Apuleius’ novel, the Metamorphoses or Golden Ass, has attracted continuous scholarly attention in the past few decades, revived as it was by J.J. Winkler’s Auctor & Actor (1985). As set out in the introduction, this book aims to contribute to the understanding of the Metamorphoses by challenging the assumption that the religious tone of the novel’s ending is surprising. According to F., who reprises a hypothesis proposed by S. Tilg (Apuleius’ Metamorphoses [2014], pp. 1–18), the finale possibly imitated that of Apuleius’ lost source, i.e. the several volumes of the Metamorphoseis by Lucius of Patras: the story of the man transformed into a donkey was covered in the first two books, which according to Photius, Bibl. 129, were transcribed (μετεγράφησαν) into one book by Lucian.
The six main chapters of the volume under review seek to cast light on the religious tone of the Metamorphoses, showing how Apuleius’ novel prepares readers for the mystical atmosphere of Book 11 by establishing a religious tone from the beginning. Disappointingly, the abrupt ending at Met. 11.30.5 and the possibility of a lacuna at the end of Book 11 in the earliest and most authoritative manuscript of Apuleius’ literary writings, Florence, BML Plut. 68.2, are not considered, nor are the studies by O. Pecere (‘Qualche riflessione sulla tradizione di Apuleio a Montecassino’, in: G. Cavallo [ed.], Le strade del testo [1987], pp. 107–10) and G. Ammannati (‘Il Laurenziano 68,2 [F] e il finale delle Metamorfosi di Apuleio’, MD 67 [2011]). To illustrate further the religious tone of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, F. compares it to that in another ‘Esel-Erzählung’, in which religious elements are subdued or altogether absent, i.e. the novel known as Loukios or the Ass (Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος, hereafter simply Onos) transmitted in Lucian’s corpus. As recognised, the attribution to Lucian is doubtful: as argued by H.-G. Nesselrath (‘Language and (in-)Authenticity: The Case of the (Ps.-)Lucianic Onos’, in: J. Martínez [ed.], Fakes and Forgers of Classical Literature. Ergo decipiatur! [2014]), the non-Attic language, syntactic dryness and linguistic peculiarity of the Onos do not agree with Lucian’s style. F. lists in the bibliography R. May’s study (‘An Ass from Oxyrhynchus: P.Oxy. LXX.4762, Loukios of Patrae and the Milesian Tales’, AncNarr 8 [2010]) on the other surviving version of the ass-story preserved in a third-century papyrus concerning a woman’s intercourse with a donkey. However, neither P.Oxy. LXX 4762 nor May’s contribution are mentioned in the book.
Chapter 1 is dedicated to the broader theme of metamorphosis across various earlier sources in Greek and Latin. F. claims that to his knowledge ‘no one has read the Asinus as only one of numerous ancient works devoted to the topic of metamorphosis’ (p. 2). Yet contextualisation of the novel among ancient metamorphosis narratives has been discussed in scholarship; see for example the recent GCA 3 (L. Costantini, Apuleius Madaurensis. Metamorphoses, Book III [2021], 259–63), quoted elsewhere in the book. Chapters 2 to 4 offer a comparison between Apuleius’ novel and pseudo-Lucian’s Onos, highlighting the religious features of the Metamorphoses and their absence in the Onos. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the plot of the first three books of the Metamorphoses, leading to the asinine theriomorphosis of the protagonist, Lucius, in Met. 3.24 and his ensuing abduction by a group of robbers. It is surprising to see no engagement here with H. van Thiel’s detailed analysis of the two ass-stories (Der Eselsroman. I. Untersuchungen [1971]) or with the recent Valla commentary on Met. 1–3 by L. Graverini (2019). Chapter 4 focuses on the finale of the Metamorphoses and the Onos, arguing that the different tone of each narrative prepares readers for their respective conclusions. The licentious light-heartedness of Asin. 54–6 is contrasted with the Isiac atmosphere of Met. 11. F. challenges the application of Christian notions to Book 11 and is no doubt right in saying that the protagonist of the Onos has learned nothing from his mishaps, but is Apuleius’ Lucius really a new man, after his initiations into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris? Has he learned his lesson, or is he simply directing his curiositas to a different supernatural source? Chapter 5 explores the inset tale of Cupid and Psyche (Met. 4.28–6.24), in which religious elements are also abundant. F. follows the common assumption that the Cupid and Psyche story was created by Apuleius, although he acknowledges E. and N. Plantade’s hypothesis of a derivation from Libyan oral traditions (‘Libyca Psyche. Apuleius’ Narrative and Berber Folktales’, in: B.T. Lee, E. Finkelpearl, L. Graverini [edd.], Apuleius and Africa [2014], pp. 174–202). The compelling alternative of a derivation from a Hellenistic literary source proposed by A. Stramaglia, however, goes unacknowledged (‘Le Metamorfosi di Apuleio tra iconografia e papiri’, in: G. Bastianini, A. Casanova [edd.], I papiri del romanzo antico [2010], pp. 165–92; now see Id., ‘The “Apuleian” Cupid and Psyche before Apuleius’, APapyrol 38 [2024]). Similarly unacknowledged are the content and the inset tales in Met. 6.25–10. Chapter 6 deals with how the Metamorphoses and the Onos engage with the Ur-ass-story, contained in Lucius of Patras’ Metamorphoseis. Apuleius’ novel is discussed in terms of a translation into Latin, and it would have been interesting to compare Apuleius’ approach with the only instance in his corpus where we have both his translation and the Greek model, namely the De Mundo, an artistic rendering of the pseudo-Aristotelian Peri Kosmou. F. also addresses the question of the double title of Apuleius’ novel: Metamorphoseon libri is the title preserved in the explicit of Books 1 to 10 in Florence, BML Plut. 68.2, while Augustine (De civ. D. 18.18) and Fulgentius (Serm. Ant. 17, 40) – not mentioned by F. – refer to the novel as Asinus aureus. The circulation of double titles is not uncommon in antiquity and is well attested, for example, for Plato’s dialogues and many writings by Lucian (see E. Castelli, La nascita del titolo nella letteratura greca [2020]). F. argues that Apuleius’ double title could be a nod towards Lucian’s double titles, assuming that the Onos was written by Lucian. Of the many arguments ex silentio that come to mind, it does not seem improbable that both the author of the Onos and Apuleius could have derived their titles from the content of the section of Lucius’ Metamorphoseis devoted to the ass-story. Be that as it may, if one takes the title of Apuleius’ defence speech, Apologia, preserved in the editio princeps by De Bussi (1469), as derived from some lost manuscripts rather than it being a humanistic formulation, this would have shown Apuleius’ penchant for double titles. This point is not raised in the volume.
Not even the most punctilious reviewer should blame an author for some omissions, but this book accumulates too many to pass them over in silence. F. acknowledges at the start that his interest lies in the mythology and mythography of metamorphosis (p. 2), and this leads him to notice interesting, and certainly different, parallels. However, the shortcomings highlighted make the argument of this book difficult to appreciate.
