Lucius Apuleius & Filippo Beroaldo: Asinus aureus

eroaldo’s edition appeared on 1 August 1500, some months later than scheduled, having been held up in the press by a paper shortage. It announces itself, almost immediately, as a very different project from the editio princeps. Its scope is simultaneously local and international: Beroaldo dedicates the commentary to one of his former students at Bologna, Peter Vàradi (Petrus de Varda, c. 1450–1502), erstwhile chancellor at the court of the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus (d. 1490), and now archbishop of Colocza (Kalocsa).

The appearance of the work was evidently a major publishing event. The contract which Beroaldo signed with his printer, Benedetto d’Ettore, on 22 May 1499 stipulated a print run of 1,200 copies. Beroaldo himself refers, in the dedication, to ‘around two thousand volumes’ being ‘printed off from the formes’ (voluminia ... circiter duo millia formis excussa, sig. a₁v), and either sum is extremely impressive, especially given the expense of the folio format. (...) The title page of Beroaldo’s folio promises ‘annotations on the remaining works’ of Apuleius (Mox in reliqua Opuscula eiusdem Annotationes imprimentur) but such a volume never materialized, and one inevitably sees, in the amount of critical attention devoted entirely to The Golden Ass, the beginning of the shift away from the medieval notion of Apuleius as pre-eminently a philosopher, towards the modern view of him as a literary artist and shaper of fictions.
— Robert H. F. Carver: The Protean Ass. Oxford: U. P., 2007. p. 175.

cclesiastici conditores magicas præstigias uocitant tamquam fallacia quadam præstringentes hominum mentes rerum ueritatem ementiantur: Et ita curiositati mortalium callenter illudant: Ceterum non parum multi credulitatem suam addixerunt magicæ doctrinæ: perinde ac rerum cunctarum potentissimæ: Inter quos ut cæteros preteream Lucius Lucianus patrensis Diuinationis gnarus nec minus Elegans sophista: (...)
Græcus ille magiam primoribus labris gustasse uideri potest quamuis de se scripserit μάντις ἀγαϑός. Vaticinus bonus Hic uero noster plenis haustibus hausisse: In tantum ut Magorum maximus crederetur. Et ut auctor est Augustinus. Apuleium & Apollonium dixere non minorem quam Christum fecisse miracula. Et ut Lactantius refert solent Apuleii & multa & mira memorari. Ipse tamen magi nomen respuens aduersus calumniatores: qui ei magicarum artium Crimen intenderant eloquentissime se defendit:
— fol. A₁v.

he ecclesiastical authors are wont to call the magic arts ‘sleights of hand’ as though, by some stratagem binding fast men’s minds, they fabricate the true nature of things and thus cunningly make sport with mortals’ curiosity. But a good many men have given their credence to the Art of Magic and thus to the most powerful of all things — amongst them (to overlook the rest) Lucius Lucian of Patrae, expert in divination and a no less elegant sophist. (...)
That Greek can be seen to have tasted magic with the edge of his lips although he describes himself as μάντις ἀγαϑός (‘a good seer’); but this Apuleius of ours seems to have drunk it in great draughts — so much so that he was believed to be the greatest of magicians. And as Augustine says — ‘They say that Apuleius and Apollonius performed miracles no less than Christ.’ And as Lactantius relates — ‘The many and marvellous doings of Apuleius are usually recounted.’ Apuleius, however, spitting the name of magician back in their faces, defended himself with great eloquence against his detractors who had brought the charge of witchcraft.
— Translated by Robert H. F. Carver: The Protean Ass. Oxford: U. P., 2007. pp. 175-176.

eroaldus’s Commentary on Apuleius reinforced the same lesson by a quotation from Symposium 219a: ‘For Plato writes in the Symposium that the eyes of the mind begin to see clearly when the eyes of the body begin to fail.’🞯 When Psyche succumbs, in the story of Apuleius, to the desire to see Amor with her eyes, she learns that this causes the god to vanish; and it is only after she has atoned for her curiosity, and produced the vessel of beauty from the realm of death, that she is allowed to rejoin the transcendent Amor, by whom she conceives ‘a daughter whom we call Voluptas’, quam Voluptatem nominamus (Apuleius VI, 24). Beroaldus’s reading of Apuleius is sustained by an important passage in Plotinus about ‘pictures and fables’ of Amor and Psyche:

“That the Good is Yonder, appears by the love which is the soul’s natural companion, so that both in pictures and in fables Eros and the Psyche make a pair. Because she is of God’s race, yet other than God, she cannot but love God. Whilst she is Yonder she knows the Heaven-passion. ... But when she enters into generation ..., then she likes better another and a less enduring love. ... Yet learning afterwards to hate the wanton dealings of this place, she journeys again to her father’s house, when she has purified herself of earthly contacts, and abides in wellbeing.” (Enneads VI, ix, 9.)

To expound the theory of divine Voluptas, there was no want of Neoplatonic witnesses. Besides ‘Orpheus’, Apuleius, Hermias, and Proclus, there was the De mysteriis of Iamblichus, translated by Ficino, in which ‘the way to felicity’ (via ad felicitatem) ends in a joyous union with the god: tunc opifici totam copulat animam. There were the ‘Celestial Hierarchies’ of Dionysius the Areopagite, in which the seraphs, who are closest to the deity, burn with a love that is above knowledge. There was Plutarch On the εἰ at Delphi, in which Pico discerned the same consummation of ecstasy which the Cabbalists called binsica (mors osculi), etc. Yet none of these texts enjoyed quite the same veneration as a curiously painstaking description by Plotinus of mystical hilarity in Enneads VI, vii, 34-6. These soberly corybantic chapters, which left a profound impression not only on Ficino and Pico, but before them on Hermias, Proclus, and Dionysius, have recently been acclaimed by M. Emile Bréhier as ‘la description la plus compléte qui soit chez Plotin de l’attitude mystique’. It may suffice to quote from them one central passage, with Ficino’s translation, or paraphrase, added in Latin:

“And it may be said therefore that the mind has two powers. ... The one is the vision of the sober mind (sanae mentis visio), the other is the mind in a state of love (ipsa mens amans): for when it loses its reason by becoming drunk with nectar (quando enim insanit nectare penitus ebria), then it enters into a state of love, diffusing itself wholly into delight (se ipsam in affectionem suavitatemque beatam saturitate diffundens): and it is better for it thus to rage than to remain aloof from that drunkenness.” (Enneads VI, vii, 35.)
— Edgar Wind: Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. London: Faber and Faber, 1968. pp. 58-60.

ast power over nature and spirits is attributed to magic and its practitioners in the opening chapters of the Metamorphoses. “By magic’s mutterings swift streams are reversed, the sea is calmed, the sun stopped, foam drawn from the moon, the stars torn from the sky, and day turned into night.”[1] While such assertions are received with some scepticism by one listener, they are largely borne out by the subsequent experiences of the characters in the story and by the feats which witches are made to perform. These are sometimes humorously and extravagantly presented, but as crime and ferocious cruelty are treated in the same spirit, this light vein cannot be regarded as an admission of magic’s unreality. On the contrary, the magic of Thessaly is celebrated with one accord the world over.[2] Meroë the witch can “displace the sky, elevate the earth, freeze fountains, melt mountains, raise ghosts, bring down the gods, extinguish the stars, and illuminate the bottomless pit.”[3] Submerging the light of starry heaven to the lowest depths of hell is a power also attributed to the witch Pamphile[4]. “By her marvelous secrets she makes ghosts and elements obey and serve her, disturbs the stars and coerces the divinities.”[5]

In none of the episodes recorded in The Golden Ass, however, do the witches find it necessary or advisable to go to quite so great lengths as these, although Pamphile once threatens the sun with eternal darkness because he is so slow in yielding to night when she may ply her sorcery and amours.[6] The witches content themselves with such accomplishments as carrying on love affairs with inhabitants of distant India, Ethopia, and even the Antipodes,—“trifles of the art these and mere bagatelles”;[7] with transforming their enemies into animal forms or imprisoning them helpless in their homes, or transporting them house and all to a spot a hundred miles off;[8] and, on the other hand, with breaking down bolted doors to murder their victims,[9] or assuming themselves the shape of weasels, birds, dogs, mice, and even insects in order to work their mischief unobserved;[10] they then cast their victims into a deep sleep and cut their throats or hang them or mutilate them.[11] They often know what is being said about them when apparently absent, and they sometimes indulge in divination of the future.[12] But to whatever fields of activity they may extend or confine themselves, their violent power is irresistible, and we are given to understand that it is useless to try to fight against it or to escape it. Its secret and occult character is also emphasized, and the adjective caeca or noun latebrae are more than once employed to describe it.[13]

Yet there are also suggested certain limitations to the power of magic. The witches seem to break down the bolted doors, but these resume their former place when the hags have departed, and are to all appearances as intact as before. The man, too, whose throat they have cut, whose blood they have drained off, and whose heart they have removed, awakes apparently alive the next morning and resumes his journey. All the events of the preceding night seem to have been merely an unpleasant dream. The witches had stuffed a sponge into the wound of his throat[14] with the adjuration, “Oh you sponge, born in the sea, beware of crossing running water.” In the morning his traveling companion can see no sign of wound or sponge on his friend’s throat. But when he stoops to drink from a brook, out falls the sponge and he drops dead. The inference, although Apuleius draws none, is obvious; witches can make a corpse seem alive for a while but not for long, and magic ceases to work when you cross running water. We also get the impression that there is something deceptive and illusive about the magic of the witches, and that only the lusts and crimes are real which their magic enables them or their employers to commit and gratify. They may seem to draw down the sun, but it is found shining next day as usual. When Lucius is transformed into an ass, he retains his human appetite and tenderness of skin,[15]—a deplorable state of mind and body which must be attributed to the imperfections of the magic art as well as to the humorous cruelty of the author.

In The Golden Ass the practitioners of magic are usually witches and old and repulsive. We have to deal with wonders worked by old-wives and not by Magi of Persia or Babylon. As we have seen and shall see yet further, their deeds are regarded as illicit and criminal. They are “most wicked women” (nequissimae mulieres)[16], intent upon lust and crime. They practice devotiones, injurious imprecations and ceremonies.[17]

Male practitioners of magic are represented in a less unfavorable light. An Egyptian, who in return for a large sum of money engages to invoke the spirit of a dead man and restore the corpse momentarily to life, is called a prophet and a priest, though he seems a manifest necromancer and is himself adjured to lend his aid and to “have pity by the stars of heaven, by the infernal deities, by the elements of nature, and by the silence of night,”[18] —expressions which are certainly suggestive of the magic powers elsewhere ascribed to witches. The hero of the story, Lucius, is animated in his dabblings in the magic art by idle curiosity combined with thirst for learning, but not by any criminal motive.[19] Yet after he has been transformed into an ass by magic, he fears to resume his human form suddenly in public, lest he be put to death on suspicion of practicing the magic art.[20]

Magic is depicted not merely as irresistible or occult or criminal or fallacious; it is also regularly called an art and a discipline. Even the practices of the witches are so dignified, Pamphile has nothing less than a laboratory on the roof of her house,—a wooden shelter, concealed from view but open to the winds of heaven and to the four points of the compass,—where she may ply her secret arts and where she spreads out her “customary apparatus.”[21] This consists of all sorts of aromatic herbs, of metal plates inscribed with cryptic characters, a chest filled with little boxes containing various ointments,[22] and portions of human corpses obtained from sepulchers, shipwrecks (or birds of prey, according as the reading is navium or avium), public executions, and the victims of wild beasts.[23] It will be recalled that Galen represented medical students as most likely to secure human skeletons or bodies to dissect from somewhat similar sources; and possibly they might incur suspicion of magic thereby.

All this makes it clear that to work magic one must have materials. The witches seem especially avid for parts of the human body. Pamphile sends her maid, Fotis, to the barber’s shop to try to steal some cuttings of the hair of a youth of whom she is enamoured;[24] and another story is told of witches who by mistake cut off and replaced with wax the nose and ears of a man guarding the corpse instead of those of the dead body.[25] Other witches who murdered a man carefully collected his blood in a bladder and took it away with them.[26] But parts of other animals are also employed in their magic, and stones as well as varied herbs and twigs.[26a] In trying to entice the beloved Boeotian youth Pamphile used still quivering entrails and poured libations of spring water, milk, and honey, as well as placing the hairs—which she supposed were his—with many kinds of incense upon live coals.[27] To turn herself into an owl she anointed herself from top to toe with ointment from one of her little boxes, and also made much use of a lamp.[28] To regain her human form she has only to drink, and bathe in, spring water mixed with anise and laurel leaf,—“See how great a result is attained by such small and insignificant herbs!”[29]—while Lucius is told that eating roses will restore him from asinine to human form.[30] The Egyptian prophet makes use of herbs in his necromancy, placing one on the face and another on the breast of the corpse; and he himself wears linen robes and sandals of palm leaves.[31]

Besides materials, incantations are much employed,[32] while the Egyptian prophet turns towards the east and “silently imprecates” the rising sun. As this last suggests, careful observance of rite and ceremony also play their part, and Pamphile’s painstaking procedure is described in precise detail. Divine aid is once mentioned[33] and is perhaps another essential for success. More than one witch is called divina[34] and magic is termed a divine discipline.[34a] But we have also heard the witches spoken of as coercing the gods rather than depending upon them for assistance. Their magic seems to be performed mainly by using things and words in the right ways.

Besides the witches (magae or sagae) and what Apuleius calls magic by name, a number of other charlatans and superstitions of a kindred nature are mentioned in The Golden Ass. Such a one is the Egyptian “prophet” already described. Such was the Chaldean who for a time astounded Corinth by his wonderful predictions, but had been unable to foresee his own shipwreck.[35] On learning this last fact, a business man who was about to pay him one hundred denarii for a prognostication snatched up his money again and made off. Such were the painted disreputable crew of the Syrian goddess who went about answering all inquiries concerning the future with the same ambiguous couplet.[36] Such were the jugglers whom Lucius saw at Athens swallowing swords or balancing a spear in the throat while a boy climbed to the top of it.[37] Such were the physicians who turned poisoners.[38]

Other passages allude to astrology[39] besides that already cited concerning the Chaldean. Divination from dreams is also discussed. In the fourth book the old female servant tells the captive maiden not to be terrified “by the idle figments of dreams” and explains that they often go by contraries; but in the last book the hero is several times guided or forewarned by dreams. Omens are believed in. Starting left foot first loses a man a business opportunity,[40] and another is kicked out of a house for his ill-omened words.[41] The violent deaths of all three sons of the owner of another house are presaged by the following remarkable conglomeration of untoward portents: a hen lays a chick instead of an egg; blood spurts up from under the table; a servant rushes in to announce that the wine is boiling in all the jars in the cellar; a weasel is seen dragging a dead snake out-of-doors; a green frog leaps from the sheep-dog’s mouth and then a ram tears open the dog’s throat at one bite.[42]

Of scientific discussion or information there is little in the Metamorphoses. When Pamphile foretells the weather and for the next day by inspection of her lamp, Lucius suggests religion, that this artificial flame may retain some properties from its heavenly original.[43] The herb mandragora is described as inducing a sleep similar to death, but as not fatal; and the beaver is said to emasculate itself in order to escape its hunters.[44] We should feel lost without mention of a dragon in a book of this sort, and one is introduced who is large enough to devour a man.[45] It is interesting to note for purposes of comparison,—inasmuch as we shall presently take up the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a Neo-Pythagorean, and later shall learn from the Recognitions of Clement that the apostle Peter was accustomed to bathe at dawn in the sea,—that Lucius, while still in the form of an ass, in his zeal for purification plunged into the sea and submerged his head beneath the wave seven times, because the divine Pythagoras had proclaimed that number as especially appropriate to religious rites.[46] “It has been said that The Golden Ass is the first book in European literature showing piety in the modern sense, and the most disreputable adventures of Lucius lead, it is true, in the end to a religious climax.” But, adds Professor Duncan B. Macdonald, “Few books, in spite of fantastic gleams of color and light, move under such leaden-weighted skies as The Golden Ass. There is no real God in that world; all things are in the hands of enchanters; man is without hope for here and hereafter; full of yearnings he struggles and takes refuge in strange cults.”[47]

While magic plays a larger part in The Golden Ass than in any other extant Greek romance, it is not unusual in the others to find the hero and heroine exposed to perils from magicians, or themselves falsely charged with magic, as in the Aethiopica of Heliodorus, where Charicles is “condemned to be burned on a charge of poisoning.”[48] In the Christian romances, too, as the Recognitions will show us later, there are plenty of allusions to magic and demons. Meanwhile we are reminded that in the Roman Empire accusations of magic were made not merely in story books but in real life by the trial for magic of the author of the Metamorphoses himself, and we next turn to the Apology which he delivered upon that occasion.
— Lynn Thorndike: A History of Magic and Experimental Science. New York: Columbia UP, 1923. pp. 225-232.

n the famous prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses the speaker claims (literary) ancestry from Athens, Corinth, and Sparta, cities indicated through metonymy as “Attic Hymettus, the Isthmus of Corinth, and Spartan Taenarus, fruitful lands immortalized in yet more fruitful books” (1,1,3). The early mention in the novel of Taenarus, a place celebrated in literature as the entry-point of famous heroes to the Underworld, foreshadows the account of Psyche’s journey to Hades through the same entrance precisely halfway through the entire text (6,18–20). The infernal journey and the vision of afterlife are continued, at another level, in the last book of the novel, in which the hero Lucius becomes a devotee of Isis and is initiated into her mysteries (11,6 and 11,23).

This meaningful arrangement reflects the importance of the theme of katabasis, the descent to the Underworld, in Apuleius’ novel. The terminology describing a journey to and from the land of the dead, used both literally and figuratively, includes ad inferos demeare (9,31,1; 11,6,6; cf. 8,7,4) or derigere (6,16,3) or descendere (6,17,2) or festinare (1,16,3); ab inferis emergere (3,10,3) or eripere (8,20,1) or recurrere (6,20,4) or reducere (2,28,1; cf. 11,18,2); ad Tartarum manesque commeare (6,17,1), ad Tartarum ire and inde redire (6,17,4); in barathrum se praecipitare (2,6,2), infernum meatum decurrere (6,20,1), ad Orcum festinare (6,29,7), and ad diem remeare (10,11,3). Apuleius is fond of using rhyming pairs (either existing or new) suggesting this kind of journey, such as demeare / remeare (1,19,3), and demeacula / remeacula (6,2,5). Moreover, since magic is the area par excellence which allows communication between the upper and the lower spheres, witches are presented in the early books as persons with powers over the stars and the Underworld alike (1,8,4; 2,5,4; 3,15,7); direct contact between the living and the dead occurs in an act of necromancy involving an Egyptian priest and the corpse of a poisoned man (2,28), as well as in cases where murdered people appear in the dreams of their relatives and explain the circumstances of their deaths (8,8,6–9; 9,31,1). (...)

Not surprisingly, the imagery of death and of the Underworld journey occurs with reference to Lucius’ initiation into the mysteries of Isis (11,21–24). In the words of the high priest who explains the ritual,

“the very rite of dedication itself is performed in the manner of a voluntary death and of a life obtained by grace. The goddess is accustomed to elect people who stand near the close of their life-span, on the very threshold of the end of light, but who can be safely entrusted, nevertheless, with the mighty mysteries of the faith. By her providence she causes them in some way to be born again and places them once more on the course of a new life” (11,21,7).[1]

The representation of death (τελευτᾶν) as initiation (τελεῖσϑαι), discussed in a well-known passage by Plutarch (de anima 2 = fr. 178 Sandbach; cf. Pl. R. 2,365a), is here (and at 11,23,7) inverted, while the idea of rebirth following a symbolic death, found also in primitive societies, relates the katabasis experience to both delivery from the fear of death and the acquisition of a new identity. The initiate in a sense becomes a new being (quodam modo renatus), and the verb renasci occurs here for the first time in extant Latin literature with reference to spiritual rebirth. The same notion, however, features as a distinctive element in other mystery cults (e.g. Mithras) as well as in Christianity.

At the night of his initiation Lucius is introduced to the innermost part of the temple and describes his experience by means of the following account:

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 (11,23,7).[2]

The style and the suggestive language of the passage have allowed diverse interpretations, including its function as σύνϑημα, ‘password’ of self-identification, through which initiates could recognize each other. But Apuleius seems to be employing here elements that are found in various traditions of religious experience, such as the idea of descent, autopsy, and physical proximity to the gods. It is instructive to compare Lucius’ first-person account with the formula from a katabasis ritual in a Greek magical papyrus dated to the late 3rd or early 4th cent. AD (PGM LXX 13–15 “I have been initiated, and I went down into the (underground) chamber of the Dactyls, and I saw the other things down below, virgin, bitch, and all the rest”, transl. Betz), as well as with Aelius Aristides’ account of an initiatory experience (τὰ τῆς τελετῆς) related to the cult of Sarapis; the author stresses the deity’s power to transfer people wherever he wishes ‘without conveyance and without bodies’ (orat. 49,48).

Lucius describes his experience as a journey to the Underworld, and further also into heaven (deos inferos et deos superos accessi coram), and its events have been explained in terms of a ritual taking place in an underground chamber. However, the terminology is elusive and may not even suggest a ‘proper’ descent. Accessi confinium mortis possibly alludes to both Aeneas’ katabasis (cf. Verg. Aen. 5,732 Ditis […] infernas accede domos) and Ulysses’ nostos (cf. [Tib.] 3,7,70 illum inter geminae nantem confinia mortis, i. e. Scylla and Charybdis), while confinium mortis can also be used of the Moon; according to Macrobius, some “Platonists” divided the universe into two parts, an active and a passive; the immutable part extended from the outer sphere down to the beginning of the moon, while the area between the moon and the earth was considered the infernal region, the moon being “the demarcation of life and death” (comm. 1,11,6 ipsamque lunam vitae esse mortisque confinium; cf. Plut. de facie 942Ε (of Korē/Moon) τοῦ Ἅιδου πέϱας). The expression calcare limen Proserpinae followed by remeare recalls Psyche’s katabasis, which included a double-border crossing (6,18,2; 6,19,3–4) and a return (6,20,4); limen Proserpinae also echoes the poetic expressions limen leti or mortis (cf. οὐδός in Il. 8,15), which are used figuratively in the sense of ‘the verge of death’.

In Egyptian tradition the sun shining in the dark of the night would be the sun-god who enters the realm of the dead and, identified with Osiris, journeys through it. The idea of light within darkness is also found in literary accounts of the initiatory experience (Dio Chrys. orat. 12,33; Plut. frg. 178 Sandbach), and, importantly, in the catalogue of Isiac powers in this book (11,6,6; cf. 11,15,3; 11,25,3). Another possible model for this detail derives from Apuleius’ philosophical works. In his treatise De deo Socratis Apuleius argues that it is impossible to define God by means of language, since God is accessible only by means of the intellect. “Even for wise men, when by vigour of mind they have removed themselves from the body as far as they can, the comprehension of this god is like a bright light fitfully flashing with the swiftest flicker in the deepest darkness, and that only from time to time” (Soc. 3 [124]). The notions of bodily separation and of the encounter with a bright light in the deepest darkness reappear, similarly phrased, in the account of Lucius’ initiation and are standard features in accounts of near-death experiences.

The representation of the Underworld from the perspective of Isis features in the goddess’ long speech to the hero in her epiphany; Isis claims the power to prolong life on earth beyond the limits set by human destiny and promises to provide a privileged place of honour for the dutiful devotees:

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 (11,6,6).[3]

In this passage the topography of the Underworld (Acheron, Styx, Elysian Fields) is traditional but essentially Roman rather than Greek (the Elysian Fields are located in the Underworld first in Vergil), while it is also influenced by astrology (“subterranean hemisphere”); more importantly, the Beyond is not described as exclusively a place of darkness and gloom, but as a location that also accommodates the privileged few living in a state of bliss near the divinity, who herself is a source of light (cf. Ael. Arist. orat. 49,46; and see above).

This kind of reward in the afterlife is traditionally associated with great heroes (Od. 4,562–563), as well as with the virtuous and the initiates to mystery cults, especially the Eleusinian mysteries (Aristoph. ran. 454–459). As is pointed out in the Groningen Commentaries on the Isis Book, Apuleius is here verbally alluding to Seneca’s account of the fate of the just ruler (Herc. f. 739–745), who is destined either to go to heaven or to become a judge in the Underworld. But there is other evidence related to the cult of Isis: in the so-called ‘Archive of Hor’ (2nd cent. BC) – a set of ostraca containing the private documents of Hor, a priest of Isis and employee at the Serapeum near Memphis –, Hor questions his beloved goddess about death and the afterlife; Isis promises her ardent devotee that he will be well provided of in life and that he will be buried near the sacrosanct site of the Serapeum in Memphis, in other words he will be granted “both a secure and happy existence in this world and survival in the next”. In a sepulchral epigram from Bithynia, dated to the late Hellenistic or early Imperial period (SEG 42 nr. 1112 = Merkelbach-Stauber II nr.09/14/01), Meniketes son of Menestheus, an Isiac mystes, claims that his devotion and service to the goddess as well as his virtuous life have earned him a place not in the gloomy Acheron, but “in the harbours of the blessed” (μαϰάϱων δ’ ἔδϱαμον εἰς λιμένας, 2). Burkert discusses our passage in the context of practical charms that speak of peace for the deceased in the rites of Isis, but also underlines its strong thematic resemblance with the conclusion of the emperor Julian’s Caesares (336C), in which Hermes assures Julian that obedience to Mithras will secure for him a safe anchor throughout his life and that “when it will be necessary to depart from here, you may do this with good hope, because you have taken as your leader a god well-disposed towards you” (transl. Burkert). Nevertheless, despite its associations with various literary strands about afterlife, Isis’ proclamation at 11,6,6 is structured in a way that emphasizes life in this world, not in the next one; the description of a blessed afterlife, enticing though it may be, is followed by a promise of conditional longevity and ad libitum postponement of the unavoidable hour of death.

Concluding Remarks

Apuleius’ concept of the Underworld in the Metamorphoses should best be understood as multi-faceted rather than uniform. In the account of Lucius’ adventures before his re-transformation in Book XI and in the tale of Psyche the formation of the netherworld contributes to a sophisticated black comedy including the inversion both of various literary strands, some of them as old as Homer’s epic, others newly devised by Apuleius, and of the katabasis motif itself, which, most importantly, has been tailored by Apuleius to suit (and test) Psyche’s character: the function of this artificial Underworld is to move the story forward, to create suspense for the audience(s) of the tale, and to question (but not give definite answers to) the issue of which souls deserve salvation. On the other hand, in his representation of the Beyond in the Isis Book Apuleius takes an equally sophisticated approach to the topic; through Isis’ words and through the comments of various characters and of the narrator, he creates an alternative and positive vision of the afterlife that is connected with both poetry and philosophy but is distant and second to the interests in this life. Both accounts are incomplete (there are no Elysian fields in Psyche’s tale, as there is no explicit mention of the fate of sinners in the Isiac afterlife) and both are directed to individuals who are required to obey in order to be saved.

The Metamorphoses is a work in which we are uncertain about beginnings and endings — and I here also refer to the abrupt beginning and abrupt ending of the text itself, the latter with connotations of carrying out as well as dying (11,30,5 obibam). The reader is constantly confronted with accounts of death, near-death, and even apparent death, and is finally asked to understand death not as a closure but as a transition to another identity and a new way of life.
— Reading the Way to the Netherworld. Education and the Representations of the Beyond in Later Antiquity. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017. pp. 234-235, 246-251.

he two lads were lounging together over a book, half-buried in a heap of dry corn, in an old granary—the quiet corner to which they had climbed out of the way of their noisier companions on one of their blandest holiday afternoons. They looked round: the western sun smote through the broad chinks of the shutters. How like a picture! and it was precisely the scene described in what they were reading, with just that added poetic touch in the book which made it delightful and select, and, in the actual place, the ray of sunlight transforming the rough grain among the cool brown shadows into heaps of gold. What they were intent on was, indeed, the book of books, the “golden” book of that day, a gift to Flavian, as was shown by the purple writing on the handsome yellow wrapper, following the title Flaviane! — it said,

It was perfumed with oil of sandal-wood, and decorated with carved and gilt ivory bosses at the ends of the roller.

And the inside was something not less dainty and fine, full of the archaisms and curious felicities in which that generation delighted, quaint terms and images picked fresh from the early dramatists, the lifelike phrases of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian, racy morsels of the vernacular and studied prettinesses: — all alike, mere playthings for the genuine power and natural eloquence of the erudite artist, unsuppressed by his erudition, which, however, made some people angry, chiefly less well “got-up” people, and especially those who were untidy from indolence.

No! it was certainly not that old-fashioned, unconscious ease of the early literature, which could never come again; which, after all, had had more in common with the “infinite patience” of Apuleius than with the hack-work readiness of his detractors, who might so well have been “self-conscious” of going slip-shod. And at least his success was unmistakable as to the precise literary effect he had intended, including a certain tincture of “neology” in expression — nonnihil interdum elocutione novella parum signatum — in the language of Cornelius Fronto, the contemporary prince of rhetoricians. What words he had found for conveying, with a single touch, the sense of textures, colours, incidents! “Like jewellers’ work! Like a myrrhine vase!” — admirers said of his writing. “The golden fibre in the hair, the gold thread-work in the gown marked her as the mistress” — aurum in comis et in tunicis, ibi inflexum hic intextum, matronam profecto confitebatur — he writes, with his “curious felicity,” of one of his heroines. Aurum intextum: gold fibre: — well! there was something of that kind in his own work. And then, in an age when people, from the emperor Aurelius downwards, prided themselves unwisely on writing in Greek, he had written for Latin people in their own tongue; though still, in truth, with all the care of a learned language. Not less happily inventive were the incidents recorded — story within story — stories with the sudden, unlooked-for changes of dreams. He had his humorous touches also. And what went to the ordinary boyish taste, in those somewhat peculiar readers, what would have charmed boys more purely boyish, was the adventure: — the bear loose in the house at night, the wolves storming the farms in winter, the exploits of the robbers, their charming caves, the delightful thrill one had at the question — “Don’t you know that these roads are infested by robbers?”

The scene of the romance was laid in Thessaly, the original land of witchcraft, and took one up and down its mountains, and into its old weird towns, haunts of magic and incantation, where all the more genuine appliances of the black art, left behind her by Medea when she fled through that country, were still in use. In the city of Hypata, indeed, nothing seemed to be its true self — “You might think that through the murmuring of some cadaverous spell, all things had been changed into forms not their own; that there was humanity in the hardness of the stones you stumbled on; that the birds you heard singing were feathered men; that the trees around the walls drew their leaves from a like source. The statues seemed about to move, the walls to speak, the dumb cattle to break out in prophecy; nay! the very sky and the sunbeams, as if they might suddenly cry out.” Witches are there who can draw down the moon, or at least the lunar virus — that white fluid she sheds, to be found, so rarely, “on high, heathy places: which is a poison. A touch of it will drive men mad.”

And in one very remote village lives the sorceress Pamphile, who turns her neighbours into various animals. What true humour in the scene where, after mounting the rickety stairs, Lucius, peeping curiously through a chink in the door, is a spectator of the transformation of the old witch herself into a bird, that she may take flight to the object of her affections — into an owl! “First she stripped off every rag she had. Then opening a certain chest she took from it many small boxes, and removing the lid of one of them, rubbed herself over for a long time, from head to foot, with an ointment it contained, and after much low muttering to her lamp, began to jerk at last and shake her limbs. And as her limbs moved to and fro, out burst the soft feathers: stout wings came forth to view: the nose grew hard and hooked: her nails were crooked into claws; and Pamphile was an owl. She uttered a queasy screech; and, leaping little by little from the ground, making trial of herself, fled presently, on full wing, out of doors.”

By clumsy imitation of this process, Lucius, the hero of the romance, transforms himself, not as he had intended into a showy winged creature, but into the animal which has given name to the book; for throughout it there runs a vein of racy, homely satire on the love of magic then prevalent, curiosity concerning which had led Lucius to meddle with the old woman’s appliances. “Be you my Venus,” he says to the pretty maid-servant who has introduced him to the view of Pamphile, “and let me stand by you a winged Cupid!” and, freely applying the magic ointment, sees himself transformed, “not into a bird, but into an ass!”

Well! the proper remedy for his distress is a supper of roses, could such be found, and many are his quaintly picturesque attempts to come by them at that adverse season; as he contrives to do at last, when, the grotesque procession of Isis passing by with a bear and other strange animals in its train, the ass following along with the rest suddenly crunches the chaplet of roses carried in the High-priest’s hand.

Meantime, however, he must wait for the spring, with more than the outside of an ass; “though I was not so much a fool, nor so truly an ass,” he tells us, when he happens to be left alone with a daintily spread table, “as to neglect this most delicious fare, and feed upon coarse hay.” For, in truth, all through the book, there is an unmistakably real feeling for asses, with bold touches like Swift’s, and a genuine animal breadth. Lucius was the original ass, who peeping slily from the window of his hiding-place forgot all about the big shade he cast just above him, and gave occasion to the joke or proverb about “the peeping ass and his shadow.”

But the marvellous, delight in which is one of the really serious elements in most boys, passed at times, those young readers still feeling its fascination, into what French writers call the macabre — that species of almost insane pre-occupation with the materialities of our mouldering flesh, that luxury of disgust in gazing on corruption, which was connected, in this writer at least, with not a little obvious coarseness. It was a strange notion of the gross lust of the actual world, that Marius took from some of these episodes. “I am told,” they read, “that when foreigners are interred, the old witches are in the habit of out-racing the funeral procession, to ravage the corpse” — in order to obtain certain cuttings and remnants from it, with which to injure the living — “especially if the witch has happened to cast her eye upon some goodly young man.” And the scene of the night-watching of a dead body lest the witches should come to tear off the flesh with their teeth, is worthy of Théophile Gautier.

But set as one of the episodes in the main narrative, a true gem amid its mockeries, its coarse though genuine humanity, its burlesque horrors, came the tale of Cupid and Psyche, full of brilliant, life-like situations, speciosa locis, and abounding in lovely visible imagery (one seemed to see and handle the golden hair, the fresh flowers, the precious works of art in it!) yet full also of a gentle idealism, so that you might take it, if you chose, for an allegory. With a concentration of all his finer literary gifts, Apuleius had gathered into it the floating star-matter of many a delightful old story. —

The Story of Cupid and Psyche.

n a certain city lived a king and queen who had three daughters exceeding fair. But the beauty of the elder sisters, though pleasant to behold, yet passed not the measure of human praise, while such was the loveliness of the youngest that men’s speech was too poor to commend it worthily and could express it not at all. Many of the citizens and of strangers, whom the fame of this excellent vision had gathered thither, confounded by that matchless beauty, could but kiss the finger-tips of their right hands at sight of her, as in adoration to the goddess Venus herself. And soon a rumour passed through the country that she whom the blue deep had borne, forbearing her divine dignity, was even then moving among men, or that by some fresh germination from the stars, not the sea now, but the earth, had put forth a new Venus, endued with the flower of virginity.

This belief, with the fame of the maiden’s loveliness, went daily further into distant lands, so that many people were drawn together to behold that glorious model of the age. Men sailed no longer to Paphos, to Cnidus or Cythera, to the presence of the goddess Venus: her sacred rites were neglected, her images stood uncrowned, the cold ashes were left to disfigure her forsaken altars. It was to a maiden that men’s prayers were offered, to a human countenance they looked, in propitiating so great a godhead: when the girl went forth in the morning they strewed flowers on her way, and the victims proper to that unseen goddess were presented as she passed along. This conveyance of divine worship to a mortal kindled meantime the anger of the true Venus. “Lo! now, the ancient parent of nature,” she cried, “the fountain of all elements! Behold me, Venus, benign mother of the world, sharing my honours with a mortal maiden, while my name, built up in heaven, is profaned by the mean things of earth! Shall a perishable woman bear my image about with her? In vain did the shepherd of Ida prefer me! Yet shall she have little joy, whosoever she be, of her usurped and unlawful loveliness!” Thereupon she called to her that winged, bold boy, of evil ways, who wanders armed by night through men’s houses, spoiling their marriages; and stirring yet more by her speech his inborn wantonness, she led him to the city, and showed him Psyche as she walked.

“I pray thee,” she said, “give thy mother a full revenge. Let this maid become the slave of an unworthy love.” Then, embracing him closely, she departed to the shore and took her throne upon the crest of the wave. And lo! at her unuttered will, her ocean-servants are in waiting: the daughters of Nereus are there singing their song, and Portunus, and Salacia, and the tiny charioteer of the dolphin, with a host of Tritons leaping through the billows. And one blows softly through his sounding sea-shell, another spreads a silken web against the sun, a third presents the mirror to the eyes of his mistress, while the others swim side by side below, drawing her chariot. Such was the escort of Venus as she went upon the sea.

Psyche meantime, aware of her loveliness, had no fruit thereof. All people regarded and admired, but none sought her in marriage. It was but as on the finished work of the craftsman that they gazed upon that divine likeness. Her sisters, less fair than she, were happily wedded. She, even as a widow, sitting at home, wept over her desolation, hating in her heart the beauty in which all men were pleased.

And the king, supposing the gods were angry, inquired of the oracle of Apollo, and Apollo answered him thus: “Let the damsel be placed on the top of a certain mountain, adorned as for the bed of marriage and of death. Look not for a son-in-law of mortal birth; but for that evil serpent-thing, by reason of whom even the gods tremble and the shadows of Styx are afraid.”

So the king returned home and made known the oracle to his wife. For many days she lamented, but at last the fulfilment of the divine precept is urgent upon her, and the company make ready to conduct the maiden to her deadly bridal. And now the nuptial torch gathers dark smoke and ashes: the pleasant sound of the pipe is changed into a cry: the marriage hymn concludes in a sorrowful wailing: below her yellow wedding-veil the bride shook away her tears; insomuch that the whole city was afflicted together at the ill-luck of the stricken house.

But the mandate of the god impelled the hapless Psyche to her fate, and, these solemnities being ended, the funeral of the living soul goes forth, all the people following. Psyche, bitterly weeping, assists not at her marriage but at her own obsequies, and while the parents hesitate to accomplish a thing so unholy the daughter cries to them: “Wherefore torment your luckless age by long weeping? This was the prize of my extraordinary beauty! When all people celebrated us with divine honours, and in one voice named the New Venus, it was then ye should have wept for me as one dead. Now at last I understand that that one name of Venus has been my ruin. Lead me and set me upon the appointed place. I am in haste to submit to that well-omened marriage, to behold that goodly spouse. Why delay the coming of him who was born for the destruction of the whole world?”

She was silent, and with firm step went on the way. And they proceeded to the appointed place on a steep mountain, and left there the maiden alone, and took their way homewards dejectedly. The wretched parents, in their close-shut house, yielded themselves to perpetual night; while to Psyche, fearful and trembling and weeping sore upon the mountain-top, comes the gentle Zephyrus. He lifts her mildly, and, with vesture afloat on either side, bears her by his own soft breathing over the windings of the hills, and sets her lightly among the flowers in the bosom of a valley below.

Psyche, in those delicate grassy places, lying sweetly on her dewy bed, rested from the agitation of her soul and arose in peace. And lo! a grove of mighty trees, with a fount of water, clear as glass, in the midst; and hard by the water, a dwelling-place, built not by human hands but by some divine cunning. One recognised, even at the entering, the delightful hostelry of a god. Golden pillars sustained the roof, arched most curiously in cedar-wood and ivory. The walls were hidden under wrought silver: — all tame and woodland creatures leaping forward to the visitor’s gaze. Wonderful indeed was the craftsman, divine or half-divine, who by the subtlety of his art had breathed so wild a soul into the silver! The very pavement was distinct with pictures in goodly stones. In the glow of its precious metal the house is its own daylight, having no need of the sun. Well might it seem a place fashioned for the conversation of gods with men!

Psyche, drawn forward by the delight of it, came near, and, her courage growing, stood within the doorway. One by one, she admired the beautiful things she saw; and, most wonderful of all! no lock, no chain, nor living guardian protected that great treasure house. But as she gazed there came a voice — a voice, as it were unclothed of bodily vesture — “Mistress!” it said, “all these things are thine. Lie down, and relieve thy weariness, and rise again for the bath when thou wilt. We thy servants, whose voice thou hearest, will be beforehand with our service, and a royal feast shall be ready.”

And Psyche understood that some divine care was providing, and, refreshed with sleep and the Bath, sat down to the feast. Still she saw no one: only she heard words falling here and there, and had voices alone to serve her. And the feast being ended, one entered the chamber and sang to her unseen, while another struck the chords of a harp, invisible with him who played on it. Afterwards the sound of a company singing together came to her, but still so that none were present to sight; yet it appeared that a great multitude of singers was there.

And the hour of evening inviting her, she climbed into the bed; and as the night was far advanced, behold a sound of a certain clemency approaches her. Then, fearing for her maidenhood in so great solitude, she trembled, and more than any evil she knew dreaded that she knew not. And now the husband, that unknown husband, drew near, and ascended the couch, and made her his wife; and lo! before the rise of dawn he had departed hastily. And the attendant voices ministered to the needs of the newly married. And so it happened with her for a long season. And as nature has willed, this new thing, by continual use, became a delight to her: the sound of the voice grew to be her solace in that condition of loneliness and uncertainty.

One night the bridegroom spoke thus to his beloved, “O Psyche, most pleasant bride! Fortune is grown stern with us, and threatens thee with mortal peril. Thy sisters, troubled at the report of thy death and seeking some trace of thee, will come to the mountain’s top. But if by chance their cries reach thee, answer not, neither look forth at all, lest thou bring sorrow upon me and destruction upon thyself.” Then Psyche promised that she would do according to his will. But the bridegroom was fled away again with the night. And all that day she spent in tears, repeating that she was now dead indeed, shut up in that golden prison, powerless to console her sisters sorrowing after her, or to see their faces; and so went to rest weeping.

And after a while came the bridegroom again, and lay down beside her, and embracing her as she wept, complained, “Was this thy promise, my Psyche? What have I to hope from thee? Even in the arms of thy husband thou ceasest not from pain. Do now as thou wilt. Indulge thine own desire, though it seeks what will ruin thee. Yet wilt thou remember my warning, repentant too late.” Then, protesting that she is like to die, she obtains from him that he suffer her to see her sisters, and present to them moreover what gifts she would of golden ornaments; but therewith he ofttimes advised her never at any time, yielding to pernicious counsel, to enquire concerning his bodily form, lest she fall, through unholy curiosity, from so great a height of fortune, nor feel ever his embrace again. “I would die a hundred times,” she said, cheerful at last, “rather than be deprived of thy most sweet usage. I love thee as my own soul, beyond comparison even with Love himself. Only bid thy servant Zephyrus bring hither my sisters, as he brought me. My honeycomb! My husband! Thy Psyche’s breath of life!” So he promised; and after the embraces of the night, ere the light appeared, vanished from the hands of his bride.

And the sisters, coming to the place where Psyche was abandoned, wept loudly among the rocks, and called upon her by name, so that the sound came down to her, and running out of the palace distraught, she cried, “Wherefore afflict your souls with lamentation? I whom you mourn am here.” Then, summoning Zephyrus, she reminded him of her husband’s bidding; and he bare them down with a gentle blast. “Enter now,” she said, “into my house, and relieve your sorrow in the company of Psyche your sister.”

And Psyche displayed to them all the treasures of the golden house, and its great family of ministering voices, nursing in them the malice which was already at their hearts. And at last one of them asks curiously who the lord of that celestial array may be, and what manner of man her husband? And Psyche answered dissemblingly, “A young man, handsome and mannerly, with a goodly beard. For the most part he hunts upon the mountains.” And lest the secret should slip from her in the way of further speech, loading her sisters with gold and gems, she commanded Zephyrus to bear them away.

And they returned home, on fire with envy. “See now the injustice of fortune!” cried one. “We, the elder children, are given like servants to be the wives of strangers, while the youngest is possessed of so great riches, who scarcely knows how to use them. You saw, Sister! what a hoard of wealth lies in the house; what glittering gowns; what splendour of precious gems, besides all that gold trodden under foot. If she indeed hath, as she said, a bridegroom so goodly, then no one in all the world is happier. And it may be that this husband, being of divine nature, will make her too a goddess. Nay! so in truth it is. It was even thus she bore herself. Already she looks aloft and breathes divinity, who, though but a woman, has voices for her handmaidens, and can command the winds.” “Think,” answered the other, “how arrogantly she dealt with us, grudging us these trifling gifts out of all that store, and when our company became a burden, causing us to be hissed and driven away from her through the air! But I am no woman if she keep her hold on this great fortune; and if the insult done us has touched thee too, take we counsel together. Meanwhile let us hold our peace, and know naught of her, alive or dead. For they are not truly happy of whose happiness other folk are unaware.”

And the bridegroom, whom still she knows not, warns her thus a second time, as he talks with her by night: “Seest thou what peril besets thee? Those cunning wolves have made ready for thee their snares, of which the sum is that they persuade thee to search into the fashion of my countenance, the seeing of which, as I have told thee often, will be the seeing of it no more for ever. But do thou neither listen nor make answer to aught regarding thy husband. Besides, we have sown also the seed of our race. Even now this bosom grows with a child to be born to us, a child, if thou but keep our secret, of divine quality; if thou profane it, subject to death.” And Psyche was glad at the tidings, rejoicing in that solace of a divine seed, and in the glory of that pledge of love to be, and the dignity of the name of mother. Anxiously she notes the increase of the days, the waning months. And again, as he tarries briefly beside her, the bridegroom repeats his warning:

“Even now the sword is drawn with which thy sisters seek thy life. Have pity on thyself, sweet wife, and upon our child, and see not those evil women again.” But the sisters make their way into the palace once more, crying to her in wily tones, “O Psyche! and thou too wilt be a mother! How great will be the joy at home! Happy indeed shall we be to have the nursing of the golden child. Truly if he be answerable to the beauty of his parents, it will be a birth of Cupid himself.”

So, little by little, they stole upon the heart of their sister. She, meanwhile, bids the lyre to sound for their delight, and the playing is heard: she bids the pipes to move, the quire to sing, and the music and the singing come invisibly, soothing the mind of the listener with sweetest modulation. Yet not even thereby was their malice put to sleep: once more they seek to know what manner of husband she has, and whence that seed. And Psyche, simple over-much, forgetful of her first story, answers, “My husband comes from a far country, trading for great sums. He is already of middle age, with whitening locks.” And therewith she dismisses them again.

And returning home upon the soft breath of Zephyrus one cried to the other, “What shall be said of so ugly a lie? He who was a young man with goodly beard is now in middle life. It must be that she told a false tale: else is she in very truth ignorant what manner of man he is. Howsoever it be, let us destroy her quickly. For if she indeed knows not, be sure that her bridegroom is one of the gods: it is a god she bears in her womb. And let that be far from us! If she be called mother of a god, then will life be more than I can bear.”

So, full of rage against her, they returned to Psyche, and said to her craftily, “Thou livest in an ignorant bliss, all incurious of thy real danger. It is a deadly serpent, as we certainly know, that comes to sleep at thy side. Remember the words of the oracle, which declared thee destined to a cruel beast. There are those who have seen it at nightfall, coming back from its feeding. In no long time, they say, it will end its blandishments. It but waits for the babe to be formed in thee, that it may devour thee by so much the richer. If indeed the solitude of this musical place, or it may be the loathsome commerce of a hidden love, delight thee, we at least in sisterly piety have done our part.” And at last the unhappy Psyche, simple and frail of soul, carried away by the terror of their words, losing memory of her husband’s precepts and her own promise, brought upon herself a great calamity. Trembling and turning pale, she answers them, “And they who tell those things, it may be, speak the truth. For in very deed never have I seen the face of my husband, nor know I at all what manner of man he is. Always he frights me diligently from the sight of him, threatening some great evil should I too curiously look upon his face. Do ye, if ye can help your sister in her great peril, stand by her now.”

Her sisters answered her, “The way of safety we have well considered, and will teach thee. Take a sharp knife, and hide it in that part of the couch where thou art wont to lie: take also a lamp filled with oil, and set it privily behind the curtain. And when he shall have drawn up his coils into the accustomed place, and thou hearest him breathe in sleep, slip then from his side and discover the lamp, and, knife in hand, put forth thy strength, and strike off the serpent’s head.” And so they departed in haste.

And Psyche left alone (alone but for the furies which beset her) is tossed up and down in her distress, like a wave of the sea; and though her will is firm, yet, in the moment of putting hand to the deed, she falters, and is torn asunder by various apprehension of the great calamity upon her. She hastens and anon delays, now full of distrust, and now of angry courage: under one bodily form she loathes the monster and loves the bridegroom. But twilight ushers in the night; and at length in haste she makes ready for the terrible deed. Darkness came, and the bridegroom; and he first, after some faint essay of love, falls into a deep sleep.

And she, erewhile of no strength, the hard purpose of destiny assisting her, is confirmed in force. With lamp plucked forth, knife in hand, she put by her sex; and lo! as the secrets of the bed became manifest, the sweetest and most gentle of all creatures, Love himself, reclined there, in his own proper loveliness! At sight of him the very flame of the lamp kindled more gladly! But Psyche was afraid at the vision, and, faint of soul, trembled back upon her knees, and would have hidden the steel in her own bosom. But the knife slipped from her hand; and now, undone, yet ofttimes looking upon the beauty of that divine countenance, she lives again. She sees the locks of that golden head, pleasant with the unction of the gods, shed down in graceful entanglement behind and before, about the ruddy cheeks and white throat. The pinions of the winged god, yet fresh with the dew, are spotless upon his shoulders, the delicate plumage wavering over them as they lie at rest. Smooth he was, and, touched with light, worthy of Venus his mother. At the foot of the couch lay his bow and arrows, the instruments of his power, propitious to men.

And Psyche, gazing hungrily thereon, draws an arrow from the quiver, and trying the point upon her thumb, tremulous still, drave in the barb, so that a drop of blood came forth. Thus fell she, by her own act, and unaware, into the love of Love. Falling upon the bridegroom, with indrawn breath, in a hurry of kisses from eager and open lips, she shuddered as she thought how brief that sleep might be. And it chanced that a drop of burning oil fell from the lamp upon the god’s shoulder. Ah! maladroit minister of love, thus to wound him from whom all fire comes; though ’twas a lover, I trow, first devised thee, to have the fruit of his desire even in the darkness! At the touch of the fire the god started up, and beholding the overthrow of her faith, quietly took flight from her embraces.

And Psyche, as he rose upon the wing, laid hold on him with her two hands, hanging upon him in his passage through the air, till she sinks to the earth through weariness. And as she lay there, the divine lover, tarrying still, lighted upon a cypress tree which grew near, and, from the top of it, spake thus to her, in great emotion. “Foolish one! unmindful of the command of Venus, my mother, who had devoted thee to one of base degree, I fled to thee in his stead. Now know I that this was vainly done. Into mine own flesh pierced mine arrow, and I made thee my wife, only that I might seem a monster beside thee — that thou shouldst seek to wound the head wherein lay the eyes so full of love to thee! Again and again, I thought to put thee on thy guard concerning these things, and warned thee in loving-kindness. Now I would but punish thee by my flight hence.” And therewith he winged his way into the deep sky.

Psyche, prostrate upon the earth, and following far as sight might reach the flight of the bridegroom, wept and lamented; and when the breadth of space had parted him wholly from her, cast herself down from the bank of a river which was nigh. But the stream, turning gentle in honour of the god, put her forth again unhurt upon its margin. And as it happened, Pan, the rustic god, was sitting just then by the waterside, embracing, in the body of a reed, the goddess Canna; teaching her to respond to him in all varieties of slender sound. Hard by, his flock of goats browsed at will. And the shaggy god called her, wounded and outworn, kindly to him and said, “I am but a rustic herdsman, pretty maiden, yet wise, by favour of my great age and long experience; and if I guess truly by those faltering steps, by thy sorrowful eyes and continual sighing, thou labourest with excess of love. Listen then to me, and seek not death again, in the stream or otherwise. Put aside thy woe, and turn thy prayers to Cupid. He is in truth a delicate youth: win him by the delicacy of thy service.”

So the shepherd-god spoke, and Psyche, answering nothing, but with a reverence to his serviceable deity, went on her way. And while she, in her search after Cupid, wandered through many lands, he was lying in the chamber of his mother, heart-sick. And the white bird which floats over the waves plunged in haste into the sea, and approaching Venus, as she bathed, made known to her that her son lies afflicted with some grievous hurt, doubtful of life. And Venus cried, angrily, “My son, then, has a mistress! And it is Psyche, who witched away my beauty and was the rival of my godhead, whom he loves!”

Therewith she issued from the sea, and returning to her golden chamber, found there the lad, sick, as she had heard, and cried from the doorway, “Well done, truly! to trample thy mother’s precepts under foot, to spare my enemy that cross of an unworthy love; nay, unite her to thyself, child as thou art, that I might have a daughter-in-law who hates me! I will make thee repent of thy sport, and the savour of thy marriage bitter. There is one who shall chasten this body of thine, put out thy torch and unstring thy bow. Not till she has plucked forth that hair, into which so oft these hands have smoothed the golden light, and sheared away thy wings, shall I feel the injury done me avenged.” And with this she hastened in anger from the doors.

And Ceres and Juno met her, and sought to know the meaning of her troubled countenance. “Ye come in season,” she cried; “I pray you, find for me Psyche. It must needs be that ye have heard the disgrace of my house.” And they, ignorant of what was done, would have soothed her anger, saying, “What fault, Mistress, hath thy son committed, that thou wouldst destroy the girl he loves? Knowest thou not that he is now of age? Because he wears his years so lightly must he seem to thee ever but a child? Wilt thou for ever thus pry into the pastimes of thy son, always accusing his wantonness, and blaming in him those delicate wiles which are all thine own?” Thus, in secret fear of the boy’s bow, did they seek to please him with their gracious patronage. But Venus, angry at their light taking of her wrongs, turned her back upon them, and with hasty steps made her way once more to the sea.

Meanwhile Psyche, tost in soul, wandering hither and thither, rested not night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she might not soothe his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least to propitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain temple on the top of a high mountain, she said, “Who knows whether yonder place be not the abode of my lord?” Thither, therefore, she turned her steps, hastening now the more because desire and hope pressed her on, weary as she was with the labours of the way, and so, painfully measuring out the highest ridges of the mountain, drew near to the sacred couches. She sees ears of wheat, in heaps or twisted into chaplets; ears of barley also, with sickles and all the instruments of harvest, lying there in disorder, thrown at random from the hands of the labourers in the great heat. These she curiously sets apart, one by one, duly ordering them; for she said within herself, “I may not neglect the shrines, nor the holy service, of any god there be, but must rather win by supplication the kindly mercy of them all.”

And Ceres found her bending sadly upon her task, and cried aloud, “Alas, Psyche! Venus, in the furiousness of her anger, tracks thy footsteps through the world, seeking for thee to pay her the utmost penalty; and thou, thinking of anything rather than thine own safety, hast taken on thee the care of what belongs to me!” Then Psyche fell down at her feet, and sweeping the floor with her hair, washing the footsteps of the goddess in her tears, besought her mercy, with many prayers: — “By the gladdening rites of harvest, by the lighted lamps and mystic marches of the Marriage and mysterious Invention of thy daughter Proserpine, and by all beside that the holy place of Attica veils in silence, minister, I pray thee, to the sorrowful heart of Psyche! Suffer me to hide myself but for a few days among the heaps of corn, till time have softened the anger of the goddess, and my strength, out-worn in my long travail, be recovered by a little rest.”

But Ceres answered her, “Truly thy tears move me, and I would fain help thee; only I dare not incur the ill-will of my kinswoman. Depart hence as quickly as may be.” And Psyche, repelled against hope, afflicted now with twofold sorrow, making her way back again, beheld among the half-lighted woods of the valley below a sanctuary builded with cunning art. And that she might lose no way of hope, howsoever doubtful, she drew near to the sacred doors. She sees there gifts of price, and garments fixed upon the door-posts and to the branches of the trees, wrought with letters of gold which told the name of the goddess to whom they were dedicated, with thanksgiving for that she had done. So, with bent knee and hands laid about the glowing altar, she prayed saying, “Sister and spouse of Jupiter! be thou to these my desperate fortune’s Juno the Auspicious! I know that thou dost willingly help those in travail with child; deliver me from the peril that is upon me.” And as she prayed thus, Juno in the majesty of her godhead, was straightway present, and answered, “Would that I might incline favourably to thee; but against the will of Venus, whom I have ever loved as a daughter, I may not, for very shame, grant thy prayer.”

And Psyche, dismayed by this new shipwreck of her hope, communed thus with herself, “Whither, from the midst of the snares that beset me, shall I take my way once more? In what dark solitude shall I hide me from the all-seeing eye of Venus? What if I put on at length a man’s courage, and yielding myself unto her as my mistress, soften by a humility not yet too late the fierceness of her purpose? Who knows but that I may find him also whom my soul seeketh after, in the abode of his mother?”

And Venus, renouncing all earthly aid in her search, prepared to return to heaven. She ordered the chariot to be made ready, wrought for her by Vulcan as a marriage-gift, with a cunning of hand which had left his work so much the richer by the weight of gold it lost under his tool. From the multitude which housed about the bed-chamber of their mistress, white doves came forth, and with joyful motions bent their painted necks beneath the yoke. Behind it, with playful riot, the sparrows sped onward, and other birds sweet of song, making known by their soft notes the approach of the goddess. Eagle and cruel hawk alarmed not the quireful family of Venus. And the clouds broke away, as the uttermost ether opened to receive her, daughter and goddess, with great joy.

And Venus passed straightway to the house of Jupiter to beg from him the service of Mercury, the god of speech. And Jupiter refused not her prayer. And Venus and Mercury descended from heaven together; and as they went, the former said to the latter, “Thou knowest, my brother of Arcady, that never at any time have I done anything without thy help; for how long time, moreover, I have sought a certain maiden in vain. And now naught remains but that, by thy heraldry, I proclaim a reward for whomsoever shall find her. Do thou my bidding quickly.” And therewith she conveyed to him a little scrip, in the which was written the name of Psyche, with other things; and so returned home.

And Mercury failed not in his office; but departing into all lands, proclaimed that whosoever delivered up to Venus the fugitive girl, should receive from herself seven kisses — one thereof full of the inmost honey of her throat. With that the doubt of Psyche was ended. And now, as she came near to the doors of Venus, one of the household, whose name was Use-and-Wont, ran out to her, crying, “Hast thou learned, Wicked Maid! now at last! that thou hast a mistress?” And seizing her roughly by the hair, drew her into the presence of Venus. And when Venus saw her, she cried out, saying, “Thou hast deigned then to make thy salutations to thy mother-in-law. Now will I in turn treat thee as becometh a dutiful daughter-in-law!”

And she took barley and millet and poppy-seed, every kind of grain and seed, and mixed them together, and laughed, and said to her: “Methinks so plain a maiden can earn lovers only by industrious ministry: now will I also make trial of thy service. Sort me this heap of seed, the one kind from the others, grain by grain; and get thy task done before the evening.” And Psyche, stunned by the cruelty of her bidding, was silent, and moved not her hand to the inextricable heap. And there came forth a little ant, which had understanding of the difficulty of her task, and took pity upon the consort of the god of Love; and he ran deftly hither and thither, and called together the whole army of his fellows. “Have pity,” he cried, “nimble scholars of the Earth, Mother of all things! — have pity upon the wife of Love, and hasten to help her in her perilous effort.” Then, one upon the other, the hosts of the insect people hurried together; and they sorted asunder the whole heap of seed, separating every grain after its kind, and so departed quickly out of sight.

And at nightfall Venus returned, and seeing that task finished with so wonderful diligence, she cried, “The work is not thine, thou naughty maid, but his in whose eyes thou hast found favour.” And calling her again in the morning, “See now the grove,” she said, “beyond yonder torrent. Certain sheep feed there, whose fleeces shine with gold. Fetch me straightway a lock of that precious stuff, having gotten it as thou mayst.”

And Psyche went forth willingly, not to obey the command of Venus, but even to seek a rest from her labour in the depths of the river. But from the river, the green reed, lowly mother of music, spake to her: “O Psyche! pollute not these waters by self-destruction, nor approach that terrible flock; for, as the heat groweth, they wax fierce. Lie down under yon plane-tree, till the quiet of the river’s breath have soothed them. Thereafter thou mayst shake down the fleecy gold from the trees of the grove, for it holdeth by the leaves.”

And Psyche, instructed thus by the simple reed, in the humanity of its heart, filled her bosom with the soft golden stuff, and returned to Venus. But the goddess smiled bitterly, and said to her, “Well know I who was the author of this thing also. I will make further trial of thy discretion, and the boldness of thy heart. Seest thou the utmost peak of yonder steep mountain? The dark stream which flows down thence waters the Stygian fields, and swells the flood of Cocytus. Bring me now, in this little urn, a draught from its innermost source.” And therewith she put into her hands a vessel of wrought crystal.

And Psyche set forth in haste on her way to the mountain, looking there at last to find the end of her hapless life. But when she came to the region which borders on the cliff that was showed to her, she understood the deadly nature of her task. From a great rock, steep and slippery, a horrible river of water poured forth, falling straightway by a channel exceeding narrow into the unseen gulf below. And lo! creeping from the rocks on either hand, angry serpents, with their long necks and sleepless eyes. The very waters found a voice and bade her depart, in smothered cries of, Depart hence! and What doest thou here? Look around thee! and Destruction is upon thee! And then sense left her, in the immensity of her peril, as one changed to stone.

Yet not even then did the distress of this innocent soul escape the steady eye of a gentle providence. For the bird of Jupiter spread his wings and took flight to her, and asked her, “Didst thou think, simple one, even thou! that thou couldst steal one drop of that relentless stream, the holy river of Styx, terrible even to the gods? But give me thine urn.” And the bird took the urn, and filled it at the source, and returned to her quickly from among the teeth of the serpents, bringing with him of the waters, all unwilling — nay! warning him to depart away and not molest them.

And she, receiving the urn with great joy, ran back quickly that she might deliver it to Venus, and yet again satisfied not the angry goddess. “My child!” she said, “in this one thing further must thou serve me. Take now this tiny casket, and get thee down even unto hell, and deliver it to Proserpine. Tell her that Venus would have of her beauty so much at least as may suffice for but one day’s use, that beauty she possessed erewhile being foreworn and spoiled, through her tendance upon the sick-bed of her son; and be not slow in returning.”

And Psyche perceived there the last ebbing of her fortune — that she was now thrust openly upon death, who must go down, of her own motion, to Hades and the Shades. And straightway she climbed to the top of an exceeding high tower, thinking within herself, “I will cast myself down thence: so shall I descend most quickly into the kingdom of the dead.” And the tower again, broke forth into speech: “Wretched Maid! Wretched Maid! Wilt thou destroy thyself? If the breath quit thy body, then wilt thou indeed go down into Hades, but by no means return hither. Listen to me. Among the pathless wilds not far from this place lies a certain mountain, and therein one of hell’s vent-holes. Through the breach a rough way lies open, following which thou wilt come, by straight course, to the castle of Orcus. And thou must not go empty-handed. Take in each hand a morsel of barley-bread, soaked in hydromel; and in thy mouth two pieces of money. And when thou shalt be now well onward in the way of death, then wilt thou overtake a lame ass laden with wood, and a lame driver, who will pray thee reach him certain cords to fasten the burden which is falling from the ass: but be thou cautious to pass on in silence. And soon as thou comest to the river of the dead, Charon, in that crazy bark he hath, will put thee over upon the further side. There is greed even among the dead: and thou shalt deliver to him, for the ferrying, one of those two pieces of money, in such wise that he take it with his hand from between thy lips. And as thou passest over the stream, a dead old man, rising on the water, will put up to thee his mouldering hands, and pray thee draw him into the ferry-boat. But beware thou yield not to unlawful pity.

“When thou shalt be come over, and art upon the causeway, certain aged women, spinning, will cry to thee to lend thy hand to their work; and beware again that thou take no part therein; for this also is the snare of Venus, whereby she would cause thee to cast away one at least of those cakes thou bearest in thy hands. And think not that a slight matter; for the loss of either one of them will be to thee the losing of the light of day. For a watch-dog exceeding fierce lies ever before the threshold of that lonely house of Proserpine. Close his mouth with one of thy cakes; so shalt thou pass by him, and enter straightway into the presence of Proserpine herself. Then do thou deliver thy message, and taking what she shall give thee, return back again; offering to the watch-dog the other cake, and to the ferryman that other piece of money thou hast in thy mouth. After this manner mayst thou return again beneath the stars. But withal, I charge thee, think not to look into, nor open, the casket thou bearest, with that treasure of the beauty of the divine countenance hidden therein.”

So spake the stones of the tower; and Psyche delayed not, but proceeding diligently after the manner enjoined, entered into the house of Proserpine, at whose feet she sat down humbly, and would neither the delicate couch nor that divine food the goddess offered her, but did straightway the business of Venus. And Proserpine filled the casket secretly and shut the lid, and delivered it to Psyche, who fled therewith from Hades with new strength. But coming back into the light of day, even as she hasted now to the ending of her service, she was seized by a rash curiosity. “Lo! now,” she said within herself, “my simpleness! who bearing in my hands the divine loveliness, heed not to touch myself with a particle at least therefrom, that I may please the more, by the favour of it, my fair one, my beloved.” Even as she spoke, she lifted the lid; and behold! within, neither beauty, nor anything beside, save sleep only, the sleep of the dead, which took hold upon her, filling all her members with its drowsy vapour, so that she lay down in the way and moved not, as in the slumber of death.

And Cupid being healed of his wound, because he would endure no longer the absence of her he loved, gliding through the narrow window of the chamber wherein he was holden, his pinions being now repaired by a little rest, fled forth swiftly upon them, and coming to the place where Psyche was, shook that sleep away from her, and set him in his prison again, awaking her with the innocent point of his arrow. “Lo! thine old error again,” he said, “which had like once more to have destroyed thee! But do thou now what is lacking of the command of my mother: the rest shall be my care.” With these words, the lover rose upon the air; and being consumed inwardly with the greatness of his love, penetrated with vehement wing into the highest place of heaven, to lay his cause before the father of the gods. And the father of gods took his hand in his, and kissed his face and said to him, “At no time, my son, hast thou regarded me with due honour. Often hast thou vexed my bosom, wherein lies the disposition of the stars, with those busy darts of thine. Nevertheless, because thou hast grown up between these mine hands, I will accomplish thy desire.” And straightway he bade Mercury call the gods together; and, the council-chamber being filled, sitting upon a high throne, “Ye gods,” he said, “all ye whose names are in the white book of the Muses, ye know yonder lad. It seems good to me that his youthful heats should by some means be restrained. And that all occasion may be taken from him, I would even confine him in the bonds of marriage. He has chosen and embraced a mortal maiden. Let him have fruit of his love, and possess her for ever.”

Thereupon he bade Mercury produce Psyche in heaven; and holding out to her his ambrosial cup, “Take it,” he said, “and live for ever; nor shall Cupid ever depart from thee.” And the gods sat down together to the marriage-feast.

On the first couch lay the bridegroom, and Psyche in his bosom. His rustic serving-boy bare the wine to Jupiter; and Bacchus to the rest. The Seasons crimsoned all things with their roses. Apollo sang to the lyre, while a little Pan prattled on his reeds, and Venus danced very sweetly to the soft music. Thus, with due rites, did Psyche pass into the power of Cupid; and from them was born the daughter whom men call Voluptas.
— Marius the Epicurean. His Sensations and Ideas. Second edition. London: Macmillan, 1885.