Reading Guide 6.Apuleius
and the Isis Cult (Reading for Thursday, Feb. 21, 2001)
Reading
Beard, North and Price pp. 260-312
Lane
and MacMullen 5.5 (pp. 72-3); 7.8 (pp. 84-103)
When we think of the novel as a genre of literature, we may be inclined to believe it was an invention of the contemporary world or at best of 17th C Europe.It may surprise us then to learn that, as with so many things, the novel existed already in the ancient world.A number of ancient novels are extant and we are going to read from one of those today.Our novel was written by Apuleius (AD c. 125 - c. 170), a leader of the provincial bourgeois aristocracy in Africa.Apuleius was a brilliant lawyer and traveling orator who was deeply interested in philosophy, magic and religion.We are reading his most famous work, a story with the title of Metamorphoses (“Changes”, both physical and mental).It retells, with great elaboration, a tale common in the ancient world and commonly referred to as The Golden Ass.Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has thus also been given this title since antiquity.
The Metamorphoses tells of a young man named Lucius who falls in love with the slave girl of a sorceress.When Lucius witnesses the sorceress transform herself into a bird, he convinces his slave-lover to obtain for him the potion she used.Unfortunately, she gets the wrong potion and, after he uses it, Lucius finds himself transformed (metamorphosed) into an ass.The novel tells of his wanderings as an ass and relates the various misadventures he encounters in this degraded form.It combines adventure, magic, sex and violence with a deep interest in religion, particularly Neoplatonic mysticism and Isis cult.Today we are reading the last chapter of this novel, the story of how Lucius was transformed back into his human state through the aid of the goddess Isis.We thus get a full initiation into Isiac worship and even the Isiac mysteries, as much of them as our author feels comfortable revealing to us.
Questions
1. Religions in the Roman world are often referred to as “syncretistic”:that is, they combine elements and gods from various polytheist cults into a single religious system.How does the Isis cult reflect this commingling of various Mediterranean religions?How do other gods serve Isis and her cult?
2. Epiphany is the manifest appearance of a god or goddess to a human.How does the goddess Isis appear to Lucius?How does our author conceive of the goddess?
3. How does the goddess treat Lucius?In exchange for what does she help him?What does she promise him?
4. What sort of people would the Isis cult have attracted?What does being an Isis priest entail?
5. How does the worship of Isis work?What is her procession like?What are her mysteries like?How would you compare her worship with other mystery cults we have encountered?
6. What distinguishes an initiate from an uninitiate?What does the initiate get out of her/his experience?How does s/he feel?What role does secrecy play in the initiation?