CLASSICS 219: THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Precept 7 : The Golden Ass

Printer-friendly
Readings
• Ward, pp. 377-392.
• Apuleius, The Golden Ass, pp. 31-104 & 142-255 (bks. 1-4 & bks. 6-11)

Reader attend, and pleasure is yours.

Apuleius (c.125 - c.170) was a leader of the provincial bourgeois aristocracy in Africa, a brilliant lawyer and a traveling orator who was deeply interested in philosophy, magic, and religion. His most famous work is a novel with the significant title of Metamorphoses, Changes (both physical and mental); since antiquity it has also been known as The Golden Ass.

A picaresque romance in the service of mystical religion, it combines adventure (magic, sex, and violence) with neoplatonic mysticism (fall, suffering, redemption). Can it be used as a historical source?

The novel .... offer[s] 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 that 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 its ranks to exert force, and was fully armed to do so... (F. Millar)

Bring a copy of The Golden Ass to precept and be prepared to cite passages. As you read the novel, look for the following:

1. What do you think is/are the novel's purpose/purposes?
2. What public authorities -- local, provincial, imperial, other -- affect daily life? How are law and order maintained?
3. What social tensions appear between various groups in provincial society? Why do they arise? How are they resolved?
4. The robbers lie outside of society. What, if anything, do they tell us about it?
5. In whom or what do people believe, and why? What are the various options available for worship? Who is the God at p. 170?

NB: We will have the second map quiz in this precept -- refer to the syllabus for details.

[↑]

Last Updated: 2004-04-28

Adobe Acrobat | Classics | Firestone | Princeton University | Web