CLAS 357
The Golden Ass (cont.)
April 29, 2024

Isis (Tomb of Seti I, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, ca. 1360 BCE)

Creative Project #2 (due April 29, 11:59pm in D2L)
Response #3 Topics (due May 1, 11:59pm in D2L)

Study Guide for Final examination (Monday, May 6, 10:30am-12:30pm)

The Golden Ass 9: Ass-man hears story of pauper's wife (large storage jar, 9.5-7) > series of Milesian Tales (infidelity, treachery, etc.); Roman soldier

Roman millstones for grinding wheat (Pompeii)

• priests arrested (temple robbery), Ass-man auctioned to baker: inhuman(e) work at mill
  
  Golden Ass 9.11-13 (lived experience of slavery for men & beasts)
  I thought that if I pretended to be brainless, I could pass as unsuitable for this kind of service and useless at it. I would be assigned to some other task, which would have to be easier or maybe I would even be foddered at leisure. But I plied my wiles in vain—they were in fact a dead loss. In a trice, several people armed with cudgels took up positions around me. I was standing there with my vision obscured, without a care in the world, when suddenly they gave the signal to advance, raised a battle cry, piled on a mountain of blows, and sent me into such confusion with their noise that I threw aside all my stratagems on the spot, set my full weight adroitly against the strap woven from broom branches, and proved quite sprightly in going about my laps. My instant conversion made the whole crowd laugh out loud. Near the day’s end, when I was practically finished off, they undid my twig-plaited horse collar, untied me from the machine, and tethered me at the manger. But you know me: though I was out and out exhausted, desperately needing to restore my strength, and downright devastated from hunger, nevertheless my habitual curiosity kept me keyed up and staring around. I put off any attention to my food, which lay plentifully before me, and with a certain titillation contemplated the conduct of this unappealing manufactory. Good gods, what sorry excuses for human beings I saw. The pale welts from chains crossed every patch of their skin like brushstrokes. Their flogged-up backs under sparse patchwork were no better covered than stretches of ground that shade falls on. Some of them had thown on an exiguous vestiture, which extended only to the loins, yet all were clad so that their scraps of tatters kept no secrets. Their foreheads were inscribed with brands, their hair half-shaved, their ankles braceleted with fetters, their pallor hideous, their eyelids gnawed by the gloomy smoke of the murky fumes, which left them less able to access light at all. Like boxers who fight bathed in fine dust, these men were filthy white with floury ash. And the beastly barracksful I now belonged to—what can I tell you? How would I put it? They were just indescribable, the ancient mules and the broken-down geldings gathered around the manger, their heads submerged as they demolished masses of chaff, the skin on their necks loose as bellows-leather from rotting, running wounds, their nostrils battered, by ceaseless coughing, into flaccid, yawning chasms, their chests covered in sores from the unending gouging of rush ropes, their ribs laid bare—bare to the bone—by perpetual chastisements, their hooves splayed to cover the grotesque amount of ground as a result of those multitudinous circular coursings, and their entire hides rough with inveterate dirt and mangy starvation.
  
  Fuller's shop scene (Pompeii)
  
  
• baker's wife (9.14-31): old lady's story of Barbarus & adulterous wife Arete (Myrmex & slippers); baker's wife & lover (husband dining at fuller's, wicker cage story) hidden under wooden trough, exposed by Ass-man, baker's sexual punishment, divorce, witch & murder
  
  Golden Ass 9.14 (lengthy condemnation of baker’s wife)
  There wasn't a single fault missing from that dame, who had nothing whatsoever to recommend her; on the contrary, every wicked passion, bar none, had flooded into a heart that was like some slimy privy. A fiend in a fight but not very bright, hot for a crotch, wine-botched, rather die than let a whim pass by—that was her . . . In place of the self-evident divinities we cultivate, she posited a god—sacreligiously and on no basis but her own lies—whom she proclaimed as the Only One.
  
  
• Ass-man auctioned to poor & kind gardener: story of householder's suicide & three sons (killed by landgrabbing aristocrat, "one-man government", 9.36) > backdrop of lawless, unjust & corrupt society
  
  
• Roman legionary (9.39-42): theft, beating, (mono)linguistic imperialism ("This man proved unable to control the bad attitude so often associated with his profession . . . [the soldier's] animalistic agression was aimed at annihilating him", 9.39-40); soldier loses sword to gardener
  
  
• Ass-man's curiosity in the attic? ("They hauled him off to prison, undoubtedly to pay with his life", 9.42)
  
  
  
  The Golden Ass 10-11: Ass-man's last calamitous wanderings & surprise enlightenment
  
  
• Book 10: journey continues – spiritual Odyssey "home"? inset tragedy (cf. Euripides's Hippolytus) of evil stepmother's crucifixion, followed by comedy of "Gourmet Ass" (soldier's sale of Ass-man to slave caterers, "these brothers adopted me as a third roommate, and there was no other period when Fortune treated me so kindly", 10.13)
  
  
• final random episode: Ass-man > new master/magistrate sponsoring Roman spectacle in Corinth – encounter with "asinine Pasiphaë" (10.19): transformation of lost Greek Milesian tale, Lucius or The Ass (summary: Ass-man transformed, returns to Pasiphaë and is rejected at end)
  
  Temple of Isis at Pompeii
  
  
• spectacle "marriage" in Corinth: woman condemned ad bestias (jealousy, false accusations, poison, quadruple murder, 10.23-8)
  
  
• absurd Spring spectacle of entertainment, aesthetics + violence (pantomime of Judgment of Paris, mountain setting, almost nude Venus, chorus of Cupids, etc., 10.29-34)
  
  Golden Ass 10.34 (pantomine ends, release of saffron scent & change of staging)
  The next moment, however, a soldier was striding straight across the arena, to fetch the woman from the city jail, as the audience was yelling for her . . . Already what looked like an elaborate wedding couch was being made up for us. The frame had a gleaming, transparent Indian tortoise shell inlay, the mattress was swollen from the mound of down inside, and flowers spangled the silken coverlet.
  
  
  
• Ass-man escapes becoming a spectacle, flees to seaside near Corinth (silent night, full-moon, deep sleep) > mystical conversion, epiphany of goddess
  
  L: Isis with Queen Nefertari (Theban tomb, 13th century BCE); R: black & white marble Isis (Naples, 2nd century CE)
  
  
• Ass-man humbles himself in prayer to "Queen of heaven" – baptized ("Ducking my head under the waves seven times . . . I beseeched with a teary countenance the goddess who is puissant beyond all others, 11.1) – surrenders to higher power, something/Other "bigger", etc.
  
  
• redemption of Ass-man (divine mercy): aretology of Isis ("excellence-narrative"), Isis as Cybele/Ceres/Minerva/Diana/Venus/Proserpina (11.2)
  
  Golden Ass 11.5 (merciful Isis appears in a dream to Ass-man)
  I am mother of the universe, queen of all the elements, the original offspring of eternity, loftiest of the gods, queen of the shades, foremost of the heavenly beings, single form of gods and goddesses alike. I control by my will the dazzling summits of the sky, the wholesome breezes of the sea, the despairing silences of the dead below. The whole world worships my power under an abundance of names, a variety of rituals, and an array of names . . . But the Ethiopians, whose sky is lit by the raw rays of the Sun at his daily birth, and the Africans, and the Egyptians with their powerful, immemorial knowledge worship me in ceremonies inherently mine and call my by my true name, Queen Isis.
  
  
• Lucius' initiation, mysteries of savior goddess Isis: promised afterlife (Elysian Fields) in dream (11.6); inclusive cult (sacred procession of initiates, “men and women of all ranks and ages”, 11.10); cult of Isis includes dualistic doctrine (soul/body), moral prescriptions, sacred symbols; ritual rebirth ("I approached the boundary of death and placed my foot on Proserpina's threshold. I made my way through the every level of the universe and back", 11.23); cf. Psyche
  
  The Golden Ass 11.23 (Isis' mysteries not revealed; admonishment against curiosity)
  Perhaps, eager reader, you have a certain pressing curiosity about what was said and done at this point. I would tell you if telling were permitted; you could learn of it if you were allowed to hear. But your ears and my tongue would incur equal blame, the latter for its impious loquacity, the former for its foolhardy prying.
  
  Roman statue of Isis (Villa of Hadrian, 1st century CE)
  
  
• (anthropological) patterns of religious conversion: rejection of world's unstable values, "false" desires & pleasures; new insights, joy & knowledge (images of light, freedom, clarity, unity, stability); religious aspirations in Greco-Roman world (2nd century CE)
  
  
• Ass-man’s reverse-metamorphosis, rebirth as Lucius
  
  The Golden Ass 11.13-14
  Immediately, the offensive form of a brute beast fell from me. First the scruffy hair sloughed off. Then my thick hide dwindled, my fat belly sank in; at the end of my legs hooves grew into digits. My hands were feet no more but reached out to perform their upright roles. My extended neck was now cut short, my face and head rounded out, and my enormous ears resumed their original paltry proportions. My boulder-like teeth again became minute human ones. And that most effective vehicle for my torment, my tail, was nowhere in evidence. [Lat. cauda = "tail", "penis"] . . . As soon as the ass had disappeared, you see, robbing me of its covering—however revolting—I had to squeeze my thighs together and stretch my hands overtop, safeguarding myself as decently as a naked man can: with the hands he was born with serving as a veil.
  
  Isis-Fortuna (House of Philocalus, Pompeii, 1st century CE)
  
  
• Lucius granted protection of Isis-Fortuna: abandons sensuality & idle curiosity, world of appearances for promise of blessed (after-)life – cf. Psyche's journey toward higher love & immortality = "freedom"?
  
  Golden Ass 11.15 (Isis’ priest to Lucius on his personal liberation/transformation)
  Neither your distinguished family nor your lofty rank, nor even the learning in which you excel, profited you in the slightest; no, the exuberance of your tender years tripped you up. You toppled among pleasures fit only for slaves and gained the sad reward for your unpropitious curiosity. Blind Fortune mangled you with the most painful trials. but she managed nevertheless, through a spite that could not make out what must come of its own maneuvers, to bring you to this holy bliss. . . Now you are under the protection of another kind of Fortune, one who can see, one who with splendor illuminates even the other gods . . . But Lucius, to fortify yourself, to be safer still, enlist in this holy army, to which you were called up a short while ago, and swear allegiance. Devote yourself obediently to our sect and take on the voluntary yoke of service. For when you become the goddess's slave, you will know a greater enjoyment of your freedom.
  
  
  Dedicatory inscription (Temple of Isis, Pompeii, 62 CE)
  
  
• Lucius embraces new world order & system of meaning (omnipotent Isis' cosmos: "The gods above worship you, honor is yours from the gods below. You turn the globe, light the sun, regulate the universe, trample Tartarus's realm of death. Under your control the heavenly bodies move, the seasons return, the divinities rejoice, the earth, sea, and sky perform their slavish duties", 11.25)
  
  
• merger of narrator & author in reported vision of priest: "this man had heard that someone from Madauros was being sent to him, someone quite poor but requiring immediate initiation at the priest's hands. For by the god's providence, this initiate would win fame in his profession, and the priest would gain no small profit" (11.27); cf. Apuleius as advocate in Rome, priest in Carthage
  
  Fresco of Isis mystery (?) (Herculaneum, 1st century CE)
  
  
• reborn to friends & family (“returned from the underworld”, 11.18): white horse returned (11.20), returns to "ancestral hearth" (11.26) before heading to Rome
  
  L: Osiris (seated) with Anubis & Horus (Tomb of Pharaoh Horemheb, 14th century BCE); R: Priest (Sarcophagus of Osiris Fresco, Temple of Isis, Pompeii)
  
  
• Lucius the initiate metamorphosizes into blessed mystic = celibate, shaven-headed priest of Isis & consort Osiris in Rome, lawyer; completes Odyssey, new focus on service in cult
  
  
• Lucius' future: "I went joyfully about the duties of this venerable priesthood . . . I did not cloak or conceal my baldness, wherever I went and whomever I met" (11.30)
  )
  Roman grafitto ("Alexamenos worships his god", ca. 200 CE)
  
  
• novel an advertisment for worship of Isis in face of competing mystery religions, e.g. the Syrian goddess (Atargatis), Christianity (et al.)