Apuleius Golden Asse

18^th Apr 04 Apuleius Golden Asse
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/108039

Apuleius (124-170CE) is best known for his Metamorphoses, better known as The Golden Ass. The name is borrowed off Ovid's work, but is not nearly the same, although it presents a series of tales that are related through Lucius. in a Chinese box structure.

However old the book might be, it is a hot topic among literature and classics students, generating a sub-industry of commentary and study in itself. Why? Because Apuleius himself is a very controversial figure who appears in the letters of St Augustine to Volusianus and Marcellinus as a threat to the new Christian faith as they found him comparable to Christ. What ho? Apuleius was an devotee of Isis and initiated into the secret mysteries of Osiris, a renown student of Plato, of ancient mystery cults and of Asclepius. he was known as a wonder-maker and accused as a magician around 156 in Alexandria in a case concerning a elderly widow, Pudentilla—I kid you not, not somebody out of a Mozartean comedy. However, he was skilled in rhetoric, which always helps in a Roman court and part of the argument that he presented was the scandal of reading rivate love letters in front of the opfficial statuary within the courts of law. The Romans being rather superstitious, treated the statutes as if they were living and doing anything profane or construed as shameful before them could result in a death penalty... this only added in his favor as presumably the trial had to be considered a mistrial on grounds of improper handling.

Apuleius was from Mdaurus, a Roman colony in Numidia, where from St Augustine also originated. He studied Platonic philosophy in Athens adn wrote three discourses on Plato, two exist: De platonis et eus dogmato/ On Plato and his teaching; De Deo Socratis/On the God of Socrates.

He also went off to Egypt and entered into the cult of Isis, nearly 400 years after the Isis cult had disappeared which appears in Plutarch's writings. He distinguishes between the left-hand destructive magic which Robert Graves associates to the Triple Goddess as Hecate and the right-hand magic of Isis which has productive powers within the story of the Goden Ass.

Frequently, the book has been seen as autobiographical, so much so, tht Apuleius was given the name he bestowed the ass, Lucius. Lucius is a poet, who in seeking for enlightenment through the mysteries of socery inadvertantly gets transformed into an ass. Curiously enough, the ass is a beast repellent to Isis as it symbolizes Python who ambushed and killed Osiris her brother-husband. The structure of the book is of Chinese-box pattern with a story embedded within a story: the most famous of these is Cupid and Psyche, frequently interpreted as a platonic allegory. However, the entire work can be seen as an allegory of human suffering and transfomation into a higher being. There are scholarly comparisons between the work and eastern literature as Apuleius, himself, refers to it as Milesian tales. There are strong parallels between the eastern influence flowing in from India and the Isis cult.

Apuleius, or the Golden Ass, has strongly influenced literature, including Bocaccio's Decameron; Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel; Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Defoe, Moll Flanders in the rowdy mood of adventure.

The Cupid and Psyche myth can be found within the stories of Beauty and the Beast where love transform something which is ugly or despicable into something cherished. The last book of the Golden Ass is dedicated to the worship of Isis, as the ass is once more transformed into human form. It is difficult to know where the jest stops and where reality begins, what is fantasy or biography in the mix of tales. The narrative is lively, dynamic and not something you can put away until read straight through. it includes the profane, the dirty, the tawdry and bawdry as well as the yearning for the divine.

On the long list of books to be read, T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) carried it in his saddle bags during the Arabic Uprising—and surprisingly enough, he did not give us his own translation, but delivered us homeric verse instead. Translations and commentaries on this work now abound as it stimulates interest in ancient mystery cults, history and is fille with the best medicine of all: laughter.

Apuleius Golden Asse
http://eserver.org/books/apuleius/default.html
Adlington's translation, 1566. This edition by Martin Guy, 1996
11 books

The Golden Asse. by Lucius Apuleius. Adlington's translation, 1566.
The Life of Lucius Apuleius. Briefly Described.

LUCIUS APULEIUS ...
http://eserver.org/books/apuleius/life.html

Luca Graverini Apuleius
http://www.unisi.it/ricerca/ist/anc_hist/online/apuleio/apucover.htm85

Bruce MacLennan
Apuleius The Home Page
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/apuleius/home.html

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/apuleius/
biography

Golden Ass
http://www.jnanam.net/golden-ass/
well-annotated commentary and discussion on Apuleius and the Goldebn Ass
gives insight into ancient religion, structure of the text and the tensions which create its structure

Apuleius The Golden Ass
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/apuleius.html
downloadable Cupid and Psyche marked

Apuleius Rhetorical works
http://www.let.kun.nl/V.Hunink/hhh.htm
translated and introduced by S.J. Harrison,
J.L. Hilton, and V.J.C. Hunink (Oxford University Press, Oxford)

Stephen A. Nimis, Prof Classics Miami University
http://montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/nimissa/

http://montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/nimissa/apuleiusintro.pdf
introduction to Apuleius

Elizabethan Authors
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/sources.htm
Sources for Shakespears works

Apueius
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/Apuleius-long.htm

Main Page for Latin Library
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/classics

Apuleius gets on Blogspot
http://apuleius.blogspot.com/

Toothpaste Dentifricim
http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Dentifricium.html
in reference to the Apologia: Apuleius was accused of socery and toothpaste was apparently to be his mode of murder.

Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/r/r11g/part252.html
has reference to Apuleius

Electronic Texts for classics
http://www.flwi.ugent.be/IAHRG/ElectronicTexts.htm

Montclair Classics Dept
http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/Homepage/links.html

Fabricius Flavius Links to the Roman World
http://www.magellannarfe.com/favoritelinks/
a directory of links but not well designed or organized