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by Apuleius,
translated by E. J. Kenney
© 1998 by E. J. Kenney
[American-Buddha
Librarian's Note: You're an ass if you read this book with
anything but scorn for the rampant sadism, misogyny, pornography,
homosexuality and superstitious ideas presented herein under the guide
of "amusing gossip." This is terrorism in literature, a story of female
sacrifice and hell on earth made into a "classic." You want to know
what magic is? It's the "art" of making women into witches, and the
world into a charnel ground.]
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"At that moment, I remember, I saw the earth opening and the
depths of Hell, and Cerberus hungering for me; and I
realized that it wasn't in pity that dear old Meroe had
spared my life, but in a spirit of sadism, saving me for the
cross."
***
"There was nothing I looked at in the city that I didn't
believe to be other than what it was: I imagined that
everything everywhere had been changed by some infernal
spell into a different shape -- I thought the very stones I
stumbled against must be petrified human beings. I thought
the birds I heard singing and the trees growing around the
city walls had acquired their feathers and leaves in the
same way, and I thought the fountains were liquefied human
bodies. I expected statues and pictures to start walking,
walls to speak, oxen and other cattle to utter prophecies,
and oracles to issue suddenly from the very sky or from the
bright sun."
***
"While they were voraciously dispatching everything in sight
they started to deliberate about our punishment and their
revenge. As usual in such an unruly crowd there was lively
disagreement. One wanted the girl to be burned alive,
another said she should be thrown to the beasts, a third
thought she should be crucified, and a fourth was all for
torturing her to death; the one point on which they were
unanimous was that die she must. Then, when the hubbub had
died down, one quietly took up the running. 'It is
repugnant,' he said, 'both to our principles as
professionals and our humanity as individuals, not to
mention my own ideas of moderation, to allow you to punish
this crime more savagely than it merits. Rather than
invoking the beasts or the cross or fire or torture, or even
giving her a quick death, if you will be guided by me you
will grant the girl her life -- but in the form that she
deserves. You won't, I'm sure, have forgotten what you've
already decided to do with that bone-idle ass that does
nothing but eat; deceitful too, shamming lame and aiding and
abetting the girl's escape. My proposal therefore is that
tomorrow we slaughter him, remove his insides, and sew the
girl up in his belly naked -- since he prefers her company
to ours -- with just her head showing and the rest of her
hugged tight in his bestial embrace. Then we'll leave this
dainty dish of stuffed donkey on some rocky crag to cook in
the heat of the sun. In that way both of them will undergo
all the punishments to which you have so justly sentenced
them. The ass will die as he richly deserves; the girl will
be torn by beasts when the worms gnaw her, she will be
roasted when the blazing sun scorches the ass's belly, and
she will be gibbeted when the dogs and vultures drag out her
entrails. And think of all her other sufferings and
torments: to dwell alive in the belly of a dead animal, to
suffocate in an intolerable stench, to waste away and die of
prolonged fasting, and not even to have her hands free to
compass her own death.'"
***
"In the hall of my house I shall dedicate a picture of this
flight of ours. People will come to see it, and the artless
story of 'The Princess who escaped from Captivity on the
back of an Ass' will be told around the world and
immortalized in the pages of the learned. You too will join
the catalogue of the Wonders of Old, and your true example
will lead us to believe that Phrixus really did make his
crossing on the ram, that Arion rode the dolphin, and that
Europa perched on the bull."
-- "The Golden Ass," by Apeleius |
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"The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of
Yahveh reversed; for Satan is not a black god, but the
negation of God. The Devil is the personification of Atheism
or Idolatry.
For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force,
created for good, but which may serve for evil. It is the
instrument of Liberty or Free Will. They represent this
Force, which presides over the physical generation, under
the mythologic and horned form of the God PAN; thence came
the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpent,
and the Light-bearer or Phosphor, of which the poets have
made the false Lucifer of the legend.
Gold, to the eyes of the Initiates, is Light condensed. They
style the sacred numbers of the Kabalah "golden numbers,"
and the moral teachings of Pythagoras his "golden verses."
For the same reason, a mysterious book of Apuleius, in which
an ass figures largely, was called "The Golden Ass."
The Pagans accused the Christians of worshipping an ass, and
they did not invent this reproach, but it came from the
Samaritan Jews, who, figuring the data of the Kabalah in
regard to the Divinity by Egyptian symbols, also represented
the Intelligence by the figure of the Magical Star adored
under the name of Remphan, Science under the emblem of
Anubis, whose name they changed to Nibbas, and the vulgar
faith or credulity under the figure of Thartac, a god
represented with a book, a cloak, and the head of an ass.
According to the Samaritan Doctors, Christianity was the
reign of Thartac, blind Faith and vulgar credulity erected
into a universal oracle, and preferred to Intelligence and
Science.
"Morals and Dogma," by Albert
Pike |
Female Sacrifice, by Tara
Carreon
The Tantric Female Sacrifice, by Victor and
Victoria Trimondi
Marquis de Sade: His Life and
Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch
Skull & Bones Table of Contents
The Book of the Dead and Elysian
Fields
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
I'm The Only One That Can Show the Real
Corinthian!, by Tara Carreon
Cappadocia, by Turhan Can
The Republic, by Plato
Harmony of the Worlds, by Carl Sagan
Satyricon -- Illustrated Screenplay &
Screencap Gallery, directed by Federico Fellini
Seven (7) Faces of Dr. Lao --
Illustrated Screenplay & Screencap Gallery, directed by George Pal
On the Nature of the Universe, by
Lucretius
Lucretius, Sage of the First
Millennium, by Charles Carreon
Morals and Dogma, by Albert Pike
Temptations of Dr. Antonio --
Illustrated Screenplay & Screencap Gallery, directed by Federico
Fellini
Table of Contents:
The Golden Ass or
Metamorphoses
APULEIUS was born about AD 125 in
Madaura or Madauros (modern Mdaurusch), a Roman colony in the North
African province of Numidia. His father, from whom he inherited a
substantial fortune, was one of the two chief magistrates (duouiri) of
the city. For his education Apuleius was sent first to Carthage, the
capital of Roman North Africa, and then to Athens. During his time abroad
he traveled widely, spending some time in Rome, where he practised as a
pleader in the courts. While detained by illness on his way home at Oea in
Tripoli, he met and married the wealthy widow Pudentilla. This was at the
instance of one of her sons, whom he had known at Rome; but other members
of her family objected and prosecuted Apuleius on various charges,
principally that of winning Pudentilla's affections by magic. Their
accusations were brilliantly and it would seem successfully rebutted by Apuleius in his Apology, delivered in or shortly, before AD 160. He
appears to have spent the rest of his life in Carthage, where he became a
notable public figure, holding the chief priesthood of the province and
honoured with a statue. His contemporary reputation rested on his
neo-Platonic philosophical writings, of which the most important that
survive are On the God of Socrates (De deo Socratis) and On Plato and His
Doctrine (De Platone et eius dogmate), and on his oratory, of which we
have excerpted specimens in his Florida. The modern world knows him best
as the author of the great serio-comic novel The Golden Ass or
Transformations (Metamorphoses), which he is generally thought to have
written after his return to Carthage. He probably died about AD 180.
E. J. KENNEY is Emeritus Kennedy
Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. He was born in 1924 and
was educated at Christ's Hospital and Trinity College, Cambridge, of which
he was Scholar and Fellow. In the Second World War he served in the Royal
Signals in the United Kingdom and India, being commissioned in 1944.
From 1953 to 1991 he was a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, where at
various times he held the offices of Director of Studies in Classics,
Senior Tutor, Librarian and Domestic Bursar. His publications include a
critical edition of Ovid's amatory works (1961; second edition, 1995) and
editions with commentary of Lucretius' De rerum natura III (1971), Apuleius'
Cupid and Psyche (1990) and Ovid's Heroides XVI-XXI (1996);
and he is currently preparing a commentary on Books VII-IX of Ovid's
Metamorphoses.
In 1968 he was Sather Professor of Classical Literature at the University
of California at Berkeley; his lectures were published in 1974 as The Classical Text (Italian translation, 1995). He is a Fellow of the
British Academy and a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
Acknowledgements
For various advice and
information generously given I am indebted to Dr James Carleton Paget, Dr
Gillian Clark, Professor John Crook and Dr Emily Gowers.
My most fundamental debt,
however, is a very old one, to the framers of the Cambridge Classical Tripos as it was in 1946-8. In those days Part I had no syllabus of
prescribed texts, and its unstructured character encouraged the discursive
exploration of Greek and Latin literature. Unprompted, I then first read
The Golden Ass, as its author intended, for pleasure; a pleasure
which, half a century later, it has been a delight to renew, and which I
hope this translation may help a new generation of readers to share.
Abbreviations
OCD S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth
(eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn. (Oxford, 1996).
OLD P. G. W. Glare (ed.),
Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1982).
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