into the sea. At length, stowed full with this
wealth of gifts and propitious offerings, the ship was cast off from her
moorings and put out to sea before a gentle breeze. When she had sailed
too far for us to be able to make her out, the bearers of the sacred objects
took up again what each had brought and returned happily to the temple
in the same orderly procession.
17 When we arrived there, the chief priest and those who had carried the
images of the gods and those initiates who were allowed to enter the
holy of holies went into the chamber of the goddess and restored the
living images to their proper places. Then one of their number, whom
the rest addressed as the Scribe, took up his stand outside the door and
summoned the Pastophori – this is the name of the sacred college – to a
sort of formal assembly. There, on a raised dais, he first read out from a
written text auspicious prayers for the Emperor, the Senate, and the
knights and all the Roman people, for the seamen and ships under the
rule of our worldwide empire; and then with Greek ceremony and in
Greek announced the opening of the sailing season. His words were
greeted with a shout from the people proclaiming their gladness at the
 good omen. Transported with joy and bearing green twigs and branches
and garlands, they kissed the feet of the silver statue of the goddess on
the temple steps and then dispersed to their homes. As for me, I could
not bear to think of stirring an inch, but with my eyes fixed on the
goddess’s image I thought over my past adventures.
18 Meanwhile swift Rumour had not been slow to take wing and had
already spread abroad in my homeland the story of the foreseeing
goddess’s worshipful beneficence and my remarkable good fortune.
Accordingly my friends and household and all my closest relatives at
once left off from the grieving occasioned by the false reports of my
death, and overjoyed by the unexpected good news came hurrying, all
with different gifts, to see for themselves one who had returned from the
Underworld to the light of day. Never having expected to set eyes on
any of them ever again I was greatly cheered and gratefully accepted
their generous contributions, my friends having very considerately
thought to provide me with the wherewithal to clothe and maintain
myself in comfort.
19 When therefore I had done my duty by greeting all of them and giving
them a summary account of my past tribulations and my present
happiness, I returned to what really gave me most pleasure,
contemplation of the goddess. I rented a lodging in the temple precincts,
where I set up house for the time being, joining privately in the service
of the goddess, constantly associating with the priests, and incessantly
adoring the great divinity. No night or snatch of sleep passed without her
appearing to admonish me. Again and again she laid her sacred
commands on me: I had long been singled out for initiation; now, she
decreed, I must take the plunge. Though for myself I was eager and
willing, I was held back by religious scruples. I had made thorough
inquiries and knew that compliance with the requirements of her
worship was not easy, that the practice of chastity and abstinence was
very hard, and that a life that was subject to so many mischances had to
be surrounded with a rampart of careful precaution. As I repeatedly
thought all this over, impatient as I was, somehow or other I went on
putting things off.
20 One night I dreamed that the high priest appeared with a pocketful of
something which he offered me. When I asked what it was he replied
that these were some ‘portions’ that had been sent me from Thessaly,
 and that a slave of mine called Candidus had also arrived from there.
When I woke up I puzzled for a long time over what this vision might
portend, more especially because I was sure I had never had a slave of
that name. However, be the event of this dream-prophecy what it might,
I thought the offer of ‘portions’ could only signify a sure prospect of
gain. So in high expectation of a fruitful outcome I waited for the
morning opening of the temple. When the white curtains were drawn
apart and the venerable image of the goddess was revealed, we all
adored her; the priest meanwhile was making the rounds of the various
altars, worshipping and offering the customary prayers at each, and
pouring from a special vessel a libation of water fetched from the
innermost shrine. When all this had been duly performed, the voices of
the faithful were raised to salute the dawn and announce the first hour of
a new day. Then, at that precise moment, there arrived from Hypata the
servants I had left behind after Photis’ disastrous mistake had embridled
me, they having of course now learned what had happened to me. With
them they brought back my horse; he had been sold on from one owner
to another, but they had traced him by the brand on his back and
reclaimed him. So I was left marvelling at how neatly my dream had
worked out, not only the fulfilment of its promise of gain but the
recovery of my horse, which was indeed a white one, symbolized by the
slave Candidus.
21 This event caused me to devote myself even more attentively to 21 my
religious duties, seeing in these present benefits an earnest of more to
come. My desire to be admitted to the mysteries was growing with every
day that passed, and I constantly applied to the high priest with urgent
prayers that he would finally initiate me into the secrets of the sacred
night. He however, a man of great discretion and renowned for his strict
religious observance, gently and kindly, as parents restrain the immature
impulses of their children, kept putting off my importunities, soothing
my anxiety with the consoling hope of better things to come. He pointed
out that the day on which any individual might be initiated was declared
by the will of the goddess, and the officiating priest was also chosen by
her Providence; even the expenses of the ceremony were likewise
regulated by her decision. All this he counselled me to bear dutifully and
patiently; for I must, he said, do my utmost to guard against excess of
zeal on the one hand and obstinacy on the other, both faults to be equally
 avoided, neither delaying when called nor chafing when not called.
None of their company was so abandoned or indeed set on his own
destruction as to dare to perform this ceremony unless personally
ordered to do so by his mistress; that would be a reckless act of sacrilege
and a crime carrying sentence of death. For the keys of hell and the
guarantee of salvation were in the hands of the goddess, and the
initiation ceremony itself took the form of a kind of voluntary death and
salvation through divine grace. Such as might be safely entrusted with
the great secrets of our religion, when they had passed through life and
stood on the threshold of darkness, these the power of the goddess was
wont to select and when they had been as it were reborn return them to a
new lifespan. Thus I too should acquiesce in the bidding of heaven, even
though long named and marked out by the clear and conspicuous favour
of the great goddess for her blessed service. Meanwhile, like her other
votaries, I should immediately abstain from unholy forbidden foods so
that I might the better attain to the secret mysteries of this purest of
religions.
22 The priest having put it like this, I did not allow my impatience to
affect my obedience but, calmly and quietly and maintaining a
commendable silence, I devoted myself in earnest to the sacred worship
for some days. However, the mighty goddess in her saving beneficence
did not disappoint me or torment me by prolonged delay; one dark night
she gave the clearest possible orders, warning me plainly that the day I
had always longed for, in which she would grant my heartfelt prayer,
had arrived. She told me how much it would cost to provide for the
ceremony, and she decreed that her own high priest Mithras should
conduct it, he being, as she told me, linked to me by a divinely ordained
conjunction of our stars. Encouraged by these and other kind
admonitions from the sovereign goddess, before it was fully light I
aroused myself from sleep and went straight to the high priest’s
apartments, where I met him and greeted him just as he was leaving his
room. I had resolved to put my request for initiation more pressingly
than ever, as being now my due; but the moment he saw me he
anticipated me. ‘Fortunate Lucius!’ he exclaimed. ‘Happy man, to be so
greatly honoured by the august goddess’s grace and favour! But come,’
he added, ‘why do you stand there idle, yourself your own delay? The
day is here that you have longed and prayed for so incessantly, the day
 on which by the divine command of the goddess of many names you are
to be inducted by these hands of mine into the most holy mysteries of
our faith.’ And holding my arm affectionately the old man then and
there took me out to the doors of the great temple, and after the solemn
ritual of opening them and the performance of the morning sacrifice he
brought out from the holy of holies some books written in unknown
characters. Some of these represented various animals and were
shorthand for formulaic expressions, and some were in the form of knots
or rounded like a wheel or twisted at the ends like vine-tendrils, to guard
their meaning against the curiosity of the uninitiated. From these he read
out to me what I needed to procure for my initiation.
23 This I at once proceeded to buy as directed and without counting the
cost, partly from my own resources and partly with the help of my
friends. Then, when the priest said the moment had come, he led me to
the nearest baths, escorted by the faithful in a body, and there, after I had
bathed in the usual way, having invoked the blessing of the gods he
ceremoniously aspersed and purified me. Next I was taken back to the
temple, the day being now two-thirds over, where he made me stand at
the goddess’s feet and privately gave me certain instructions which are
too sacred to divulge. Then with everybody present he ordered me to
abstain from the pleasures of the table for the next ten days and not to
eat the flesh of any animal or drink any wine. This abstinence I observed
with reverential restraint as instructed. Then the day came which was
fixed for my pledged appearance before the goddess. Towards sunset
there came flocking from all sides crowds of people, all bearing different
gifts in my honour, according to the ancient practice of the mysteries.
Then the uninitiated were all made to leave, I was dressed in a brand-
new linen robe, and the priest took me by the hand and conducted me to
the very innermost part of the sanctuary.
I dare say, attentive reader, that you are all agog to know what was then
said and done. I should tell you if it were lawful to tell it; you should
learn if it were lawful to hear it. But then your ears and my tongue
would both incur equal guilt, the one for sacrilegious loquacity, the other
for importunate curiosity. But since it may be that your anxious yearning
is piously motivated, I will not torment you by prolonging your anguish.
Listen then, but believe; for what I tell you is the truth. I came to the
boundary of death and after treading Proserpine’s threshold I returned
 having traversed all the elements; at midnight I saw the sun shining with
brilliant light; I approached the gods below and the gods above face to
face and worshipped them in their actual presence. Now I have told you
what, though you have heard it, you cannot know. So all that can
without sin be revealed to the understanding of the uninitiated, that and
no more I shall relate.
24 Morning came, and, the ceremonies duly performed, I came forth
attired in the twelve robes of my consecration, a truly mystical dress, but
nothing prevents me from mentioning it since a great many people were
there and saw it at the time. For in the very heart of the sacred temple,
before the statue of the goddess, a wooden platform had been set up, on
which I took my stand as bidden. I was a striking sight, since though my
dress was only of fine linen it was colourfully embroidered, and from
my shoulders there fell behind me to my ankles a costly cloak. Wherever
you looked, I was decorated all over with pictures of multicoloured
animals: here Indian serpents, there Hyperborean griffins with bird-like
wings, creatures of another world. This is what initiates call an Olympic
robe. In my right hand I held a flaming torch and my head was encircled
with a beautiful crown of palm, its bright leaves projecting like rays.
Equipped thus in the image of the Sun I stood like a statue while the
curtains were suddenly pulled back and the people crowded in to gaze at
me. Following this I celebrated my rebirth as an initiate with enjoyable
feasting and good-humoured conviviality. The third day too was
celebrated with similar ceremonies and a sacramental breakfast, marking
the formal conclusion of my initiation.
For a few days I remained enjoying the inexpressible pleasure of
contemplating the image of the goddess, bound as I was to her by a boon
I could never repay. At last, at the bidding of the goddess herself, having
paid my debt of gratitude to her, not indeed in full but as fully as my
means allowed, I set about preparing my long-delayed return home,
though it was hard for me to sever the bonds of my ardent yearning.
Finally I prostrated myself before her, and repeatedly kissing her feet
and weeping profusely, my words constantly strangled by sobs and my
voice choking in my throat, I prayed.
25 ‘Hail, holy one, eternal saviour of the human race, ever cherishing
mortals with your bounty, you who extend a mother’s tender love to the
sufferings of the unfortunate. Not a day, not a night, not a fleeting
 second passes in which your goodness is not at work, safeguarding men
on land and sea, quelling life’s storms and holding out that rescuing
hand which can even unravel the inextricably tangled threads of the
Fates, calm the tempests of Fortune, and check the baleful motions of
the stars. The gods above worship you, the gods below revere you; you
make the earth revolve, you give the sun his light, you rule the universe,
you trample hell under your feet. Obedient to you the stars rise and set,
the seasons return, the powers rejoice, the elements perform their
service. At your bidding the winds blow, the clouds nourish, the seeds
germinate, the buds break and grow. Your majesty is held in awe by the
birds that fly in the heavens, the beasts that roam in the mountains, the
snakes that slide over the earth, the monsters that swim in the deep. As
for me, my talents are too meagre to recite your praises and my means
too slender to offer you sacrifice; and my eloquence is too poor and
barren to express what I feel about your majesty – for which indeed a
thousand mouths and as many tongues and a flow of words that never
tired and lasted for ever would not suffice. And so I shall faithfully do
all that a man can who is a devotee, though a poor one: I shall keep and
contemplate your divine countenance and your holy power in the secret
recesses of my heart for ever.’
Having thus propitiated the great goddess, I embraced the priest
Mithras, now my father, and hanging on his neck and repeatedly kissing
him I asked him to forgive me for not being able to recompense
him properly for his many kindnesses. Then, after expressing my
26 gratitude at great length, I finally parted from him and made haste to
revisit my ancestral home after my long absence. However, after a few
days, at the prompting of the mighty goddess, I hurriedly packed and
took ship for Rome. After a prosperous voyage with favourable winds I
arrived safely at Ostia; from there I took a fast carriage and reached the
holy city on the evening of the twelfth of December. My most urgent
desire was then to offer my prayers daily to the supreme power of Queen
Isis, to her who from the site of her temple is called Isis of the Field and
is the subject of special veneration and adoration. I was from then on a
constant worshipper, a newcomer it is true to this shrine but no stranger
to the faith.
 Now the great Sun had traversed the zodiac and a year had passed,
when the tranquil course of my life was once more interrupted by the
unsleeping concern of the beneficent goddess, warning me of a second
initiation and a second set of ceremonies. I could not imagine what she
purposed or what she was foretelling, since I quite thought that I had
been completely initiated some time ago. These conscientious
misgivings I pondered in my own mind and I also took advice from
27 other members of the cult. I was surprised to discover that though I had
indeed been initiated, it was only into the mysteries of Isis, and I had yet
to attain enlightenment in the mysteries of the great god, supreme father
of the gods, the invincible Osiris. Though the nature and cult of the two
deities was closely connected, indeed one and the same, yet the process
of initiation was quite different. I should therefore understand that the
great god too was calling me to his service.
I was not long left in doubt. The very next night I dreamed that there
appeared to me one of the faithful dressed in linen and carrying a wand
tipped with ivy and other things I may not mention. These he put down
in my lodging, and sitting in my seat announced a banquet in honour of
our great faith. To furnish me with a sure sign by which I should know
him again, he had a slightly deformed left ankle, so that he limped a
little in his walk. With so clear an expression of the will of the gods the
dark cloud of uncertainty at once lifted and vanished, and after my
morning prayer to the goddess I eagerly asked all the others whether any
of them had a limp as in my dream. Confirmation was soon
forthcoming: I immediately spotted one of the college who not only
limped but whose appearance and dress exactly matched that of the
previous night’s apparition. I later found out that his name was Asinius
Marcellus, very apt in view of my transformation. I lost no time in
getting hold of him, and found that he already knew what I was going to
tell him, he having already been likewise instructed that he was to
initiate me. The previous night he had dreamed that while he was
garlanding the statue of the great god he had learned from that very
mouth which announces every man’s destiny that there was sent to him a
man from Madaura, quite a poor man, whom he was at once to initiate
into his faith. For that man literary renown and for himself a great
reward were prepared by the god’s Providence.
28 Though thus pledged to initiation and eager as I was, I was held back
by the slenderness of my means. My modest patrimony had been used
up in paying for my travels, and the cost of living at Rome was much
higher than in the provinces where I came from. With my poverty
interposing its veto I found myself sorely perplexed, caught, as they say,
between the devil and the deep sea. The god continued to press me
relentlessly, and his repeated goading, which in the end became a
command, was most distressing to me. Eventually by selling my
wardrobe, such as it was, I scraped together the small sum that was
needed. This in fact I did by his express orders. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘if you
were planning some scheme for mere enjoyment, you wouldn’t have any
scruples about disposing of your clothes; now, when you are about to
undergo so important a ceremony, do you hesitate to commit yourself to
a poverty you will have no cause to regret?’ So therefore, everything
being properly prepared, I once more went for ten days without eating
animal food and once more had my head shaved. Then, enlightened by
the nocturnal mysteries of the supreme god, I began in full confidence
my devotions in this twin faith. Doing so consoled me a great deal for
having to live in foreign parts and afforded me a more ample living into
the bargain: for the favouring breeze of Success brought me a small
income from pleading in the courts in Latin.
29 However, it was not very long before the gods once again intervened
with the unexpected and startling order that I must undergo yet a third
initiation. I was extremely worried and in great perplexity asked myself
anxiously what the gods might mean by this new and unlooked-for
demand. I had been initiated twice: what was there left to do? ‘Those
two priests,’ I said to myself, ‘must have given me bad advice or
overlooked something’ – and I actually, I must admit, began to entertain
suspicions of their good faith. While I was in this agitated state, driven
almost insane with worry, I was visited one night by an apparition which
gently imparted the following revelation: ‘You have no cause to fear this
sequence of initiations or think the first two defective. Rather you
should rejoice in this constant favour of the gods and take an exultant
delight in it: what is granted once if at all to others, will be yours three
times, and you can be sure that this threefold initiation will render you
forever blessed. Moreover, this third initiation of yours is necessarily
called for, if you remember that the goddess’s holy symbols which you
 received at Cenchreae are still in the temple there where you left them,
so that here in Rome you cannot wear them to worship in on feast days
or receive illumination from that happy attire when ordered to do so. So,
as the great gods command, you must with a glad heart be initiated once
more; and may happiness and prosperity and salvation attend your
consecration.’
30 With these words of majestic eloquence the divine apparition declared
what needed to be done. I did not put the matter off or idly procrastinate,
but at once told the high priest what I had dreamed. At once I submitted
myself to abstinence from animal food, and indeed in my voluntary
continence I considerably exceeded the ten days prescribed by the
immemorial law; and I provided lavishly for the ceremony on a scale
dictated by my pious ardour rather than my limited means. Not that I
regretted this expenditure either of labour or money – had I not through
the bountiful Providence of the gods made a very pretty thing of my
practice in the courts? So after only a few days the god who is the most
mighty of the great gods, highest of the mighty, greatest of the highest,
and ruler of the greatest, Osiris, appeared to me in my sleep, not
transformed into some other shape but face to face, and deigned to
address me in his own august voice. I was, he ordered, to continue
confidently my distinguished practice as an advocate and I was not to
fear the slanders put about by ill-wishers, provoked by my learning and
my application to my profession. Furthermore, not wishing me to serve
his cult as one of the crowd, he admitted me to the sacred college of the
Pastophori and indeed enrolled me in the order of quinquennial
decurions. So, with my head once more completely shaved and not
covering or veiling my baldness, I entered joyfully on my duties as a
member of this ancient college, founded in the time of Sulla.
Appendix
The Onos and The Golden Ass

(See Introduction, §4)

Onos The Golden

Ass

1–3 Arrival at Hypata. Hospitably received/bored 1.2, 21–4, 26

and starved by Hipparchus/Milo

4 In quest of witchcraft. Warned by 2.1–3, 5

Abroea/Byrrhena against Hipparchus’
wife/Pamphile

5–10 Intrigue with Palaestra/Photis 2.6–7, 10,

15–17

11– Metamorphosis 3.19–26

15

16– With the robbers 3.28–4.5, 7–

26 8, 22–3,
6.25–32

26–7 The robbers captured by soldiers/drugged and 7.12–14

slaughtered. Lucius well treated by the captive
girl/Charite

27–8 At pasture and in the mill 7.14–16

29– The abominable boy. Threat of castration 7.17–23

33
34 Death of the captive girl/Charite and her 8.1, 15
husband. The establishment decamps

35– Arrival at Beroea/‘a certain large and famous 8.23–9.4, 8–

41 city’. Sold to Philebus. With the priests 10

42 With the baker 9.10–11

43–5 With the gardener 9.32, 39–42

46–7 With the cooks 10.13–16

48– With Menecles of Thessalonica/Thiasus of 10.16–23

52 Corinth

53–5 The games. Lucius regains his shape/escapes 10.34–5

The stories, episodes and significant amplifications which in all
probability were not in Met. and were added by Apuleius are then:

Aristomenes’ story 1.3–20

The trampling of the fish 1.25

Byrrhena’s house 2.4

On hair 2.8–9

Diophanes 2.12–14

Thelyphron’s story 2.18–30

Encounter with the ‘robbers’; the spoof trial; Photis’ 2.31–3.18

explanation

Thwarted attempt to eat roses; first beating 3.27

The robbers’ lair 4.6

First robber’s story 4.8

Second robber’s story 4.9–21

Charite’s story 4.24–7

Cupid and Psyche 4.28–6.24

Third robber’s story 7.1–3

Tlepolemus’ story 7.4–12

Death of abominable boy 7.24–8

Story of Charite, Tlepolemus and Thrasyllus 8.1–14

Adventures on the road 8.15–22

Inserted story (i): the delinquent slave 8.22
Inserted story (ii): the lover and the jar 9.5–7

Lucius meditates on his situation 9.12–13

Inserted story (iii): the baker’s wife 9.14–3I
Inserted story (iv): Barbarus’ wife 9.16–21
Inserted story (v): the fuller’s wife 9.24–5
Inserted story (vi): the downfall of a house 9.33–8
Inserted story (vii): the wicked stepmother 10.2–12
Inserted story (viii): the condemned woman 10.23–8

The games. Pyrrhic dance; the Judgement of Paris 10.29–34

Rescue by Isis and Lucius’ subsequent fortunes 10.36–

11.30
A Note on Money

The relative values of the sums of money that change hands in the course of
the narrative can be calculated from the table

1 gold piece (aureus) = 25 denarii = 100 sestertii.

However, it is clear that Apuleius habitually manipulated and exaggerated

prices for comic or dramatic effect or indeed on occasion for no apparent
reason at all (see R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire,
Cambridge, 1974, pp. 248–51). For instance, the fluctuations in the price of
Lucius-as-ass as he is sold on from one owner to another do not seem to
follow any discernible pattern or make any implicit point. It follows that
any attempt to relate these sums of money to contemporary economic
reality or translate them into modern equivalents is bound to be fruitless.
Notes

BOOK 1

1.1 this Milesian discourse: see Introduction, §1.

amusing: this renders lepidus, from lepos, a word connoting charm,
grace, wit. Lucius repeatedly uses this adjective to characterize the stories
he hears and tells. Their true significance and their relevance to his own
case invariably escape him.
an Egyptian book: papyrus came from Egypt. It is only in book 11 that
the story takes on an explicitly Egyptian colouring. However, the fact that it
is an ass into which Lucius is transformed then takes on its full significance.
See Introduction, §9.
with the sharpness of a pen from the Nile: the pen, of Nile reed, is both
literally and metaphorically ‘sharp’, a hint that the book may after all prove
to be something more than the ‘amusing gossip’ promised here.
Attic Hymettus, the Isthmus of Corinth, and Spartan Taenarus: Mount
Hymettus stands for Athens, where Lucius had been a student (1.24).
Corinth, as later emerges (2.12), was his native place. Taenarus figures only
as one of the traditional entrances to the Underworld (6.18); there may be
an allusion to the symbolic Catabasis (descent to Hell) which formed part of
the ritual of Isiac initiation (11.23).
mastered the Latin language: Apuleius himself had learned Latin as a
boy in North Africa; this is Lucius speaking. At the end of the story he will
be abruptly elbowed aside by his creator (11.27 and note), who is very far
from being ‘an unpractised speaker’ (11.28). However, see also 39 and note.
 the trick… of changing literary horses at the gallop: a graphic image of
the kaleidoscopic variety of content, models, tone and treatment in this
unique novel, but referring more particularly to the author’s linguistic
versatility. See Introduction, §1.
a Grecian story: see Introduction, §§1, 4.
1.2 Plutarch and his nephew Sextus: the connection is alluded to again by
Byrrhena (2.3). The implication is that Lucius ought to know better: his
unenlightened curiosity and degrading involvement in sensual pleasures
with Photis are a betrayal of his philosophical heritage. It is only towards
the end of the novel that this is brought home to him in the words of the
priest of Isis. The attentive reader is supposed to be equipped and alert to
grasp the significance of such apparently casual allusions. Sextus was tutor
to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Descent, real or fictitious, from
Plutarch was something for a philosopher to boast of (C. P. Jones, Plutarch
and Rome, Oxford, 1971, pp. 11–12). On Plutarchan elements in the novel
see Introduction, §9.
a pure white animal: later to take on a symbolic significance (11.20).
thirsting as always for novelty: inopportune curiosity will be his, and
Psyche’s, undoing. The well-informed reader would remember that Plutarch
had written a treatise De curiositate, in which there is much that is relevant
to Lucius and his behaviour (Introduction, §9).
1.3 milked of her dew. it was believed that dew was produced by the moon.
1.4 the Painted Porch: the Stoa Poikile, a portico decorated with paintings
by famous artists and the meeting-place of the sect called after it, the Stoics.
The contrast of the setting, with its stern philosophical associations, and the
speciously miraculous nature of the spectacle with which Lucius couples it,
again hints at his wilful neglect of his advantages. He should have been in
the Porch imbibing wisdom, not gawping at mountebanks outside.
twining sinuously round it: Aesculapius (Greek Asklepios) was the son
of Apollo and god of medicine. His emblem was a ragged staff and a
serpent, symbolizing renewal.
1.5 Aristomenes, from Aegium: a rather grand name for a commercial
traveller (aristos, ‘best’, menos, ‘might’), borne by, among others, the
addressee of one of Pindar’s victory odes (Pythians, 8). See below on
Socrates. Aegium was a city of some importance on the south shore of the
Gulf of Corinth.
on the wrong foot: proverbial for doing something inauspicious at the
outset of a journey or undertaking, left being as now the unlucky side.
Lupus: ‘wolf’. See next note.
1.6 Socrates: the bearer of this name turns out to be no more distinguished
for wisdom than Aristomenes for courage. Such ‘speaking’ names were a
feature of epic, and Apuleius employs them freely.
1.7 a gang of bandits: brigandage plays a prominent part in the plot of
Apuleius’ novel, as it does in the Greek romances. It appears to have been a
feature of life in the remoter provinces; but Lucius’ world is in general a
lawless place. See Introduction, §6.
Meroe: there was a famous temple of Isis on the island of Meroe in the
upper Nile, but it is perhaps more likely that her name puns on merum,
‘neat wine’.
1.8 bring down the sky… illuminate Hell itself: a typical catalogue of the
feats commonly attributed to witches, and precisely the kind of phenomena
discredited by Aristomenes’ sceptical companion.
both lots: ‘the Aethiopians, that last race of men, whose dispersion
across the world’s end is so broad that some of them can see the Sun-God
rise while others see him set’ (Homer, Odyssey, I. 23–4, trans. T. E.
Lawrence).
the Antipodeans: the idea of men ‘with feet opposite’ (antipus) on the
other side of a spherical world is first attested in Plato’s Timaeus (63a).
1.9 biting off their balls: they were supposed to be aware that it was for the
sake of a medicinal oil (castoreum) extracted from their testicles that they
were hunted (Pliny, Natural History, 8. 109, 32. 26–31).
as if it was an elephant: the period of gestation for elephants was
popularly supposed to be ten years (in fact, just under two).
1.10 Medea: the witch par excellence. When her husband Jason proposed to
take a new wife she contrived the destruction of the bride and her father
Creon, king of Corinth, by the gift of a poisoned robe and a self-igniting
crown. The story was familiar from Euripides’ classic treatment in his play
Medea.
 into a trench: like Odysseus (Ulysses) summoning the ghosts from
Hades (Homer, Odyssey, 11. 35–6). According to Heliodorus this was a
common necromantic practice in Egypt (Ethiopica, 6. 14. 2).
1.12 Panthia: ‘all-divine’.
Endymion: a beautiful shepherd with whom the Moon (Artemis, Diana)
fell in love. At his own request Zeus (Jupiter) granted him eternal life,
eternal youth, and eternal sleep.
Ganymede: a beautiful Trojan boy, abducted by Zeus to be his cupbearer
and bedfellow.
his wily Ulysses: Calypso was the nymph with whom Odysseus
(Ulysses) spent seven years of the ten that it took him to get back home
from Troy (Homer, Odyssey, 5. 1–269). The later tradition, Homer’s ‘man
of many resources’ (ibid., 1. 1) became a byword for unscrupulous cunning.
1.13 like Bacchantes: who tore wild animals apart in their frenzy.
1.15 Cerberus: the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to Hades;
see 6.19.
1.16 Now, now… my dearest bed: with the substitution of grabatule, ‘bed’,
for frater, ‘brother’, the opening words of this prayer are identical with an
apostrophe put into the mouth of the Numidian Adherbal by Sallust in his
Jugurthine War (14. 22). This paratragedic appeal to a broken-down
bedstead forms an ironic contrast to the real prayers addressed by Lucius to
Isis later in the novel.
with which it was strung: the mattress rested on a network of cords
stretched across the frame, as in an Indian charpoy.
1.19 waxy pale: literally ‘with the pallor of boxwood’, a recurring poetic
comparison.
1.20 delightful: lepidus (see 1.1 and note).
1.21 Milo: the name of (1) a famous Greek wrestler of the sixth century BC;
(2) a Roman politician defended by Cicero in a famous speech, the Pro
Milone, on charges of political violence. In this case there seems to be no
particular relevance to Milo’s character, which is that of a miser.
his ruling passion: there seems to be a pun on the literal and transferred
senses of aerugo, ‘verdigris’ and ‘canker of the mind’. Horace writes of
avarice as ‘this craze for coppers, this verdigris… on our hearts’ (Art of
Poetry, trans. Niall Rudd, 330–31).
 Demeas: the name of the severe brother in Terence’s play Adelphoe;
again it is difficult to see any significance in the choice.
1.22 his wife sitting: the old custom by which men reclined at table and
women and children sat had become obsolete, at least as regarded women,
at Rome nearly two centuries before Apuleius’ time. If this passage (which
reproduces the Onos) is reliable evidence it survived much longer in the
provinces.
1.23 old Hecale’s frugal hospitality: Theseus, on his way to fight the Bull of
Marathon, took shelter from the rain in the cottage of an old woman called
Hecale. The episode was the subject of a famous and influential short epic
poem by Callimachus of which only fragments survive: see Callimachus,
Hecale, ed. A. S. Hollis (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990).
Photis: her name derives from Greek phos, ‘light’, as Lucius’ does from
Latin lux. In this sense she is an ignis fatuus, beckoning him away from the
true light, who is Isis, with the allurements of purely sensual pleasure. See
3.22 and note.
1.24 for our supper: i.e. for himself and his slaves, whose presence is taken
for granted (2.15 and note). Insouciance about such details is an Apuleian
hallmark.
Pytheas: Apuleius’ manuscripts and modern editors and translators spell
him Pythias, which is a woman’s name. Again the choice of name seems to
have no special significance.
Lucius: here first identified by name.
Clytius: a name borne by several characters from myth and legend;
klutos in Greek means ‘famous’. However, the name here is a conjectural
restoration of the manuscript reading adstio.
an aedile: aediles were magistrates in charge of various aspects of public
order, including supervision of the markets.
1.25 completely bemused: as well he might be; the episode has perplexed
scholars too. Rather than a gratuitous stroke of satire at the expense of
municipal officialdom, always admittedly fair game (Schlam, 1992, p. 33),
it seems more likely that it carries some symbolic implication. The fish was
an important symbol both in the cult of Atargatis, whose discreditable
priests Lucius will later encounter (8.24 and note), and for the early
Christians (see OCD s.v. fish, sacred), and there is evidence for an Isiac
ritual intended to avert inimical influences which involved trampling fish
underfoot (Schlam, ibid.). For the possibility that it is Christianity which is
glanced at here, see 9.14 and note. The immediate outcome is that at the end
of his first day in Thessaly Lucius goes to bed tired out, hungry and
bewildered; and it may be that Apuleius inserted the episode, which was
almost certainly not in his original, to provide the end of the first book of
his novel with an effective conclusion. If that was his intention, the effect
remains elusive.

BOOK 2

2.1 a new day: and a new book, as with books 3, 7 and 8. This is
characteristic of epic narrative, as is the ending of a book with the hero’s
retiring to rest (1, 2, 10; similarly book 4 ends with Psyche in a deep sleep).
It is also in the epic manner to ring artful literary changes on the theme of
daybreak.
the cradle of magic arts and spells: the reputation of Thessaly as mother
of witches goes back at least to Aristophanes (Clouds, 749–50).
2.2 Salvia: the name for a medicinal herb (Pliny, Natural History, 22. 147),
but probably chosen here for its etymological connection with salus,
‘safety’, ‘life’, ‘salvation’; it is Lucius’ salvation that, as the reader
eventually discovers, the book is all about, and his mother’s name is another
reminder of the advantages he had enjoyed which ought to have helped him
to avoid the pitfalls into which his curiosity is to lead him. The hint is
reconfirmed by Byrrhena’s allusion to the family connection with Plutarch.
eyes grey: the word used here, caesius, is variously rendered ‘grey’,
‘blue-grey’ and ‘green’; the precise meaning of terms of colour in Greek
and Latin is often open to argument. Though this was the colour of
Minerva’s (Athene’s) eyes, it was evidently not as a rule admired in people;
in Lucretius’ famous catalogue of lovers’ euphemisms a man with a grey-
eyed girlfriend is advised to pass her off as ‘a miniature Pallas [Athene]’
(De rerum natura, 4. 1161).
2.3 Byrrhena: perhaps ‘Ginger’, burrus being the Latin spelling of Greek
purrhos, ‘red-haired’. It has, however, been ingeniously suggested that the
allusion is to Greek bursa, ‘leather’, and that her reference to rearing Lucius
with her own hands implies that she was a strict disciplinarian; if so, he
evidently failed to profit from her attentions. Dickensians will remember
Pip’s rueful reflections in Great Expectations on his upbringing ‘by hand’.
2.4 There was a magnificent entrance-hall: set-piece descriptions, of which
this is the first example in the novel, were a stock feature of poetry and
oratory, and Apuleius clearly enjoyed the opportunities that they offered for
virtuosic writing. Some of those in The Golden Ass have no other
justification, as is admitted in the case of the robbers’ lair (4.6 and note).
This example, however, as will appear, is a significant exception.
a statue of Victory: these statues, so precariously poised, hint perhaps
that Lucius’ eventual victory over Fortune (11.15) will not be easily won.
Actaeon: while out hunting he came on Diana bathing with her nymphs
and was turned by her into a stag and torn to pieces by his own hounds. As
a symbolic warning against inopportune curiosity the message could hardly
be clearer, and it is immediately reinforced by the ironical implications of
Byrrhena’s formal words of welcome, ‘everything you see is yours’ (ch. 5),
and her adjuration by Diana, who is also the Underworld goddess Hecate
and the Moon, both avatars of Isis (11.2, 5). The story of Actaeon would
have been familiar to any educated Roman from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (3.
138–52), and the subject was favoured by artists.
2.5 by Diana there: as Hecate she was goddess of witchcraft and magic.
Pamphile: ‘all-loving’; another Meroe. However, in the event it is the
involvement with Photis that is Lucius’ undoing.
2.7 to vote with my feet: the usual phrase when the Senate divided on a
motion, which they did by walking to one side or the other of the Senate
House.
a succulent stew: there follows another dish, but the text is hopelessly
garbled.
stood in amazement… stood to attention: Apuleius spices his naughty
joke by echoing the words used by Virgil to describe Aeneas’ consternation
at the apparition of Creusa: ‘I was paralysed. My hair stood on end’
(Aeneid, 2. 774, trans. David West).
witty: lepida (see 1.1 and note).
2.8 this preference: there is more to this than a personal obsession. This
description of Photis’ hair is picked up in the epiphany of Isis (11.3),
lending weight to the suggestion that Photis is a sort of anti- or false Isis:
see the notes on 1.23, 3.22.
her cestus: the love-charm lent by Aphrodite (Venus) to Hera (Juno) in a
famous passage of Homer (Iliad, 14. 211–23); probably a breast-band rather
than a girdle or belt.
her Vulcan: the Latin is nicely ambiguous: suo, ‘her own’, need mean no
more than ‘her dear’, but some translators take it as ‘husband’, as he is in
Homer and the classical poets. However, later on (5.30) Venus by her own
account turns out to be married en secondes noces to Mars (Ares), who in
the usual version of events was her lover. Apuleius may well have known
the pre-classical genealogy in which Ares was Aphrodite’s husband
(Hesiod, Theogony, 933–4).
2.10 a bittersweet morsel: a literary stereotype deriving from Sappho’s
famous description of Eros as ‘a bittersweet irresistible creature’, but again
irony is at work. Photis’ light-hearted prophecy will turn out to be all too
accurate.
2.11 Venus’ supporter and squire: an allusion to the proverbial sentiment,
first met with in Terence’s play Eunuchus (732), that ‘Without food and
wine Venus lacks warmth’; but the word translated by ‘squire’, armiger,
contributes to the warlike imagery which Apuleius substitutes for the
wrestling metaphors of the original in the subsequent description of their
amatory encounter.
plenty of oil in the lamp: ‘… moving blind spoils love-making; In love
it’s the eyes that lead’; so Propertius (2. 15. 11–12, trans. A. G. Lee),
expressing a traditional view. Aristophanes’ play Ecclesiazusae begins with
a famous address to the lamp as the accomplice and confidant of lovers, and
the theme constantly recurs in the poets. See 5.22 and note.
the bottomless pit: in the Latin, Lake Avernus in the Bay of Naples,
traditionally one of the entrances to the Underworld; another is Taenarus
(6.18 and note).
2.12 sharing consciousness with it: Lucius trivializes the Stoic
identification of God (Nature, Fate, Providence) with fire.
a Chaldean: the Chaldeans (Babylonians) were famous for their skill in
astronomy and astrology. By Apuleius’ time ‘Chaldean’ often simply meant
‘astrologer’.
a legend, an incredible romance in several volumes: the Latin says
historiam… et fabulam et libros me futurum, i.e. I shall be the
Metamorphoses, the book now in the reader’s hands. This is an early hint of
the forthcoming identification at the end of the novel of Lucius as ‘a man
from Madaura’ (11.27), the revelation, that is, that this narrative is in some
sense confessional and autobiographical. Apuleius peeps out again from
behind the persona of Lucius at 4.32 and 8.1 (see notes).
2.13 Diophanes: ‘god-revealing’.
Cerdo: ‘profiteer’.
2.14 both her rudders: ships were steered by two oars, one on each side of
the stern.
Arignotus: ‘well-known’.
2.15 irrelevant anecdotes: another warning obtusely ignored: if Diophanes
cannot foresee his own future accurately, why should his prediction of
Lucius’ be any more reliable? True, it is correct as far as it goes, but it
leaves much unforetold.
the slaves: Lucius’; Photis was the only servant in Milo’s household.
This is one of the numerous loose ends in Apuleius’ conduct of the story;
we hear again (11.20) of ‘the servants’ left behind at Hypata, but elsewhere
(2.31, 3.27, 7.2) only one is mentioned. See Introduction, §5.
only waiting to be diluted: wine was generally drunk mixed with water,
sometimes, as here, warm.
2.16 garlanded me: garlands, it has been observed, were the ancient
equivalent of evening dress. Roses were especially associated with Venus,
but their appearance here will prove ironic.
without any diplomatic overtures: in the Latin ‘without waiting for the
Fetiales to do their stuff’. The Fetiales were a college of priests responsible
for the formalities of making treaties and declaring war. Not a very
plausible witticism in the mouth of a native Greek, but one of many such
specifically Roman and often anachronistic allusions in the novel. See
below, 2.18 and note.
2.17 to protect her modesty: there was a famous painting by Apelles of
Venus rising from the sea (Venus Anadyomene), of which Apuleius could
have seen a copy at Rome. However, the pose provocatively and self-
consciously adopted by Photis recalls rather Praxiteles’ equally famous and
much-copied statue of the Cnidian Aphrodite (M. Robertson, A History of
Greek Art, Cambridge, 1975, I. 391–4, II. Plate 127).
2.18 take the auspices: the practice of taking the auspices before battle had
fallen into disuse long before Apuleius’ time. By alluding to Photis’
decision in these terms Lucius implicitly accords her divine status.
2.20 Thelyphron: ‘womanheart’.
amusing: lepidi (see 1.1 and note).
2.21 like a man making a formal speech: gesture was an important part of
rhetorical technique; the various deployments of fingers and thumb to suit
what is being said are elaborately analysed by Quintilian in the Institutio
Oratoria (11. 3. 92–106).
2.23 Harpies: monsters with a bird’s body and a woman’s head.
Lynceus or Argus: Lynceus was one of the Argonauts renowned for his
keen sight; Argus had a hundred eyes. Thelyphron forgets or has never
learned that both came to an untimely end, Lynceus killed by Pollux in a
brawl about some rustled cattle, and Argus by Mercury, who lulled him to
sleep while he was guarding Io (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1. 713–23).
2.26 Philodespotus: ‘master-loving’.
Pentheus or Orpheus: in the Latin pretentiously paraphrased as ‘the
proud Aonian (i.e. Theban) young man’ and ‘the Pipleian (i.e. Pierian, dear
to the Muses) bard’. Both were torn to pieces by Bacchantes (1.13),
Pentheus for defying the power of Dionysus (Bacchus), Orpheus for
shunning the love of women. Neither illustration is particularly apposite;
Thelyphron likes showing off his schoolroom acquaintance with classical
literature, in this case Euripides’ Bacchae and Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(11.1–66) respectively.
2.28 divine Providence: on the part played in the novel by Providence see
Introduction, §11; and on Fortune see 7.2 and note.
 Zatchlas: a unique and exotic name, variously interpreted by scholars; it
may or may not have been correctly transmitted in the manuscripts. The
episode is generally seen as a demonstration of the beneficent power of Isis
as contrasted with the malevolence of the witches and as a further warning
to Lucius, disregarded like all the others, not to meddle ignorantly with
magic. However, it should be noted that the Isiac priest in Heliodorus’
Ethiopica specifically rejects necromancy as corrupt and unclean: ‘the
prophetic powers of priests proceed from legitimate sacrifices and pure
prayer’ (6. 14. 7; see also 3. 16. 3). It looks as if Apuleius got carried away,
perhaps by reminiscence of one of the most famous necromantic scenes in
Latin literature, the performance of the witch Erichtho in Lucan’s Pharsalia
(6. 507–830). On Apuleius’ reliability as a witness to the details of Isiac
cult, see 11.16 and note.
with his head shaved bare: as Lucius’ will eventually be (11.28, 30).
Coptos… Memphis… Pharos: centres of Isiac worship.
the risings of Nile: always in antiquity and indeed down to modern times
a subject of wonder and speculation. See, for instance, the elaborate
exposition by Kalasiris, priest of Memphis, in Heliodorus’ Ethiopica (2.
28).
sistrums: rattles used in Isiac ceremonies; see the description at 11.4.
2.31 the god of Laughter: apparently invented by Apuleius, along with his
festival, as the peg on which to hang another cautionary episode.
some suitably lavish adornment: literally ‘some material that the great
god could flowingly wear’, a rather laboured play on the two senses of
materia, ‘literary material’ and ‘fabric’. Lucius thinks that he is being
invited to write an ode or speech in honour of Laughter; in fact he himself
will be the material for the jest, and his (for everybody but himself) mirth-
provoking speech will be in his own defence. Byrrhena’s words ‘provide
some witty diversion’ turn out to be highly ironic.
2.32 Geryon: a giant with three bodies; Lucius implicitly equates himself
with Hercules, who killed Geryon as one of his twelve Labours.
BOOK 3

3.1 Rosy-fingered Dawn: Apuleius exploits a Homeric cliché. On his

epicizing descriptions of daybreak, see 2.1 and note.
3.2 at the bar of the court: on the relationship, or lack of it, between this
trial and that at 10.7–12 to contemporary legal realities, see Introduction,
§6.
the coffering of the ceiling: the details of Apuleius’ descriptions are
sometimes hard to pin down. He evidently envisages a theatre on the
Roman pattern with a roofed stage backed by a high wall elaborately
embellished with columns, pedimented niches, and statuary.
the orchestra: the space, circular in Greek theatres, semicircular in
Roman, between the stage and the front row of seats.
3.3 ran off drop by drop: the water-clock (clepsydra) was a familiar device;
it is typical of Apuleius to provide this careful description of it, not so clear
what he thought was the point of doing so.
3.7 second father: the word used, parens, is often used to describe
relationships other than the strictly paternal (compare French parent);
Hanson renders ‘uncle’, Walsh ‘patron’. At 7.3 Lucius refers to his alleged
crime against Milo as parricide (see note).
3.8 by torture: the evidence of slaves was routinely taken under torture in
the classical period. Roman citizens were legally exempt from torture, but
by Apuleius’ time this rule was not infrequently breached (J. A. Crook, Law
and Life of Rome, 1967, pp. 274–5). The point here, however, is that by his
conduct Lucius has degraded himself to the level of a slave and this
treatment is no more than he deserves. This is clear to the thoughtful reader
and ought to be clear to Lucius himself; the townspeople of Hypata are
intent only on their sadistic fun.
3.9 Greek-style: the wheel was a characteristically Greek instrument of
torture; it crops up again at 10.10. The victim was stretched on it while the
fire or the scourge was applied.
Proserpine. . . Orcus: Proserpine (Greek Persephone) was queen of the
Underworld, Orcus (Greek Hades, Pluto) its king.
3.11 author and actor: Lucius has been both plot and protagonist of the
play.
 among its patrons: in the real world a patronus was a sort of ambassador,
a man of substance and influence appointed to watch over the city’s
interests at Rome. Lucius’ appointment, like the statue which he tactfully
declines, is purely honorific. Apuleius records that he himself received
similar honours from more than one city (Florida, 16).
3.13 resulted in your humiliation: Photis is not made to explain the sequel
to her part of the story; the reader is left to infer that the subsequent
performance must have been set up by Milo when he discovered what had
happened. This is typical of Apuleius’ often cavalier way with the details of
his narrative.
3.15 initiated in several cults: nothing more is heard of these previous
initiations, but Apuleius himself had indeed been initiated in more than one
Greek cult (Apology, 55). This is another hint of the eventual quasi-
identification of Lucius with his creator.
3.17 plaques inscribed with mysterious characters: i.e. spells and curses.
Many examples of such lead tablets have survived; Pamphile’s would no
doubt mostly be intended to bind her love-victims.
3.18 like another Ajax: enraged by the award of the arms of the dead
Achilles to Ulysses instead of himself, he set out to kill him, but being
driven mad by Ulysses’ protector Athene slaughtered a flock of sheep
instead. The story was familiar from Sophocles’ play Ajax.
an utricide: uter = ‘a skin bag’.
3.19 even with women of my own class: the Latin is matronalium
amplexuum, ‘the embraces of matrons’. A young bachelor of good family in
search of sexual satisfaction had, for practical reasons, to choose between
resorting to household slaves or prostitutes or intriguing with married
women. Though Augustus’ Lex Iulia de adulteriis had made adultery a
criminal offence, married women, as in most ages, frequently took lovers.
Lucius had hitherto high-mindedly set his face against yielding to sensuality
even to the extent of what was generally condoned by society. His total
enslavement to Photis, herself a slave, represents abrupt and catastrophic
moral degradation, as the priest of Isis eventually tells him (11.15).
3.20 offered herself to me like a boy: the idea of this as a stimulating extra is
evidently borrowed from Martial: ‘All night long I enjoyed a wanton girl,
whose naughtinesses no man can exhaust. Tired by a thousand different
modes, I asked for the boy routine; before I begged or started to beg, she
gave it in full’ (9. 67. 1–4, trans. Shackleton Bailey).
3.21 an owl: Bubo, the eagle-owl, proverbially a bird of ill omen. It was a
common belief (like the more modern fantasy about broomsticks) that
witches transformed themselves into birds.
3.22 a boon that I can never repay: irremunerabili beneficio, the identical
phrase later used by Lucius to characterize the ‘unspeakable pleasure’ with
which as an initiate he contemplates the image of Isis; another hint of
Photis’ role as anti- or false Isis (1.23 and note).
the local wolf-pack: lupula means both ‘she-wolf’ and ‘whore’.
3.25 an ass: as in English, so to the ancients ‘ass’ connoted stupidity; so
Lucius at 10.13, ‘I was not such a fool or an actual ass…’. But asses have
also always been proverbial for their obstinacy; and Lucius continues to be
as resolutely deaf to admonition after his metamorphosis as he was before
it. The moral of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, for instance, is completely
lost on him.
3.26 this vile and infamous creature: this, apart from a handful of
maledictions in passing (7.14, 9.15, 11.20), is the last we hear of her.
Though her role in the story is, strictly speaking, symbolic, Apuleius has
gone out of his way, building it is true on her original, Palaestra, to depict
her by no means unsympathetically; her affection for Lucius is genuine
enough and without ulterior motives. This can be seen to lend force to the
argument: false pleasure does not immediately proclaim its falsity.
the red-carpet treatment: in the Latin a technical term for the
entertainment accorded to ambassadors.
3.27 Epona: goddess of beasts of burden, worshipped by their drivers.
‘How long, for God’s sake’: Quo usque tandem, the famous opening
words of Cicero’s denunciation of Catiline in his first Catilinarian oration;
see 8.23 and note. This is the first of several abortive attempts on Lucius’
part to eat roses (3.29, 4.1–2, 7.15) and also the occasion of the first of the
many merciless beatings he endures. The whole episode is a foretaste of the
long series of privations, frustrations and torments which the violent entry
of the robbers is about to set in motion. As usual, Apuleius handles the
details cavalierly, ignoring the problems which he set himself when he
decided to graft this episode on to his Greek original; the reader is left to
wonder where the groom was when Lucius was introduced into the stable
and why, never having set eyes on him before, he talks as if he were an old
offender.
3.28 Suddenly: nee mora, cum; a favourite phrase of Apuleius’, here
heralding the first of the many violent and more often than not unmotivated
peripeties on which the narrative hinges. On the part played by brigandage
in the novel, see 1.7 and note.
they were not checkmated: this renders a technical term from a board-
game, possibly that called ludus latrunculorum, ‘Bandits’.

BOOK 4

4.2 that festive flower: the rose, as now, was associated with love and
pleasure; Achilles Tatius calls it ‘Aphrodite’s go-between’ (2. 1. 3).
Success: Bonus Eventus, ‘Prosperous Outcome’, was one of the many
abstractions forming the subject of Roman cults; Lucius does not finally
encounter him until 11.28. His counterpart, ‘Ill Success’, appears at 4.19.
laurel-roses: oleanders.
4.4 a discharge on medical grounds: Apuleius uses the technical military
term, missio causaria.
4.5 threw him still breathing off the edge of the cliff: this was still the way in
which donkeys that had met with an accident or had otherwise outlived
their usefulness were disposed of in the Spanish village where Gerald
Brenan lived in the 1920s (South from Granada, Harmondsworth, 1963, pp.
114–15).
4.6 The subject and the occasion itself demand: a stock formula used by
historians, orators and poets to underline the significance of a topographical
description. Unlike the passage on Byrrhena’s house (2.4 and note), this
elaborate treatment of the robbers’ cave, on the narrator’s own admission,
serves no purpose except to display his descriptive talents. As often in
Apuleius, the details are not always easy to visualize precisely; it is the
general effect that is impressive.
as I later discovered: as will appear, he does not have very long to
become acquainted with the robbers’ routine. See 9.41 and note.
4.8 the Lapiths and Centaurs all over again: another display of rather
superficial erudition. The Lapiths were a Thessalian people. At the wedding
of their king Pirithous to Hippodamia, to which the Centaurs were invited
as the bride’s kinsmen, one of them tried to carry her off and a bloody battle
ensued. Ovid had told the story in the Metamorphoses (12. 210–535), and
the subject was much favoured by poets and artists.
Lamachus: one of the generals in command of the Athenian expedition
to Sicily in 415 BC, killed in action. The name means ‘Fighter for the
people’.
4.9 seven-gated Thebes: the Homeric epithet lends mock dignity to his
exordium.
Chryseros: ‘lovegold’.
the expense of public office: wealthy citizens were expected, and might
be compelled, to take on offices which entailed considerable expenditure on
games and other entertainments. Demochares (4.13) and Thiasus (10.18)
are cases in point.
4.10 into the keyhole: we are not well enough informed about the locking
mechanisms of Roman doors to assess the plausibility of Lamachus’
attempt; the likelihood is that Apuleius, as often, was more interested in
creating a dramatic denouement than in technical detail. The episode was
later gruesomely exploited by Charles Reade in ch. 33 of The Cloister and
the Hearth. See 9.37 and note.
the safety of them all: Chryseros was indeed crafty; an alarm of fire in a
crowded city was the surest way to bring everybody out on to the street to
help, whereas the prospect of encountering armed robbers would have been
a deterrent.
4.11 a whole element as his tomb: this resounding flourish is designed to
recall the words attributed by Thucydides (2. 43) to Pericles: ‘the whole
earth is the sepulchre of famous men’. Thebes is only some fifteen miles
from the sea, so that the necessary detour is not perhaps as glaringly
implausible as some commentators make out; the real oddity is the choice
of the sea as a hero’s grave. Burial for the ancients meant burial on land; the
idea of being abandoned to the fishes to devour was regarded with horror.
4.12 Alcimus: ‘stalwart’. Text and interpretation of this sentence are
uncertain.
His rib-cage… from deep inside him: these details are lifted from epic
descriptions of the deaths of warriors in battle; though Alcimus’ end is
ignominious he dies with some literary dignity.
4.13 Demochares: ‘people-pleaser’.
an elaborate timber structure: the text is too uncertain to allow a clear
idea, if he had one himself, of what exactly Apuleius is describing.
Compare the elaborate staging of the pantomime at Corinth (10.30, 34).
4.14 Envy: Fortune in another guise.
Eubulus: ‘good counsellor’.
4.15 Thrasyleon: ‘lionheart’.
4.18 our appointment with plunder: Apuleius is fond of playing with the
legal term uadimonium, a promise to appear in court. Isis uses the same
terminology when pledging Lucius to her service (11.6 and note). Here the
bandits’ proceedings are dignified by this veneer of legal language and the
preceding reference to professional practice, disciplina sectae.
4.19 Ill Success: Scaevus Eventus, ‘Unlucky Outcome’, the opposite of
Bonus Eventos (4.2 and note), Fortune in yet another guise.
4.21 his life… his glory: the conceit, repeated and varied at the end of the
chapter, can be paralleled from actual gravestones; the form of the
expression is redolent of the declamatory exercises on which Apuleius
would have cut his rhetorical teeth.
gone to live among the spirits of the dead: a variation on a theme which
goes back at least to Hesiod, who laments that Shame and Righteous
Indignation will quit the earth in disgust to dwell among the gods (Works
and Days, 199–200). In picturing Good Faith (Fides) as taking refuge in
hell rather than heaven Apuleius had been anticipated by Petronius
(Satyricon, 124. 249–53).
mourning the loss of three comrades: another epic touch, an echo of the
Homeric formula ‘We sailed on grieving at heart, glad to have escaped
death, but having lost our dear comrades’ (Odyssey, 9. 62–3, al.).
4.22 a real Salian banquet: the lavish repasts of the College of Saliares,
priests of Mars, were famous.
4.26 a Son of the People: filium publicum; the official conferment of such
titles is attested in inscriptions.
Attis and Protesilaus: she too has had a classical education. Attis was a
vegetation god associated with Cybele about whom many legends clustered;
Apuleius appears to be referring to one said by Pausanias (7. 17. 5) to be the
best known, in which he went mad and castrated himself at his wedding.
The newly-married Protesilaus was the first Greek hero to be killed at Troy;
his wife Laodamia is the writer of the eighth of Ovid’s Letters of Heroines
(Heroides). Unless the allusion is to a version of the story in which the
marriage was not consummated, it does not seem especially apt.
4.27 the opposite of what actually happens: so Artemidorus (Onirocritica,
2. 49–51), and still conventional wisdom. This dream, however, turned out
to be false (8.5).
pretty: lepidus (see 1.1 and note). Lucius predictably receives the story
in this spirit (6.25 and note).
4.28 putting right thumb and forefinger to their lips: a ritual gesture of
adoration.
drops from heaven: a delicate allusion to the story of her birth told
explicitly by Hesiod (Theogony, 176–200): Cronus, having castrated his
father Uranus (Heaven), threw his genitals into the sea, where they
engendered Aphrodite (Venus), while from the drops of blood which fell on
the earth there sprang the race of Giants and other superhuman creatures.
The story has already been discreetly hinted at (2.8), and when Venus visits
Olympus, Heaven, her father, opens to receive her (6.6). For another
version of her parentage see 6.7 and note.
4.29 Paphos… Cnidos… Cythera: important centres of her cult.
4.30 nurturer of the whole world: she characterizes herself in terms which
recall the Lucretian Venus, the great originating principle of the universe.
The rhetoric and tone of her speech, however, recall Virgil’s Juno and her
implacable persecution of Aeneas and the Trojans (Aeneid, 7. 308–10). Her
words also foreshadow the epiphany of Isis, who is the true, celestial, Venus
(caelestis Venus, 11.2; cf. 11.5). This Venus, at least at this stage, is firmly
earthbound. See Introduction, §9.
 the shepherd: Paris, ordered by Jupiter to adjudicate the prize of beauty
claimed by Venus, Juno and Minerva. The episode will be depicted in the
pantomime elaborately described at 10.30–32. The reference to his
‘impartial fairness’ is ironical; all the goddesses tried to bribe him, and
Venus won because her bribe, marriage to Helen, was the most attractive.
that winged son of hers: Cupid (Eros, Love) makes his first appearance
in his familiar literary guise as a mischievous boy, irresponsibly using his
arrows and his fire to vex gods and mortals alike. He is not named until
Psyche finally sees him, to her undoing (5.22 and note).
4.31 the honeyed burns: a typically Apuleian variation on the age-old idea
of love as bittersweet (2.10 and note).
open-mouthed and closely pressed: like those of Photis (2.10) and those
promised as the reward for informing on Psyche (6.8). This is very
definitely not Venus caelestis.
her enemy the Sun: she had three reasons for disliking him: (1) ladies in
antiquity, let alone the goddess of love herself, did not cultivate sun-tan; (2)
fire and water (her native element) were incompatible; (3) it was the all-
seeing Sun (1.5) who had given away her affair with Mars (Homer,
Odyssey, 8. 302; Ovid, Ars amatoria, 2. 573–4, Metamorphoses, 4. 171–4,
190–92).
the retinue that escorted Venus: this description is heavily indebted to
literary models, especially Homer (Iliad, 18. 39–48), Virgil (Aeneid, 5. 240–
42, 823–4), and the Hellenistic poet Moschus (Europa, 115–24). Nereus
was father of the sea-nymphs; Portunus was the god of harbours (portus);
Salacia was an old Roman marine goddess connected by etymologists with
salum, ‘sea’; Palaemon, often depicted by artists astride a dolphin, as here,
was originally Melicertes, changed into a sea-god by Neptune (Ovid,
Metamorphoses, 4. 531–42); Tritons, human above the waist, piscine below,
were Neptune’s traditional escort.
4.32 replied in Latin: Apuleius goes out of his way to shatter the dramatic
illusion with this arch reference to the literary character of his story (1.1 and
note) and the fact that, though purporting to be told by a native Greek
speaker, it is written in Latin. As well as being in the wrong language, the
god’s reply is in the wrong metre, elegiac couplets; Apollo always answered
in hexameters. Apuleius is not alone in this last delinquency; in Heliodorus
the Pythia similarly delivers herself in elegiacs (Ethiopica, 2. 26. 5, 2. 35.
5). See also 9.8 and note. It was generally considered a breach of literary
decorum to mix Greek and Latin in the same book, at least if it had
pretensions to literary status; Apuleius indicates his respect for this ‘rule’ at
9.39, where he translates the soldier’s Greek. He allows himself once to use
a Greek technical term in an Isiac ritual (11.17). He has no such inhibitions
in the Apology, which is full of Greek quotations. By Apuleius’ day the
Pythia was delivering her oracles in prose.
4.33 For funeral wedlock: the punishment of Psyche’s involuntary offence
is to be exposed on a rock for a monster to carry her off. This recalls the
fate of Andromeda, made to atone in the same way for her mother’s
boasting of her own beauty. The story was popular; it was the subject of a
lost tragedy by Euripides and would have been familiar to Roman readers
from Ovid (Metamorphoses, 4. 670–739). The detail that Andromeda was
dressed as a bride had been exploited by Manilius (Astronomica, 5. 545–8);
and Achilles Tatius describes a picture of her ‘in a wedding dress like a
bride adorned for Death’ (3. 7. 5). In what follows Apuleius goes on to
exploit the conceit in terms of a favourite paradox of Hellenistic epigram,
the bride who dies on her wedding day.
regards with fear: no ancient reader could have been in doubt for a
moment over the identity of this ‘monster’. Its attributes, wings, fire
(torches) and steel (arrows) have already been alluded to (4.30), and Love
was the only power in the mythological universe of whom all the other
gods, the river Styx included, went in dread.
4.34 herself encouraged them: Psyche’s speech is that of a tragic heroine
such as Iphigenia or Macaria or Polyxena, doomed to be sacrificed for the
people. A similar disregard for superficial plausibility (aside from the fact
that this story is supposed to be told by a presumably illiterate old woman)
is evident in her elaborate prayers to Ceres and Juno (6.2, 4).
my spirit rather: the idea of a shared soul is most familiar in the context
of erotic love, but Euripides had used it of family ties (Alcestis, 882–4) and
Ovid of the love of husband and wife (Metamorphoses, 11. 388). Compare
Charite’s speech at 8.12. In the first of several plays on Psyche’s name
Apuleius exploits the ambiguity of spiritus, meaning both ‘breath (of life)’
and ‘soul’.
4.35 Zephyr: the West Wind, harbinger of spring and so apt for the service
of the son of Venus; in some genealogies he was Eros’ father. Winds were
in the business of abducting girls, and Ovid had cast Zephyrus in this role
(Fasti, 5. 201–4). Perseus was airborne when he rescued Andromeda.

BOOK 5

5.1 What she now saw: the description of this divine stately home belongs
to a literary tradition which goes back to Homer’s depiction of the palace
and gardens of Alcinous (Odyssey, 7. 84–132) and which is represented in
the novel by the gardens which figure in Longus (Daphnis and Chloe,
2.3.3–4, 4.2–3) and Achilles Tatius (1.1, 1.15). Apuleius also borrows from
Ovid’s bravura description of the palace of the Sun (Metamorphoses, 2. 1–
18). In real life, description of fine houses almost constituted a genre in its
own right, as in the Silvae of Statius (1. 3, 1. 5, 2. 2) and in Pliny’s letters
about his villas (Epistles, 2. 17, 5. 6).
5.2 there is nothing that was not there: the Latin can also mean ‘what was
not there is nothing’, i.e. does not exist, an allusive reminder that Love, in
its true and highest form, is universal and all-sufficient. Psyche does not
learn this truth until it is almost too late.
All of it is yours: an ominous echo of the words of Byrrhena to Lucius
(2.4 and note) in an identical setting, the wondering examination of a
marvellous house. Like Lucius, Psyche will be the victim of ignoble
curiosity.
5.4 her unknown husband: this is the primary meaning of ignobilis, but it
also not uncommonly means ‘humble’, ‘base’, an ironical allusion to the
outcast wretch to whom Cupid had been ordered to marry her (4.31). By
this time it will have become clear to any moderately perceptive reader that
he has flatly disobeyed those orders.
5.6 obey the ruinous demands of your heart: the animus (Greek thumos)
which she is resignedly told to obey is the appetitive part of the soul
(anima, Greek psuche); the expression recalls Plato’s description of the man
‘who is ruled by desire’ (Phaedrus, 238e). The image of enslavement to the
passions occurs in Apuleius’ description in the Apology of Venus Vulgaria
as ‘binding the bodies of all living things in servile bondage’ (12). Lucius,
who is listening intently to this story, of course fails to take the point.
impious curiosity: the first overt reference to the failing which, along
with her naivety (5.11), is to be her undoing.
whoever you are: under the surface irony of this speech a deeper and
fundamental layer can be detected. Psyche has yet to learn, the hard way,
what Love really is. What she thinks she loves is not Love itself but
physical pleasure.
5.9 the blindness… of Fortune: see 7.2 and note.
shut up with bolts and bars: in contrast to the palace inhabited by Psyche
(5.2), but in this context it sounds as if she is complaining at being kept
locked up, whereas it is clear that she can come and go freely. The style of
these complaints stereotypes the sisters as middle-class housewives such as
those figuring in the series of inserted stories later in the novel rather than
royal consorts. Nor is the tone of Venus’ haranguing of Cupid quite what
one would expect of a goddess (5.29–30).
5.11 you will not see it: i.e. he will disappear, but the paradox has a deeper
significance: she will not recognize him, i.e. even when face to face with
Love itself she will not comprehend its true nature. See 5.6 whoever you are
and note.
he will be mortal: this son will turn out to be a daughter (6.24). If this is
simple carelessness on Apuleius’ part, he almost goes out of his way to
draw attention to it by making Cupid refer in the next chapter to ‘this little
son of ours’. If it is a ‘deliberate mistake’ it is difficult to see the point of it.
For down-to-earth common sense it would be hard to beat the explanation
of Louis Purser: ‘Cupid did not necessarily know the future in every
respect. Parents always assume that their first-born will be a boy; and when
the sex is unknown, it is allowable to use the masculine.’
5.12 the Sirens: half women, half birds, they lured sailors to destruction by
their song.
5.17 an immense serpent: for the details of this horrific description
Apuleius is heavily indebted to Virgil (Georgics, 3. 425–39; Aeneid, 2. 204–
8). Psyche of course knows from experience that in the dark her husband’s
shape is human; the unspoken premiss of the plot is that it is only by day
that he is a serpent. When the sisters instruct Psyche to do the murder in the
light they evidently expect an instant transformation; and this suggests that,
though they themselves refer to their story as a fabrication (fallacias, 5.16),
they believe it to be true. The scenario as a whole more or less hangs
together and the narrative moves so quickly that the reader is not given time
to think about the details, which, as often in Apuleius, do not stand close
scrutiny.
the Pythian oracle: it was the one at Miletus (4.32), but in this context
the cult-title ‘Pythian’ is appropriate. The Python was the dragon which
guarded the Delphic oracle until Apollo killed it and took over.
5.20 Take a very sharp blade… cut them apart: in the Latin a single long
and continuously flowing sentence; the instructions are framed by the
instrument, nouaculam, and the act, abscide, ‘cut’.
5.21 the savage Furies who harried her: the irresolute heroine, agonizingly
poised between equally dire alternative courses of action, is a familiar
literary figure; Apuleius’ chief indebtedness is to Ovid’s portrayals in the
Metamorphoses of such women as Procne, Althaea, Byblis and Myrrha.
5.22 cruel Fate: as not infrequently, the distinction between Fate and
Fortune, the usual instrument of malignant supernatural intervention in the
novel, is blurred.
was gladdened and flared up: because it could now fulfil its traditional
role, of which it had hitherto been cheated, of confidant and voyeur: see
2.11 and note, 5.23, 8.10.
dripping with ambrosia: here a perfume, at 6.23 a drink (see note).
the gracious weapons of the great god: what at his first appearance had
been depicted as the toys of a naughty unbiddable child and what his
mother later claims as her ‘gear’ (5.29) are now transformed into the awe-
inspiring attributes of a mighty god. It is this Cupid, Amor I (Introduction,
§9), who from now on controls the action.
5.25 to scorch even water: Apuleius may well have in mind Ovid’s
catalogue of amorous rivers at Amores, 3. 6. 23ff.
Pan: as a country god and a veteran of many amorous exploits he is
naturally an expert on love; when Philetas instructs Daphnis and Chloe in
the art of love it is Pan on whom he calls for help (Longus, Daphnis and
Chloe, 2. 7. 6). With his list of symptoms compare that at 10.2; such
inventories were a commonplace of poetry and romance from Sappho
onwards.
aware no matter how. clearly briefed by Cupid (Amor I); the first hint
that he is at work behind the scenes.
5.26 take your chattels with you… in due form: another intrusion of
specifically Roman references, particularly jarring in this timeless fairytale.
Psyche reports Cupid as using the technical legal terminology of divorce
and marriage, the latter in its most ancient and solemn form, confarreatio,
virtually obsolete long before Apuleius’ time. See also 5.29 and note.
5.27 fell to a similar death: attempts have been made to invest the deaths of
the sisters with symbolic significance, but the perfunctory manner in which
the episode is handled suggests that Apuleius’ principal preoccupation was
to get them out of the way once they had served their turn and to gratify the
normal human wish to see villains come to a sticky end. He makes no effort
to mitigate the inconsistency in characterization by which the naive and
credulous Psyche suddenly and briefly becomes as crafty and vindictive as
her wicked sisters.
5.30 your father’s estate: more legal language (5.26 and note), suggesting a
divorce or judicial separation from her husband; see below on 5.30.
expose… abuse… battering me: he behaves like a typical spoilt child, but
the words also imply that he turns his weapons on her and ‘strips’ her (the
word is denudas), i.e. leaves her defenceless by constantly making her fall
in love. Venus was usually depicted naked by artists. This tirade is indebted
to Aphrodite’s complaints about Eros in Apollonius’ Argonautica (3. 91–9).
See also 5.31 and note.
your stepfather: her husband was Vulcan (Hephaestus), Mars (Ares) her
lover, at least in the version most generally familiar. The idea that she had
somehow disposed of Vulcan and remarried seems to have been borrowed
from Ovid, who is the only other writer to refer to Mars as Cupid’s
stepfather (Amores, 1. 2. 24, 2. 9. 48; Remedia amoris, 27).
his infidelities: they were many and various.
groomed with nectar from my own breasts: sense uncertain.
5.31 Ceres and Juno: the following scene is loosely modelled on the
episode in Apollonius’ Argonautica in which Hera and Athene approach
Aphrodite to enlist the aid of Eros in their schemes (see above on ch. 30).
Hera there assures Aphrodite that his behaviour will improve.

BOOK 6

6.2 There is Venus in her rage: though in her funeral speech Psyche had
implied that she was the victim of Venus’ jealousy, this is the first explicit
revelation of the fact vouchsafed to her.
an elaborate prayer: too elaborate and learned, like that to Juno, to be
plausible in Psyche’s mouth. The allusions (see next note) to the rape and
rescue of Proserpine foreshadow her own Catabasis (6.16 and note) and the
symbolic death and resurrection of Lucius in the first of his three initiations
(11.23 and note).
the furrows of the Sicilian fields… conceals in silence: Ceres’
(Demeter’s) daughter Proserpine (Persephone) was carried off from Henna
in Sicily down to the Underworld by Pluto (Dis, Hades). Ceres secured her
return by preventing the crops from growing, but as Proserpine had eaten
some pomegranate seeds (the number varies) during her imprisonment, she
was obliged to spend a part of every year underground. In this ancient
nature-myth Proserpine represents the regenerative power of the seed-corn,
which must be buried each year and lie in darkness during the winter, to be
reborn each spring. Ceres’ most famous cult-centre was at Eleusis near
Athens, where every year the story was symbolically re-enacted for initiates
in conditions, supposedly, of strict religious secrecy. Apuleius probably
expected his readers to remember Ovid’s treatment of the story
(Metamorphoses, 5. 341–571), in which it is at Venus’ instigation that Pluto
is shot by Cupid and so inspired with love for Proserpine. Ceres therefore
has good reason to be wary of crossing this pair.
6.3 a thoroughly good sort: after the lofty tone of Psyche’s invocation,
Ceres’ reply is chillingly matter-of-fact. Venus is a relative and a crony, and
Ceres must keep on her right side. Juno’s reply is similarly prosaic (6.4 and
note).
6.4 Samos… Carthage… Argos: a good example of syncretism, the fusing
of originally distinct deities and their cults. Juno is identified with Hera,
whose chief cult centres were at Samos and Argos, and also with the
Carthaginian Tanit, represented as riding on a lion. Psyche artfully
associates these places with the chronology of the goddess’s life as child,
young girl, and wife and mother. The form of her prayer reflects actual
usage.
Zygia… Lucina: Zygia, ‘Yoker’ renders in Greek her Latin title luga or
Iugalis (iugum, ‘yoke’), symbolizing her role as goddess of marriage;
Lucina is more usually identified with Diana (Artemis) as goddess of
childbirth because, according to the ancient etymology, she brought the
new-born to light (lux). It is appropriate that the pregnant Psyche should
invoke Juno in this capacity.
prevented by the laws: by this anachronistic reference to specifically
Roman legislation Juno, like Ceres, brings matters down to earth with a
bump.
6.6 Heaven… Aether: her father and grandfather. On Uranus and the
circumstances of her birth see 4.28 and note.
6.7 the loud-voiced god: so called as herald of the gods, now impressed as
town-crier (6.8 and note).
Arcadian brother: he was born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. Venus’
greeting presupposes an alternative genealogy in which she was daughter of
Jupiter and Dione. Mercury’s (Hermes’) mythological character is that of,
among other things, an accomplished liar, which makes him an appropriate
assistant in amatory intrigue.
6.8 Passing far and wide among the peoples: a discreetly learned allusion,
playing on the Stoic identification of Mercury as the divine logos (word)
and on the etymology of his Latin name as medius currens, ‘because speech
(sermo) runs about among men’ (Varro, Antiquities, fragment 250). This is
the sort of ploy which helps to tell against the assumption that the ancient
novel had a mass readership.
made proclamation: it is clearly modelled on a well-known poem by the
Hellenistic poet Moschus, ‘Love the runaway’, in which the reward is
promised by Venus herself (1–5); but the form of the announcement,
beginning with the formula si quis…, ‘If any man…’, is taken from such
advertisements in real life, as surviving inscriptions show.
the South turning-point of the Circus: where the shrine of Venus Murcia
was situated. Another anachronistic allusion, in this case, however, far from
gratuitous. The Circus Maximus was a notorious haunt of prostitutes; and
the description of the promised reward implicitly reduces Venus (Venus II:
see Introduction, §9) to precisely that level, the level of Photis and the
servile pleasures to which Lucius succumbs.
Habit: Consuetudo; that love was a creature of habit was a traditional
idea (Lucretius, De rerum natura, 4. 1283; Ovid, Ars amatoria, 2. 345,
Remedia amoris, 503; Chariton, 5. 9. 9; Achilles Tatius, 1. 9. 5). Psyche
herself had experienced the truth of it (5.4), as Thrasyllus will (8.2).
6.9 laughed shrilly: ironical; her Homeric epithet was ‘laughter-loving’.
it will be born a bastard: more anachronistic legalism, possibly
embodying a sly allusion to Apuleius’ own brush with the law; it was one
of the charges against him that his marriage to Pudentilla took place in the
country, in uilla (Apology, 67, 88). These words are picked up by Jupiter at
6.23.
6.10 the great god’s bedfellow: this is the first overt indication that it is
indeed Cupid who is helping Psyche behind the scenes.
6.12 source of sweet music: because used to make the panpipes.
6.13 Styx… Cocytus: Underworld rivers. Venus’ house, it seems, is not, as
one would expect, on Olympus, but somewhere in the Peloponnese, within
easy reach of Taenarus (6.18 and note). It is not clear what she wants with
this water. Its traditional role was that of a lie-detector: it was the Styx by
which the gods took their oaths (6.15), and the consequences of perjury
were dire (Hesiod, Theogony, 793–804).
6.15 the Phrygian cupbearer: Ganymede (see 1.12 and note).
6.16 to the Underworld: in the last of Psyche’s ordeals Apuleius exploits a
familiar literary theme, the Catabasis or Descent to Hades. Homer
(Odyssey, 11. 568–635), Aristophanes (Frogs; see next note), Virgil
(Georgics, 4. 467–84, Aeneid, 6. 268–899) and Ovid (Metamorphoses, 4.
432–80) had all been there before him; it is Aeneas’ visit to the Underworld
in Aeneid, VI which he chiefly lays under contribution.
6.17 for a certain lofty tower: the idea that jumping off a tower is the most
convenient route to Hades can only have been suggested to Apuleius by
Heracles’ sarcastic advice to Dionysus in Aristophanes’ play Frogs (127–
33). Visitors to Hell need a guide, Circe in Homer, Heracles in
Aristophanes, the Sibyl in Virgil; a tower in this role – Cupid’s other
intermediaries are all living things – gives a new and unexpected turn to this
old theme.
6.18 Taenarus: Cape Matapan, the southernmost point of the Peloponnese
and one of the traditional entrances to Hades; another was Lake Avernus
(2.11 and note).
a lame donkey… with a lame driver: the significance of this encounter,
which sounds as if it should in some way relate to the adventures of Lucius-
as-ass, has never been satisfactorily explained. See also 11.8 and note for a
similarly enigmatic pair.
to haul him aboard: this ‘temptation’ was evidently suggested by the
episode in the Virgilian Catabasis in which the dead Palinurus begs Aeneas
for a lift across the Styx and is refused, because as an unburied corpse he is
ineligible to enter (Aeneid, 6. 337–83).
6.19 some old women weavers: this reverses a common theme; such old
women were apt to turn out to be goddesses in disguise, to whom it was
advisable to be helpful.
a huge dog: Cerberus.
the empty house of Dis: an allusion to Virgil’s ‘empty halls of Dis and his
desolate kingdom’ (Aeneid, 6. 269, trans. David West), ‘a world of phantom
dwellings, homes of hollow men’ (R. G. Austin).
ask for some coarse bread: considering the fate of Proserpine herself
(6.2 and note), one would expect a total prohibition of eating.
6.20 in private: necessarily so, since she could not be allowed to see the
trap that was being set for her. The theme of the message which is the
death-warrant of the bearer is familiar from the stories of Bellerophon
(Homer, Iliad, 6. 166–95), Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11:14–27), and
Hamlet; but how is Proserpine or whoever fills the box supposed to know
Venus’ real wishes? This is another of the numerous loose ends in
Apuleius’ rapid narrative.
6.22 became himself again: Cupid is now abruptly transformed from all-
powerful god to ailing apprehensive child, Amor I reverting to his first
appearance as Amor II. Given the need to end the story on a light-hearted
note – it is meant to cheer the captive Charite up – it is appropriate that the
last scene should be played as high comedy in the setting of a traditional
Olympus, but this denouement inevitably compromises the fundamental
symbolic function of the tale as an allegory of the human soul in quest of
love in its highest, divine, guise – which of course makes it all the easier for
Lucius to miss its application to his own case.
the Lex Julia: passed in 18 BC, it made adultery a criminal offence.
into… base shapes: this catalogue draws on Ovid’s list of Jupiter’s
disguises in the Metamorphoses (6. 103–14).
you are bound to pay me back: perhaps to be read as an aside; Jupiter is
not only incorrigible but unrepentant.
6.23 to summon all the gods… to assembly: the Council of the gods is a
stock feature of epic from Homer onwards and a favourite subject of
burlesque. The idea of making the gods follow the procedures of the Roman
Senate seems to have been first hit on by the satirist Lucilius (second
century BC) and was further exploited by Seneca in his Apocolocyntosis and
by Ovid in the Metamorphoses (1. 167–76).
in accordance with the civil law: see 6.9 and note. A prosaic conclusion
to a reassurance which had begun on a lofty note with a reminiscence of his
great speech to Venus at the beginning of the Aeneid (1. 257–8).
brought by Mercury: now in his role, here reversed, of conductor of souls
to the Underworld (Psychopompus).
a cup of ambrosia: more usually a food, but occasionally a drink, as
here, or a perfume (5.22 and note). At the banquet they drink nectar, as one
would expect.
6.24 Liber… Vulcan: Bacchus pours himself out in the shape of wine,
Vulcan cooks the dinner in the shape of fire, an example of the common
figure of speech called metonymy.
whom we call Pleasure: Apuleius springs a surprise (5.11 and note). The
idea is a leitmotiv of the novel. In its immediate context the birth of this
divine child can be read both as an encouragement to Charite to hope for a
happy outcome to her own sufferings and as a restoration to the world of the
true pleasure of love of which it was deprived by the joint secession of
Venus and Cupid (5.28). In the larger context of the book as a whole it
foreshadows the ‘inexpressible pleasure’ which Lucius is to experience in
contemplating the image of Isis after his initiation (11.24), which effaces
and replaces the false ’servile pleasures’ offered by Photis (11.15). In the
writer’s syncretistic vision of Venus–Isis can also be detected the
lineaments of Lucretius’ Venus (4.30 and note), identified by him in the
first line of the De rerum natura as ‘pleasure of gods and men’, the
Epicurean hedone.
6.25 such a pretty story: bellam, a variation on lepidus (see 1.1 and note),
the old woman’s description (4.27 and note); Lucius of course takes the
story at (her) face value. The author puts in a momentary appearance to
remind us that the story will eventually indeed be written down – for it now
has been. See also 6.29 and note.
6.27 Dirce: she was tied to a wild bull by Zethus and Amphion as a
punishment for her cruel treatment of their mother Antiope. The story had
been dramatized by Euripides in his lost play Antiope.
6.29 immortalized in the pages of the learned: another reminder (2.12, 6.25
and notes) of the off-stage presence of the author.
Phrixus… Arion… Europa: Phrixus escaped across the Hellespont from
his stepmother Ino on the back of the ram with the golden fleece; Arion was
rescued from his murderers by a dolphin; Europa was abducted by Zeus
(Jupiter) in the shape of a bull.
apportionment of the road: another of Apuleius’ legal pleasantries, using
technical language; compare the miller at 9.27.
6.30 Pegasus: the winged horse born from drops of blood from the head of
the Gorgon Medusa, cut off by Perseus; ridden by Bellerophon when he
killed the Chimaera. Compare 7.26, 8.16 and notes.
from a branch of a tall cypress tree: not the obvious choice of tree for
this particular purpose (see 8.18 and note), but the cypress was a symbol of
death.
6.31 burned alive… thrown to the beasts… crucified: all, ironically,
punishments prescribed for banditry.
aiding and abetting: in the Latin more technical terminology, sequestro
ministroque, ‘trustee and agent’.
BOOK 7

7.2 his slave: see 2.15 and note.

portrayed Fortune as totally blind: the blindness of Fortune was
proverbial (5.9, 8.24), but the idea is especially significant in The Golden
Ass, where she is the antitype of provident and beneficent Isis, identified by
her priest with ‘a Fortune that can see’ (11.15). On Fortune and Providence
see Introduction, §11.
7.3 parricide: the contemporary legal definition of parricide embraced
murder of a kinsman or even a patron (3.7 and note).
7.5 Haemus: a mountain range in Thrace, perhaps recalling poetic
comparisons of warriors to mountains (Homer, Iliad, 13. 754; Virgil,
Aeneid,12. 701–3), perhaps also suggesting Greek haima, ‘blood’.
Theron: ‘hunter’.
7.6 a two-hundred-thousand man: on the various types of post held by
procuratores, see OCD s.v. procurator. They were ranked in terms of their
pay: 200,000 sesterces per annum was the second highest grade.
Plotina: possibly intended to recall the exemplary wife of the emperor
Trajan; Apuleius might have seen her commemorated on the coinage and
she had a temple at Rome.
Zacynthus: modern Zante, an island off the north-west Peloponnese;
islands were often used as places of exile, as being easier to keep under
surveillance.
7.7 Actium: a promontory on the coast of Acarnania, made famous as the
place of Octavian’s victory over Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC.
7.8 a mere donkey-woman: rather conspicuously dressed for the part, one
would think.
7.10 Treasury Pleader: the office of advocatus fisci, according to the
evidence, for what it is worth, of the Historia Augusta (Life of Hadrian, 20.
6) had been established by Hadrian; the fiscus was the Imperial, as
distinguished from the State, Treasury.
7.11 whoever he is: this apparently gratuitous qualification ironically hints
at Lucius’ ignorance of what will shortly be revealed, Haemus’ true
identity.
7.12 Tlepolemus: ‘hardy warrior’, the name of the commander of the
Rhodian contingent at Troy, a son of Heracles (Homer, Iliad, 2. 653).
Charite: ‘grace’.
7.13 manfully: the idiomatic sense of the phrase pro uirili parte is ‘to the
best of my ability’, but here the literal sense of uirilis is also felt; Lucius
displays human awareness of the occasion.
7.16 deeds of valour at home and abroad: this has the ring of a quotation or
parody of an official citation, but exact parallels for such a formula are
lacking.
the king of Thrace: Diomedes; Heracles’ eighth Labour was to capture
these horses. In the most familiar version of the legend they were mares, but
that would have spoiled the comparison.
7.20 this salamander of an ass: text and interpretation uncertain. The
salamander (actually a completely harmless amphibian) was reputed to be
poisonous and invulnerable to fire.
7.21 while Venus looks away in horror: auersa Venere, a play on words
which resists translation; the phrase can also mean ‘in the reverse position’,
which would naturally be that attempted by an ass.
7.23 the next market: they were held at fixed intervals, usually of eight
days; the delay is plausibly motivated.
a lover’s… his manhood: the words used are ironically appropriate to the
man hidden within the ass. Compare 7.25, ‘the butchery of my virility’.
7.26 My Bellerophon: Lucius as Pegasus again (6.30 and note).
7.27 antisocial behaviour: the principle to which she appeals, boni mores,
‘honest behaviour’, did in fact have some legal standing (A. Berger,
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, Philadelphia, 1953, p. 374).
7.28 Meleager. . . Althaea: he was fated to die when a particular piece of
wood was burnt. His mother Althaea, enraged by his killing of her brothers
in the quarrel after the hunting of the Calydonian Boar, thrust it into the fire
and destroyed him. This is another story familiar to Roman readers from
Ovid (Metamorphoses, 8. 445–525).
BOOK 8

8.1 the gift of literary style: another authorial intrusion into Lucius’
narrative; see 2.12, 6.29 and notes. The implication is not merely that the
tale itself is remarkable but that Apuleius has taken especial pains in
combining, elaborating, and embellishing his several literary models.
Thrasyllus: ‘Rashman’; see 8.8.
8.4 the nets: they would have been set up round the edge of the thicket to
catch the game flushed by the hounds; Apuleius does not bother in this
instance (contrast the water-clock at 3.3) to elaborate a detail which would
have been familiar to most of his readers.
8.6 like a Bacchante: the whole scene is pervaded with Virgilian echoes.
Dido, when Fame brings the news that Aeneas is preparing to depart, ‘raged
and raved round the whole city like a Bacchant’ (Aeneid, 4. 298–303); and
Amata, maddened by the Fury Allecto, ‘ran through the middle of the
cities… [and] flew into the forests’ (7. 383–7) (trans. David West).
8.7 nobody is immune: this was the commonest of the standard consolatory
commonplaces, exploited to great effect by, for instance, Lucretius (De
rerum natura, 3. 1024–52). Thrasyllus is ostensibly behaving exactly as a
friend in these circumstances was supposed to.
as the god Liber: the Latin equivalent of Bacchus/Dionysus. This reflects
a real custom, alluded to by, for example, Statius (Silvae, 2. 7. 124–5, 5. 1.
231–6). Apuleius may also have had in mind the story of Laodamia, who
cherished a portrait of her dead husband Protesilaus (4.26 and note); he
would have read of this in Ovid (Heroides, 13. 151–8). Bacchus is chosen
as young and ideally beautiful.
8.8 his unspeakable treachery: his pretence of disinterested friendship; she
learns of the murder from Tlepolemus’ ghost.
8.10 my nurse: from Homer onwards a stock character, confidante and go-
between.
8.11 to lay him to rest: the verb used, sepeliuit, literally ‘buried’, anticipates
Thrasyllus’ fate.
8.12 that shed my blood: see 4.34 and note.
Your matrons of honour shall be the avenging Furies: an echo of the ill-
omened marriage of Dido and Aeneas, conveyed through a conflation of
allusions to Virgil and Ovid: Juno as pronuba, matron of honour (Aeneid, 4.
166), and a chorus of Furies (Heroides, 7. 95–6).
8.16 the fire-breathing Chimaera: a tripartite monster, a lion in front, a goat
in the middle, and a dragon behind, with three heads to correspond, killed
by Bellerophon (6.30 and note).
8.17 not so much memorable as miserable: non tam… memorandum quam
miserandum; the alliteration and assonance underline Apuleius’ literary
versatility. Encounters with fierce dogs are a recurring feature of his
narrative (4.3, 4.19–20, 9.36–7); the changes that he rings on this theme
recall the analogous treatment by historians of stock battle motifs (P. G.
Walsh, Livy: his Historical Aims and Methods, Cambridge, 1967, pp. 197–
208); and for the idea of a battle or its aftermath as a spectacle one may
compare, for instance, the scene in which the Carthaginians view the
battlefield of Cannae (Livy, 22. 51. 5–9) or Vitellius’ visit to Bedriacum,
described as ‘a loathsome and dreadful spectacle’ (Tacitus, Histories, 2. 70).
8.18 from the top of a cypress: like Cupid reproving Psyche (5.24). It is
difficult to see any significance in the choice of a cypress; almost any other
tree would be easier to climb. See 6.30 and note.
8.20 by your Fortunes and your Guardian Spirits: per Fortunas uestrosque
Genios, an apparently unique combination in appeals of this kind. The idea
of a Fortune peculiar to an individual recurs at 8.24, 11.15. The genius, a
word which resists translation, is ‘the entirety of the traits united in a
begotten being’ (OCD s.v. genius).
8.21 a monstrous serpent: though the reader is expected to accept witchcraft
and transformations such as Lucius’ as part of an ostensibly realistic
depiction of contemporary life, serpents or dragons such as this are fabulous
creatures (cf. 11.24), an intrusion from the fairytale world of Cupid and
Psyche.
8.22 to put it on record: the inserted stories in the earlier part of the book
were cautionary, warnings to Lucius not to persist in his degraded conduct.
Those after his metamorphosis point the moral by way of commentary on
what his folly has brought him to (Introduction, §§2, 4, 6). The suspension
of disbelief required from the reader as to how Lucius-as-ass is supposed to
have learned all the details that he recounts is for the most part taken for
granted; the mock apology at 9.30 really explains nothing.
 his consort: conseruam coniugam, ‘fellow-slave-wife’; slaves could not
legally marry but were often allowed to form near-conjugal connections. In
what follows Apuleius uses the terms maritus (husband) and uxor (wife)
without qualification.
8.23 a certain large and famous city: identified in the Onos as Beroea in
Macedonia. Apuleius is studiously vague about Lucius’ itinerary between
Hypata, where he is transformed, and Corinth, where he makes his last and
successful bid for freedom.
How long…: another allusion to the famous exordium of Cicero’s first
oration against Catiline (3.27 and note).
a sieve on four legs: compare 3.29; but the conceit is here elaborated in
an obscure and untranslatable pun on the word ruderarius, which occurs
nowhere else. It is formed from rudus, ‘rubble’, but is perhaps also meant to
suggest rudo, ‘bray’. For once a translator may resort to paraphrase.
8.24 the Syrian Goddess: Atargatis-Derceto, a type of Near Eastern mother-
and fertility-goddess represented also by Aphrodite-Astarte and Rhea-
Cybele. Their cults had many features in common, including that exploited
in Apuleius’ description of eunuch priests and devotees. See OCD s.v.
Atargatis. His unflattering account of the conduct of her priests follows that
in the Onos quite closely but adds a number of picturesque details; the
comment at the end of ch. 27 in particular may suggest that he is portraying
the goddess as an anti-Isis: see the commentary of Hijmans et al. on book
VIII, appendices III and IV. On an earlier possible symbolic allusion to
Atargatis see 1.25 and note. His treatment of the episode also plays up to
the traditional Roman distaste for passive male homosexuals.
a genuine Cappadocian: Cappadocians were proverbially strong and
virile.
his tax return: the information required at the census included the
citizen’s age.
the Cornelian law: such an act was undoubtedly illegal, but this law
appears to be a jocular figment. Of course this is precisely what the
auctioneer is unwittingly doing; the irony is discreetly underscored by the
human overtones of ‘good and deserving servant’ (bonum et frugi
mancipium) and ‘at home and abroad’ (et foris et domi).
8.25 the extent of his patience: the ass’s equipment is large enough to satisfy
any demands likely to be made on it by his new masters; the ‘patience’
(passivity) will, however, be on their part.
Sabadius… Bellona… the Idaean Mother… Venus with her Adonis:
Sabadius, or Sabazius, was another fertility deity; Bellona was the Roman
goddess of war; the Idaean Mother is Cybele; Adonis was a god of
vegetation and fertility, in myth a beautiful young hunter beloved of Venus
and tragically killed by a boar. See on all these OCD s.vv. The variety of
deities invoked is typical of the syncretism of such cults; it is even more
strikingly in evidence in Lucius’ prayer to Isis and her epiphany (11.2, 5).
its unfortunate guardian: here, as in his address to the ‘girls’ in the next
chapter, he uses the feminine gender.
Philebus: ‘lover of youth’. Exceptionally, a character’s name is retained
from the Onos.
8.26 a hind substituting for a maiden: to secure a favourable wind for the
Greek fleet bound for Troy, withheld by the offended Artemis, Agamemnon
was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia; in one version of the legend
Artemis substituted a hind in her place. The phrase was apparently
proverbial, but happens to be particularly appropriate here.
8.27 with lowered heads: had Dickens read The Golden Ass? ‘Suddenly
they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the
width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands
high up, swooped screaming off’ (A Tale of Two Cities, book III, ch. 5). Of
this description of the Carmagnole George Orwell singled out ‘that touch,
“with their heads low down and their hands high up”’ for ‘the evil vision it
conveys’ (Critical Essays, 1946, p. 16).
8.29 Romans, to the rescue: Porro Quirites, an old formula of appeal to the
people. In the Onos (38), ‘O Zeus!’; compare 3.29.
8.30 a certain important city: see 8.23 and note.

BOOK 9
9.1 Fortune… divine Providence: here, confusingly, identified, or at any
rate apparently for once cooperating. See 9.31 and note.
9.2 Myrtilus. . . Hephaestio… Hypnophilus… Apollonius: humorous
‘speaking’ names. Myrtilus was Pelops’ charioteer; Hephaestio, after
Hephaestus, god of fire, is as obviously apt for a cook (6.24 and note) as
Apollonius, after Apollo, god of medicine, is for a doctor; and Hypnophilus
(‘sleep-lover’) is, as far as the sense goes, a plausible restoration of what
the manuscripts offer (hypatafium), though it lacks the literary resonances
of the other names.
9.3 recorded in the ancient authorities: true, and clinically accurate.
9.4 amusing: lepidus (see 1.1 and note). The manner of its introduction is
calculated to draw attention to the fact that the story has little if any
ostensible relevance to the main narrative; see 8.22 and note.
9.5 her dashing blade of a lover: temerarius adulter, an Ovidian tag (Fasti,
2. 335); it is used again of Philesitherus at 9.22.
with your hands in your pockets: in the Latin ‘with your hands in your
bosom’, i.e. in the fold of the tunic which served for a pocket.
9.8 one all-purpose oracle: in iambic senarii, not the usual hexameters
(4.32 and note). However, this metre too is occasionally attested (e.g.
Herodotus, 1. 174; Cicero, De divinatione, 1. 81).
9.10 the local Clink: in the Latin the Tullianum, the state prison at Rome, a
noisome place with a very sinister reputation. The name of the Clink, a
prison in London, has passed into the language as a word for prisons in
general. So Kipling: ‘And I’m here in the Clink for a thundering drink and
blacking the Corporal’s eye’.
9.11 blindfolded: this was commonly done to prevent vertigo; see 9.15 and
note.
wandering but never deviating: Apuleius relentlessly milks the paradox
that all this walking never gets the walker anywhere.
had often seen… in operation: and had, as ass, operated it (7.15), as the
narrator of the Onos (42) explicitly acknowledges. Unless he is simply
being careless, Apuleius appears to go out of his way to underline the
asininity of Lucius’ behaviour.
9.12 with a kind of pleasure: because of the artistic opportunity it afforded
for the pathetic description that follows.
 the furnaces: the miller, as often, was also a baker.
sprinkle themselves with dust: for a better grip. This alludes to the
pancratium, a combination of boxing and all-in wrestling, rather than
boxing proper, in which holding was not allowed.
9.13 a consummately wise man: Odysseus (Ulysses), so characterized by
Homer in the opening lines of the Odyssey.
no wiser, I must admit: a rueful gloss by Lucius, recollecting his
experiences in tranquillity, on his failure at the time to draw any
conclusions from them bearing on his own case.
9.14 a prettily polished production: fabulam… suaue comptam, a variation
on lepidus (see 1.1 and note).
the One and Only God: whether this identifies her as a Jew or a Christian
is debatable; see the commentary of Hijmans et al. on book IX, appendix
IV. For the latter possibility, see the episode of the trampling of the fish
(1.25 and note).
9.15 enabled me to follow everything that was happening: though
blindfolded while at work (9.11 and note). Another sop to the sceptical
reader (8.22 and note); see also 9.22.
9.16 Philesitherus: ‘love-hunter’.
9.17 Arete: ‘virtue’.
Myrmex: ‘ant’.
busy with her woolwork: spinning was the traditional occupation of the
dutiful Roman housewife.
to the baths: as is clear from the frequent mention of them in the novel,
public baths were an indispensable feature of urban life under the Empire;
as a rule only very grand houses would have had their own. They afforded
obvious opportunities for intrigue, as Ovid notes in the Ars amatoria (3.
639–40).
9.18 will force open even gates of steel: the thought is proverbial, the
expression pointedly recalls Horace on Jupiter’s finding his way into
Danae’s tower in the shape of a shower of gold: ‘gold can pass through the
midst of attendants and break through stone with greater power than a
thunderbolt’ (Odes, 3. 16. 9–11).
9.19 his purpose driven this way and that: like a distraught heroine (5.21
and note).
like all women: the Latin is ambiguous: genuina can mean, and is so
taken by some translators, ‘natural to her’, sc. individually. However, the
notion that frailty is endemic in the female sex was old and persistent
(compare the jaundiced view taken by Lucius at 7.10); the old woman who
is telling the story naturally takes the cynical view. There is a similar
ambiguity at 9.23.
9.20 Love the Raw Recruit: Amori Rudi; though each is individually
experienced in love, they are recruits in a new service so far as this
relationship is concerned. For the military metaphor, compare 2.10, 2.15–
17.
9.21 in the baths: the theft of clothes from bathers was a common crime, so
Philesitherus’ inspiration is not implausible.
9.22 the dashing adulterer: the phrase is repeated from 9.5 (see note), but
with ironic effect. Apuleius seems to go out of his way to draw attention to
the fact that in combining two originally distinct stories into one, with the
same protagonist, he expects the reader to accept without demur
Philesitherus’ metamorphosis from a man of the world, equal to coping
with the formidable Barbarus, to a pretty boy who needs (as the old
woman’s speech indicates) a good deal of encouragement to come to the
scratch and is then thrown into total panic by the arrival of the wronged
husband. See below, 9.27 and note.
9.23 the cunning of her sex: ingenita… astutia, the same ambiguity as at
9.19 (see note).
by holy Ceres over there: a mill-cum-bakery would naturally house a
shrine of Ceres, as a stable would one of Epona (3.27).
9.25 bless you: he would have said salue, ‘be well’; sneezing could be lucky
or unlucky as it came from the right or left respectively.
9.27 I’m no barbarian: non sum barbarus, also meaning ‘I’m not
Barbarus’; nor is this Philesitherus (above, 9.22 and note).
I shan’t sue: more legal pleasantries (6.29 and note).
9.30 let me tell you: a tease; he never does so. See 8.22 and note.
9.31 her stepmother’s crimes: only now do we learn that she is typecast in
this archetypally malevolent role.
 Fortune: here again (9.1 and note) implicitly identified with divine
Providence, who set this chain of events in motion by providing Lucius
with the opportunity to avenge his master (9.27).
9.32 the subject demands: see 4.6 and note.
9.37 leaving his body balanced in mid-air: a specifically epic touch (Ovid,
Metamorphoses, 5. 126–7, 12. 330–31; Lucan, Pharsalia, 3. 601–2, 7. 624);
compare the fete of Alcimus (4.12 and note). This and other details of the
fighting invest a sordid brawl with literary dignity.
9.38 you will always have a neighbour: a proverbial idea, but hardly
calculated to crush this aggressor.
9.39 the vine-staff: the centurion’s emblem of rank.
couldn’t understand what he was saying: how could Lucius? In taking
over this episode from the Onos (44) Apuleius seems to have overlooked
the fact that it was only later that he learned Latin (1.1 and note).
calling him ‘mate’: commilito, ‘fellow soldier’.
9.41 as I learned later: we are not told how; compare 4.6 and note.
a sacrilegious breach: because the oath was sworn by the Emperor or, as
here (see below), by his genius.
9.42 the common proverb: in fact an Apuleian conflation of two proverbs.
‘The peeping ass’ put his head into a potter’s shop and broke the pots; the
potter sued his owner. ‘The ass’s shadow’ is a story supposedly invented by
Demosthenes to shame an inattentive jury: a man hired an ass and took a
nap in its shadow, and the owner sued him because he had only rented out
the beast and not its shadow. Both stories in different ways satirize frivolous
behaviour.

BOOK 10

10.2 the sock… the buskin: the low shoe (soccus) and high boot (cothurnus)
worn by comic and tragic actors respectively. This is an Apuleian tease: the
story of the stepmother who falls in love with her stepson was familiar in
particular from Euripides’ play Hippolytus, but here it turns out to have a
happy ending. The literary texture is enriched by echoes of Virgil, Ovid and
Seneca.
Alas, th’ unknowing minds of – doctors: an adapted quotation from
Virgil’s comment on Dido’s attempts to invoke the blessing of the gods on
her ill-starred love for Aeneas (Aeneid, 4. 65); in the original, ‘of seers’.
Compare these symptoms with those at 5.25.
10.3 It is his likeness: lifted from Seneca’s play Phaedra (646–7).
hasn’t happened: this has a proverbial ring: ‘What’s hid’s unknown, and
what’s unknown’s unsought’ (Ovid, Ars amatoria, 3. 397, trans. A. D.
Melville). Compare Psyche’s sister: ‘You aren’t really rich if nobody knows
that you are’ (5.10).
10.5 buried before his eyes: to be predeceased by one’s children, more
especially by a son, was looked on as a terrible misfortune; the theme had
been eloquently exploited by Juvenal in his tenth Satire (25off.).
10.6 a parricide: see 3.7 and note. So at 5.11 the sisters’ plot against Psyche
is described in the Latin as parricide.
10.7 the council: in this case the court apparently consists of the town
councillors (patres) acting as a jury, with the magistrates presiding. See
Introduction, §6.
the court of the Areopagus: this very ancient court was still in being in
Apuleius’ time; that these prohibitions were still in force in provincial
courts may be antiquarian fantasy.
I don’t know and am in no position to report to you: after his report of
the stepmother’s ipsissima verba, a belated concession to plausibility.
Apuleius may have felt, reasonably enough, that another pair of full-dress
forensic speeches after those at 3.3–6 would, even by his standards, be
overdoing things. He has, however, no compunction in reporting the
doctor’s speech verbatim.
with a show of nervousness: this, in terms of transcriptional probability,
is a more convincing correction of the manuscript text than the reading
preferred by some editors, ‘without the slightest trace of nervousness’. The
fact that two readings diametrically opposed in sense are from the literary
point of view almost equally plausible is a salutary reminder of the
difficulties that sometimes confront critics of Greek and Latin texts.
10.8 to be sewn up in the sack: another antiquarian flourish. The ancient
punishment for parricides was to be enclosed in a sack with various animals
and drowned. It had been abolished in the mid first century BC.
10.10 as usual in Greece: see 3.9 and note.
10.11 improper for one of my profession: as contrary to the Hippocratic
Oath: ‘I will not administer poison to anyone if asked, nor suggest doing
so’.
mandragora: a decoction of the mandrake. Seneca records a similar
incident when a slave, ordered to give his master poison to save him from
death at the hands of Caesar, substituted a narcotic; there as here the story
ended happily (De benefeciis, 3. 24). The theme was also exploited by the
Greek novelists Xenophon of Ephesus and Iamblichus, and long afterwards
by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet.
the extreme penalty of the law. in this case crucifixion (10.12), but a
slave convicted of conspiring against his master was liable to be burned
alive or thrown to the beasts.
10.12 famous, indeed fabulous: famosa atque fabulosa; in introducing the
story Apuleius had announced it as ‘a tragedy, no mere tale’, tragoediam
non fabulam (10.2). A ‘tale’ is of course precisely what he has made of it.
10.13 a pastrycook… a chef: a slave might be allowed to own and manage
property or conduct a business on his own behalf. Technically the profits or
savings – the ‘nest-egg’ (peculium) referred to at 10.14 – belonged to the
master; in practice they were often used by the slave to purchase his
freedom, as is evidently the case with the freedman mentioned at 10.17,
referred to as satis peculiato, having set himself up well. See OCD s.v.
peculium; J. A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome, 1967, pp. 188–9.
10.14 doing an Eteocles: Oedipus’ sons Eteocles and Polynices died at each
other’s hands while fighting for the kingship after his death. Their conflict
was the theme of Aeschylus’ play The Seven against Thebes and the
background to Sophocles’ Antigone.
10.15 the Harpies: see 2.23 and note. They persecuted the blind Phineus by
fouling and plundering his food. Apuleius’ readers would have been
familiar with Virgil’s description (Aeneid, 3. 209–69).
10.16 silphium: a kind of asafoetida, used for both medicinal and culinary
purposes. It was a purgative and perhaps an acquired taste.
10.17 upwards for ‘no’ and downwards for ‘yes’: still the regular gestures
of dissent and assent in Greece.
10.18 Thiasus: ‘revel’.
the capital of the province of Achaea: and also Lucius’ native place
(2.12), something one might have expected him to allude to. In the Onos,
the scene of this last episode is Thessalonica (49). Another loose end; see
also 11.18, 11.26 and notes.
the quinquennial magistracy: as municipal censor; see OCD s.v.
municipium.
10.19 Pasiphae: wife of Minos, king of Crete; she fell in love with a bull
and mated with him concealed in a wooden cow made by Daedalus. Their
offspring was the Minotaur, half bull, half man. The story had been told
with mock-revulsion by Ovid in the Ars amatoria (1. 289–326).
10.21 even the band: often shown in pictures of lovemaking as kept on.
10.23 put to death at birth: by exposure. In law the Roman father of a
family (paterfamilias) had the absolute power of life and death over its
members. By Apuleius’ time it was rarely exercised except on unwanted
new-born infants, a practice which continued in spite of attempts to outlaw
it.
10.25 many victorious battles and many notable trophies: doctors who
killed their patients were a favourite target of satirists; there is a similar
conceit to this in an epigram ascribed to Lucian (Greek Anthology, 11. 401),
in which a doctor boasts that he has sent many souls down to Hades in an
adaptation of a famous line of Homer referring to the exploits of Achilles
(Iliad, 1. 3). This one evidently does it on purpose.
Lifegiver… Lifetaker: literally (but the text is uncertain) ‘sacred to
Health… sacred to Proserpine’.
10.28 from a child prematurely deceased: text and interpretation uncertain.
10.29 holy matrimony: matrimonium confarreatum; see 5.26 and note.
the very pretty sight inside: once more Apuleius indulges his love of
elaborate description. However, this is not pure embellishment. The
mythical Venus portrayed in the pageant, who offered Paris pleasure as the
price of his Judgement, with proverbially ruinous consequences (10.33),
can be seen in retrospect as an ironic contrast to the true Venus, subsumed
in the all-embracing godhead of Isis (11.2, 5), in whose service Lucius will
find the high and pure pleasure which, like Psyche, he has hitherto failed to
recognize. That the reference to the fatal verdict of Paris is blunted of its
point by being made to form part of a general diatribe on corrupt juries can
also be seen as ironic: once again Lucius fails to grasp the real significance
of what he sees and of his own reactions to it. His revulsion from what
awaits him in the arena is grounded, not on moral principle, but on a
distaste for criminal associations and fear for his own skin. These are the
motives for his escape; he finds salvation not because he has come to
deserve it but because he desperately needs it.
a pyrrhic dance in Greek style: a war-dance, properly performed by men
and boys in armour. If Apuleius knew the etymology which derived the
name from pyra, ‘funeral pyre’, i.e. that of Patroclus, round which it was
first supposed to have been danced, its performance before a re-enactment
of the events which led to the Trojan War is doubly appropriate.
10.30 the wand he carried: his herald’s staff (caduceus).
with a nod: a pointed piece of mime, representing the nod with which in
epic Jupiter irrevocably confirms his decisions.
10.31 her descent from heaven… her connection with the sea: see 4.28 and
note. egg-shaped helmets with a star for crest: their mother Leda bore them
to Jupiter, who had mated with her in the shape of a swan, in an egg; as the
constellation Gemini (the Twins) they protected sailors.
the Ionian pipe: a quiet ladylike mode for the most ladylike of the three
goddesses.
Terror and Fear: the Homeric Deimos and Phobos, Athene’s (Minerva’s)
attendants in battle (Homer, Iliad, 4. 440).
a Dorian piper: the martial mode; Milton, Paradise Lost, 1. 549–51:
Anon they move
In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of Flutes and soft Recorders; such as rais’d
To highth of noblest temper Hero’s old
Arming to Battel…
10.32 sweet Lydian harmonies: the softest of the modes.
10.33 you gowned vultures: lawyers as a class have never been popular, and
complaints about justice being sold to the highest bidder are as old as
Hesiod (Works and Days, 37–41). ‘It was a widespread conviction in
antiquity that all arts and artefacts must have been invented by somebody’
(R. G. M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes
Book I, Oxford, 1970, p. 49); so the invention of the lamp is ascribed to a
lover (5.23). Lucius credits Paris, on top of starting the Trojan War, with the
additional distinction of being the first corrupt judge. He himself later on is
not ashamed to boast of doing well for himself as an advocate (11.30).
Palamedes… Ajax: both victims of Ulysses’ unprincipled cunning.
Palamedes unmasked Ulysses’ deception when he feigned madness to
escape service in the expedition against Troy, and was subsequently framed
by Ulysses and executed on a trumped-up charge of treachery. Ajax was
defeated by Ulysses’ sophistical rhetoric in the contest for the arms of the
dead Achilles, and in his humiliation committed suicide. Both stories would
have been familiar from Ovid’s treatment in the Metamorphoses (13.1–
398); and both are mentioned in the speech ascribed to Socrates by Plato in
the other case cited by Lucius as ‘men of old who lost their lives through an
unjust judgement’ (Apology, 41b). See next note.
An old man of godlike understanding: Socrates, condemned to drink
hemlock on a charge of corrupting the youth of Athens.
10.34 a shower of wine mixed with saffron: spraying perfume over the stage
was a standard refinement. Mixing saffron with wine is expressly
recommended by Pliny (Natural History, 21. 33).
10.35 the famous colony of Corinth: it had been destroyed by Mummius in
146 BC and refounded as a Roman colonia in 44 BC.

BOOK 11

11.1 by her Providence: the divine Providence so often referred to is now

identified with the goddess herself.
 her light and might: luminis numinisque.
godlike Pythagoras: a reminder of the philosophical background that
ought to have stood Lucius in better stead (1.2 and note). The mystic
properties of the number seven were widely venerated in Greek and
Oriental cults; Venus in her anti-Isiac guise offers seven kisses as the
reward for informing against Psyche (6.8 and note).
my silent prayer: Lucius throws himself on the divine mercy. The
ensuing chain of events calls forth the most sustained display of Apuleius’
rhetorical and descriptive powers in the novel. His invocation, like those of
Psyche (6.2, 6.4 and notes), follows the traditional forms and conventions
of ancient prayer and is constructed with great elaboration (see the analysis
by Gwyn Griffiths, Isis-Book, pp. 119–22). It and the following description
of Isis’ epiphany also reflect ancient catalogues (aretalogies) of the
goddess’s powers and attributes (Walsh, 1970, pp. 252–3).
11.2 Phoebus’ sister: Diana (Artemis), though in classical (Homeric) myth
a virgin goddess, was worshipped at Ephesus as a fertility goddess and as
Lucina (Ilithyia) presided over childbirth. She was also identified with the
moon, as Phoebus was with the sun.
of the fearful night-howling and triple countenance: not here the
courteous hostess of Psyche, but the Underworld goddess identified with
Hecate, whose coming is heralded by the howling of the dogs (Theocritus,
Idylls, 2. 35–6; Virgil, Aeneid, 6. 257–8). She too is identified with the
moon in the all-embracing figure of Isis.
if I may not live: van der Vhet (1897) added hominem, ‘as a man’, which
is more logical and pointed: the escaped Lucius-as-ass is not now
confronted with imminent death.
11.3 First her hair: as in the description of the sleeping Cupid (5.22) he
follows the rules of classical rhetoric by starting at the top. The emphasis on
hair, though brief, is pointed (see 2.8 and note).
11.4 a bronze sistrum: a rattle made of rods loosely fixed in a metal frame
(two examples are depicted on the cover). See 11.10.
the blessed perfumes of Arabia: blessed as coming from Arabia Felix,
Arabia the Blessed; as usual, Apuleius scouts the obvious turn of phrase.
11.5 first-born of mankind: as claimed by Herodotus (2. 2. 1). Pessinus was
an important provincial centre in Asia Minor.
 the native Athenians: they boasted that they had always lived in Attica.
Dictynnan Diana: the Cretan goddess Dictynna was identified with
Artemis/Diana.
the triple-tongued Sicilians: they are not elsewhere so described, and it is
not clear what third language after Greek and Latin Apuleius may have in
mind. Elsewhere trilinguis means literally ‘three-tongued’, e.g. of the three-
headed Cerberus, and the allusion may be to the triangular shape of Sicily,
often so characterized; lingua can mean ‘promontory’. Compare ‘the island-
dwelling Cypriots’ preceding.
Rhamnusia: i.e. as Nemesis, worshipped at Rhamnus in Attica.
both races of Ethiopians: see 1.8 and note.
11.6 that has always been so hateful to me: see Introduction, §8.
make spiteful accusations against you: similar considerations had
deterred Lucius from seizing an earlier opportunity of release (3.29).
solemnly promised: she uses the technical term meaning ‘legally bound
over to appear’; see 4.18 and note.
that subterranean hemisphere: in the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus,
and apparently nowhere else, the gods and ‘those below’ are described as
inhabiting the upper and lower halves of a spherical universe (371b).
beyond the bounds fixed for you by your Fate: a striking claim: the gods
of the pagan literary tradition were powerless to override the decrees of
Fate. Perhaps, as suggested by Gwyn Griffiths, ‘fate’ is used here to mean
‘what the astrologers predict’.
11.7 wore an air of serene enjoyment: Lucius’ lyrical description recalls the
Lucretian Venus, at whose coming ‘the creative earth puts forth sweet
flowers, the broad ocean smiles, and heaven is appeased and glows with
diffused light’ (De rerum natura, 1. 7–9). See Introduction, §7.
11.8 Pegasus and Bellerophon: see 6.30 and note. It is tempting to see some
symbolic significance in these masqueraders, especially since it is an ass
that brings up the rear, but no really convincing interpretation on these lines
has been offered; see 6.18 and note. As Lucius carefully distinguishes
between this popular buffoonery and the goddess’s procession proper, the
description may be intended to throw the true significance of the following
spectacle into relief by contrasting it with the uncritical and
uncomprehending enjoyment of the uninitiated.
11.9 Sarapis: the Greek spelling; he is more familiar as Serapis. Here
identified with Osiris.
which extended to their right ears: a periphrasis for the transverse pipe
(plagiaulos, tibia obliqua). The aulos or tibia was a reed instrument, and
the ‘flute’ of some translators and commentators gives a misleading idea of
its tone, which was more calculated to excite than soothe.
11.10 the earthly stars of the great faith: these words were transposed to
this position in the text by van der Vliet (1897); in the manuscripts they
characterize the body of the initiates.
a copy of Mercury’s caduceus: see note on Anubis at 11.11 below.
more apt to symbolize justice than the right: this interesting idea seems
to be otherwise unattested and may be a flight of fancy on Apuleius’ part. It
is hazardous to trust him implicitly on such points; see next note.
a golden basket heaped with laurel branches: text and interpretation are
disputed, but most modern versions (Butler’s is an honourable exception)
do violence to the Latin or the sense or both. Laurel is not elsewhere
mentioned as playing a part in Isiac ritual, but see previous note. The
vannus doubled in cult as a winnowing-fan and a receptacle for sacred
objects.
11.11 his face now black, now gold: perhaps as symbolizing the Underworld
and heaven respectively; but whether one statue with particoloured face is
meant or two different statues is not clear from the description. Anubis, like
Mercury, is a shepherd of souls and shares his attributes.
the All-Mother: Isis herself, figured as a cow or with a cow’s head.
11.15 a Fortune that can see: it is one of the unresolved paradoxes of the
revelation finally granted to Lucius-Apuleius that it should be blind Fortune
(7.2 and note) that places him in the end under the protection of a seeing
Fortune in the shape of Isis. It was probably the paradox itself and the
opportunity it offered for rhetorical exploitation that primarily interested
Apuleius rather than its theological implications. The priest’s
characterization of Lucius’ persecuting Fortune owes at least as much to
literary as to religious conceptions.
 you will really experience the enjoyment of your liberty: an idea familiar
to Anglicans in the words of the Collect for Peace: ‘whose service is perfect
freedom’; not found in this pointed paradoxical form in the New Testament.
It goes back through the early Fathers at least to Seneca: De vita beata
(‘How to be happy’) 15. 7, ‘Liberty is obedience to God’.
11.16 the reward of a blameless and pious life: the remark is prefaced with
a word which Apuleius often uses as a nudge to the reader, scilicet,
‘obviously’ but also ironically ‘no doubt’. Taken at its face value it is flatly
at variance both with what the reader knows and what the priest has just
said; Apuleius is slyly indicating that the idea that salvation is earned by
works rather than faith is a popular misconception. See Introduction, §10.
an egg, and sulphur: though sulphur and eggs figure separately in other
allusions to purificatory rituals, they are otherwise mentioned in
combination only by Ovid in the Ars amatoria (2. 330). Apuleius knew his
Ovid, and this may be another detail that owes more to literary
reminiscence than to accurate observation. See next note.
11.17 the Pastophori: ‘shrine-bearers’. Here and subsequently Apuleius
writes of them as if they had priestly status, which does not appear to have
been the case. See 11.30 and note.
in Greek: ta Ploiaphesia, ‘the Ship-launching’. These are the only words
actually written in Greek (slightly garbled but plausibly restored) in the
novel; see 4.32 and note.
11.18 in my homeland: Rumour did not in fact have far to go, or his visitors
to come, for he was now only a matter of a few miles (10.35) from Corinth,
where he was born. The implication that he was a long way from home is a
hangover from the Greek original, in which the narrator’s native city is
several days’ sail from the place of his restoration to human shape (Onos,
55).
11.20 some ‘portions’: partes, suggesting ‘shares’ in an enterprise of some
kind, but the modern connotations of the word render its use misleading
here.
after Photis’ disastrous mistake had embridled me: cum me Photis malis
incapistrasset erroribus, i.e. turned me into an ass, but the words can also
mean ‘had trapped me in my unhappy wanderings’, a good example of
Apuleius’ linguistic versatility. incapistro is found nowhere else and was
evidently coined by him, as was a good deal of his vocabulary.
11.21 return them to a new lifespan: in this world or the next? The
ambiguity reflects that of Isis’ promise at 11.6. But initiation is clearly, as
the case of Lucius himself shows, not reserved exclusively for those at
death’s door.
11.22 her own high priest Mithras: Mithras seems to have been a not
uncommon personal name, but it is striking to find a high priest of Isis so
called. All the mystery religions shared certain features, and it is on record
that people were initiated or held priesthoods in more than one. If Apuleius
is hinting at an affinity between the cults of Isis and Mithras he does not
develop the point. On Mithraism see OCD s.v. Mithras.
a divinely ordained conjunction of our stars: again a literary echo, here
of Horace addressing Maecenas: ‘our horoscopes agree in a marvellous
manner’ (Odes, 2.17. 21–2).
unknown characters: in the hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts.
11.23 my pledged appearance: again the legal phrase connoting being
bound over to appear in court (11.6 and note), almost ‘to answer to my
divine bail’.
the other for importunate curiosity: this phrase is a supplement added by
van der Vliet (1897); curiosity is not a vice of the tongue.
that and no more I shall relate: what exactly initiates in the mystery cults
experienced has been the subject of much speculation. So much is clear,
that an ordeal by darkness and terror culminated in a brilliantly lit
revelation of divine beneficence. The pattern has survived in the rituals
enacted in The Magic Flute.
11.24 Hyperborean griffins: fabulous monsters that lived in the far north
guarding stores of gold (Herodotus, 4. 13. 1).
an Olympic robe: the epithet has not been convincingly explained.
Olympiacam means ‘Olympic’, not as in the translations ‘Olympian’.
Perhaps a symbol of victory?
a boon I could never repay: see 3.22 and note.
11.26 my ancestral home: Corinth, just the other side of the Isthmus, an
hour or so away on horseback. Lucius makes it sound as if he had a long
way to go: see 10.18, 11.18 and notes.
Isis of the Field: Isis Campensis; her temple was in the Campus Martius,
the Field of Mars. Like other Isiac temples, it was notorious as a lovers’
rendezvous (Ovid, Amores, 2. 2. 25, Ars amatoria, 1. 77, 3. 393; Juvenal,
Satires, 6.489, 9. 22; Martial, 11. 47. 4).
11.27 the invincible Osiris: consort of Isis; he had appeared in the
procession in the guise of Sarapis (11.9 and note). He is called invincible or
unconquered (inuictus) because of his restoration to life by Isis (herself also
so styled, 11.7) and his victory over his evil brother and murderer, Seth-
Typhon.
a wand tipped with ivy: the thyrsus, associated particularly with the
worship of Bacchus (Dionysus).
very apt: the cognomen Asinius is derived from asinus, ‘ass’.
a man from Madaura: attentive readers have been prepared for the
revelation that ‘Lucius’ is a mask for the author himself (2.12 and note), but
the way in which it is finally effected is wonderfully offhand. See
Introduction, §8.
11.28 between the devil and the deep sea: in the Latin inter sacrum. . . et
saxum, ‘between the altar and the flint-knife’, sc. of the sacrificing priest.
Apparently proverbial, but Apuleius almost certainly picked the expression
up from Plutus, who uses very nearly the same words in his play Captivi
(617).
in Latin: this is Apuleius speaking (1.1. and note).
11.30 the Pastophori: see 11.17 and note.
the order of quinquennial decurions: the term and the office belong to
the world of provincial administration (10.18); the decuriones were
municipal senators or town councillors. There seems to be no other firm
evidence for the existence of such an office in the Isiac priesthood. See
11.10, 16 and notes.
entered joyfully on: gaudens obibam, the last words of the Latin text.
The book ends as it began, with an emphasis on pleasure, but ambiguity
persists to the last. The verb, in the imperfect tense, may be inceptive, as it
is rendered here, ‘began to perform’, or continuative, ‘went on performing’.
The reader is left wondering how long ago all this was and what may have
happened between then and the ‘now’ implied in the Prologue.
founded in the time of Sulla: Sulla lived from 138 to 78 BC; it is perfectly
possible that an Isiac priesthood was established at Rome during this
period, but there is no reason to connect it with Sulla himself. The prosaic
chronological formula signals the final emergence of the hero and his story
from the colourful nightmare of metaphorical metamorphosis into the light
of common day and leaves the reader once more confronting contemporary
reality. See Introduction, §3.
Index

Abroea, xvii, 215

Acarnania, 243
Achaea, 183, 253
Acheron, 198
Achilles, 229, 253, 254
Achilles Tatius, xxx, 230, 234, 235
Actaean, see Attica
Actaeon, 24, 224
Actium, 114, 243
Adherbal, 221
Adlington, William, xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxv
Adonis, 142, 247
Aegean (sea), 194
Aegjum, 9, 220
Aeneas, xxxi, xxxv, 224, 233, 240, 241, 245, 251
Aeschylus, 252
Aesculapius, 9, 220
Aether, 97, 239
Aetolia, 9, 17
Africa, xxviii, 219
Agamemnon, 247
Ajax, 49, 193, 229, 254–5
Alcimus, 62–3, 231, 235, 250
Allecto, 245
Althaea, 127, 237, 244
Amata, 245
Amphion, 242
Andromeda, 234, 235
Antiope, 242
Antipodes, 11, 221
Antony, Mark (Marcus Antonius), 243
Anubis, 201, 257
Apelles, 226
Aphrodite, see Venus
Apollo, xv, xxiii, 35, 74, 105, 196, 220, 234, 236, 252
Apollonius (author of Argonautica), 238
Apollonius (character in GA), 148, 248
Apuleius, xiii, xvii, xxii–xxv, xxviii–xxx, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiii, 28, 225, 228,
242, 245, 259–60
Arabia, 27, 197, 256
Arcadia, 97, 239
Areopagus, 176, 251
Ares, see Mars
Arete, 156–8, 249–50
Argonauts, 226
Argos, 95, 239
Argus, 34, 226
Arignotus, 29, 225
Arion, 108, 242–3
Aristides (of Miletus), ix–x
Aristomenes, 9–18, 22, 216, 220–21
Aristophanes, 223, 225, 240
Artemidorus, xx, 232
Artemis, see Diana
Asclepius, see Aesculapius
Asia, 191
Asia Minor, 256
Asinius Marcellus, xxiii, 212, 259
Astarte, see Atargatis
Atargatis, xxxii, 142–52 passim, 223, 247–8
Athene, see Minerva
Athens, x, 7, 8, 20, 193, 197, 219, 231, 238, 255, 256
Attica, 7, 95, 197, 256
Attis, 71, 232
Augustine (of Hippo), xx, xxiii, xxxiv, xxxvii
Augustus, 229, 243
Aurelius, Marcus, 220
Avernus, 225, 241

Babylonia, 225
Bacchante, 14, 131, 221, 226, 245
Bacchus (Dionysus, Liber), 28, 50, 105, 132, 226, 240, 242, 245, 259
Bactria, 119
Barbarus, 156–9, 216, 250
Bedriacum, 246
Bellerophon, 125, 200, 241, 243, 244, 245, 257
Bellona, 142, 197, 247
Beroea, 215, 246
Boccaccio, Giovanni, xxxiv–xxxv
Boeotia, 9, 48–9, 60
Brenan, Gerald, xx–xxi, 230
Bridges, Robert Seymour, xxxv
Byblis, 237
Byrrhena, xvii, 23–5, 28, 31–3, 38, 46, 215, 216, 219, 223, 224, 227, 231,
235

Caesar, 54, 171, 252

Callimachus, 222
Calydonian Boar, 244
Calypso, 13, 221
Campus Martius, 211, 259
Candidus (Lucius’ horse), 8, 206–7
Cannae (battle of), 246
Cappadocia, 142, 247
Capricorn, 165
Care (Sollicitudo), 98
Carrhae (battle of), x
Carthage, 95, 239, 246
Castor, 191, 254; see also Pollux
Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina), 230, 246
Cecrops, 197
Cenchreae, xxix, 194, 213
Centaurs, 60, 231
Cerberus, 15, 49, 67, 103, 221, 241, 256
Cerdo, 29, 225
Ceres (Demeter), xiii, 93, 94–5, 160, 195, 197, 234, 238–9, 250
Cervantes, Miguel de, xxxv
Chaldea, 28–9, 40, 225
Charite, xvii, xxv, 69–71, 106–10, 113, 116–19, 128–36, 215, 216, 235,
241, 242, 244
Chariton, xxx
Charon, 102, 103
Chimaera, 137, 243, 245
Chloe, 237
Christ, xx
Christ Church, Oxford, xiv, lii
Christianity, 154–5, 223, 249
Chryseros, 61, 231
Cicero, xxxiii, 222, 230, 246
Circe, 240
Circus Maximus, 97, 240
Cleaver, Eldridge, xx, xxi
Cleopatra, 243
Clink (prison), 152, 240
Clodius Albinus, x
Clytius, 20, 222
Cnidos, 72, 226, 233
Cocytus, 100, 240
Common Prayer, Book of, 258
Coptos, 36, 227
Corinth, x, xi, xii, 7, 19, 28, 112, 183–6, 194, 211, 215, 219, 220, 221, 232,
246, 253, 254, 258, 259
Creon, 11, 221
Crete, 197, 253, 256
Creusa, 224
Cronus (Kronos), 233
Cupid (Eros, Love), xxv, xxxvii, 26, 30, 51, 129, 157, 173, 192, 195, 225,
233, 241, 250, 256; see also Cupid and Psyche, the story of
Cupid and Psyche, the story of, xii, xiii, xvi, xvii, xxv–xxvi, xxviii, xxxv,
71–106, 216, 229, 233–42 passim, 246
Cybele, 143, 152, 197, 232, 247
Cyllene (Mount), 239
Cyprus, 197, 256
Cythera, 28, 72, 233

Daedalus, 253
Danaë, 249
Daphne, 150
Daphnis, 237
Dawn (Aurora), 40, 99, 227
Delphi, 193, 236
Demeas, 18–19, 21, 222
Demeter, see Ceres
Demochares, 63–5, 231, 232
Demosthenes, 251
Derceto, see Atargatis
Diana (Artemis), xiii, 23–4, 196, 197, 221, 224, 239, 247, 255, 256; see
also Hecate, Moon
Dickens, Charles, xxii, 223, 247–8
Dictynna, 197, 256
Dido, 245, 251
Dinard, xx–xxi
Diomedes (king of Thrace), 120, 244
Dione, 239
Dionysus, see Bacchus
Diophanes, 29–30, 40, 216, 225
Dirce, 107, 242
Dis, 102, 103, 241; see also Orcus
Dorian (mode), 192, 254

Earth, 36, 99
Echo, 89
Egypt, x, xiii, xx, xxx, 7, 36, 197, 201, 204, 219, 221
Eleusis, 95, 195, 197, 238
Elysium, 198
Encolpius, xxxi
Endymion, 13, 221
Envy (Invidia), 64, 75, 114, 232
Ephesus, 196, 252, 255
Epicurus, xxvii, 242
Epona, 53, 230, 250
Erichtho, 227
Eros, see Cupid
Eteocles, 181, 252
Ethiopia, 11, 197, 221, 256
Eubcea, 29
Eubulus, 64, 232
Euripides, 221, 226, 234, 235, 242, 251
Europa, 108, 243

Fame, 131, 205, 245, 258

Fate, 18, 28, 36, 57, 88, 173, 195, 198, 210, 225, 237, 256; see also
Fortune, Providence
Fear (Phobos), 192, 254
Fetiales, 226
Fielding, Henry, xxxvi, xxxviii
Flaubert, Gustave, xxxvii
Florence, xlii
Fortune, xi, xxvii, xxxi, 9, 10, 11, 15, 29, 47, 57, 62, 65, 73, 79, 80, 81, 82,
96, 108, 112, 113, 120, 122, 124, 128, 139, 141, 147, 148, 164, 174, 182,
187, 202, 203–4, 210, 224, 226, 232, 236, 237, 243, 246, 248, 250, 257;
see also Fate, Providence
Furies, 17, 37, 83, 87, 135, 167, 237, 245
Gaisford, Thomas, xiv
Gaius (brother of narrator of Onos), xxxvi
Ganymede, 13, 101, 105, 200, 221, 240
Gaul, 183–4
Gemini (constellation), 254; see also Castor, Pollux
Geryon, 39, 49, 227
Giants, 233
Gildon, Charles, xxxii–xxxiii
Golden Ass, The (Asinus Aureus), title of Apuleius’ novel, xxiii
Good Faith (Fides), 68, 187, 232
Graces, 26, 57, 91, 105, 192
Grant, Michael, xxxiii–xxxiv
‘Grecian story’ (fabula Graecanica), see Metamorphoses
Grub Street, xxxii
Guardian Spirit (Genius), 139, 171, 246, 251
Gulf of Corinth, 220

Habit (Consuetudo), 97, 240

Hades, see Orcus
Hadrian, 243, 244
Haemus, 114–18, 243, 244; see also Tlepolemus
Harpies, 34, 181, 226, 253
Heaven (Uranus), 97, 233, 239
Hecale, 19, 222
Hecate, 196, 197, 224, 256
Helen of Troy, 192, 233
Heliodorus, xxx, 221, 227, 234
Hellespont, 242
Henna, 238
Hephaestio, 148, 248
Hephaestus, see Vulcan
Hera, see Juno
Hercules (Heracles), 49, 227, 240, 244
Hermes, see Mercury
Herodotus, 256
Hesiod, 232, 233, 254
Hipparchus, 215
Hippocratic Oath, 252
Hippodamia, 231
Homer, xxx, xxxi, 13, 29, 154, 190, 221, 224, 231, 232, 233, 235, 240, 242,
245, 249, 253, 254
Horace, xxii, 222, 249, 259
Hours, 91, 192
Hymettus, 7, 219
Hypata, xi, xviii, 9, 18, 60, 200, 215, 225, 228, 246
Hyperborean, 210, 259
Hypnophilus, 148, 248

Iamblichus (novelist), 252

Ida (Mount), 142, 190, 247
Ilithyia, see Lucina
Ill Success (Scaevus Eventus), 66, 230, 232
Inachus, 95
India, 11, 194, 210, 222
Ino, 242
Io, 226
Ionian mode, 74, 191, 254
Iphigenia, 143, 234, 247
Isis, xiii, xiv, xx–xxxi passim, xxxvi, xxxvii, 196–213 passim, 217, 219–24
passim, 227, 229, 232–4, 242, 243, 247, 253, 254–60 passim
Iuga, Iugalis, 239

James, Paula, xxiii

Jason, 221
Jealousy (Rivalitas), 187
Jove, Jupiter (Zeus), 51, 54, 72, 74, 77, 95, 97, 101, 104–5, 108, 132, 191,
193, 221, 233, 239, 240, 241–2, 243, 248, 249, 254
Judaism, 154–5, 249
Juno (Hera), xxxi, 72, 93, 95–6, 105, 191, 193, 197, 224, 233, 234, 238–9
Justice, 33, 43, 201
Juvenal, xviii–xix, 251

Kalasiris, 227
Keats, John, xxxv
Kipling, Rudyard, 248

Lamachus, 60–62, 231

Laodamia, 232, 245
Lapiths, 60, 231
Larissa, 10, 33
Laughter (Risus), xv, xvii, 38, 46, 227
Leda, 254
Le Sage (Lesage), Alain René, xxxv
Lethe, 37
Lex Cornelia, 142, 247
Lex Julia, 104, 229, 241
Liber, see Bacchus
Livy, xxxiii, 246
Lollianus, xxxviii
London, xxxii, 248
Longus, 235, 237
Loyalty, see Good Faith
Lucan, xxviii, 227, 255
Lucian, xv–xvi, xxxvi, 253
Lucilius, 242
Lucina, 95, 239, 255
Lucius (narrator of GA), xi, xxxvi, 222
Lucius (narrator of Onos), xv–xvi, xx, xxxvi
‘Lucius of Patrae’ (alleged author of Metamorphoses), xv
Lucretius, xxvi–xxvii, 223, 242, 245, 256–7
Lupus, 9, 220
Lydian mode, 74, 192, 254
Lynceus, 34, 226

Macaria, 234
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, xxviii
Macedonia, 10, 114, 115, 246
Macrobius, xxviii
Madaura, xxiii, xxiv, xxix, 212, 225, 259
Maecenas, Gaius, 259
Manilius, 234
Marathon, Bull of, 222
Mars, 62, 68, 92, 114, 117, 224, 233, 238, 259
Martial, 229
Matapan (Cape), 240
Medea, 12, 221
Medusa, 243
Meleager, 127, 244
Melicertes, 234
Memphis, 36, 227
Menecles, 215
Mercury, 97, 105, 191, 201, 226, 239–40, 242, 257
Meroë (island), 220
Meroë (witch), 10–14, 15, 220, 224
Metamorphoses (Greek original of ass story), x–xi, xii, xv–xvi, xxix, xxxvi,
xxxvii, 7, 230; (title of Apuleius’ novel), xxiii; see also Onos
‘Milesian’ tales, ix–x, xi–xii, xv–xvi, 74, 234
Miletus, ix, xv, 33, 74, 236
Milo, xvii, xxxii, 18–21, 23, 24–5, 28–30, 42–6, 53–4, 60, 111, 112, 215,
222, 225, 228
Milton, John, 254
Minerva (Athene), 72, 191–2, 193, 197, 223, 229, 233, 254
Minos, 253
Minotaur, 185, 253
Mithras (priest of Isis), 208–9, 211, 258–9
Monte Cassino, xlii
Moon, xii–xiii, 195–6, 221, 255, 256, see also Diana
Morris, William, xxxv
Moschus, 234, 239
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 259
Mummius, Lucius, 255
Muses, 91, 105, 106, 200, 226
Myrmex, 156–9, 249
Myrrha, 237
Myrrhine, 34
Myrtilus, 148, 248

Nabokov, Vladimir, xxviii

Naples, Bay of, 225
Nature, 225
Nemesis, 256
Neptune, xxxi, 234
Nereus, 73, 234
Nicanor, 65
Nile, x, 7, 36, 219, 220, 227
Nymphs, 91

Ocean, 73, 159

Octavian, see Augustus
Odysseus, see Ulysses
Oea, xxix, xxxiv
Oedipus, 252
Olympia, 33, 210, 259
Olympus (Mount), 233, 240, 241
Onos, xv–xviii passim, xx, xxii, xxvi, xxxii, xxxvi, xxxviii, 215–16, 222,
246, 247, 248, 249, 250–51, 253, 258
Orcus (Hades, Pluto), 45, 97, 101, 102, 115, 124, 212, 228, 238–9, 240–41,
253; see also Dis
Orpheus, 35, 226
Orwell, George, 248
Osiris, xiv, xxiii–xxiv, xxviii, 212–14, 257, 258
Ostia, 211
Ovid, xxiii, xxv, xxxiii, xxxv, xxxvi, 224, 226, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237,
238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 245, 248, 249, 251, 253, 255, 258

Palaemon, 73, 234

Palaestra, 215, 229
Palamedes, 193, 254–5
Palinurus, 241
Pamphile, 24–5, 28, 47–51, 215, 224, 228–9
Pan, 89–90, 106 (Paniscus), 237
Panthia, 13–14, 221
Paphos, 72, 196, 197, 233
Paris, 72, 191–3, 217, 233, 253–4
Paros, 23
Pasiphaë, 184, 185–6, 253
Pastophori, 205, 214, 258, 260
Pater, Walter, xxxv
Patrae, xv–xvi
Patroclus, 254
Pausanias (author), 232
Pausanias (interlocutor in Plato’s Symposium), xxv
Pegasus, 109, 137, 200, 243, 244, 257
Peloponnese, 240–41, 243
Pelops, 248
Pentheus, 35, 226
Pericles, 231
Persephone, see Proserpine
Perseus, 235, 243
Pessinus, 197, 256
Petronius, xviii, xxx, xxxi, 232
Pharos, 36, 227
Philebus, 142–52 passim, 215, 247
Philesitherus, 155–60, 162–3, 248, 249–50
Philetas, 237
Philodespotus, 35, 226
Phineus, 181, 253
Phoebus, see Apollo
Photis, xi, xvii, xxv, xxvii, xxxii, 18–19, 20, 25–8, 30–31, 39, 46–52, 111,
119, 155, 206, 215, 216, 219, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228–30, 233, 240, 242,
 258
Photius, xv
Phrixus, 108, 242
Phrygia, 101, 146, 191, 192, 197, 200, 240
Pindar, 220
Pirithous, 231
Pity, altar of, 203
Plataea, 63, 68
Plato, xxiv–xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxix, xxxiv, xxxvii, 221, 235, 255, 256
Plautus, xxviii, xxxii, 260
Pleasure (Voluptas), child of Cupid and Psyche, 106, 242
Pliny the elder, xxxiii, 255
Pliny the younger, 235
Plotina, 114–15, 243
Plutarch, xxiv, xxvi, 7, 23, 219, 223
Pluto, see Orcus
Pollux, 191, 226, 254; see also Castor
Polynices, 252
Polyxena, 234
Porch, Painted (Stoa Poikile), 8, 220
Portunus, 73, 234
Poseidon, see Neptune
Praxiteles, 226
Priapus, xxxi
Price, John, lii
Priestley, John Boynton, xxxvi
Procne, 237
Propertius, xxxvii, 225
Proserpine (Persephone), xiii, 45, 95, 101, 103, 104, 195, 196, 197, 209,
228, 238–9, 241, 253, 255–6
Protesilaus, 71, 232, 245
Providence, xxvii, xxxi, 36, 42, 43, 78, 101, 108, 144, 146, 148, 161, 180,
195, 198, 201, 202, 203, 207, 212, 214, 225, 226, 243, 248, 250, 254; see
also Fate, Fortune, Isis
Psyche, xxiii, xxvi, xxxi, xxxvii, 220, 223, 251, 253, 255, 256; see also
Cupid and Psyche, the story of
Pudentilla, xxix, 240
Purser, Louis C., 236
Pythagoras, 195, 255
Pytheas, 20, 222
Pythian oracle, 86, 234, 236
Python, 236

Quintilian, 226

Reade, Charles, 231

Rhamnus, 197, 256
Rhea, see Atargatis
Rhodes, 244
Rome, x, xiii, xix, xxviii–xxx, 7, 32, 180, 211, 213, 222, 226, 228, 243, 248
Rumour, see Fame

Sabadius (-azius), 142, 247

Saintsbury, George Edward Bateman, xiv
Salacia, 73, 234
Salian priests (Saliares), 68, 117, 159, 232
Sallust, 221
Salvia, 23, 223
Samos, 95, 239
Sappho, 225, 237
Sarapis, Serapis, 200, 257
Saronic Gulf, 194
Satyr, 106
Seasons, 105
Seneca, 242, 251, 252, 258
Seth-Typhon, xxiii, xxiv, 259
Sextus of Chaeronea (Plutarch’s nephew), 7, 219
Shakespeare, William, xxxv, 241, 252
Shumate, Nancy, xx, xxvii
Sibyl, 240
Sicily, 95, 197, 231, 238, 256
Sirens, 83, 236
Sobriety, 92
Socrates (character in GA), 9–17, 220
Socrates (philosopher), xxvi, 193, 255
Sophocles, 229, 252
Sorrow (Tristities), 98
Sparta, x, 7, 102
Statius, 235, 245
Stoa Poikile, see Porch, Painted
Stoics, 220, 225, 239
Styx, 37, 74, 100–101, 102–3, 104, 197, 198, 234, 240, 241
Success (Bonus Eventus), 57, 213, 230, 232
Sulla (Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix), 214, 260
Sun, 9, 33, 43, 48, 73, 196, 210, 211, 233, 235
Syria, 142
Syrian Goddess, see Atargatis

Tacitus, xxxiii, 246

Taenarus, 7, 102, 103, 219, 225, 240–41
Tanit, 239
Tartarus, 24, 102
Terence, 222, 225
Terror (Deimos), 192, 254
Thebes (Boeotian), 61, 63, 226, 231
Thelyphron, xxxvi, 32–8, 216, 226
Theron, 114, 243
Theseus, 19, 222
Thessalonica, 216, 253
Thessaly, xi, 7, 9, 20, 22, 33, 45, 46, 183, 206, 223, 231
Thiasus, xii, 182–6, 215, 231, 253
Thrace, 65, 114, 120, 243, 244
Thrasyleon, 64–8, 232
Thrasyllus, 128–36, 216, 240, 245
Thucydides, 231
Tlepolemus, xvii, 118–19, 128–36, 215, 216, 244, 245; see also Haemus
Trajan, 243
Tranquillity, harbour of, xxviii, 203
Tripoli, xxix
Triton, 73, 234
Troy, 221, 232, 233, 244, 247, 254, 255
Truth, 131, 180
Tullianum, 248
Tyche, see Fortune
Typhon, see Seth-Typhon
Tyre, 184

Ulysses (Odysseus), xxxi, xxxv, 13, 29, 154, 193, 221, 229, 249, 254–5
Uranus, see Heaven
Uriah the Hittite, 241
Venus (Aphrodite), xiii, xxv, 26–7, 28, 31, 51, 57, 72–3, 75, 88, 89, 90, 91–
3, 94, 95, 96–104, 105, 123, 142, 158, 173, 191, 192, 193, 195, 197, 224,
226, 230, 236–42 passim, 244, 247, 253–4, 255, 256–7
Verus, Lucius, 220
Victory, 23, 224
Virgil, xxxi, xxxvii, 224, 233, 236, 240, 241, 242, 245, 251, 253
Vitellius, 246
Vulcan, 27, 96, 105, 224, 238, 242, 248

Waugh, Evelyn Arthur St John, xxiv

Westminster School, lii
Winkler, John J., xxx
Wordsworth, William, xxii

Xenophon (novelist), xxx, 252

Zacynthus, 114, 243

Zatchlas, xxxvi, 36–7, 227
Zephyr, 75, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 235
Zethus, 242
Zeus, see Jove, Jupiter
Zygia, 95, 239
 The Defense
By Apuleius
Translated by H. E. Butler

Part 1
For my part, Claudius Maximus, and you, gentlemen who sit beside him on
the bench, I regarded it as a foregone conclusion that Sicinius Aemilianus
would for sheer lack of any real ground for accusation cram his indictment
with mere vulgar abuse; for the old rascal is notorious for his unscrupulous
audacity, and, further, launched forth on his task of bringing me to trial in
your court before he had given a thought to the line his prosecution should
pursue. Now while the most innocent of men may be the victim of false
accusation, only the criminal can have his guilt brought home to him. It is
this thought that gives me special confidence, but I have further ground for
self-congratulation in the fact that I have you for my judge on an occasion
when it is my privilege to have the opportunity of clearing philosophy of
the aspersions cast upon her by the uninstructed and of proving my own
innocence. Nevertheless these false charges are on the face of them serious
enough, and the suddenness with which they have been improvised makes
them the more difficult to refute.
For you will remember that it is only four or five days since his advocates
of malice prepense attacked me with slanderous accusations, and began to
charge me with practice of the black art and with the murder of my step-son
Pontianus. I was at the moment totally unprepared for such a charge, and
was occupied in defending an action brought by the brothers Granius
against my wife Pudentilla. I perceived that these charges were brought
forward not so much in a serious spirit as to gratify my opponents' taste for
wanton slander. I therefore straightway challenged them, not once only, but
frequently and emphatically, to proceed with their accusation.
The result was that Aemilianus, perceiving that you, Maximus, not to speak
of others, were strongly moved by what had occurred, and that his words
had created a serious scandal, began to be alarmed and to seek for some
safe refuge from the consequences of his rashness.
Part 2
Therefore as soon as he was compelled to set his name to the indictment, he
conveniently forgot Pontianus, his own brother's son, of whose death he had
been continually accusing me only a few days previously. He made
absolutely no mention of the death of his young kinsman; he abandoned this
most serious charge, but -- to avoid the appearance of having totally
abandoned his mendacious accusations -- he selected, as the sole support of
his indictment, the charge of magic -- a charge with which it is easy to
create a prejudice against the accused, but which it is hard to prove.
Even that he had not the courage to do openly in his own person, but a day
later presented the indictment in the name of my step-son, Sicinius Pudens,
a mere boy, adding that he appeared as his representative. This is a new
method. He attacks me through the agency of a third person, whose tender
age he employs to shield his unworthy self against a charge of false
accusation. You, Maximus, with great acuteness saw through his designs
and ordered him to renew his original accusation in person. In spite of his
promise to comply, he cannot be induced to come to close quarters, but
actually defies your authority and continues to skirmish at long range with
his false accusations. He persistently shirks the perilous task of a direct
attack, and perseveres in his assumption of the safe role of the accuser's
legal representative. As a result, even before the case came into court, the
real nature of the accusation became obvious to the meanest understanding.
The man who invented the charge and was the first to utter it had not the
courage to take the responsibility for it. Moreover the man in question is
Sicinius Aemilianus, who, if he had discovered any true charge against me,
would scarcely have been so backward in accusing a stranger of so many
serious crimes, seeing that he falsely asserted his own uncle's will to be a
forgery although he knew it to be genuine: indeed he maintained this
assertion with such obstinate violence, that even after that distinguished
senator, Lollius Urbicus, in accordance with the decision of the
distinguished consulars, his assessors, had declared the will to be genuine
and duly proven, he continued -- such was his mad fury -- in defiance of the
award given by the voice of that most distinguished citizen, to assert with
oaths that the will was a forgery. It was only with difficulty that Lollius
Urbicus refrained from making him suffer for it.
Part 3
I rely, Maximus, on your sense of justice and on my own innocence, but I
hope that in this trial also we shall hear the voice of Lollius raised
impulsively in my defence; for Aemilianus is deliberately accusing a man
whom he knows to be innocent, a course which comes the more easy to
him, since, as I have told you, he has already been convicted of lying in a
most important case, heard before the Prefect of the city. Just as a good man
studiously avoids the repetition of a sin once committed, so men of
depraved character repeat their past offence with increased confidence, and,
I may add, the more often they do so, the more openly they display their
impudence. For honour is like a garment; the older it gets, the more
carelessly it is worn. I think it my duty, therefore, in the interest of my own
honour, to refute all my opponent's slanders before I come to the actual
indictment itself.
For I am pleading not merely my own cause, but that of philosophy as well,
philosophy, whose grandeur is such that she resents even the slightest slur
cast upon her perfection as though it were the most serious accusation.
Knowing this, Aemilianus' advocates, only a short time ago, poured forth
with all their usual loquacity a flood of drivelling accusations, many of
which were specially invented for the purpose of blackening my character,
while the remainder were such general charges as the uninstructed are in the
habit of levelling at philosophers. It is true that we may regard these
accusations as mere interested vapourings, bought at a price and uttered to
prove their shamelessness worthy of its hire.
It is a recognized practice on the part of professional accusers to let out the
venom of their tongues to another's hurt; nevertheless, if only in my own
interest, I must briefly refute these slanders, lest I, whose most earnest
endeavour it is to avoid incurring the slightest spot or blemish to my fair
fame, should seem, by passing over some of their more ridiculous charges,
to have tacitly admitted their truth, rather than to have treated them with
silent contempt. For a man who has any sense of honour or self-respect
must needs -- such at least is my opinion -- feel annoyed when he is thus
abused, however falsely. Even those whose conscience reproaches them
with some crime, are strongly moved to anger, when men speak ill of them,
although they have been accustomed to such ill report ever since they
became evildoers. And even though others say naught of their crimes, they
are conscious enough that such charges may at any time deservedly be
brought against them. It is therefore doubly vexatious to the good and
innocent man when charges are undeservedly brought against him which he
might with justice bring against others. For his ears are unused and strange
to ill report, and he is so accustomed to hear himself praised that insult is
more than he can bear.
If, however, I seem to be anxious to rebut charges which are merely
frivolous and foolish, the blame must be laid at the door of those, to whom
such accusations, in spite of their triviality, can only bring disgrace. I am
not to blame. Ridiculous as these charges may be, their refutation cannot
but do me honour.
Part 4
To begin then, only a short while ago, at the commencement of the
indictment, you heard them say, `He, whom we accuse in your court, is a
philosopher of the most elegant appearance and a master of eloquence not
merely in Latin but also in Greek!' What a damning insinuation! Unless I
am mistaken, those were the very words with which Tannonius Pudens,
whom no one could accuse of being a master of eloquence, began the
indictment.
I wish that these serious reproaches of beauty and eloquence had been true.
It would have been easy to answer in the words, with which Homer makes
Paris reply to Hector which I may interpret thus: `The most glorious gifts of
the gods are in no wise to be despised; but the things which they are wont to
give are withheld from many that would gladly possess them.' Such would
have been my reply.
I should have added that philosophers are not forbidden to possess a
handsome face. Pythagoras, the first to take the name of `philosopher', was
the handsomest man of his day. Zeno also, the ancient philosopher of Velia,
who was the first to discover that most ingenious device of refuting
hypotheses by the method of self-inconsistency, that same Zeno was -- so
Plato asserts -- by far the most striking in appearance of all the men of his
generation. It is further recorded of many other philosophers that they were
comely of countenance and added fresh charm to their personal beauty by
their beauty of character.
But such a defence is, as I have already said, far from me. Not only has
nature given me but a commonplace appearance, but continued literary
labour has swept away such charm as my person ever possessed, has
reduced me to a lean habit of body, sucked away all the freshness of life,
destroyed my complexion and impaired my vigour. As to my hair, which
they with unblushing mendacity declare I have allowed to grow long as an
enhancement to my personal attractions, you can judge of its elegance and
beauty. As you see, it is tangled, twisted and unkempt like a lump of tow,
shaggy and irregular in length, so knotted and matted that the tangle is past
the art of man to unravel. This is due not to mere carelessness in the tiring
of my hair, but to the fact that I never so much as comb or part it. I think
this is a sufficient refutation of the accusations concerning my hair which
they hurl against me as though it were a capital charge.
Part 5
As to my eloquence -- if only eloquence were mine -- it would be small
matter either for wonder or envy if I, who from my earliest years to the
present moment have devoted myself with all my powers to the sole study
of literature and for this spurned all other pleasures, had sought to win
eloquence to be mine with toil such as few or none have ever expended,
ceasing neither night nor day, to the neglect and impairment of my bodily
health. But my opponents need fear nothing from my eloquence. If I have
made any real advance therein, it is my aspirations rather than my
attainments on which I must base my claim.
Certainly if the aphorism said to occur in the poems of Statius Caecilius be
true, that innocence is eloquence itself, to that extent I may lay claim to
eloquence and boast that I yield to none. For on that assumption what living
man could be more eloquent than myself? I have never even harboured in
my thoughts anything to which I should fear to give utterance. Nay, my
eloquence is consummate, for I have ever held all sin in abomination; I
have the highest oratory at my command, for I have uttered no word, I have
done no deed, of which I need fear to discourse in public. I will begin
therefore to discourse of those verses of mine, which they have produced as
though they were something of which I ought to be ashamed. You must
have noticed the laughter with which I showed my annoyance at the absurd
and illiterate manner in which they recited them.
Part 6
They began by reading one of my jeux d'esprit, a brief letter in verse,
addressed to a certain Calpurnianus on the subject of a tooth-powder. When
Calpurnianus produced my letter as evidence against me, his desire to do
me a hurt blinded him to the fact that if anything in the letter could be urged
as a reproach against me, he shared in that reproach. For the verses testify
to the fact that he had asked me to send him the wherewithal to clean his
teeth:
Good morrow! Friend Calpurnianus, take
the salutation these swift verses make.
Wherewith I send, responsive to thy call,
a powder rare to cleans thy teeth withal.
This delicate dust of Arab spices fine,
shall smooth the swollen gums and sweep away
the relics of the feast of yesterday.
So shall no foulness, no dark smirch be seen,
if laughter shown thy teeth their lips between.
I ask you, what is there in these verses that is disgusting in point either of
matter or of manner? What is there that a philosopher should be ashamed to
own? Unless indeed I am to blame for sending a powder made of Arabian
spices to Calpurnianus, for whom it would be more suitable that he should
Polish his teeth and ruddy gums,
as Catullus says, after the filthy fashion in vogue among the Iberians.
Part 7
I saw a short while back that some of you could scarcely restrain your
laughter, when our orator treated these views of mine on the cleansing of
the teeth as a matter for savage denunciation, and condemned my
administration of a tooth-powder with fiercer indignation than has ever
been shown in condemning the administration of a poison.
Of course it is a serious charge, and one that no philosopher can afford to
despise, to say of a man that he will not allow a speck of dirt to be seen
upon his person, that he will not allow any visible portion of his body to be
offensive or unclean, least of all the mouth, the organ used most frequently,
openly and conspicuously by man, whether to kiss a friend, to conduct a
conversation, to speak in public, or to offer up prayer in some temple.
Indeed speech is the prelude to every kind of action and, as the greatest of
poets says, proceeds from `the barrier of our teeth'. If there were any one
present here today with like command of the grand style, he might say after
his fashion that those above all men who have any care for their manner of
speaking, should pay closer attention to their mouth than to any other
portion of their body, for it is the soul's antechamber, the portal of speech,
and the gathering place where thoughts assemble. I myself should say that
in my poor judgement there is nothing less seemly for a freeborn man with
the education of a gentleman than an unwashen mouth. For man's mouth is
in position exalted, to the eye conspicuous, in use eloquent. True, in wild
beasts and cattle the mouth is placed low and looks downward to the feet, is
in close proximity to their food and to the path thq tread, and is hardly ever
conspicuous save when its owner is dead or infuriated with a desire to bite.
But there is no part of man that sooner catches the eye when he is silent, or
more often when he speaks.
Part 8
I should be obliged, therefore, if my critic Aemilianus would answer me
and tell me whether he is ever in the habit of washing his feet, or, if he
admits that he is in the habit of so doing, whether he is prepared to argue
that a man should pay more attention to the cleanliness of his feet than to
that of his teeth. Certainly, if like you, Aemilianus, he never opens his
mouth save to utter slander and abuse, I should advise him to pay no
attention to the state of his mouth nor to attempt to remove the stains from
his teeth with oriental powders: he would be better employed in rubbing
them with charcoal from some funeral pyre. Least of all should he wash
them with common water; rather let his guilty tongue, the chosen servant of
lies and bitter words, rot in the filth and ordure that it loves! Is it reasonable,
wretch, that your tongue should be fresh and clean, when your voice is foul
and loathsome, or that, like the viper, you should employ snow-white teeth
for the emission of dark, deadly poison? On the other hand it is only right
that, just as we wash a vessel that is to hold good liquor, he who knows that
his words will be at once useful and agreeable should cleanse his mouth as
a prelude to speech.
But why should I speak further of man? Even the crocodile, the monster of
the Nile -- so they tell me -- opens his jaws in all innocence, that his teeth
may be cleaned. For his mouth being large, tongueless, and continually
open in the water, multitudes of leeches become entangled in his teeth:
these, when the crocodile emerges from the river and opens his mouth, are
removed by a friendly waterbird, which is allowed to insert its beak without
any risk to itself.
Part 9
But enough of this! I now come to certain other of my verses, which
according to them are amatory; but so vilely and coarsely did they read
them as to leave no impression save one of disgust. Now what has it to do
with the malpractices of the black art, if I write poems in praise of the boys
of my friend Scribonius Laetus? Does the mere fact of my being a poet
make me a wizard? Who ever heard any orator produce such likely ground
for suspicion, such apt conjectures, such close-reasoned argument?
`Apuleius has written verses!' If they are bad, that is something against him
as a poet, but not as a philosopher. If they are good, why do you accuse
him? `But they were frivolous verses of an erotic character.' So that is the
charge you bring against me? and it was a mere slip of the tongue when you
indicted me for practising the black art?
And yet many others have written such verse, although you may be ignorant
of the fact. Among the Greeks, for instance, there was a certain Teian, there
was a Lacedaemonian, a Cean, and countless others; there was even a
woman, a Lesbian, who wrote with such grace and such passion that the
sweetness of her song makes us forgive the impropriety of her words;
among our own poets there were Aedituus, Porcius, and Catulus, with
countless others. `But they were not philosophers.' Will you then deny that
Solon was a serious man and a philosopher? Yet he is the author of that
most wanton verse:
Longing for your thighs and your sweet mouth.
What is there so lascivious in all my verses compared with that one line? I
will say nothing of the writings of Diogenes the Cynic, of Zeno the founder
of Stoicism, and many other similar instances. Let me recite my own verses
afresh, that my opponents may realize that I am not ashamed of them:
Critias my treasure is and you,
light of my life, Charinus, too
hold in my love-tormented heart
your own inalienable part.
Ah! Doubt not! With redoubled spite
though fire on fire consume me quite,
the flames ye kindle, boys divine,
I can endure, so ye be mine.
Only to each may I be dear
as your own selves are, and as near;
grant only this and you shall be
dear as mine own two eyes to be.
Now let me read you the others also which they read last as being the most
intemperate in expression.
I lay these garlands, Critias sweet,
and this my song before thy feet;
song to thyself I dedicate,
wreaths to the Angel of thy fate.
The song I send to hymn the praise
of this, the best of all glad days,
whereon the circling seasons bring
the glory of thy fourteenth spring;
the garlands, that thy brows may shine
with splendour worthy spring's and thine,
that thou in boyhood's golden hours
mayst deck the flower of life with flowers.
Wherefore for these bright blooms of spring
thy springtide sweet surrendering,
the tribute of my love repay
and all my gifts with thine outweigh.
Surpass the twined garland's grace
with arms entwined in soft embrace;
the crimson of the rose eclipse
with kisses from thy rosy lips.
Or if thou wilt, be this my meed
and breathe thy soul into the reed; \u00a1!
then shall my songs be shamed and mute
before the music of thy flute.
Part 10
This, Maximus, is what they throw in my teeth, as though it were the work
of an infamous rake: verses about garlands and serenades.
You must have noticed also that in this connexion they further attack me for
calling these boys Charinus and Critias, which are not their true names. On
this principle they may as well accuse Caius Catullus for calling Clodia
Lesbia, Ticidas for substituting the name Perilla for that of Metella,
Propertius for concealing the name Hostia beneath the pseudonym of
Cynthia, and Tibullus for singing of Delia in his verse, when it was Plania
who ruled his heart. For my part I should rather blame Caius Lucilius, even
allowing him all the license of a satiric poet, for prostituting to the public
gaze the boys Gentius and Macedo, whose real names he mentions in his
verse without any attempt at concealment. How much more reserved is
Mantua's poet, who, when like myself he praised the slave-boy of his friend
Pollio in one of his light pastoral poems, shrinks from mentioning real
nnames and calls himself Corydon and the boy Alexis.
But Aemilianus, whose rusticity far surpasses that of the Virgilean
shepherds and cowherds, who is, in fact, and always has been a boor and a
barbarian, though he thinks himself far more austere than Serranus, Curius,
or Fabricius, those heroes of the days of old, denies that such verses are
worthy of a philosopher who is a follower of Plato. Will you persist in this
attitude, Aemilianus, if I can show that my verses were modelled upon
Plato? For the only verses of Plato now extant are love-elegies, the reason, I
imagine, being that he burned all his other poems because they were
inferior in charm and finish. Learn then the verses written by Plato in
honour of the boy Aster, though I doubt if at your age it is possible for you
to become a man of learning.
Thou wert the morning star among the living
ere thy fair light had fled; --
now having died, thou art as Hesperus giving
new light unto the dead.
There is another poem by Plato dealing conjointly with the boys Alexis and
Phaedrus:
I lid but breathe the words `Alexis fair',
and all men gazed on him with wondering eyes,
my soul, why point to questing beasts their prize?
'Twas thus we lost our Phaedrus; ah! Beware!
Without citing any further examples I will conclude by quoting a line
addressed by Plato to Dion of Syracuse:
Dion, with love thou hast distraught my soul.
Part 11
Which of us is most to blame? I who am fool enough to speak seriously of
such things in a lawcourt? Or you who are slanderous enough to include
such charges in your indictment? For sportive effusions in verse are
valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have you not read Catullus, who
replies thus to those who wish him ill:
A virtuous poet must be chaste. Agreed.
But for his verses there is no such need.
The divine Hadrian, when he honoured the tomb of his friend the poet
Voconius with an inscription in verse from his own pen, wrote thus:
Thy verse was wanton, but thy soul was chaste,
words which he would never have written had he regarded verse of
somewhat too lively a wit as proving their author to be a man of immoral
life. I remember that I have read not a few poems by the divine Hadrian
himself which were of the same type. Come now, Aemilianus, I dare you to
say that that was ill done which was done by an emperor and censor, the
divine Hadrian, and once done was recorded for subsequent generations.
But, apart from that, do you imagine that Maximus will censure anything
that has Plato for its model, Plato whose verses, which I have just read, are
all the purer for being frank, all the more modest for being outspoken? For
in these matters and the like, dissimulation and concealment is the mark of
the sinner, open acknowledgement and publication a sign that the writer is
but exercising his wit. For nature has bestowed on innocence a voice
wherewith to speak, but to guilt she has given silence to veil its sin.
Part 12
I say nothing of those lofty and divine Platonic doctrina, that are familiar to
but few of the elect and wholly unknown to all the uninitiate, such for
instance as that which teaches us that Venus is not one goddess, but two,
each being strong in her own type of love and several types of lovers. The
one is the goddess of the common herd, who is fired by base and vulgar
passion and commands not only the hearts of men, but cattle and wild
beasts also, to give themselves over to the gratification of their desires: she
strikes down these creatures with fierce intolerable force and fetters their
servile bodies in the embraces of lust. The other is a celestial power endued
with lofty and generous passion: she cares for none save men, and of them
but few; she neither stings nor lures her followers to foul deeds. Her love is
neither wanton nor voluptuous, but serious and unadorned, and wins her
lovers to the pursuit of virtue by revealing to them how fair a thing is
nobility of soul. Or, if ever she commends beautiful bodies to their
admiration, she puts a bar upon all indecorous conduct. For the only claim
that physical beauty has upon the admiration is that it reminds those whose
souls have soared above things human to things divine, of that beauty which
once they beheld in all its truth and purity enthroned among the gods in
heaven. Wherefore let us admit that Afranius shows his usual beauty of
expression when he says: `Only the sage can love, only desire is known to
others'; although if you would know the real truth, Aemilianus, or if you are
capable of ever comprehending such high matters, the sage does not love,
but only remembers.
Part 13
I would therefore beg you to pardon the philosopher Plato for his amatory
verse, and relieve me of the necessity of offending against the precepts put
by Ennius into the mouth of Neoptolemus by philosophizing at undue
length; on the other hand if you refuse to pardon Plato, I am quite ready to
suffer blame on this count in his company.
I must express my deep gratitude to you, Maximus, for listening with such
close attention to these side issues, which are necessary to my defence
inasmuch as I am paying back my accusers in their own coin. Your kindness
emboldens me to make this further request, that you will listen to all that I
have to say by way of prelude to my answer to the main charge with the
same courtesy and attention that you have hitherto shown.
For next I have to deal with that long oration, austere as any censor's, which
Pudens delivered on the subject of my mirror. He nearly exploded, so
violently did he declaim against the horrid nature of my offence. `The
philosopher owns a mirror, the philosopher actually possesses a mirror.'
Grant that I possess it: if I denied it, you might really think that your
accusation had gone home: still it is by no means a necessary inference that
I am in the habit of adorning myself before a mirror. Why! suppose I
possessed a theatrical wardrobe, would you venture to argue from that that I
am in the frequent habit of wearing the trailing robes of tragedy, the saffron
cloak of the mimic dance, or the patchwork suit of the harlequinade? I think
not. On the contrary there are plenty of things of which I enjoy the use
without the possession.
But if possession is no proof of use nor non-possession of non-use, and if
you complain of the fact that I look into the mirror rather than that I possess
it, you must go on to show when and in whose presence I have ever looked
into it; for as things stand, you make it a greater crime for a philosopher to
look upon a mirror than for the uninitiated to gaze upon the mystic emblems
of Ceres.
Part 14
Come now, let me admit that I h\u00e1ve looked into it. Is it a crime to be
acquainted with one's own likeness and to carry it with one wherever one
goes ready to hand within the compass of a small mirror, instead of keeping
it hidden away in some one place? Are you ignorant of the fact that there is
nothing more pleasing for a man to look upon than his own image? At any
rate I know that fathers love those sons most who most resemble
themselves, and that public statues are decreed as a reward for merit that the
original may gladden his heart by looking on them. What else is the
significance of statues and portraits produced by the various arts? You will
scarcely maintain the paradox that what is worthy of admiration when
produced by art is blameworthy when produced by nature; for nature has an
even greater facility and truth than art.
Long labour is expended over all the portraits wrought by the hand of man,
yet they never attain to such truth as is revealed by a mirror. Clay is lacking
in life, marble in colour, painting in solidity, and all three in motion, which
is the most convincing element in a likeness: whereas in a mirror the
reflection of the image is marvellous, for it is not only like its original, but
moves and follows every nod of the man to whom it belongs; its age always
corresponds to that of those who look into the mirror, from their earliest
childhood to their expiring age: it puts on all the changes brought by the
advance of years, shares all the varying habits of the body, and imitates the
shifting expressions of joy and sorrow that may be seen on the face of one
and the same man. For all we mould in clay or cast in bronze or carve in
stone or tint with encaustic pigments or colour with paint, in a word, every
attempt at artistic representation by the hand of man after a brief lapse of
time loses in truth and becomes motionless and impassive like the face of a
corpse. So far superior to all pictorial art in respect of truthful
representation is that craftsmanly smoothness and productive splendour of
the mirror.
Part 15
Two alternatives then are before us. We must either follow the precept of
the Lacedaemonian Agesilaus, who had no confidence in his personal
appeannce and refused to allow his portrait to be painted or carved; or we
must accept the universal custom of the rest of mankind which welcomes
portraiture both in sculpture and painting. In the latter case, is there any
reason for preferring to see one's portrait moulded in marble rather than
reflected in silver, in a painting rather than in a mirror?
Or do you regard it as disgraceful to pay continual attention to one's own
appearance? Is not Socrates said actually to have urged his followers
frequently to consider their image in a glass, that so those of them that
prided themselves on their appearance might above all else take care that
they did no dishonour to the splendour of their body by the blackness of
their hearts; while those who regarded themselves as less than handsome in
personal appearance might take especial pains to conceal the meanness of
their body by the glory of their virtue? You see; the wisest man of his day
actually went so far as to use the mirror as an instrument of moral
discipline. Again, who is ignorant of the fact that Demosthenes, the greatest
master of the art of speaking, always practised pleading before a mirror as
though before a professor of rhetoric? When that supreme orator had
drained deep draughts of eloquence in the study of Plato the philosopher,
and had learned all that could be learned of argumentation from the
dialectician Eubulides, last of all he betook himself to a mirror to learn
perfection of delivery. Which do you think should pay greatest attention to
the decorousness of his appearance in the delivery of a speech? The orator
when he wrangles with his opponent or the philosopher when he rebukes
the vices of mankind? The man who harangues for a brief space before an
audience of jurymen drawn by the chance of the lot, or he who is
continually discoursing with all mankind for audience? The man who is
quarrelling over the boundaries of lands, or he whose theme is the
boundaries of good and evil?
Moreover there are other reasons why a philosopher should look into a
mirror. He is not always concerned with the contemplation of his own
likeness, he contemplates also the causes which produce that likeness. Is
Epicurus right when he asserts that images proceed forth from us, as it were
a kind of slough that continually streams from our bodies? These images
when they strike anything smooth and solid are reflected by the shock and
reversed in such wise as to give back an image turned to face its original.
Or should we accept the view maintained by other philosophers that rays
are emitted from our body? According to Plato these rays are filtered forth
from the centre of our eyes and mingle and blend with the light of the world
without us; according to Archytas they issue forth from us without any
external support; according to the Stoics these rays are called into action by
the tension of the air: all agree that, when these emanations strike any
dense, smooth, and shining surface, they return to the surface from which
they proceeded in such manner that the angle of incidence is equal to the
angle of reflection, and as a result that which they approach and touch
without the mirror is imaged within the mirror.
Part 16
What do you think? Should not philosophers make all these problems
subjects of research and inquiry and in solitary study look into mirrors of
every kind, liquid and solid? There is also over and above these questions
further matter for discussion. For instance, why is it that in flat mirrors all
images and objects reflected are shown in almost precisely their original
dimensions, whereas in convex and spherical mirrors everything is seen
smaller, in concave mirrors on the other hand larger than nature? Why again
and under what circumstances are left and right reversed? When does one
and the same mirror seem now to withdraw the image into its depths, now
to extrude it forth to view? Why do concave mirrors when held at right
angles to the rays of the sun kindle tinder set opposite them? What is the
cause of the prismatic colours of the rainbow, or of the appearance in
heaven of two rival images of the sun, with sundry other phenomena treated
in a monumental volume by Archimedes of Syracuse, a man who showed
extraordinary and unique subtlety in all branches of geometry, but was
perhaps particularly remarkable for his frequent and attentive inspection of
mirrors.
If you had only read this book, Aemilianus, and, instead of devoting
yourself to the study of your fields and their dull clods, had studied the
mathematician's slate and blackboard, believe me, although your face is
hideous enough for a tragic mask of Thyestes, you would assuredly, in your
desire for the acquisition of knowledge, look into the glass and sometimes
leave your plough to marvel at the numberless furrows with which wrinkles
have scored your face.
But I should not be surprised if you prefer me to speak of your ugly
deformity of a face and to be silent about your morals, which are infinitely
more repulsive than your features. I will say nothing of them. In the first
place I am not naturally of a quarrelsome disposition, and secondly I am
glad to say that until quite recently you might have been white or black for
all I knew. Even now my knowledge of you is inadequate. The reason for
this is that your rustic occupations have kept you in obscurity, while I have
been occupied by my studies, and so the shadow cast about you by your
insignificance has shielded your character from scrutiny, while I for my part
take no interest in others' ill deeds, but have always thought it more
important to conceal my own faults than to track out those of others. As a
result you have the advantage of one who, while he is himself shrouded in
darkness, surveys another who chances to have taken his stand in the full
light of day. You from your darkness can with ease form an opinion as to
what I am doing in my not undistinguished position before all the world;
but your position is so abject, so obscure, and so withdrawn from the light
of publicity that you are by no means so conspicuous.
Part 17
I neither know nor care to know whether you have slaves to till your fields
or whether you do so by interchange of service with your neighbours. But
you know that at Oea I gave three slaves their freedom on the same day, and
your advocate has cast it in my teeth together with other actions of mine of
which you have given him information. And yet but a few minutes earlier
he had declared that I came to Oea accompanied by no more than one slave.
I challenge you to tell me how I could have made one slave into three free
men. But perhaps this is one of my feats of magic. Has lying made you
blind, or shall I rather say that from force of habit you are incapable of
speaking the truth? `Apuleius,' you say, `came to Oea with one slave,' and
then only a very few words later you blurt out, `Apuleius on one and the
same day at Oea gave three slaves their freedom.' Not even the assertion
that I had come with three slaves and had given them all their freedom
would have been credible: but suppose I had done so, what reason do you
have for regarding three slaves as a mark of my poverty, rather than for
considering three freed men as a proof of my wealth?
You don't know, really, Aemilianus, you don't know how to accuse a
philosopher: you reproach me for the scantiness of my household, whereas
it would really have been my duty to have laid claim, however falsely, to
such poverty. It would have redounded to my credit, for I know that not
only philosophers of whom I boast myself a follower, but also generals of
the Roman people have gloried in the small number of their slaves. Have
your advocates really never read that Marcus Antonius, a man who had
filled the office of consul, had but eight slaves in his house? That that very
Carbo who obtained supreme control of Rome had fewer by one? That
Manius Curius, famous beyond all men for the crowns of victory that he
had won, Manius Curius who thrice led the triumphal procession through
the same gate of Rome, had but two servants to attend him in camp, so that
in good truth that same man who triumphed over the Sabines, the Samnites,
and Pyrrhus had fewer slaves than triumphs? Marcus Cato did not wait for
others to tell it of him, but himself records the fact in one of his speeches
that when he set out as consul for Spain he took but three slaves from the
city with him. When, however, he came to stay at a state residence, the
number seemed insufficient, and he ordered two slaves to be bought in the
market to wait on him at table, so that he took five in all to Spain.
Had Pudens come across these facts in his reading, he would, I think, either
have omitted this particular slander or would have preferred to reproach me
on the ground that three slaves were too large rather than too small an
establishment for a philosopher.
Part 18
Pudens actually reproached me with being poor, a charge which is welcome
to a philosopher and one that he may glory in. For poverty has long been
the handmaid of philosophy; frugal and sober, she is content with little,
greedy for naught save honour, a stable possession in the face of wealth, her
mien is free from care, and her adornment simple; her counsels are
beneficent, she puffs no man up with pride, she corrupts no man with
passions beyond his control, she maddens no man with the lust for power,
she neither desires nor can indulge in the pleasures of feasting and of sex.
These sins and their like are usually the nurslings of wealth. Count over all
the greatest crimes recorded in the history of mankind, you will find no
poor man among their guilty authors. On the other hand, it is rare to find
wealthy men among the great figures of history. All those at whom we
marvel for their great deeds were the nurslings of poverty from their very
cradles, poverty that founded all cities in the days of old, poverty mother of
all arts, witless of all sin, bestower of all glory, crowned with all honour
among all the peoples of the world. Take the history of Greece: the justice
of poverty is seen in Aristides, her benignity in Phocion, her force in
Epaminondas, her wisdom in Socrates, her eloquence in Homer. It was this
same poverty that established the empire of the Roman people in its first
beginnings, and even to this day Rome offers up thanksgivings for it to the
immortal gods with libations poured from a wooden ladle and offerings
borne in an earthen platter. If the judges sitting to try this case were Caius
Fabricius, Gnaeus Scipio, Manius Curius, whose daughters on account of
their poverty were given dowries from the public treasury and so went to
their husbands bringing with them the honour of their houses and the wealth
of the state; if Publicola, who drove out the Kings, or Agrippa, the healer of
the people's strife, men whose funerals were on account of their poverty
enriched by the gift of a few farthings per man from the whole Roman
people; if Atilius Regulus, whose lands on account of his own poverty were
cultivated at the public expense; if, in a word, all the heroes of the old
Roman stock, consuls and censors and triumphant generals, were given a
brief renewal of life and sent back to earth to give hearing to this case,
would you dare in the presence of so many poor consuls to reproach a
philosopher with poverty?
Part 19
Perhaps Claudius Maximus seems to you to be a suitable person before
whom to deride poverty, because he himself is in enjoyment of great wealth
and enormous opulence? You are wrong, Aemilianus, you are wholly
mistaken in your estimate of his character, if you take the bounty of his
fortune rather than the sternness of his philosophy as the standard for your
judgement and fail to realize that one, who holds so austere a creed and has
so long endured military service, is more likely to befriend a moderate
fortune with all its limitations than opulence with all its luxury, and holds
that fortunes, like tunics, should be comfortable, not long. For even a
Fortune, if cannot be carried but must be dragged, will entangle and trip the
feet as badly as a cloak that hangs down in front. In everything that we
employ for the needs of daily life, whatever exceeds the mean is
superfluous and a burden rather than a help. So it is that excessive riches,
like steering oars of too great weight and bulk, serve to sink the ship rather
than to guide it; for their bulk is unprofitable and their superfluity a curse.
I have noticed that of the wealthy themselves those win most praise who
live quietly and in moderate comfort, concealing their actual resources,
administering their great possessions without ostentation or pride and
showing like poor folk under the disguise of their moderation. Now, if even
the rich to some extent affect the outward form and semblance of poverty to
give evidence of their moderation, why should we of slenderer means be
ashamed of being poor not in appearance only but in reality?
Part 20
I might even engage with you in controversy over the word poverty, urging
that no man is poor who rejects the superfluous and has at his command all
the necessities of life, which nature has ordained should be exceedingly
small. For he who desires least will possess most, inasmuch as he who
wants but little will have all he wants. The measure of wealth ought
therefore not to be the possession of lands and investments, but the very
soul of man. For if avarice make him continually in need of some fresh
acquisition and insatiable in his lust for gain, not even mountains of gold
will bring him satisfaction, but he will always be begging for more that he
may increase what he already possesses. That is the genuine admission of
poverty. For every desire for fresh acquisition springs from the
consciousness of want, and it matters little how large your possessions are if
they are too small for you. Philus had a far smaller household than Laelius,
Laelius than Scipio, Scipio than Crassus the Rich, and yet not even Crassus
had as much as he wanted; and so, though he surpassed all others in wealth,
he was himself surpassed by his own avarice and seemed rich to all save
himself. On the other hand, the philosophers of whom I have spoken
wanted nothing beyond what was at their disposal, and, thanks to the
harmong existing between their desires and their resources, they were
deservedly rich and happy. For poverty consists in the need for fresh
acquisition, wealth in the satisfaction springing from the absence of needs.
For the badge of penury is desire, the badge of wealth contempt.
Therefore, Aemilianus, if you wish me to be regarded as poor, you must
first prove that I am avaricious. But if my soul lacks nothing, I care little
how much of the goods of this world be lacking to me; for it is no honour to
possess them and no reproach to lack them.
Part 21
But let us suppose it to be otherwise. Suppose that I am poor, because
fortune has grudged me riches, because my guardian, as often happens,
misappropriated my inheritance, some enemy robbed me, or my father left
me nothing. Is it just to reproach a man for that which is regarded as no
reproach to the animal kingdom, to the eagle, to the bull, to the lion? lf the
horse is strong in the possession of his peculiar excellences, if he is pleasant
to ride and swift in his paces, no one rebukes him for the poverty of his
food. Must you then reproach me, not for any scandalous word or deed, but
simply because I live in a small house, possess an unusually small number
of slaves, subsist on unusually light diet, wear unusually light clothing, and
make unusually small purchaches of food?
Yet however scanty my service, food, and raiment may seem to you, I on
the contrary regard them as ample and even excessive. Indeed I am desirous
of still further reducing them, since the leas I have to distract me the happier
I shall be. For the soul, like the body, goes lightly clad when in good health;
weakness wraps itself up, and it is a sure sign of infirmity to have many
wants. We live, just as we swim, all the better for being but lightly
burdened. For in this stormy life as on the stormy ocean heavy things sink
us and light things buoy us up. It is in this respect, I find, that the gods more
especially surpass men, namely that they lack nothing: wherefore he of
mankind whose needs are smallest is most like unto the gods.
Part 22
I therefore regarded it as a compliment when to insult me you asserted that
my whole household consisted of a wallet and a staff. Would that my spirit
were made of such stern stuff as to permit me to dispense with all this
furniture and worthily to carry that equipment for which Crates sacrificed
all his wealth! Crates, I tell you, though I doubt if you will believe me,
Aemilianus, was a man of great wealth and honour among the nobility of
Thebes; but for love of this habit, which you cast in my face as a crime, he
gave his large and luxurious household to his fellow citizens, resigned his
troops of slaves for solitude, so contemned the countless trees of his rich
orchards as to be content with one staff, exchanged his elegant villas for one
small wallet, which, when he had fully appreciated its utility, he even
praised in song by diverting from their original meaning certain lines of
Homer in which he extols the island of Crete. I will quote the first lines, that
you may not think this a mere invention of mine designed to meet the needs
of my own case:
There is a twon named Wallet in the midst
of smoke that's dark as wine.
The lines which follow are so wonderful, that had you read them you would
envy me my wallet even more than you envy me my marriage with
Pudentilla.
You reproach philosophers for their staff and wallet. You might as well
reproach cavalry for their trappings, infantry for their shields, standard-
bearers for their banners, triumphant generals for their chariots drawn by
four white horses and their cloaks embroidered with palmleaves. The staff
and wallet are not, it is true, carried by the Platonic philosophers, but are the
badges of the Cynic school. To Diogenes and Antisthenes they were what
the crown is to the king, the cloak of purple to the general, the cowl to the
priest, the trumpet to the augur. Indeed the Cynic Diogenes, when he
disputed with Alexander the Great, as to which of the two was the true king,
boasted of his staff as the true sceptre. The unconquered Hercules himself,
since you despise my instances as drawn from mere mendicancy, Hercules
that roamed the whole world, exterminated monsters, and conquered races,
god though he was, had but a skin for raiment and a staff for company in
the days when he wandered through the earth. And yet but a brief while
afterwards he was admitted to heaven as a reward for his virtue.
Part 23
But if you despise these examples and challenge me, not to plead my case,
but to enter into a discussion of the amount of my fortune, to put an end to
your ignorance on this point, if it exists, I acknowledge that my father left
my brother and myself a little under 2,000,000 sesterces -- a sum on which
my lengthy travels, continual studies, and frequent generosity have made
considerable inroads. For I have often assisted my friends and have shown
substantial gratitude to many of my instructors, on more than one occasion
going so far as to provide dowries for their daughters. Nay, I should not
have hesitated to expend every farthing of my patrimony, if so I might
acquire what is far better by contempt for my patrimony. But as for you,
Aemilianus, and ignorant boors of your kidney, in your case the fortune
makes the man. You are like barren and blasted trees that produce no fruit,
but are valued only for the timber that their trunks contain.
But I beg you, Aemilianus, in future to abstain from reviling any one for
their poverty, since you yourself used, after waiting for some seasonable
shower to soften the ground, to expend three days in ploughing single-
handed, with the aid of one wretched ass, that miserable farm at Zarath,
which was all your father left you. It is only recently that fortune has smiled
on you in the shape of wholly undeserved inheritances which have fallen to
you by the frequent deaths of relatives, deaths to which, far more than to
your hideous face, you owe your nickname of Charon.
Part 24
As to my birthplace, you assert that my writings prove it to lie right on the
marches of Numidia and Gaetulia, for I publicly described myself as half
Numidian, half Gaetulian in a discourse delivered in the presence of that
most distinguished citizen Lollianus Avitus. I do not see that I have any
more reason to be ashamed of that than had the elder Cyrus for being of
mixed descent, half Mede, half Persian. A man's birthplace is of no
importance, it is his character that matters. We must consider not in what
part of the world, but with what purpose he set out to live his life. Sellers of
wine and cabbages are permitted to enhance the value of their wares by
advertising the excellence of the soil whence they spring, as for instance
with the wine of Thasos and the cabbages of Phlius. For those products of
the soil are wonderfully improved in flavour by the fertility of the district
which produces them, the moistness of the climate, the mildness of the
winds, the warmth of the sun, and the richness of the soil. But in the case of
man, the soul enters the tenement of the body from without. What, then, can
such circumstances as these add to or take away from his virtues or his
vices? Has there ever been a time or place in which a race has not produced
a variety of intellects, although some races seem stupider and some wiser
than others? The Scythians are the stupidest of men, and yet the wise
Anacharsis was a Scyth. The Athenians are shrewd, and yet the Athenian
Meletides was a fool.
I say this not because I am ashamed of my country, since even in the time of
Syphax we were a township. When he was conquered we were transferred
by the gift of the Roman people to the dominion of King Masinissa, and
finally as the result of a settlement of veteran soldiers, our second founders,
we have become a colony of the highest distinction. In this same colony my
father attained to the post of duumvir and became the foremost citizen of
the place, after filling all the municipal offices of honour. I myself,
immediately after my first entry into the municipal senate, succeeded to my
father's position in the community, and, as I hope, am in no ways a
degenerate successor, but receive like honour and esteem for my
maintenance of the dignity of my position. Why do I mention this? That
you, Aemilianus, may be less angry with me in future and may more readily
pardon me for having been negligent enough not to select your `Attic'
Zarath for my birthplace.
Part 25
Are you not ashamed to produce such accusations with such violence before
such a judge, to bring forward frivolous and self-contradictory accusations,
and then in the same breath to blame me on both charges at once? Is it not a
sheer contradiction to object to my wallet and staff on the ground of
austerity, to my poems and mirror on the ground of undue levity; to accuse
me of parsimony for having only one slave, and of extravagance in having
three; to denounce me for my Greek eloquence and my barbarian birth?
Awake from your slumber and remember that you are speaking before
Claudius Maximus, a man of stern character, burdened with the business of
the whole province. Cease, I say, to bring forward these empty slanders.
Prove your indictment, prove that I am guilty of ghastly crimes, detestable
sorceries, and black art-magic. Why is it that the strength of your speech
lies in mere noise, while it is weak and flabby in point of facts?
I will now deal with the actual charge of magic. You spared no violence in
fanning the flame of hatred against me. But you have disappointed all men's
expectations by your old wives' fables, and the fire kindled by your
accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have you ever seen
fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply, blazing wide and
spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel, dying fast away, leaving
not a wrack behind? So they have kindled their accusation with abuse and
fanned it with words, but it lacks the fuel of facts and, your verdict once
given, is destined to leave not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole of
Aemilianus' calumnious accusation was centred in the charge of magic. I
should therefore like to ask his most learned advocates how, precisely, they
would define a magician.
If what I read in a large number of authors is true, namely, that magician is
the Persian word for priest, what is there criminal in being a priest and
having due knowledge, science, and skill in all ceremonial law, sacrificial
duties, and the binding rules of religion, at least if magic consists in that
which Plato sets forth in his description of the methods employed by the
Persians in the education of their young princes? I remember the very
words of that divine philosopher. Let me recall them to your memory,
Maximus:
When the boy has reached the age of fourteen he is handed over to the care
of men known as the Royal Masters. They are four in number, and are
chosen as being the best of the elders of Persia, one the wisest, another the
justest, a third the most temperate, a fourth the bravest. And one of these
teaches the boy the magic of Zoroaster the son of Oromazes; and this magic
is no other than the worship of the gods. He also teaches him the arts of
kingship.
 The Defense
By Apuleius
Translated by H. E. Butler

Part 26
Do you hear, you who so rashly accuse the art of magic? It is an art
acceptable to the immortal gods, full of all knowledge of worship and of
prayer, full of piety and wisdom in things divine, full of honour and glory
since the day when Zoroaster and Oromazes established it, high-priestess of
the powers of heaven. Nay, it is one of the first elements of princely
instruction, nor do they lightly admit any chance person to be a magician,
any more than they would admit him to be a king. Plato -- if I may quote
him again -- in another passage dealing with a certain Zalmoxis, a Thracian
and also a master of this art has written that magical charms are merely
beautiful words. If that is so, why should I be forbidden to learn the fair
words of Zalmoxis or the priestly lore. of Zoroaster?
But if these accusers of mine, after the fashion of the common herd, define
a magician as one who by communion of speech with the immortal gods
has power to do all the marvels that he will, through a strange power of
incantation, I really wonder that they are not afraid to attack one whom they
acknowledge to be so powerful. For it is impossible to guard against such a
mysterious and divine power. Against other dangers we may take adequate
precautions. He who summons a murderer before the judge comes into
court with an escort of friends; he who denounces a poisoner is unusually
careful as to what he eats; he who accuses a thief sets a guard over his
possessions. But for the man who exposes a magician, credited with such
awful powers, to the danger of a capital sentence, how can escort or
precaution or watchmen save him from unforeseen and inevitable disaster?
Nothing can save him, and therefore the man who believes in the truth of
such a charge as this is certainly the last person in the world who should
bring such an accusation.
Part 27
But it is a common and general error of the uninitiated to bring the
following accusations against philosophers. Some of them think that those
who explore the origins and elements of material things are irreligious, and
assert that they deny the existence of the gods. Take, for instance, the cases
of Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, and other natural
philosophers. Others call those magicians who bestow unusual care on the
investigation of the workings of providence and unusual devotion on their
worship of the gods, as though, forsooth, they knew how to perform
everything that they know actually to be performed. So Epimenides,
Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Ostanes were regarded as magicians, while a
similar suspicion attached to the `purifications' of Empedocles, the `demon'
of Socrates and the `good' of Plato. I congratulate myself therefore on being
admitted to such distinguished company.
I fear, however, Maximus, that you may regard the empty, ridiculous and
childish fictions which my opponents have advanced in support of their
case as serious charges merely because they have been put forward. `Why,'
says my accuser, `have you sought out particular kinds of fish?' Why should
not a philosopher be permitted to do for the satisfaction of his desire for
knowledge what the gourmand is permitted to do for the satisfaction of his
gluttony? `What,' he asks, `induced a free woman to marry you after
thirteen years of widowhood?' As if it were not more remarkable that she
should have remained a widow so long. `Why, before she married you, did
she express certain opinions in a letter?' As if anyone should give the
reasons for another person's private opinions. `But,' he goes on, `although
she was your senior in years, she did not despise your youth.' Surely this
simply serves to show that there was no need of magic to induce a woman
to marry a man, or a widow to wed a bachelor some years her junior. There
are more charges equally frivolous. `Apuleius,' he persists, `keeps a
mysterious object in his house which he worships with veneration.' As if it
were not a worse offence to have nothing to worship at all. `A boy fell to
the ground in Apuleius' presence.' What if a young man or even an old man
had fallen in my presence through a sudden stroke of disease or merely
owing to the slipperiness of the ground? Do you really think to prove your
charge of magic by such arguments as these: the fall of a wretched boy, my
marriage to my wife, my purchases of fish?
Part 28
I should run but small risk if I were to content myself with what I have
already said and begin my peroration. But since as a result of the length at
which my accusers spoke, the water-clock still allows me plenty of time, let
us, if there is no objection, consider the charges in detail. I will deny none
of them, be they true or false. I will assume their truth, that this great crowd,
which has gathered from all directions to hear this case, may clearly
understand not only that no true incrimination can be brought against
philosophers, but that not even any false charge can be fabricated against
them, which -- such is their confidence in their innocence -- they will not be
prepared to admit and to defend, even though it be in their power to deny it.
I will therefore begin by refuting their arguments, and will prove that they
have nothing to do with magic. Next I will show that even on the
assumption of my being the most consummate magician, I have never given
cause or occasion for conviction of any evil practice. I will also deal with
the lies with which they have endeavoured to arouse hostility against me,
with their misquotation and misinterpretation of my wife's letters, and with
my marriage with Pudentilla, whom, as I will proceed to prove, I married
for love and not for money. This marriage of ours caused frightful
annoyance and distress to Aemilianus. Hence springs all the anger, frenzy,
and raving madness that he has shown in the conduct of this accusation.
If I succeed in making all these points abundantly clear and obvious, I shall
then appeal to you, Claudius Maximus, and to all here present to bear me
out, that the boy Sicinius Pudens, my step-son, through whom and with
whose consent his uncle now accuses me, was quite recently stolen from
my charge after the death of Pontianus his brother, who was as much his
superior in character as in years, and that he was fiercely embittered against
myself and his mother through no fault of mine: that he abandoned his
study of the liberal arts and cast off all restraint, and -- thanks to the
education afforded him by this villanous accusation -- is more likely to
resemble his uncle Aemilianus than his brother Pontianus.
Part 29
I will now, as I promised, take Aemilianus' ravings one by one, beginning
with that charge which you must have noticed was given the place of
honour in the accuser's speech, as his most effective method of exciting
suspicion against me as a sorcerer, the charge that I had sought to purchase
certain kinds of fish from some fishermen. Which of these two points is of
the slightest value as affording suspicion of sorcery? That fishermen sought
to procure me the fish ? Would you have me entrust such a task to gold-
embroiderers or carpenters, and, to avoid your calumnies, make them
change their trades so that the carpenter would net me the fish, and the
fisherman take his place and hew his timber? Or did you infer that the fish
were wanted for evil purposes because I paid to get them? I presume, if I
had wanted them for a dinner-party, I should have got them for nothing.
Why do not you go farther and accuse me on many similar grounds ? I have
often bought wine and vegetables, fruit and bread. The principles laid down
by you would involve the starvation of all purveyors of dainties. Who will
ever venture to purchase food from them, if it be decided that all provisions
for which money is given are wanted not for food but for sorcery?
But if there is nothing in all this that can give rise to suspicion, neither the
payment of the fishermen to ply their usual trade, to wit, the capture of fish
-- I may point out that the prosecution never produced any of these
fishermen, who are, as a matter of fact, wholly creatures of their
imagination -- nor the purchase of a common article of sale -- the
prosecution have never stated the amount paid, for fear that if they
mentioned a small sum, it would be regarded as trivial, or if they mentioned
a large sum it would fail to win belief, -- if, I say, there is no cause for
suspicion on any of these grounds, I would ask Aemilianus to tell me what,
failing these, induced them to accuse me of magic.
Part 30
`You seek to purchase fish,' he says. I will not deny it. But, I ask you, is any
one who does that a magician? No more, in my opinion, than if I should
seek to purchase hares or boar's flesh or fatted capons. Or is there
something mysterious in fish and fish alone, hidden from all save sorcerers
only? If you know what it is, clearly you are a magician. If you do not
know, you must confess that you are bringing an accusation of the nature of
which you are entirely ignorant. To think that you should be so ignorant not
only of all literature, but even of popular tales, that you cannot even invent
charges that will have some show of plausibility! For of what use for the
kindling of love is an unfeeling chilly creature like a fish, or indeed
anything else drawn from the sea, unless indeed you propose to bring
forward in support of your lie the legend that Venus was born from the sea?
I beg you to listen to me, Tannonius Pudens, that you may learn the extent
of the ignorance which you have shown by accepting the possession of a
fish as a proof of sorcery. If you had read your Vergil, you would certainly
have known that very different things are sought for this purpose. He, as far
as I recollect, mentions soft garlands and rich herbs and male incense and
threads of diverse hues, and, in addition to these, brittle laurel, clay to be
hardened, and wax to be melted in the fire. There are also the objects
mentioned by him in a more serious poem.
Rank herbs are sought, with milky venom dark
by brazen sickles under moonlight mown;
sought also is that wondrous talisman,
torn from the forehead of the foal at birth
ere yet its dam could snatch it.
But you who take such exception to fish attribute far different instruments
to magicians, charms not to be torn from new-born foreheads, but to be cut
from scaly backs; not to be plucked from the fields of earth, but to be drawn
up from the deep fields of ocean; not to be mowed with sickles, but to be
caught on hooks. Finally, when he is speaking of the black art, Vergil
mentions poison, you produce an entree; he mentions herbs and young
shoots, you talk of scales and bones; he crops the meadow, you search the
waves.
I would also have quoted for your benefit similar passages from Theocritus
with many others from Homer and Orpheus, from the comic and tragic
poets and from the historians, had I not noticed ere now that you were
unable to read Pudentilla's letter which was written in Greek. I will,
therefore, do no more than cite one Latin poet. Those who have read
Laevius will recognize the lines.
Love-charms the warlocks seek through all the world:
The `lover's knot' they try, the magic wheel,
ribbons and nails and roots and herbs and shoots,
the two-tailed lizard that draws on to love,
and eke the charm tbat gods the whinnying mare.
Part 31
You would have made out a far more plausible case by pretending that I
made use of such things instead of fish, if only you had possessed the
slightest erudition. For the belief in the use of these things is so widespread
that you might have been believed. But of what use are fish save to be
cooked and eaten at meals? In magic they seem to me to be absolutely
useless. I will tell you why I think so.
Many hold Pythagoras to have been a pupil of Zoroaster, and, like him, to
have been skilled in magic. And yet it is recorded that once near
Metapontum, on the shores of Italy, his home, which his influence had
converted into a second Greece, he noticed certain fishermen draw up their
net. He offered to buy whatever it might contain, and after depositing the
price ordered all the fish caught in meshes of the net to be relea~ed and
thrown back into the sea. He would assuredly never have allowed them to
slip from his possession had he known them to possess any valuable
magical properties. For being a man of abnormal learning, and a great
admirer of the men of old, he remembered that Homer, a poet of manifold
or, rather I should say, absolute knowledge of all that may be known, spoke
of the power of all the drugs that earth produces, but made no mention of
the sea, when speasing of a certain witch, he wrote the line:
All drugs, that wide earth nourishes, she knew.
Similarly in another passage he says:
Earth the grain-giver
yields up to her its store of drugs, whereo
many be healing, mingled in the cup,
and many baneful.
But never in the works of Homer did Proteus anoint his face nor Ulysses his
magic trench, nor Aeolus his windbags, nor Helen her mixing bowl, nor
Circe her cup, nor Venus her girdle, with any charm drawn from the sea or
its inhabitants. You alone within the memory of man have been found to
sweep as it were by some convulsion of nature all the powers of herbs and
roots and young shoots and small pebbles from their hilltops into the sea,
and there confine them in the entrails of fish. And so whereas sorcerers at
their rites used to call on Mercury the giver of oracles, Venus that lures the
soul, the moon that knows the mystery of the night, and Trivia the mistress
of the shades, you will transfer Neptune, with Salacia and Portumnus and
all the company of Nereids from the cold tides of the sea to the burning
tides of love.
Part 32
I have given my reasons for refusing to believe that magicians and fish have
anything to do with one another. But now, if it please you, we will assume
with Aemilianus that fish are useful for making magical charms as well as
for their usual purposes. But does that prove that whoever acquires fish is
ipso facto a magician? On those lines it might be urged that whoever
acquires a sloop is a pirate, whoever acquires a crowbar a burglar, whoever
acquires a sword an assassin. You will say that there is nothing in the world,
however harmless, that may not be put to some bad use, nothing so cheerful
that it may not be given a gloomy meaning. And yet we do not on that
account put a bad interpretation on everything, though, for instance, you
should hold that incense, cassia, myrrh, and similar other scents are
purchased solely for the purpose of funerals; whereas they are also used for
sacrifice and medicine.
But on the lines of your argument you must believe that even the comrades
of Menelaus were magicians; for they, according to the great poet, averted
starvation at the isle of Pharos by their use of curved fish-hooks. Nay, you
will class in the same category of sorcerers seamews, dolphins, and the
lobster; gourmands also, who sink whole fortunes in the sums they pay to
fishermen; and fishermen themselves, who by their art capture all manner
of fish.
`But what do you want fish for?' you insist. I feel myself under no necessity
to tell you, and refuse to do so. But I challenge you to prove unsupported
that I bought them for the purpose you assert; as though I had bought
hellebore or hemlock or opium or any other of those drugs, the moderate
use of which is salutary, although they are deadly when given with other
substances or in too large quantities. Who would endure it if you made this
a ground for accusing me of being a poisoner, merely because those drugs
are capable of killing a man?
Part 33
However, let us see what these fish were, fish so necessary for my
possession and so hard to find, that they were well worth the price I paid for
their acquisition. They have mentioned no more than three. To one they
gave a false name; as regards the other two they lied. The name was false,
for they asserted that the fish was a sea-hare, whereas it was quite another
fish, which Themison, my servant, who knows something of medicine as
you heard from his own lips, bought of his own suggestion for me to
inspect. For, as a matter of fact, he has not as yet ever come across a sea-
hare. But I admit that I search for other kinds of fish as well, and have
commissioned not only fishermen but private friends to search for all the
rarest kinds of fish, begging them either to describe the appearance of the
fish or to send it me, if possible, alive, or, failing that, dead. Why I do so I
will soon make clear.
My accusers lied -- and very cunning they thought themselves -- when they
closed their false accusation by pretending that I had sought for two sea-
beasts known by gross names. That fellow Tannonius wished to indicate the
nature of the obscenity, but failed, matchless pleader that he is, owing to his
inability to speak. After long hesitation he indicated the name of one of
them by means of some clumsy and disgusting circumlocution. The other
he found impossible to describe with decency, and evaded the difficulty by
turning to my works and quoting a certain passage from them in which I
described the attitude of a statue of Venus.
Part 34
He also with that lofty puritanism which characterizes him, reproached me
for not being ashamed to describe foul things in noble language. I might
justly retort on him that, though he openly professes the study of eloquence,
that stammering voice of his often gives utterance to noble things so basely
as to defile them, and that frequently, when what he has to say presents not
the slightest difficulty, he begins to stutter or even becomes utterly tongue-
tied. Come now! Suppose I had said nothing about the statue of Venus, nor
used the phrase which was of such service to you, what words would you
have found to frame a charge, which is as suited to your stupidity as to your
powers of speech? I ask you, is there anything more idiotic than the
inference that, because the names of two things resemble each other, the
things themselves are identical?
Or did you think it a particularly clever invention on your part to pretend
that I had sought out these two fish for the purpose of using them as
magical charms? Remember that it is as absurd an argument to say that
these sea-creatures with gross names were sought for gross purposes, as to
say that the sea-comb is sought for the adornment of the hair, the fish
named sea-hawk to catch birds, the fish named the little boar for the hunting
of boars, or the sea-skull to raise the dead. My reply to these lying
fabrications, which are as stupid as they are absurd, is that I have never
attempted to acquire these playthings of the sea, these tiny trifles of the
shore, either gratis or for money.
Part 35
Further, I reply that you were quite ignorant of the nature of the objects
which you pretended that I sought to acquire. For these worthless fish you
mention can be found on any shore in heaps and multitudes, and are cast up
on dry land by the merest ripple without any need for human agency. Why
do you not say that at the same time I commissioned large numbers of
fishermen to secure for me at a price striped sea-shells, rough shells,
smooth pebbles, crabs' claws, sea-urchins' husks, the tentacles of cuttlefish,
shingle, straws, cordage, not to mention worm-eaten oyster-shells, moss,
and seaweed, and all the flotsam of the sea that the winds drive, or the salt
wave casts up, or the storm sweeps back, or the calm leaves high and dry all
along our shores? For their names are no less suitable than those I
mentioned above for the purpose of awakening suspicions.
You have said that certain objects drawn from the sea have a certain value
for gross purposes on account of the similarity of their names. On this
analogy why should not a stone be good for diseases of the bladder, a shell
for the making of a will, a crab for a cancer, seaweed for an ague? Really,
Claudius Maximus, in listening to these appallingly long-winded
accusations to their very close you have shown a patience that is excessive
and a kindness which is too long-suffering. For my part when they uttered
these charges of theirs, as though they were serious and cogent, while I
laughed at their stupidity, I marvelled at your patience.
Part 36
However, since he takes so much interest in my affairs, I will now tell
Aemilianus why I have examined so many fishes already and why I am
unwilling to remain in ignorance of some I have not yet seen. Although he
is in the decline of life and suffering from senile decay, let him, if he will,
acquire ome learning even at the eleventh hour. Let him read the words of
the philosophers of old, that now at any rate he may learn that I am not the
first ichthyologist, but follow in the steps of authors, centuries my seniors,
such as Aristotle, Theophrastus, Eudemus, Lycon, and the other successors
of Plato, who have left many books on the generation, life, parts and
differences of animals.
It is a good thing, Maximus, that this case is being tried before a scholar
like yourself, who have read Aristotle's numerous volumes `on the
generation, the anatomy, the history of animals', together with his
numberless `Problems' and works by others of his school, treating of
various subjects of this kind. If it is an honour and glory to them that they
should have put on record the results of their careful researches, why should
it be disgraceful to me to attempt the like task, especially since I shall
attempt to write on those subjects both in Greek and Latin and in a more
concise and systematic manner, and shall strive either to make good
omissions or remedy mistakes in all these authors?
I beg of you, if you think it worth while, to permit the reading of extracts
from my `magic' works, that Aemilianus may learn that my sedulous
researches and inquiries have a wider range than he thinks. Bring a volume
of my Greek works -- some of my friends who are interested in questions of
natural history may perhaps have them with them in court -- take by
preference one of those dealing with problems of natural philosophy, and
from among those that volume in particular which treats of the race of fish.
While he is looking for the book, I will tell you a story which has some
relevance to this case.
Part 37
The poet Sophocles, the rival and survivor of Euripides--for he lived to
extreme old age -- on being accused by his own son of insanity on the
ground that the advance of age had destroyed his wits, is said to have
produced that matchless tragedy, his Oedipus Coloneus, on which he
happened to be engaged at the time, and to have read it aloud to the jury
without adding another word in his defence, except that he bade them
without hesitation to condemn him as insane if an old man's poetry
displeased them. At that point -- so I have read -- the jury rose to their feet
as one man to show their admiration of so great a poet, and praised him
marvellously both for the shrewdness of his argument and for the eloquence
of his tragic verse. And indeed they were not far off unanimously
condemning the accuser as the madman instead.
Have you found the book? Thank you. Let us try now whether what I write
may serve me in good stead in a law-court. Read a few lines at the
beginning, then some details concerning the fish. And do you while he
reads stop the water-clock.
Part 38
You hear, Maximus. You have doubtless frequently read the like in the
wor}s of ancient philosophers. Remember too that these volumes of mine
describe fishes only, distinguishing those that spring from the union of the
sexes from those which are spontaneously generated from the mud,
discussing how often and at what periods of the year the males and females
of each species come together, setting forth the distinction established by
nature between those of them who are viviparous and those who are
oviparous -- for thus I translate the Greek phrases zôiotoka and ôiotoka --
together with the causes of this distinction and the organic differences by
which it is characterized, in a word -- for I would not weary you by
discussing all the different methods of generation in animals -- treating of
the distinguishing marks of species, their various manners of life, the
difference of their members and ages, with many other points necessary for
the man of science but out of place in a law-court.
I will ask that a few of my Latin writings dealing with the same science
may be read, in which you will notice some rare pieces of knowledge and
names but little known to the Romans; indeed they have never been
produced before today, but yet thanks to my toil and study they have been
so translated from the Greek, that in spite of their strangeness they are none
the less of Latin mintage. Do you deny this, Aemilianus? If so, let your
advocates tell me in what Latin author they have ever before read such
words as those which I will cause to be recited to you. I will mention only
aquatic animals, nor will I make any reference to other animals save in
connexion with the characteristics which distinguish them from aquatic
creatures. Listen then to what I say. You will cry out at me saying that I am
giving you a list of magic names such as are used in Egyptian or
Babylonian rites. Selacheia, malacheia, malakostraka, chondrakantha,
ostrakoderma, karcharodonta, amphibia, lepidôta, pholidôta, dermoptera,
steganopoda, monèrè, sunagelastika -- I might continue the list, but it is not
worth wasting time over such trifles, and I need time to deal with other
charges. Meanwhile read out my translation into Latin of the few names I
have just given you.
Part 39
What do you think? Is it disgraceful for a philosopher who is no rude and
unlearned person of the reckless Cynic type, but who remembers that he is a
disciple of Plato, is it disgraceful for such an one to know and care for such
learning or to be ignorant and indifferent? To know how far such things
reveal the workings of providence, or to swallow all the tales his father and
mother told him of the immortal gods?
Quintus Ennius wrote a poem on dainties: he there enumerates countless
species of fish, which of course he had carefully studied. I remember a few
lines and will recite them:
Clipea's sea-weasels are of all the best,
for `mice' the place is Aenus; oysters rough
in greatest plenty from Abydos come.
The sea-comb's found at Mitylene and
Ambracian Charadrus, and I praise
Brundisian sargus: take him, if he's big.
Know that Tarentum's small sea-boar is prime;
the sword-fish at Surrentum thou shouldst buy;
Blue fish at Cumae. What! Have I passed by
Scarus? The brain of Jove is not less sweet.
You catch them large and good off Nestor's home.
Have I passed by the black-tail and the `thrush',
the sea-merle and the shadow of the sea?
Best to Corcyra go for cuttle-fish,
for the acarne and the fat sea-skull
the purple-fish, the little murex too,
mice of the sea and the sea-urchin sweet.
He glorified many fish in other verses, stating where each was to be found
and whether they were best fried or stewed, and yet he is not blamed for it
by the learned. Spare then to blame me, who describe things known to few
under elegant and appropriate names both in Greek and Latin.
Part 40
Enough of this! I call your attention to another point. What if I take such
interest and possess such skill in medicine as to search for certain remedies
in fish? For assuredly as nature with impartial munificence has distributed
and implanted many remedies throughout all other created things, so also
similar remedies are to be found in fish. Now, do you think it more the
business of a magician than of a doctor, or indeed of a philosopher, to know
and seek out remedies? For the philosopher will use them not to win money
for his purse, but to give assistance to his fellow men. The doctors of old
indeed knew how to cure wounds by magic song, as Homer, the most
reliable of all the writers of antiquity, tells us, making the blood of Ulysses
to be stayed by a chant as it gushed forth from a wound. Now nothing that
is done to save life can be matter for accusation.
`But,' says my adversary, `for what purpose save evil did you dissect the
fish brought you by your servant Themison?' As if I had not told you just
now that I write treatises on the organs of all kind of animals, describing the
place, number and purpose of their various parts, diligently investigating
Aristotle's works on anatomy and adding to them where necessary. I am,
therefore, greatly surprised that you are only aware of my having inspected
one small fish, although I have actually inspected a very large number
under all circumstances wherever I might find them, and have, moreover,
made no secret of my researches, but conducted them openly before all the
world, so that the merest stranger may, if it please him, stand by and
observe me. In this I follow the instruction of my masters, who assert that a
free man of free spirit should as far as possible wear his thoughts upon his
face. Indeed I actually showed this small fish, which you call a sea-hare, to
many who stood by.
I do not yet know what name to call it without closer research, since in spite
of its rarity and most remarkable characteristics I do not find it described by
any of the ancient philosophers. This fish is, as far as my knowledge
extends, unique in one respect, for it contains twelve bones resembling the
knuckle-bones of a sucking-pig, linked together like a chain in its belly.
Apart from this it is boneless. Had Aristotle known this, Aristotle who
records as a most remarkable phenomenon the fact that the fish known as
the small sea-ass alone of all fishes has its diminutive heart placed in its
stomach, he would assuredly have mentioned the fact.
Part 41
`You dissected a fish,' he says. Who can call this a crime in a philosopher
which would be no crime in a butcher or cook? `You dissected a fish.'
Perhaps you object to the fact that it was raw. You would not regard it as
criminal if I had explored its stomach and cut up its delicate liver after it
was cooked, as you teach the boy Sicinius Pudens to do with his own fish at
meals. And yet it is a greater crime for a philosopher to eat fish than to
inspect them. Are augurs to be allowed to explore the livers of victims and
may not a philosopher look at them too, a philosopher who knows that he
can draw omens from every animal, that he is the high-priest of every god?
Do you bring that as a reproach against me which is one of the reasons for
the admiration with which Maximus and myself regard Aristotle? Unless
you drive his works from the libraries and snatch them from the hands of
students you cannot accuse me. But enough! I have said almost more on
this subject than I ought.
See, too, how they contradict themselves. They say that I sought my wife in
marriage with the help of the black art and charms drawn from the sea at the
very time when they acknowledge me to have been in the midmost
mountains of Gaetulia, where, I suppose, Deucalion's deluge has made it
possible to find fish! I am, however, glad that they do not know that I have
read Theophrastus' `On beasts that bite and sting' and Nicander `On the
bites of wild animals'; otherwise they would have accused me of poisoning
as well! As a matter of fact I have acquired a knowledge of these subjects
thanks to my reading of Aristotle and my desire to emulate him. I owe
something also to the advice of my master Plato, who rays that those who
make such investigations as these `pursue a delightful form of amusement
which they will never regret.'
Part 42
Since I have sufficiently cleared up this business of the fish, listen to
another of their inventions equally stupid, but much more extravagant and
far more wicked. They themselves knew that their argument about the fish
was futile and bound to fail. They realized, moreover, its strange absurdity
(for who ever heard of fish being scaled and boned for dark purposes of
magic?), they realized that it would be better for their fictions to deal with
things of more common report, which have ere now been believed. And so
they devised the following fiction which does at least fall within the limits
of popular credence and rumour. They asserted that I had taken a boy apart
to a secret place with a small altar and a lantern and only a few accomplices
as witnesses, and there so bewitched him with a magical incantation that he
fell in the very spot where I pronounced the charm, and on being awakened
was found to be out of his wits. They did not dare to go any further with the
lie. To complete their story they should have added that the boy uttered
many prophecies.
For this we know is the prize of magical incantations, namely divination
and prophecy. And this miracle in the case of boys is confirmed not only by
vulgar opinion but by the authority of learned men. I remember reading
various relations of the kind in the philosopher Varro, a writer of the highest
learning and erudition, but there was the following story in particular.
Inquiry was being made at Tralles by means of magic into the probable
issue of the Mithridatic war, and a boy who was gazing at an image of
Mercury reflected in a bowl of water foretold the future in a hundred and
sixty lines of verse. He records also that Fabius, having lost five hundred
denarii, came to consult Nigidius; the latter by means of incantations
inspired certain boys so that they were able to indicate to him where a pot
containing a certain portion of the money had been hidden in the ground,
and how the remainder had been dispersed, one denarius having found its
way into the possession of Marcus Cato the philosopher. This coin Cato
acknowledged he had received from a certain lackey as a contribution to the
treasury of Apollo.
Part 43
I have read this and the like concerning boys and art-magic in several
authors, but I am in doubt whether to admit the truth of such stories or no,
although I believe Plato when he asserts that there are certain divine powers
holding a position and possessing a character midway between gods and
men, and that all divination and the miracles of magicians are controlled by
them. Moreover it is my own personal opinion that the human soul,
especially when it is young and unsophisticated, may by the allurement of
music or the soothing influence of sweet smells be lulled into slumber and
banished into oblivion of its surroundings so that, as all consciousness of
the body fades from the memory, it returns and is reduced to its primal
nature, which is in truth immortal and divine; and thus, as it were in a kind
of slumber, it may predict the future.
But howsoever these things may be, if any faith is to be put in them, the
prophetic boy must, as far as I can understand, be fair and unblemished in
body, shrewd of wit and ready of speech, so that a worthy and fair shrine
may be provided for the divine indwelling power (if indeed such a power
does enter into the boy's body) or that the boy's mind when wakened may
quickly apply itself to its inherent powers of divination, find them ready to
its use and reproduce their promptings undulled and unimpaired by any loss
of memory. For, as Pythagoras said, not every kind of wood is fit to be
carved into the likeness of Mercury.
If that be so, tell me who was that healthy, unblemished, intelligent,
handsome boy whom I deemed worthy of initiation into such mysteries by
the power of my spells. As a matter of fact, Thallus, whom you nentioned,
needs a doctor rather than a magician. For the poor wretch is such a victim
to epilepsy that he frequently has fits twice or thrice in one day without the
need for any incantations, and exhausts all his limbs with his convulsions.
His face is ulcerous, his head bruised in front and behind, his eyes are dull,
his nostrils distended, his feet stumbling. He may claim to be the greatest of
magicians in whose presence Thallus has remained for any considerable
time upon his feet. For he is continually lying down, either a seizure or
mere weariness causing him to collapse.
Part 44
Yet you say that it is my incantations that have overwhelmed him, simply
because he has once chanced to have a fit in my presence. Many of his
fellow servants, whose appearance as witnesses you have demanded, are
present in court. They all can tell you why it is they spit upon Thallus, and
why no one ventures to eat from the same dish with him or to drink from
the same cup. But why do I speak of these slaves? You yourselves have
eyes. Deny then, if you dare, that Thallus used to have fits of epilepsy long
before I came to Oea, or that has frequently been shown to doctors. Do his
fellow slaves, who are at your service, deny this?
I will confess myself guilty of everything, if he has not long since been sent
away into the country, far from the sight of all of them, to a distant farm, for
fear he should infect the rest of the household. They cannot deny this to be
the fact. For the same reason it is impossible for us to produce him here
today. The whole of this accusation has been reckless and sudden, and it
was only the day before yesterday that Aemilianus demanded that we
should produce fifteen slaves before you. The fourteen living in the town
are present today. Thallus only is absent owing to the fact that he has been
banished to a place some hundred miles distant. However, we have sent a
man to bring him here in a carriage.
I ask you, Maximus, to question these fourteen slaves whom we have
produced as to where the boy Thallus is and what is the state of his health; I
ask you to question my accuser's slaves. They will not deny that this boy is
of revolting appearance, that his body is rotten through and through with
disease, that he is liable to fits, and is a barbarian and a clodhopper. This is
indeed a handsome boy whom you have selected as one who might fairly be
produced at the offering of sacrifice, whom one might touch upon the head
and clothe in a fair white cloak in expectation of some prophetic reply from
his lips! I only wish he were present. I would have entrusted him to your
tender mercies, Aemilianus, and would be ready to hold him myself that
you might question him. Here in open court before the judges he would
have rolled his wild eyes upon you, he would have foamed at the mouth,
spat in your face, drawn in his hands convulsively, shaken his head and
fallen at last in a fit into your arms.
Part 45
Here are fourteen slaves whom you bade me produce in court. Why do you
refuse to question them? You want one epileptic boy who, you know as well
as I, has long been absent from Oea. What clearer evidence of the falseness
of your accusations could be desired? Fourteen slaves are present, as you
required; you ignore them. One young boy is absent: you concentrate your
attack on him. What is it that you want? Suppose Thallus were present. Do
you want to prove that he had a fit in my presence? Why, I myself admit it.
You say that this was the result of incantation. I answer that the boy knows
nothing about it, and that I can prove that it was not so. Even you will not
deny that Thallus was epileptic. Why then attribute his fall to magic rather
than disease? Was there anything improbable in his suffering that fate in my
presence, which he has often suffered on other occasions in the presence of
a number of persons?
Nay, even supposing I had thought it a great achievement to cast an
epileptic into a fit, why should I use charms when, as I am told by writers
on natural history, the burning of the stone named gagates is an equally sure
and easy proof of the disease? For its scent is commonly used as a test of
the soundness or infirmity of slaves even in the slave-market. Again, the
spinning of a potter's wheel will easily infect a man suffering from this
disease with its own giddiness. For the sight of its rotations weakens his
already feeble mind, and the potter is far more effective than the magician
for casting epileptics into convulsions.
You had no reason for demanding that I should produce these slaves; I have
good reason for asking you to name those who witnessed that guilty ritual
when I cast the moribund Thallus into one of his fits. The only witness you
mention is that worthless boy, Sicinius Pudens, in whose name you accuse
me. He says that he was present. His extreme youth is no reason why we
should reject his sworn evidence, but the fact that he is one of my accusers
does detract from his credibility. It would have been easier for you,
Aemilianus, and your evidence would have carried much more weight, had
you said that you were present at the rite and had been mad ever since,
instead of entrusting the whole business to the evidence of boys as though it
were a mere joke. A boy had a fit, a boy saw him. Was it also some boy that
bewitched him?
Part 46
At this point Tannonius Pudens, like the old hand he is, saw that this lie also
was falling flat and was doomed to failure by the frowns and murmurs of
the audience, and so, in order to check the suspicions of some of them by
kindling fresh expectations, he said that he would produce other boys as
well whom I had similarly bewitched. He thus passed to another line of
accusation.
I might ignore it, but I will go out of my way to challenge it as I have done
with all the rest. I want those boys to be produced. I hear they have been
bribed by the promise of their liberty to perjure themselves. But I say no
more. Only produce them. I demand and insist, Tannonius Pudens, that you
should fulfil your promise. Bring forward those boys in whose evidence
you put your trust; produce them, name them. You may use the time allotted
to my speech for the purpose. Speak, I say, Tannonius. Why are you silent?
Why do you hesitate? Why look round? If he does not remember what he
has said, or has forgotten his witnesses' names, do you at any rate,
Aemilianus, come forward and tell us what instructions you gave your
advocate, and produce those boys. Why do you turn pale? Why are you
silent? Is this the way to bring an accusation? Is this the way to indict a man
on so serious a charge? Is it not rather an insult to so distinguished a citizen
as Claudius Maximus, and a false and slanderous persecution of myself?
However, if your representative has made a slip in his speech, and there are
no such boys to produce, at any rate make some use of the fourteen whom I
have brought into court. If you refuse, why did you demand the appearance
of such a housefull?
Part 47
You have demanded fifteen slaves to support an accusation of magic; how
many would you be demanding if it were a charge of violence? The
inference is that fifteen slaves know something, and that something is still a
mystery. Or is it nothing mysterious and yet something connected with
magic? You must admit one of these two alternatives: either the proceeding
to which I admitted so many witnesses had nothing improper about it, or, if
it had, it should not have been witnessed by so many. Now this magic of
which you accuse me is, I am told, a crime in the eyes of the law, and was
forbidden in remote antiquity by the Twelve Tables because in some
incredible manner crops had been charmed away from one field to another.
It is then as mysterious an art as it is loathly and horrible; it needs as a rule
night-watches and concealing darkness, solitude absolute and murmured
incantations, to hear which few free men are admitted, not to speak of
slaves. And yet you will have it that there were fifteen slaves present on this
occasion. Was it a marriage? Or any other crowded ceremony? Or a
seasonable banquet? Fifteen slaves take part in a magic rite as though they
had been created quindecimvirs for the performance of sacrifice! Is it likely
that I should have permitted so large a number to be present on such an
occasion, if they were too many to be accomplices? Fifteen free men form a
borough, fifteen slaves a household, fifteen fettered serfs a chain-gang. Did
I need such a crowd to help me by holding the lustral victims during the
lengthy rite? No! the only victims you mentioned were hens! Were they to
count the grains of incense? Or to knock Thallus down?
Part 48
You assert also that by promising to heal her I inveigled to my house a free
woman who suffered from the same disease as Thallus; that she, too, fell
senseless as a result of my incantations. It appears to me that you are
accusing a wrestler, not a magician, since you say that all who visited me
had a fall. And yet Themison, who is a physician and who brought the
woman for my inspection, denied, when you asked him, Maximus, that I
had done anything to the woman other than ask her whether she heard
noises in her ears, and if so, which ear suffered most. He added that she
departed immediately after telling me that her right ear was most troubled
in that way.
At this point, Maximus, although I have for the present been careful to
abstain from praising you, lest I should seem to have flattered you with an
eye to winning my case, yet I cannot help praising you for the astuteness of
your questions. After they had spent much time in discussing these points
and asserting that I had bewitched the woman, and after the doctor who was
present on that occasion had denied that I had done so, you, with
shrewdness more than human, asked them what profit I derived from my
incantations They replied, `The woman had a fit.' `What then?' you asked,
`Did she die?' `No,' they said. `What is your point then? How did the fact of
her having a fit profit Apuleius?'
That third question showed brilliant penetration and persistence. You knew
that it was necessary to submit all facts to stringent examination of their
causes, that often facts are admitted while motives remain to seek, and that
the representatives of litigants are called pleaders of causes, because they
set forth the causes of each particular act. To deny a fact is easy and needs
no advocate, but it is far more arduous and difficult a task to demonstrate
the rightness or wrongness of a given action. It is waste of time, therefore,
to inquire whether a thing was done, when, even if it were done, no evil
motive can be alleged. Under such circumstances, if no criminal motive is
forthcoming, a good judge releases the accused from all further vexatious
inquiry.
So now, since they have not proved that I either bewitched the woman or
caused her to have a fit, I for my part will not deny that I examined her at
the request of a physician; and I will tell you, Maximus, why I asked her if
she had noises in her ears. I will do this not so much to clear myself of the
charge which you, Maximus, have already decided to involve neither blame
nor guilt, as to impart to you something worthy of your hearing and
interesting to one of your erudition. I will tell you in as few words as
possible. I have only to call your attention to certain facts. To instruct you
would be presumption.
Part 49
The philosopher Plato, in his glorious work, the Timaeus, sets forth with
more than mortal eloquence the constitution of the whole universe. After
discoursing with great insight on the three powers that make up man's soul,
and showing with the utmost clearness the divine purpose that shaped our
various members, he treats of the causes of all diseases under three heads.
The first cause lies in the elements of the body, when the actual qualities of
those elements, moisture and cold and their two opposites, fail to
harmonize. That comes to pass when one of these clements assumes undue
proportions or moves from its proper place. The second cause of disease
lies in the vitiation of those components of the body which, though formed
out of the simple elements, have coalesced in such a manner as to have a
specific character of their own, such as blood, entrails, bone, marrow, and
the various substances made from the blending of each of these. Thirdly, the
concretion in the body of various juices, turbid vapours, and dense humours
is the last provocative of sickness.
Part 50
Of these causes that which contributes most to epilepsy, the disease of
which I set out to speak, is a condition when the flesh is so melted by the
noxious influence of fire as to form a thick and foaming humour. This
generates a vapour, and the heat of the air thus compressed within the body
causes a white and eruptive ferment. If this ferment succeeds in escaping
from the body, it is dispersed in a manner that is repulsive rather than
dangerous. For it causes an eczema to break out upon the surface of the skin
of the breast and mottles it with all kinds of blotches. But the person to
whom this happens is never again attacked with epilepsy, and so he rids
himself of a most sore disease of the spirit at the price of a slight
disfigurement of the body.
But if, on the other hand, this dangerous corruption be contained within the
body and mingle with the black bile, and so run fiercely through every vein,
and then working its way upwards to the head flood the brain with its
destructive stream, it straightway weakens that royal part of man's spirit
which is endowed with the power of reason and is enthroned in the head of
man, that is its citadel and palace. For it overwhelms and throws into
confusion those channels of divinity and paths of wisdom. During sleep it
makes less havoc, but when men are full of meat and wine it makes its
presence somewhat unpleasantly felt by a choking sensation, the herald of
epilepsy. But if it reaches such strength as to attack the heads of men when
they are wide awake, then their minds grow dull with a sudden cloud of
stupefaction and they fall to the ground, their bodies swooning as in death,
their spirit fainting within them. Men of our race have styled it not only the
`Great sickness ' and the `Comitial sickness', but also the `Divine sickness',
in this resembling the Greeks, who call it hiera nosos, the holy sickness.
The name is just; for this sickness does outrage to the rational part of the
soul, which is by far the most holy.
 The Defense
By Apuleius
Translated by H. E. Butler

Part 51
You recognize, Maximus, the theory of Plato, as far as I have been able to
give it a lucid explanation in the time at my disposal. I put my trust in him
when he says that the cause of epilepsy is the overflowing of this
pestilential humour into the head. My inquiry therefore was, I think,
reasonable when I asked the woman whether her head felt heavy, her neck
numb, her temples throbbing, her ears full of noises. The fact that she
acknowledged these noises to be more frequent in her right ear was proof
that the disease had gone home. For the right-hand organs of the body are
the strongest, and therefore their infection with the disease leaves small
hope of recovery. Indeed Aristotle has left it on record in his Problems that
whenever in the case of epileptics the disease begins on the right side, their
cure is very difficult. It would be tedious were I to repeat the opinion of
Theophrastus also on the subject of epilepsy. For he has left a most
excellent treatise on convulsions. He asserts, however, in another book on
the subject of animals ill-disposed towards mankind, that the skins of newts
-- which like other reptiles they shed at fixed intervals for the renewal of
their youth -- form a remedy for fits. But unless you snatch up the skin as
soon as it be shed, they straightway turn upon it and devour it, whether
from a malign foreknowledge of its value to men or from a natural taste for
it.
I have mentioned these things, I have been careful to quote the arguments of
renowned philosophers, and to mention the books where they are to be
found, and have avoided any reference to the works of physicians or poets,
that my adversaries may cease to wonder that philosophers have learnt the
causes of remedies and diseases in the natural course of their researches.
Well then, since this woman was brought to be examined by me in the hope
that she might be cured, and since it is clear both from the evidence of the
physician who brought her and from the arguments I have just set forth that
such a course was perfectly right, my opponents must needs assert that it is
the part of a magician and evildoer to heal disease, or, if they do not dare to
say that, must confess that their accusations in regard to this epileptic boy
and woman are false, absurd, and indeed epileptic.
Part 52
Yes, Aemilianus, if you would hear the truth, you are the real sufferer from
the falling sickness, so often have your false accusations failed and cast you
helpless to the ground. Bodily collapse is no worse than intellectual, and it
is as important to keep one's head as to keep one's feet, while it is as
unpleasant to be loathed by this distinguished gathering as to be spat upon
in one's own chamber. But you perhaps think yourself sane because you are
not confined within doors, but follow the promptings of your madness
whithersoever it lead you: and yet compare your frenzy with that of
Thallus; you will find that there is but little to choose between you, save
that Thallus confines his frenzy to himself, while you direct yours against
others; Thallus distorts his eyes, you distort the truth; Thallus contracts his
hands convulsively, you not less convulsively contract with your advocates;
Thallus dashes himself against the pavement, you dash yourself against the
judgement-seat. In a word, whatever he does, he does in his sickness erring
unconsciously; but you, wretch, commit your crimes with full knowledge
and with your eyes open, such is the vehemence of the disease that inspires
your actions. You bring false accusations as though they were true; you
charge men with doing what has never been done; though a man's
innocence be clear to you as daylight, you denounce him as though he were
guilty.
Part 53
Nay, further, though I had almost forgotten to mention it, there are certain
things of which you confess your ignorance, and which nevertheless you
make material for accusation as though you knew all about them. You assert
that I kept something mysterious wrapped up in a handkerchief among the
household gods in the house of Pontianus. You confess your ignorance as to
what may have been the nature or appearance of this object; you further
admit that no one ever saw it, and yet you assert that it was some instrument
of magic. You are not to be congratulated on this method of procedure.
Your accusation reveals no shrewdness, and has not even the merit of
impudence. Do not think so for a moment. No! It shows naught save the ill-
starred madness of an embittered spirit and the pitiable fury of cantankerous
old age.
The words you used in the presence of so grave and perspicacious a judge
amounted to something very like this. `Apuleius kept certain things
wrapped in a cloth among the household gods in the house of Pontianus.
Since I do not know what they were, I therefore argue that they were
magical. I beg you to believe what I say, because I am talking of that of
which I know nothing.' What a wonderful argument, in itself an obvious
refutation of the charge. `It must have been this, because I do not know
what it was.' You are the only person hitherto discovered who knows that
which he does not know. You so far surpass all others in folly, that whereas
philosophers of the most keen and penetrating intellect assert that we should
not trust even the objects that we see, you make statements about things
which you have never seen or heard.
If Pontianus still lived and you were to ask him what the cloth contained, he
would reply that he did not know. There is the freedman who still has
charge of the keys of the place; he is one of your witnesses, but he says that
he has never examined these objects, although, as the servant responsible
for the books kept there, he opened and shut the doors almost daily,
continually entered the room, not seldom in my company but more often
alone, and saw the cloth lying on the table unprotected by seal or cord.
Quite natural, was it not? Magical objects were concealed in the cloth, and
for that reason I took little care for its safe custody, but left it about anyhow
for any one to examine and inspect, if he liked, or even to carry it away! I
entrusted it to the custody of others, I left it to others to dispose of at their
pleasure!
What credence do you expect us to give you after this? Are we to believe
that you, on whom I have never set eyes save in this court, know that of
which Pontianus, who actually lived under the same roof, was ignorant? Or
shall we believe that you, who have never so much as approached the room
where they were placed, have seen what the freedman never saw, although
he had every opportunity to inspect them during the sedulous performance
of his duties?
Suppose that what you never saw was such as you say. Yet, you fool, if this
very day you had succeeded in getting that handkerchief into your hands, I
should deny the magical nature of whatever you might produce from it.
Part 54
I give you full leave; invent what you like, rack your memory and your
imagination to discover something that might conceivably seem to be of a
magical nature. Even then, should you succeed in so doing, I should argue
the point with you. I should say that the object in question had been
substituted by you for the original, or that it had been given as a remedy, or
that it was a sacred emblem that had been placed in my keeping, or that a
vision had bidden me to carry it thus. There are a thousand other ways in
which I might refute you with perfect truth and without giving any
explanation which is abnormal or lies outside the limits of common
observation. You are now demanding that a circumstance, which, even if it
were proved up to the hilt, would not prejudice me in the eyes of a good
judge, should be fatal to me when, as it is, it rests on vague suspicion,
uncertainty, and ignorance.
You will perhaps, as is your wont, say, `What, then, was it that you wrapped
in a linen cloth and were so careful to deposit with the household gods?'
Really, Aemilianus! Is this the way you accuse your victims? You produce
no definite evidence yourself, but ask the accused for explanations of
everything.' `Why do you search for fish?' `Why did you examine a sick
woman?' `What had you hidden in your handkerchief?' Did you come here
to accuse me or to ask me questions? If to accuse me, prove your charges
yourself; if to ask questions, do not anticipate the truth by expressing
opinions on that concerning which your ignorance compels you to inquire.
If this precedent is followed, if there is no necessity for the accuser to prove
anything, but on the contrary he is given every facility for asking questions
of the accused, there is not a man in all the world but will be indicted on
some charge or other. In fact, everything that he has ever done will be used
as a handle against any man who is charged with sorcery. Have you written
a petition on the thigh of some statue? You are a sorcerer! Else why did you
write it? Have you breathed silent prayers to heaven in some temple? You
are a sorcerer! Else tell us what you asked for? Or take the contrary line.
You uttered no prayer in some temple! You are a sorcerer! Else why did you
not ask the gods for something? The same argument will be used if you
have made some votive dedication, or offered sacrifice, or carried sprigs of
some sacred plant. The day will fail me if I attempt to go through all the
different circumstances of which, on these lines, the false accuser will
demand an explanation. Above all, whatever object he has kept concealed
or stored under lock and key at home will be asserted by the same argument
to be of a magical nature, or will be dragged from its cupboard into the light
of the law-court before the seat of judgement.
Part 55
I might discourse at greater length on the nature and importance of such
accusations, on the wide range for slander that this path opens for
Aemilianus, on the floods of perspiration that this one poor handkerchief
will cause his innocent victims. But I will follow the course I have already
pursued. I will acknowledge what there is no necessity for me to
acknowledge, and will answer Aemilianus' questions. You ask, Aemilianus,
what I had in that handkerchief.
Although I might deny that I had deposited any handkerchief of mine in
Pontianus' library, or even admitting that it was true enough that I did so
deposit it, I might still deny that there was anything wrapped up in it. If I
should take this line, you have no evidence or argument whereby to refute
me, for there is no one who has ever handled it, and only one freedman,
according to your own assertion, who has ever seen it. Still, as far as I am
concerned I will admit the cloth to have been full to bursting. Imagine
yourself, please, to be on the brink of a great discovery, like the comrades
of Ulysses who thought they had found a treasure when they stole the bag
that contained all the winds. Would you like me to tell you what I had
wrapped up in a handkerchief and entrusted to the care of Pontianus'
household gods? You shall have your will.
I have been initiated into various of the Greek mysteries, and preserve with
the utmost care certain emblems and mementoes of my initiation with
which the priests presented me. There is nothing abnormal or unheard of in
this. Those of you here present who have been initiated into the mysteries
of father Liber alone, know what you keep hidden at home, safe from all
profane touch and the object of your silent veneration. But I, as I have said,
moved by my religious fervour and my desire to know the truth, have
learned mysteries of many a kind, rites in great number, and diverse
ceremonies. This is no invention on the spur of the moment; nearly three
years since, in a public discourse on the greatness of Aesculapius delivered
by me during the first days of my residence at Oea, I made the same boast
and recounted the number of the mysteries I knew. That discourse was
thronged, has been read far and wide, is in all men's hands, and has won the
affections of the pious inhabitants of Oea not so much through any
eloquence of mine as because it treats of Aesculapius.
Will anyone, who chances to remember it, repeat the beginning of that
particular passage in my discourse? You hear, Maximus, how many voices
supply the words. I will order this same passage to be read aloud, since by
the courteous expression of your face you show that you will not be
displeased to hear it.
Part 56
Can anyone, who has the least remembrance of the nature of religious rites,
be surprised that one who has been initiated into so many holy mysteries
should preserve at home certain talismans associated with these ceremonies,
and should wrap them in a linen cloth, the purest of coverings for holy
things? For wool, produced by the most stolid of creatures and stripped
from the sheep's back, the followers of Orpheus and Pythagoras are for that
very reason forbidden to wear as being unholy and unclean. But flax, the
purest of all growths and among the best of all the fruits of the earth, is used
by the holy priests of Egypt, not only for clothing and raiment, but as a veil
for sacred things.
And yet I know that some persons, among them that fellow Aemilianus,
think it a good jest to mock at things divine. For I learn from certain men of
Oea who know him, that to this day he has never prayed to any god or
frequented any temple, while if he chances to pass any shrine, he regards it
as a crime to raise his hand to his lips in token of reverence. He has never
given firstfruits of crops or vines or flocks to any of the gods of the farmer,
who feed him and clothe him; his farm holds no shrine, no holy place, nor
grove. But why do I speak of groves or shrines? Those who have been on
his property say they never saw there one stone where offering of oil has
been made, one bough where wreaths have been hung. As a result, two
nicknames have been given him: he is called Charon, as I have said, on
account of his truculence of spirit and of countenance, but he is also -- and
this is the name he prefers -- called Mezentius, because he despises the
gods. I therefore find it the easier to understand that he should regard my
list of initiations in the light of a jest. It is even possible that, thanks to his
rejection of things divine, he may be unable to induce himself to believe
that it is true that I guard so reverently so many emblems and relics of
mysterious rites.
But what Mezentius may think of me, I do not care a straw; to others I make
this announcement clearly and unshrinkingly: if any of you that are here
present had any part with me in these same solemn ceremonies, give a sign
and you shall hear what it is I keep thus. For no thought of personal safety
shall induce me to reveal to the uninitiated the secrets that I have received
and sworn to conceal.
Part 57
I have, I think, Maximus, said enough to satisfy the most prejudiced of men
and, as far as the handkerchief is concerned, have cleared myself of every
speck of guilt. I shall run no risk in passing from the suspicions of
Aemilianus to the evidence of Crassus, which my accusers read out next as
if it were of the utmost importance.
You heard them read from a written deposition, the evidence of a gorging
brute, a hopeless glutton, named Junius Crassus, that I performed certain
nocturnal rites at his house in company with my friend Appius Quintianus,
who had taken lodgings there. This, mark you, Crassus says that he
discovered (in spite of the fact that he was as far away as Alexandria at the
time!) from finding the feathers of birds and traces of the smoke of a torch.
I suppose that while he was enjoying a round of festivities at Alexandria --
for Crassus is one who is ready even to encroach upon the daylight with his
gluttonies -- I suppose, I say, that there from his reeking-tavern he espied,
with eye keen as any fowler's, feathers of birds wafted towards him from
his house, and saw the smoke of his home rising far off from his ancestral
rooftree. If he saw this with his eyes, he saw even further than Ulysses
prayed and yearned to see. For Ulysses spent years in gazing vainly from
the shore to see the smoke rising from his home, while Crassus during a few
months' absence from home succeeded, without the least difficulty, in
seeing this same smoke as he sat in a wine-shop! If, on the other hand, it
was his nose that discerned the smoke, he surpasses hounds and vultures in
the keenness of his sense of smell. For what hound, what vulture hovering
in the Alexandrian sky, could sniff out anything so far distant as Oea?
Crassus is, I admit, a gourmand of the first order, and an expert in all the
varied flavours of kitchen-smoke, but in view of his love of drinking, his
only real title to fame, it would have been easier to reach him at Alexandria
for the fumes of his wine rather than the fumes of his chimney.
Part 58
Even he saw that this would pass belief. For he is said to have sold this
evidence before eight in the morning while he was still fasting from food
and drink! And so he wrote that he had made his discovery in the following
manner. On his return from Alexandria he went straight to his house, which
Quintianus had by this time left. There in the entrance-hall he came across a
large quantity of birds' feathers: the walls, moreover, were blackened with
soot. He asked the reason of this from the slave whom he had left at Oea,
and the latter informed him of the nocturnal rites carried out by myself and
Quintianus.
What an ingenious lie! What a probable invention! That I, had I wished to
do anything of the sort, should have done it there rather than in my own
house! That Quintianus, who is supporting me here today, and whom I
mention with the greatest respect and honour for the close love that binds
him to me, for his deep erudition and consummate eloquence, that this same
Quintianus, supposing him to have dined off some birds or, as they assert,
killed them for magical purposes, should have had no slave to sweep up the
feathers and throw them out of doors! Or further that the smoke should have
been strong enough to blacken the walls and that Quintianus should have
suffered such defacement of his bedroom for as long as he lived there!
Nonsense, Aemilianus! There is no probability in the story, unless indeed
Crassus on his return went not to the bedroom, but after his fashion made
straight for the kitchen.
And what made his slave suspect that the walls had been blackened by night
in particular? Was it the colour of the smoke? Does night smoke differ from
day smoke in being darker? And why did so suspicious and conscientious a
slave allow Quintianus to leave the house before having it cleaned? Why
did those feathers lie like lead and await the arrival of Crassus for so long?
Let not Crassus accuse his slave. It is much more likely that he himself
fabricated this mendacious nonsense about feathers and soot, being unable
even in his evidence to divorce himself further from his kitchen.
Part 59
And why did you read out this evidence from a written deposition? Where
in the world is Crassus? Has he returned to Alexandria out of disgust at the
state of his house? Is he washing his walls? Or, as is more likely, is the
glutton feeling ill after his debauch? I myself saw him yesterday here at
Sabrata belching in your face, Aemilianus, in the most conspicuous manner
in the middle of the market-place. Pray, Maximus, ask your slaves whose
duty it is to keep you informed of people's names -- although, I admit,
Crassus is better known to the keepers of taverns -- yet ask them, I say,
whether they have ever seen Junius Crassus, a citizen of Oea, in this place.
They will answer `yes'. Let Aemilianus then produce this most admirable
young man on whose testimony he relies.
You notice the time of day. I tell you that Crassus has long since been
snoring in a drunken slumber or has taken a second bathe and is now
evaporating the sweat of intoxication at the bath that he may be equal to a
fresh drinking bout after supper. He presents himself in writing only. That is
the way he speaks to you, Maximus. Even he is not so dead to sense of
shame as to be able to lie to your face without a blush. But there is perhaps
another reason for his absence. He may have been unable to abstain from
drunkenness sufficiently long to keep sober against this moment.
Or it may be that Aemilianus took good care not to subject him to your
severe and searching gaze, lest you should damn the brute with his close-
shaven cheeks and his disgusting appearance by a mere glance at his face,
when you saw a young man with his features stripped of the beard and hair
that should adorn them, his eyes heavy with wine, his lids swollen, his <...>
grin, his slobbering lips, his harsh voice, his trembling hands, his breath
reeking of the cook-shop. He has long since devoured his fortune; nothing
is left him of his patrimony save a house that serves him for the sale of his
false witness, and never did he make a more remunerative contract than he
has done with regard to this evidence he offers today. For he sold
Aemilianus his drunken fictions for 3,000 sesterces, as every one at Oea is
aware.
Part 60
We all knew of this before it actually took place. I might have prevented the
transaction by denouncing it, but I knew that so foolish a lie would be
prejudicial to Aemilianus, who wasted his money to secure it, rather than to
myself, who treated it with the contempt it deserved. I wished not only that
Aemilianus should lose his money, but that Crassus should have his
reputation ruined by his disgraceful perjury. It was but the day before
yesterday that the transaction took place in the most open manner at the
house of Rufinus, of whom I shall soon have something to say. Rufinus and
Calpurnianus acted as middlemen and entreated him to comply to their
wishes. The former carried out the task with all the more readiness because
he was certain that his wife, at whose misconduct he knowingly connives,
would be sure to recover from Crassus a large proportion of his fee for
perjury.
I noticed that you also, Maximus, as soon as this written evidence was
produced, suspected with your usual acuteness that they had formed a
league and conspiracy against me; and I saw from your face that the whole
affair excited your disgust. Finally my accusers, in spite of their being
paragons of audacity and monsters of shamelessness, noticed that Crassus'
evidence smelled after faex and did not dare to read it out in full or to build
anything upon it. I have mentioned these facts not because I am afraid of
these dreadful feathers and stains of soot -- least of all with you to judge me
-- but that Crassus might meet with due punishment for having sold mere
smoke to a helpless rustic like Aemilianus.
Part 61
And after all this, they have also come up, on reading Pudentilla's letters,
concerning the manufacture of a seal. This seal, they assert, I had fashioned
of the rarest wood by some secret process for purposes of the black art.
They add that, although it is loathly and horrible to look upon, being in the
form of a skeleton, I yet give it especial honour and call it in the Greek
tongue, basileus, my king. I think I am right in saying that I am following
the various stages of their accusation in due order and reconstructing the
whole fabric of their slander detail by detail.
Now how can the manufacture of this seal have been secret, as you assert,
when you are sufficiently well acquainted with the maker to have
summoned him to appear in court? Here is Cornelius Saturninus, the artist,
a man whose skill is famous among his townsfolk and whose character is
above reproach. A little while back, in answer, Maximus, to your careful
cross-examination, he explained the whole sequence of events in the most
convincing and truthful manner. He said that I visited his shop and, after
looking at many geometrical patterns all carved out of boxwood in the most
cunning and ingenious manner, was so much attracted by his skill that I
asked him to make me certain mechanical devices and also begged him to
make me the image of some god to which I might pray after my custom.
The particular god and the precise material I left to his choice, my only
stipulation being that it should be made of wood. He therefore first
attempted to work in boxwood. Meanwhile, during my absence in the
country, Sicinius Pontianus, my step-son, wishing it to be made for me,
procured some ebony tablets from that excellent lady Capitolina and
brought them to his shop, exhorting him to make what I had ordered out of
this rarer and more durable material: such a gift, he said, would be most
gratifying to me. Our artist did as Pontianus suggested, as far as the size of
the ebony tablets permitted. By careful dove-tailing of minute portions of
the tablets he succeeded in making a small figure of Mercury.
Part 62
You heard all the evidence just as I repeat it. Moreover, it receives exact
confirmation from the answers given to you in cross-examination by
Capitolina's son, a youth of the most excellent character, who is here in
court today. He said that Pontianus asked for the tablets, that Pontianus took
them to the artist Saturninus. Nor does he deny that Pontianus received the
completed signet from Saturninus and afterwards gave it me.
All these things have been openly and manifestly proved. What remains, in
which any suspicion of sorcery can lie concealed? Nay, what is there that
does not absolutely convict you of obvious falsehood? You said that the seal
was of secret manufacture, whereas Pontianus, a distinguished member of
the equestrian order, gave the commission for it. The figure was carved in
public by Saturninus as he sat in his shop. He is a man of sterling character
and recognized honesty. The work was assisted by the munificence of a
distinguished married lady, and many both among the slaves and the
acquaintances who frequented my house were aware both of the
commission for the work and its execution. You were not ashamed falsely
to pretend that I had searched high and low for the requisite wood through
all the town, although you know that I was absent from Oea at that time,
and although it has been proved that I gave a free hand as to the material.
Part 63
Your third lie was that the figure which was made was the lean, eviscerated
frame of a gruesome corpse, utterly horrible and ghastly as any ghost. If
you had discovered such definite proof of my sorceries, why did you not
insist on my producing it in court? Was it that you might have complete
freedom for inventing lies in the absence of the subject of your slanders? If
so, the opportunity afforded you for mendacity has been lost you, thanks to
a certain habit of mine which comes in most opportunely. It is my wont
wherever I go to carry with me the image of some god kept among my
books and to pray to him on feast days with offerings of incense and wine
and sometimes even of victims. When, therefore, I heard persistent though
outrageously mendacious assertions that the figure I carried was that of a
skeleton, I ordered some one to go and bring from my house my little image
of Mercury, the same that Saturninus had made for me at Oea. You here,
give it them! Let them see it, hold it, examine it. There you see the image
which that scoundrel called a skeleton. Do you hear these cries of protest
that arise from all present? Do you hear the condemnation of your lie? Are
you not at last ashamed of all your slanders? Is this a skeleton, this a ghost,
is this the familiar spirit you asserted it to be? Is this a magic symbol or one
that is common and ordinary?
Take it, I beg you, Maximus, and examine it. It is good that a holy thing
should be entrusted to hands as pure and pious as yours. See there, how fair
it is to view, how full of all a wrestler's grace and vigour! How cheerful is
the god's face, how comely the down that creeps on either side his cheeks,
how the curled hair shows upon his head beneath the shadow of his hat's
brim, how neatly the tiny pair of pinions project about his brows, how
daintily the cloak is drawn about his shoulders! He who dares call this a
skeleton, either never sees an image of a god or if he does ignores it.
Indeed, he who thinks this to represent a ghost is evoking ghosts.
Part 64
But in return for that lie, Aemilianus, may that same god who goes between
the lords of heaven and the lords of hell grant you the hatred of the gods of
either world and ever send to meet you the shadows of the dead with all the
shades, with all the fiends, with all the spectrets, with all the ghosts of all
the world, and thrust upon your eyes all the terror that walks by night, all
the dread dwellers in the tomb, all the horrors of the sepulchre, although
your age and character have brought you near enough to them already.
But we of the family of Plato know naught save what is bright and joyous,
majestic and heavenly and of the world above us. Nay, in its zeal to reach
the heights of wisdom, the Platonic school has explored regions higher than
heaven itself and has stood triumphant on the outer circumference of this
our universe. Maximus knows that I speak truth, for in his careful study of
the Phaedrus he has read of the `place being builded on heaven's back.'
Maximus also clearly understands -- I am now going to reply to your
accusation about the name -- who he is whom not I but Plato was first to
call the `King'. `All things,' he says, `depend upon the King of all things and
for him only all things exist.' Maximus knows who that `King' is, even the
cause and reason and primal origin of all nature, the lord and father of the
soul, the eternal saviour of all that lives, the unwearying builder of his
world. Yet he builds without labour, yet he saves without care, he is father
without begetting, he knows no limitation of space or time or change, and
therefore few may conceive and none may tell of his power.
Part 65
I will even go out of my way to aggravate the suspicion of sorcery; I will
not tell you, Aemilianus, who it is that I worship as my king. Even if the
proconsul should ask me himself who my god is, I am dumb.
About the name I have said enough for the present. For the rest I know that
some of my audience are anxious to hear why I wanted the figure made not
of silver or gold, but only of wood, though I think that their desire springs
not so much from their anxiety to see me cleared of guilt as from eagerness
for knowledge. They would like to have this last doubt removed, even
although they see that I have amply rebutted all suspicion of any crime.
Listen, then, you who would know, but listen with all the sharpness and
attention that you may, for you are to hear the very words that Plato wrote
in his old age in the last book of the Laws.
The man of moderate means when he makes offerings to the gods should do
so in proportion to his means. Now, earth and the household hearths of all
men are holy to all the gods. Let no one therefore dedicate any shrines to
the gods over and above these.
He forbids this with the purpose of preventing men from venturing to build
private shrines; for he thinks that the public temples suffice his citizens for
the purposes of sacrifice. He then continues,
Gold and silver in other cities, whether in the keeping of private persons or
of temples, are invidious possessions; ivory taken from a body wherefrom
the life has passed is not a welcome offering; iron and bronze are
instruments of war. Whatsoever a man dedicates, let it be of wood and
wood only, or if it be of stone, of stone only.
The general murmur of assent shows, Maximus, and you, gentlemen, who
have the honour to assist him, that I am adjudged to have made admirable
use of Plato, not only as a guide in life, but as an advocate in court, to
whose laws, as you see, I obey.
Part 66
It is now time for me to turn first and foremost to the letters of Pudentilla,
or rather to retrace the whole course of events a little further back still. For I
desire to make it abundantly clear that I, whom they keep accusing of
having forced my way into Pudentilla's house solely through love of money,
ought really never to have come near that house, had the thought of money
ever crossed my mind. My marriage has for many reasons brought me the
reverse of prosperity and, but for the fact that my wife's virtues are
compensation for any number of disadvantages, it would be contrary to my
interests.
Disappointment and envy are the sole causes that have involved me in this
trial, and even before that gathered many mortal perils about my path. What
motiva for resentment has Aemilianus against me, even assuming him to be
correctly informed when he accuses me of magic? No least word of mine
has ever injured him in such a way as to give him the appearance of
pursuing a just revenge. It is certainly no lofty ambition that prompts him to
accuse me, ambition such as fired Marcus Antonius to accuse Cnaeus
Carbo, Caius Mucius to accuse Aulus Albucius, Publius Sulpicius to accuse
Cnaeus Norbanus, Caius Furius to accuse Marcus Aquilius, Caius Curio to
accuse Quintus Metellus. They were young men of admirable education and
were led by ambition to undertake these accusations as the first step in a
forensic career, that by the conduct of some `cause celebre' they might
make themselves a name among their fellow citizens. This privilege was
conceded by antiquity to young men just entering public life as a means of
winning glory for their youthful genius. The custom has long since become
obsolete, but even if the practice were still common, it would not apply to
Aemilianus. It would not have been becoming to him to make any display
of his eloquence, for he is rude and unlettered; nor to show a passion for
renown, since he is a mere barbarian bumpkin; nor thus to open his career
as an advocate, for he is an old man on the brink of the grave. The only
hypothesis creditable to him would be that he is perhaps giving an example
of his austerity of character and has undertaken this accusation through
sheer hatred of wrongdoing and to assert his own integrity. But I should
hardly accept such an hypothesis even in the case of a greater Aemilianus,
not our African friend here, but the conqueror of Africa and Numantia, who
held, moreover, the office of censor at Rome. Much less will I believe that
this dull blockhead, I will not say, hates sin, but recognizes it when he sees
it.
Part 67
What then was his motive? It is as clear as day to any one that envy is the
sole motive that has spurred him and Herennius Rufinus, his instigator -- of
whom I shall have more to say later -- and the rest of my enemies, to
fabricate these false charges of sorcery.
Well, there are five points which I must discuss. If I remember aright, their
accusations as regards Pudentilla were as follows. Firstly, they said that
after the death of her first husband she resolutely set her face against re-
marriage, but was seduced by my incantations. Secondly, there are her
letters, which they regard as an admission that I used sorcery. Thirdly and
fourthly, they object that she made a lovematch at the advanced age of sixty
and that the marriage contract was sealed not in the town but at a country
house. Lastly, there is the most invidious of all these accusations, namely,
that which concerns the dowry. It is into this charge they have put all their
force and all their venom; it is this that vexes them most of all. They assert
that at the very outset of our wedded life I forced my devoted wife in the
absolute seclusion of her country house to make over to me a large dowry.
I will show that all these statements are so false, so worthless, so
unsubstantial, and I shall refute them so easily and unquestionably, that in
good truth, Maximus, and you, gentlemen, his assessors, I fear you may
think that I have suborned my accusers to bring these charges, that I might
have the opportunity of publicly dispelling the hatred of which I am the
victim. I will ask you to believe now what you will understand when the
facts are before you, that I shall need to put out all my strength to prevent
you from thinking that such a baseless accusation is a cunning device of my
own rather than a stupid enterprise of my enemies.
Part 68
I shall now briefly retrace events and force Aemilianus himself to admit,
whenhe has heard the facts, that his envy was groundless and that he has
strayed far from the truth. In the meantime I beg you, as you have already
done, or if possible yet more than you have already done, to give the best of
your attention to me as I trace the whole case to its fount and source.
Aemilia Pudentilla, now my wife, was once the wife of a certain Sicinius
Amicus. By him she had two sons, Pontianus and Pudens. These two boys
were left by their father's death under the guardianship of their paternal
grandfather -- for Amicus predeceased his father -- and were brought up by
their mother with remarkable care and affection for about fourteen years.
She was in the flower of her age, and it was not of her own choosing that
she remained a widow for so long. But the boys' grandfather was eager that
she should, in spite of her reluctance, take his son, Sicinius Clarus, for her
second husband and with this in view kept all other suitors at a distance. He
further threatened her that if she married elsewhere he would by his will
exclude her sons from the possession of any of their father's heritage. When
she saw that nothing could move him to alter the condition that he had laid
down, such was her wisdom, and so admirable her maternal affection, that
to prevent her sons' interests suffering any damage in this respect, she made
a contract of marriage with Sicinius Clarus in accordance with her father-in-
law's bidding, but by various evasions managed to avoid the marriage until
the boys' grandfather died, leaving them as his heirs, with the result that
Pontianus, the elder son, became his brother's guardian.
Part 69
She was now freed from all embarrassment, and being sought in marriage
by many distinguished persons resolved to remain a widow no longer. The
dreariness of her solitary life she might have borne, but her bodily
infirmities had become intolerable. This chaste and saintly lady, after so
many years of blameless widowhood, without even a breath of scandal,
owing to her long absence from a husband's embraces, began to suffer
internal pains so severe that they brought her to the brink of the grave.
Doctors and wise women agreed that the disease had its origin in her long
widowhood, that the evil was increasing daily and her sickness steadily
assuming a more serious character; the remedy was that she should marry
before her youth finally departed from her.
There were many who welcomed this recommendation, but none more so
than that fellow Aemilianus, who a little while back asserted with the most
unhesitating mendacity that Pudentilla had never thought of marriage until I
compelled her to be mine by my exercise of the black art; that I alone had
been found to outrage the virgin purity of her widowhood by incantations
and love philtres. I have often heard it said with truth that a liar should have
a good memory. Had you forgotten, Aemilianus, that before I came to Oea,
you wrote to her son Pontianus, who had then attained to man's estate and
was pursuing his studies at Rome, suggesting that she should marry?
Give me the letter, or better give it to Aemilianus and let him refute himself
in his own voice with his own words. Is this your letter? Why do you turn
pale? We know you are past blushing. Is this your signature? Read a little
louder, please, that all may realize how his written words belie his speech
and how much more he is at variance with himself than with me.
Part 70
Did you, Aemilianus, write what has just been read out? `I know that she is
willing to marry and that she ought to do so, but I do not know the object of
her choice.' You were right there. You knew nothing about it. For
Pudentilla, though she admitted that she wished to marry again, said
nothing to you about her suitor. She knew the intrusive malignity of your
nature too well. But you still expected her to marry your brother Clarus and
were induced by your false hopes to go further and to urge her son to assent
to the match.
And of course, if she had wedded Clarus, a boorish and decrepit old man,
you would have asserted that she had long desired to marry him of her own
free will without the intervention of any magic. But now that she has
married a young man of the elegance which you attribute to him, you say
that she had always refused to marry and must have done so under
compulsion! You did not know, you villain, that the letter you had written
on the subject was being preserved, you did not know that you would be
convicted by your own testimony. The fact is that Pudentilla, knowing your
changeableness and unreliability no less than your shamelessness and
mendacity, rather than forward the letter preferred to keep it as clear
evidence of your intentions.
Furthermore, she wrote a letter of her own on the same subject to her son
Pontianus at Rome, in which she gave full reasons for her determination.
She told him pretty fully about the state of her health; there was no longer
any reason for her to persist in remaining a widow; she had so remained for
thus long and had sacrificed her health solely to procure him the inheritance
of his grandfather's fortune, a fortune to which she had by the exercise of
the greatest care made considerable additions; Pontianus himself was now
by the grace of heaven ripe for marriage and his brother for the garb of
manhood; she begged them to suffer her at length to solace her lonely
existence and to relieve her ill health; they need have no fears as to her final
choice or as to her motherly affection; she would still be as a wife what she
had been as a widow. I will order a copy of this letter to her son to be read
aloud.
Part 71
This letter makes it, I think, sufficiently clear that it needed no incantations
of mine to move Pudentilla from her resolve to remain a widow, but that she
had been for some time by no means averse to marriage, when she chose
me -- it may be in preference to others. I cannot see why such a choice by
so excellent a woman should be brought against me as matter for reproach
rather than honour. But I admit feeling surprise that Aemilianus and
Rufinus should be annoyed at the lady's decision, when those who were
actually suitors for her hand acquiesce in her preference for myself.
She was indeed guided in making her choice less by her personal
inclination than by the advice of her son, a fact which Aemilianus cannot
deny. For Pontianus on receiving his mother's letter hastily flew hither from
Rome, fearing that, if the man of her choice proved to be avaricious, she
might, as often happens, transfer her whole fortune to the house of her new
husband. This anxiety tormented him not a little. All his own expectations
of wealth together with those of his brother depended on his mother. His
grandfather had left but a moderate fortune, his mother possessed 4,000,000
sesterces. Of this sum, it is true, she owed a considerable portion to her
sons, but they had no security for this, relying, naturally enough, on her
word alone. He gave but silent expression to his fears; he did not venture to
show any open opposition for fear of seeming to distrust her.
Part 72
Things being in this delicate position owing to the mother's request and the
son's fear, chance or destiny brought me to Oea on my way to Alexandria.
Did not my respect for my wife prevent me, I would say `Would God it had
never happened.' It was winter when this occurred. Overcome by the
fatigues of the journey, I was laid up for a considerable number of days in
the house of my friends the Appii, whom I name to show the affection and
esteem with which I regard them. There Pontianus came to see me; for not
so very long before certain common friends had introduced him to me at
Athens, and we had afterwards lodged together and come to know each
other intimately. He greeted me with the utmost courtesy, inquired
anxiously after my health, and touched dexterously on the subject of love.
For he thought that he had found an ideal husband for his mother to whom
he could without the slightest risk entrust the whole fortune of the house. At
first he sounded me as to my inclinations in somewhat ambiguous language,
and seeing that I was desirous of resuming my journey and was not in the
least disposed to take a wife, he begged me at any rate to remain at Oea for
a little while, as he himself was desirous of travelling with me. Since my
physical infirmity had made it impossible for me to profit by the present
winter, he urged that it would be well to wait for the next owing to the
danger presented by the passage of the Syrtes and the risk of encountering
wild beasts. His urgent entreaty induced my friends the Appii to allow me
to leave them and to become his guest in his mother's house. I should find
the situation healthier, he said, and should get a freer view of the sea -- a
special attraction in my eyes.
Part 73
He had shown the greatest eagerness in inducing me to come to this
decision, and strongly recommended his mother and his brother -- that boy
there -- to my consideration. I gave them some help in our common studies
and a marked intimacy sprang up between us. Meanwhile I gradually
recovered my health. At the instance of my friends I gave a discourse in
public. This took place in the basilica, which was thronged by a vast
audience. I was greeted with many expressions of approval, the audience
shouted `bravo! bravo!' like one man, and besought me to remain and
become a citizen of Oea. On the dispersal of the audience Pontianus
approached me, and by way of prelude said that such universal enthusiasm
was nothing less than a sign from heaven. He then revealed to me that it
was his cherished design -- with my permission -- to bring about a match
between myself and his mother, for whose hand there were many suitors.
He added that I was the only friend in the world in whom he could put
implicit trust and confidence. If I were to refuse to undertake such a
responsibility, simply because it was no fair heiress that was offered me, but
a woman of plain appearance nd the mother of children -- if I were moved
by these considerations and insisted on reserving myself for a more
attractive and wealthier match, my behaviour would be unworthy of a
friend and a philosopher.
It would take too long -- even if I were willing to tell you what I replied and
how long and how frequently we conversed on the subject, with how many
pressing entreaties he plied me, never ceasing until he finally won my
consent. I had had ample opportunity for observing Pudentilla's character,
for I had lived for a whole year continually in her company and had realized
how rich was her endowment of good qualities; but my desire for travel led
me to desire to refuse the match as an impediment. But I soon began to love
her for her virtues as ardently as though I had wooed her of my own
initiative. Pontianus had also persuaded his mother to give me the
preference over all her other suitors, and showed extraordinary eagerness
for the marriage to take place at the earliest possible date. We could
scarcely induce him to consent to the very briefest postponement to such
time as he himself should have taken a wife and his brother in due course
have assumed the garb of manhood. That done, we would be married at
once.
Part 74
Would to heaven it were possible without serious damage to my case to
pass by what I have now to relate. I freely forgave Pontianus when he
begged for pardon, and I have no wish to seem to reproach him now for the
fickleness of his conduct. I acknowledge the truth of a circumstance
brought against me by my accusers, I admit that Pontianus, after taking to
himself a wife, broke his pledged word and suddenly changed his mind; that
he tried to prevent the fulfilment of this project with no less obstinacy than
he had shown zeal in forwarding it. He was ready to make any sacrifice, to
go any lengths, to prevent our marriage taking place. Nevertheless this
discreditable change of attitude, this deliberate quarrel with his mother,
must not be laid to his charge, but to that of his father-in-law, Herennius
Rufinus, whom you see before you, a man than whom no more worthless,
wicked, and crime-stained soul lives upon this earth. I will -- since I cannot
avoid it -- give a brief description of this man's character, using such
moderation as I may, lest, if I pass him by in silence, the energy which he
has shown in engineering this accusation against me should have been spent
all in vain.
This is the man who poisoned that worthless boy against me, who is the
prime mover in this accusation, who has hired advocates and bought
witnesses. This is the furnace in which all this calumny has been forged,
this the firebrand, this the scourge that has driven Aemilianus here to his
task. He makes it his boast before all men in the most extravagant language
that it is through his machinations that my indictment has been procured. In
truth he has some reason for self-congratulation. For he is the organizer of
every lawsuit, the deviser of every perjury, the architect of every lie, the
seed-ground of every wickedness, the habitation of lust and gluttony, a
brothel and a house of whores; the mark of every scandal since his earliest
years; in boyhood, ere he became so hideously bald, the ready servant of his
pederasts in the vilest vices; in youth a stage dancer limp and nerveless
enough in all conscience, but, they tell me, clumsy and inartistic in his very
effeminacy. He is said not to have possessed a single quality that should
distinguish an actor, except for his indecency.
Part 75
He is older now -- God's curse upon him! I crave your pardon for my
warmth of language. But his house is the dwelling-place of panders, his
whole household foul with sin, himself a man of infamous character, his
wife a harlot, his sons like their parents. His door night and day is battered
with the kicks of wanton gallants, his windows loud with the sound of loose
serenades, his dining-room wild with revel, his bedchambers the haunt of
adulterers. For no one need fear to enter it save he who has no gift for the
husband. Thus does he make an income from the shame of his own bed.
Once he had been good at making money everywhere with his own body,
now with that of wife. With none but him -- it is not a lie! -- with none but
him most make the arrangements for a night with his wife. So here we have
this well known collusion of husband and wife: whoever have brought a
large sum to the woman are not checked by anyone and can leave as they
wish. Whoever has come with less, are caught as adulterers, after a sign has
been given; and as if they had come to school, they are not allowed to leave
before they have `written something.'
What else should the wretch do? He has lost a considerable fortune, though
I admit that he only got that fortune unexpectedly through a fraudulent
transaction on the part of his father. The latter, having borrowed money
from a number of persons, preferred to keep their money at the cost of his
own good name. Bills poured in on every side with demands for payment.
Every one that met him laid hands on him as though he were a madman.
`Steady, now!' he says, stating that he cannot pay. So he resigned his golden
rings and all the badges of his position in society and thus came to terms
with his creditors. But he had by a most ingenious fraud transferred the
greater part of his property to his wife, and so, although he himself was
needy, ill-clad and protected by the very depth of his fall, managed to leave
this same Rufinus -- I am telling you the truth and nothing but the truth --
no less than 3,000,000 sesterces to be squandered on riotous living. This
was the sum that came to him unencumbered from his mother's property,
over and above the daily dowry brought him by his wife. Yet all this money
has been ravenously devoured by this glutton in a few short years, all this
fortune has been destroyed by the infinite variety of his gormandizing; so
that you might really think him to be afraid of seeming in any way to be the
gainer by his father's dishonesty. This honourable fellow actually took care
that what had been ill-gained should be ill-spent, nor was anything left him
from his too ample fortune, save his depraved ambition and his boundless
appetite.
 The Defense
By Apuleius
Translated by H. E. Butler

Part 76
His wife, however, was getting old and worn out and gave up the whole
household to dishonour. But there was a daughter who, at her mother's
instigation, was exhibited to all the wealthy young men, but in vain. To
some of the suitors she was even given to try. Had she not come across so
easy a victim as Pontianus, she would perhaps still have been sitting at
home a widow who had never been a bride. Pontianus, in spite of urgent
attempts on our part to dissuade him, gave her the right -- false and illusory
though it was -- to be called a bride. He did this knowing that, but a short
time before he married her, she had been deserted by a young man of good
family to whom she had been previously betrothed, after he had had enough
of her.
And so his new bride came to him, not as other brides come, but unabashed
and undismayed, her virtue lost, her modesty gone, her bridal-veil a
mockery. Cast off by her previous lover, she brought to her wedding the
name without the purity of a maid. She rode in a litter carried by eight
slaves. You who were present saw how impudently she made eyes at all the
young and how immodestly she flaunted her charms. Who did not
recognize her mother's pupil, when they saw her dyed lips, her rouged
cheeks, and her lascivious eyes? Her dowry was borrowed, every penny of
it, on the eve of her wedding, and was indeed greater than could be
expected of so large and impoverished a family.
Part 77
But though Rufinus' fortune is small, his hopes are boundless. With avarice
rivalled only by his need he had already devoured Pudentilla's 4,000,000 in
vain anticipation. With this in view he decided that I must be got out of the
way, in order that he might find fewer obstacles in his attempt to hoodwink
the weak Pontianus and the lonely Pudentilla. He began, therefore, to
upbraid his son-in-law for having betrothed his mother to me. He urged him
to draw back without delay from so perilous a path, while there was yet
time; to keep his mother's fortune himself rather than deliberately transfer it
to the keeping of a stranger. He threatened that, if he refused, he would take
away his daughter, the device of an old hand to influence a young man in
love.
To be brief, he so wrought upon the simple-minded young man, who was,
moreover, a slave to the charms of his new bride, as to mould him to his
will and move him from his purpose. Pontianus went to his mother and told
her what Rufinus had said to him. But he made no impression on her
steadfast character. On the contrary, she rebuked him for his fickleness and
inconstancy, and it was no pleasant news he took back to his father-in-law.
His mother had shown a firmness of purpose not to be expected of one of
her placid disposition, and to make matters worse, his expostulations had
made her angry, which was likely seriously to increase her obstinacy; in
fact, she had finally replied, that it was no secret to her that his
expostulations were instigated by Rufinus, a fact which made the support
and assistance of a husband against his desperate greed all the more
necessary to her.
Part 78
When he heard this, the ruffian was stung to fury and burst into such wild
and ungovernable rage that in the presence of her own son he heaped
insults, such as he might have used to his own wife, on the purest and most
modest of women. In the presence of many witnesses, whom, if you desire
it, I will name, he loudly denounced her as a wanton and myself as a
sorcerer and poisoner, threatening to murder me with his own hands. I can
hardly restrain my anger, such fierce indignation fills my soul. That you, the
most effeminate of men, should threaten any man with death at your hand!
What hand? The hand of Philomela or Medea or Clytemnestra? Why, when
you dance in those characters you show such contemptible timidity, you are
so frightened at the sight of steel, that you will not even carry a property
sword.
But I am digressing. Pudentilla, seeing to her astonishment that her son had
fallen lower than she could have deemed possible, went into the country
and by way of rebuke wrote him the notorious letter, in which, according to
my accusers, she confessed that my magical practices had made her lose her
reason and fall in love with me. And yet, Maximus, the day before
yesterday at your command I took a copy of the letter in the presence of
witnesses and of Pontianus' secretary. Aemilianus also was there and
countersigned the copy. What is the result? In contradiction to my accusers'
assertion everything is found to tell in my favour.
Part 79
And yet, even if she had spoken somewhat strongly and had called me a
magician, it would be a reasonable explanation that she had, in defending
her conduct to her son, preferred to allege compulsion on my part rather
than her own inclination. Is Phaedra the only woman whom love has driven
to write a lying letter? Is it not rather a device common to all women that,
when they have begun to feel strong desire for anything of this kind, they
should prefer to make themselves out the victims of compulsion? But even
supposing she had genuinely regarded me as a magician, would the mere
fact of Pudentilla's writing to that effect be a reason for actually regarding
me as a magician? You, with all your arguments and your witnesses and
your diffuse eloquence, have failed to prove me a magician. Could she
prove it with one word? A formal indictment, written and signed before a
judge, is a far more weighty document than what is written in a private
letter! Why do not you prove me a magician by my own deeds instead of
having recourse to the mere words of another?
If your principle be followed, and whatever any one may have written in a
letter under the influence of love or hatred be admitted as proof, many a
man will be indicted on the wildest charges. `Pudentilla called you a
magician in her letter; therefore you are a magician!' If she had called me a
consul, would that make me one? What if she had called me a painter, a
doctor, or even an innocent man? Would you accept any of these
statements, simply because she had made them? You would accept none of
them. Yet it is a gross injustice to believe a person when he speaks evil of
another and to refuse to believe him when he speaks well. It is a gross
injustice that a letter should have power to destroy and not to save. - `But,'
says my accuser, `she was out of her wits, she loved you distractedly.' I will
grant it for the moment. But are all persons, who are the objects of love,
magicians, just because the person in love with them chances to say so in a
letter? If, indeed, Pudentilla wrote in a letter to another person what would
clearly be prejudicial to myself, I think she could hardly have been in love
with me at the moment in question.
Part 80
Tell me now, what is your contention: was she mad or sane when she
wrote? Sane, do you say? Then she was not the victim of magic. Insane? In
that case she did not know what she was writing and must not be believed.
Nay, even supposing her to have been insane, she would not have been
aware of the fact. For just as to say `I am silent' is to make a fool of oneself,
since these very words actually break silence, and the act of speaking
impugns the substance of one's speech, so it is even more absurd to say `I
am mad'. It cannot be true unless the speaker knows what he says, and he
who knows what madness is, is ipso facto sane. For madness cannot know
itself any more than blindness can see itself. Therefore Pudentilla was in
possession of her senses, if she thought she was out of them. I could say
more on this point, but enough of dialectic!
I will read out the letter which gives crying witness to a very different state
of things and might indeed have been specially prepared to suit this
particular trial. Take it and read it out until I interrupt.
Stop a moment before you go on to what follows. We have come to the
crucial point. So far, Maximus, as far at any rate as I have noticed, the lady
has made no mention of magic, but has merely repeated in the same order
the statements which I quoted a short time ago about her long widowhood,
the proposed remedy for her ill health, her desire to marry, the good report
she had heard of me from Pontianus, his own advice that she should marry
me in preference to others.
Part 81
So much for what has been read. There remains a portion of the letter
which, although like the first part it was written in my defence, also turns
against me. For although it was specially written to rebut the charge of
magic brought against me, a remarkable piece of ingenuity on the part of
Rufinus has altered its meaning and brought me into discredit with certain
citizens of Oea as being a proved sorcerer.
Maximus, you have heard much from the lips of others, you have learned
yet more by reading, and your own personal experience has taught you not
a little. But you will say that never yet have you come across such insidious
cunning or such marvellous dexterity in crime. What Palamedes, what
Sisyphus, what Eurybates or Phrynondas could ever have devised such
guile? All those whom I have mentioned, together with all the notorious
deceivers of history, would seem mere clowns and pantaloons, were they to
attempt to match this one single instince of Rufinus' craftiness. O miracle of
lies! O subtlety worthy of the prison and the stocks! Who could imagine
that what was written as a defence could without the alteration of a single
letter be transformed into an accusation! Good God! it is incredible. But I
will make clear to you how the incredible came to pass.
Part 82
The mother was rebuking her son because, after extolling me to her as a
model of all the virtues, he now, at Rufinus' instigation, asserted that I was a
magician. The actual words were as follows:
Apuleius is a magician and has bewitched me to love him! Come to me,
then, while I am still in my senses.
These words, which I have quoted in Greek, have been selected by Rufinus
and separated from their context. He has taken them round as a confession
on the part of Pudentilla, and, with Pontianus at his side all dissolved in
tears, has shown them through all the market-place, allowing men only to
read that portion which I have just cited and suppressing all that comes
before and after. His excuse was that the rest of the letter was too disgusting
to be shown; it was sufficient that publicity should be given to Pudentilla's
confession as to my sorcery.
What was the result? Everyone thought it probable enough. That very letter,
which was written to clear my character, excited the most violent hatred
against me amongst those who did not know the facts. This foul villain
went rushing about in the midst of the market-place like any bacchanal; he
kept opening the letter and proclaiming, `Apuleius is a sorcerer! She herself
describes her feelings and her sufferings! What more do you demand?'
There was no one to take my part and reply, `Give us the whole letter,
please! Let me see it all, let me read it from beginning to end. There are
many things which, produced apart from their context, may seem open to a
slanderous inter-pretation. Any speech may be attacked, if a passage
depending for its sense on what has preceded be robbed of its
commencement, or if phrases be expunged at will from the place they
logically occupy, or if what is written ironically be read out in such a tone
as to make it seem a defamatory statement.'
With what justice this protest or words to that effect might have been
uttered the actual order of the letter will show.
Part 83
Now, Aemilianus, try to remember whether the following were not the
words of which, together with myself, you took a copy in the presence of
witnesses.
For since I desired to marry for the reasons of which I told you, you
persuaded me to choose Apuleius in preference to all others, since you had
a great admiration for him and were eager through me to become yet more
intimate with him. But now that certain ill-natured persons have brought
accusations against us and attempt to dissuade you, Apuleius has suddenly
become a magician and has bewitched me to love him! Come to me, then,
while I am still in my senses.
I ask you, Maximus, if letters -- some of which are actually called vocal --
could find a voice, if words, as poets say, could take them wings and fly,
would they not, when Rufinus first made disingenuous excerpts from that
letter, read but a few lines and deliberately said nothing of much that bore a
more favourable meaning, would not the remaining letters have cried out
that they were unjustly kept out of sight? Would not the words suppressed
by Rufinus have flown from his hands and filled the whole market-place
with tumult: `they too had been sent by Pudentilla, they too had been
entrusted with something to say; men should not give ear to a dishonest
villain attempting to prove a lie by means of another's letter, but rather
listen to them; Pudentilla never accused Apuleius of magic, while Rufinus'
accusation was tantamount to an acquittal.' All these things were not said
then, but now, when they are of more effectual service to me, their truth
appears clearer than day. Rufinus, your cunning stands revealed, your fraud
stares us in the face, your lies are laid bare; truth dethroned for a while rises
once more and transcends slander as if from a bottomless pit.
Part 84
You challenged me with Pudentilla's letter: with that letter I win the day. If
you like to hear the conclusion, I will not grudge it you. Tell me, what were
the words with which she ended the letter, that poor bewitched, lunatic,
insane, infatuated lady?
I am not bewitched, I am not in love; it is my destiny.
Would you have anything more? Pudentilla throws your words in your teeth
and publicly vindicates her sanity against your slanderous aspersions. The
motive or necessity of her marriage, whichever it was, she now ascribes to
fate, and between fate and magic there is a great gulf, indeed they have
absolutely nothing in common. For if it be true that the destiny of each
created thing is like a fierce torrent that may neither be stayed nor diverted,
what power is left for magic drugs or incantations? Pudentilla, therefore,
not only denied that I was a magician, but denied the very existence of
magic. It is a good thing that Pontianus, following his usual custom, kept
his mother's letter safe in its entirety: it is a good thing that the speed with
which this case has been hurried on left you no opportunity for adding to
that letter at your leisure. For this I have to thank you and your foresight,
Maximus. You saw through their slanders from the beginning and hurried
on the case that they might not gather strength as the days went by; you
gave them no breathing space and wrecked their designs.
Suppose now that the mother, after her wont, had made confession of her
passion for me in some private letter to her son. Was it just, Rufinus, was it
consistent, I will not say with filial piety but with common humanity, that
these letters should be circulated and, above all, published and proclaimed
abroad by her own son? But perhaps I am no better than a fool to ask you to
have regard for another's sense of decency when you have so long lost your
own.
Part 85
Why should I only complain of what is past? The present is equally
distressing. To think that this unhappy boy should have been so corrupted
by you as to read aloud in the proconsular court, before a man of such lofty
character as Claudius Maximus, a letter from his mother, which he chooses
to regard as amatory, and in the presence of the statues of the emperor Pius
to accuse his mother of yielding to a shameful passion and reproach her
with her amours? Who is there of such gentle temper, but that this would
wake him to fury? Vilest of creatures, do you pry into your mother's heart in
such matters, do you watch her glances, count her sighs, sound her
affections, intercept her letters, and accuse her of being in love? Do you
seek to discover what she does in the privacy of her own chamber, do you
demand -- I will not say that she should be above love affairs -- but that she
should cease to be a woman? Cannot you conceive the possibility that she
should show any affection save the affection of a mother for her son? Ah!
Pudentilla, you are unhappy in your offspring! Far better have been barren
than have borne such children! Ill-omened were the long months through
which you bore them in your womb and thankless your fourteen years of
widowhood! The viper, I am told, reaches the light of day only by gnawing
through its mother's womb; its parent must die before it is born. But your
son is fullgrown and the wounds he deals are far bitterer, for they are
inflicted on you while you yet live and see the light of day. He insults your
reserve, he arraigns your modesty, he wounds you to the heart and outrages
your dearest affections.
Is this the gratitude with which a dutiful son like yourself repays his mother
for the life she gave him, for the inheritance she won him for her long
fourteen years of seclusion? Is the result of your uncle's teaching this, that,
if you were sure your sons would be like yourself, you should be afraid to
take a wife? There is a well-known line
I hate the boy that's wise before his time.
Yes, and who would not loathe and detest a boy that is `wicked before his
time,' when he sees you, like some frightful portent, old in sin but young in
years, with the bodily powers of a boy, yet deep in guilt, with the bright
face of a child, but with wickedness such as might match grey hairs? Nay,
the most offensive thing about him is that his pernicious deeds go scot free;
he is too young to punish, yet old enough to do injury. Injury, did I say? No!
crime, unfilial, black, monstrous, intolerable crime!
Part 86
The Athenians, when they captured the correspondence of their enemy,
Philip of Macedon, and the letters were being read in public one by one, out
of reverence for the common rights of humanity forbade one letter to be
read aloud, a letter addressed by Philip to his wife Olympias. They spared
the enemy that they might not intrude on the privacy of husband and wife;
they placed the law that is common to all mankind above the claims of
private vengeance. So enemy dealt with enemy! And how have you dealt as
son with his mother? You see how close is my parallel. Yet you read out
aloud lettcrs written by your mother which, according to your assertion,
concern her love affairs, and you do so before this gathering here
assembled, a gathering before which you would not dare to read the verses
of some obscene poet, even if bidden to do so, but you would be restrained
by some sense of shame. Nay, you would never have touched your mother's
letters, had you ever been in touch with letters.
But you have also dared to submit a letter of your own to be read, a letter
written about your mother in outrageously disrespectful, abwive, and
unseemly language, written too at a time when you were still being brought
up under her loving care. This letter you sent secretly to Pontianus, and you
have now produced it to avoid the reproach of having sinned only once and
to make sure that he could catch a glance of your good deed! Poor fool, do
you not realize that your uncle permitted you to do this, that he might clear
himself in public estimation by using your letter as proof that even before
you migrated to his house, even at the time when you caressed your mother
with false words of love, you were already as cunning as any fox and
devoid of all filial affection?
Part 87
But I cannot bring myself to believe Aemilianus such a fool as to think that
the letter of a mere boy, who is also one of my accusers, could seriously tell
against me.
There is also that forged letter by which they attempted to prove that I
beguiled Pudentilla with flattery. I never wrote it and the forgery is not even
plausible. What need did I have of flattery, if I put my trust in magic? And
how did they secure possession of that letter which must, as is usual in such
affairs, have been sent to Pudentilla by some confidential servant? Why,
again, should I write in such faulty words, such barbarous language, I
whom my accusers admit to be quite at home in Greek? And why should I
seek to seduce her by flattery so absurd and coarse? They themselves admit
that I write amatory verse with sufficient sprightliness and skill. The
explanation is obvious to everyone; it is this: he who could not read the
letter which Pudentilla wrote in Greek altogether too refined for his
comprehension, found it easier to read this letter and set it off to greater
advantage because it was his own.
One more point and I shall have said enough about the letters. Pudentilla,
after writing in jest and irony those words `Come then, while I am yet in my
senses,' sent for her sons and her daughter-in-law and lived with them for
about two months. I beg this most dutiful of sons to tell us whether he then
noticed his mother's alleged madness to have affected for the worse either
her words or her deeds. Let him deny that she showed the utmost
shrewdness in her examination of the accounts of the bailiffs, grooms, and
shepherds, that she earnestly warned his brother Pontianus to be on his
guard against the designs of Rufinus, that she rebuked him severely for
having freely published the letter she had sent him without having read it
honestly as it was written! Let him deny that, after what I have just related
to you, his mother married me in her country house, as had been agreed
some time previously!
Part 88
The reason for our decision to be married by preference at her country
house not far from Oea was to avoid a fresh concourse of citizens
demanding largesse. It was but a short time before that Pudentilla had
distributed 50,000 sesterces to the people on the occasion of Pontianus'
marriage and this boy's assumption of the garb of manhood. We also wished
to avoid the frequent and wearisome dinner-parties which custom generally
imposes on newly-married couples. This is the whole reason, Aemilianus,
why our marriage contract was signed not in the town but at a country
house in the neighbourhood -- to avoid squandering another 50,000
sesterces and to escape dining in your company or at your house. Is that
sufficient?
I must say that I am surprised that you object so strongly to the country
house, considering that you spend most of your time in the country. The
Julian marriage-law nowhere contains a clause such as `no man shall wed in
a country house.' Indeed, if you would know the truth, it is of far better
omen for the expectation of offspring that one should marry one's wife in a
country house in preference to the town, on rich soil in preference to barren
ground, on the greensward of the meadow rather than the pavement of the
market-place. She that would be a mother should marry in the very bosom
of her mother, among the standing crops, on the fruitful ploughland, or she
should lie beneath the elm that weds the vine, on the very lap of mother
earth, among the springing herbage, the trailing vine-shoots and the
budding trees. I may add that the metaphor in the line so well known in
comedy
that in the furrow children true be sown
bears out this view most strongly. The ancient Romans also, such as
Quintius, Serranus and many others, were offered not only wives but
consulships and dictatorships in the open field. On such an abundant topic, I
will restrain myself for fear of gratifying you by my praise of country life.
Part 89
As to Pudentilla's age, concerning which you lied so boldly as to assert that
she had married at the age of sixty, I will reply in a few words. It is not
necessary to speak at length in discussing a matter where the truth is so
obvious.
Her father acknowledged her for his daughter in the usual fashion; the
documents in which he did so are preserved partly in the public record
office, partly in his house. Here they are before your very eyes. Please hand
the documents to Aemilianus. Let him examine the linen strip that bears the
seal; let him recognize the seal stamped upon it, let him read the names of
the consuls for the year, let him count up the years. He gave her sixty years.
Let him bring out the total at fifty-five, admitting that he lied and gave her
five too many. Nay, that is hardly enough. I will deal yet more liberally with
him. He gave Pudentilla such a number of years that I will reward him by
returning ten. Mezentius has been wandering with Ulysses; let him at least
prove that she is fifty.
To cut the matter short, as I am dealing with an accuser who is used to
multiplying by four, I will multiply five years by four and subtract twenty
years at one fell swoop. I beg you, Maximus, to order the number of consuls
since her birth to be reckoned. If I am not mistaken, you will find that
Pudentilla has barely passed her fortieth year. The insolent audacity of this
falsehood! Twenty years' exile would be a worthy punishment for such
mendacity! Your fiction has added a good half to the sum, your fabrication
is one and a half times the size of the original. Had you said thirty years
when you ought to have said ten, it might have been supposed that you had
made a slip in the gesture used for your calculation, that you had placed
your fore-finger against the middle joint of your thumb, when you should
have made them form a circle. But whereas the gesture indicating forty is
the simplest of all such gestures, for you have merely to hold out the palm
of your hand -- you have increased the number by half as much again.
There is no room for an erroneous gesture; the only possible hypothesis is
that, believing Pudentilla to be thirty, you got your total by adding up the
number of consuls, two to each year.
Part 90
I have done with this. I come now to the very heart of the accusation, to the
actual motive for the use of magic. I ask Rufinus and Aemilianus to answer
me and tell me -- even assuming that I am the most consummate magician -
- what I had to gain by persuading Pudentilla to marry me by means of my
love philtres and my incantations.
I am well aware that many persons, when accused of some crime or other,
even if it has been shown that there was some real motive for the offence,
have amply cleared themselves of guilt by this one line of defence, that the
whole record of their lives renders the suspicion of such a crime incredible
and that even though there may have been strong temptation to sin, the
mere fact of the existence of the temptation should not be counted against
them. We have no right to assume that everything that might have been
done actually has been done. Circumstances may alter; the one true guide is
a man's character; the one sure indication that a charge should be rejected or
believed is the fact that through all his life the accused has set his face
towards vice or virtue as the case may be.
I might with the utmost justice put in such a plea for myself, but I waive my
right in your favour, and shall think that I have made out but a poor case for
myself, if I merely clear myself of all your charges, if I merely show that
there exists not the slightest ground for suspecting me of sorcery. Consider
what confidence in my innocence and what contempt of you is implied by
my conduct. If you can discover one trivial reason that might have led me to
woo Pudentilla for the sake of some personal advantage, if you can prove
that I have made the very slightest profit out of my marriage, I am ready to
be any magician you please -- the great Carmendas himself or Damigeron
or Moses, or Jannes or Apollobex or Dardanus himself or any sorcerer of
note from the time of Zoroaster and Ostanes till now.
Part 91
See, Maximus, what a disturbance they have raised, merely because I have
mentioned a few magicians by name. What am I to do with men so stupid
and uncivilized? Shall I proceed to prove to you that I have come across
these names and many more in the course of my study of distinguished
authors in the public libraries? Or shall I argue that the knowledge of the
names of sorcerers is one thing, participation in their art another, and that it
is not tantamount to confessing a crime to have one's brain well stored with
learning and a memory retentive of its erudition? Or shall I take what is far
the best course and, relying on your learning, Maximus, and your perfect
erudition, disdain to reply to the accusations of these stupid and
uncultivated fellows? Yes, that is what I will do. I will not care a straw for
what they may think. I will go on with the argument on which I had entered
and will show that I had no motive for seducing Pudentilla into marriage by
the use of love philtres. My accusers have gone out of their way to make
disparaging remarks both about her age and her appearance; they have
denounced me for desiring such a wife from motives of greed and robbing
her of her vast and magnificent dowry at the very outset of our wedded life.
I do not intend to weary you Maximus, with a long reply on these points.
There is no need for words from me, our deeds of settlement will speak
more eloquently than I can do. From them you will see that both in my
provision for the future and in my action at the time my conduct was
precisely the opposite of that which they have attributed to me, inferring my
rapacity from their own. You will see that Pudentilla's dowry was small,
considering her wealth, and was made over to me as a trust, not as a gift,
and moreover that the marriage only took place on this condition that if my
wife should die without leaving me any children, the dowry should go to
her sons Pontianus and Pudens, while if at her death she should leave me
one son or daughter, half of the dowry was to go to the offspring of the
second marriage, the remainder to the sons of the first.
Part 92
This, as I say, I will prove from the actual deed of settlement. It may be that
Aemilianus will still refuse to believe that the total sum recorded is only
30,000 sesterces, and that the reveNion of this sum is given by the
settlement to Pudentilla's sons. Take the deeds into your own hands, give
them to Rufinus who incited you to this accusation. Let him read them, let
him blush for his arrogant temper and his pretentious beggary. He is poor
and ill-clad and borrowed 400,000 sesterces to dower his daughter, while
Pudentilla, a woman of fortune, was content with 300,000, and her husband,
who has often refused the hand of the richest heiresses, is also content with
this trifling dowry, a mere nominal sum. He cares for nothing save his wife
and counts harmony with his spouse and great love as his sole treasure, his
only wealth.
Who that had the least experience of life, would dare to pass any censure if
a widow of inconsiderable beauty and considerable age, being desirous of
marriage, had by the offer of a large dowry and easy conditions invited a
young man, who, whether as regards appearance, character or wealth, was
no despicable match, to become her husband? A beautiful maiden, even
though she is poor, is amply dowered. For she brings to her husband a fresh
untainted spirit, the charm of her beauty, the unblemished glory of her
prime. The very fact that she is a maiden is rightly and deservedly regarded
by all husbands as the strongest recommendation. For whatever else you
receive as your wife's dowry you can, when it pleases you and if you desire
to feel yourself under no further obligation, repay in full just as you
received it; you can count back the money, restore the slaves, leave the
howe, abandon the estates. Virginity only, once it has been given, can never
be repaid; it is the one portion of the dowry that remains irrevocably with
the husband.
A widow on the other hand, if divorced, leaves you as she came. She brings
you nothing that she cannot ask back, she has been another's and is certainly
far from tractable to your wishes; she looks suspiciously on her new home,
while you regard her with suspicion because she has already been parted
from one husband: if it was by death she lost her husband, the evil omen of
her ill-starred union minimizes her attractions, while, if she left him by
divorce, she possesses one of two faults: either she was so intolerable that
she was divorced by her husband, or so insolent as to divorce him. It is for
reasons of this kind among others that widows offer a larger dowry to
attract suitors for their hands. Pudentilla would have done the same had she
not found a philosopher indifferent to her dowry.
Part 93
Consider. If I had desired her from motives of avarice, what could have
been more profitable to me in my attempt to make myself master in her
house than the dissemination of strife between mother and sons, the
alienation of her children from her affections, so that I might have
unfettered and supreme control over her loneliness? Such would have been,
would it not, the action of the brigand you pretend me to be.
But as a matter of fact I did all I could to promote, to restore and foster
quiet and harmony and family affection, and not only abstained from
sowing fresh feuds, but utterly extinguished those already in existence. I
urged my wife -- whose whole fortune according to my accusers I had by
this time devoured -- I urged her and finally persuaded her, when her sons
demanded back the money of which I spoke above, to pay over the whole
sum at once in the shape of farms, at a low valuation and at the price
suggested by themselves, and further to surrender from her own private
property certain exceedingly fertile lands, a large house richly decorated, a
great quantity of wheat, barley, wine and oil, and other fruits of the earth,
together with not less than four hundred slaves and a large number of
valuable cattle. Finally I persuaded her to abandon all claims on the portion
she had given them and to give them good hopes of one day coming into the
rest of the property. All these concessions I extorted from Pudentilla with
difficulty and against her will -- I have her leave to tell the whole story as it
happened -- I wrung them from her by my urgent entreaty, though she was
angry and reluctant. I reconciled the mother with her sons, and began my
career as a step-father by enriching my step-sons with a large sum of
money.
Part 94
All Oea was aware of this. Every one execrated Rufinus and extolled mg
conduct.
Pontianus together with his very inferior brother had come to visit us,
before his mother had completed her donation. He fell at our feet and
implored us to forgive and forget all his past offences; he wept, kissed our
hands and expressed his penitence for listening to Rufinus and others like
him. He also most humbly begged me to make his excuses to the most
honourable Lollianus Avitus to whom I had recommended him not long
before when he was beginning the study of oratory. He had discovered that
I had written to Avitus a few days previously a full account of all that had
happened. I granted him this request also and gave him a letter with which
he set off to Carthage, where Lollianus Avitus, the term of his proconsulate
having neariy expired, was awaiting your arrival, Maximus. After reading
my letters he congratulated Pontianus with the exquisite courtesy which
always characterizes him for having so soon rectified his error and entrusted
him with a reply. Ah! what learning! what wit! what grace and charm dwelt
in that reply! Only a `good man and an orator' could have written it.
I know, Maximus, that you will readily give a hearing to this letter. Indeed,
if it is to be read, I will recite it myself. Give me Avitus' letter. That I should
have received it has always flattered me. Today it shall do more than flatter,
it shall save me! You may let the water-clock continue, for I would gladly
read and re-read the letter of that excellent man to the third and fourth time
at the cost of any amount of the time allowed me.
Part 95
I know that after reading this letter I should bring my speech to a close. For
what ampler commendation, what purer testimony could I produce in my
support, what more eloquent advocacy? I have in the course of my life
listened with rapt attention to many eloquent Romans, but never have I
admired any so much as Avitus. There is in my opinion no one living of any
attainments or promise in oratory who would not far sooner be Avitus, if he
compares him with himself impartially and without envy. For practically all
the different excellencies of oratory are united in him. Whatever speech
Avitus composes will be found so absolutely perfect and complete in all
respects that it would satisfy Cato by its dignity, Laelius with its
smoothness, Gracchus with its energy, Caesar with its warmth, Hortensius
with its arrangement, Calvus with its point, Sallust with its economy and
Cicero with its wealth of rhetoric. In fact, not to go through all his merits, if
you were to hear Avitus, you would wish nothing added, withdrawn or
altered of anything that he says.
I see, Maximus, with what pleasure you listen to the recital of the virtues
which you recognize your friend Avitus to possess. Your courtesy invited
me to say a few words about him. But I will not trespass on your kindness
so far as to permit myself to commence a discourse on his extraordinary
virtues at this period of the case. It is wearing to its end and my powers are
almost exhausted. I will rather reserve the praise of Avitus' virtues for some
day when my time is free and my powers unimpaired.
Part 96
Now, I grieve to say, it is my duty to turn from the description of so great a
man to discuss these pestilent fellows here. Do you dare then, Aemilianus,
to match yourself against Avitus? Will you attack with accusations of magic
and the black art him whom Avitus describes as a good man, and whose
disposition he praises so warmly in his letter? Or do you have greater
reason to be vexed at my forcing my way into Pudentilla's house and
pillaging her goods than Pontianus would have had, Pontianus, who not
only in my presence but even before Avitus in my absence, made amends
for the strife of a few days that had sprung up between us at your
instigation, and expressed his gratitude to me in the presence of so great a
man?
Suppose I had read a report of what took place in Avitus' presence instead
of reading merely his letter. What is there in the whole affair that could give
you or anyone else a handle for accusing me? Pontianus himself considered
himself in my debt for the money given him by his mother; Pontianus
rejoiced with the utmost sincerity in his good fortune in having me for his
step-father. Ah! would that he had returned from Carthage safe and sound!
Or since it was not fated that that should be, would that you, Rufinus, had
not poisoned his judgement at the last! What gratitude he would have
expressed to me either personally or in his will! However, as things are, I
beg you, Maximus, -- it will not take long -- to allow the reading of these
letters full of expressions of respect and affection for myself, which he sent
me, some of them from Carthage, some as he drew near on his homeward
journey, some written while he still enjoyed his health, and some when the
sickness was already upon him. Thus his brother, my accuser, will realize
how in everything he is running a Minerva's course with his brother, a man
of blessed memory.
Part 97
Did you hear the phrases which your brother Pontianus used in speaking of
me? He called me his father, his master, his instructor not only on various
occasions in his lifetime but actually on his deathbed. I might follow this by
producing similar letters from you, if I thought that the delay thus caused
would be worth while. But I should prefer to produce your brother's recent
will, unfinished though it may be, in which he made most dutiful and
respectful mention of myself. But Rufinus never allowed this will to be
drawn up or completed owing to his chagrin at the loss of the inheritance
which he had regarded in the light of a rich payment for his daughter's
embraces during the few months in which he was Pontianus' father-in-law.
He had further consulted certain Chaldean soothsayers as to what profit his
daughter, whom he regarded in the light of an investment, would bring him
in. They, I am told, prophesied truly -- would they had not -- that her first
husband would die in a few months. The rest of the prophecy dealing with
the inheritance was as usual fabricated to suit the debires of their client.
But Rufinus gaped for his prey in vain like a wild beast that has gone blind.
For Pontianus not only did not leave Rufinus' daughter as his heir -- he had
discovered her evil character -- but he did not even make her a respectable
legacy. He left her by way of insult linen to the value of 200 denarii, to
show that he had not forgotten or ignored her, but that he set this value on
her as an expression of his resentment. As his heirs -- in this just as in the
former will which has been read aloud -- he appointed his mother and his
brother, against whom, mere boy as he is, Rufinus is, as you see, bringing
his old artillery into play: I refer to his daughter. He thrusts her upon his
embraces although she is considerably his elder and but a brief while ago
was his brother's wife.
Part 98
Pudens was so captivated and possessed by the charms of that harlot and by
the beguiling words of the pander, her father, that the moment his brother
had breathed his last, he left his mother and migrated to his uncle's house.
The design was to facilitate the carrying out of the schemes already afoot by
removing him from our influence. For Aemilianus is backing Rufinus and
desires his success. Ah! Thank you! You rightly remind me that this
excellent uncle has hopes of his own mixed up in this affair, for he knows
that if this boy dies intestate he will be his heir-at-law, whatever he may be
in point of equity. I wish I had not let this slip. I am a man of great self-
control and it is not my way to blurt out openly the silent suspicions that
must have occurred to every one. You did wrong in suggesting this point to
me!
But to be frank, if you will have the truth, many have been wondering at the
sudden affection which you, Aemilianus, have begun to show for this boy
since the death of his brother Pontianus, whereas formerly you were such a
stranger to him that frequently, even when you met him, you failed to
recognize the face of your brother's son. But now you show yourself so
patient towards him, you so spoil him by your indulgence and grant his
every whim to such an extent that your conduct makes the more suspicious
think their suspicions well grounded. You took him from us a mere boy and
straightway gave him the garb of manhood. While he was under our
guardianship, he used to go to school: now he has bidden a long farewell to
study and betaken himself to the delights of the tavern. He despises serious
friends, and, boy as he is, spends his tender years in revelling with the most
abandoned youths among harlots and wine-cups. He rules your house,
orders your slaves, directs your banquets. He is frequently seen in</
I> the gladiatorial school and there -- as a boy of position should! -- he
learns from the keeper of the school the names of the gladiators, the fights
they have fought, the wounds they have received. He never speaks any
language save Punic, and though he may occasionally use a Greek word
picked up from his mother, he neither will nor can speak Latin. You heard,
Maximus, a little while ago, you heard my step-son -- oh! the shame of it! --
the brother of that eloquent young fellow Pontianus, hardly able to stammer
out single syllables, when you asked him whether his mother had given
himself and his brother the gifts which, as I told you just now, she actually
gave them with my hearty support.
Part 99
I call you, therefore, Claudius Maximus, and you, gentlemen, his assessors,
and you that with me stand before this tribunal, to bear witness that this
boy's disgraceful falling away in morals is due to his uncle here and that
candidate for the privilege of becoming his father-in-law, and that I shall
henceforth count it a blessing that such a step-son has lifted the burden of
superintending him from my shoulders, and that from this day forth I will
never intercede for him with his mother.
For recently -- I had almost forgotten to mention it -- when Pudentilla, who
had fallen ill after the death of her son Pontianus, was writing her will, I had
a prolonged struggle to prevent her disinheriting this boy on account of the
outrageous insult and injury he had inflicted on her. I prayed her with the
utmost earnestness to erase that most important clause, which, I can assure
you, she had already written, every word of it! Finally, I even threatened to
leave her, if she refused to accede to my request, and begged her to grant
me this boon, to conquer her wicked son by kindness, and to save me from
all the ill feeling which her action would create. I did not desist till she
complied.
I regret that I should have taken away this point of concern from
Aemilianus and showed him such an unexpected thing. Look, Maximus, see
how confused he is at hearing this, see how he casts his eyes upon the
ground. He had not unnaturally expected something very different. He knew
that my wife was angry with her son on account of his insolent behaviour
and that she returned my devotion. He had reason also for fear in regard to
myself; for anyone else, even if like myself he had been above coveting the
inheritance, would gladly have seen so undutiful a step-son punished. It was
this anxiety above all others that spurred them on to accuse me. Their own
avarice led them falsely to conjecture that the whole inheritance had been
left to me. As far as the past is concerned, I will dispel your fears on that
point. I was proof against the temptation both of enriching myself and of
revenging myself. I -- a step-father, mind you -- contended for my wicked
step-son with his mother, as a father might contend against a stepmother in
the interests of a virtuous son; nor did I rest satisfied till, with a perfectly
extravagant sense of fairness, I had restrained my good wife's lavish
generosity towards myself.
Part 100
Give me the will which was made in the interests of so unfilial a son by his
mother. Each word of it was preceded by an entreaty from myself, whom
my accusers speak of as a mere robber. Order the tablets to be broken open,
Maximus. You will find that her son is the heir, that I get nothing save some
trifling complimentary legacy inserted to avoid the non-appearance of my
name, the husband's name, mark you, in my wife's will, supposing she
succumbed to any of the ills to which this flesh is heir. Take up your
mother's will. You are right, in one respect it is undutiful. She excludes her
devoted husband from the inheritance in favour of her most unfilial son?
Nay, it is not her son to whom she leaves her fortune; she leaves it rather to
the greedy Aemilianus and the matchmaking Rufinus and that drunken
gang, that hang about you and prey upon you.
Take it, o best of sons! Lay aside your mother's love-letters for a while and
read her will instead. If she ever wrote anything while not in her right mind,
you will find it here, nor will you have to go far to find it. `Let Sicinius
Pudens, my son, be my heir.' I admit it! he who reads this, will think it
insanity. Is this same son your heir, who at his own brother's funeral
attempted with the help of a gang of the most abandoned youths to shut you
out of the house which you yourself had given him, who is so deeply and
bitterly incensed to find that his brother left you co-heir with himself, who
hastened to desert you when you were plunged in grief and mourning, and
fled from your bosom to Aemilianus and Rufinus, who afterwards uttered
many insults against you to your face, and manufactured others with the
help of his uncle, who has dragged your name through the law-courts, has
attempted by using your own letters publicly to besmirch your fair fame,
and has accused upon a capital charge the husband of your choice, with
whom, as Pudens himself objected, you were madly in love!
Open the will, my good boy, open it, I beg you. You will find it easier then
to prove your mother's insanity. Why do you draw back? Why do you
refuse to look at it, now that you are free from all anxiety about the
inheritance of your mother's fortune?
Part 101
He may do as he likes, Maximus, but for my part I cast these tablets at your
feet and call you to witness that henceforth I shall show greater indifference
as to what Pudentilla may write in her will. He may approach his mother
himself for the future; he has made it impossible for me to plead for him
again. He is now a man and his own master; henceforth let him himself
dictate to his mother the terms of an unpalatable will, himself smooth away
her anger. He who can plead in court, will be able to plead with his mother.
I am more than satisfied not only to have refuted the miscellaneous
accusations brought against myself, but also to have utterly swept away the
hateful charge on which the whole trial is based, the charge of having
attempted to secure the inheritance for myself.
I will bring one final proof to show the falsity of that last charge before I
bring my speech to a close. I wish to pass nothing over in silence. You
asserted that I bought a most excellent farm in my own name, but with a
large sum of money which belonged to my wife. I say that a tiny property
was bought for 60,000 sesterces, and bought not by me but by Pudentilla in
her own name, that Pudentilla's name is in the deed of sale, and that the
taxes paid on the land are paid in the name of Pudentilla. The honourable
Coninus Celer, the state treasurer to whom the tax is paid, is here in court.
Cassius Longinus also is present, my wife's guardian and trustee, a man of
the loftiest and most irreproachable character. I cannot speak of him save
with the deepest respect. Ask him, Maximus, what was the purchase which
he authorized, and what was the trifling sum for which this wealthy lady
bought her little estate.
Is it as I said? Is my name ever mentioned in the deed of sale? Is the price
paid for this trifling property such as should excite any prejudice against
me, or did my wife give me even so much as this small gift?
Part 102
What is there left, Aemilianus, that in your opinion I have failed to refute?
What had I to gain by my magic that should lead me to attempt to win
Pudentilla by love-philtres? What had I to gain from her? A small dowry
instead of a large one? Truly my incantations were miraculous. That she
should refund her dowry to her sons rather than leave it in my possession?
What magic can surpass this? That she should at my exhortation present the
bulk of her property to her sons and leave me nothing, although before her
marriage with myself she had shown them no special generosity? What a
criminal we of love-philtres! Or perhaps I had better call it a generous
action which has not received its deserts! By her will, which she drew up in
a fit of violent irritation against her son, she leaves as her heir that same son
with whom she had quarrelled, rather than myself to whom she was
devoted! For all my incantations it was only with difficulty that I persuaded
her to this.
Suppose that you were pleading your case, not before Claudius Maximus, a
man of the utmost fairness and unswerving justice, but before a judge of
depraved morals and of ferocious temper, one in fact who naturally inclined
to the side of the accuser and was only too ready to condemn the accused!
Give him some hint to follow! Give him even the slightest reasonable
opportunity for declaring in your favour! At least invent something, devise
some suitable reply to questions such as have been put to you.
Nay, since every action must necessarily have some motive, answer me this,
you who say that Apuleius tried to influence Pudentilla's heart by magical
charms, answer me this! What did he seek to get from her by so doing? Was
he in love with her beauty? You say not! Did he covet her wealth? The
evidence of the marriage settlement denies it, the evidence of the deed of
gift denies it, the evidence of the will denies it! It shows not only that I did
not court the generosity of my wife, but that I even repulsed it with some
severity. What other motive can you allege? Why are you struck dumb?
Why this silence? What has become of that ferocious utterance with which
you opened the indictment, couched in the name of my step-son? `This is
the man, most excellent Maximus, whom I have resolved to indict before
you.'
Part 103
Why did you not add `He whom I indict is my teacher, my step-father, my
mediator'? But how did you proceed? `He is guilty of the most palpable and
numerous sorceries.' Produce one of these many sorceries or at least some
doubtful instance from those which you style so palpable.
Nay, see whether I cannot reply to your various charges with two words to
each. `You clean your teeth.' Excusable cleanliness. `You look into mirrors.'
Philosophers should. `You write verse.' 'Tis permitted. `You examine fish.'
Following Aristotle. `You worship a piece of wood.' So Plato. `You marry a
wife.' Obeying law. `She is older than you.' Nothing commoner. `You
married for money.' Take the marriage-settlement, remember the deed of
gift, read the will!
If I have rebutted all their charges, word by word, if I have refuted all their
slanders, if I am beyond reproach, not only as regards their accusations but
also as regards their vulgar abuse, if I have done nothing to impair the
honour of philosophy, which is dearer to me than my own safety, but on the
contrary have smitten my adversary hip and thigh and vanquished him at all
points, if all my contentions are true, I can await your estimate of my
character with the same confidence with which I await the exercise of your
power; for I regard it as less serious and less terrible to be condemned by
the proconsul than to incur the disapproval of so good and so perfect a man.

THE END
THE TALE OF CUPID & PSYCHES

***

LUCIUS APULEIUS

Translated by

WILLIAM ADLINGTON

The Tale of Cupid & Psyches

From a 1639 edition.

ISBN 978-1-775411-79-6

© 2008 THE FLOATING PRESS.

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the
information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The
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2

The most pleasant and delectable tale of the marriage of Cupid and Psyches.

There was sometimes a certaine King, inhabiting in the West parts, who had
to wife a noble Dame, by whom he had three daughters exceeding fair: of
whom the two elder were of such comly shape and beauty, as they did excell
and pass all other women living, whereby they were thought worthily to
deserve the praise and commendation of every person, and deservedly to be
preferred above the residue of the common sort. Yet the singular passing
beauty and maidenly majesty of the youngest daughter did so farre surmount
and excell then two, as no earthly creature could by any meanes sufficiently
expresse or set out the same.

By reason wherof, after the fame of this excellent maiden was spread about
in every part of the City, the Citisens

and strangers there beeing inwardly pricked by the zealous affection to

behold her famous person, came daily by thousands, hundreths, and scores,
to her fathers palace, who was astonied with admiration of her incomparable
beauty, did no less worship and reverence her with crosses, signes, and
tokens, and other divine adorations, according to the custome of the old used
rites and ceremonies, than if she were the Lady Venus indeed, and shortly
after the fame was spread into the next cities and bordering regions, that the
goddess whom the deep seas had born and brought forth, and the froth of the
waves had nourished, to the intent to show her high magnificencie and
divine power on earth, to such as erst did honour and worship her, was now
conversant among mortall men, or else that the earth and not the sea, by a
new concourse and influence of the celestiall planets, had budded and
yeelded forth a new Venus, endued with the floure of virginity.

So daily more and more encreased this opinion, and now is her flying fame
dispersed into the next Island, and well nigh unto every part and province of
the whole world. Wherupon innumerable strangers resorted from farre
Countries, adventuring themselves by long journies on land and by great
perils on water, to behold this glorious virgin. By occasion wherof such a
contempt grew towards the goddesse Venus, that no person travelled

unto the Towne Paphos, nor to the Isle Gyndos, nor to Cythera to worship
her. Her ornaments were throwne out, her temples defaced, her pillowes and
cushions torne, her ceremonies neglected, her images and Statues
uncrowned, and her bare altars unswept, and fowl with the ashes of old burnt
sacrifice. For why, every person honoured and worshipped this maiden in
stead of Venus, and in the morning at her first comming abroad offered unto
her oblations, provided banquets, called her by the name of Venus, which
was not Venus indeed, and in her honour presented floures and garlands in
most reverend fashion.

This sudden change and alteration of celestiall honour, did greatly inflame
and kindle the love of very Venus, who unable to temper her selfe from
indignation, shaking her head in raging sort, reasoned with her selfe in this
manner, Behold the originall parent of all these elements, behold the Lady
Venus renowned throughout all the world, with whome a mortall maiden is
joyned now partaker of honour: my name registred in the city of heaven is
prophaned and made vile by terrene absurdities. If I shall suffer any mortall
creature to present my Majesty on earth, or that any shall beare about a false
surmised shape of her person, then in vaine did Paris the sheepheard (in
whose judgement and competence the great Jupiter had affiance) preferre me

above the residue of the goddesses, for the excellency of my beauty: but she,
whatever she be that hath usurped myne honour, shal shortly repent her of
her unlawful estate. And by and by she called her winged sonne Cupid, rash
enough and hardy, who by his evill manners contemning all publique justice
and law, armed with fire and arrowes, running up and down in the nights
from house to house, and corrupting the lawfull marriages of every person,
doth nothing but that which is evill, who although that hee were of his owne
proper nature sufficiently prone to worke mischiefe, yet she egged him
forward with words and brought him to the city, and shewed him Psyches
(for so the maid was called) and having told the cause of her anger, not
without great rage, I pray thee (quoth she) my dear childe, by motherly bond
of love, by the sweet wounds of thy piercing darts, by the pleasant heate of
thy fire, revenge the injury which is done to thy mother by the false and
disobedient beauty of a mortall maiden, and I pray thee, that without delay
shee may fall in love with the most miserablest creature living, the most
poore, the most crooked, and the most vile, that there may bee none found in
all the world of like wretchednesse. When she had spoken these words she
embraced and kissed her sonne, and took her voyage toward the sea.

When she came upon the sea she began to cal the gods

and goddesses, who were obedient at her voyce. For incontinent came the
daughters of Nereus, singing with tunes melodiously: Portunus with his
bristled and rough beard, Salita with her bosome full of fish, Palemon the
driver of the Dolphine, the Trumpetters of Tryton, leaping hither and thither,
and blowing with heavenly noyse: such was the company which followed
Venus, marching towards the ocean sea.

In the meane season Psyches with all her beauty received no fruit of honor.
She was wondred at of all, she was praised of all, but she perceived that no
King nor Prince, nor any one of the superiour sort did repaire to wooe her.
Every one marvelled at her divine beauty, as it were some Image well
painted and set out. Her other two sisters, which were nothing so greatly
exalted by the people, were royally married to two Kings: but the virgin
Psyches, sitting alone at home, lamented her solitary life, and being
disquieted both in mind and body, although she pleased all the world, yet
hated shee in her selfe her owne beauty. Whereupon the miserable father of
this unfortunate daughter, suspecting that the gods and powers of heaven did
envy her estate, went to the town called Milet to receive the Oracle of
Apollo, where he made his prayers and offered sacrifice, and desired a
husband for his daughter: but Apollo though he were a Grecian, and of the
country of Ionia, because of the

foundation of Milet, yet hee gave answer in Latine verse, the sence whereof
was this:—

Let Psyches corps be clad in mourning weed, And set on rock of yonder hill
aloft: Her husband is no wight of humane seed, But Serpent dire and fierce
as might be thought. Who flies with wings above in starry skies, And doth
subdue each thing with firie flight. The gods themselves, and powers that
seem so wise, With mighty Jove, be subject to his might, The rivers blacke,
and deadly flouds of paine And darkness eke, as thrall to him remaine.

The King, sometimes happy when he heard the prophesie of Apollo,

returned home sad and sorrowful, and declared to his wife the miserable and
unhappy fate of his daughter. Then they began to lament and weep, and
passed over many dayes in great sorrow. But now the time approached of
Psyches marriage, preparation was made, blacke torches were lighted, the
pleasant songs were turned into pittifull cries, the melody of Hymeneus was
ended with deadly howling, the maid that should be married did wipe her
eyes with her vaile. All the family and people of the city weeped likewise,
and with great lamentation was ordained a remisse time for that day, but
necessity compelled that Psyches should be brought to her appointed place,
according to the divine appointment.

And when the solemnity was ended, they went to bring the sorrowful
spowse, not to her marriage, but to her final end and burial. And while the
father and mother of Psyches did go forward weeping and crying unto this
enterprise, Psyches spake unto them in this sort: Why torment your unhappy
age with continuall dolour? Why trouble you your spirits, which are more
rather mine than yours? Why soyle ye your faces with teares, which I ought
to adore and worship? Why teare you my eyes in yours? why pull you your
hory haires? Why knocke ye your breasts for me? Now you see the reward
of my excellent beauty: now, now you perceive, but too late, the plague of
envy. When the people did honour me, and call me new Venus, then yee
should have wept, then you should have sorrowed as though I had been
dead: for now I see and perceive that I am come to this misery by the only
name of Venus, bring mee, and as fortune has appointed, place me on the top
of the rocke, I greatly desire to end my marriage, I greatly covet to see my
husband. Why doe I delay? why should I refuse him that is appointed to
destroy all the world.

Thus ended she her words, and thrust her selfe among the people that
followed. Then they brought her to the appointed rocke of the high hill, and
set [her] hereon, and so departed. The Torches and lights were put out with
the teares of the people, and every man gone home, the

miserable Parents well nigh consumed with sorrow, gave themselves to

everlasting darknes.

Thus poore Psyches being left alone, weeping and trembling on the toppe of
the rocke, was blowne by the gentle aire and of shrilling Zephyrus, and
carried from the hill with a meek winde, which retained her garments up,
and by little and little bought her downe into a deepe valley, where she was
laid in a bed of most sweet and fragrant flowers.

Thus faire Psyches being sweetly couched among the soft and tender hearbs,
as in a bed of sweet and fragrant floures, and having qualified the thoughts
and troubles of her restlesse minde, was now well reposed. And when she
had refreshed her selfe sufficiently with sleepe, she rose with a more quiet
and pacified minde, and fortuned to espy a pleasant wood invironed with
great and mighty trees. Shee espied likewise a running river as cleare as
crystall: in the midst of the wood well nigh at the fall of the river was a
princely Edifice, wrought and builded not by the art or hand of man, but by
the mighty power of God: and you would judge at the first entry therin, that
it were some pleasant and worthy mansion for the powers of heaven. For the
embowings above were of Citron and Ivory, propped and undermined with
pillars of gold, the walls covered and seeled with silver, divers sorts of
10

beasts were graven and carved, that seemed to encounter with such as
entered in. All things were so curiously and finely wrought, that it seemed
either to be the worke of some Demy god, or of God himselfe. The pavement
was all of pretious stones, divided and cut one from another, whereon was
carved divers kindes of pictures, in such sort that blessed and thrice blessed
were they that might goe upon such a pavement: Every part and angle of the
house was so well adorned, that by reason of the pretious stones and
inestimable treasure there, it glittered and shone in such sort, that the
chambers, porches, and doores gave light as it had beene the Sunne. Neither
otherwise did the other treasure of the house disagree unto so great a
majesty, that verily it seemed in every point an heavenly Palace, fabricate
and built for Jupiter himselfe.

Then Psyches moved with delectation approched nigh and taking a bold
heart entred into the house, and beheld every thing there with great affection,
she saw storehouses wrought exceedingly fine, and replenished with
aboundance of riches. Finally, there could nothing be devised which lacked
there: but among such great store of treasure this was most marvellous, that
there was no closure, bolt, nor locke to keepe the same. And when with great
pleasure shee had viewed all these things, she heard a voyce without any
body, that sayd, Why doe you

11

marvell Madame at so great riches? behold, all that you see is at your
commandement, wherefore goe you into the chamber, and repose your selfe
upon the bed, and desire what bath you will have, and wee whose voyces
you heare bee your servants, and ready to minister unto you according to
your desire. In the meane season, royall meats and dainty dishes shall be
prepared for you.

Then Psyches perceived the felicity of divine providence, and according to

the advertisement of the incorporeall voyces she first reposed her selfe upon
the bed, and then refreshed her body in the baines. This done, shee saw the
table garnished with meats, and a chaire to sit downe.
When Psyches was set downe, all sorts of divine meats and wines were
brought in, not by any body, but as it were with a winde, for she saw no
person before her, but only heard voyces on every side. After that all the
services were brought to the table, one came in and sung invisibly, another
played on the harpe, but she saw no man. The harmony of the Instruments
did so greatly shrill in her eares, that though there were no manner of person,
yet seemed she in the midst of a multitude of people.

All these pleasures finished, when night aproched Psyches went to bed, and
when she was layd, that the

12

sweet sleep came upon her, she greatly feared her virginity, because shee
was alone. Then came her unknowne husband and lay with her: and after
that hee had made a perfect consummation of the marriage, he rose in the
morning before day, and departed. Soone after came her invisible servants,
and presented to her such things as were necessary for her defloration. And
thus she passed forth a great while, and as it happeneth, the novelty of the
things by continuall custome did encrease her pleasure, but especially the
sound of the instruments was a comfort to her being alone.

During this time that Psyches was in this place of pleasures, her father and
mother did nothing but weepe and lament, and her two sisters hearing of her
most miserable fortune, came with great dolour and sorrow to comfort and
speake with her parents.

The night following, Psyches husband spake unto her (for she might feele
his eyes, his hands, and his ears) and sayd, O my sweet Spowse and dear
wife, fortune doth menace unto thee imminent danger, wherof I wish thee
greatly to beware: for know that thy sisters, thinking that thou art dead, bee
greatly troubled, and are coming to the mountain by thy steps. Whose
lamentations if thou fortune to heare, beware that thou doe in no wise make
answer, or looke up towards them, for if thou doe thou

13
shalt purchase to mee great sorrow, and to thyself utter destruction. Psyches
hearing her Husband, was contented to doe all things as hee had
commanded.

After that hee was departed and the night passed away, Psyches lamented
and lamented all the day following, thinking that now shee was past all
hopes of comfort, in that shee was closed within the walls of a prison,
deprived of humane conversation, and commaunded not to aid her sorrowful
Sisters, no nor once to see them. Thus she passed all the day in weeping, and
went to bed at night, without any refection of meat or baine.

Incontinently after came her husband, who when he had embraced her
sweetly, began to say, Is it thus that I find you perform your promise, my
sweet wife? What do I finde heere? Passe you all the day and the night in
weeping? And wil you not cease in your husbands armes? Goe too, doe what
ye will, purchase your owne destruction, and when you find it so, then
remember my words, and repent but too late. Then she desired her husband
more and more, assuring him that shee should die, unlesse he would grant
that she might see her sisters, wherby she might speak with them and
comfort them, wherat at length he was contented, and moreover hee willed
that shee should give them as much gold and jewels as she would. But he
gave her a further charge

14

saying, Beware that ye covet not (being mooved by the pernicious counsell
of you sisters) to see the shape of my person, lest by your curiosity you
deprive your selfe of so great and worthy estate. Psyches being glad
herewith, rendered unto him most entire thankes, and said, Sweet husband, I
had rather die than to bee separated from you, for whosoever you bee, I love
and retaine you within my heart, as if you were myne owne spirit or Cupid
himselfe: but I pray you grant this likewise, that you would commaund your
servant Zephyrus to bring my sisters downe into the valley as he brought
mee.

Wherewithall shee kissed him sweetly, and desired him gently to grant her
request, calling him her spowse, her sweetheart, her Joy and her Solace.
Wherby she enforced him to agree to her mind, and when morning came he
departed away.

After long search made, the sisters of Psyches came unto the hill where she
was set on the rocke, and cried with a loud voyce in such sort that the stones
answered againe. And when they called their sister by her name, that their
lamentable cries came unto her eares, shee came forth and said, Behold,
heere is shee for whom you weepe, I pray you torment your selves no more,
cease your weeping. And by and by she commaunded Zephyrus by the
appointment of her husband to bring them downe.

15

Neither did he delay, for with gentle blasts he retained them up and laid them
softly in the valley. I am not able to expresse the often embracing, kissing
and greeting which was between them three, all sorrows and tears were then
layd apart.

Come in (quoth Psyches) into our house, and refresh your afflicted mindes
with your sister.

After this she shewed them the storehouses of treasure, shee caused them to
hear the voyces which served her, the bain was ready, the meats were
brought in, and when they had filled themselves with divine delecates, they
conceived great envy within their hearts, and one of them being curious, did
demand what her husband was, of what estate, and who was Lord of so
pretious a house? But Psyches remembring the promise which she had made
to her husband, feigned that hee was a young man, of comely stature, with a
flaxen beard, and had great delight in hunting the dales and hills by. And lest
by her long talke she should be found to trip or faile in her words, she filled
their laps with gold, silver, and Jewels, and commanded Zephyrus to carry
them away.

When they were brought up to the mountain, they made their wayes
homeward to their owne houses, and murmured with envy that they bare
against Psyches,
16

saying, behold cruell and contrary fortune, behold how we, borne all of one
Parent, have divers destinies: but especially we that are the elder two bee
married to strange husbands, made as handmaidens, and as it were banished
from our Countrey and friends. Whereas our younger sister hath great
abundance of treasure, and hath gotten a god to her husband, although shee
hath no skill how to use such great plenty of riches. Saw you not sister what
was in the house, what great store of jewels, what glittering robes, what
Gemmes, what gold we trod on? That if shee hath a husband according as
shee affirmeth, there is none that liveth this day more happy in all the world
than she. And so it may come to passe, at length for the great affection
which hee may beare unto her that hee may make her a goddesse, for by
Hercules, such was her countenance, so she behaved her self, that as a
goddesse she had voices to serve her, and the windes did obey her.

But I poore wretch have first married an husband elder than my father, more
bald than a Coot, more weake than a childe, and that locketh me up all day in
the house.

Then said the other sister, And in faith I am married to a husband that hath
the gout, twyfold, crooked, nor couragious in paying my debt, I am faine to
rub and mollifie his stony fingers with divers sorts of oyles, and

17

to wrap them in playsters and salves, so that I soyle my white and dainty
hands with the corruption of filthy clouts, not using my self like a wife, but
more like a servant. And you my sister seem likewise to be in bondage and
servitude, wherefore I cannot abide to see our younger sister in such felicity;
saw you not I pray you how proudly and arrogantly she handled us even
now? And how in vaunting her selfe she uttered her presumptuous minde,
how she cast a little gold into our laps, and being weary of our company,
commanded that we should be borne and blown away?

Verily I live not, nor am a woman, but I will deprive her of all her blisse.
And if you my sister bee so far bent as I, let us consult together, and not to
utter our minde to any person, no not to our parents, nor tell that ever we saw
her. For it sufficeth that we have seene her, whom it repenteth to have seene.
Neither let us declare her good fortune to our father, nor to any other, since
as they seeme not happy whose riches are unknowne: so shall she know that
she hath sisters no Abjects, but worthier than she.

But now let us goe home to our husbands and poore houses, and when we
are better instructed, let us return to suppresse her pride. So this evill
counsell pleased these two evil women, and they hid the treasure which
Psyches

18

gave them, and tare their haire, renewing their false and forged teares. When
their father and mother beheld them weep and lament still, they doubled
their sorrowes and griefes, but full of yre and forced with Envy, they tooke
their voyage homeward, devising the slaughter and destruction of their sister.

In the meane season the husband of Psyches did warne her againe in the
night with these words: Seest thou not (quoth he) what perill and danger
evill fortune doth threaten unto thee, whereof if thou take not good heed it
will shortly come upon thee. For the unfaithfull harlots doe greatly endeavor
to set their snares to catch thee, and their purpose is to make and perswade
thee to behold my face, which if thou once fortune to see, as I have often
told, thou shalt see no more. Wherfore if these naughty hagges, armed with
wicked minds, doe chance to againe (as I think no otherwise but that they
will) take heed that thou talk not with them but simply suffer them to speake
what they will, howbeit if thou canst not refraine thy selfe, beware that thou
have no communication of thy husband, nor answer a word if they fortune to
question of me, so will we encrease our stocke, and this young and tender
childe, couched in this young and tender belly of thine, shall be made an
immortall god, otherwise a mortal creature. Then Psyches was very glad that
she should bring forth a divine babe, and very joyfull in that

19
she should be honored as a mother. She reckened and numbered carefully the
days and months that passed, and beeing never with child before, did marvel
greatly that in so short a time her belly should swel so big. But those
pestilent and wicked furies breathing out their Serpentine poyson, took
shipping to bring their enterprise to passe. The Psyches was warned again by
her husband in this sort: Behold the last day, the extream case, and the
enemies of thy blood, hath armed themselves against us, pitched their
campe, set their host in array, and are marching towards us, for now thy two
sisters have drawn their swords and are ready to slay thee. O with what force
are we assailed on this day! O sweet Psyches I pray thee to take pitty on thy
selfe, of me, and deliver thy husband and this infant within thy belly from so
great danger, and see not, neither heare these cursed women, which are not
worthy to be called thy sisters, for their great hatred and breach of sisterly
amity, for they wil come like Syrens to the mountains, and yeeld out their
pittious and lamentable cries. When Psyches had heard these words she
sighed sorrowfully and said, O deare husband this long time have you had
experience and triall of my faith, and doubt you not that I will persever in the
same, wherefore command your winde Zephyrus, that hee may doe as hee
hath done before, to the intent that where you have charged me not to behold
your venerable face, yet that I may comfort myself with the

20

sight of my sisters. I pray you by these beautifull haires, by these round

cheekes delicate and tender, by your pleasant hot breast, whose shape and
face I shall learn at length by the childe in my belly, grant the fruit of my
desire, refresh your deare Spowse Psyches with joy, who is bound and linked
unto you for ever. I little esteeme to see your visage and figure, little doe I
regard the night and darknesse thereof, for you are my only light.

Her husband being as it were inchanted with these words and compelled by
violence of her often embracing, wiping away her teares with his haire, did
yeeld unto his wife. And when morning came, departed as hee was
accustomed to doe.

Now her sisters arrived on land, and never rested til they came to the rock,
without visiting their parents, and leapt down rashly from the hill
themselves. Then Zephyrus according to the divine commandment brought
them down, although it were against his wil, and laid them in the vally
without any harm: by and by they went into the palace to their sister without
leave, and when they had eftsoone embraced their prey, and thanked her with
flattering words for the treasure which she gave them, they said, O deare
sister Psyches, know you that you are now no more a child, but a mother: O
what great joy beare you unto us in your belly? What a comfort will it

21

be unto all the house? How happy shall we be, that shall see this Infant
nourished amongst so great plenty of Treasure? That if he be like his parents,
as it is necessary he should, there is no doubt but a new cupid shall be borne.
By this kinde of measures they went about to winne Psyches by little and
little, but because they were wearie with travell, they sate them downe in
chaires, and after that they had washed their bodies in baines they went into
a parlour, where all kinde of meats were ready prepared. Psyches
commanded one to play with his harpe, it was done. Then immediately
others sung, others tuned their instruments, but no person was seene, by
whose sweet harmony and modulation the sisters of Psyches were greatly
delighted.

Howbeit the wickednesse of these cursed women was nothing suppressed by

the sweet noyse of these instruments, but they settled themselves to work
their treasons against Psyches, demanding who was her husband, and of
what Parentage. Then shee having forgotten by too much simplicity, what
shee had spoken before of her husband, invented a new answer, and said that
her husband was of a great province, a merchant, and a man of middle age,
having his beard intersparsed with grey haires. Which when shee had spoken
(because shee would have no further talke) she filled their laps with Gold
and Silver, and bid Zephyrus to bear them

22

away.

In their returne homeward they murmured within themselves, saying, How

say you sister to so apparent a lye of Psyches? First she sayd that her
husband was a young man of flourishing yeares, and had a flaxen beard, and
now she sayth that he is halfe grey with age. What is he that in so short a
space can become so old? You shall finde it no otherwise my sister, but that
either this cursed queane hath invented a great lie, or else that she never saw
the shape of her husband. And if it be so that she never saw him, then verily
she is married to some god, and hath a young god in her belly. But if it be a
divine babe, and fortune to come to the eares of my mother (as God forbid it
should) then may I go and hang my selfe: wherfore let us go to our parents,
and with forged lies let us colour the matter.

After they were thus inflamed, and had visited their Parents, they returned
againe to the mountaine, and by the aid of the winde Zephyrus were carried
down into the valley, and after they had streined their eye lids, to enforce
themselves to weepe, they called unto Psyches in this sort, Thou (ignorant of
so great evill) thinkest thy selfe sure and happy, and sittest at home nothing
regarding thy peril, whereas wee goe about thy affaires and are carefull lest
any harme should happen unto you:

23

for we are credibly informed, neither can we but utter it unto you, that there
is a great serpent full of deadly poyson, with a ravenous gaping throat, that
lieth with thee every night Remember the Oracle of Apollo, who pronounced
that thou shouldest he married to a dire and fierce Serpent, and many of the
Inhabitants hereby, and such as hunt about in the countrey, affirme that they
saw him yesternight returning from pasture and swimming over the River,
whereby they doe undoubtedly say, that hee will not pamper thee long with
delicate meats, but when the time of delivery shall approach he will devoure
both thee and thy child: wherefore advise thy selfe whether thou wilt agree
unto us that are carefull of thy safety, and so avoid the perill of death, bee
contented to live with thy sisters, or whether thou remaine with the Serpent
and in the end be swallowed into the gulfe of his body. And if it be so that
thy solitary life, thy conversation with voices, this servile and dangerous
pleasure, and the love of the Serpent doe more delight thee, say not but that
we have played the parts of naturall sisters in warning thee.
Then the poore and simple miser Psyches was mooved with the feare of so
dreadful words, and being amazed in her mind, did cleane forget the
admonitions of her husband, and her owne promises made unto him, and
throwing her selfe headlong into extreame misery, with a

24

wanne and sallow countenance, scantly uttering a third word, at length gan
say in this sort: O my most deare sisters, I heartily thanke you for your great
kindnesse toward me, and I am now verily perswaded that they which have
informed you hereof hath informed you of nothing but truth, for I never saw
the shape of my husband, neither know I from whence he came, only I heare
his voice in the night, insomuch that I have an uncertaine husband, and one
that loveth not the light of the day: which causeth me to suspect that he is a
beast, as you affirme. Moreover, I doe greatly feare to see him, for he doth
menace and threaten great evill unto mee, if I should goe about to spy and
behold his shape wherefore my loving sisters if you have any wholeome
remedy for your sister in danger, give it now presently. Then they opened the
gates of their subtill mindes, and did put away all privy guile, and egged her
forward in her fearefull thoughts, perswading her to doe as they would have
her whereupon one of them began and sayd, Because that wee little esteeme
any perill or danger, to save your life we intend to shew you the best way
and meane as we may possibly do. Take a sharpe razor and put it under the
pillow of your bed; and see that you have ready a privy burning lampe with
oyle, hid under some part of the hanging of the chamber, and finely
dissembling the matter when according to his custome he commeth to bed
and sleepeth soundly, arise you secretly,

25

and with your bare feet goe and take the lampe, with the Razor in your right
hand and with valiant force cut off the head of the poysonous serpent,
wherein we will aid and assist you: and when by the death of him you shall
be made safe, we wil marry you to some comely man.

After they had thus inflamed the heart of their sister fearing lest some danger
might happen unto them by reason of their evill counsell, they were carried
by the wind Zephyrus to the top of the mountaine, and so they ran away and
tooke shipping.

When Psyches was left alone (saving that she seemed not to be alone, being
stirred by so many furies) she was in a tossing minde like the waves of the
sea, and although her wil was obstinate, and resisted to put in execution the
counsell of her Sisters, yet she was in doubtfull and divers opinions touching
her calamity. Sometime she would, sometime she would not, sometime she
is bold, sometime she feareth, sometime shee mistrusteth, somtime she is
mooved, somtime she hateth the beast, somtime she loveth her husband: but
at length night came, when as she prepared for her wicked intent.

Soon after her husband Came, and when he had kissed and embraced her he
fell asleep. Then Psyches (somwhat feeble in body and mind, yet mooved by
cruelty of fate)

26

received boldnes and brought forth the lampe, and tooke the razor, so by her
audacity she changed her mind: but when she took the lamp and came to the
bed side, she saw the most meeke and sweetest beast of all beasts, even faire
Cupid couched fairly, at whose sight the very lampe encreased his light for
joy, and the razor turned his edge.

But when Psyches saw so glorious a body shee greatly feared, and amazed in
mind, with a pale countenance all trembling fel on her knees and thought to
hide the razor, yea verily in her owne heart, which doubtlesse she had done,
had it not through feare of so great an enterprise fallen out of her hand. And
when she saw and beheld the beauty of the divine visage shee was well
recreated in her mind, she saw his haires of gold, that yeelded out a sweet
savor, his neck more white than milk, his purple cheeks, his haire hanging
comely behinde and before, the brightnesse whereof did darken the light of
the lamp, his tender plume feathers, dispersed upon his sholders like shining
flours, and trembling hither and thither, and his other parts of his body so
smooth and so soft, that it did not repent Venus to beare such a childe. At the
beds feet lay his bow, quiver, and arrowes, that be the weapons of so great a
god: which when Psyches did curiously behold, she marvelling at her
husbands weapons, took one of the arrows out of the quiver, and pricked her
selfe

27

withall, wherwith she was so grievously wounded that the blood followed,
and thereby of her owne accord shee added love upon love; then more
broyling in the love of Cupid shee embraced him and kissed him and kissed
him a thousand times, fearing the measure of his sleepe But alas while shee
was in this great joy, whether it were for envy for desire to touch this
amiable body likewise, there fell out a droppe of burning oyle from the
lampe upon the right shoulder of the god. O rash and bold lampe, the vile
ministery of love, how darest thou bee so bold as to burne the god of all fire?
When as he invented thee, to the intent that all lovers might with more joy
passe the nights in pleasure.

The god beeing burned in this sort, and perceiving that promise and faith
was broken, bee fled away without utterance of any word, from the eyes and
hands of his most unhappy wife. But Psyches fortuned to catch him as hee
was rising by the right thigh, and held him fast as hee flew above in the aire,
until such time as constrained by wearinesse shee let goe and fell downe
upon the ground. But Cupid followed her downe, and lighted upon the top of
a Cypresse tree, and angerly spake unto her in this manner: O simple
Psyches, consider with thy selfe how I, little regarding the commandement
of my mother (who willed mee that thou shouldst bee married to a man of
base and miserable condition) did come my selfe from

28

heaven to love thee, and wounded myne owne body with my proper
weapons, to have thee to my Spowse: And did I seeme a beast unto thee, that
thou shouldst go about to cut off my head with a razor, who loved thee so
well? Did not I alwayes give thee a charge? Did not I gently will thee to
beware? But those cursed aides and Counsellors of thine shall be worthily
rewarded for their pains. As for thee thou shalt be sufficiently punished by
my absence. When hee had spoken these words he tooke his flight into the
aire. Then Psyches fell flat on the ground, and as long as she could see her
husband she cast her eyes after him into the aire, weeping and lamenting
pitteously: but when hee was gone out of her sight shee threw her selfe into
the next running river, for the great anguish and dolour that shee was in for
the lack of her husband, howbeit the water would not suffer her to be
drowned, but tooke pity upon her, in the honour of Cupid which accustomed
to broyle and burne the river, and threw her upon the bank amongst the
herbs.

Then Pan the rusticall god sitting on the river side, embracing and
[instructing] the goddesse Canna to tune her songs and pipes, by whom were
feeding the young and tender Goats, after that he perceived Psyches in
sorrowful case, not ignorant (I know not by what meanes) of her miserable
estate, endeavored to pacific her in this sort: O faire maid, I am a rusticke
and rude

29

heardsman, howbeit by reason of my old age expert in many things, for as

farre as I can learnt by conjecture (which according as wise men doe terme is
called divination) I perceive by your uncertaine gate, your pale hew, your
sobbing sighes, and your watery eyes, that you are greatly in love.
Wherefore hearken to me, and goe not about to slay your selfe, nor weepe
not at all, but rather adore and worship the great god Cupid, and winne him
unto you by your gentle promise of service.

When the god of Shepherds had spoken these words, she gave no answer,
but made reverence to him as to a god, and so departed.

After that Psyches had gone a little way, she fortuned unawares to come to a
city where the husband of one of her Sisters did dwell. Which when Psyches
did understand, shee caused that her sister had knowledge of her comming,
and so they met together, and after great embracing and salutation, the sister
of Psyches demaunded the cause of her travell thither. Marry (quoth she) doe
you not remember the counsell you gave me, whereby you would that I
should kill the beast which under colour of my husband did lie with mee
every night? You shall understand, that as soone as I brought forth the lampe
to see and behold his shape, I perceived that he was the sonne of Venus, even
Cupid himselfe that

30

lay with mee. Then I being stricken with great pleasure, and desirous to
embrace him, could not thoroughly asswage my delight, but alas by evill ill
chance the oyle of the lampe fortuned to fall on his shoulder which caused
him to awake, and seeing me armed with fire and weapons, gan say, How
darest thou be so bold to doe so great a mischiefe? Depart from me and take
such things as thou didst bring: for I will have thy sister (and named you) to
my wife, and she shall be placed in thy felicity, and by and by hee
commaunded Zephyrus to carry me away from the bounds of his house.

Psyches had scantly finished her tale but her sister pierced with the pricke of
carnall desire and wicked envy ran home, and feigning to her husband that
she had heard word of the death of her parents tooke shipping and came to
the mountaine. And although there blew a contrary winde, yet being brought
in a vaine hope shee cried O Cupid take me a more worthy wife, and thou
Zephyrus beare downe thy mistresse, and so she cast her selfe headlong from
the mountaine: but shee fell not into the valley neither alive nor dead, for all
the members and parts of her body were torne amongst the rockes, wherby
she was made prey unto the birds and wild beasts, as she worthily deserved.

Neither was the vengeance of the other delayed, for

31

Psyches travelling in that country, fortuned to come to another city where

her other sister did dwel; to whom when shee had declared all such things as
she told to her other sister shee ran likewise unto the rock and was slaine in
like sort Then Psyches travelled about in the countrey to seeke her husband
Cupid, but he was gotten into his mothers chamber and there bewailed the
sorrowful wound which he caught by the oyle of a burning lamp.

Then the white bird the Gull, which swims on the waves of the water, flew
toward the Ocean sea, where he found Venus washing and bathing her selfe:
to whom she declared that her son was burned and in danger of death, and
moreover that it was a common brute in the mouth of every person (who
spake evill of all the family of Venus) that her son doth nothing but haunt
harlots in the mountain, and she her self lasciviously use to ryot in the sea:
wherby they say that they are flow become no more gratious, pleasant nor
gentle, but incivile, monstrous and horrible. Moreover, that marriages are not
for any amity, or for love of procreation, but full of envy, discord, and
debate. This the curious Gul did clatter in the ears of Venus, reprehending
her son. But Venus began to cry and sayd, What hath my sonne gotten any
Love? I pray thee gentle bird that doest serve me so faithfully, tell me what
she is, and what is her name that hath troubled my

32

son in such sort? whether shee be any of the Nymphs, of the number of the
goddesses, of the company of the Muses, or of the mistery of the Graces? To
whom the bird answered, Madam I know not what shee is, but this I know
that she is called Psyches. Then Venus with indignation cried out, What is it
she? the usurper of my beauty, the Vicar of my name? What did he think that
I was a bawd, by whose shew he fell acquainted with the maid? And
immediately she departed and went to her chamber, where she found her son
wounded as it was told unto her, whom when she beheld she cries out in this
sort.

Is this an honest thing, is this honourable to thy parents? is this reason, that
thou hast violated and broken the commandement of thy mother and
soveraign mistresse: and whereas thou shouldst have vexed my enemy with
loathsom love, thou hast done otherwise?

For being of tender and unripe yeares, thou hast with too licentious appetite
embraced my most mortall Foe, to whome I shall bee made a mother, and
she a Daughter.

Thou presumest and thinkest, thou trifling boy, thou Varlet, and without all
reverence, that thou art most worthy and excellent, and that I am not able by
reason of myne age to have another son, which if I should have,

33
thou shouldst well understand that I would beare a more worthier than thou.
But to worke thee a greater despight, I do determine to adopt one of my
servants, and to give him these wings, this fire, this bow, and these Arrowes,
and all other furniture which I gave to thee, not to this purpose, neither is
any thing given thee of thy father for this intent: but first thou hast been evill
brought up and instructed in thy youth thou hast thy hands ready and sharpe.
Thou hast often offended thy antients, and especially me that am thy mother,
thou hast pierced mee with thy darts thou contemnest me as a widow, neither
dost t thou regard thy valiant and invincible father, and to anger me more,
thou art amorous of harlots and wenches: hot I will cause that thou shalt
shortly repent thee, and that this marriage shal be dearely bought. To what a
point am I now driven? What shall I do? Whither shall I goe? How shall I
represse this beast? Shall I aske ayd of myne enemy Sobriety, whom I have
often offended to engender thee? Or shall I seeke for counsel of every poore
rusticall woman? No, no, yet had I rather dye, howbeit I will not cease my
vengeance, to her must I have recourse for helpe, and to none other (I meane
to Sobriety), who may correct thee sharpely, take away thy quiver, deprive
thee of thy arrowes, unbend thy bow, quench thy fire, and which is more
subdue thy body with punishment: and when that I have rased and cut off
this thy haire, which I have dressed with myne owne hands,

34

and made to glitter like gold, and when I have clipped thy wings, which I my
selfe have caused to burgen, then shall I thinke to have revenged my selfe
sufficiently upon thee for the injury which thou hast done. When shee had
spoken these words shee departed in a great rage out of her chamber.

Immediatelie as she was going away came Juno and Ceres, demaunding the
cause of her anger. Then Venus answered, Verily you are come to comfort
my sorrow, but I pray you with all diligence to seeke out one whose name is
Psyches, who is a vagabond, and runneth about the Countries, and (as I
thinke) you are not ignorant of the brute of my son Cupid, and of his
demeanour, which I am ashamed to declare. Then they understanding the
whole matter, endeavoured to mitigate the ire of Venus in this sort: What is
the cause Madam, or how hath your son so offended, that you shold so
greatly accuse his love, and blame him by reason that he is amorous? and
why should you seeke the death of her, whom he doth fancie? We most
humbly intreat you to pardon his fault if he have accorded to the mind of any
maiden: what do you not know that he is a young man? Or have you
forgotten of what yeares he is? Doth he seeme alwayes unto you to be a
childe? You are his mother, and a kind woman, will you continually search
out his dalliance? Will you blame his luxury? Will you bridle his love? and

35

will you reprehend your owne art and delights in him? What God or man is
hee, that can endure that you should sowe or disperse your seed of love in
every place, and to make restraint thereof within your owne doores? certes
you will be the cause of the suppression of the publike paces of young
Dames. In this sort this goddesse endeavoured to pacifie her mind, and to
excuse Cupid with al their power (although he were absent) for feare of his
darts and shafts of love. But Venus would in no wise asswage her heat, but
(thinking that they did rather trifle and taunt at her injuries) she departed
from them, and tooke her voiage towards the sea in all haste. In the meane
season Psyches hurled her selfe hither and thither, to seeke her husband, the
rather because she thought that if he would not be appeased with the sweet
flattery of his wife, yet he would take mercy on her at her servile and
continuall prayers. And (espying a Church on the top of a high hill) she said,
What can I tell whether my husband and master be there or no? wherefore
she went thitherward, and with great paine and travell, moved by hope, after
that she climbed to the top of the mountaine, she came to the temple, and
went in, wheras behold she espied sheffes of corn lying on a heap, blades
withered with garlands, and reeds of barly, moreover she saw hooks, sithes,
sickles, and other instruments, to reape, but every thing lay out of order, and
as it were cast in by the hands of laborers which when Psyches saw she
gathered

36

up and put everything in order, thinking that she would not despise or
contemne the temples of any of the Gods, but rather get the favour and
benevolence of them all: by and by Ceres came in, and beholding her busie
and curious in her chapell, cried out a far off, and said, O Psyches needfull
of mercy, Venus searcheth for thee in every place to revenge her selfe and to
punish thee grievously, but thou hast more mind to be heere, and carest for
nothing lesse, then for thy safety. Then Psyches fell on her knees before her,
watring her feet with her teares, wiping the ground with her haire, and with
great weeping and lamentation desired pardon, saying, O great and holy
Goddesse, I pray thee by thy plenteous and liberall right hand, by the joyfull
ceremonies of thy harvest, by the secrets of thy Sacrifice, by the flying
chariots of thy dragons, by the tillage of the ground of Sicilie, which thou
hast invented, by the marriage of Proserpin, by the diligent inquisition of thy
daughter, and by the other secrets which are within the temple of Eleusis in
the land of Athens, take pitty on me thy servant Psyches, and let me hide my
selfe a few dayes amongst these sheffes of corne, untill the ire of so great a
Goddesse be past, or until that I be refreshed of my great labour and travell.
Then answered Ceres, Verely Psyches, I am greatly moved by thy prayers
and teares, and desire with all my heart to aide thee, but if I should suffer
thee to be hidden here, I should increase

37

the displeasure of my Cosin, with whom I have made a treatie of peace, and
an ancient promise of amity: wherefore I advise thee to depart hence and
take it not in evil part in that I will not suffer thee to abide and remaine here
within my temple. Then Psyches driven away contrary to her hope, was
double afflicted with sorrow and so she returned back againe. And behold
she perceived a far off in a vally a Temple standing within a Forest, faire and
curiously wrought, and minding to over- passe no place whither better hope
did direct her, and to the intent she would desire pardon of every God, she
approached nigh unto the sacred doore, whereas she saw pretious riches and
vestiments ingraven with letters of gold, hanging upon branches of trees, and
the posts of the temple testifying the name of the goddesse Juno, to whom
they were dedicate, then she kneeled downe upon her knees, and imbraced
the Alter with her hands, and wiping her teares, gan pray in this sort: O deere
spouse and sister of the great God Jupiter which art adored and worshipped
amongst the great temples of Samos, called upon by women with child,
worshipped at high Carthage, because thou wast brought from heaven by the
lyon, the rivers of the floud Inachus do celebrate thee: and know that thou art
the wife of the great god, and the goddesse of goddesses; all the east part of
the world have thee in veneration, all the world calleth thee Lucina: I pray
thee to be my advocate in my tribulations, deliver me from

38

the great danger which pursueth me, and save me that am weary with so long
labours and sorrow, for I know that it is thou that succorest and helpest such
women as are with child and in danger. Then Juno hearing the prayers of
Psyches, appeared unto her in all her royalty, saying, Certes Psyches I would
gladly help thee, but I am ashamed to do any thing contrary to the will of my
daughter in law Venus, whom alwaies I have loved as mine owne child,
moreover I shall incurre the danger of the law, intituled, De servo corrupto,
whereby am forbidden to retaine any servant fugitive, against the will of his
Master. Then Psyches cast off likewise by Juno, as without all hope of the
recovery of her husband, reasoned with her selfe in this sort: Now what
comfort or remedy is left to my afflictions, when as my prayers will nothing
availe with the goddesses? what shall I do? whither shall I go? In what cave
or darknesse shall I hide my selfe, to avoid the furor of Venus? Why do I not
take a good heart, and offer my selfe with humilitie unto her, whose anger I
have wrought? What do I know whether he (whom I seeke for) be in his
mothers house or no? Thus being in doubt, poore Psyches prepared her selfe
to her owne danger, and devised how she might make her orison and prayer
unto Venus. After that Venus was weary with searching by Sea and Land for
Psyches, shee returned toward heaven, and commanded that one should
prepare her Chariot, which her husband Vulcanus gave

39

unto her by reason of marriage, so finely wrought that neither gold nor silver
could be compared to the brightnesse therof. Four white pigeons guided the
chariot with great diligence, and when Venus was entred in a number of
sparrowes flew chirping about, making signe of joy, and all other kind of
birds sang sweetly, foreshewing the comming of the great goddesse: the
clouds gave place, the heavens opened, and received her joyfully, the birds
that followed nothing feared the Eagle, Hawkes, or other ravenous foules of
the aire. Incontinently she went unto the royall Pallace of God Jupiter, and
with a proud and bold petition demanded the service of Mercury, in certaine
of her affaires, whereunto Jupiter consented: then with much joy shee
descended from Heaven with Mercury, and gave him an earnest charge to
put in execution her words, saying: O my Brother, borne in Arcadia, thou
knowest well, that I (who am thy sister) did never enterprise to doe any thing
without thy presence, thou knowest also how long I have sought for a girle
and cannot finde her, wherefore there resteth nothing else save that thou with
thy trumpet doe pronounce the reward to such as take her: see thou put in
execution my commandment, and declare that whatsoever he be that
retaineth her wittingly, against my will shall not defend himselfe by any
meane or excusation: which when she had spoken, she delivered unto him a
libell, wherein was contained the name of

40

Psyches, and the residue of his publication, which done, she departed away
to her lodging. By and by, Mercurius (not delaying the matter) proclaimed
throughout all the world, that whatsoever hee were that could tell any
tydings of a Kings fugitive Daughter, the servant of Venus, named Psyches,
should bring word to Mercury, and for reward of his paines, he should
receive seaven sweet kisses of Venus After that Mercury had pronounced
these things, every man was enflamed with desire to search out Psyches.

This proclamation was the cause that put all doubt from Psyches, who was
scantly come in the sight of the house of Venus, but one of her servants
called Custome came out, who espying Psyches, cried with a loud voyce,
saying: O wicked harlot as thou art, now at length thou shalt know that thou
hast a mistresse above thee. What, dost thou make thy selfe ignorant, as
though thou didst not understand what travell wee have taken in searching
for thee? I am glad that thou art come into my hands, thou art now in the
golfe of hell, and shalt abide the paine and punishment of thy great
contumacy, and therewithall she tooke her by the haire, and brought her in,
before the presence of the goddesse Venus. When Venus spied her, shee
began to laugh, and as angry persons accustome to doe, she shaked her head,
and scratched her right eare saying, O goddesse, goddesse,

41
you are now come at length to visit your husband that is in danger of death,
by your meanes: bee you assured, I will handle you like a daughter: where
be my maidens, Sorrow and Sadnesse? To whom (when they came) she
delivered Psyches to be cruelly tormented; then they fulfilled the
commandement of their Mistresse, and after they had piteously scourged her
with rods and whips, they presented her againe before Venus; then she began
to laugh againe, saying: Behold she thinketh (that by reason of her great
belly, which she hath gotten by playing the whore) to move me to pitty, and
to make me a grandmother to her childe. Am not I happy, that in the
flourishing time of al mine age, shall be called a grandmother, and the sonne
of a vile harlot shall bee accounted the nephew of Venus: howbeit I am a
foole to tearm him by the name of my son, since as the marriage was made
betweene unequall persons, in the field without witnesses, and not by the
consent of parents, wherefore the marriage is illegitimate, and the childe
(that shall be borne) a bastard; if we fortune to suffer thee to live so long till
thou be delivered. When Venus had spoken these words she leaped upon the
face of poore Psyches, and (tearing her apparell) tooke her by the haire, and
dashed her head upon the ground. Then she tooke a great quantity of wheat,
of barly, poppy seede, peason, lintles, and beanes, and mingled them
altogether on a heape saying: Thou evil favoured girle,

42

thou seemest unable to get the grace of thy lover, by no other meanes, but
only by diligent and painefull service, wherefore I will prove what thou
canst doe: see that thou separate all these graines one from another,
disposing them orderly in their quantity, and let it be done before night.
When she had appointed this taske unto Psyches, she departed to a great
banket that was prepared that day. But Psyches went not about to dissever
the graine, (as being a thing impossible to be brought to passe by reason it
lay so confusedly scattered) but being astonyed at the cruell commandement
of Venus, sate still and said nothing. Then the little pismire the emote, taking
pitty of her great difficulty and labour, cursing the cruellnesse of the
daughter of Jupiter, and of so evill a mother, ran about, hither and thither,
and called to all her friends, Yee quick sons of the ground, the mother of all
things, take mercy on this poore maid, espouse to Cupid, who is in great
danger of her person, I pray you helpe her with all diligence. Incontinently
one came after another, dissevering and dividing the graine, and after that
they had put each kinde of corne in order, they ranne away againe in all
haste. When night came, Venus returned home from the banket wel tippled
with wine, smelling of balme, and crowned with garlands of roses, who
when shee had espied what Psyches had done, gan say, This is not the labour
of thy hands, but rather of his that is amorous of thee: then she gave her a
morsel of brown

43

bread, and went to sleep. In the mean season, Cupid was closed fast in the
surest chamber of the house, partly because he should not hurt himself with
wanton dalliance, and partly because he should not speake with his love: so
these two lovers were divided one from another. When night was passed
Venus called Psyches, and said, Seest thou yonder Forest that extendeth out
in length with the river? there be great sheepe shining like gold, and kept by
no manner of person. I command thee that thou go thither and bring me
home some of the wooll of their fleeces. Psyches arose willingly not to do
her commandement, but to throw her selfe headlong into water to end her
sorrows. Then a green reed inspired by divine inspiration, with a gratious
tune and melody gan say, O Psyches I pray thee not to trouble or pollute my
water by the death of thee, and yet beware that thou goe not towards the
terrible sheepe of this coast, untill such time as the heat of the sunne be past,
for when the sunne is in his force, then seeme they most dreadfull and
furious, with their sharpe hornes, their stony foreheads and their gaping
throats, wherewith they arme themselves to the destruction of mankinde. But
untill they have refreshed themselves in the river, thou must hide thy selfe
here by me, under this great plaine tree, and as soone as their great fury is
past, thou maist goe among the thickets and bushes under the wood side and
gather the lockes their golden Fleeces, which thou shalt

44

finde hanging upon the briers. Then spake the gentle and benigne reed,
shewing a mean to Psyches to save her life, which she bore well in memory,
and with all diligence went and gathered up such lockes as shee found, and
put them in her apron, and carried them home to Venus. Howbeit the danger
of this second labour did not please her, nor give her sufficient witnesse of
the good service of Psyches, but with a sower resemblance of laughter, did
say: Of a certaine I know that this is not thy fact, but I will prove if that thou
bee of so stout, so good a courage, and singular prudency as thou seemest to
bee. Then Venus spake unto Psyches againe saying: Seest thou the toppe of
yonder great Hill, from whence there runneth downe waters of blacke and
deadly colour, which nourisheth the floods of Stix, Cocytus? I charge thee to
goe thither, and bring me a vessell of that water: wherewithall she gave her a
bottle of Christall, menacing and threatening her rigorously. Then poor
Psyches went in all haste to the top of the mountaine, rather to end her life,
then to fetch any water, and when she was come up to the ridge of the hill,
she perceived that it was impossible to bring it to passe: for she saw a great
rocke gushing out most horrible fountaines of waters, which ran downe and
fell by many stops and passages into the valley beneath: on each side shee
did see great Dragons, which were stretching out their long and bloody
Neckes, that did never sleepe, but appointed to keepe the river

45

there: the waters seemed to themselves likewise saying, Away; away, what
wilt thou doe? flie, flie, or else thou wilt be slaine. Then Psyches (seeing the
impossibility of this affaire) stood still as though she were transformed into a
stone and although she was present in body, yet was she absent in spirit and
sense, by reason of the great perill which she saw, insomuch that she could
not comfort her self with weeping, such was the present danger that she was
in. But the royall bird of great Jupiter, the Eagle remembring his old service
which he had done, when as by the pricke of Cupid he brought up the boy
Ganimedes, to the heavens, to be made butler of Jupiter, and minding to
shew the like service in the person of the wife of Cupid, came from the high-
house of the Skies, and said unto Psyches, O simple woman without all
experience, doest thou thinke to get or dip up any drop of this dreadfull
water? No, no, assure thy selfe thou art never able to come nigh it, for the
Gods themselves do greatly feare at the sight thereof. What, have you not
heard, that it is a custome among men to sweare by the puissance of the
Gods, and the Gods do sweare by the majesty of the river Stix? but give me
thy bottle, and sodainly he tooke it, and filled it with the water of the river,
and taking his flight through those cruell and horrible dragons, brought it
unto Psyches: who being very joyfull thereof, presented it to Venus, who
would not yet be appeased, but menacing more and more

46

said, What, thou seemest unto me a very witch and enchauntresse, that
bringest these things to passe, howbeit thou shalt do nothing more. Take this
box and to Hell to Proserpina, and desire her to send me a little of her
beauty, as much as will serve me the space of one day, and say that such as I
had is consumed away since my sonne fell sicke, but returne againe quickly,
for I must dresse my selfe therewithall, and goe to the Theatre of the Gods:
then poore Psyches perceived the end of all fortune, thinking verely that she
should never returne, and not without cause, when as she was compelled to
go to the gulfe and furies of hell. Wherefore without any further delay, she
went up to an high tower to throw her selfe downe headlong (thinking that it
was the next and readiest way to hell) but the tower (as inspired) spake unto
her saying, O poore miser, why goest thou about to slay thy selfe? Why dost
thou rashly yeeld unto thy last perill and danger? know thou that if thy spirit
be once separated from thy body, thou shalt surely go to hell, but never to
returne againe, wherefore harken to me; Lacedemon a Citie in Greece is not
farre hence: go thou thither and enquire for the hill Tenarus, whereas thou
shalt find a hold leading to hell, even to the Pallace of Pluto, but take heede
thou go not with emptie hands to that place of darknesse: but Carrie two sops
sodden in the flour of barley and Honney in thy hands, and two halfepence
in thy mouth. And when thou hast passed a

47

good part of that way, thou shalt see a lame Asse carrying of wood, and a
lame fellow driving him, who will desire thee to give him up the sticks that
fall downe, but passe thou on and do nothing; by and by thou shalt come
unto a river of hell, whereas Charon is ferriman, who will first have his fare
paied him, before he will carry the soules over the river in his boat, whereby
you may see that avarice raigneth amongst the dead, neither Charon nor
Pluto will do any thing for nought: for if it be a poore man that would passe
over and lacketh money, he shal be compelled to die in his journey before
they will shew him any reliefe, wherefore deliver to carraine Charon one of
the halfpence (which thou bearest for thy passage) and let him receive it out
of thy mouth. And it shall come to passe as thou sittest in the boat thou shalt
see an old man swimming on the top of the river, holding up his deadly
hands, and desiring thee to receive him into the barke, but have no regard to
his piteous cry; when thou art passed over the floud, thou shalt espie old
women spinning, who will desire thee to helpe them, but beware thou do not
consent unto them in any case, for these and like baits and traps will Venus
set to make thee let fall one of thy sops, and thinke not that the keeping of
thy sops is a light matter, for if thou leese one of them thou shalt be assured
never to returne againe to this world. Then shalt thou see a great and
marvailous dogge, with three heads, barking continually at the soules of

48

such as enter in, but he can do them no other harme, he lieth day and night
before the gate of Proserpina, and keepeth the house of Pluto with great
diligence, to whom if thou cast one of thy sops, thou maist have accesse to
Proserpina without all danger: shee will make thee good cheere, and
entertaine thee with delicate meate and drinke, but sit thou upon the ground,
and desire browne bread, and then declare thy message unto her, and when
thou hast received such beauty as she giveth, in thy returne appease the rage
of the dogge with thy other sop, and give thy other halfe penny to covetous
Charon, and come the same way againe into the world as thou wentest: but
above all things have a regard that thou looke not in the boxe, neither be not
too curious about the treasure of the divine beauty. In this manner tire tower
spake unto Psyches, and advertised her what she should do: and immediately
she tooke two halfe pence, two sops, and all things necessary, and went to
the mountaine Tenarus to go towards hell. After that Psyches had passed by
the lame Asse, paid her halfe pennie for passage, neglected the old man in
the river, denyed to helpe the woman spinning, and filled the ravenous
month of the dogge with a sop, shee came to the chamber of Proserpina.
There Psyches would not sit in any royall seate, nor eate any delicate meates,
but kneeled at the feete of Proserpina, onely contented with course bread,
declared her message, and after she had received a

49
mysticall secret in a boxe, she departed, and stopped the mouth of the dogge
with the other sop, and paied the boatman the other halfe penny. When
Psyches was returned from hell, to the light of the world, shee was ravished
with great desire, saying, Am not I a foole, that knowing that I carrie here
the divine beauty, will not take a little thereof to garnish my face, to please
my love withall? And by and by shee opened the boxe where she could
perceive no beauty nor any thing else, save onely an infernall and deadly
sleepe, which immediatly invaded all her members as soone as the boxe was
uncovered, in such sort that she fell downe upon the ground, and lay there as
a sleeping corps.

But Cupid being now healed of his wound and Maladie, not able to endure
the absence of Psyches, got him secretly out at a window of the chamber
where hee was enclosed, and (receiving his wings,) tooke his flight towards
his loving wife, whom when he had found, hee wiped away the sleepe from
her face, and put it againe into the boxe, and awaked her with the tip of one
of his arrows, saying: O wretched Caitife, behold thou wert well-nigh
perished againe, with the overmuch curiositie: well, goe thou, and do thy
message to my Mother, and in the meane season, I will provide for all things
accordingly: wherewithall he tooke his flight into the aire, and Psyches
brought her present to Venus.

50

Cupid being more and more in love with Psyches, and fearing the
displeasure of his Mother, did pearce into the heavens, and arrived before
Jupiter to declare his cause: then Jupiter after that hee had eftsoone
embraced him, gan say in this manner: O my well beloved sonne, although
thou haste not given due reverence and honour unto me as thou oughtest to
doe, but haste rather spoiled and wounded this my brest (whereby the laws
and order of the Elements and Planets be disposed) with continuall assaults,
of Terren luxury and against all laws, and the discipline Julia, and the utility
of the publike weale, in transforming my divine beauty into serpents, fire,
savage beasts, birds, and into Bulles: howbeit remembring my modesty, and
that I have nourished thee with mine owne proper hands, I will doe and
accomplish all thy desire, so that thou canst beware of spitefull and envious
persons. And if there be any excellent Maiden of comely beauty in the
world, remember yet the benefit which I shall shew unto thee by recompence
of her love towards me againe. When lie had spoken these words he
commanded Mercury to call all the gods to counsell, and if any of the
celestiall powers did faile of appearance he would be condemned in ten
thousand pounds: which sentence was such a terrour to all the goddesses,
that the high Theatre was replenished, and Jupiter began to speake in this
sort: O yee gods, registred in the bookes of the Muses, you all know this
young man Cupid whom I have nourished with

51

mine owne hands, whose raging flames of his first youth, I thought best to
bridle and restraine. It sufficeth that hee is defamed in every place for his
adulterous living, wherefore all occasion ought to bee taken away by meane
of marriage: he hath chosen a Maiden that fancieth him well, and hath
bereaved her of her virginity, let him have her still, and possesse her
according to his owne pleasure: then he returned to Venus, and said, And
you my daughter, take you no care, neither feare the dishonour of your
progeny and estate, neither have regard in that it is a mortall marriage, for it
seemeth unto me just, lawfull, and legitimate by the law civill. Incontinently
after Jupiter commanded Mercury to bring up Psyches, the spouse of Cupid,
into the Pallace of heaven. And then he tooke a pot of immortality, and said,
Hold Psyches, and drinke, to the end thou maist be immortall, and that Cupid
may be thine everlasting husband. By and by the great banket and marriage
feast was sumptuously prepared, Cupid sate downe with his deare spouse
between his armes: Juno likewise with Jupiter, and all the other gods in
order, Ganimedes filled the pot of Jupiter, and Bacchus served the rest. Their
drinke was Nectar the wine of the gods, Vulcanus prepared supper, the
howers decked up the house with roses and other sweet smells, the graces
threw about blame, the Muses sang with sweet harmony, Apollo tuned
pleasantly to the Harpe, Venus danced finely:

52

Satirus and Paniscus plaid on their pipes; and thus Psyches was married to
Cupid, and after she was delivered of a child whom we call Pleasure. This
the trifling old woman declared unto the captive maiden: but I poore Asse,
not standing farre of, was not a little sorry in that I lacked pen and inke to
write so worthy a tale.

***

53
Apuleius, On the God of Socrates
Plato has made a triple division of all nature, and especially of that part
of it which comprises animated beings; and he is of opinion, that there are
Gods of the highest, the middle, and the lowest station. Understand,
however, that this division is based not only upon local separation, but also
upon comparative dignity of nature, which is itself distinguished not in one
or two, but in many modes. It was the clearer way, however, to begin with
the distinction of locality; for this has assigned the heavens to the immortal
Gods, conformably to what their majesty demands. And of these celestial
Gods, some we form a notion of by sight, while others we endeavor to
comprehend by the intellect.

"—You refulgent ministers of light,

Who through the heavens conduct the gliding year." [Virgil, Georgics,
Book I]

We do not, however, perceive by the eyes, those principal Gods only, the
Sun the maker of the day, the Moon the rival of the Sun, and the glory of
night; whether she is horned or divided, whether gibbous or full; exhibiting
a varying brightness in her light; being more largely illuminated the farther
she departs from the Sun; and, by an equal increase both of her path and her
light, defining the month by means of her increments, and afterwards by
means of her decrements in like degree: whether it is, as the Chaldeans
think, that she possesses a proper or permanent light of her own, and is on
one side gifted with light, but destitute of brightness on the other, and so
changes her appearance by manifold revolutions of her various colored
face; or whether it is that being wholly void of brightness of her own, and
standing in need of foreign light, with an opaque body, or with a body
polished like a mirror, she receives either obliquely or direct the rays of the
Sun, and, to use the words of Lucretius, Book IV.—

"—Throws from her orb a spurious light."

 Whichever of these opinions is true, (for that I shall afterwards consider,)
there is not any Greek, or any barbarian, who will
not easily conclude that the Sun and Moon are Gods; and not these only, as
I have observed, but also the five stars, which are commonly styled
"erratic," or "planets," by the unlearned, though, in their undeviating,
certain, and established course, they perform, by their divine changes,
movements most orderly and eternal; movements which are indeed various
in appearance, but which are made with a celerity that is always equable,
and represent with wonderful alternation, at one time progressions, and at
another retrogressions, according to the position, ellipticity, and inclination
of their orbits, with which he is well acquainted who understands the risings
and settings of the stars.

You who are of the same opinion with Plato, must also rank in the same
number of visible Gods those other stars,

The rainy Hyades, Arcturus, both the Bears; [Virgil, Aeneid, Book III]

and likewise the other radiant Gods, by whom we perceive, in a serene

sky, the celestial choir bedecked and crowned, when the nights are painted
with a severe grace and a stern beauty; beholding, as Ennius says, in this
most ''perfect shield of the universe," engravings wrought with surprising
brilliancy.

There is another species of Gods, which nature has denied to our sight;
and still we may contemplate them with admiration through intellect,
acutely surveying them with the eye of the mind. In the number of these are
those twelve Gods who are included by Ennius, with a metrical
arrangement of their names, in two verses:

Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,

Mercurius, Jovi, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo;

and others of the like kind, whose names, indeed, have been long known
to our ears, but whose powers are conjectured by our minds, our attention
being called to them through the various benefits which they impart to us in
the affairs of life in those things over which they severally preside. The
crowd, however, of the ignorant, who are rejected by Philosophy as
uninitiated, whose notions of holiness are misplaced, who are deprived of
genuine reason, who are destitute of religion, and incapable of grasping the
truth, dishonor the Gods, either by a worship most over acted, or a most
insolent disdain of them; one part being always in alarm through
superstition, while the other is always swelling with contempt. Very many
there are who venerate all these Gods, established in the lofty heights of the
firmament, and far removed from human contagion: but not in such manner
as they ought: all fear them, but through ignorance; a few deny their
existence, but in a spirit of impiety. Plato thought these Gods to be
incorporeal and animated natures without an end or beginning, but eternal
both with reference to time past and time to come; spontaneously separated
from the contact of the body by the nature peculiar to themselves; through
perfection of intellect possessing supreme beatitude; good, not through
participation in any extraneous good, but of themselves; and able to procure
for themselves every thing requisite, with a facility which is prompt,
simple, unrestrained, and absolute.

But of the parent of these, who is the lord and author of all things, and
who is tree from all obligations to act or to suffer, not being bound by any
necessity to the performance of any duties, why should I now begin to
speak? For Plato, who was endowed with a heavenly eloquence,
discoursing in language worthy of the immortal Gods, frequently proclaims
that on account of the incredible and ineffable transcendency of his majesty,
he cannot possibly be even in the slightest degree comprehended, under any
definition, through the poverty of human language; and that the intellectual
apprehension of this God can hardly flash upon wise men, when they have
separated themselves from body, as much as possible, through the vigor of
the intellect; and that sometimes this knowledge does blaze forth with a
most instantaneous flash, like a dazzling light amid the most profound
darkness. I will therefore omit the discussion of this theme, for which all
words adequate to the amplitude of the subject are not only wanting to me,
but could not even be found by my master Plato. Hence I shall at once
sound a retreat, as to things which very far surpass my humble powers, and
at length bring down my discourse from heaven to earth, in which we men
are the principal animated things, though most of us, through the neglect of
training, are so depraved, and are so imbued with all errors and the most
atrocious crimes, and have become so utterly ferocious, through having
nearly quite abandoned the mildness of our nature, that it may seem there is
not an animal on the earth more vile than man. But at present our object is
not to discuss feelings, but to treat of the natural distribution of things.

Men, therefore, dwell on the earth, possessing the gift of speech, having
immortal souls, but mortal members, with frivolous and anxious minds,
with bodies brutish and infirm, of dissimilar manners, but similar errors, of
presumptuous audacity, long-lived hope, laboring in vain, with variable
fortunes, severally mortal, but taken altogether in their whole species,
eternal, quitting the scene in regular succession, and leaving offspring to
supply their place, fleeting in their time, tardy at gaining wisdom, speedy in
meeting with death, and dissatisfied in life. You have, then, in the
meantime, two kinds of animated beings, Gods entirely differing from men,
in the sublimity of their abode, in the eternity of their existence, in the
perfection of their nature, and having no proximate communication with
them; since those that are supreme are separated from the lowest habitations
by such a vast interval of distance; and life is there eternal and never-
failing, but here decaying and interrupted, and the natures are there
sublimated to beatitude, while those below are depressed to wretchedness.
What then? Has nature connected itself by no bond, but allowed itself to be
separated into the divine and human parts, and to be thus split and crippled,
as it were? For, as the same Plato remarks, "No God mingles with men."
But this is the principal mark of their sublime nature, that they are not
contaminated by any contact with us. One part of them only is to be seen by
us with our blunted vision; as the stars, about whose magnitude and color
men are still in doubt, while the rest are only known to our understandings,
and that by no prompt perception. This, however, ought by no means to be
wondered at with reference to the immortal Gods, since even among men,
who are raised to opulence by the favor of Fortune, and are elevated to the
tottering throne and the unsteady tribunal of a kingdom, access is rare, all
beholders being kept at a distance, and they enjoy their dignity in
retirement; familiarity breeds contempt, but privacy gains admiration.

"What, then, shall I do," some person may object, "after this very
celestial, but almost inhuman decision of yours? if, so it is,
that men are entirely removed from the immortal Gods, and are so exiled in
these Tartarean realms of earth that all communication whatever with the
heavenly Gods is denied them, and not one of the celestials occasionally
visits them, as a shepherd visits his flocks of sheep, a groom his horses, or a
herdsman his lowing cattle, in order that he may curb the more vicious, heal
the diseased, and assist those which are in want? No God, you say,
interferes in human affairs. To whom, then, shall I address my prayers? To
whom shall I make my vows? To whom shall I immolate victims? Whom
shall I invoke throughout my whole life, as the helper of the unfortunate,
the favorer of the good, and the adversary of the wicked? And whom, in
fine, (a thing for which necessity most frequently occurs,) shall I adduce as
a witness to my oath? Am I to say, like Virgil's Ascanius,

"Now by this head I swear, by which before

My father used to swear?" [Virgil, Aeneid, Book XI]

Why, no doubt, lulus, your father might use this oath among Trojans,
who were allied to him by birth, and also perhaps among Greeks, who were
known to him in battle; but among the Rutuli, who were but recently known
by you, if no one believed in this head, what God would you have to be
surety for you? Would you have your right hand and your dart, like the
ferocious Mezentius? For these only, by which he defended himself, did he
adjure:

"For me my right hand and the missile dart,

Which now well-poised I hurl, are each a God." [Virgil, Aeneid, Book
X]

Away, I beseech you, with such sanguinary Gods; a right hand weary
with slaughter, and a dart rusted with gore. Neither of these is a fit object
for you to adjure, nor that you should swear by them, for this is an honor
that is peculiar to the highest of the Gods. For a solemn oath, as Ennius
says, is also called Jovisjurandum. What, then, is your opinion? Am I to
swear by Jupiter, in the shape of a stone, after the most ancient custom of
the Romans? Why, if the opinion of Plato is true, that God never mingles
with men, a stone will hear me more easily than Jupiter.

Such is not the fact: for Plato shall answer for his opinion in my words. "I
do not affirm," says he, "that the Gods are so far separated and alienated
from us, that not even our prayers can reach them; for I have not removed
them from attention to the affairs of mankind, but only from contact with
them."

Besides, there are certain divine powers of a middle nature, situate in this
interval of the air, between the highest aether and the earth below, through
whom our aspirations and our deserts are conveyed to the Gods. These the
Greeks call by name "daemons," and, being placed as messengers between
the inhabitants of earth and those of heaven, they carry from the one to the
other, prayers and bounties, supplications and assistance, being a kind of
interpreter and message carriers for both. Through these same demons, as
Plato says in his Symposium, all revelations, the various miracles of
magicians, and all kinds of presages, are carried on. For specially appointed
individuals of this number, administer everything according to the province
assigned to each; either by framing dreams, or causing ominous fissures in
entrails, or governing the flights of some birds, or instructing others in song,
or inspiring prophets, or by launching thunders, or causing the lightning to
flash in the clouds, or other things to take place by means of which we
obtain a knowledge of future events. And we have reason to believe that all
these particulars are by the will, the power, and the authority of the celestial
Gods, but through the obedience, aid, and services of demons; for it was
through the employment, the services, and the care of these, that dreams
forewarned Hannibal of the loss of one of his eyes; that inspection of the
entrails foretold to Flaminius a perilous carnage; and that auguries assured
to Attius Navius the miracle of the whetstone. Just in the same manner,
tokens of future empire are imparted beforehand to certain persons; as, for
instance, an eagle hovered over the cap on the head of Tarquinius Priscus,
and a flame shone from the head of Servius Tullius. And lastly, to these are
owing all the presages of diviners, the expiatory sacrifices of the Etrurians,
the sacrificial enclosure of places struck by lightning, and the verses of the
Sibyls; all which, as I have said, are effected by certain influences that carry
on the communication between men and Gods.

Nor, indeed, would it be conformable to the majesty of the celestial Gods,

that any one of them should either frame a dream for Hannibal, or withdraw
the victim from Flaminius, or direct the flight of the bird for Attius Navius,
or form in verse the predictions of the Sibyl, or be willing to snatch the hat
from the head of Tarquin, and restore it, or place a splendid flame upon the
head of Servius, but so as not to burn him. It is not becoming that the Gods
of heaven should condescend to things of this nature. This is the province of
the intermediate Gods, who dwell in the regions of the air, which are
adjacent to the earth, and on the confines of the heavens, just as in each part
of the world there are animals peculiarly adapted to it, those which fly
living in the air, and those which walk, on the earth. For since there are four
elements universally known, nature being as it were divided into four grand
portions, and there are animals peculiar to earth, water, and flame; (for
Aristotle informs us that certain animals peculiar thereto, and furnished
with wings, fly about in burning furnaces, and pass the whole period of
their existence in fire

[Book v., Chap. xix. of Aristotle's History of Animals]

, come to life therein, and with it die), and besides this, since, as we have
already observed, so many stars are beheld floating above in aether, that is
to say, in the very brightest heat of fire,— since this is the case, why should
nature suffer this fourth element, the air, which is so widely extended, to be
the only one void of every thing, and destitute of its own inhabitants? Why
should not animated beings be generated in this air in the same manner as
animals that exist in flame are generated in fire, animals that float, in water,
and those of an earthly nature, on earth? For you have every reason to
pronounce his opinion false who assigns the birds to the air; for not one of
them raises itself above the summit of Mount Olympus, which, though it is
said to be the highest of all mountains, yet if you measure its height in a
straight line, the distance to its summit is not equal, according to the
opinions of geometricians, to ten stadia; whereas the immense mass of air
extends as far as the nearest portion of the cycle of the moon, beyond which
aether takes its rise in an upward direction. What, then, are we to say of
such a vast body of air, which ranges in extent from the nearest part of the
revolutions of the moon as far as the highest summit of Mount Olympus?
Will that, pray, be destitute of its own appropriate animated beings, and will
this part of nature be without life, and impotent? Moreover, if you
attentively consider the matter, birds themselves may, with greater
propriety, be said
to be terrestrial than aerial animals; for their whole living is always on the
earth; there they procure food, and there they rest; and they only make a
passage through that part of the air in flying which lies nearest to the earth.
But, when they are wearied by the rowing motion of their wings, the earth
is to them as a harbor. If, therefore, reason evidently requires that its
appropriate animals must also be admitted to exist in the air, it remains for
us to consider what they are, and what is their nature.

They are then by no means animals of an earthly nature, for such have a
downward tendency, through their gravity. But neither are they of a fiery
nature, lest they should be carried aloft by their heat. A certain middle
nature, therefore, must be conceived by us, in conformity to the middle
position of their locality, that so the nature of the inhabitants may be
conformable to the nature of the region. Well, then, let us form in our mind
and generate in our ideas bodies so constituted as neither to be so sluggish
as terrestrial, nor so light as ethereal, but in a certain measure distinct from
both, or else composed of a mixture of both, either removed from, or
modified by, a participation of both. They will, however, be more easily
conceived, if admitted to be a mixture of both, than if they assumed to be
mingled with neither. The bodies of these demons, therefore, must have
some little weight, in
order that they may not be carried aloft; and they must also have some
lightness, in order that they may not be precipitated to the realms below.
However, that I may not appear to you to be devising things that are
incredible, after the manner of the poets, I will just give you an example of
this equipoised middle nature. We see the clouds unite in a way not much
different from this tenuity of body; but if these were equally light as those
bodies which are entirely devoid of weight, they would never cap the
heights of a lofty mountain with, as it were, certain wreathed chains,
depressed beneath its ridges, as we frequently perceive they do. On the
other hand, if they were naturally so dense and so ponderous that no union
with a more active levity could elevate them, they would certainly strike
against the earth, of their own tendency, just like a mass of lead and stone.
As it is, however, being pendulous and moveable, they are guided in this
direction and in that by the winds amid the sea of air, in the same manner as
ships, shifting sometimes in proximity and remoteness; for, if they are
teeming with the moisture of water, they are depressed downward, as
though for the purpose of bringing forth. And on this account it is that
clouds that are more moist descend lower, in dusky masses, and with a
slower motion, while those that are serene ascend higher, and are impelled
like fleeces of wool, in white masses, and with a more rapid flight. Have
you not heard how Lucretius most eloquently expresses himself
concerning thunder in his Sixth Book?

"The azure heavens with dreadful thunders shake,

Because th' ethereal clouds, ascending high,
Dash on each other, driven by adverse winds."

But if the clouds fly aloft, all of which originate from the earth, and again
flow downward to it, pray what should you conclude as to the bodies of
demons, which are so much more attenuated in their composition? For they
are not heaped up from feculent vapors and dense mists, as is the nature of
clouds, but they are formed of the most pure liquid and serene element of
air, and on this account they are not visible on every occasion to the human
eye, but only when by divine command they allow themselves to be seen.
For in them no earthly density occupies the place of light, so as to encounter
our perception, and necessarily to arrest our visual ray by that solidity; but
the lineaments of the bodies which they have are rare, shining, and
attenuated, to such a degree, that they allow all the rays of our vision to pass
through them in consequence of their rarity, refract them by their
brightness, and baffle them by their subtlety. Hence that description of
Minerva, in Homer, presenting herself in the midst of the assembly of the
Greeks, for the purpose of checking the wrath of Achilles. If you will wait a
moment I will give you the Greek line in Latin, and here it is on the spur of
the moment. Minerva, then, as I said, by the command of Juno came, in
order to moderate the wrath of Achilles,

"Seen by him only, by the rest unseen." [liad, lib. i. v. 198]

Hence, also, Virgil's Juturna, when in the midst of many thousands of

men, for the purpose of aiding her brother,

"With soldiers mingled, though by none perceived," [Aeneid, lib. xii.]

fully accomplishing that which the captain in Plautus boasted of having

effected by his shield,
 "Which dazzled by its light the vision of his foes."

And not to discuss prolixly the rest of the instances, the poets, from this
multitude of demons, are accustomed, in a way by no means remote from
the truth, to feign the Gods to be haters and lovers of certain men, and to
give prosperity and promotion to some, and to oppose and afflict others.
Hence, they are influenced by pity, moved by indignation, racked with
vexation, elated with joy, and are subject to all the affections of the human
mind; and are agitated by all the fluctuations of human thought, with similar
commotions of the spirit and agitations of the feelings. All which storms
and tempests are far alien from the tranquil state of the celestial Gods. For
all the celestials always enjoy the same state of mind, with an eternal
equanimity, which in them is never driven from its own fixed state either in
the direction of pleasure or of pain; nor is it moved by any thing from its
own everlasting rule, towards any sudden line of conduct; neither by any
external force, because there is nothing more powerful than deity; nor
of their own impulse, because nothing is more perfect than deity.

And furthermore, how can he appear to have been perfect, who moves
from a former condition of being to another condition which is better? And
this the more especially, as no one spontaneously embraces any thing new,
unless he is tired of what he had before; for a new mode of proceeding
cannot be adopted, without disapproving the preceding modes. Hence, it
follows, that a God ought not to be employed in any temporal functions
either of beneficence or love; and, therefore, is neither to be influenced by
indignation nor by pity, nor to be disquieted by any anxiety, nor elated by
any hilarity; but he is free from all the passions of the mind, so as never
either to grieve or to rejoice, nor on sudden impulse to will or unwill.

But all these, and other qualities of the like kind, properly accord with the
middle nature of demons. For they are intermediate between us and the
Gods, both in the place of their habitation, and in their nature; having
immortality in common with the Gods of heaven, and passions in common
with subordinate beings. For they are capable, just as we are, of being
affected by all that soothes as well as all that moves the mind; so as to be
stimulated by anger, influenced by pity, allured by gifts, appeased by
prayers, exasperated by affronts, soothed by honors, and swayed by all
other circumstances, just in the same way that we are. For, to embrace the
nature of them in a definition, demons are as to genus animated beings, as
to mind rational, as to feelings passive, as to body aerial, as to duration
eternal. Of these five characteristics which I have mentioned, the three first
are the same as those which we possess, the fourth is peculiar to
themselves, and the last they possess in common with the immortal Gods,
from whom they differ in being subject to passion. Hence, according to my
idea, I have not absurdly called demons passive, because they are subject to
the same perturbations as we are: and on this account it is that we may place
some confidence in the different observances of religions, and the various
propitiatory offerings made in sacred rites. There are likewise some among
this number of Gods who rejoice in victims, or ceremonies, or observances,
nocturnal or diurnal, public or performed in secret, replete with the greatest
joy or marked with extreme sadness. Thus, the Egyptian deities are almost
all of them delighted with lamentations, the Grecian in general with dances,
and those of the Barbarians with the sound produced by cymbals,
tambourines, and pipes. So, in like manner, other points relating to sacred
rites present considerable diversities, according to different regions; as, for
instance, the crowds that swell the sacred processions, the mysteries, the
duties performed by the priests, and the observances performed by the
devotees: and then, again, the images of the Gods, and their insignia, the
rites performed in, and the situations of, their temples, and the variety of
blood and color in their victims. All these particulars are regulated and set
forth in the accustomed form peculiar to the usage of each place, so much
so that we have frequently ascertained by means of dreams, oracles and
prophecies especially, that the Divinities have been indignant, if anything in
their sacred rites has been neglected through slothfulness or contumacy; of
which circumstances I have an abundance of examples. They are, however,
so universally mentioned, and so generally known, that no one could
attempt to recount them, without omitting a great number more than he
mentioned. On this account, I shall desist for the present from expending
words upon these particulars, which if they have not obtained assured credit
with all men, still, at least, are universally within the knowledge of all. It
will be more advisable, therefore, to discuss this point in the Latin tongue,
that there are kinds of demons enumerated by the philosophers, in order that
you may more clearly and more fully come to an understanding on the
presage of Socrates, and his familiar demon.
 Now, according to a certain signification, the human soul, even when it is
still situate in the body, is called a demon.

"O say, Euryalus, do Gods inspire

In minds this ardor, or does fierce desire
Rule as a God in its possessor's breast?" [Virgil, Aeneid, Book IX]

If, then, this is the case, a longing of the soul that is of good tendency is a
good demon. Hence it is that some think, as we have already observed, that
the blessed are called ευδαιμονες, eudaemones, the demon of whom is
good, that is, whose mind is perfect in virtue. You may call this demon in
our language, according to my mode of interpretation, by the name of
"Genius," whether quite correctly I am not altogether sure, but at all events,
at any risk you may so call it; because this God, who is the mind of every
one, though immortal, is nevertheless, after a certain manner, generated
with man; so that those prayers in which we implore the Genius, and which
we employ when we embrace the knees [genua] of those whom we
supplicate, seem to me to testify this connection and union, since they
comprehend in two words the body and the mind, through the communion
and conjunction of which we exist.

There is also another species of demons, according to a second

signification, and this is the human soul, after it has performed its duties in
the present life, and quitted the body: I find that this is called in the ancient
Latin language by the name of Lemur. Now, of these Lemures, the one who,
undertaking the guardianship of his posterity, dwells in a house with
propitious and tranquil influence, is called the "familiar" Lar. But those
who, having no fixed habitation of their own, are punished with vague
wandering, as with a kind of exile, on account of the evil deeds of their life,
are usually called "Larvae," thus becoming a vain terror to the good, but a
source of punishment to the bad. But when it is uncertain what is the
allotted condition of any one of these, and whether it is Lar or Larva, it is
called a God Manes; the name of God being added for the sake of honor.
For those only are called
Gods, who being of the number of the Lemures, and having regulated the
course of their life justly and prudently, have afterwards been celebrated by
men as divinities, and are universally worshipped with temples, and
religious rites; such, for instance, as Amphiaraus in Boeotia, Mopsus in
Africa, Osiris in Egypt, and others in other nations, but Esculapius
everywhere. All this distribution, however, has been made of those demons,
who once existed in a human body.

But there is another species of demons, more exalted and august, not
fewer in number, but far superior in dignity, who, being for ever liberated
from the bonds and conjunction of the body, preside over certain powers. In
the number of these are Sleep and Love, who possess powers of a different
nature; Love, of exciting to wakefulness, Sleep of lulling to rest. From this
more elevated order of demons, Plato is of opinion that a peculiar demon is
allotted to every man, to be a witness and a guardian of his conduct in life,
who, without being visible to any one, is always present, and is an overseer
not only of his actions, but even of his thoughts. But when life is finished,
and the soul has to return to its judges, then the demon who has presided
over it immediately seizes, and leads it as his charge to judgment, and is
there present with it while it pleads its cause; and censures it if it is guilty of
any untruthfulness; corroborates what it says, if it asserts what is true; and
conformably to its testimony, sentence is passed. All you, therefore, who
hear this divine opinion of Plato, as explained by me, so adapt your minds
to whatever you may have to do, or to whatever may be the subject of your
meditation, as men who know that there is nothing concealed from those
guardians either within the mind or external to it; but that the demon
scrupulously takes part in all these matters, sees all things, understands all
things, and dwells in the most profound recesses of the mind, in the place of
conscience. He of whom I speak is entirely our guardian, our individual
keeper, our watcher at home, our own proper regulator, a searcher Into our
inmost fibres, our constant observer, our inseparable witness, a reprover of
our evil actions, an approver of our good ones; if he is becomingly attended
to, sedulously examined and devoutly worshipped, in the way in which he
was worshipped by Socrates in justice and in innocence; he is our
forewarner in uncertainty, our monitor in matters of doubt, our defender in
danger, and our assistant in need. He is able also by dreams, and by tokens,
and perhaps even openly, when necessity demands it, to avert from you evil,
to increase your blessings, to aid you when depressed, to support you when
falling, to lighten your darkness, to regulate your prosperity, and modify
your adversity.
 What wonder, then, if Socrates, who was a man perfect in the highest
degree, and wise even by the testimony of Apollo, should know and
venerate this his God; and that hence, this Lar, his keeper, and nearly, as I
may say, his co-mate and his domestic associate, should repel from him
everything which ought to be repelled, foresee what ought to be foreseen,
and forewarn him of what he ought to be forewarned of, if at any time, the
functions of wisdom falling short, he stood in need, not of counsel, but
foreknowledge; in order that when he was vacillating through doubt, he
might take a firm stand through being forewarned. For there are many
things respecting which even wise men have recourse to diviners and
oracles. Do you not very clearly perceive in Homer, as in a kind of large
mirror, these two properties of divination and of wisdom separated widely
from each other? For when those two pillars of the whole expedition
disagreed, Agamemnon potent in sway, and Achilles powerful in battle, and
a man famed for his eloquence and renowned for his skill, was wanting,
who might allay the pride of the son of Atreus, and curb the anger of the
son of Peleus, command the attention of both by the weight of his character,
admonish them by examples, and soothe them by his words; who, then, on
such an occasion undertook to speak? Why, Nestor, the Pylian orator, who
was so bland in his eloquence, wary through experience, and venerable for
his age; who was known by all to have a body weakened by years, but a
mind vigorous in counsel, and words flowing with honeyed sweetness.

In like manner, when in dubious and adverse circumstances, spies are to

be chosen, to penetrate into the camp of the enemy at midnight, are not
Ulysses and Diomedes selected for that purpose, as counsel and aid, mind
and hand, spirit and sword? But, on the other hand, when the Greeks are
detained in Aulis, kept back by the winds, and through weariness are
shrinking from the difficulties of the war; when the means of proceeding,
the tranquillity of the sea, and the clemency of the winds, have to be
ascertained by means of the indications of the entrails, the courses taken by
birds, and the food devoured by serpents; then were those two supreme
summits of the Grecian wisdom, the Ithacan and the Pylian, both of them
silent; but Calchas, who was far more skillful in divining, as soon as he had
surveyed the birds, and the altars, and the tree, immediately through his
divination appeased the tempests, brought the fleet out to the sea, and
foretold a war which should last ten years. Just so in the Trojan army also,
when affairs required the aid of divination, that wise senate is silent, nor
does either Hicetaon, Lampus, or Clytius, presume to give any opinion; but
all of them listen in silence, either to the distasteful auguries of Helenus, or
to the discredited predictions of Cassandra. After the same manner, Socrates
too, if at any time advice not within the province of wisdom was requisite,
was then governed by the prophetic power of his daemon; and he was
sedulously attentive to his admonitions, and on that account was acceptable
in a far higher degree to his God.

The reason also, has been in some measure already stated, why the
demon of Socrates was generally in the habit of forbidding him to do
certain things, but never exhorted him to the performance of any act. For
Socrates, being of himself a man exceedingly perfect, and prompt to the
performance of all requisite duties, never stood in need of any one to exhort
him; though sometimes he required one to forbid him, if danger happened
to lurk in any of his undertakings; in order that, being admonished, he might
use due precaution, and desist for the present from his attempt, either to
resume it more safely at a future period, or enter upon it in some other way.
On occasions of this kind, he used to say, "That he heard a certain voice,
which proceeded from the divinity." For so it is asserted by Plato; and let no
one suppose that he was in the habit of deriving omens from the ordinary
conversation of men. Once, for example, when he was with Phaedrus,
beyond the precincts of the city, under the covering of a shady tree, and at a
distance from all overlookers, he perceived a sign which announced to him
that he must not pass over the small stream of the river llissus, until he had
appeased Love, who was indignant at his censure of him, by a recantation.
And then, besides, if he had been an observer of omens, he would
sometimes also have received positive encouragement from them, as we see
frequently the case with many of those, who, through a too superstitious
observance of omens, are not directed by their own minds, but by the words
of others; and who creeping about the lanes, gather counsel from the
remarks of strangers, and, if I may use the expression, do not think with the
understanding, but with the ears.

But be this as it may, it is certain that those who hear the words of
soothsayers, generally receive a voice with their ears, concerning the nature
of which they have no doubt, and which they know to proceed from the
human mouth. But Socrates did not simply say that he heard a voice, but a
"certain voice," transmitted to him: by which addition, you must certainly
understand, that neither an ordinary nor a human voice is signified; for had
it been so, it would have been no use to say a "certain" voice, but rather "a
voice," "or the voice of some one," as the courtesan in Terence says,

"I thought just now I heard the captain's voice." [The Eunuch of
Terence]

But he who says that he heard a certain voice, is either ignorant whence
that voice originated, or is in some doubt concerning it, or shows that it had
something unusual and mysterious about it, as Socrates did of that voice,
which he said was transmitted to him opportunely and from a divine source.
And, indeed, I think that he used to perceive indications of his demon, not
only with his ears, but even with his eyes; for he very frequently declared
that not a voice, but a divine sign, had been presented to him. This sign too
might have been the form of his demon, which Socrates alone beheld, just
as, in Homer, Achilles beheld Minerva.

I suppose that most of you will with difficulty believe what I have just
said, and will greatly wonder what was the form of the demon Socrates was
in the habit of seeing. Aristotle, however, who is a pretty good authority, I
think, informs us that it was usual with the Pythagoreans to express great
surprise if any one denied that he had ever seen a demon. If, therefore, the
power of beholding a divine form may be possessed by any one, why might
it not, in an especial degree, fall to the lot of Socrates, whom the dignity of
wisdom rendered equal to the very highest divinity? For nothing is more
similar and more acceptable to Deity, than a man intellectually good in a
perfect degree, for he as much excels other men as he himself is surpassed
by the immortal Gods. Do we not, then, ourselves feel elevated by the
example and mention of Socrates? And ought we not to devote ourselves to
the felicitous study of a like philosophy, and stand in awe of like Divinities?
A study from which we allow ourselves to be drawn away, for what reason I
know not. And nothing is there which excites in me so much surprise, as
that all men should desire to live most happily, and should know that they
cannot so live in any other way than by cultivating the mind, and yet leave
their minds uncultivated. Just so, if any one wishes to see clearly, it is
requisite that he should pay attention to his eyes by which he sees; if he
desires to run swiftly, attention must be paid to the feet by which he runs;
and so, too, if you wish to be a stout pugilist, your arms must be
strengthened with which you engage in that exercise. So it is with all the
other members; the care of each must be made
your study. And, as all men may easily see that this is true, I cannot
sufficiently account to myself, and wonder to the extent that the thing
deserves, why they do not, with the aid of reason, cultivate their minds. For
this art of living is equally necessary for all; whereas the same is not the
case with the art of painting, nor with the art of singing, which any worthy
man may despise, without any censure upon his understanding, without
baseness, and without disgrace. I know not how to play on the flute like
Ismenias, still I feel no shame that I am not a player on the flute: I know not
how to paint in colors like Apelles, nor to carve like Lysippus, still I am not
ashamed that I am not an artist; and the same as to other arts, not to recount
them all individually; you are at liberty to be ignorant of them, and yet not
to feel ashamed. But, on the other hand, be good enough to say, I know not
how to live aright as Socrates, as Plato, and as Pythagoras lived, and I feel
no shame that I know not how to live aright. This you will never dare to
say.

It is, however, especially to be wondered at, that people should still

neglect to learn those things of which they by no means wish to appear
ignorant, and shun at one and the same moment, both acquaintance with
and ignorance of the same art. Hence, if you examine their daily outlay, you
will find that they are prodigally profuse in their ordinary expenditure, but
bestow nothing on themselves; I mean on proper attention to their demon,
which proper attention is nothing else than the secret obligations of
philosophy. They build sumptuous villas, no doubt, richly decorate their
houses, and collect a numerous household; but in all these, and amidst such
vast affluence, there is nothing to be ashamed of but the master himself, and
with good reason; for they have an accumulation of things which they have
collected with exquisite care, while they themselves wander about among
them, rude, uncultivated, and ignorant.

Accordingly, you will find the things on which they have lavished their
patrimony, to be most pleasing to the view, and most exquisitely built; villas
raised that rival cities, houses decorated like temples, most numerous
retinues of servants, with carefully curled locks, costly furniture, every
thing betokening affluence, every thing bespeaking opulence, every thing
bearing marks of refinement, except the master himself; who alone, just like
Tantalus, needy, poor, and in want in the midst of his riches, though he does
not snatch at retreating fruit, nor endeavor to quench his thirst with shifting
water, still hungers and thirsts for want of true beatitude, that is to say, a
genuine life, and a happy and discreet existence. For he does not perceive
that 'tis usual to look upon rich men in the same way that we do horses
when we buy them; for in purchasing horses we do not look to the
trappings, nor the decorations of the belt, nor do we contemplate the riches
of the neck with all its ornaments, and examine whether chains of various
patterns, and made of silver, gold, or gems, are hanging from it; whether
elaborate baubles surround the head and neck; whether the bits are
embossed, the saddle painted, and the girths gilt; but all this outside show
being removed, we survey the bare horse itself, and direct our attention only
to his body and his temper, in order to ascertain whether he is of handsome
form, vigorous for the race, and strong for purposes of carriage. In the first
place, we consider whether there is in his body

"A head that's slender, and a belly small,

A back obese, and animated breast.
In brawny flesh luxuriant." [Book III. of the Georgics of Virgil.]

And besides, whether a twofold spine passes along his loins; for I would
have him not only to carry me swiftly, but to
afford me an easy seat.

In a similar manner, therefore, in examining men, do not take into

account these foreign particulars, but closely consider the man himself, and
look upon him in a state of poverty, as was my Socrates. But I call those
things foreign which our parents have produced, and which Fortune has
bestowed, none of which do I mingle with the praises of my Socrates; no
nobility of birth, no high pedigree, no long line of ancestors, no envied
riches, for all these, I say, are foreign. It is glory sufficient derived from
Protaonius, if he was such a man that he was not a disgrace to his grandson.
In like manner, may you enumerate every thing of a foreign nature. Is he of
noble birth? You praise his parents. Is he rich? I put no trust in Fortune; nor
do I admire these things a bit the more. Is he strong? He will be weakened
by sickness. Is he swift in the race? He will fall into old age. Is he
beautiful? Wait a little, and he will be so no longer. But is he well
instructed, and extremely learned in the pursuits of philosophy, and wise,
and skilled in the knowledge of good, as much as it is possible for man to
be? Now, then, at last you praise the man himself. For this is neither an
hereditary possession from his father, nor depending on chance, nor yet on
the suffrages of the people, nor subject to bodily decay, nor mutable through
age. All these my Socrates possessed, and therefore cared not for the
possession of other things. Why, then, do not you apply yourself to the
study of wisdom, or, at least, strive that you may hear nothing of an alien
nature in your praises? but that he who wishes to compliment you, may
praise you in the same manner as Accius praises Ulysses, in his Philoctetes,
where he says, at the beginning of that tragedy

"Fam'd hero, in a little island born,

Of celebrated name and powerful mind,
Once to the Grecian ships war's leading light,
And to the Dardan race th' avenger dire,
Son of Laertes."

He mentions his father last of all. But you have heard all the praises of
that man; Laertes, Anticlea, and Acrisius, claim no share of it. The whole of
the praises are, as you see, a possession belonging to Ulysses alone. Nor
does Homer teach you anything else with regard to the same Ulysses, in
always representing Wisdom as his companion, whom he poetically calls
Minerva. Hence, attended by her, he encounters all terrific dangers, and
rises superior to all adverse circumstances. For, assisted by her, he entered
the cavern of the Cyclops, but escaped from it; saw the oxen of the Sun, but
abstained from them, and descended to the realms beneath, but emerged
from them. With the same Wisdom for his companion, he passed by Scylla,
and was not seized by her; he was surrounded by Charybdis, and was not
retained by her; he drank the cup of Circe, and was not transformed; he
came to the Lotophagi, yet did not remain with them; he heard the Sirens,
yet did not approach them.