The Charite Episode and Lucius’ Failure
in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

Jean Alvares (Montclair State University)

The narrative of Lucius’ life in Apuleius Metamorphoses details a young person’s trials, failures, and struggles before he finds his proper station. I consider one insufficiently  appreciated  feature of this journey — the inability of Lucius the ass to rescue Charite. Lucius is tested and found wanting at various points in the narrative, failures often linked  a slighting of philosophy; here I argue that his inadequate response to the Cupid and Psyche narrative reveals inadequacies which make him unfit to be Charite’s rescuer and  pitch him into even more horrid experiences.

The Metamorphoses’ central narrative details the comic, salacious exotic and gruesome adventures of a young man who is tested, found wanting, forced to experience the consequences of his appetites and the world’s horrors, to be finally saved  by Isis and given a new, productive role at the centers of spiritual power (Isis worship) and political power (Rome). One of Lucius’ faults is slighting philosophy. Lucius is descended from Plutarch and Sextus and educated at Athens, and should know and do better; instead he remembers the stoa poecile as the site for an amazing magic trick. The slippery (lubrica vallium) decent toward Hypatia contains an initial test in his reaction to Aristomenes’ witchcraft tale. Its  Socrates in thrall to debased love and the arch reference to the Phaedran setting plane constitute a mockery of philosophy illustrative of Lucius’ mindset, which dismisses philosophy’s moral power, and prefers magic’s effective force. Note the debate concerns the possibility of magic, not its morality. And before hearing the tale, Lucius gets off and unbridles his white horse, who recalls the noble steed of the Phaedrus; Candidus symbolizes Lucius’ higher potential which accompanies him until he fails one too many times. There are several such failures, such as – failure to grasp moral Actaeon’s statue, of Thltypherons story, of the aftermath of the encounter with the wineskins. Lucius’ carnal romp with Fotis, ‘Miss Light” plays off the Phaedrean notion of a proper Eros which brings philosophic progress. Eventually Lucius is transformed into an ass, the embodiment of his grossness, which becomes more profound. The tale of  Cupid and Psyche  is a grand philosophic parable about the nature of true love, but the ass-Lucius reacts to it as merely a pretty fable.  The debauched crone who tells it, instead of an august Diotima, also embodies Lucius’ ignorant attitude.  Lucius’ lack of appreciation further indicates his shortcoming as a proper erotic hero, a role he assumes in his rescue of Charite. The grand terms by which Charite promises to celebrate Lucius’ rescue suggests she sees this rescue in the light of this grand fable, in which true love can be disguised and the natural world helps true lovers – while Lucius tries to snatch kisses.  Lucius literally is trying to rescue love (Charite), but fails, notably at a crossroads. In other Greek novels, especially Chariton’s and Achilles Tatius’, the hero, after failures revealing his insufficiency as a romantic hero, undergoes trials which raise him to the proper standard. Here Lucius parts company with Candidus, his horse and symbol of his higher self, and begins a series of adventures and hears tales notably darker than those which have gone before. This segment culminates in Lucius enjoying being a rich man’s performing ass, which leads to the arena, a place featured prominently in later Christian salvation narratives.  Lucius’ reaction to the philosophic meaning behind tableau of the judgment of Paris, which is tied to the issue of false appearances and contains a denunciation of the false condemnation of Socrates, signals that Lucius now has sufficiently reformed to be saved, as he shortly is, by Isis. And soon, after is restoration, Candidus  returns to him.