Scholars have long recognized that the oracle Psyche’s father receives about what to do with his beautiful daughter gives numerous heavy-handed hints that she will marry Cupid.Footnote ¹ They have likewise noted that some of these hints use Ovidian language and allude to his depictions of Cupid and his power.Footnote ² But one Ovidian element seems to have gone unnoticed, likely because it is not intertextual in terms of word choice but rather in technique.

This Ovidian effect occurs in the second line of the oracle (Met. 4.33.1):Footnote ³

Although other metres were used for the prophecies from oracles, dactylic hexameter was the normal, expected metre, especially for this particular oracle.Footnote ⁴ The shift in the second line to the unexpected pentameter recalls the beginning of Ovid’s Amores (1.1.1–4):

Ovid famously plays with genre here, declaring in a hexameter line beginning with arma that he is going to write an epic poem in the Virgilian mode, only to have Cupid snatch away a foot and thereby force him to write elegy.Footnote ⁵ In a similar way, Apuleius foreshadows the shift from the expected story of divine punishment to his love story.

Other details support the notion that Apuleius is employing this Ovidian technique here.Footnote ⁶ First, in Ovid’s poem, it is only when we reach the second line and the word conueniente (‘fitting’) with its second, short syllable that we know that the metre has shifted from hexameter to elegiacs. Ovid puckishly chooses the ironic conueniente to show that the initial topic and new metre no longer fit together.Footnote ⁷

Apuleius has chosen the word for revealing his own switch to the unexpected metre with similar care: funerei recalls the common etymology of elegia from various Greek words and phrases associated with funerals and mourning. For instance, Porphyry explains Horace’s neu miserabilis | decantes elegos (Carm. 1.33.2–3) by saying Proprie elegiorum uersus aptissimi sunt fletibus, quos ideo miserabiles dixit. nam et nomen ipsum elegiorum παρὰ τὸ ἒ ἔ, quae uox est lamentantium, dictum putant (‘In particular, elegiac verses are most fitting for lamenting, and he therefore calls them miserabiles. For they think that even the very name of elegiacs comes παρὰ τὸ ἒ ἔ [from woe! woe!], which is the cry of those lamenting’).Footnote ⁸ Etymological wordplay juxtaposing poetry and music with mourning and death are common in the elegiac poets, so it makes sense that Apuleius would choose a word that announces the switch to elegy not just in its metre but also in its programmatic meaning.Footnote ⁹

The word is doubly fitting here, with the focus on Psyche’s supposed imminent death and on the love story that follows; it thereby encompasses both elegy’s supposed origins and its later development as love poetry. The ‘remarkable oxymoron’ funerei thalami has no parallel elsewhere, but neatly encompasses both aspects of elegy, and its inclusion in such a phrase makes funerei all the more striking.Footnote ¹⁰ And because Ovid explicitly blames his metrical alteration on Cupid, Apuleius’ adoption of the technique itself is a further, more recondite clue to the identity of Psyche’s promised partner.

Secondly, the difference in vocabulary between Apuleius’ first two lines recalls Ovid’s post-Virgilian playful take on recusatio. Apuleius’ first line, with its (emended) address to the king, may recall the use of reges et proelia (‘kings and battles’) as the subject of heroic epic, as in Virgil’s own recusatio in Ecl. 6.3–5.Footnote ¹¹ By contrast, the second line, with references to female dress and the marriage chamber, is more suitable to love elegy.

Finally, both Ovid and Apuleius announce this change in a four-word line. Such lines are relatively rare in Ovid; Catull. 66, for instance, has more (10) than the entire first book of the Amores (9). On its own, this similarity does not carry much weight, in part because the issue of what does or does not count as a word in such matters is always contentious.Footnote ¹² But, when paired with the other factors, this correspondence suggests that it is also part of Apuleius’ allusion.Footnote ¹³

One other factor outside of these lines supports the argument that Apuleius is alluding to this Ovidian play with genre, the infamous introduction of the oracle (4.32.6):

As many have noted, Apollo’s Greek oracles never spoke in Latin, and hence the need for Apuleius’ playful reference to translation here. And it is unnecessary to get into all of the issues of language and identity in this passage to observe that right before we hear these two lines of the prophecy we are meant to think consciously of language and the particular words being used, and their position within (or at least relative to) a certain genre.Footnote ¹⁴ This introduction foregrounds the issue of genre, and prepares us for the sleight-of-hand to come.

This Ovidian technique with its allusion to Cupid is the first of many hints that he will be Psyche’s husband. It prepares us for how to read the rest of the prophecy and to some extent the rest of the Cupid and Psyche story, which is Ovidian in so many ways.Footnote ¹⁵