Tag Archives: The Golden Ass

Cupid and Psyche

19 January 2025 By in Art, History, Novel, Philosophy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Cupid and Psyche is the timeless tale of love’s conquering power, overcoming all obstacles in its path. It symbolizes the union of the soul with desire, transcending to a love that goes beyond the physical and the mortal.

The only extant writings of Cupid and Psyche is known from Apuleius’s romance “The Golden Ass,” composed in the 2nd century AD. The tale is likely to have been known as early as the 4th century BC, and Cupid is known as far back as the 8th century BC from Hesiod’s “Theogony.”

In the myth of Cupid and Psyche, with Cupid’s mother Venus as the antagonist, the characters metaphorically act out various emotions and experiences, both mortal and immortal.

Psyche,a mortal more beautiful than the goddess Venus, represents the soul (in Greek, Psyche means soul) and its journey from the tragedy of human life to the transformative power of love for everlasting spiritual fulfillment.

Cupid, tasked by his mother Venus to destroy Psyche for possessing beauty beyond that of a mortal, instead falls in love with her. Cupid embodies love and desire, and the emotional power and unpredictability that it brings to a relationship.

Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, represents jealousy and the obstacles that Psyche battles to realize the completion of her quest for emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Her trials for Psyche reflect the ever-present barriers to true love.

Cupid and Psyche is a story of transcendent transformation over the physical to the triumph of love and the immortality of the soul.

Trivia: In the painting by Gerard, the butterfly floating above Psyche’s head represents, rather redundantly, the soul.

Source: The Golden Ass by Apuleius. The Evolution of Cupid, Erlang Shen, Fatelines, 2022. Graphic: Cupid and Psyche by Francois Gerard, 1798, The Louvre, Public Domain.

Sticks His Nose In

12 January 2025 By in Novel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Lucius, the protagonist of the 2nd century AD Latin novel The Golden Ass, cannot suppress his curiosity nor stop meddling in the dark arts of spells and magic. Attempting to flee from the troubles resulting from his inquisitiveness, he accidentally uses the wrong ointment and turns himself into a donkey rather than a bird. This error leads to a series of comical and mostly bawdy misadventures as a beast of burden, who is thoroughly abused and misused due to his intemperate habit of sticking his nose in.

The story, written by the Roman author and philosopher Lucius Apuleius, who hailed from a Roman province in what is now modern-day Algeria, is characterized as a romance—not in the modern Harlequin sense, but in the Greek meaning of a Milesian tale. A Milesian tale consists of a series of adventurous stories, usually short, humorous, and erotic—a romantic narrative for the ancients.

The translator of The Golden Ass, Joel C. Relihan, takes the meaning of a Milesian romance a step further into what Northrop Frye described as secular scripture. Relihan states that the romance in The Golden Ass is: “A survivor’s tale of descent into a nightmare world of loss and eventual recovery of identity.”

Lucius loses his identity, becoming ludicrous and expendable. But in the end, he prays for salvation, which he receives from the goddess Isis. Ultimately, he is initiated into the secrets of the gods. His transformation from misfortune to enlightenment and spiritual fulfillment is, in the end, the ultimate story of a lived life—a maturing into old age with illuminated and learned experience leading to peace and grace.

Trivia: The Golden Ass has been known by various names, including the author’s title, Metamorphoses, Asinus Aureus (a Latin name which translates to “Golden Ass”), The Metamorphosis of Lucius, and the modern title: The Golden Ass or A Book of Changes.

Source: The Golden Ass by Apuleius. Oxford Bibliographies. Graphic: The Golden Ass Book Cover, Hackett Publishing, 2007.