The Golden Ass

Lucius awakes the next morning and goes out to explore Hypata. He’s so enthused by the thought that this is the very city where Aristomenes’s story took place that he expects to see magic everywhere: Even the stones and fountains of the city strike him as transformed humans. He longs to learn more about magic.

While he’s out enjoying his day, he runs into a rich woman, Byrrhena, who greets him like a long-lost son. It turns out she’s his aunt, and she’s overjoyed to see him. She invites him to her beautiful house, where he’s transfixed by an astonishingly lifelike statue of the goddess Diana and Actaeon, the hunter she transformed into a stag when he saw her bathing. In this statue, “art, nature’s rival, had put these spitting images of reality on display” (24).

Byrrhena warns Lucius to beware of Milo’s wife Pamphile, who’s a witch with a taste for handsome young men like Lucius. Lucius agrees that it’s probably best to stay out of Pamphile’s way. Instead, he’ll slake his lust with Milo and Pamphile’s lovely young servant, Photis, whose beautiful hair he particularly admires.

He goes back to Milo’s house and flirts with Photis in the kitchen. Photis enthusiastically assents to his proposition, and throws Lucius a secret sexy banquet after another of Milo’s sparse dinners. Lucius and Photis become lovers, and meet every night.

But one evening, Lucius has to beg off: Byrrhena has invited him to dinner, and he can’t get out of it. Photis grudgingly allows this, but warns Lucius to be home early, as a band of murderous robbers has been roaming the streets at night.

Lucius attends dinner at Byrrhena’s house, and marvels at all the lavish decor: drinking goblets carved from chunks of amber and pretty serving-boys with curly hair. But he’s most excited about a tale of witchcraft told by another guest, Thelyphron.

As Thelyphron tells it, Hypata is so full of witches that bereaved families have to hire people to keep an eye on the corpses of the dead. Otherwise, witches will steal their body parts for their dark rites. The pay for guarding corpses is good, but it’s hard to succeed at the job: The witches are tricky and dangerous. Thelyphron nevertheless signs up to be a corpse guard for a young man after; the dead man’s widow minutely inspects her husband’s corpse before leaving Thelyphron to his work.

Thelyphron keeps a close eye on the corpse all night and sternly tells a witch who enters the room disguised as a weasel to go away. But then he falls into a sudden, strange, enchanted sleep. He awakes, appalled, in the morning—but is surprised to find that the corpse seems utterly undisturbed. He collects his pay and goes to watch the funeral procession.

That procession comes to an abrupt halt when an old man stands in the way of the bier and accuses the corpse’s widow of poisoning her husband to cover up her affair. The only way to settle this, everyone agrees, is to hire an Egyptian necromancer to bring the corpse briefly back to life and ask him what happened. The necromancer does his job, and the corpse (sullen to have been called back from his rest) confirms that his wife killed him.

The dead man also explains what happened while Thelyphron was watching his corpse. Thelyphron did a great job, the corpse says, frustrating all the witches’ attacks. But the witches eventually got so fed up that they put Thelyphron into an enchanted sleep. Then, they tried to cast a spell that would make the corpse get up and walk over to a crack in the door, through which they could cut off his nose and ears. But as it turns out, the dead man had also been named Thelyphron—so the spell ended up falling on the living Thelyphron instead! They cut off his nose and ears and replaced them with wax models. At that, the living Thelyphron tests his nose and ears, and finds that it’s all true: they’re only wax, and pop right off.

Since then, Thelyphron sadly tells Byrrhena’s party guests, he’s had to wear his hair long to hide his ear-holes, and to cover his nose with a bandage. At that, the whole crowd starts laughing at poor Thelyphron’s suffering. Byrrhena tells Lucius that the city is celebrating the festival of Laughter the next day, and encourages him to join the fun.

Lucius drunkenly stumbles home late at night. It’s so dark that he and his servant have to cling to each other in order not to fall over. As they approach Milo’s house, they find three robbers banging on the doors, trying to get in. Lucius summarily slays them all, then goes straight to bed and falls into a deep sleep.

The next morning, Lucius wakes up in a panic, sure he’s about to be arrested for killing the three robbers. And indeed, he soon finds himself before a judge in a theater, where he tries to explain that he was defending his host Milo’s house, but to no avail. Just as he’s about to be tortured for his crimes (and suffering doubly because everyone in court is laughing at his agonies), the dead men’s families arrive and demand that he unveil the corpses of his victims. Unwillingly, he does so—only to find that they’re just goatskin bags with slashes where he sliced them.

Everyone laughs: It’s all been a trick for the festival of Laughter! Shaken but pretending to find this hilarious, Lucius retreats to the consolations of Photis.

Photis guiltily offers Lucius a belt to flog her with: It’s her fault he’s had to go through this ordeal and she’s willing to pay the price. Lucius refuses to beat her, but asks that she explain. Her story goes like this: Her mistress Pamphile (Milo’s wife) is, just as Byrrhena warned, a powerful witch. Pamphile is in love with a handsome, golden-haired young man, so she sent Photis out to collect his fallen hairs from the barber’s shop so she can cast a spell on him. Photis tried, but the barber suspected her of witchcraft and ran her off. Afraid that Pamphile would beat her if she returned home empty-handed, Photis scooped up some scattered blondish hairs from beneath where a craftsman was making goatskin bags. It was these bags—animated by Pamphile’s spell—that were hammering on the door when Lucius mistook them for robbers!

Lucius is fascinated by this tale of magic, and asks that Photis take him to where Pamphile casts her spells. Photis reluctantly agrees. Lucius watches through the keyhole as Pamphile smears herself with an ointment that turns her into an owl, and then flies out to seduce the young man she’s got her eye on.

Hungry to try this trick himself, Lucius cajoles Photis into getting a bit of the ointment for him. He knows that Photis can turn him back into a human again: Pamphile has taught her the recovery spells so Photis can help her when she returns from one of her jaunts. Photis, though uneasy, grabs a jar for him.

Lucius smears the ointment all over and finds himself transformed—into an ass. Photis smacks her forehead: wrong jar! But luckily, the remedy is simple: “You just need to nibble through some roses, and you’ll be rid of this ass in no time” (62). She’ll hide him in the stable until she can get the flowers for him.

Lucius is furious, but has no choice but to comply. He sulks in the stable, bruised by the kicks of his own ungrateful horse and a beating from a stable hand for trying to eat rose petals adorning an altar to the horse goddess Epona. But his night gets even worse when a real troupe of bandits descends on wealthy Milo’s house. They steal so much treasure that they can’t carry it all, so they raid the stables, load the unfortunate Lucius up with riches, and escape into the night.

Kidnapped, Lucius the ass desperately tries to free himself from the spell. But finding roses seems impossible: First, what he thinks are roses are actually poisonous laurel flowers; next, an angry farmer whose vegetable garden Lucius raids gives him a severe beating. (Lucius gets his own back by unleashing a river of donkey diarrhea on his persecutor.)

Lucius can’t even passively resist his captors. He observes that when another donkey lies down and refuses to go on, the bandits promptly hamstring it and throw it into a ravine. Lucius decides to play along as a donkey for now.

At last, the raiding party comes to their lair, a fortified mountain stronghold watched over by an old woman, who has prepared a banquet for the bandits’ return. The bandits settle in and begin exchanging stories with another raiding party, who’ve taken severe losses on their latest ventures in Thebes and Plataea. They tell three stories about their lost comrades.

In the first story, the brave Lamachus embarks on a raid on the miser Chryseras. But, when Lamachus reaches through Chryseras’s gates to quietly draw the bolt, Chryseras (who has been tipped off about this robbery) nails Lamachus’s hand to the door. The bandits have no choice but to cut off Lamachus’s arm and flee. Lamachus, refusing to endure the useless life of a one-armed bandit, commits suicide, much to the approbation of his comrades.

In the second story, the foolish Alcimus breaks into an old woman’s cottage in the dead of night, and is busy throwing her valuables out the window to his fellow bandits when she wakes up. She craftily asks him, “My son, please, why are you giving these wretched rags, a poor old woman’s piffling things, to her wealthy neighbors, whose home this window overlooks?” (74). When Alcimus leans out the window to see if he has indeed been throwing the goods the wrong way, the old lady pushes him, and he gets smashed to death on a rock below.

In the third story, a generous rich man, Demochares, is about to put on a gladiatorial show for his neighbors. But when all the bears he bought for this festive, violent occasion catch a disease and die, the bandits skin one such bear and make a bear costume for a robber named Thrasyleon, whom they plan to deliver to Demochares. Then Thrasyleon can burst out in the dead of night and let them into Demochares’s house, Trojan Horse-style. All goes according to plan until Demochares’s servants, believing that a bear is loose in the house, turn the dogs on the disguised Thrasyleon, and then stab him to death.

The bandits toast their fallen comrades with “undiluted wine in golden cups” and fall asleep (81); Lucius, meanwhile, feasts on barley, his first real meal in ages. His hearty appetite as an ass surprises him: “I was now a slave,” he says, “to my fathomless belly” (82).

The robbers go out for another raid in the middle of the night, and return, not with treasure, but with a beautiful young girl named Charite, whom they intend to ransom to her rich family. While they assure her they won’t harm her, she won’t stop weeping and wailing. In fact, she even cries in her sleep, sobbing so much that she irritates the old woman who manages the lair. Begging for pity, Charite tells her own story: She was just about to get married to her beloved cousin when the bandits swooped in and kidnapped her. In her dream, she saw him coming to rescue her, but getting clubbed to death by a bandit.

The old woman softens, and tells Charite a story to distract her from her sorrow. This is the tale of Cupid and Psyche, which will take up the whole center of The Golden Ass.

The story of Cupid and Psyche, as told by the old woman, goes like this:

Once upon a time, a king and queen had three beautiful daughters. The first two were plenty pretty, and got married off right away. But the third, whose name was Psyche, was so astonishingly beautiful that the people believed she was the embodiment of Venus herself. In fact, they began to worship her, calling her by Venus’s name.

Venus herself didn’t like this one bit, so the goddess sent her son, the love god Cupid, to enact her revenge. She instructed him to use his magical arrows to make Psyche fall in love with the lowliest, least worthy man he could find.

Meanwhile, Psyche was suffering. Being worshiped as a goddess meant she was deeply lonely. Men were in too much awe of her to offer marriage. Her parents consulted an oracle, who delivered bad news: Psyche’s rightful husband was a terrifying monster, and her family must leave her on a mountaintop so that he could claim her. Psyche accepted this fate willingly, feeling she didn’t have much to live for anyway. So her parents, lamenting, did as the oracle said.

Abandoned on the mountain, Psyche was surprised to be picked up and carried away by the West Wind—and even more surprised to find herself standing in front of a gorgeous palace made of jewels and gold, clearly the home of a god. Inside its doors, invisible servants dressed her, fed her, sang to her, and got her ready for bed. At night, she slept with an invisible lover—a bit of a shock at first, but she soon grew to enjoy his visits, and to love her new life in the palace. Her new husband had only one rule: She must only receive him in the dark, and must never look at his face.

But when Psyche got lonely and invited her sisters to visit, the envious pair goaded her into taking a lamp and a sword into her bedroom at night, reminding her that the oracle predicted she’d marry a horrible monster and telling her she’d be better off killing it before it ate her. But as Psyche held up the lamp, she saw, not a monster, but “Cupid himself, the gorgeous god, at gorgeous rest” (86). Investigating his arrows, she pricked herself, fell even more deeply in love with him, and leaned over to embrace him. But a drop of hot oil from her lamp fell out and scalded him. He awoke, and explained that when his mother sent him to torment Psyche, he pricked himself on his own arrow and fell for her instead. But now that she’s broken his single rule, he must leave her.

Psyche, who had fallen pregnant not long before this disaster, wandered the world weeping. The goat god Pan took pity and consoled her, telling her that she just needed to be patient, pray to her husband Cupid, and things would work out. She tried her best—and got revenge on her sisters by telling them, one by one, that Cupid had given her up and wanted to marry them now. Trying to get the West Wind to carry them to Cupid’s palace, the envious sisters fell to their deaths.

Meanwhile, Venus uncovered the story of her wounded son’s love affair and went to roundly berate him for disobeying her and making her rival into her daughter-in-law. Her fellow goddesses Juno and Ceres tried to calm her down, but all to no avail: Venus was on the warpath now, searching for Psyche. 

The story of Cupid and Psyche continues:

At last, the enraged Venus captured Psyche, and tortured her mercilessly. Then, she set Psyche a series of impossible tasks: to sort a jumbled mass of different grains, to pluck the golden wool from a flock of furious sheep, and to draw icy water from the snake-infested spring that feeds the river Styx.

Psyche completed these tasks with the help of, respectively, some friendly ants, a sympathetic reed, and the majestic eagle of Jupiter himself. But Venus was never satisfied, believing every time that Cupid had somehow interfered. So she set Psyche the trickiest task of all: to descend into the underworld and borrow a little box of beauty from Proserpina, the queen there.

Psyche despaired, and was about to commit suicide by throwing herself from a tower. But instead, the tower spoke, and told her how to safely travel to the underworld. Once she has found its gates, she must proceed carefully, ignoring anyone who asks her for help and offering bribes of money and cakes to Charon, ferryman of the dead, and Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld. Once she found Proserpina and acquired the box of beauty, she must return the same way and never look into the box.

Psyche followed these instructions word for word, until the very end. Then, she decided to borrow just a dab of beauty, to please Cupid. But as soon as she opened the box, she fell into a deadly sleep.

Luckily, Cupid had now recovered from his wound, and could no longer bear to be separated from his bride. Slipping out the window, he searched the world until he found her asleep, and restored her with a gentle jab of his arrow, saying, “Look at you, poor silly thing, destroyed by your old curiosity again” (128). Sending her off to complete her task, he went to visit Jupiter, king of the gods, to plead for his help with the furious Venus.

Jupiter agreed to calm Venus, on the condition that Cupid grow up, settle down with his bride, and stop making everyone’s life so difficult. Jupiter decreed that the young couple should be married, and that Psyche should drink the ambrosia of the gods and become immortal. All this came to pass, and Psyche at last gave birth to her child, whom she and Cupid named Pleasure.

With that, the story of Cupid and Psyche ends. But Lucius doesn’t get to bask in its afterglow for long: The bandits go out on a raid, and he spies an opportunity to escape. The captive Charite leaps on his back as he flees, and they think they’ve gotten away until the bandits, returning home, snatch them right back up again. The bandits swear they’ll put the girl and the ass to a gruesome joint death in the morning: They’ll disembowel Lucius, sew the girl up in his gutted carcass, and leave the whole mess to be devoured by worms and vultures.