The Virtue of Curiosity: Mystery Cults and Enlightenment in Apuleius' "Golden Ass"

From the very first, the narration of Lucius' remarkable story, or rather, his colorful parade of stories, reveals the primary motivational trait of his character: curiosity. "I want to know everything in the world... or at least a good part of it." (Apuleius p. 33) Lucius intends no ill by his inquiry of the two travelers he meets en route to Hypata - he does not mean to pry, but to expand his knowledge, particularly of the seemingly impossible and the magical. "'I consider nothing impossible'", he asserts to the skeptical companion of Aristomenes. "'As the Fates have predestined, so unwinds all human action. For you and I and every other man alive have had experiences so curious as to be outside reality, and which when described carry no conviction to those who have not shared them.'" (Apuleius p. 45) Lucius' initially almost lustful pursuit of such experiences is quickly fruitful, but the yield of his asinine machinations proves to be much greater than he had probably intended, and indeed, far surpassed what he may have imagined. Seeking to taste the fruit, Lucius finds the orchard; seeking little pieces of mystical knowledge, he arrives at the fullness of understanding, but not without travail. As an ass, Lucius becomes acquainted with the experiences he had never had before, and returns to human form changed by his extraordinary experiential knowledge. Thus prepared, his threefold initiation into the various mystery cults of Isis and Osiris opens the way for him to expand this knowledge into the supra-mundane, where he may perchance attain wisdom.

Lucius begins his story with an awareness that a person's knowledge is limited by the scope of his experience, and that consequently people are incredulous upon hearing of incredible happenings which they themselves have not seen. Consoling the teller of the first inset tale, Aristomenes, Lucius rebukes the other, disbelieving traveler:

But for you, sir, with the dense ears and the firm prejudice, you are rejecting a story which may very well be true. By Hercules, you are ignorant that man's debased intelligence calls all those matters lies which are either seldom seen or heard, or which exist on heights beyond the narrow cast of his reason. (Apuleius p. 34) He goes on, insisting that "'if you probe these matters closely, you will find them not only understandable and clear, but even easily beheld." Bringing home his point, Lucius gives a relatively mundane and believable example of what he means. Recounting that the previous evening he nearly choked on a bite of soft, sweet cheesecake hastily swallowed at supper, he offers a starkly contrasting experience he had observed not long before:

I saw with these identical two eyes a juggler who swallowed a horseman's sharp double-edged broadsword, tip first, right down to the hilt - and then, for a few miserable coppers, he rammed home a hunting-spear until he had the point with all its deadly threat buried deep in his entrails. (Apuleius p. 34) By his example Lucius very astutely illustrates his critique of the skeptical listener, that over-dependence on one's limited scope of experience leads to exclusion of a possible but usually unseen far end of the whole scope. Had Lucius only the experience of getting the cheesecake stuck in his throat, he certainly might be disinclined to believe that someone else could swallow a sword or a spear without discomfiture. Having had revealed to him knowledge "beyond the narrow cast of his reason," however, he is able to conjecture that there is everywhere the possibility of extending one's experiential coverage.

It is with this awareness that Lucius feeds his "gleeful curiosity," entering the city of Hypata naively enchanted with the thought that the cobblestones, birds, trees, and fountains' waters were bewitched, transmogrified men, and the statues were liable to move, the oxen to speak. (Apuleius p. 50) He perhaps does not take seriously enough the matters which fascinate him so. Soon after describing his excited observation of the city, Lucius lavishes his attention on an extensive description of the sculpture of Actaeon glimpsing Diana which greets him as he arrives at the house of his aunt Byrrhaena. (Apuleius p. 52) This outstanding ekphrasis seems in every way a silent but strong sign of caution for Lucius. The Goddess and all the magnificence surrounding her is closely guarded by flanking fierce dogs, rendered in mid-chase, suggesting that the divine, that which is outside the normal mundane human experience, is accessible not without danger. Further, that the hungrily staring Actaeon himself is depicted as already transforming into a stag - indeed, "he was to be seen ambushed" - before Diana has even actually undressed is warning of what will come upon Lucius before what he wishes to look upon is revealed. All the more does Apuleius subtly amplify this warning when Byrrhaena says to Lucius, in his fascinated pleasure, "'Everything you see here is yours.'"

And exactly so does everything become. The commitment Lucius makes in watching Pamphile, the witching wife of his host, undress and turn herself into an owl is the same as that of Actaeon in gazing upon the Goddess. Their act is also identical; Lucius says so: "I looked." (Apuleius p. 82) Following his curiosity now without restraint, and applying Pamphile's magic ointment, Lucius unwittingly throws himself into the hands of a cruel Fortune. Finding himself herded by her, having "submitted to the heavy pack of Fate" (Apuleius p. 85), throughout his wanderings as an ass, he often bemoans the maliciousness of his "relentless destiny" (Apuleius p. 90) and of "Fortune's spite" (Apuleius p. 149). Harsh as Lucius may find Fortune, however, by his transformation he is given access to the seldom-seen which he had somewhat idly sought. Become an ass, he is taken far beyond the previous scope of his experience, and in every way his horizons are broadened.
No sooner is he housed in the stable to spend the night before being cured by a snack of rose petals than a band of robbers assaults his host's home, seizing all the wealth they can lay hands on, and finding it too much to carry, take Lucius as a beast of burden as well. Under the bandits' yoke, he suffers the hard labor which as a scholarly young man of noble birth has probably been far from him his whole life: "I was exhausted by the length of the road, bowed under the weight of the packages, debilitated by the cudgel-blows, and lamed and stumbling with hooves worn to the quick." (Apuleius p. 90) To top off his painful toil, Lucius must also mutely endure hearing of his condemnation for the robbery of his host, a most irksome charge to his conscience. (Apuleius p. 149)

Escaping the robbers when the captured maiden Charite is rescued by her fiance, Lucius comes into the service of cruel farm hands, from whom he faces threats of death on several occasions, and at one point, even worse, is nearly gelded. Escaping the wrath of the farmers, particularly the gelder, Lucius and his party find themselves facing attack by wolves as they travel. Though the wolves stay away, the vicious dogs and hurled stones of fearful peasants, thinking the travelers to be bandits, do plenty of damage in lieu of any lupine assault.

From being in danger of his life, Lucius is now subjected to all manner of ignominy. He is first sold to Philebus, to bear an image of the Syrian Goddess for him and his procession of depraved, debauching, and deceitful eunuchs. Lucius is still beaten, this time with the flats of the sham-priests' swords, and is nearly eaten, served up in place of a lost thigh of stag. (Apuleius p. 184) Avoiding the butcher, he leaves the pan for the fire, as his owners and their hosts decide he is rabid, and come close to putting him down. After the monks' are arrested for their less-than-saintly behavior, he is sold again, this time into the hands of a baker at whose mill he is once more worked to the bone. By now, however, Lucius has developed some appreciation for the lone benefit of his circumstances:

There was no relief whatsoever for my tormented existence, except to indulge my inborn curiosity; ... I therefore gratefully recall to mind the times when I was an ass, because, hidden under the ass's skin, I experienced all life's variety and acquired much knowledge if little wisdom. (Apuleius p. 192) Though his reflection is brief, that he is reflecting upon, acknowledging and even appreciating the boon of his curse is sign of his progress in the outstandingly hard program of his learning.
Eventually passing from the miserable mill, Lucius is bought again, by a hard-up gardener, from whose honest poverty he is snatched by a commandeering centurion. Traveling for a little while in the soldier's baggage train, Lucius is sold for the last time to two brothers, each culinary masters, one "a confectioner who baked sweet-breads and dainties; the other was a cook who specialized in appetizing messes succulently seasoned with mixed herbs." (Apuleius p. 220) Surrounded by these delicacies, which he prefers to coarse hay and which are left unguarded when the brothers take leave to bathe, Lucius develops the habit of feasting on human food. When the brothers and their wealthy master discover his fine tastes, he is taught "a repertoire of tricks," and becomes a sideshow. In this role Lucius becomes quite popular, and he tells us

my fame had preceded me so loudly that I was the source of considerable profit to my keeper. When he perceived that crowds of people were enthusiastically keen to see me amusing myself, he shut the gates and admitted the populace one at a time, charging a stiff price for the privilege. (Apuleius p. 224) After a particular such viewer, a fine lady, "took heart at the example of Pasiphae", however, Lucius' master conceives of putting on the same act during a public gladiatorial show. Fearing both contact with the depraved woman chosen as his mate and the wild beasts to whose maws she has herself been condemned, Lucius "was therefore perturbed not merely for my moral character but for my very life." Quietly sneaking away, then running for miles, the peril of the arena is avoided. Finding a "quiet nook by the shore," Lucius rests, exhausted, in "the cradling lap of the sand. The chariot of the sun had reached the end of his course; and surrendering myself to the peaceful dusk I was soon rocked in sweet slumbers." (Apuleius p. 234)

Awaking to find the full moon just rising over the sea, Lucius is struck rather abruptly by the thought "that this was the hour of silence and loneliness when my prayers might avail. For I knew that the Moon was the primal Goddess of supreme sway; ... I determined to implore the august image of the risen Goddess." (Apuleius p. 235) Addressing the "Queen of Heaven," he wings his prayer desperately. With suddenness apropos to the story's rapid change in tone, Lucius' prayer is answered as the very Goddess emerges from the sea, she "'whose single godhead is venerated all over the earth under manifold forms, varying rites, and changing names.'" (Apuleius p. 237) Though while in ass form he has known toil, pain, abuse, luxury, misery, fame, poverty - the whole gamut of human experience - not since his transformation itself has Lucius witnessed something truly supernatural, entirely beyond the cast of mundane reason. Now, not only is he treated to something supernatural, but to something divine, and intensely personal, to boot. For the Goddess, identifying herself as truly named Queen Isis, details how Lucius is to meet her priest in a procession the next day, and receive from him the roses to free him from his bestial form. In return for this redemption, Isis insists "'that all the remaining days of your life must be dedicated to me, and that nothing can release you from this service but death.'" (Apuleius p. 238) This servitude is not without promise of freedom, however. Not only will Lucius at last return to his former shape, but "'More, if you are found to merit my love by your dedicated obedience, religious devotion, and constant chastity, you will discover that it is within my power to prolong your life beyond the limits set to it by Fate.'" (Apuleius p. 239)

Lucius meets the priest, exactly as Isis describes, and eats the crown of roses he is carrying. By the Goddess' providence, Lucius is restored. His ass-form shed, he stands unclothed in the middle of the procession, and the priest addresses him:

At last, Lucius, after the long days of disaster and the heavy storms of fortune you have reached the haven of peace and the altar of mercy. ... you have reaped the reward of your unprospering curiosity. Nevertheless, blind Fortune ... has led you ... to this beatitude of release. ... let her seek another object for her hate. For terror and calamity have no power over him whose life the majesty of our Goddess has claimed for her service. ... You are now received into the protection of Fortune, but of Fortune who is open-eyed and who lightens even the other gods with the splendors of her light.
(Apuleius p. 243)

A twofold transformation has occurred: most visibly, Lucius has changed back into a human body, but his destiny has also been transferred from the care of the cruel, punishing, unseeing Fortune into that of the protecting, rewarding, open-eyed Fortune. The limit-setting Fate from whom Isis promises Lucius freedom is no doubt this blind Fortune; the seeing Fortune unto whom Lucius has been delivered, on the other hand is, as the priest suggests, "'the providence of mighty Isis'": "'Dedicate yourself to the service of true religion, and voluntarily bend your neck to the yoke of this ministry. For when you have begun to serve the Goddess you will feel the full fruitfulness of your liberty.'" (Apuleius p. 244)

All Lucius' experience has been bent toward one thing: the raising of the threshold of his knowledge beyond the mundane, to the divine. All the suffering of his asininity has been the halter by which he has been led, with his all-enduring curiosity holding the leading end. At the time of his transformation back into his original form, it is as if the Goddess herself takes the reins from Lucius' curiosity, and leads him the little way further to the clear waters of divine experiential knowledge, the true essence of what Lucius had curiously sought at first in the magical arts. Though initially apprehensive, through much guidance of inspired dreams and signs, Lucius at last joins Isis' priesthood, and the good part of everything in the world he wished to know is his. Within the Holy of Holies, what Lucius experiences is not even intelligible to us:

I approached the confines of death. I tread the threshold of Proserpine; and borne through the elements I returned. At midnight I saw the Sun shining in all his glory. I approached the gods below and the gods above, and I stood beside them, and I worshipped them. Behold, I have told my experience, and yet what you hear can mean nothing to you. (Apuleius p. 249)
With this initiation, and his further two into the mysteries of Osiris and the Roman Isis (as opposed to the Achaian Isis), Lucius goes where we cannot understand unless we follow. In deepest darkness he sees the light, and he is acquainted with the divinity above and below. He is protected, rather than assailed, by Fortune. Thrice-beloved of the Gods, he is elevated from his lustful youth and and potentially dangerous curiosity to a pure, virtuous, and suffice it to say experienced state. Only having seen so much, gone from the bottom to the top of all there is to be known, can Lucius begin to become wise.

Hopefully Apuleius does not mean to say that only through so radical a transformation as Lucius' can we attain to wisdom. Rather, he tells us that our urge to know is seeking divinity, that we will have to metamorphose in order to know it, and that perhaps, from all of this, we may gain a little wisdom. If nothing else, at least we will live "a light gay-tale" which "will carry us more smoothly over the ruggedness of this hill that we are just ascending." (Apuleius p. 33)