THE MEDIEVAL ASS:
RE-EVALUATING THE RECEPTION OF APULEIUS IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

ROBERT H. F. CARVER

What do we know for certain about the medieval transmission and reception of The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses of Apuleius? Our firmest evidence is codicological. The traditional stemma (fig. 1) shows some key moments, beginning, in the 1050s–80s, with the creation, at Monte Cassino, of F (Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana 68.2), a manuscript containing the Metamorphoses, the Apologia, and the Florida.¹

Figure 1. Traditional stemma.

The ink started to flake quite quickly from the flesh side of the parchment, and, around 1200, a copy of F was made which we call ϕ (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Laurentianus 29.2). Towards the end of the eleventh century (before 1086), Guaiferius, monk of Monte Cassino, makes undeniable use of the Florida, producing an almost cento-like effect. He also seems to extract details from Lucius’ vision of Isis’ mantle in The Golden Ass (‘palla […] nodulis fimbriarum’, Apul. Met. 11.3), the ‘threads of the mantle’ which, despite being ‘surrounded by ashes’, have somehow remained ‘intact’ (‘palle fimbrie cineribus involute sed integre’).²

After Guaiferius and ϕ, however, the trail of Apuleian influence goes very cold indeed. One potential factor inhibiting the diffusion of manuscripts from Monte Cassino is the supposed difficulty of Beneventan (‘Lombardic’) script compared with Caroline minuscule. For a long time, it was believed that The Golden Ass only ‘escaped’ from the confines of Monte Cassino sometime around 1350, when Boccaccio or Zanobi da Strada ‘rescued’ the text. That myth has been exposed by scholarly analysis, but speculation about the availability of The Golden Ass has been hampered by a continuing fetishization of the roles of Monte Cassino and F. The logic, even of the traditional stemmatic model established by D. S. Robertson, demands that at least one copy of F (the lost ancestor of Class-1 manuscripts) had been made before folio 160 of F suffered a rent (that is to say, between 1050 or 1080 and the copying of ϕ around 1200).³

In recent decades, the date for diffusion outside Monte Cassino has been pushed back to the 1330s (Boccaccio’s earliest works), the 1320s (Benzo of Alessandria), and (as I argued in 2007) the late 1310s (if we accept the internal dating of 1319 for Albertino Mussato’s Latin poem describing a metamorphic journey).⁴ The recent redating of A1 (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana N180 sup.) from the early fourteenth century⁵ to the late thirteenth century⁶ takes us into very interesting territory, but it still leaves a significant gap in the fossil record.

There have been various attempts to fill this gap, but none of them has been entirely convincing.⁷ The most compelling counter-evidence is the absence of a decisive mention of The Golden Ass in the places we would most expect to find it—monastic catalogues, medieval encyclopaedias, and learned commentaries, particularly relating to that notable exploiter and imitator of Apuleius, Martianus Capella.

If we can fill that gap, or find one or more of the ‘missing links’, it will have profound, indeed, radical implications for our understanding of the history of Western literature. The mid-twelfth to the mid-thirteenth century is a seminal epoch for imaginative fiction: it sees the revival of classical modes, epic, and comedy; the emergence of new modes, such as medieval romance; the Celtic or ‘Breton’ lai with its fabulous (or ‘fairy-tale’-like) content; and the fabliaux, those bawdy verse narratives which feed directly into the comic achievement of Boccaccio and Chaucer, while also exhibiting (whether as a result of convergent evolution or actual filiation) some uncanny affinities with Milesian tales. If The Golden Ass was available to readers and writers at this time, it may have played a significant part in this efflorescence of fiction.

Our focus in this preliminary re-evaluation of the medieval reception of The Golden Ass will be two Latin poems whose protagonists share some significant features with Apuleius’ hero-narrator: they both manifest a mind that is human (or nearly human) in a body that (for all or most of the work) is fully asinine.

Case-study 1: ‘Speculum stultorum’

The Speculum stultorum (‘The mirror of fools’) is a Latin satirical poem of 3,900 lines, composed (perhaps between November 1179 and March 1180) by an English monk, ‘Nigellus’, variously identified as Nigel de Longchamps, Nigel Wireker (or Whiteacre), or Nigel of Canterbury.⁸ In the introduction to his English translation, Graydon W. Regenos observes, in passing, that ‘The means by which Nigellus wishes to convey his message is imitative of the method used by Apuleius in his Golden Ass’. However, the claim is neither substantiated nor developed.⁹

The Speculum owes an obvious debt to Avianus’ fable of ‘The Ass in the Lion’s Skin’.¹⁰ But Apuleius’ Lucius and Nigel’s Burnellus share many characteristics, most notably a love of novelty (‘nouitas’) and forbidden things, and a desire for transformation. While Lucius travels to Thessaly in search of magic, Galienus sends Burnellus to Salerno (a centre of medical learning, and strongly connected with Monte Cassino) to purchase the requisites for a longer tail (619–20; R 51).¹¹ Galienus makes explicit the link between medicine and the divine: ‘Sed deus est medicus nomine reque simul’ (‘God is doctor both in name and deed’ (128; R 33). The tale (‘narratio’) that Galienus tells about Brunetta and Bicornis in order ‘to turn the ass away from his foolishness’ (205–594; R 36–50) has a structural affinity with Byrrhena’s attempts to save Lucius from the consequences of his misplaced curiositas (Apul. Met. 2.5). And, like Apuleius, Nigel makes use of intercalated tales as a way of shortening a journey:

Burnellus’ inability to learn anything in Paris besides ‘hy ha’ might be compared with Lucius’ inability to say anything but ‘O’:

There is also a general similarity between the ‘monstrous sharp-toothed hounds’ (‘immensos mordaci dente molossos’) that Fromundus (one of the White Monks) sets on Burnellus as he crosses the fields (833; R 61), and the ‘fierce, monstrous farm- and sheep-dogs’ (‘canes pastoricios villaticos feros atque immanes’) that attack the boundary markers at the instigation of Apuleius’ bloodthirsty landowner (Apul. Met. 9.36). 571–72; R 86),¹⁵ Burnellus wishes that he had never ‘scaled the Alps’ to visit ‘the Paris schools’:

There are also some tantalizing moments where one might suspect that Nigel is using the geography of southern Italy (‘Apulia’) to play on the ‘Apuleian’ characteristics of his protagonist (a foolish ass with a misplaced yearning for philosophy and transformation).¹⁴ Reproaching himself for the ‘follies’ of his ‘wasted youth’ (‘ineptae’ / ‘Damna juventutis’,

A safe default position might be that The Golden Ass was known about, but not actually known first-hand at this point; desired but not possessed. Yet some features of the poem may make us question that assumption:

Of all the metaphors available to him to describe the placing of a bishop’s mitre on the head of a donkey, why does Nigel choose ‘gilding’ (‘deaurabit’)? The immediate answer might be that ‘gilding’ conveys effectively the gap between semblance and substance—between the superficial pomp of office and actual ecclesiastical impotence.¹⁷ But if we loosen the shackles of that negative (‘nulla’) and relax the ‘bit’ of that future simple (‘deaurabit’), Burnellus becomes, if only for the most fleeting of moments, a ‘golden ass’, at least from the neck up. This is an illusion, of course—the thinnest layer of gold leaf—but it may also, just possibly, be an allusion to the title of Apuleius’ work (De asino aureo) as transmitted by Augustine (De civitate dei 18.18).

We might consider, finally, Burnellus’ escape from the blows of his master, Bernardus, and the brief idyll that he enjoys in his flight:

The debt to Ovid’s evocation of an erotic siesta in Amores 1.5.1–2 is obvious:

But there are also some interesting parallels with Lucius’ flight from Corinth at the end of Book 10, and the moment of peace that he experiences as he stretches out beside the water before his vision of the goddess Isis (beginning at Apul. Met. 11.1). We note the elements in common: a donkey escaping from a town (2875–76: ‘Nuper cum profugus fugerem festinus ab urbe, / Bernardum fugiens’); the hero’s concern about being attacked by his master’s animals (the wild beasts expected to devour the condemned woman while she mates with Lucius in the spectacle organized by Thiasus, see Apul. Met. 10.23, 10.29, and 10.34; the dogs accompanying Bernardus in his hunt for the fugitive Burnellus, 2879–80); a lying down to rest in a safe place (compare Apul. Met. 10.35, ‘ lassum corpus porrectus refoveo’, with Nigel’s ‘lassus […] fovere’, 2891-92); a vision, theophany, or epiphany of some kind.

The medieval convention would be for Burnellus to fall asleep at this point and have a dream vision—which is exactly the convention that Chaucer follows when he adapts the avian epiphany in his Parlement of foules. But Burnellus’ vision of speaking birds occurs while he is awake, and it supplants the ‘noteworthy new poems’ (‘nova carmina digna nota’, 2898) of his own composition that he was intending to inscribe on parchment (‘pellis ovina’) with the ‘slender iron-tipped pen’ that he manages (despite his asinine form) to ‘hold’ in his ‘hand’ (‘manus […] teneret’). At the end of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ (Apul. Met. 6.25), the asinine Lucius laments that he does not have to hand ‘tablets and stilus’ (‘pugillares et stylum’) with which to ‘note down such a pretty little tale’ (‘tam bellam fabellam praenotarem’).

There is, of course, a huge amount in the Speculum that is not Apuleian at all, and there is no single detail that proves, decisively, direct acquaintance with a text of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. But the number of correspondences that we have detected allows us, at the very least, to conclude that the poem emerges out of—and, in turn, functions within—a cultural milieu and a system of signification in which the idea of a ‘golden ass’ (a noted philosopher turned into a donkey) means something.

Case-study 2: Anon., ‘Asinarius’

Our second case-study, the anonymous Asinarius, is a much shorter work—a mere 404 lines (also in elegiac couplets)—composed, it is generally thought, around 1200, and usually associated with Frederick II (1194–1250) of the House of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily. The poem circulated widely in manuscript in France, Germany, and Italy (fourteen copies survive).¹⁹ In his Registrum multorum auctorum (c. 1280), Hugo von Trimberg numbers it among the Latin ‘comedies’ popular ‘within the schools’ (‘in scholis’).²⁰ However, the basic plot is best known today because the Brothers Grimm used the Latin work as the sole basis for their concocted folk-tale, Das Eselein (‘The little donkey’), first published in 1815.²¹

In this heavily pared-down folk-tale version, the plot may look barely Apuleian at all: instead of a man turning into a donkey for twelve months (as happens to Lucius), a donkey turns into a man on a nightly basis, and is only forced to stay permanently in human form by the Western King’s expedient of burning the donkey’s hide that his son-in-law has been taking off and then putting back on at dawn. The same device of asinine hide-burning is found in a Sanskrit tale (of doubtful date and origin) which supplies at least an analogue to the Western plot.²²

In 1983, the poem’s most recent editor, Simona Rizzardi, noted certain superficial resemblances between the Asinarius and the story of Cupid and Psyche.²³ But even six years after the appearance of Detlev Fehling’s iconoclastic monograph,²⁴ Rizzardi (still under the influence of the taxonomic tradition exemplified by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson)²⁵ favoured the ‘universalist’ explanation of folk-tale studies: the Mysterious or Monster Husband; the curious onlooker; the flight (or attempted flight) of the husband after the violation of a taboo. That folkloric bias explains her decision to choose the reading of fabula over pagina in the second line of the poem (a tendency followed by Jan Ziolkowski— fabula better supports his ‘Once upon a time’ translation of the opening).²⁶

Inevitably, perhaps, I favour pagina: too much emphasis on the supposedly ‘folk-tale’ or ‘fairy tale’ elements obscures the fundamentally ludic nature of the text. The Asinarius seems to me to be, above all, the work of a learned mind at play: it is funny, titillating, allusive, and highly performative. But if we choose to gaze intently, with Apuleian eyes, on the medieval Latin poem, we will also find, I believe, a pattern of close correspondence, in theme and function, sequence and structure, not merely with some version of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, but with the novel more widely. My hypothesis (and, indeed, my conclusion) is that the Asinarius is the work of a poet with an intimate knowledge of the totality of The Golden Ass, and a sophisticated understanding of how the parts of Apuleius’ work interconnect. The poet chooses to collapse the diegetic shells that separate those parts: he focuses on the embedded tale, ‘Cupid and Psyche’, which forms Apuleius’ centre-piece (Met. 4–6), but he maps onto it the asinine narrative as a whole (the cornice), recasting the secret husband Cupid (who has been depicted by the oracle, and by Psyche’s jealous sisters, as a serpent-monster) as a Lucius-like donkey-monster—a handsome young man hidden within the hide of a hideous beast. (The asellus is also a Psyche figure when he wants to return home.) In turn, the Western King’s daughter functions mainly as Psyche, but also, in part, as Photis (the slave-girl who initiates Lucius into the art of love-making); as the libidinous matrona of Corinth (the Pasiphae-figure of Book Ten); and, finally, as Isis (the salvific deity of Book Eleven who engineers his return to human form).²⁷

Is such an argumentative kite even worth flying? There is no objection in purely theoretical terms. The date usually assigned to the poem (c. 1200) coincides precisely with the production, at Monte Cassino, of ϕ, an apograph (or exact copy) of F, and our second-oldest extant manuscript of the Metamorphoses, the Apologia, and the Florida. The Hohenstaufen are well placed to facilitate the diffusion of such texts, given the long and intimate association of the German royal houses with the Abbey.²⁸ And, as we have noted above, even before the copying of ϕ (c. 1200), at least one copy of F (the ancestor of Class-1 manuscripts) existed outside the confines of Monte Cassino.²⁹

and the ideal in The Golden Ass of Apuleius’, in The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel, eds M. Paschalis and S. Panayotakis (Groningen 2013) 243–74.

The opening of the poem is suggestive of Apuleian influence, but not decisive:

Compare Apul. Met. 4.28:

We notice some overlap (king, queen, unspecified city), but these elements are also found in Fulgentius’ Mitologiae (a work certainly known in the Middle Ages):

If we move to the two love-scenes near the end of the poem, we have more striking correspondences, particularly in the account of the wedding night of the ‘fearless little donkey’. Some of the lineaments of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ appear to have been changed in order to accommodate an asinine spouse, but the response of the new bride to ‘the noble body of a handsome man’ (311) echoes Apuleius’ passage (Met. 5.22), where the light of the lamp transforms the monstrous serpent of Psyche’s expectations into ‘the mildest and sweetest beast of all wild creatures’, Cupid himself. Moreover, the erotic details of the Asinarius are resonant of Apuleius’ accounts of Lucius’ lovemaking (as man and as donkey) with (respectively) Photis and the Corinthian matrona:

The detail of the mysterious husband leaving at dawn is common to Fulgentius and Apuleius:

But in the next two passages we see the king taking the taboo-violating part of Psyche,³⁸ by spying upon his son-in-law and daughter while they lie in bed, deep in post-coital sleep.³⁹

The king ‘perceives a handsome man reclining’ (‘Formosum […] accubitare’, picking up Psyche’s first view of the recumbent Cupid at Apul. Met. 5.22: ‘formosum deum formose cubantem’).⁴³ Like Psyche, the king burns the young man’s skin, although, in his case, the act of burning is intentional and complete. Both young men respond to the violation with immediate flight (‘fuga’ is the common term), and, in each case, the violator does his or her best to block that departure, although only the king succeeds:

Metamorphic modes

One obvious difference between the two works is the mode (and mechanism) of asinine– human transformation. The Asinarius poet sidesteps all of the standard medieval objections to actual human–animal metamorphosis⁴⁷ by having the queen simply give birth to a donkey:

In his ability to doff and don his asinine hide, the ‘little donkey’ serves as an inverted image of Avianus’ fifth fable. Lucius, in contrast, undergoes a full-body metamorphosis (inside and out)—at the beginning and at the end of the novel (Apul. Met. 11.13).⁴⁸ Apuleius gives the asinine metamorphosis the full Ovidian treatment, showing us the stages of elongation, contraction, hardening, softening, and so on. There is no question of an outer skin merely being shed. Yet, at certain points in the novel, at least at the level of metaphor, the asinine identity is seen as a garment that can be taken off. Isis enjoins Lucius at Apul. Met. 11.6: ‘pessimae mihique iam dudum detestabilis beluae istius corio te protinus exue’ (‘cast off at once the hide of that wretched beast which I have long detested’). And Lucius himself recounts at Apul. Met. 11.14: ‘Nam me cum primum nefasto tegmine despoliaverat asinus […]’ (‘For as soon as the ass had stripped me of his abominable coat […]’).⁴⁹

Putting poem and novel together, we could say that, instead of confirming the conventional wisdom of the Aesopic / Avianan apologue, the medieval poem realizes the potential of the Apuleian auctioneer’s mocking (indeed, multiply ironic) sales-pitch at Met. 8.25: ‘sed prorsus ut in asini corio modestum hominem inhabitare credas’ (‘You would really think that inside this ass’s hide dwelt a mild-mannered human being’). The poem mimics (and perhaps even mocks) standard medieval hermeneutics, particularly as applied to the apologue or fable— the notion that the fiction is merely a cortex, the bark, the shell, the outer casing that can be taken off and discarded, leaving behind the thing that actually matters, the nucleus or kernel of meaning.⁵⁰

The poet focuses, instead, on the normal (yet still ‘wonder-filled’) metamorphoses that can occur within (and between) human beings: physiological and pedagogical; textual as well as sexual (cf. Psyche’s change of sex at Apul. Met. 5.22: ‘sexum audacia mutatur’). Consider the young donkey’s encounter with a master harp-player whom he asks to teach him to play (57–66). In Apuleian terms, Music takes the place of Magic as the forbidden ‘art’ in which he wishes to meddle.⁵¹ The mimus or citharista attempts to dissuade him,⁵² invoking the conventional wisdom (mos) embodied in the fable of the Asinus ad Lyram (‘The Ass with the Lyre’) that donkeys can neither sing nor play:

The donkey, however, insists, and he quickly surpasses his teacher in the musical arts. Yet this successful musical metamorphosis leads immediately to a painful anagnorisis: while playing his harp and singing, the donkey sees his own reflection for the first time and is appalled. Having escaped the shackles of one verbal and mental construct, he is immediately caught by a second: convinced that the ‘golden’ baubles of monarchical office will never sit comfortably on a ‘little donkey’ (‘asellus’), he embarks on a ship which takes him to the western limits of the world, and an encounter with the king’s daughter:

We observe that the girl has recently undergone the natural transformations associated with puberty, but we might contrast her ‘fine’ pubic hairs (‘teneros […] pilos’) with Lucius’ body-hair ‘thickening into bristles’ (‘plane pili mei crassantur in setas’) as the first stage of his metamorphosis into a donkey at Met. 3.24.⁵⁴

Another gap in the poem’s narrative is the fact that the donkey only seems to gain (or discover) the ability to doff and don his asinine hide on the night of his wedding. This sexual initiation of an adolescent ass (asellus) will, in all senses of the word, ‘make a man’ of him. We might compare Photis’ initiation of Lucius into the erotic and necromantic mysteries (beginning with ‘heus tu, scolastice’ at Apul. Met. 2.10). There is a kind of chiasmus at work: in The Golden Ass (at least according to traditional moralizing readings), sex and then magic turn a man into an ass. In the Asinarius, music and then sex turn an ass into a man.

Laughter

The donkey is initially denied admission at the king’s gate (cf. Photis’ initial reluctance to admit Lucius to Milo’s house at Apul. Met. 1.22),⁵⁵ but he wins over the gatekeeper with his music:

Immediately before the unknown husband makes Psyche his wife in bed, she is entertained by a banquet and by invisible performers, a singer and a lyre-player (Apul. Met. 5.3: ‘Post opimas dapes quidam introcessit et cantavit invisus, et alius citharam pulsavit, quae videbatur nec ipsa’). We note that the asellus singing and playing so harmoniously outside the king’s gate is heard before he is seen by the guests at table.

No one in the poem seems to be shocked that a donkey can speak (talking animals fit easily within the conventions of medieval Beast Fable). What does amaze onlookers is the donkey’s ability to sing and to play the harp:

In terms of its position in the narrative sequence, and the intensity and extent of the laughter, this scene may put us in mind of the conclusion of the Risus Festival in Book Three, when Lucius pulls back the sheet that covers the bodies of the men he has ‘murdered’ only to see that they are merely inflated goat-skins:

In both cases, we note the tension between containment and release. But the contrast in function is quite marked: Apuleius’ Festival of Laughter traumatizes the still-human Lucius: it isolates him from the society of Hypata (Apul. Met. 3.10–11); makes him suspect the good faith of his host, Milo (3.7), his aunt, Byrrhena (3.12), and even his lover, Photis; and sets in motion the chain of events that will lead, quite quickly, to his metamorphosis into an ass (we notice that, as a consequence of this performance, he has already undergone a figurative— indeed, theatrical—transformation, into one of the stone ‘statues or columns’ of the theatre).⁵⁷

In the Asinarius, the laughter helps, instead, to integrate the donkey into his new society, and, in this respect, it is closer to the episode (or suite of episodes) in Book Ten that serves as an inverted image of the Risus Festival: the bakers’ astonishment when they spy upon the asinine Lucius as he feasts upon sweet-meats; the delight of their master, Thiasus; the desire kindled in the Corinthian matrona; the fate assigned to Lucius of being exhibited (once again!) in a theatre, but this time as a sexually performing mimus in a pantomime, the climax of which is to be the eating alive (by a second beast) of a woman condemned for murder. And, finally, Lucius’ escape from the theatre, his double vision of the goddess; his return to human form; and his decision to commit himself to the religious life, as a devotee first of Isis and then of Osiris.

The Baker Brothers

In the case of the bakers and Thiasus, we might note the double act of looking—first by the servants, then by the master. We will find the same pattern in Asinarius, where the servant (and then the king) spy on the donkey making love to the king’s daughter.

The close personal attention paid by Thiasus (‘the master of the house’) to Lucius’ dining arrangements is mirrored in the Asinarius, where the king goes to inordinate lengths to accommodate his asinine guest at table, even making him his daughter’s dining-companion or ‘messmate’ (the same word, ‘conviva’, is also used by Thiasus).⁵⁸ Thiasus’ freedman (‘libertus’) enrols Lucius in an intensive course of instruction:

The Asinarius poet goes one stage further, by enabling a donkey to serve food and wine to a human. And for his account of the wedding festivities, the poet turns, I suggest, not so much to the conclusion of ‘Cupid and Psyche’, as to the pantomime at the end of Book Ten, where Lucius the donkey is billed to star as a sexually performing mimus in a mock marriage. Not only is the whole city (‘polis’, 291) decked out for the Asinarius’ royal wedding so that it shines like heaven (‘polus’, 292), a huge swarm of mimus-performers (‘mimorum magna caterva’, 293) is called in, including a female mime-player who (perhaps in inverted mimicry of Lucius’ unnatural bipedalism as an ass dancing with ‘forefeet in the air’, ‘sublatis primoribus pedibus’, Met. 10.17), moves about on her hands.⁵⁹

Almost as soon as he enters the dining hall, the King asks the Little Donkey if he likes his daughter:

Once again, we may detect echoes of Psyche’s vision of Cupid at Apul. Met. 5.22:

We should not make extravagant claims for these correspondences: white necks and rosy cheeks are standard catalogue items in a blason, or exercise in effictio, and the parallels are suggestive rather than decisive. But the use of ‘caesaries’ (‘hair’) in both passages is note-worthy, especially in a sequence which includes notions of ‘iron-heartedness’ (‘ferreus’) and ‘iron’ being ‘hidden in the heart’ (‘ferrum quaerit abscondere, sed in suo pectore’).⁶⁰ So too is ‘contemplor’.⁶¹ We might note, etymologically, the connection with ‘templum’ (and hence with augury or divination); and the fact that the donkey’s erotic devotion to a beautiful young woman whose face seems to be made up, in part, of roses (‘lilia mixta rosis’), will lead, in due course, to his being able to shed his asinine hide.⁶²

These acts of domestic service function as a kind of sexual—and textual—foreplay: Ovid is the obvious source for ‘Singula quid memorem?’ (‘Why should I recall the individual details?’),⁶³ and this passage becomes the conduit linking (mutually pleasing) service at table (‘discumbendo’) to (mutually pleasing) service in bed (‘concumbendo’, 221).

The last two lines form an astonishing prolepsis. ‘Nupserit’ may be the key term—all of the actual sexual activity in the poem takes place within the legitimizing confines of wedlock— but the leaps are still shocking, especially given the fact that bestiality is involved.

When the Little Donkey (in spite of the limitless wealth offered to him) becomes homesick (just like Psyche at Met. 5.6–7), the king plays his final card:

What kind of father invites a donkey to have sex with his daughter? What kind of king asks the heir to his kingdom to marry an ass? The king’s generosity—his willingness to give his only child to a ‘foedus asellus’ (‘a foul little ass’)—only makes sense if he knows something that other people in the poem do not. He certainly seems to understand (in positive terms) the metamorphic power that sexual love can have, when he says that ‘If you reject this option, you will always be a little donkey’.

The donkey’s response hints at a soteriological dimension to the king’s offer: ‘as if awakening from a sleep’, the donkey recognizes the proposed union as a ‘porta salutis’, not merely a ‘door to well-being’ (as Ziolkowski puts it),⁶⁵ but a ‘gateway to salvation’:

The Asinarius poet is here transforming or repurposing the apologue. Nigel’s Speculum is consistently anti-metamorphic. It reinforces the message of Avianus’ fifth fable, ‘De asino pelle leonis induto’: if you start life as a donkey, whatever you do (whether you put on a lion’s skin, as in Avianus; or do your best to lengthen your tail, or to acquire learning or high position, as with Burnellus), ‘you will always’ (as the final line of Avianus’ fable puts it) ‘be a little ass’ (‘semper asellus eris’).

The daughter’s response to her father’s offer (287: ‘Non mea, sed patris fiat liberta voluntas’) may sound shockingly blasphemous in its echo of Christ’s Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:42: ‘dicens Pater si vis transfer calicem istum a me verumtamen non mea voluntas sed tua fiat’). Yet it also configures the king’s daughter as a sacrificial victim who, like Psyche (Apul. Met. 4.33–35), is willing to make a ‘monstrous’ marriage for the greater good.

We are dealing here with very complex webs of inter-textual play. But the king’s motivation is still one of the many gaping holes in the plot that I would see as being intentional lacunae—gaps that should, or can, be filled by readers, depending on the extent of their learning. The poet will expect most, if not all, of his audience to pick up the allusions to the Aesopic fables and admire his bold inversions of them. A far smaller percentage of readers will have heard, thanks to Saint Augustine (C. D., 18.18), of Apuleius the Platonic Philosopher’s account of being turned into a donkey. Such readers may even have encountered a version of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ in Fulgentius or the first of the so-called ‘Vatican Mythographers’,⁶⁷ and, thus, albeit at second or third hand, they may have been able to spot some of the Apuleian links made in the poem.

However, it is also possible (this is our boldest claim) that the poet is working within an elite circle, a network (perhaps tiny) of people who have (or, at some point, have had) direct access to The Golden Ass. The evidence does not create a clear picture of the poet composing his poem with a manuscript of Apuleius lying open on his desk (in such a scenario, even after taking metrical issues into account, one might expect more mosaic or cento-like effects, with specifically Apuleian diction as in Guaiferius). But it does, I think, suggest that the poet has absorbed and digested Apuleius’ work, and that he is redeploying its constituent parts, for his own pleasure, and for that of an esoteric readership.

‘Spurcum additamentum’

If our hypothesis is correct, the Asinarius may provide a context for the composition and circulation of the so-called Spurcum additamentum, the obscene interpolation (literally, ‘dirty addition’) found in some manuscripts alongside Apuleius’ account of the asinine Lucius’ love-making with the matrona of Corinth (Apul. Met. 10.21). The author is anonymous (Eduard Fraenkel playfully dubbed him ‘Spurcus’) and the passage has been added to the margin, not of F but of ϕ, in a hand identified by Billanovich as that of the fourteenth-century humanist Zanobi da Strada. The text below is reproduced from Boccaccio’s manuscript (L4) in order to indicate the level of corruption that seems to have already accumulated by the 1350s:

In Apuleius, Lucius is concerned that, with his ‘huge legs’ and ‘hard hooves’ (Met. 10.22), he might hurt the soft-skinned matrona. Those fears turn out to be ill-founded, as she easily accommodates the full endowment of the ass. When the Little Donkey sees his image in the water for the first time, ‘he considers his legs and feet, and his whole body displeases him’.⁷⁰ Thinking himself unfit for kingly office, he leaves. But immediately prior to this, the lyre-player has objected to his attempting to learn to play on the basis of his physical attributes:

The asellus is told that, with his ‘enormous fingers’ (‘Enormes digiti’), he cannot even distinguish the strings of the harp, but he promptly proves his teacher wrong by mastering the instrument.⁷¹ In the Spurcum additamentum, the asinine narrator (let us call him ‘Pseudo-Lucius’) displays the knowledge befitting a mimus or citharista: in the midst of a sexual blending (or dissolution) of identities, the ass is (quite literally) able to ‘distinguish the strings of the harp’ by spelling out their names (‘At dein digitis, ypate, lichanos, meso, paramese et nete […]’), but, in an erotic hypallage, he transfers that knowledge to his human lover’s fingers as she plays upon his instrument. The word ‘Excorians’ is noteworthy, as it helps to tie together both ass fables: as she pulls back his foreskin, the pseudo-matrona is both playing the lyre and ‘skinning the hide’ off the beast; while the donkey, in turn, is ‘singing’ (‘ganniens’, ‘growling’) to the tune of that lyre (‘asinus ad lyram’).⁷² Spurcus, it seems to me, is taking in hand a somewhat tired, indeed, flaccid common-place and perking it up—teasing it, and squeezing it to an unexpected climax.⁷³

More than a decade ago, I tentatively suggested as a plausible candidate for the authorship of the Spurcum additamentum the twelfth-century scholar Peter the Deacon (Petrus Diaconus; b. c. 1107; d. after 1153), Monte Cassino’s most accomplished forger.⁷⁴ Peter remains a suspect, but the circle should surely now be widened to include the German-Italian Hohenstaufen networks in southern Italy (e.g. Salerno, Naples, with links to Monte Cassino) and perhaps even Sicily.

Conclusion

Ziolkowski points, helpfully, to the pedagogic milieu of the Asinarius and its concern with liminal states, with puberty or adolescence.⁷⁵ The work may be aimed at (or speak to) those young men who do not feel called to the vita contemplativa of monastic life. It is not simply secular, but displays a complex blend of the subversive and the conservative. It manages to be both titillating and homiletic, anticipating that modern beatitude, ‘The Geek shall inherit the earth’. Even an ass can ‘get the girl’ (and the gold) if he is sufficiently learned.

But the Asinarius is also engaging, it would appear, with the complexities of the translatio studii et imperii, reflecting the political and cultural resonances (and anxieties) of German power operating within the heartland of the original Roman empire. The ‘little ass’ (‘asellus’) is not merely the son of a ‘king’ (‘rex’); he is a ‘pignus imperiale’ (an ‘imperial child’ or heir, but also, more literally, a ‘pledge’ or ‘proof’ or ‘assurance’ of the imperial line) and he wonders how well the purple will look upon an ass. In fact, he ends up inheriting both kingdoms (his father’s and that of his father-in-law).

As Apuleianists, seeing the ass finally identified at the end of the poem as Neoptolemus,⁷⁶ we may be reminded of Tlepolemus, the husband of Charite (the immediate recipient of the tale of ‘Cupid and Psyche’) and someone who claims (Apul. Met. 7.8) to have disguised himself as a ‘donkey woman’ (‘mulier asinaria’).⁷⁷ But a medieval audience, recalling Virgil’s image of Achilles’ son (Neoptolemus or Pyrrhus), ‘new and glittering’ (‘nouus […] nitidusque’, Verg. A. 2.473), like a snake which has finally cast off its old skin, might be more responsive to the ‘Neo-’ part of the name (literally, ‘new warrior’), particularly in the context of Naples, the ‘new city’ (‘Neapolis’) which retained long memories of its Greek past.⁷⁸ The Asinarius can be read as a locus of hybridity and of cultural and imperial intersection: the Hohenstaufen dynasty is a relatively new entity but with an ancient lineage (possibly ‘degener’, as Priam describes Neoptolemus at Aeneid 2.549, although still entitled in all senses of the word). What we might be seeing is an early (if anxious) flexing of German intellectual muscle, something which the poet’s countryman, Konrad Muth (Conradus Mutianus Rufus, 1471–1526), would articulate in explicitly Apuleian terms three hundred years later:

Reception and transmission are symbiotic: it is not simply a case of ‘reception’ being the cart pulled behind the horse (or donkey) of ‘transmission’: the copying and diffusion of texts may also depend on ‘receptivity’—on appetites, desires, expectations, and the perception of textual gaps by individuals and/or networks at particular times and in particular places. As academics, we have a duty to be sceptical, to wield Psyche’s novacula (as Bernardus Silvestris advises us) with the zeal of an Ockhamite in the service of Reason—in this case, cutting off the heads (or skins) of Apuleian imposters.⁸⁰ But after examining the Asinarius with a loving, yet scholarly gaze, one is tempted to say: if it looks like a Golden Ass, sounds like a Golden Ass, even smells like a Golden Ass, perhaps that is because, at the end of a long night of inter-textual games (‘ioci’), it actually is a Golden Ass.

If the foregoing hypothesis is accepted, and if the traditional dating of the Asinarius to c. 1200 is correct, then we have narrowed the gap between Guaiferius and the next demonstrable imitator of Apuleius’ novel (hitherto Mussato) by nearly 120 years. It is difficult to say, at this stage, whether the Asinarius poet had access to the Apuleian manuscripts most famously associated with Monte Cassino (F or ϕ), or whether his knowledge of the Metamorphoses depended on a lost ancestor (perhaps even the archetype) of Class-1 manuscripts which was already circulating beyond the immediate confines of the abbey (but probably still within southern Italy). From this new vantage point, however, we are now able to look more positively and receptively at other potential instances of Apuleian influence, such as the apparent echoes of Isiac theophany and pageantry (Met. 11) in a clear piece of Hohenstaufen propaganda, Pietro da Eboli’s account (completed, probably at Palermo, c. 1196–1197) of the triumphal entry of Empress Constance (mother of Frederick II) into Salerno, the capital of Apulia, after her husband, Henry VI’s conquest of the kingdom of Sicily. Constance is depicted as Salerno’s very own goddess Juno (l. 430). Her appearance at dawn seems to trigger an immediate rush of devotees, reminiscent of the praeludia to the Festival of Isis.⁸¹ In each text, birds and people unite in voicing praise at the sudden end of winter and the arrival both of spring and its divine embodiment.⁸² The description of the ‘sandy shore’ (‘arenosum litus’, l. 424) where exotic fragrances ‘excite the nostrils’ (‘Cinnama, thus, aloe, nardus, rosa, lilia, mirtus / Inflamant nares’, ll. 426–27) as ‘each person brings new balsams to be poured out’ (‘Quod nova perfundi balsama quisque ferat’, l. 429) is fraught, I would suggest, with Apuleian resonances.⁸³

What remains to be established, however, is the precise point at which The Golden Ass moved north and crossed into France.⁸⁴ The testimony of the Asinarius and Pietro da Eboli potentially strengthens the case for thirteenth-century works such as the Roman de la Rose (written in two parts, c. 1230 and c. 1275) being beneficiaries of Apuleian influence. We are probably still not in a position to claim direct Apuleian input into the great French writers of the twelfth century—Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, Alanus de Insulis—but this new evidence suggesting that The Golden Ass was being read and imitated outside Monte Cassino in the late 1190s may add fuel to our suspicions and serve as a goad to further research.

University of Durham

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² Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 63–65, citing O. Limone, ‘L’opera agiografica di Guaiferio di Montecassino’, in Monastica III. Scritti raccolti in memoria del XV centenario della nascita di S. Benedetto (480–1980), Miscellanea Cassinese 47 (Monte Cassino 1983) 77–130 (104).

³ Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 67, extrapolating from D. S. Robertson, ‘The manuscripts of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, CQ 18 (1924) 27–42 and 85–99.

⁴ Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 121–22.

⁵ Robertson, ‘The manuscripts’ (n. 3, above) 29.

⁶ J. H. Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the ‘Golden Ass’: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton-Oxford 2008) 93 and 309.

⁷ E.g. D. Rollo, ‘From Apuleius’ Psyche to Chrétien’s Erec and Enide’, in The Search for the Ancient Novel, ed. J. Tatum (Baltimore 1994) 347–69; P. Dronke, ‘Metamorphoses: allegory in early medieval commentaries on Ovid and Apuleius’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 72 (2009) 21–39; J. Fumo, ‘Romancing the rose: Apuleius, Guillaume de Lorris, and moral horticulture’, Modern Philology 107.3 (2010) 343–79. For a critical survey of the claims up until 2006, see Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 73–107. Neither the Speculum stultorum nor the Asinarius was considered in that monograph.

⁸ A. G. Rigg, ‘Canterbury, Nigel of [Nigel Wireker or Whiteacre (c. 1135–1198?)’, ODNB.

⁹ G. W. Regenos, trans., The Book of Daun Burnel the Ass: Nigellus Wireker’s ‘Speculum stultorum’ (Austin 1959) 9. For a narrative summary of the Speculum stultorum, see J. Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain (Oxford 2009) 312–13 (Appendix 2).

¹⁰ Avianus, Fab. 5.17–18, in Minor Latin Poets, eds and trans J. W. Duff and A. M. Duff, 2 vols (London 1934) II 680–749 (= Perry 358). Cf. Speculum 61–62: ‘Pelle leonina tectum detexit asellum / Fastus et excedens Gloria vana modum’ (‘Vainglory and excessive pride betray / The ass, though he be decked in lion’s skin’ (trans. Regenos 31). All references are to the Latin text (cited by line numbers) given in Nigel de Longchamps, Speculum stultorum, eds J. H. Mozley and R. R. Raymo (Berkeley 1960), and to Regenos’ English translation (n. 9, above), which will subsequently be cited in abbreviated form (e.g.‘R 31’).

¹¹ Burnellus’ desire for a longer tail (‘De asino qui voluit caudam suam longiorem fieri’, 81; R 32) and his grief at losing half his existing tail (847–48 and 861; R 62) contrast with Lucius’ relief at finally losing the asinine attribute: ‘quae me potissimum cruciabat ante, cauda nusquam’ (Apul. Met. 11.13). J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London 1982) 36, notes that ‘Cauda = “penis” is securely attested only in Horace (Serm. 1.2.45, 2.7.49)’ (cf. 35, 37, 221).

¹² All quotations from Apuleius are based on the Loeb edition, Apuleius: Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. J. A. Hanson, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA 1989).

¹³ Lucius fails to fulfil this pledge to Aristomenes when they reach Hypata at Apul. Met. 1.20–21.

¹⁴ On the representation of Frederick II (1194–1250) as the ‘puer Apuliae’ (‘child of Apulia’) and ‘stupor mundi’ (‘wonder of the world’), see E. H. Kantorowicz’s mythologizing biography, Frederick the Second 1194–1250, trans. E. O. Lorimer (London 1931).

¹⁵ Cf. Apul. Met. 11.15: ‘sed lubrico virentis aetatulae ad serviles delapsus voluptates, curiositatis improsperae sinistrum praemium reportasti’ (‘but on the slippery path of headstrong youth you plunged into slavish pleasures and reaped the perverse reward of your ill-starred curiosity’).

¹⁶ Manuscript D (Dublin, Trinity College, ms 440; mid-fifteenth century; owned by Peter Lee, monk of Durham, student of Oxford [1511], and Bursar [1514], then Prior [1523] of Durham College, Oxford) reads Anglicus (‘[As] an Englishman’) for ‘Appulus’. See Speculum stultorum, eds Mozley and Raymo (n. 10, above), 9–10 and 134. The variant may reflect the satirical tradition (‘caudatus Anglicus’) of Englishmen having tails, explored by A. G. Miller, ‘“Tails” of masculinity: knights, clerics, and the mutilation of horses in medieval England’, Speculum 88.4 (Oct. 2013) 958–95 (960–61). Cf. ‘Arnold’s Story about the Priest’s Son and the Little Chick’: ‘Contigit Apuliae celebri res digna relatu, / Tempore Willelmi principis hujus avi’ (‘Apulia saw a strange event take place / When William ruled, the present duke’s grandsire’, 1255–56; R 75).

¹⁷ Note the discussion of sterility and genitalia in the lines that follow: Burnellus wants to be a horse and not a mule. There seems to be a sideways swipe at the Church’s hypocrisy regarding clerical celibacy: Arnoldus (1251ff.; R 75ff.) tells the tale of Gundulfus, the priest’s son.

¹⁸ Garritus-us (m.) (Late Latin): Sidonius, Ep. 3.6 (med.).

¹⁹ Anon., Asinarius, ed. S. Rizzardi, in Commedie latine del XII e XIII secolo, 8 vols (Genoa 1983) IV 137–251 (173–86). Cf. S. Praet, ‘The Trojan ass: Asinarius as mock epic’, Viator 44.3 (2013) 157–73 (159).

²⁰ Asinarius, ed. Rizzardi (n. 19, above) 147–48.

²¹ J. and W. Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 2 vols (Berlin 2015) II no. 58.

²² For a discussion connecting Asinarius to The Story of Vikramaditya’s Birth, see J. M. Ziolkowski, Fairy Tales from before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies (Ann Arbor 2007) 219–25.

²³ Asinarius, ed. Rizzardi (n. 19, above) XX. Cf. Praet, ‘The Trojan ass’ (n. 19, above) 166 n. 35: ‘I shall not discuss the possibility of the Asinarius author having known Apuleius’ Metamorphoses here. While mainstream scholarship assumes the text was not well known at the time, Carver [ Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 78] does discern a vague influence in 12th-c.y romance literature’.

²⁴ D. Fehling, Amor und Psyche: Die Schöpfung des Apuleius und ihre Einwirkung auf das Märchen, eine Kritik der romantischen Märchentheorie (Mainz 1977) 79–88.

²⁵ S. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk-Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends, 6 vols (Helsinki 1932– 36); J.-Ö. Swahn, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche (Aarne-Thompson 425 & 428) (Lund 1955); A. Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore: Toward a History of ML3045, AaTh567, 449A (London 1983).

²⁶ J. M. Ziolkowski, ‘The beast and the beauty: the reorientation of “The Donkey” from the Middle Ages to the Brothers Grimm’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 5 (1995) 53–94 (58); Ziolkowski, Fairy Tales (n. 22, above) 341. All subsequent quotations in English from the Asinarius are taken from the translation that Ziolkowski appends to these two publications.

²⁷ On the inter-relatedness of these female characters, see R. H. F. Carver, ‘Between Photis and Isis: fiction, reality,

²⁸ The German Richerius owed his appointment in 1038 as abbot of Monte Cassino to Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor (and member of the Salian dynasty). On the occupation of the abbey by Hohenstaufen troops between 1239 and 1266, H. Bloch, Montecassino in the Middle Ages: Volume II (Parts III– V) (Rome 1986) 1005 n. 2, quotes Regesti Bernardi I Abbatis Casinensis fragmenta, ed. A. M. Caplet O.S.B. (Rome 1890), 145 no. 364: ‘Fredericus quondam Romanorum Imperator et post eum duo filii eius, Conradus videlicet et Manfredus […] speluncam latronum de templo Domini facientes, viginti et sex fere annis ante ingressum nostrum in arcem dampnabiliter tenuerunt’ (‘for almost twenty-six years before our entry into the citadel, Frederick, the former Emperor of the Romans, and, after him, his two sons, namely, Conrad and Manfred, occupied [it] in damnable fashion, making a den of thieves of the temple of the Lord’).

²⁹ Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 67. On the possibility that Class-1 MSS represent a tradition older than F, see O. Pecere, ‘Qualche riflessione sulla tradizione di Apuleio a Montecassino’, in Le strade del testo, Studi e commenti 5, ed. G. Cavallo (Bari 1987) 99–124.

³⁰ Thus manuscripts B, E, and G.

³¹ Cf. Apul. Met. 10.20 (Corinthian matrona): ‘At intus cerei praeclara micantes luce nocturnas nobis tenebras inalbabanti’.

³² Cf. Apul. Met. 10.20 (Corinthian matrona): ‘Nec dominae voluptates diutina sua praesentia morati, clausis cubiculi foribus facessunt’; and Met. 3.15 (Lucius and Photis): ‘pessulis iniectis et uncino firmiter immisso’.

³³ Cf. Apul. Met. 10.21 (Corinthian matrona): ‘Tunc ipsa cuncto prorsus spoliata tegmine […]’.

³⁴ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.22 (Psyche): ‘videt omnium ferarum mitissimam dulcissimamque bestiam’.

³⁵ Cf. Apul. Met. 2.17 (Lucius and Photis): ‘ simul ambo corruimus inter mutuos amplexus animas anhelantes’.

³⁶ Cf. Apul. Met. 3.15 (Lucius and Photis): ‘sic ad me reversa colloque meo manibus ambabus implexa […]’.

³⁷ Cf. Apul. Met. 6.24: Cupid clasping Psyche in his lap (‘maritus, Psychen gremio suo complexus’); 5.28: seagull diving ‘ad Oceani profundum gremium’; 5.14: Psyche’s sisters recklessly ‘leap’ (‘prosiliunt’) from the crag; 4.3: woman ‘ad eum statim prosilit’.

³⁸ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.22 (Psyche): ‘ sexum audacia mutatur’ (‘in her boldness, she changes her sex’).

³⁹ Cf. Ov. Met. 8.82–86 (Scylla and the rape of Nisus’ lock): ‘with the shadows, her boldness grew. […] the daughter steals silently into her father’s room, and (alas, the evil!) robs him of the fateful lock of hair’ (‘tenebrisque audacia crevit. […] thalamos taciturna paternos / intrat et (heu facinus!) fatali nata parentem / crine suum spoliat’).

⁴⁰ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.21: ‘Nox aderat et maritus aderat priusque Veneris proeliis velitatus altum in soporem descenderat’.

⁴¹ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.23: ‘de somni mensura metuebat’.

⁴² Cf. Apul. Met. 5.23: ‘lucerna […] evomuit de summa luminis sui stillam ferventis olei super umerum dei dexterum. Hem audax et temeraria lucerna […] ipsum ignis totius deum aduris, […] Sic inustus exsiluit deus visaque detectae fidei colluvie protinus ex osculis et manibus infelicissimae coniugis tacitus avolavit’.

⁴³ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.22: ‘ videt omnium ferarum mitissimam dulcissimamque bestiam, ipsum illum Cupidinem formosum deum formose cubantem’.

⁴⁴ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.26: ‘lucerna fervens oleum rebullivit in eius umerum. Quo dolore statim somno recussus […]’.

⁴⁵ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.24: ‘te vero tantum fuga mea punivero’.

⁴⁶ Cf. Apul. Met. 5.24: ‘At Psyche, statim resurgentis eius crure dextero manibus ambabus arrepto […]’.

⁴⁷ R. H. F. Carver, ‘Of donkeys and d(a)emons: metamorphosis and the literary imagination from Apuleius to Augustine’, and ‘Defacing god’s work: metamorphosis and the “Mimicall Asse” in the age of Shakespeare’, chapters 5 and 7 of Transformative Change in Western Thought: A History of Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood, eds I. Gildenhard and A. Zissos (London 2013) 237–46 and 284–300.

⁴⁸ If the second person of the Christian Trinity is theandric (fully God and fully Man), the Esel-Mensch may be said to be onandric: fully asinine and fully human.

⁴⁹ Cf. Thrasyleon’s fateful donning of the bearskin in Apul. Met. 4.14–21.

⁵⁰ Cf. cortex / nucleus reading / jewel in the dung-heap analogy endorsed by the Speculum stultorum.

⁵¹ Plato makes Music (more precisely, harmonics) the final subject in the advanced curriculum that he outlines in Book 7 of the Republic.

⁵² Cf. Photis (and Byrrhena) attempting to warn Lucius against meddling in the magic arts.

⁵³ Phaedrus, Appendix Perottina 14, in Babrius and Phaedrus: Fables, ed. and trans. B. E. Perry (London 1965) 390-91. Cf. Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, I. Prosa iv, s. 1; W. S. Gibson, ‘Asinus ad Lyram: from Boethius to Bruegel and beyond’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 33.1 (2007/2008) 33–42.

⁵⁴ Cf. ‘squalens pilus’ (‘coarse bristles’) at Apul. Met. 11.13; ‘pilum liberali nitore nutriveram’ (the nourishing effect of the bakers’ dishes on his hide) at 10.15; the boar that attacks Tleopolemus (‘pilis inhorrentibus corio squalidus’) at 8.4. Cf. Photis’ ‘glabellum feminal’ (‘smooth-shaven pubes’) at 2.17, and Cupid’s hairless body (‘corpus glabellum’) at 5.22.

⁵⁵ Having heard the racket of the little donkey knocking, the doorkeeper asks, ‘Why are you shouting? You, who are you? From where do you come? Why do you beat so importunately at the king’s front door? [140] Why do you strike the door panels with such presumptuousness?’. Cf. Apul. Met. 1.22: ‘ianuam firmiter oppessulatam pulsare vocaliter incipio. Tandem adulescentia quaedam procedens, “Heus tu,” inquit “qui tam fortiter fores verberasti […]”.’ On the soteriological implications of importunate door-knocking, see Luke 13:22–27.

⁵⁶ Cf. ‘novos […] tonos’ in the Speculum stultorum (2900; R 132).

⁵⁷ Apul. Met. 3.10. See Carver, ‘Of donkeys and d(a)emons’ (n. 48, above) 233.

⁵⁹ Asinarius 295–96: ‘Crura levans sursum suspensa caputque deorsum / Ambulat, atque manus dat pedis officium’ (‘A female mime-player, balanced with her feet upward and her head downward, walks and accords to her hands the function of her feet’).

⁶⁰ Teste Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary, 265, ‘caesaries’ is used most frequently of men. But TLL shows plenty of use for females in the Vulgate Bible, as well as in Catullus, Virgil, Claudian, and others.

⁶¹ Cf. ‘mihi renidentis fortunae contemplatus faciem’ at Apul. Met. 10.16.

⁶² Cf. Apul. Met. 11.6 and 11.13.

⁶³ Cf. Ov. Am. 1.5.23–26: ‘singula quid referam? nil non laudabile vidi, / et nudam pressi corpus ad usque meum. / cetera quis nescit? lassi requievimus ambo. / proveniant medii sic mihi saepe dies’.

⁶⁴ Note the significance of the wine cup going back and forth before Lucius and Photis make love for the first time (Apul. Met. 2.16).

⁶⁵ On the therapeutic potential of sexual intercourse, see Plin. Nat. 28.10 and 28.16. According to William of Newburgh (Historia rerum anglicarum 1.3.4), Thomas the Younger, Archbishop of York (d. 1114), preferred his chastity to his life when he disobeyed his doctors’ orders to engage in sexual intercourse as the sole remedy for his disease. Cf. Mozley and Raymo eds, Speculum (n. 10, above) 159, commenting on Speculum stultorum 1529–30; and the De coitu of Constantinus Africanus (monk of Monte Cassino in the late eleventh century).

⁶⁶ Cf. Lucius falling asleep (Apul. Met. 10.35) and waking to a theophany which seems to offer him ‘the hope of salvation’ (‘spem salutis’, 11.1).

⁶⁷ Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 41–47 (Fulgentius), 97–98 and 103 (‘Vatican Mythographers’).

⁶⁸ Text based on L4 (Laur. 54.24), as presented in Lucii Apulei Metamorphoseon libri XI, ed. J. Van der Vliet (Leipzig 1897) 238–39, with emendations (‘H’ and ‘M’) in square brackets proposed, respectively, by L. Herrmann, ‘Le fragment obscène de l’Âne d’or (x, 21)’, Latomus 10 (1951) 329–32, and S. Mariotti, ‘Lo Spurcum Additamentum ad Apul. Met. 10, 21’, SIFC 27–28 (1956) 229–50. See Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 67–71; Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 6, above) 63–66.

⁶⁹ Translation from M. Zimmerman, Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Book X: Text, Introduction and Commentary (Groningen 2000) X 434 (based on Mariotti’s Latin text).

⁷⁰ 91–92: ‘Luminibusque suis percurrens crura pedesque / Respicit, et corpus displicet omne sibi’ (‘Surveying with his eyes, he considers his legs and feet, and his whole body displeases him’).

⁷¹ Cf. Lucius’ lament at Apul. Met. 10.29 that he cannot unsheathe a sword (to kill himself, thus avoiding a public mating with a condemned women) because of his ‘round and misshapen hoof’ (‘ungula rotunda atque mutila’).

⁷² Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 6, above) 65, notes (following Mariotti), the matrona’s ‘sweet moans’ (‘dulces gannitus’) at Apul. Met. 10.22. We might also compare ‘sic nobis gannientibus’ (an alternative reading for ‘garrientibus’) at Apul. Met. 3.20, where ‘libido mutua’ (‘mutual desire’) simultaneously ‘excites the minds and bodies’ of Lucius and Photis (‘et animos simul et membra suscitat’).

⁷³ Cf. the hint of the metamorphic in the ‘rosewater of Chios’. See Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 6, above) 65.

⁷⁴ Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 70–71.

⁷⁵ Ziolkowski, ‘The Beast and the Beauty’ (n. 26, above) 58–60.

⁷⁶ See Apul. Apol. 13.

⁷⁷ The suggestive banter between the two in the cave offends the on-looking Lucius, but the situation is redeemed by the revelation that they are espoused (Apul. Met. 7.9–12).

⁷⁸ We might also note the bust of Pyrrhus (the Hellenistic general) at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

⁷⁹ See Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 247–49, quoting Der Briefwechsel des Conradus Mutianus, ed. K. Gillert (Halle 1890), no. 260, 344.

⁸⁰ On Bernard and Psyche, see Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 102–03.

⁸¹ Pietro da Eboli, Book in Honor of Augustus (Liber ad honorem Augusti), trans. G. Hood (Tempe, AZ 2012) ll. 418–19: ‘Sol ubi sydereas ammovit crastinus umbras, / Urbs ruit et domine plaudit osanna sue’. Cf. Apul. Met. 11.7: ‘Nec mora cum noctis atrae fugato nubilo Sol exsurgit aureus, et ecce discursu religioso ac prorsus triumphali, turbulae complent totas plateas’. Cf. ‘influunt turbae’ (Apul. Met. 11.10) and ‘Occurrit […] turba’ (l. 423).

⁸² ll. 432–34: ‘Ut modulantur aves foliis in vere renatis / Post noctes yemis, post grave tempus aque, / Non aliter verno venienti plauditur ore’ (‘As the birds sing in the spring when the leaves are reborn, /After the winter nights, after the season of heavy rain, / Not otherwise is her coming applauded by the voice of spring’). Cf. Apul. Met. 11.7: ‘Nam et pruinam pridianam dies apricus ac placidus repente fuerat insecutus, ut canorae etiam aviculae prolectatae verno vapore concentus suaves assonarent, matrem siderum, parentem temporum orbisque totius dominam blando mulcentes affamine’ (‘For a sunny and calm day had come close on the heels of yesterday’s frost, so that even the songbirds were enticed by the spring warmth to sing lovely harmonies, soothing with their charming greetings the mother of the stars, parents of the seasons, and mistress of the whole world’).

⁸³ Cf. Apul. Met. 11.9: ‘illae quae ceteris unguentis et geniali balsamo guttatim excusso conspargebant plateas’ (‘Still others shook out drops of delightful balsam and other ointments to sprinkle the streets’). But note also (especially in the light of our discussion of the Spurcum additamentum) the possible echoes of Lucius’ congress with the Corinthian matrona at Apul. Met. 10.21: ‘multo sese perungit oleo balsamino [F: balsamo] meque indidem largissime perfricat, sed multo tanta impensius; tura [F: cura] etiam nares perfundit meas’ (‘she anointed herself all over with oil of balsam […] and lavishly rubbed me down with the same, but with much greater eagerness. She even moistened my nostrils with frankincense [F: ‘with care’]’).

⁸⁴ For potential pathways from Monte Cassino into France, see Carver, Protean Ass (n. 1, above) 73–76.