Although the long story of Cupid and Psyche told in the middle of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has attracted a great deal of scholarship (see Kenney 1990; Zimmerman et al. 2004; Binder and Merkelbach 1968; Zimmerman et al. 1998; Walsh 1970, 190–223), comparatively little work has been devoted to the narrator of this tale, an anonymous old woman running the household of a robber band. Apart from some general studies of the topos of old wives’ tales, only van Mal-Maeder and Zimmerman (1998) and Graverini (2006; 2007, 105–132) have discussed her role in greater detail. Van-Mal Maeder and Zimmerman give a narratological analysis in which they unravel the various “voices” in the old woman’s discourse. Graverini looks into the function of the old woman narrator in Apuleius’ larger literary rationale, and this is the direction that my own study will follow. Kenaan (2000) also provides some discussion, but focuses more generally on later readings of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in literal and allegorical terms (with the literal readings often being associated with the uneducated old woman narrator).
Only the barest outline of the events preceding the appearance of the old woman narrator is needed here. After Lucius, the protagonist of the Metamorphoses, has by mistake been transformed into an ass, the house of his host is attacked by a band of robbers. Lucius the ass falls into their hands and is taken as a pack animal to their hideout in the mountains (4.5). Following an elaborate description of the robber’s den, the old woman has her first appearance and is introduced as their housekeeper (4.7). However, the heap of abuse that they yell at her makes clear that she is not held in high regard:1
etiam ne tu, busti cadaver extremum et vitae dedecus primum et Orci fastidium solum, sic nobis otiosa domi residens lusitabis nec nostris tam magnis tamque periculosis laboribus solacium de tam sera refectione tribues? quae diebus ac noctibus nil quicquam rei quam merum saevienti ventri tuo soles aviditer ingurgitare. (4.7.2) (You last corpse on the funeral pyre, life’s foremost disgrace and Orcus’ sole reject! Are you just going to sit idly amusing yourself at home all day, and not offer us some late-evening refreshment after all our dangerous labours? Day and night all you do is greedily pour strong drink into your insatiable belly.)
At first sight, the robbers’ scorn suggests that their housekeeper really neglects her duties, but this idea turns out to be no more than tough robber’s talk. In fact, the old woman is well prepared and presents them with every comfort from a lavish meal to a hot bath. At no point in the story is there any doubt about the housekeeper’s loyalty to “her” robbers. Their low opinion of her derives rather from her old age (artfully paraphrased in the expletives busti cadaver extremum et vitae dedecus primum et Orci fastidium solum) and her predilection for wine (quae diebus ac noctibus nil quicquam rei quam merum saevienti ventri tuo soles aviditer ingurgitare). Her old age is also pointed out earlier by the narrator, Lucius, as he introduces her to the reader (4.7.1: anum quandam curvatam gravi senio … compellant: “they accosted an old woman, bent with extreme age”). From the very beginning, then, there is a strong, not to say grotesque, focus on the old woman’s age and her drunkenness—a stark contrast to the beautiful fairytale that she is going to tell.
Nevertheless, back to the events: the robbers are joined by other members of their band, and Lucius overhears a number of stories they tell each other. After that, they make another plundering raid (4.22.5) and return with a beautiful young girl, abducted from her family to extort a ransom (4.23.2–5; the name of the girl, Charite, is revealed only after the story of Cupid and Psyche, in 7.12.2). Since Charite is inconsolable and keeps weeping, they instruct their housekeeper to comfort her. Waking up from a nightmare, Charite tells the old woman the story of her calamity (4.26.3–8): shortly after her marriage, she was abducted by the robbers and separated from her husband, whom she had just married; her mother’s hope for (grand)children (4.26.6) came to nothing. Now she has relived this experience in that nightmare (recounted in 4.27.1–4), in which her husband was even killed by the bandits. In response to this, the old woman first briefly explains that dreams often turn out to be false (4.27.5–7). The real remedy for Charite’s distress, however, is her narration of the story of Cupid and Psyche, which is introduced as follows: sed ego te narrationibus lepidis anilibusque fabulis protinus avocabo (“But right now I shall divert you with a pretty story and old wives’ tales”; 4.27.8) (Hanson 1989, unlike most translators, prefers “an old wife’s tale,” which does not clearly bring out the proverbial use of aniles fabulae in Latin literature, on which see more in the following text). Lucius makes a similar comment when the old woman has finished her story:
Sic captivae puellae delira et temulenta illa narrabat anicula; sed astans ego non procul dolebam mehercules, quod pugillares et stilum non habebam, qui tam bellam fabellam praenotarem. (6.25.1) (So ran the story told to the captive girl by that crazy, drunken old woman. I was standing not far off, and by Hercules I was upset not to have tablets and stilus to write down such a pretty tale.)
Much of my further discussion will revolve around these remarkable comments. For the time being, however, I would like to draw attention to three issues surrounding Apuleius’ choice of the old woman narrator: first, the apparent incongruity between her and the story she tells; second, the striking parallels between her introduction to Cupid and Psyche and Apuleius’ introduction to the Metamorphoses in his prologue; and third, the topos of old wives’ tales manifestly evoked on the one hand by the narrative situation in which an old wife tells a story, and on the other hand by the fact that she explicitly characterizes her story as aniles fabulae.
In the narrative situation outlined in the preceding text, it is clear why the old woman tells some sort of story—she was asked to comfort Charite, and telling a story in response to Charite’s story seems a natural reaction. Moreover, there is good reason for the old woman to tell a story like Cupid and Psyche because its plot can be read as an optimistic variant of Charite’s sad story. The story is about the young princess Psyche, and her love for the god Cupid. After a tragic separation and many complications, all ends well with the couple’s wedding in heaven. A daughter is born to them, and they live happily ever after among the Olympian gods. Of course, this tale would suggest to its narratee, Charite, that her story, too, will eventually have a happy ending, that she will be reunited with her husband, and that they will have the children they hoped for. We do not hear a reaction from Charite when the story is finished, but since Charite’s distress is then no longer an issue for the narrator (who turns his attention to other events), the comforting effect of it seems to be implied.
Still, there is a problem with the fact that the old woman does not narrate some sort of story like Cupid and Psyche, but the story of Cupid and Psyche that we actually read in the Metamorphoses. In this form, the length of the story—running to about two books—is unrealistic and disproportionate; consider that Charite’s story took up no more than a page or so. An even greater worry is the style and theme of the story, which deals in a sophisticated manner with noble characters, gods, and ideal love, mixed with a note of allegory and Platonic philosophy (on which see further in the following text). The idea that such a story could be told by a “crazy, drunken old woman” running a robber’s den seems absurd, and this incongruity has often been noticed by scholars.2 At the same time, it is difficult to think of unawareness or lazy composition on the part of the author. On the contrary, Apuleius seems to employ the old woman narrator deliberately and even gleefully (so Dowden 1982, 429: “Having, as is often remarked, incongruously and gleefully employed delira et temulenta illa anicula to relate the Cupid and Psyche tale…”) by overdoing her unfavorable traits (cf. the robber’s curses and Lucius’ comment at the end of her story). This is not least suggested by a comparison with his Greek model: in the extant Greek counterpart of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Ps.-Lucian’s Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος (Lucius, or the Ass; henceforth: Onos), we find an old woman (20: γραυ̑ς) in the robbers’ den, but she does not tell the captured girl a story. The scholarly consensus is therefore that the common model of Apuleius and the Onos, the lost Greek Metamorphoseis by so-called Loukios of Patrae (cf. Photius, Cod. 129), contained neither the story of Cupid and Psyche nor the old woman in the role of narrator, though if it did, the issues discussed in this chapter would not disappear, but rather shift to Apuleius’ model, or apply to both the model and Apuleius’ adaptation. Nowhere in the Onos is the old woman called drunken or given any of the grotesque characteristics known from Apuleius—in his model, it seems, she is simply an old woman.
A larger agenda in Apuleius’ choice of the old woman narrator is suggested by the fact that, in the very first sentence of the prologue, he closely associates her introduction of Cupid and Psyche with his own introduction of the Metamorphoses. The parallels between the two phrases have long been noted, and are too pronounced to be explained by coincidence:
At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram auresque tuas benivolas lepido susurro permulceam… (1.1.1) (But I would like to tie together different sorts of tales for you in that Milesian style, and to caress your ears into approval with a pretty whisper.)
sed ego te narrationibus lepidis anilibusque fabulis protinus avocabo. (4.27.8) (But right now I shall divert you with a pretty story and old wives’ tales.)
There are no less than six clear correspondences on a basic verbal and conceptual level, following with some modification Winkler (1985, 53): (i) the opening words in the sequence: (a) adversative conjunction (At/sed), (b) personal pronoun in first person (ego), (c) personal pronoun in second person (tibi/te); (ii) the category of fiction (fabulas/fabulis); (iii) the disreputable label attached to the fiction (Milesio/anilibus; Milesio alludes to the then notorious Milesian Tales of Aristides c. 100 BC, a work containing bawdy low-life stories; anilibus implies the topos of old wives’ stories, discussed further in later text); (iv) the fiction is said to be “charming” (lepido/lepidis); (v) it is characterized as seductive (permulceam/avocabo); (vi) it is announced in the plural (varias fabulas/narrationibus … fabulis). Quite obviously, the old woman in her role as narrator is modeled on the main narrator of the Metamorphoses (with the author, Apuleius, lurking behind both of them). No matter how we interpret the old woman narrator, then, our reading will also bear on the narrator and the narration of the Metamorphoses as a whole.
If there is a topos of old wives’ tales and we have a story not only told by an old wife but also characterized as aniles fabulae, it is difficult not to think of an instantiation of that topos. Now, that topos was clearly current in Apuleius’ time. Its history and intellectual context are well explored, so I confine myself here to the most essential characteristics (the best survey is Massaro 1977; cf. Ziolkowski 2002 and Renger 2005, especially for later periods; Bremmer 1987 for the social and historical background – for the topos itself 200–2). Talking and thinking about old wives’ tales entered Greek literature with Plato, who used similar phrases and images throughout his works. The meaning of these phrases is clearly derogatory in itself. They are employed to disqualify an idea or a story as lacking reason, coherence, and usefulness. In Theaetetus 176b, for instance, Socrates refutes as ὁ λεγόμενος γραω̑ν ὕθλος (“what is commonly called ‘old wives’ gossip”; Plato is already drawing on a proverbial use among the Greeks—for similar proverbial uses, especially of anilis fabula among the Romans, see Otto 1890, 28, s.v. anus, no. 2) the popular idea that being just equals seeming just. Similarly, in Lysis 205d mythological poems and speeches for a loved one are compared to ἅπερ αἱ γραι̑αι ᾄδουσι (“what old wives sing”). However, Plato’s use of the topos is not always free of irony and not always plainly negative in context. In the Hippias maior (286a), for example, it is said that the Spartans listen to Hippias’ lectures on antiquities as enthusiastically as children listen to the sweet tales of the elderly (καὶ χρω̑νται ὥσπερ ται̑ς πρεσβύτισιν οἱ παι̑δες πρὸς τὸ ἡδέως μυθολογη̑σαι); and in the Laws (10.887d), the anonymous Athenian (whose character is reminiscent of Socrates) is even indignant at people who do not believe in the gods and the stories about them told by nurses and mothers (οὐ πειθόμενοι τοι̑ς μύθοις οὓς ἐκ νέων παίδων ἔτι ἐν γάλαξι τρεφόμενοι τροφω̑ν τε ἤκουον καὶ μητέρων; cf. Republic 1.350e and 2.377a–378d, leaving open the possibility that old wives’ tales may be fruitful under certain conditions). One passage in particular, from the end of the Gorgias, provides a clear parallel with Apuleius in that Socrates himself tells what appears to be an old wives’ tale (527a: μυ̑θος … γραός). I discuss this passage in the following section titled “‘Milesian’ Platonism.”
After Plato, even the slightest positive notion of old wives’ tales is rare: the topos is mostly used in the fields of philosophy and theology (sometimes also in historiography and geography), by writers who polemically attack their rivals in the search for truth (for the important exception of Horace’s Satires 2.6.77–78 see below). Thus, Cicero in De deorum natura 3.12 has his stand-in Cotta dismiss as aniles fabellae the suggestion that the dead could rise again and fight in battles. Even Apuleius himself uses the topos in this polemical sense when, in Apologia 25.5, he says that the charge of magic against him was made per nescio quas anilis fabulas (“with the help of some old wives’ tales”).
Finally, we should keep in mind that the old woman as a character type of ancient literature has, in one way or another, always been the object of scorn and derision, the invectives of the Vetula-Skoptik found in Horace and Martial being only the grossest example (Watson 2003, 288–292; Richlin 1992, 109–116; briefly, Bremmer 1987, 202–203). Perhaps, Apuleius is picking up on that larger tradition in the Metamorphoses when he reinforces the apparent disparagement of the old woman’s anilis fabula by lending her the additional traits of craziness and drunkenness. He exploits two further topoi about old women, saying that they were feebleminded and that they were alcoholics (cf., e.g. Otto 1890, 28, s.v. anus, no. 1 and 4; briefly, Bremmer 1987, 201–202). For the first aspect, we may compare a number of passages in which we find a delira anus as in Lucius’ comment at the end of Cupid and Psyche (e.g. Cic. Div. 2.141: an tu censes ullam anum tam deliram futuram fuisse…; Tusc. 1.21: quae est anus tam delira quae timeat ista…; Gell. NA 1.19.6: Tarquinius … dixitque anum iam procul dubio delirare); for the second, the proverb anus rursum ad armillum (“the old woman returns to the (wine) jug”), adapted in a more general sense by Apuleius in Met. 6.22.1 and 9.29.1 (generally for the topos of the drunken old woman Bremmer 1987, 201–202, with further literature).
The incongruity of the story and the old woman narrator, the parallels of the old woman narrator with the main narrator of the Metamorphoses, and the denigrating topoi about old wives’ tales and old women in general make Apuleius’ choice of the old woman as narrator of Cupid and Psyche a startling one. It seems an open admission of writing nonsense, not only the story of Cupid and Psyche, but the whole of the Metamorphoses. Clearly, Apuleius’ choice was open to being used against him, and indeed this happened, for instance, in the well-known example of the biography of the (counter) emperor Clodius Albinus contained in the Historia Augusta (after 360 AD). In this biography, a letter by Clodius’ rival, Septimius Severus, to the senate is quoted, in which Severus complains about the senators’ fondness of Clodius and casts a number of aspersions on him. One of them refers to Clodius’ apparent writing of Milesian tales (Clod. 11.8: Milesias nonnulli eiusdem esse dicunt, quarum fama non ignobilis habetur, quamvis mediocriter scriptae sint; “He is said to have written a number of Milesian tales, whose reputation is held to be not undistinguished, although they are rather mediocre”):
illum pro litterato laudandum plerique duxistis, cum ille neniis quibusdam anilibus occupatus inter Milesias Punicas Apulei sui et ludicra litteraria consenesceret. (Clod. 12.12) (you have deemed him to deserve praise as a man of literature, when he was busied with some old wives’ lullabies and was growing senile amongst his Apuleius’ Punic Milesian tales and such literary trivialities)
The Metamorphoses is here referred to as Milesias Punicas, on the one hand because Apuleius introduces his novel as sermo Milesius, on the other hand because he was of African—and hence by metonymy “Punic”—origin. The pun works well as Clodius was African, too, and he is imagined to share both origin and literary taste with “his” Apuleius. The fact that this is meant to be an insult is emphasized by the description of Clodius’ Milesian tales as neniae aniles, reminiscent of the aniles fabulae of the old woman narrator in Met. 4.27.8. Thus, the author of the biography exploits the parallels between the old wife narrator and the prologue speaker, and he readily accepts Apuleius’ invitation to reject his novel as trivial nonsense.
Clearly, it is unlikely that Apuleius would extend such a self-belittling invitation without an agenda behind it. The polemical reference to Apuleius in the biography of Clodius Albinus made no effort to analyze this agenda. A number of modern scholars did more justice to it.
Cupid and Psyche has a long history of allegorical interpretation (see Moreschini 1999). The first extant example of this approach is Fulgentius’ Mythologiae, c. 500 AD, in which the pagan myths of classical antiquity are read allegorically and in line with Christian values. The story, whose consideration in the Mythologiae is remarkable (3.6, p. 66.19–70.20 Helm; Cupid and Psyche is the only story written by a particular author among a large number of anonymous myths), centers this reading on the relation of Psyche (Soul) to Venus (Lust) and Cupid (Desire). There is no need to go further into the allegory at this point. What matters here is the general interpretative procedure, which attempts to uncover a serious, but hidden, meaning behind the apparent frivolity of the story. In modern times, such readings were usually not Christian—Christianity obviously not providing the right historical framework for Apuleius—but philosophical, especially Platonic. This makes sense against the backdrop of Apuleius’ philosophical leanings: he wrote a number of Platonic treatises, and was arguably the most prominent Latin Platonist of his time.
While allegorical interpretations of the story are comparatively easy, it is difficult to assign the old woman narrator a place in any consistent allegory. Her vulgar and grotesque persona seems to disturb a “clean” philosophical reading, and it is no surprise that, again beginning with Fulgentius, most proponents of this approach simply ignore the narrator of Cupid and Psyche in favor of the narrative. Some exceptions can be found; Kenney (1990; 13, 22–3), for instance, reads the phrase with which the old woman introduces the story as a sort of dramatic irony and a “sardonic comment on his [sc. Lucius’] failure to profit from his experience.” While at least the second reader (who knows the ending of the Metamorphoses) would recognize that Cupid and Psyche tells the story of Lucius’ own predicament—there are a number of shared motifs, especially the disastrous meddlesomeness (curiositas) of both Lucius and Psyche—his superficial comment at the end of the tale would imply that he is taken in by the old woman’s story. Ultimately, her introduction would be a hermeneutical marker that brings the issue of reading the Metamorphoses as a whole to mind. For just as Lucius is fooled by the old woman’s promise of “charming stories” (4.27.8: narrationibus lepidis), the reader may be fooled by the prologue speaker’s promise of telling stories “with a charming whisper” (1.1.1: lepido susurro). Strictly speaking, the old woman narrator is here not part of the philosophical reading but a red herring that the reader should be able to eliminate. Even if the old woman narrator receives some consideration, then, the allegorical approach tends to detach her from what is seen as the serious core meaning of the text.
The only exception here seems to be Massaro’s 1977 study of the topos of old wives’ tales in antiquity. He argues that Apuleius drew on a device known from “mystical” authors (i mistici) who protect their teachings from outside views by casting them in the form of allegories. On a superficial level, such allegories may seem absurd—like old wives’ tales—but, given the right interpretation, they reveal themselves for what they are. The specific link with the topos of old wives’ tales is created by two references to the Neo-Platonist philosopher Iamblichus (third/fourth century AD), who writes that the secret symbola (“symbolic sayings”) of the Pythagoreans may seem γραώδης (“old-wife-like”) to the non-initiated, but that they are meaningful to those who know how to interpret them.3 However, Massaro’s evidence is not convincing. Iamblichus postdates Apuleius, and there is no suggestion that the topos of old wives’ tales played a particular role in hermetic writing before him. Rather, both Apuleius and Iamblichus are indebted to the Platonic tradition of this topos, on which I say more in the later section titled “‘Milesian’ Platonism.”
Another approach is the reading of Cupid and Psyche (and with that the whole Metamorphoses) as mere literary entertainment. Here, the old woman narrator is seen as a marker of comedy, which signals to the reader that the following story does not have any deeper meaning but should be enjoyed as a lighthearted piece of literature or even as a parody of serious concepts. This view is taken, for instance, by Purser (1910, xliv–xlv) in the first separate commentary on Cupid and Psyche:
The story is to be regarded rather [than as philosophical allegory] as a mere fairy-tale, tricked out with all the airs and graces of Apuleian style. Look at it in that point of view, and everything becomes plain, especially the dramatic setting of the whole story—an old woman (delira et temulenta anicula, 6.25) tells the tale to a girl who has been carried off by robbers, in order to amuse her and take her mind off the trouble into which she has fallen.
Harrison, today’s main proponent of a comic reading of the Metamorphoses, has argued that the robber’s tales preceding Cupid and Psyche recall and parody the Platonic Symposium. In this context, the old woman narrator would take the role of the priestess Diotima whose teachings are reported by Socrates at the end of the Symposium.4 Diotima claims that Love is the greatest god because he draws man toward the soul, his true object. Clearly, the story of Cupid, the god of love, and Psyche, “Soul,” could be inspired by this claim. The fact that this story is now told not by a dignified priestess but by a “crazy, drunken old woman” would draw attention to the status of the Metamorphoses as literary entertainment rather than a novel of ideas (Kirichenko 2008, 95, suggests a simpler comic reading, drawing only on the “blatant conceptual mismatch” between the person of the old woman narrator and her narrative). Regardless of what we think about the seriousness of the Metamorphoses, Harrison’s reading is an important step toward understanding the old woman narrator as a marker of poetics, signaling Apuleius’ ideas about the status of his novel. I shall return to this idea later.
There are several ways of combining the serious and comic approaches to the old woman narrator. A special case with which I would like to begin is the postmodernist reading of Winkler (1985, 50–56), in which the old woman narrator warrants an alternative reading of Cupid and Psyche as a tale of deception. While the story in itself is a beautiful fairytale, the fact that it is told by the old woman in order to keep a captive girl quiet would reveal a sinister purpose. The parallels between the old woman narrator and the main narrator of the Metamorphoses would then draw attention to the larger issue of how to read Apuleius’ novel: as a piece of straightforward entertainment or as a deceptive, cunning text that sells a religious ending under comic wrappings (cf. Winkler 1985, 56: “And if her avocabo … is perfidious, what are we to make of his permulceam …?”). Winkler’s is not an easy reading and seems to me developed ad hoc to fit in with his larger interpretation of the Metamorphoses in which a comic and a religious take are played off each other (with the point being that neither take is authorized and that Apuleius intended exactly this ambiguity). Comparing the allegedly “cynical” and “cruel” agenda of the old woman narrator (why not see it as pity?) with a hermeneutical strategy of the author is a stretch, and I do not see how the issues “comic vs. religious” on the one hand and “entertaining vs. cunning” on the other could be convincingly aligned.
A more plausible reading has recently been put forward by Graverini (2006), who builds on Massaro’s (1977) study of the topos of old wives’ tales. Massaro’s investigation revolves around a single passage from Horace’s second book of Satires (2.6.77–78): Cervius haec inter vicinus garrit anilis / ex re fabellas (“Amid this talk my neighbor Cervius prattles away telling old wives’ tales that are to the point”). The context is a banquet in a country house, with simple food but good discussions about happiness, friendship, and the nature of the Good. At this point, one of the guests, Cervius, tells the fable about the town mouse and the country mouse, implying that the simple and peaceful country life is superior to the more comfortable but stressful town life. This fable takes up the remainder of the satire, and it is an appropriate conclusion considering that it makes a point the guests were discussing in their conversation. Its introduction as an old wives’ tale that is “prattled away” is here clearly not derogatory but due to good-humored irony that conveys its message in an undogmatic and amusing way.
Massaro sets out to demonstrate that Horace’s adaptation of the topos of old wives’ tales is special in that it preserves a touch of self-deprecatory Socratic irony, otherwise only found in Plato’s dialogues. Massaro distinguishes Horace’s adaptation from the polemical tradition of the topos, but also from Apuleius, who in his opinion is indebted to a more dogmatic strain of hermetic philosophy. The suspicion remains, however, that Massaro overstates the case for Apuleius as a dogmatic philosopher to save the uniqueness of Horace. This is where Graverini comes in with his idea that Apuleius’ old woman narrator adopts a self-deprecatory stance known from satire. Horace is the most prominent example, but the topos of old wives’ tales is similarly used in late-antique (Menippean) satirists: Martianus Capella (fifth century AD) addresses his son of the same name at the end of the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (9.997) with the words: habes anilem, Martiane, fabulam… (“take this old wives’ tale, Martianus”; anilem is here a conjecture of the Teubner editor, J. Willis, for the far-better-attested senilem, “old man’s-like”—a lectio difficilior that would fittingly adapt the topos to the old Martianus making fun of his age). Even more clearly, Fulgentius addresses his dedicatee in the prosimetric prologue to his Mythologiae (p. 3.13–17 Helm):
additur quia et mihi nuper imperasse dinosceris ut feriatas affatim tuarum aurium sedes lepido quolibet susurro permulceam: parumper ergo ausculta dum tibi rugosam sulcis anilibus ordior fabulam. (and because you have recently seen fit to command me to soothe the seats of your ears when they are sufficiently free of business with whatever graceful whisper I could; hear me then awhile as I begin to weave for you a tale wrinkled with an old wife’s furrows…)
This is evidently borrowed from Apuleius, and, more precisely, constitutes another conflation of the prologue to the Metamorphoses (1.1.1) and the introduction of Cupid and Psyche by the old woman narrator (4.27.8). The relevance of these late-antique testimonies, however, seems to me dubious. Both Martianus Capella and Fulgentius postdate Apuleius. Fulgentius manifestly depends on him, and bearing in mind that Martianus takes inspiration from Cupid and Psyche in his introductory myth (describing the ascent to heaven, apotheosis, and marriage of Philology to Mercury; cf. Carver 2007, 36–41), it seems very likely that his final comment on his anilis or senilis fabula is also borrowed from Apuleius. What is more, both Martianus Capella and Fulgentius were Africans and therefore likely to have a particular interest in the works of their fellow countryman Apuleius. For these reasons, it is difficult to argue for a satiric tradition specifically of the topos of old wives’ tales. No further examples seem to be known, so we are left with Horace as far as possible satiric models for Apuleius are concerned.
Given that Horace’s anilis fabella is an Aesopic fable, it also seems worthwhile to look into the fable genre as an inspiration to Apuleius. Graverini here points out as structural parallel that the “low” fable genre is nevertheless aware of its moral utility and may draw attention to this in a self-deprecatory way. An excellent example is Phaedrus’ fable of the poet, in which he warns against underestimating his writing (4.2.3–4): Sed diligenter intuere has nenias: / Quantam sub titulis utilitatem reperies! (“But take a careful look into these trifles: what a lot of practical instruction you will find in tiny affairs!”) There is not a single example from the fables, however, which takes up the topos of old wives’ tales. We should also take into account that fables, because of their mostly obvious fabula docet, were perhaps a low, but generally respected genre that had its official place in education. This cannot be said of the ancient novel, let alone of the disreputable low-life novel that traced its origins back to the Milesian Tales.
Graverini ends with the intriguing suggestion that the Platonist Apuleius, too, had something to teach, although his teaching is rather ironic and can no more be put in a convenient formula than a Platonic dialogue can. As to the old woman narrator, Apuleius would have followed the lead of satirists and fable writers and adopted a self-denigrating stance to draw attention to the seriocomic nature of his writing, characterized by both a certain philosophical claim and narrative entertainment that undermines any dogmatic creeds.
In this last section, I present a reading that is not far from Graverini’s conclusion, but looks at the problem from a different angle. I have already laid out some reasons why I do not consider satire and fable as particularly significant factors in Apuleius’ choice of the old woman narrator (although nothing of what I am going to say rules out these factors as an influence). Add to these that an ironic self-deprecatory stance is in itself not suggestive of one or two particular genres, but a widespread gesture in literature: apart from satire and fable, we find it, to name but two further examples, in the way in which Catullus refers to his poetry as nugae (“trifles”), or in the prefatory topos of modesty (of which Apuleius’ prologue speaker, referring to himself as rudis locutor, “raw talker,” provides an example). I would rather go back directly to Plato and argue that Apuleius adapted the Platonic topos of the old woman narrator at least as cleverly and successfully as Horace did. The Platonic model, I think, can also provide a more detailed answer as to the nature of Apuleius’ philosophical attitude in Cupid and Psyche and the whole Metamorphoses (this topic could be expanded, but I only discuss Platonic aspects surrounding the old woman narrator). Based on this attitude, I discuss the idea that Apuleius self-confidently used the old woman narrator as an emblem of what seemed to many a contradiction in terms: a philosophical novel.
The key passage for Apuleius may well have been Socrates’ story of the afterlife, told at the end of the Gorgias. It is introduced as a “very beautiful” logos, which, however, might appear to Socrates’ interlocutor, Callicles, as a mythos (523a):
Ἄκουε δή, φασί, μάλα καλου̑ λόγου, ὃν σὺ μὲν ἡγήσῃ μυ̑θον, ὡς ἐγὼ ο
μαι, ἐγὼ δὲ λόγον · ὡς ἀληθη̑ γὰρ ὄντα σοι λέξω ἃ μέλλω λέγειν. (Hear then, as they say, a very beautiful story (logos), which you, however, will regard as a myth (mythos), as I think, but I as an actual account (logos); for what I am about to tell you I mean to offer as the truth.)
Then Socrates tells his story about how Zeus instituted a new procedure for judging the dead, no longer according to their external appearance while they were living but according to the righteousness of their soul (ψυχή). Many who seemed good before will now be sent to the Underworld, where they will suffer the punishments they deserve. Sometimes, however, a virtuous soul will be spotted, in particular the soul of a “philosopher who has minded his own business and has not been a busybody in his lifetime” (φιλοσόφου τὰ αὑτου̑ πράξαντος καὶ οὐ πολυπραγμονήσαντος ἐν τ
βίῳ). This soul is sent to the Island of the Blessed, and this is the way that Socrates wishes to go on the Day of Judgment—hence his austere way of life and his search for the truth. Socrates concludes with another suggestion that his interlocutor has misjudged the story, and this time he uses the topos of old wives’ tales (527a): “Possibly, however, you regard this as an old wives’ tale, and despise it” (Τάχα δ’ ο
ν ταυ̑τα μυ̑θός σοι δοκει̑ λέγεσθαι ὥσπερ γραὸς καὶ καταφρονει̑ς αὐτω̑ν). The remaining page or so of the dialogue is filled with Socrates’ argument that there is in fact nothing to despise in his story and that virtue must be followed.
I think there are clear echoes of Socrates’ story in both the content and the narrative setting of Cupid and Psyche. First to the content: in one way or another, both stories are about the “soul” (ψυχή / Psyche) after “death”—the oracle at the beginning of Cupid and Pysche predicts a “funereal wedding” (4.33.1 funereus thalamus) and commands that Psyche’s parents abandon their daughter at the top of a steep mountain crag. There she would be sacrificed to a “monster” (which eventually turns out to be Cupid). The preparations for this sacrifice are represented as a funeral, and when Psyche is carried by gentle winds from the mountain top to Cupid’s palace, she has come to a realm that is at least beyond that of ordinary mortals. Later, she will in actual fact visit the underworld and finally find her place—if not on the Island of the Blessed—in heaven among the Olympian gods. Furthermore, it could be argued that she manages to do so because she has atoned for her curiosity, the πολυπραγμονει̑ν, which the Socratic philosopher worthy of a happy afterlife avoids.5
Concerning the narrative setting, both stories are framed by comments on their appeal, their nature, and their credibility: compare μάλα καλου̑ λόγου (“very beautiful story”) in Gorg. 523a with narrationibus lepidis in Met. 4.27.8 and tam bellam fabellam in Met. 6.25.1; the generic characterizations as logos and mythos with narratio and fabula; and the suggestion that the respective stories are nonsense, as obvious from the doubts attributed to Callicles and from Lucius’ comment about the delira et temulenta … anicula in Met. 6.25.1. Finally, this idea materializes in the image of the old wife, utilized as a “mere” proverbial topos in Plato, and brought to life in Apuleius. The embodiment of the topos as a character in the Metamorphoses is in line with a larger pattern of Apuleius’ literary technique. Plaza (2006, 73) has shown in a number of cases that Apuleius has a “manner of turning a two-dimensional expression saying something into the three-dimensional showing of much the same thing” (the idea is touched upon, with reference to Plaza, by Graverini 2006, 103; also see Panayotakis 1997, who argues that three dangerous encounters awaiting Psyche in the Underworld—a lame ass with his lame driver, a dead man, and some old crones—are abstract notions of Old Age and of Mortality turned into flesh). An example, for illustration, is the sententious utres inflati ambulamus (“we walk about like inflated wineskins,” known from Petronius 42.4), from which Apuleius arguably weaves his famous scene of the walking wineskins at the end of the second book of the Metamorphoses.
However, the Platonic associations of the old woman narrator are not exhausted with the model of the Gorgias. Cupid and Psyche is not only a story about Psyche, but also about Cupid, and this brings us back to the Symposium, in which the discussion is about the nature of Love. In Diotima’s crucial speech, Love is a demon, a being that intermediates between humans and gods. Mutatis mutandis this is also the role of Cupid in Apuleius, in that he takes Psyche away from her mortal family and leads her to heaven and the Olympian gods. Demons and demonology were a favorite subject of middle Platonism, the philosophical current to which Apuleius subscribed. In his theory about demons, he is clearly influenced by Diotima’s speech (Soc. 6.132–3 and Apol. 43.1; for the influence of Diotima’s teachings, see Beaujeu 1973, 215–216, on Soc. and Regen 1971, 5–6, on Apol.). It is very likely, therefore, that the old woman narrator, too, is to some extent indebted to Socrates’ teacher, Diotima. This can be read, as Harrison does, as mere parody and literary entertainment, but I think there is more to it, not least because of the links between Cupid and Psyche and the religious ending of the Metamorphoses in the Isis book. Many of these links, most prominently the motif of curiosity, are well known. Against the backdrop of Diotima’s demonology, I would like to add here that both Cupid and Psyche and the Isis Book tell the story of a soul or person (Psyche / Lucius) led by the intervention of a demon-like intermediate being (Love / Isis) to spiritual happiness among the gods (the Olympians) or in the service of the highest god (Osiris). In this light, the old woman narrator turns out to be a match for the main narrator of the Metamorphoses, not only in the formal aspects discussed earlier but also in basic Platonic implications of their stories. More than that, both narrators could have taken a cue from the “mystical” language in which Diotima casts her intention to initiate Socrates into the matters of love (209e–210a; Riedweg 1987, 1–29, for mystery terminology and larger patterns of imitation in the Symposium):
Ταυ̑τα μὲν ον τὰ ἐρωτικὰ ἴσως, 
Σώκρατες, κἂν σὺ μυηθείης · τὰ δὲ τέλεα καὶ ἐποπτικά, 
ν ἕνεκα καὶ ταυ̑τα ἔστιν, ἐάν τις ὀρθω̑ς μετίῃ, ου̑κ οδ’ εἰ ο
ός τ’ ἂν εἴης. ἐρω̑ μὲν ον, ἔφη, ἐγὼ καὶ προθυμίας οὐδὲν ἀπολείψω · πειρω̑ δὲ ἕπεσθαι, ἂν οός τε 
ς. (“Into these love-matters, even you, Socrates, may be happily initiated; but I am not sure if you could approach the rites and revelations to which these, for the properly instructed, are merely the avenue. However, I will speak of them,” she said, “and will not stint my best endeavors; only you on your part must try your best to follow.”)
Like Diotima, both the narrators of Cupid and Psyche and the Metamorphoses tell love stories, the philosophical implications of which may not be fully grasped by their readers. Nevertheless, they tell the stories, confident that their readers will try to follow as well as they can. Notions of initiation and mysteries, implied in many passages of Cupid and Psyche (e.g. Merkelbach 2001, 451–484, although surely exaggerating the evidence), manifestly take shape in the Isis book.
It seems there is a significant philosophical dimension to the old woman narrator. I do not claim that this dimension is particularly profound, let alone detailed, but some essential lines of Platonic philosophy materialize in her story and its narrative setting. Whether this is ultimately sincere or parodic depends on how we generally read the Metamorphoses and especially its religious ending—a question far too large to approach here in any detail. My opinion is that it can only be answered in the context of Apuleius’ oeuvre, and here we sometimes see a dogmatic philosopher and sometimes a brilliantly witty orator, but always a committed advocate of Platonism. I do not think that this attitude is radically different in the Metamorphoses. It rather is only refracted in and through the medium of low-life prose fiction—in which Apuleius first stumbled upon the old woman when reading the Greek Metamorphoseis.
I propose that Apuleius’ Platonic rewriting of “Milesian” fiction accounts for the curious conflict between the old woman’s appearance and her story. At the same time, this makes her a metaliterary emblem of Apuleius’ larger poetics. This is not only suggested by the parallelism between the old wife’s introduction of Cupid and Psyche and the main narrator’s introduction of the Metamorphoses. There are two further remarkable intrusions of the author in the context of Cupid and Psyche and its narrator. The first occurs shortly after the beginning of the tale, in 4.32.6, where Psyche’s father asks the oracle of Apollo at Didyma near Miletus about a future husband for his daughter. The narrator then explains, tongue in cheek, why the oracle was given in Latin rather than Greek: Apollo, quanquam Graecus et Ionicus, propter Milesiae conditorem sic Latina sorte respondit (“Apollo, although a Greek and an Ionic Greek at that, answered with an oracle in Latin to show favor to the author of this Milesian tale”). It is not entirely clear whether Milesia here refers to the Metamorphoses in general or to Cupid and Psyche in particular. However, clearly, the voice alluding to authorship is that of Apuleius lurking behind the voice of the old woman narrator (Van Mal-Maeder and Zimmerman 1998, 89–90). The second intrusion is Lucius’ comment at the end of Cupid and Psyche, in 6.25.1, where he pretends to be “upset not to have tablets and stilus to write down such a pretty tale.” The joke here is, on one level, that Lucius wishes to do what Apuleius has just done, and the reader is invited to identify the two. On a second level, however, the narrative of Apuleius is identified with that of the old woman because he has in fact written it down and brought it to the reader. Surely these are reasons enough to extend the significance of the old woman narrator in the narrower context of Cupid and Psyche to the poetics of the whole Metamorphoses? She is a fitting metaliterary emblem of a novel that brings an unusual philosophical interest to low-life fiction (for the paradox of the idea of a “philosophical old woman,” see Lucius Verus to Marcus Aurelius, quoted in SHA Avid. Cass. 1.8: te [sc. M. Aurelium] philosopham aniculam, me luxuriosum morionem vocat; “[Avidius Cassius] calls you a little old woman philosopher, and me a voluptuous fool”). Considering that such a philosophical interest was not a typical characteristic of ancient novels, let alone Apuleius’ professed stylistic model, Aristides’ Milesiaca,6 I suspect that it was this innovation that the Platonizing old woman narrator was intended to suggest.
To illustrate this point and conclude this chapter, I would like briefly to discuss an instance of reception. It comes from a much later time, the early modern period, but makes a similar claim of innovating the genre by employing the (clearly Apuleian) narrative device of the old woman narrator. The work is the voluminous Latin novel Nova Solyma (1648), written by the English lawyer and politician Samuel Gott (1613–1671) (see Morrish 2003 generally on Gott and his novel, and Morrish 2005 on its use of the old woman narrator; an English translation can be found in Begley 1902, who wrongly attributed the novel to John Milton). In this utopian and romantic novel, two students from Cambridge visit “New Jerusalem” (Nova Solyma), a Christian city built on the site of old Jerusalem. There, a complex plot unfolds in six books packed with descriptions of local customs and institutions, romantic affairs, and discussions about education, philosophy, theology, and other subjects. Gott’s poetics is self-referentially explored in various passages, most prominently in the discourse of the schoolmaster Alphaeus (Gott’s fictional persona), who explains the function of different pens attributed to different genres (Morrish 2003, 258–271). It clearly emerges from these passages that Gott’s project is an apology of the novel genre—then mostly held in low esteem, but deeply appreciated by Gott for its potential—by giving it a Christian and philosophical dimension.
Gott’s Nova Solyma is a sophisticated work that draws on a vast range of classical and early modern models. One of the models with which the author shows himself thoroughly familiar is Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and one of the instances in which this becomes most obvious is the insertion of an old wives’ tale into the novel.7 It occupies about a quarter of the first book and is told by an anilis matrona (line 4) to her pupils, Auximus and Augentius, the sons of the patriarch of Nova Solyma who were entrusted to her for their primary education. Just as Cupid and Psyche is overheard from a distance by Lucius, the ass, Gott’s old wives’ tale is overheard from another location by the protagonists, the two young Englishmen and their native guide, Joseph.
The old woman narrates a dream of hers in which her pupils were abandoned on an indeterminate island, divided into the jurisdictions of an aged king, Philoponus, and his two children, Philocles and Philomela, the latter born of a concubine. The clearly allegorical story tells of Auximus and Augentius’ escape from the depraved jurisdiction of Philomela and their reception in the virtuous jurisdiction of Philoponus and his son, Philocles. It is decided that action against Philomela must be taken and, when she is finally defeated in battle, the old woman’s story has come to an end because this was the end of her dream. As in Apuleius, there is regret that the story has not been written down (Auximus begs her in lines 387–388: atque utinam nobis perscriptam [sc. fabulam] dares). And, as in Apuleius, we hear the reactions of the hidden listeners. To Joseph’s suggestion that tales nugae (“such trifles,” line 393) are not worth listening to, Eugenius, one of the Englishmen, responds in the old wife’s defense (lines 337–340):
Nugas esse dicis … quae non ineruditam voluptatem cum tanta utilitate componunt? Neque sunt hae similes anilium fabularum quibus memini me puerum adeo delectatum; atque ob id magis miror unde haec fingeret: an hic anus quoque philosophantur? (Can you call those things trifles … which pair not uninstructed pleasure with such utility? They are very unlike the old wives’ tales that delighted me when a boy, and it makes me wonder all the more whence she borrowed them. Do even old women talk philosophy here?)
In the following discussion, the protagonists agree that the tale of the old matrona was both pleasant and useful, and they praise the merits of allegorical fiction.
As in Apuleius, then, we have an old wife as the unlikely narrator of a long and more or less philosophical story, strikingly in contrast with the familiar topos of old wives’ tales. The parallels in narrative setting are such that Eugenius’ question about the origin of the old wife’s tale in Nova Solyma might even be read as an allusion to Apuleius’ model. In any case, it can be argued that Gott adopted Apuleius’ old woman narrator as an emblem of a hitherto rather unphilosophical genre. Morrish (2005, 296–297) concludes her piece on Gott’s old woman narrator with the suggestion that the latter is defended because she mirrors the author’s poetics and his upgrading of the novelistic genre. I have argued for a similar mirror function of the old woman narrator in Apuleius, where this is, in principle, obvious from the parallel of her introduction of Cupid and Psyche with the first words of the prologue speaker. Granted, Apuleius is different from Gott in that he does not supply us with explicit discussions about philosophical elements, and in that he mischievously emphasizes the ugly appearance of his old woman narrator. However, this is a difference in literary history and personal style rather than poetics. Gott is an elegant but comparatively straightforward writer. He stands in the tradition of theoretical novels such as Thomas More’s Utopia, in which the point is to make things explicit. Apuleius wields his pen exuberantly and punningly wherever the genre allows him to (compare, for instance, his rhetorical works). He works on the basis of the Milesian Tales and the Greek Metamorphoseis, his model for the ass story. The limits set by this material did not favor a philosophical approach, but thanks to his irrepressible humor Apuleius managed to bring it even to the “Milesian” world in which he was operating, and play the role of a “philosophizing ass” (Met. 10.33 asinus philosophans).
1 The Latin text of the Metamorphoses is from Helm 1955; the now standard paragraph numbers, missing in Helm, are added according to the edition of Robertson and Vallette 1940–1945; the English translation—sometimes modified—comes from Hanson 1989.
2 Cf., for example Helm 1959 in the preface to his edition of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and rhetorical works, found in the volume containing the Florida, vii: inepte turpissimae anui et latronum ancillae eam [sc. fabulam] tribuit (“he ineptly assigned this story to a most disgraceful old woman and slave of robbers”; Norwood 1956, 8: “It [sc. Cupid and Psyche] is told in a robbers’ den by a filthy old woman: one would expect a narrative about common folk uttered in colloquial language. Instead, the author, with a lordly disregard for verisimilitude, has lavished on the lines all the richness of his thought, all the splendour of his Latin.” Walsh 1970, 190: “… rather incongruously allotting its telling to the aged crone deputed to the task of bandits’ housekeeper”; May 2006, 251: “It is strange that Apuleius’ old woman is educated enough, despite her humble employment by the robbers, to narrate the sophisticated tale of Cupid and Psyche to the captured girl.”
3 Iambl. VP 23.105: γελοι̑α ἂν καὶ γραώδη δόξειε τοι̑ς ἐντυγχάνουσι τὰ λεγόμενα, λήρου μεστὰ καὶ ἀδολεσχίας (“to those who by chance happen to hear them, these words may seem ridiculous and old wives’ tales, full of nonsense and prattle”); ibid. 32.227: τὰ τοιαυ̑τα σύμβολα, ἅπερ ψιλῃ̑ μὲν τῃ̑ φράσει γραώδεσιν ὑποθήκαις ἔοικε, διαπτυσσόμενα δὲ θαυμαστήν τινα καὶ σεμνὴν ὠφέλειαν παρέχεται τοι̑ς μεταλαβου̑σι (“such symbols seem like old wives’ advice when you just look at the bare words, but when they are interpreted they turn out to be of amazing and solemn use”).
4 Harrison 1998, 57–8; 2000, 225; the idea was first touched upon in a philosophical reading by Thibau 1965, 110; also see Krabbe 2003, 24–34; an association of Cupid and Psyche and Diotima’s speech can be found as early as the English translation of Cupid and Psyche by Taylor 1795.
5 The vice “curiosity” notoriously links Psyche with Lucius and sets up the whole drama of Cupid and Psyche because it makes Psyche violate Cupid’s order never to expose him to light and to look at him; her transgression leads to the tragic separation from Cupid and a string of trials and tribulations.
6 Aristides’ Milesiaca was known as entertaining and erotic (cf., e.g. Ov. Tr. 2.413–414 and 443–444; Plut., Crass. 32.3), but certainly not as philosophical. Among the other strains of the ancient novel known to us and predating Apuleius, only Antonius Diogenes’ fantastic travel romance The Incredible Things beyond Thule (early second century AD?) may have contained a committed element of (here Pythagorean) philosophy; cf., e.g. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 112–14, for a brief survey of the issue.
7 Gott 1648, 24–42; a separate edition of this tale is provided by Morrish 2005, 298–310. My quotations and the references to line numbers are from this edition.
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