Let us now return to the beginning. In the first chapter Apuleius announced that he is telling a Greek story. The main outline of his plot is indeed identical with that of the Greek Lucius or Ass, which as we have seen, is an epitome of the Greek Metamorphoses by Lucian. Apuleius’ novel is clearly later than Lucian’s because of rich and notable additions to the plot of the epitome Lucius or Ass. These additions are Milesian Tales, the Cupid and Psyche story and the great eleventh book portraying the worship of Isis, who redeemed Lucius from ass to human shape.
The change in the tone of telling the whole story is significant for while the earthy character of the original folk-tale occasionally appears and there are recurrent glimpses of Lucianic wit and satire, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is neither a comic romance nor a satire as Lucian’s clearly was. Apuleius wrote a serious novel, a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress of the Ass-Man in his quest for knowledge of marvels. Whereas Lucian through satire degraded a simple folk-tale, Apuleius exalted it by making the journeyings of Lucius a search for the spiritual meaning of life. His hero walks alone. The love romance in his story, the Cupid and Psyche tale, starts with the Platonic conception of the relation of Eros and Psyche, Love and the Soul, and therefrom is lifted to the realm of the Olympian gods. And finally the retransformation of Lucius is no chance event, but a salvation wrought out by the mystic worship of Isis.
The subjectivity infused in the plot by these additions is enhanced by the fact that the hero-narrator Lucius is identified with the author, implicitly at first in the Preface and in incidental comment of author to reader; in the last book by the identification of Lucius with “the poor man of Madaura” so that the whole narrative becomes personal experience. This fact involves another difference from the structure of the Greek love romances. The action of these love romances, as Riefstahl points out,[368] is a “closed” one: in the misfortunes which threaten the lovers through Fortune, they must always remain faithful to each other and stout-hearted in order to be re-united. So the circle of the action is “closed,” for it is a great cycle in the life of the hero which places him at the end just where he was in the beginning. The action in Apuleius is “open,” for the hero is bound and pledged to nothing. He goes through his adventures with a light heart. He does not need to prove his faith to any one. He does not need to stand up to a test or even to remain true to himself. He must needs wander, but there is no set purpose in his journeyings. His sufferings are as spiritual as corporeal. He is aware too of the misery of others in the world. And in profound despair he must beg divine aid.
It is absurd to compare the plot of the whole novel with the typical pattern of the Greek love romances and Fotis with their heroines as Riefstahl does.[369] The only great human love-story in Apuleius’ main plot, that of Charite, is a tragedy. It is like the Greek Romances in being a story of high life and in this too is unique among Apuleius’ novelle. But it is utterly different from the Greek love romances in structure and tone. The only parallel to them is to be found in the inset story of Cupid and Psyche. Here the tale is of two young lovers unhappily separated by the cruelty not of Fortune but of a greater goddess, Venus herself. And only after the hard testing of one of the pair, this time the lady, are the two lovers reunited. Thus the conventional happy ending of the plot is achieved. But for the author’s philosophical mind such a beautiful story must start with a touch of Platonic symbolism in the very names of the lovers, Cupid and Psyche, and must be concluded in high heaven, for only among the immortals may such perfect happiness be won forever.
From this account of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses it is already clear that his great novel is a synthesis of various types of Greek Romances. Its closest parallel is in the Greek Lucius or Ass, for the bare outline of the plot of the first ten books is like that of the Greek work. But all recent research tends to prove that Lucian’s original Metamorphoses was satiric in character, therefore very different in tone from Apuleius’ serious work. So although they share the characteristics of a romance of adventure, with stories of magic and of robbers forming principal episodes, the motivation and the aim of the two romances are utterly different. This difference is emphasized by Apuleius’ two longest and most startling additions to the plot, the love-story of Cupid and Psyche and the story of Lucius and Isis.
Apuleius writes a love romance like the Greek only in the story of Cupid and Psyche. For the episode with Fotis is a sex-story of convenience and the Milesian Tales added to the plot of Lucius or Ass carry out this Fotis-motif of sex and lechery.[370] The one long love-story of human beings, Charite’s story, is indeed a love romance of a noble lady and her noble lord, but it is a complete tragedy in episodes, tone and ending. Only the Cupid and Psyche story is the true type of Greek love romances.
The third great interest in the Greek Romances besides adventure and love was religion. To this Apuleius gave a new emphasis and a new importance. In the center of his novel in the inset story of Cupid and Psyche he pictures the old familiar Olympian gods in their conventional mythological characters, but as realistically and with as implicit a satire as Lucian used in his “Dialogues of the Gods.” Venus is a very jealous and cruel step-mother. Jupiter is a lusty, amorous, irresistible king. Cupid is at first undutiful, mischievous and wanton. The story of Lucius and Isis is, however, a serious story of a great religious experience. Through prayer, visions, priestly instruction, ceremonials, initiation and communion Apuleius becomes one with the goddess to whom he is to devote the rest of his life. The worship of Isis is pictured spiritually from the depths of experience by Apuleius who according to his own statements had actually been many times initiated in her cult.[371]
Throughout these three parts of Apuleius’ novel with their successive emphasis on adventure, love and religion, virtually all the conventional devices of the Greek Romances are employed. In the stories of adventure there are rapidly shifting scenes, though in a more limited spatial area. The Greek love romances lie according to the time of their action in the geography of the colonies of great Greece or within the boundaries of the hellenistic-oriental world from Byzantium to Egypt, from Sicily to Babylon. The action is carried out through long sea voyages, varied with storms and shipwreck. The wide world, the spatial separations are overcome only through the faithfulness of the lovers. The Ass-story takes place in narrower compass, in old Greece between Patrae, Hypata and Corinth. To Lucian’s geographical set Apuleius adds Rome. In these two versions of the Ass-story all the life of mankind is represented concretely and in close perspective. The action concerns little people living in one locality or for purposes of trade taking short journeys hither and thither on land.[372] Other conventional devices in Apuleius’ stories of adventure are the introduction as important characters of robbers and robber chieftains, narratives with emphasis on external events, descriptions like that of the robbers’ cave.
In the love-story of Charite the interest centers in a lover and his lass; both are persons in high life, both are faithful. A dream furnishes an apparition of the dead husband. But the villainy of a treacherous friend makes the story a tragedy involving murder and suicide. The story of Cupid and Psyche, true to the type of the Greek love romance, starts with a religious beginning, the worship of a mortal girl Psyche as the goddess of love; is motivated by a Greek oracle; describes at length the proving of the heroine in tasks imposed by the will of an unfriendly deity; depicts Psyche’s apparent sleep of death; and finally consummates a happy ending for the lovers through a saving god, who is Cupid the hero himself. A pastoral note which affiliates the story with Daphnis and Chloe is introduced by the presence of the friendly god Pan, who acts as a wise old adviser and comforter to Psyche in her great despair. And the conventional use of excursus creates a new pictorial character in brilliant descriptions of Venus charioted over the sea, of the Palace of Cupid, of Cupid asleep, of the wedding banquet of the lovers.
In the story of Lucius and Isis in Book Eleven, many of the conventional devices of the Greek Romances appear: dreams, epiphanies, religious festivals, a dea ex machina. So in Chariton Aphrodite and Fortune contend for the control of the lovers; in Xenophon of Ephesus Artemis and Isis are the two saving goddesses; in Heliodorus Apollo and Isis are prominent though the philosophies of the Gymnosophists and of the Neo-Pythagoreans have a share in the plot; in Achilles Tatius Artemis reigns supreme; in Longus Pan and the Nymphs guide the destinies of the young lovers. The difference in Apuleius is that the whole quest of the hero is for some meaning in life and when magic, adventure, mythology and human amours can not supply it, he finds through conversion a union with a mystic goddess who sublimates his emotion and absorbs his life into her service.