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On Two Stories in Apuleius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Extract
The late B. E. Perry’s work on the stories of Aristomenes and Thelyphron in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses is a classic of its kind. Originally a by-product of his doctoral dissertation on Lucius of Patrae, it has stood the test of time as a critical analysis of Apuleius’s narrative style; Perry himself repeated his analysis with only minor changes of emphasis forty odd years later in The Ancient Romances, having energetically repelled a few attacks early in its career, and it holds the field still. His study on the two stories observes an effect which all readers sense in the text, perhaps without being aware of it as a distinct phenomenon, and traces this effect to certain causes which lie under the surface of the text. As he said: ‘I am trying to explain for myself and others the secret of that exceedingly strange and romantic effect which certain of (Apuleius’s) stories produce.’ He goes on to remark: ‘Only a part of this effect is produced by the subject matter as such’; that which is peculiar to Apuleius, ‘the unique element … which contributes most of a reader’s sense of mystification, even when he is not aware of it, is the absence of a natural and normally logical sequence of events …’
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- Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1975
References
1 ‘On Apuleius’ Metamorphoses i. 14–17’, CPh 24(1929), 394‘400; ‘The story of The lyphron in Apuleius’, CPh 24(1929), 231‘8.
2 Published as Lucius of Patrae (New York, 1920).
3 Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967.
4 In his review of de Jonge, B.J., Ad Apulei Madaurensis Metamorphoseon librum secundum commentarius exegeticus in CPh 44 (1949), 38–42.Google Scholar
5 See, for example, Walsh, P.G.The Roman Novel (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 150150, 153–4.Google ScholarSandy, Gerald N. in his article ‘Foreshadowing and suspense in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Classical Journal 68(1973), 232–5,Google Scholar rejects Perry’s criticism of the composition of books i-iii, identifying in the different stories in these books a use of motifs which ‘creates an atmosphere of gradually increasing mystery, of foreboding and of inevitable calamity’ (235), and is therefore relevant to the story of Lucius; but he apparently accepts (ibid, note 10) that the conflation of incompatible stories is partly responsible for the tone of mystery.
6 CPh 44(1949), 40.
7 In ‘Some aspects of the literary art of Apuleius in the Metamorphoses’, TAPhA 54(1923), 196–227.
8 Ancient Romances, p. 258.
9 CPh 44(1949), 40.
10 ibid.
11 CPh 24(1929), 397–9; Ancient Romances, pp. 261–3.
12 Ancient Romances, pp. 249–51; compare van Thiel, H.Der Eselroman, Vol. 1 (Munich, 1971), pp. 10, 156.Google Scholar
13 Ancient Romances, pp. 263–4.
14 Metamorphoses i 12.
15 A reversal of the theme of delivery from death into life, frequent in the Metamorphoses; Aristomenes’s rebirth brings him face to face with death. Compare Tatum, James‘The tales in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPhA 100(1969), 487–527, especially 495–7.Google Scholar
16 Metamorphoses i 14. On the sense of urina and related words as genital fluids, see Korzeniewski, D.‘Die erste Satire des Persius’, in Die römische Satire (Darmstadt, 1970), p. 395.Google Scholar
17 CPh 24(1929), 398; Ancient Romances, p. 264.
18 Was it this phrase (arbiter quae node aesta sunt, i 16) that suggested to Perry, and before him to Helm, an erotic context? Perry understood the phrase to refer to a ‘lover‘s bed which has long been with him and has witnessed a great deal of his own erotic experience’ (Ancient Romances, p. 264). It is of course quite apt in its actual context; as is the phrase qui mecum tot (not totiens) aerumnas exanclasti (ibid.), even if it is an exaggeration. Perry is right, however, in pointing out (loc.cit.) that the mention of a window in the room arouses expectations that are not fulfilled; either Aristomenes should have tried to escape through it, or it should not have been mentioned.
19 CPh 24(1929), 398.
20 Compare Amis, K.The James Bond Dossier (London, 1965), p. 133133,Google Scholar on Dr No’s prison in Ian Fleming’s novel of that name: ‘To find yourself expected where you can’t by any reason be expected sets off a basic fear, as witness plenty of ghost stories and fairy tales. Memory, identity, sanity itself seem threatened by it.’
21 This may have been an apotropaic gesture used by initiates; see most recently Amat, J.‘Sur quelques aspects de l’esthétique baroque dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée’, REA 74(1972), 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Indeed a similar gesture is in use today, though there the forefingers are slightly parted and the thumb is not prominent as in Apuleius’s description. Or it may have been the fica; see MacKay, L.A.‘Two notes on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, CPh 67(1972), 55.Google Scholar What matters most is that it announces a story told with self-conscious art.
22 Contra, Perry, , CPh 24(1929), 234 note 3:Google Scholar ‘Since all this is merely the author’s own preface to the story proper, and not an organic part of anything in Thely-phron’s narrative, it can have no necessary bearing upon the motivation.’
23 CPh 24(1929), 231; Ancient Romances, p. 264; the number reduced to two by Walsh, op. cit. (see note 5 above), pp. 153–4.
24 Ancient Romances, pp. 269–73.
25 Brotherton, Blanche‘The introduction of characters by name in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, CPh 28(1933), 47.Google Scholar
26 As Perry, himself argues, CPh 24(1929), 233;Google ScholarAncient Romances, p. 269.
27 This I take to be the answer to Perry’s, question, CPh 24(1929), 236236:Google Scholar ‘… if we assume, as the author wants us to, that Thelyphron had wax ears and nose ever since the night of his vigil and that they came off at the mere touch of his hand, how shall we account for the fact that these false features remained intact while he was being thoroughly mauled by the widow’s servants?’ Until the corpse spoke, the wax appendages were indistinguishable from real ones; it seems that when the corpse spoke their true nature was revealed. Of course Apuleius does not provide the reader with enough information to be sure. My point will be made if it be allowed that the reader hesitates between a ‘natural’ explanation: Thelyphron had been wearing wax nose and ears since the night before; and a ‘supernatural’ explanation: the corpse’s words caused his nose and ears to fall off, because at that moment the magic that had held the substitutes in place undetected ended. On the role of such ‘hesitation’ in stories of this kind, see Todorov, T.Introduction à la littérature fantastique (Paris, 1970), chapters 2 and 3.Google Scholar
28 Walsh, op. cit. p. 154.
29 Denied by Brotherton, CPh 29(1934), 48–50,Google Scholar who argued that a minor character like the dead husband is not normally named in Apuleius; that if named he would have been named earlier; and that the significant name Thelyphron (‘weak witted’) would in any case not be given idly to him. She concluded that the witches must have called, not ‘Thelyphron’, but ‘mortue’. But surely the live Thelyphron, however dead to the world, would not have recognized himself in that form of address. See too Ingenkamp, H.G.‘Thelyphron’, RhM 115(1972), 341.Google Scholar
30 Ancient Romances, p. 268.
31 CPh 24(1929), 233–4; Ancient Romances, pp. 268–9.
32 CPh 24(1929), 233.
33 Note his conclusion to ‘The story of Thelyphron in Apuleius’, CPh 24(1929), 238: citing a modern Greek folktale he observed: ‘The sort of logical coherence which we find in this story is what we have a right to expect in any story that has not been contaminated by the hand of a literary redactor.’
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