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A Serious Joke:
Apuleius between Religion and Philosophy
4.29.2015
Steven M. Wasserstrom
Outline:
1. Apuleius’s life, identity, trial
2. Apuleius as Platonist, Hermeticist, novelist
3. The “Reading Mystery”
4. Apuleius and the daimones
5. Curiosity, secrecy and the joke
6. The “Reading Mystery” and Media Theory
Terms:
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Mystery religions = “secret cults in the Mediterranean world during the Greco-Roman period”
Initiation rituals = “induction into an age group, secret society or religious office or community”
Mystery initiation, in three stages: 1. confession, 2. judgment and 3. forgiveness
Hermeticism = “philosophical and religious practices and speculations associated with the Hellenistic
Greco-Egyptian deity Hermes Tristmegistos”
“philosophical religion” (Religio Mentis) (Fowden, 95-115).
Lesemysterium, “Reading Mystery,” an initiation by means of a book.
Daimon = a special class of divine beings, “the incalcuable non-human element in phenomena…
[daimon] commonly denotes also the protecting spirit of a family or individual and acquires the
meaning of an angel guardian and almost of an astral self” (Nock, p. 222)
Selected citations from secondary sources quoted in the lecture:
The Golden Ass does offer us a complex and significant portrait of a provincial society: the network of
relationships among the provincial aristocracy; the political functions, displays and generosities of the rich, as
acted out in front of their local communities; the crude accumulation of wealth side by side with extreme
poverty; an economy which was both monetized on the one hand and gave a large place to hunting in the wild
on the other; a world where brigandage was rife but where society could close ranks to exert force where it was
needed, and was fully armed to do so. Millar 267
[The Golden Ass] well represents the sort of milieu in which Hermetic ideas most easily took root. Apuleius
fancied himself a Platonist philosopher; and his fellow-citizens knew no better, since they dedicated a statue to
him, ‘[ph]ilosopho [Pl]atonico’. … His famous account of an Isiac initiation at the end of the Metamorphoses
guarantees first-hand acquaintance with the rites of the Egyptian goddess; while his Apologia reveals a strong,
sincere attachment to Hermes-Mercury, not merely as patron of magic and learning, but also as ruler of the
whole universe – as Hermes Trismegistus (though he does not use the title). Indeed, Apuleius’s possession of a
wooden image of the god provided the basis for one of the principal counts against him at the famous magictrial where the Apologia was delivered. Apuleius was also an enthusiastic devotee of Asclepius, who was of
course an important figure in the Hermetic pantheon. Perhaps it is significant too that Apuleius was on his way
to Egypt when he was accused of being a magician. Fowden, 199
If the Kaguru think it witty to throw excrement at certain cousins or the Lodagaba to dance grotesquely at
funerals or the Dogon to refer to the parents’ sexual organs when they meet a friend, then to recognize the joke
that sends all present into huge enjoyment we need not retreat into cultural relativism and give up a claim to
interpret. Mary Douglas [cited in Smith, 365]
Apuleius, one of our main transmitters of the Platonic view of ‘daimon’, was in fact (unsuccessfully) prosecuted
for it in the second century A.D. He was supposed to have secured his rich wife by this means, and was
charged with magic by a competitor for her fortune (Apologia 47). Interestingly, Augustine himself defends
Apuleius hotly from this charge (Epistulae 138 to Marcellinus). Flint, 320
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The ‘gospel’ as I have described it stands in the closest relation to the joke which has been recently described
by Mary Douglas as: “A play upon form. It brings into relation disparate elements in such a way that one
accepted pattern is challenged by the appearance of another which in some way was hidden in the first…The
joke affords opportunity for realizing that an accepted pattern has no necessity.” Smith, 206
Selected citations from The Golden Ass quoted in the lecture:
“an introductory smile” (63)
“a toast to the God Laughter” (69)
“The jokes were horse-play. The songs were uproar, the wit was smut” (92)
“some pretty fablings and old wives tales” (104)
“…you often find that visions of the night go by contraries in what they express” (p. 104)
“Do not open or peep into the box you carry and repress all curiosity as to the imprisoned Treasure of Divine
Beauty” (139)
“I immersed my head seven times because (according to the divine Pythagoras) that number is specially suited
for all ritual acts” (235)
“The populace stood in blinking wonder; and the devotees adored the Goddess for the miraculous revelation of
her power in a metamorphosis which partook of the shifting pageantry of a dream.” (243)
“a dark glow” (237)
“the beatitude of release” (243)
Selected Bibliography:
De Vries, Hent and Samuel Weber, (eds.) Religion and Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Festugière, André-Jean. Personal Religion Among the Greeks. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1954.
Flint, Valerie. “The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan
Religions.” Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. (eds) Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Fowden, Garth. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986.
Hägg, T. The Novel in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Harrison, S. J. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Hijmans, B.L. “Apuleius, Philosophus Platonicus,” in: ANRW II, 36.1, (1987) 395-475.
Millar, Fergus. “The World of the Golden Ass.” Oxford Readings in The Roman Novel. Ed. S.J. Harrison.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Nock, A. D. Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo.
London: Oxford University Press, 1933.
Smith, Jonathan Z. Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion. Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Wlosok, Antonie. “On the Unity of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.” Oxford Readings in The Roman Novel. Ed. S.J.
Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Ziolkowski, Theodore. Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2013.