APULEIUS AND MARTIANUS CAPELLA: RECEPTION, PEDAGOGY,
AND THE DIALECTICS OF CANON

AHUVIA KAHANE

I. Is Apuleius a canonical author?

‘Is Apuleius a canonical author?’ asks Joseph Farrell in a recent essay. In essence, and despite Apuleius’ recent acceptance into the late-modern canon, Farrell answers in the negative. Apuleius ‘is, literally, marginal’. Yet, as Farrell notes,

In what follows, I want to suggest that, in fact, Apuleius’ canonical status in late antiquity, and indeed in general, is not entirely ‘odd’, or perhaps that it is so by necessity. We should view Apuleius not as being closer to the centre of the canon or further away at its margins but instead as subject to a special canonical dialectic of appeal and exclusion. On the one hand, his work, especially the salacious surplus of The Golden Ass, and the exuberance of his language and thought—loud, free, witty, titillating, and learned—give him an alluring voice. He is a useful literary actor. Yet, on the other hand, this very same excess is more difficult to socialize within structured cultural contexts that rely on the pedagogical regulatory device of canon to enforce and replicate their values and praxis. In this sense, Apuleius is often a liminal auctor excluded from speech. The double-sided character of his work makes it inherently more difficult for tradition to position him within its literary hierarchies. It cannot erase him from literary history, but it likewise cannot fully acknowledge his presence.² This kind of double status, we should add, is different from the more uniform canonicity of, for example, Homer or Virgil. Yet it is not ‘odd’, first, because it is essential to Apuleius’ reception and, second, because it is also a necessary mechanism working within broader traditions of canon and pedagogy.

II. Apuleius, reception, Martianus Capella

The tradition of Apuleius’ reception is long and detailed.³ However, to argue my point here, I want to look at the work of just one of his closest, most influential, and most instructive imitators, Martianus Min(n)e(i)us Felix Capella. In doing so, I consider the relationship between pedagogy, desire, and pleasure, and their implications for questions of canon and canonicity, with special emphasis, as we shall see, on the interaction of eros and formal learning.

Martianus Capella (fourth century CE) was, like Apuleius, a native of the city of Madauros in North Africa. He is best known for the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury), an encyclopaedic didactic work in nine books that outlines the structure and boundaries of the learned disciplines within an allegorical mythological framing narrative. In this narrative, the god Mercury, having come of age, seeks a bride. Turned down by Wisdom, Divination, and the Soul, he marries Philology, who brings with her as gifts her seven maidens: Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Harmony.⁴ The De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii was also known by the title De septem disciplinis (On the Seven Disciplines, i.e. the ‘Liberal Arts’) or, alternatively, as Satura. All three appellations seem to be late attributions rather than the original given by Martianus himself.⁵ But precisely for this reason these titles provide evidence about Capella’s reception and character, and, as we shall see, through this reception also important perspectives on Capella’s relation to Apuleius and the position of the work of both authors within the literary canon.

II.1. Capella’s ‘De nuptiis’, ‘Protean style’

The most common title of Capella’s work, De nuptiis (see, for example, Fulgentius, Expositio sermonum antiquorum 45), clearly foregrounds the work’s allegorical narrative and the erotic, exotic frame of its often technical, dry content. Such allegorical framing directly alludes to Apuleius’ ‘Cupid and Psyche’ episode, the most prominent narrative component of Metamorphoses, and suggests a double-sided approach to knowledge and education which, in a different form, is also characteristic of Apuleius’ seriocomic, erotico-philosophical tale about Lucius’ curiosity.⁶ As Stahl, Shanzer, Westra, Carver, Gaisser, and many others point out, Capella is a close imitator of Apuleius’ ‘Protean’ style, and indeed develops it to excess.⁷ He has sometimes been described as the singe d’Apulée.⁸ E. R. Curtius has suggested that ‘Modern readers find him insipid’.⁹ C. S. Lewis went a step further: ‘this universe, which has produced the bee orchid and the giraffe, has produced nothing stranger than Martianus Capella’.¹⁰ F. J. LeMoine says: ‘If Horace had read the work, he probably would have compared it to the picture of [a] “human head to [a] horse’s neck conjoined”’.¹¹

Like Apuleius, Capella was, as we have already noted, an African, a man born far from the centre of the Empire. We must, however, consider such provenance and its implications for canonicity with caution. Our perspectives on canon and canonical diversity have changed considerably in recent decades,¹² as has our understanding of such terms as ‘African style’ in Latin and Latinity.¹³ Yet it is clear that, as an independent author, Capella has an even more complex relationship with the ‘golden’ centre of the canon of Latin literature than does Apuleius’ The Golden Ass. We shall have to consider carefully this aspect of his work and its implications for the idea of canon below.

II.2. Capella and the cultural dialectics of canon

The second title of Martianus’ book, De septem disciplinis (Cassiodorus, Institutiones 2.2.17) characterizes the work in exactly the opposite way—a pointed reminder of Capella’s double-sided reception. In contrast to the mythological narrative frame and the allegorical title De nuptiis, the ‘technical’ appellation De septem disciplinis marks Capella’s work as a learned, non-narrative, and non-allegorical presentation of ordered knowledge (‘disciplinae’). The book is one of the prime exponents in the transmission and consolidation of the traditional Western ‘enkyklios paideia’ and the idea of the ‘Seven Liberal Arts’.¹⁴ The Seven Arts define a prescriptive rule of pedagogic content as well as the administrative structure of higher education and, thus, the training of elites and the practice of knowledge in the West. This ‘rule’ was in effect from the fifth century, and perhaps earlier, right up until the Enlightenment, and can still be traced in the intellectual content and administrative departmental structure of present-day higher education. Canon, is, of course, the sublimated instrument of education. Lists of ‘the best’, socially sanctioned, literary works are at the core of pedagogic ideology and the transfer of values and social practices.¹⁵ Capella is not independently admired as a ‘primary’ auctor. He is not a household name or a literary celebrity. Yet the De nuptiis, despite its obscure language and its mix of wild allegory and dull learning, was ‘perhaps the most widely used schoolbook of the Middle ages’.¹⁶ De facto, it was at the heart of pedagogy and the canon. Consider, for example, that today we possess over 240 extant manuscripts of the De nuptiis. Capella’s text is problematic, its language and style are exotic and difficult. The work thus presents an enormous challenge to editors. Yet the main witnesses for the text constitute a remarkably coherent stemma, probably going back to a single Carolingian (or Merovingian) archetype.¹⁷ In other words, against the odds of language, style, and content, Capella’s manuscript tradition has managed to thrive and exclude ‘rogue’ independent witnesses. The tradition is authoritative, and in this sense canonical. From this perspective, then, Capella can be regarded as a distinct example of the ‘cultural dialectics’ of canon which also characterize Apuleius.

II.3. Satura and farrago

Finally, Capella’s work is also known as Satura. Again, this is probably not an original appellation, but one derived from internal references in the work itself (1.2; 385.4–6; 9.997). It points to the ‘Varronian’ generic characterization of the De nuptiis as a varied, prosimetric ‘Menippean’ work, a literary and philosophical delicacy, just like the work of Apuleius.¹⁸ Satura can also be used to represent Capella’s farrago of low-brow entertainment and high-brow formal pedagogy, of a wild and often erotically charged ‘nuptial’ narrative and a prescriptive ‘disciplinary’ programme. In the appellation Satura, we might also see an emblem of Capella’s strange ‘Apuleian’ position: on the one hand, a useful source and influential literary actor, but, on the other hand, an author not fully admitted into the canon. Martianus, as we have already suggested, enhances this double ‘advantage/disadvantage’.

III. Martianus’ proem: actor and auctor

In the discussion that follows, I begin with some brief and relatively conventional examples illustrating the general character of the De nuptiis and its relation to Apuleius. Later examples will reveal more complicated aspects of intertextuality. These involve not merely acts of reference but also possible acts of occlusion as well, which raise important questions of tradition, pedagogy, and ethics.

The De nuptiis opens with a verse invocation to Hymenaeus as the principle of unity among cosmic elements brought together by mutual attraction (1.1):

This proem offers a conventional coupling of allegorical sensuality and philosophical content. It also comprises an unbroken, sixteen-verse sentence,²⁰ the absurd, circuitous poetics, convoluted syntax, and bombastic poetry of which are immediately derided in the next section, a first-person prose proem that provides a characteristically Apuleian second introduction to the narrative (1.2):²¹

Martianus the son rudely interrupts Martianus the father and, using characteristically obscure ‘Capellan’ vocabulary, speaks both for himself and as an intradiegetic surrogate for the readers, asking ‘quid istud, mi pater?’, in effect, ‘what is going on?’

Martianus the auctor of De nuptiis, with the aid of both of his actors, Martianus Sr. and Martianus Jr., is speaking in jest, partly at our expense although also for our benefit. And, as readers of the De nuptiis often point out, Martianus borrows his son’s question, our question, from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.²⁵ In the first book of the novel, at the beginning of the story of the witches (1.6.2), the speaker, Aristomenes, meets his old friend Socrates, who is ‘half covered by a tattered old cloak, almost unrecognizable in his sallowness (‘paene alius lurore’), pitiably deformed and shrunken (‘ad miseram maciem deformatus’). Socrates has been assumed to be dead by all and his appearance is unexpected. Bewildered by this apparition, Aristomenes says, ‘mi Socrates, quid istud?’²⁶

Aristomenes and readers of the Metamorphoses will yet learn an important lesson (‘don’t mess with magic’) from the ghostly tale’s hilarity.²⁷ This is entertainment in the service of instruction that sets the tone for Capella’s readers too. The Metamorphoses’ question ‘quid istud’, we might add, replicates (with a change of grammatical gender) the novel’s most famous interrogative and the ‘anticipatory’ bewilderment of its prologue: ‘Quis ille?’ This uncanny question at the beginning of the book, voicing both the reader’s anxiety, not knowing who is speaking, and the unsettling reassurance of precisely that speaker, whoever he is, establishes an essential Apuleian tone of ambiguity.²⁸ The imperious promise, ‘lector, intende, laetaberis’, that follows shortly afterward, at the end of the Metamorphoses’ prologue, only increases our perplexity.²⁹ The identity and authority of the implied narrator of Apuleius’ novel, like the identity of his secondary narrator Aristomenes, who tells preposterous lies (‘tam absurda tamque immania’, 1.2), and his tertiary narrator Socrates, who is a walking corpse, are moot. Likewise, the identity of ‘Martianus’, the implied narrator of the De nuptiis’ prologic frame is obscured by his formal namelessness and his discourse seems to turn into a game by the confusing presence of an otherwise unknown son and addressee also named Martianus. Adding to this playful atmosphere, it is not immediately clear to us from the prologue of the De nuptiis, nor from its allegorical frame narrative and the story of Mercury and Philology, what Martianus Capella’s ‘chatter of fatuous nothings’ has to do with the serious curricular content which his book must deliver. The De nuptiis— it may be better to speak of the De septem disciplinis here—was a canonical handbook for the education of boys who would one day assume real positions of power in their worlds.³⁰ In its socially-productive capacity, Capella’s book is not a piece of light erotic entertainment. The real-life students who will have been tasked to read it by their magistri will have been both puzzled and amused by the prologue, and would have wanted to know ‘quid istud?’, which is, indeed, an essential ‘prologic’ question.

Martianus Sr.’s immediate response to his son (1.2) is:

This retort too is, as scholars widely recognize, a direct echo from precisely the same Apuleian story and from Socrates’ response to Aristomenes (1.6.16–18):³²

Capella, whose ‘real’ theme is not ‘nuptiae’ but the ‘disciplinae’, knows Apuleius’ ‘slippery windings’. Like the Apuleian voice in the prologue of the Metamorphoses that says ‘pay attention: you will be entertained’, Capella too is bent on entertainment. Yet like Apuleius, he has a more serious, practical mission. At the end of the prologue of the De nuptiis, he promises his son Martianus (and the readers) that ‘if you are serious, I will unfold before you a tale which Satire taught me’ (‘si properus scrutator inquiris, fabellam tibi, quam Satura […] edocuit […] explicabo’).

Nevertheless, if, amidst such games, Capella, his book, and the social order that sanctioned his book are to retain strategic control of pedagogy, they must first maintain control over their means and over the exuberance of the De nuptiis’ Apuleian source. Capella uses borrowed ‘Apuleian windings’ but he cannot give them official sanction. This, let me suggest, is why, as Robert Carver, Julia Gaisser, and others note, despite being ever-present in Capella’s De nuptiis, Apuleius is never named anywhere in the work. Recognizing him as a source, giving him the status of canon, would conflate Capella’s incongruous, if necessary, means and ends, and could jeopardize the authority of Capella’s pedagogic edifice.

IV. he slippage between usage and canonical recognition

Following the verse proem and the prose prologue, Capella begins in the next section (1.3) the frame story of the marriage itself. We are in a world of playful literary allusion, which nevertheless, as we shall see, moves progressively towards a more complex practice of reception and pedagogy.

‘There was a time when on all sides among the gods the sacred weddings of a numerous generation were being celebrated’, Capella begins. A little later in the narrative (1.5), hearing of such nuptials, Mercury decides that he should also take a wife. His mother Maia recommends it too:

Capella’s narrative, like that of Apuleius, is replete with sexual nudges and winks. In De nuptiis, Mercury had been practicing in the palaestra and through ‘constant to and fro activity’ (‘creberisque discursibus’). These are Apuleian words,³³ yet ‘discursus’ ‘is not the normal word to use of running in the track or palaestra’.³⁴ Lexical opaqueness is a Capellan characteristic, but here it is also part of an erotic trope. We and young student readers can only guess at the precise nature of Mercury’s ‘bustling activity’ in the wrestling schools,³⁵ guided, perhaps, by the description of Mercury’s ephebic physique in the next sentence: Mercury’s body ‘glistens forth in masculine development’, his muscles ‘bulging in the protuberance of his youthful vigour’ (‘corpus lacertosis in iuvenalis roboris excellentiam toris virilis quadam amplitudine renidebat’). A moment later, Martianus offers a yet more open hint, pointing out that Mercury was in the habit of walking about ‘half-naked (‘seminudum’), draped in a small chlamys, with everything else exposed (‘invelatum cetera’), so as to cover only the tops of his shoulders, to ‘great amusement on the part of Cypris’. Interpreting such hints, it is important to bear in mind the De nuptiis’ performative context and its perlocutionary effects. As a textbook, Capella’s work will have been read in the classroom by adolescent youths who were probably themselves going through the same bodily changes and will have had similar opportunities for exercise. Capella’s innuendo seems well aimed at adolescent humour and may have helped in keeping fidgety pupils at their desks.

It is hard to say exactly how much of Martianus’ intertext his youthful readers were meant to have known. But, as Chevalier says, ‘le portrait de Mercure est vraisemblement inspiré de celui que propose Apulée dans Apol. 63’.³⁶ In the Apology, we find an ecphrastic description of a ritual statue of Mercury:

A similar description, with its emphasis on Mercury’s beauty and nakedness, along with his short chlamys, is also attested in the Metamorphoses (10.30.3):³⁷

These sources, however, require careful assessment. In Apuleius’ Apology, otherwise known as the De magia, Mercury’s description is not mere pleasantry but part of the author’s defence against a serious legal charge of sorcery and moral corruption. In our passage, Apuleius is responding to the accusation (Apol. 61) that he had commissioned a sinister ritual statuette for secretive magical purposes. Apuleius describes the statue in question, which, he claims, is not a sordid figurine but a graceful image. What Apuleius keeps sub rosa, for obvious reasons, is the ‘highly dangerous’ fact that Mercury is the patron god of magic itself.³⁸ Using the De magia as a source, Capella takes advantage of the alluring eroticism of Apuleius’ description, but—almost like Apuleius himself—he seems to elide some of the darker resonance of its context. Capella treads on the cusp of transgression and must maintain a careful balance of exposure and occlusion. To have said, ‘as Apuleius says in his De magia […]’, may have taken the narrative a step too far.

The dilemmas behind the otherwise playful description of Mercury can be understood even more distinctly when we consider Capella’s second Apuleian intertext and the image of Mercury as it appears in Apuleius’ best-known work, the Metamorphoses. Here, the description of Mercury, although not without charm, is nevertheless part of the ecphrastic mise-en-scène of the novel’s most grotesque and pornographic scene, one which, happily, even Apuleius forecloses before it reaches its climax. Lucius the narrator, still in the body of an ass, is to play the role of Zeus in disguise and re-enact the myth of Pasiphaea in a bizarre theatrical spectacle: the public execution, by bestial copulation, of a condemned murderess. The Metamorphoses describes the slopes of a wooden mock-up of Mont Ida, ‘mons ligneous ad instar incluti montis illius quem vates Homeris Idaeum cecinit’ (10.30), a rustic vista adorned by a few grazing goats, ‘capellae pauculae tondebant herbulas’. Martianus Capella was no doubt smiling to himself (indeed, enjoying a pun?) as he invoked this scene in which Mercury, an actor in costume, makes a brief dancing appearance as he hands a golden apple to the actor playing Paris. Mercury’s innocent ephebic nakedness adds perverse detail to this scene.

The relation between eros and pedagogy has many applications. But sexual bestiality takes any such relation beyond what is acceptable or permitted in most cultures.³⁹ Animal sexuality is a basic appetite that cannot be removed from human experience (as Aristotle and other ancient philosophers knew), but is in many cultures— Greek, Roman, Medieval, Victorian, and no less our own age—often relegated to clearly defined spaces in the silent and occluded peripheries of social order, and especially outside the sphere of public culture and education.⁴⁰ Pornography is rarely ‘canonical’. Apuleius’ Metamorphoses takes us to the brink of bestiality. It does not actually cross the line but, treading so close to the edge, it remains in a ‘liminal’ position. Martianus Capella’s borrowing, the occlusion of the context of the source of his description of Mercury, and exclusion of any open reference to Apuleius are both a confirmation of Apuleius’ liminal status and the replication of such a double-sided liminality. Here, I submit, is the operative principle that determines the slippage between usage and canonical recognition.

V. Transgressive vehicles and prescriptive tenors: eros and dialectic

I want to suggest, however, that some of the most interesting and revealing examples of this slippage—an incongruous but productive ‘marriage’ of transgressive vehicles and prescriptive tenors—occur in the more formal, academically ‘hard-core’, sections of Capella’s didactic treatise. I turn therefore to book IV of the De nuptiis and to Capella’s discussion of dialectic, the ‘science of science’ (‘disciplina disciplinarum’, Aug. de ord. 2.1.3.38), of formal inference, syllogisms, and logic.⁴¹ My comments, of course, will focus not on the formal, philosophical, aspects of the Dialectica but on its use of the Apuleian source and its pedagogy.

Like the other ‘disciplinary’ books of the De nuptiis (i.e. books II–IX), the Dialectica is framed by allegory and begins with its own long and convoluted verse proem (327):

By necessity, the topic is more technical and Capella, while preserving the allegorical frame as best he can, must already here mention several of his main sources. These include above all Aristotle, whose Organon was the foundation of ancient logic, the Stoics, especially Chrysippus, and the Sceptic Carneades.⁴³ The more immediate sources of Capella’s Dialectic were, however, probably Latin works on the subject. Mentioned by name are only the canonical authors, for example Varro (335) and Cicero (350 and passim; citations appear especially in the ‘hypothetical syllogisms’, 414–22). But other, unacknowledged, Latin sources include work by the fourth-century North African rhetorician Marius Victorinus Afer and, most important for us here, the Peri hermeneias, which, despite its Greek title, is a Latin work on logic attributed to Apuleius.⁴⁴

The influence of the Peri hermeneias is easy to identify in Capella’s Dialectica, and especially in the section of book IV on ‘categorical syllogisms’ (406–13). However, to understand his use of Apuleius, we must first say a brief word about this work which Stephen Harrison describes as ‘a Latin version of Aristotelian logical doctrine in dry and technical language which offers little of stylistic or literary interest’.⁴⁵ Fundamentally, Peri hermeneias is indeed a taxonomy of formal propositions. It provides definitions, examples, and explanations of ‘predicative’ and ‘conditional’ statements, ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ propositions, ‘dedicative’ and ‘abdicative’ syllogisms, and so on.⁴⁶ Whoever was the author of the Peri hermeneias, the work names Apuleius explicitly. Indeed, Apuleius’ name is part of the book’s formal exempla. A proposition, the text explains, has a ‘pars subiectiva / subdita’ and a ‘pars declarativa’ (a ‘subjective’ / ‘subordinative’ and a ‘declarative’ element; broadly corresponding to the nominal and verbal parts of the sentence). The text gives an example, ‘Apuleius [the nominal element] disserit / non disserit [the verbal element]’, then extends the ‘subordinative’ part ‘Apuleius’ with the element ‘philosophicus Platonicus Madaurensis’, which, it explains, is logically interchangeable.⁴⁷

Of course, reference to ‘Apuleius, philosophicus Platonicus Madaurensis’, like all semantic content, has no impact on the formal logical structure of propositions. Yet in the Peri hermeneias, Apuleius’ name inevitably frames the readers’ horizons of expectation. The formal logical propositions take on the curious flavour of Apuleian narrative—light zest in a bitter scientific draught. In the discussion of the relations between the ‘subordinative’ and ‘declarative’ elements, Apuleius’ Peri hermeneias offers the following proposition: ‘qui equus est, hinnibile est’, ‘he who is a horse is a neigher’.⁴⁸ With the author’s name and, implicitly, his most famous work, also known as The Golden Ass, ringing in our ear, it is hard to miss the deadpan joke (‘every horse neighs [[…] and every ass brays]’). A line or two later, ‘Apuleius’ offers another example of the relations between ‘subordinative’ and ‘declarative’: ‘omnem hominem animal esse […] omne animal hominem esse’, ‘every man is an animal […] every animal is a man’.⁴⁹ Again, the logical exempla trigger Apuleian humour, first, because the author’s name is ‘Apuleius’, second, because they contain the essential narrative and situational theme of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (‘man turns into animal’), and, finally, because they incorporate a sense of Apuleian innuendo and playful poetics.

Let us now turn again to Martianus Capella’s Dialectica. Following the verse proem, the book discusses propositions (sections I–IV), the relations between propositions (sections V–VI), ‘assertoric’ syllogisms (VII–XIV), and, finally, some doxographic comments on the study of logic (XIII). As this text moves forward, Capella’s allusive Apuleian hints also develop and take on more substantial moral and pedagogical, but equally more transgressive, resonance.

In one of the most important sections of the Dialectica (V), Capella considers the relations between propositions and arranges them within a structured logical diagram otherwise known as the ‘Apuleian square of opposition’, since its first appearance in the history of Western logic is probably in the Peri hermeneias (fig. 1).⁵⁰ Capella does not name Apuleius, but he copies the Peri hermeneias’ paradigmatic examples: A. Every pleasure (‘voluptas’) is good; B. Every pleasure is not good; C. Some pleasure is good; D. Some pleasure is not good (V). We will not, of course, consider the formalities of the logic here, but must note, first, that these are indeed primarily examples of formal logical relations; second, that despite the ‘irrelevance’ of propositional content to logical form, the content of these examples takes us into the realm of moral action; and, finally, that at least something of Apuleius’ more salacious reputation resonates in the use of ‘voluptas’ in these otherwise austere, scientific examples. We must not forget that this is a textbook of logic for princes and well-to-do youths who, when they have completed their education, are likely to become influential members of their cities with the power to make important decisions.⁵¹ Indeed, as Capella himself says in the verse proem to the Dialectica, ‘speech consists in words which are ambiguous and judges nothing as having a standard meaning unless it be combined with other words’.⁵² What is otherwise dry and potentially difficult academic material is thus made both more morally relevant and humorous, but, for exactly the same reason, also a little more risqué. Capella replicates useful practice the resonance of which is both potentially productive and potentially transgressive.

Figure 1. ‘The Apuleian square of opposition’

Nevertheless, in Apuleius’ Peri hermeneias, such practice is generally limited to mildly suggestive examples. Furthermore, innuendo seems to fade away when ‘Apuleius’ considers syllogisms (‘If A, then B’), the more action-oriented elements of reasoned speech, the greater power of which arguably calls for greater moral and pedagogical responsibility. Thus, for example, section VII of the Peri hermeneias highlights the following syllogism (271–2, here arranged graphically for clarity):

The propositional content of this formal syllogism contains an important moral element, which is also reflected in all of the syllogistic examples in all following sections of Apuleius’ Peri hermeneias.

Martianus’ discussion of syllogisms is, as we stressed, heavily indebted to the Peri hermeneias. He relies on Apuleian concepts and method and he is well aware of the moral message underlying logical formalities. Thus, for example, in section 405 of the Dialectica, he says ‘putemus quaestionem esse, utrum voluptas utilis est?’ (‘let us consider the question, is pleasure [otherwise ‘desire’] useful?’). Like Peri hermeneias, the Dialectica is not a manual of moral philosophy but merely a technical handbook. The propositional content of the question has no bearing on the formal structure of the logical argument. Yet, clearly, the content of the question and its moral resonance cannot be entirely elided. It is here, however, that Capella illustrates his formal discussion by means of most extraordinary and revealing examples. While copying the logical structure from the Peri hermeneias, his examples seem to reach out to the most salacious themes of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Capella’s text says (405, again arranged graphically for clarity):

Shortly afterwards, he repeats similar propositional claims in the subsequent discussion of formal logical variation (408):

It seems that here the ‘formal’ character of logic provides a protective mask, behind which all human animals, including young students of logic and their schoolmasters, can exercise their ‘voluptas sub rosa’, as it were, without sanction.

Adapting Apuleius’ tale of curiosity and matrimony as the frame narrative of the De nuptiis, Capella takes what is of practical use to him. The rest he hides or silences. ‘Cupid and Psyche are’, as Shanzer suggests, ‘no longer the lovers of the Apuleian tale’.⁵³ In Martianus, she argues, the soul’s descent into the material world is a death-producing ‘fall’, not productive of life or desire.⁵⁴ This is true, inasmuch as Cupid and Psyche’s issue, Voluptas, has been written out of the narrative of book I of the De nuptiis. Yet, as we have seen, ‘Apuleian’ ‘voluptas’, intensified and enhanced, seems to be alive and well in some of the most important lessons of Martianus Capella’s pedagogy. Furthermore, Apuleian ‘voluptas’ is indeed ‘utile’, as Capella’s formal example suggests. It will have helped schoolmasters teach the dry art of dialectic. Capella the pedagogue cannot resist the exuberant charms of ‘voluptas’. Yet, in approaching ‘voluptas’ in this way, Capella also highlights her more dangerous, transgressive nature, which, if given formal license, could undermine society’s control over itself. Educators, moralists, parents, and indeed those traditions of reception whose agglomerated effect is responsible for the formation of canon, would not wish, nor could they risk, to have schoolboys praise the virtues of pleasure except through a veil.⁵⁵ ‘Voluptas’, the double-sided essence of Apuleius, has enormous power and, for this exact same reason, like Apuleius himself, constitutes both an allure and a threat. Its exuberant, protean disregard for authority is a life force which is ignorant of social constraint. It is a force that, perhaps a little like the power of horses and asses, must be harnessed, but which, harnessed, has no independence. In literary and literary historical terms, the ‘dialectic’ status of this force, let me suggest, characterizes something of Apuleius’ in the tradition, or at least in his reception in Martianus Capella. Apuleius is always there, yet he is kept sub rosa, unacknowledged. Capella is a good witness to such canonical status. He both imitates and enhances the Apuleian habit, and is, for this reason, also himself a variant example of the dialectic of canon. Capella, as we noted at the beginning of this essay, is an immensely popular author whose role in the history of pedagogy is seminal. He is an effective pedagogue, partly because of his exuberant habit, yet, sailing rather close to the wind, he lives largely on the margins of the canon. Martianus Capella’s double-sided fate is thus both an incisive critique of Apuleian canonicity and one of its most revealing examples.

Trinity College Dublin

__________

¹ J. Farrell, ‘Apuleius and the classical canon’, in Apuleius and Africa, eds B. T. Lee, E. Finkelpearl, and L. Graverini (London 2014) 66–84 (70).

² I do not discuss matters of theory at length in this paper. However, loosely adapted, the Apuleian dichotomy auctor/actor and the distinction between animal ‘voice’ (‘phonê’) and human ‘speech’ (‘logos’) provide a useful critical framework for my argument. For auctor/actor (cf. Met. 3.11 and the scribal correction ‘auctorem’ - superscr. ‘actorem’), see J. J. Winkler, ‘Auctor & actor: Apuleius and his metamorphosis’, Pacific Coast Philology 14 (1979) 84–91 (84); J. J. Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’s ‘The Golden Ass’ (Berkeley 1985) 171 on 3.11; 249 n. 16. For voice and speech, see Arist. Hist. An. 488a32–36, 535a28–535b3, 535b3–13, 535b25–32; de Anim. 420b6–17, 420b23–421a2, etc.; A. Haltenhoff, ‘ॅΛधΓॅ घΩडॅ: Antike Diskussionen über Tierrechte’, in Translatio humanitatis: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Peter Riemer, ed. C. Kugelmeier (St Ingbert 2015) 369–80; J. L. Labarrière, ‘Imagination humaine et imagination animale chez Aristote’, Phronesis 29 (1984) 17–49; W. Ax, ‘Ψόϕख़ς, ϕωνή und διάλϵκτख़ς als Grundbegriffe aristotelischer Sprachreflexion’, Glotta 56 (1978) 245–71, etc. The Aristotelian distinction has attracted important comments in contemporary philosophy (Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, Braidotti, etc.).

³ Extended surveys in R. H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford 2007); J. H. Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and ‘The Golden Ass’: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton-Oxford 2008).

⁴ Overview of Capella in A. Hicks, ‘Martianus Capella and the liberal arts’, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, eds R. Hexter and R. Townsend (Oxford 2012) 307–34. Capella’s name and biography: S. Grebe, ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ Darstellung der sieben freien Künste und ihrer Beziehungen zueinander (Stuttgart 1999) 22; W. H. Stahl and R. Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, 2 vols (New York 1971–77) I (1971) 21–22. Capella’s floruit: 420–30 CE (A. Cameron, ‘Martianus and his first editor’, Classical Philology 81 (1986) 320–8; R. Martin, ‘Petronius Arbiter et le ‘Satyricon’: quelques pistes de réflexion’, Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé (2009) 143–68), or the third quarter of the century (D. Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella’s ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ Book 1 (Berkeley, CA 1986); S. I. B. Barnish, ‘Martianus Capella and Rome in the late fifth century’, Hermes 114 (1986) 98–111), or even later in the sixth century (S. Grebe, ‘Gedanken zur Datierung von ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ des Martianus Capella’, Hermes 128 (2000) 353–68). Text: J. Willis, Martianus Capella (Stuttgart 1983). The Budé edition now has text and commentaries of most of the De nuptiis. For books I and IV (the focus of this essay), see esp. D. Shanzer above; J. F. Chevalier, Martianus Capella, ‘Les noces de Philologie et de Mercure’. Tome I, Livre I (Paris 2014), with bibliography, xic–cxi; M. Ferré, Martianus Capella, ‘Les noces de Philologie et de Mercure’, Livre IV, La Dialectique (Paris 2007); L. Cristante, L. Lenaz, and P. Ferrarino, Martiani Capellae ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’. 1, Libri I–II (Hildesheim 2011). See also the Medieval commentaries, e.g. in C. Lutz, Remigii Autissiodorensis Commentum in Martianum Capella, Libri I–II (Leiden 1962–65); H. J. Westra and C. Vester, The Berlin Commentary on Martianus Capella’s ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ Book 1 (Leiden 1994) (full list in Chevalier, Martianus Capella (this note, above) xci–xcii).

⁵ See Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 45.

⁶ For a comparison, see, e.g., H. J. Westra, ‘The juxtaposition of the ridiculous and the sublime in Martianus Capella’, Florilegium 3 (1981) 198–214.

⁷ Carver, Protean Ass (n. 3, above) 36–9; Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 52–3; Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) passim; Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (n. 4, above) passim; etc.

⁸ Criticized by Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 44, also citing L. Lenaz, Martiani Capellae ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii liber secundus’ (Padua 1975) 96 n. 398. See below, n. 11.

⁹ E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (London 1953) 38.

¹⁰ C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (New York 1963) 78.

¹¹ F. J. LeMoine, ‘Judging the beauty of diversity: a critical approach to Martianus Capella’, Classical Journal 67 (1972) 209–15 (209).

¹² We can no longer speak of ‘canon’ as an unchanging literary standard. Major discussions in Critical Inquiry 10 (1983)—a special issue on canon; Canons, ed. R. von Hallberg (Chicago 1984); P. Bourdieu and J.-C. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (New York 1990); J. Gorak, The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Modern Idea (London 1993); J. Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago 1993); F. Kermode, Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon (Oxford 2004); J. D. Wyrick, The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions (Cambridge, MA 2004); Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture, ed. E. Thomassen (Copenhagen 2010).

¹³ See the essays in Apuleius and Africa, eds B. T. Lee, E. Finkelpearl, L. Graverini, and A. Barchiesi (London 2014).

¹⁴ Curtius, European Literature (n. 9, above) 37–42; B. Englisch, Die Artes liberales im frühen Mittelalter (Stuttgart 1994); Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (n. 4, above) I 90–7; S. Grebe, ‘De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ (n. 4, above) 37–50; P. Olmos, ‘Two literary encyclopaedias from late antiquity’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43.2 (2012): 284–92; etc. The date and early formation of the ‘seven arts’ is a matter of some disagreement; Ferré, Martianus Capella (n. 4, above) xiv–xv, citing H. I. Marrou, ‘Les arts libéraux dans l’Antiquité classique’, in Actes du quatrième congrès International de philosophie médiévale (Paris-Montréal 1969) 5–33 and I. Hadot, Arts libéraux et philosophie dans la pensée antique (Paris 1984, 1st edn).

¹⁵ See above, n. 11.

¹⁶ H. O. Taylor, The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (New York 1901) 49; cf. Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (n. 4, above) I 22.

¹⁷ The main manuscripts are the Reichenauensis 73 (R = Carolsruhensis 73, ninth century CE), Bambergensis Ms class 39 (B, also ninth century CE), Parisinus 8670 (D, ninth century CE), Harleianus 2685 (A, ninth century CE), and the more-recently collated and partial Vaticanus Reginensis 1987; see Martianus Capella, ed. Willis (n. 4, above) iv–xvi; more recently, Martianus Capella, ed. Chevalier (n. 4, above) lviii–iv. Catalogue of the manuscripts of the De nuptiis: C. Leonardi, ‘I codici di Marziano Capella’, Aevum 33 (1959) 443–489 and Aevum 34 (1960) 411–524.

¹⁸ See Westra, ‘The juxtaposition of the ridiculous’ (n. 6, above); Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 29–44 (esp. 29 n. 2); Grebe, ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ Darstellung (n. 4, above) 24–6.

¹⁹ ‘Tu quem psallentem thalamis, quem matre Camena / progenitum perhibent, copula sacra deum, / semina qui arcanis stringens pugnantia vinclis / complexuque sacro dissona nexa foves, / nam elementa ligas vicibus mundumque maritas / atque auram mentis corporibus socias, / foedere complacito sub quo natura iugatur, / sexus concilians et sub amore fidem; / o Hymenaee decens, Cypridis quae maxima curas es / (hinc tibi nam flagrans ore Cupido micat), / seu tibi quod Bacchus pater est placuisse choreas, / cantare ad thalamos seu genetricis habes / comere vernificis florentia limina sertis / seu consanguineo Gratia trina dedid: / conubium divum componens Calliopea / carmina auspicio te probat annuere’. The translation draws heavily on Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) and Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (n. 4, above). Further translations, below, unless otherwise stated, are taken from Shanzer. Main discussions of the verse proem in Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (n. 4, above); Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above); Cristante, Lenaz, and Ferrarino, Martiani Capellae (n. 4, above); Martianus Capella, ed. Chevalier (n. 4, above).

²⁰ See Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 45.

²¹ For the Apuleian use of the first person, see S. Frangoulidis, Witches, Isis and Narrative: Approaches to Magic in Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ (Berlin 2008) 83–4. For a bibliography of studies discussing Capella’s double prologue, see Martianus Capella, ed. Chevalier (n. 4, above) 43–4.

²² MSS—‘nugulas ineptias’; Willis—‘nugulas ineptas’. Discussion in Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 53 ad loc. Martianus Capella, ed. Chevalier (n. 4, above): ‘nugulas in Nuptiis’ is ingenious but too straightforward, given Capella’s usual diction.

²³ ‘An incrementum lustrale was a period of five years’: Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 52.

²⁴ Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 52: ‘the deprecating tone and diminutive [‘nugulas’, ‘versiculos’] reinforce the modesty topos’. However, as Grebe and others rightly note, this is not modesty but self-deprecation in the interests of comedy: Grebe, ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ (n. 4, above) 22–23 n. 55.

²⁵ See, e.g., Martianus Capella, ed. Willis (n. 4, above) 2 ad 2.8.

²⁶ Cf. W. H. Keulen, Apuleius Madaurensis ‘Metamorphoses’ book I (Groningen 2007), 166 ad Met. 1.6.2.

²⁷ M. C. O’Brien, ‘“Larvale simulacrum”: Platonic Socrates and the persona of Socrates in Apuleius, ‘Metamorphoses’ 1, 1–19’, Echoing Narratives (2011) 123–37.

²⁸ See A. Kahane and A. Laird, A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ (Oxford-New York 2001) 300–01 for references to a range of views. For the idea that the speaker is the talking book, see S. J. Harrison, ‘The speaking book: the prologue to Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’’, Classical Quarterly 40 (1990) 507–13.

²⁹ See Kahane and Laird, A Companion to the Prologue (n. 28, above) 303.

³⁰ See, e.g., Curtius, European Literature (n. 9, above) 38 n. 5: ‘Pierre Daniel Huet (1630–1721), later bishop of Avranches, was in 1670 appointed assistant to Bossuet, who was then tutor to the Dauphin. One of his duties was supervising the edition of the Latin classics for the Dauphin’s use. […] He entrusted the edition of Martianus Capella to Leibniz, who wanted to “restore him honor” (G. Hess, Leibniz korrespondiert mit Paris [1940] 22)’.

³¹ Obscure and much discussed. See R. Schievenin, Nugis ignosce lectitans: studi su Marziano Capella (Triest 2009) 25: ‘Per Marziano dunque ἐγέρσιμख़ν indica anzitutto l’inno che segna l’inizio mattutino del culto. Il termine, sostantivato, sarebbe dunque entrato nel lessico del rito egizio a indicare l’inno della cerimonia di risveglio della divinità. Questo significato spiega anche la valenza della occurrenza del libro nono: da ‘inno iniziale dell rito mattutino’ a semplice ‘inno iniziale in onore della divinità’ (musicale nel caso del libro nono, una ouverture potremmo dire con una certa approssimazione)’.

³² Martianus Capella, ed. Willis (n. 4, above) 2 ad loc.; Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (n. 4, above) II 4 n. 8; etc.

³³ See, e.g., Martianus Capella, ed. Willis (n. 4, above) 3 ad loc. and Met. 6.1, ‘interea Psyche variis iactabatur discursibus’ (‘meanwhile Psyche wandered this way and that’). ‘Iactabatur’, like ‘discursus’, involves a to-and-fro movement (M. Zimmerman, S. Panayotakis, V. C. Hunink, W. H. Keulen, S. J. Harrison, T. D. McCreight, B. Wesseling, and D. van Mal-Maeder, Apuleius Madaurensis ‘Metamorphoses’ Books IV 28–35, V and VI 1–24 The Tale of Cupid and Psyche (Groningen 2004) 363–4).

³⁴ Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 64 ad loc. Cf. H. Schalk, ‘Diskurs: zwischen Allerweltswort und philosophischem Begriff’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 40 (1997) 56–104; TLL 5.1.1369.82; Plin. Hist. Nat. 1.2.36 ‘de discursu stellarum’; etc.

³⁵ Cf. OLD s.v. ‘discursus’ 3 and, e.g., Sen. Dial. 12.6.5, ‘discursus et sudor’; Plin. Ep. 1.9.7, ‘inanum discursum relinque’.

³⁶ Martianus Capella, ed. Chevalier (n. 4, above) 63. Text: R. Helm, Apulei Platonici Opera Quae Supersunt Vol. II Fasc. 1: Pro Se De Magia Liber (Apologia) (Leipzig 1959); trans. S. J. Harrison, J. Hilton, and V. C. Hunink, Apuleius, Rhetorical Works (Oxford 2001) 85–6. For a discussion of Mercury’s portrait here, see J.-F. Chevalier, ‘Le corps du Cyllénien dans le livre I du ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ de Martianus Capella: Le portrait d’un éphèbe virgilien?’, in Mélanges en l’honneur de Philippe Heuzé, eds Y. Hersant and J. Pigeaud (Québec, forthcoming).

³⁷ In contrast to Mercury’s short chlamys, when, in the modest initiation ceremony at the end of the Metamorphoses, Lucius dons a similar garb (11.24.2), it hangs ‘all the way to his heels’.

³⁸ Florida, trans. V. C. Hunink, in S. J. Harrison, J. Hilton, and V. C. Hunink, Apuleius, Rhetorical Works (n. 36, above) 84 n. 155.

³⁹ With some exceptions, such as representation in Greek vase painting, which lie outside the scope of our discussion and require special consideration. See, e.g., M. F. Kilmer, Greek Erotica on Attic Red-Figure Vases (London 1993).

⁴⁰ The relation of pornography to canon in antiquity is an understudied topic (but see, e.g., A. Richlin, Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford 1992); L. Kurke, ‘Pindar and the prostitutes, or reading ancient “pornography”’, Arion 4.2 (1996) 49–75. The fate of the Metamorphoses’ Greek cognate, Lucius, or The Ass, which is more pornographic and largely lost, may be indicative. For pornography and canon more generally, see S. Gubar, ‘Representing pornography: feminism, criticism, and depictions of female violation’, Critical Inquiry 13.4 (1987) 712–41.

⁴¹ For a characterization of the Dialectica in relation to knowledge and the sciences, see Ferré, Martianus Capella (n. 4, above) viii.

⁴² ‘Haec quoque contortis stringens effamina nodis / Qua sine nil sequitur nilque repugnant item, / in coetum superum veniens primordia fandi / advehit et scholium praestruit axioma / ambiguis memorans vocem consistere verbis / nil normale putants, ni fuat associum / sed licet ipse modos demum bis quinque profatus / pallens afflictim verset Aristoteles, / Stoica circumeant ludantque sophismata sensus / perdita neque umquam cornua fronte ferant, / Chrysippus cumulet proprium <et> consumat acervum / Carneadesque parem vim great hellebore; / nullus apex tot prole virum par accidit umquam / nec tibi tam felix sortis honos cecidit: / inter temple deum fas est, Dialectica, fari, / et Iove conspecto iure docentis agis’. Trans. Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (n. 4, above).

⁴³ See Grebe, ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ (n. 4, above) 109–15; Ferré, Martianus Capella (n. 4, above) xvi–viii.

⁴⁴ Text of the Peri hermeneias: C. Moreschini, Apulei Platonici Madaurensis Vol. III: De philosophia libri (Stuttgart-Leipzig 1991). See also D. Londey and C. Johanson, The Logic of Apuleius (Leiden 1987); M. W. Sullivan, Apuleian Logic: The Nature, Sources, and Influence of Apuleius’s ‘Peri hermeneias’ (Amsterdam 1967). The fact that this work is today excluded from the Apuleian corpus is irrelevant for our purposes here.

⁴⁵ S. J. Harrison, Apuleius: A Latin Sophist (Oxford 2000) 11.

⁴⁶ The main discussions of these concepts in antiquity are to be found in Aristotle’s Organon, but cf., e.g., Plato, Theaet. 206D, Soph. 262C; P. T. Geach, ‘History of the corruptions of logic’, in P. T. Geach, Logic Matters (Berkeley 1972) 44–61; L. M. de Rijk, Plato’s Sophist: A Philosophical Commentary (Amsterdam 1986) 133.

⁴⁷ 267 / IV. C. Moreschini, Apulei Platonici Madaurensis (n. 44, above) 191.18–192.12.

⁴⁸ 267 / IV. C. Moreschini, Apulei Platonici Madaurensis (n. 44, above) 192–17.

⁴⁹ 268 / IV. C. Moreschini, Apulei Platonici Madaurensis (n. 44, above) 192.23–193.13.

⁵⁰ 397. See Sullivan, Apuleian Logic (n. 44, above) 64–66; Londey and Johanson, The Logic of Apuleius (n. 44, above) 108. For the history of logic, see I. M. Bocheński, A History of Formal Logic (Notre Dame, IN 1961) esp. 37 n. 14; D. Gabbay and J. Woods, Handbook of the History of Logic. Volume I. Greek, Indian and Arabic Logic (Amsterdam 2004).

⁵¹ See above, n. 30.

⁵² See above, n. 42.

⁵³ Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 69: ‘In the Metamorphoses the unio mystica of Cupid and Psyche has a positive value. The tale is one of a relationship between a human mystes and a divinity […] Martianus’s account, however, owes far more to the Hermetic thought of the Poimandres, where sexual union of ἄνθρωπख़ς and ϕύσις is the metaphor which expresses the soul’s fall into the material world. […] [C]ertainly later mediaeval writers knew that Cupid and Psyche are no longer the lovers of the Apuleian tale’.

⁵⁴ Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary (n. 4, above) 70: ‘The Marteanean version is a hybrid: it is heavily allegorized in that there is no description of the downward flight of the soul. Within this allegorical framework there is perhaps intentional narrative confusion: the soul (like Pandora) is nubile […]’.

⁵⁵ Society’s fundamental principle is, of course the Unbehagenheit it forces upon its members through the imposition of boundaries on behaviour, as Freud had argued in his classic work in 1930: see The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXI (1927–1931), ed. J. Stachey (London 2001).