Joshua Renfro
How are we to read the Metamorphoses alongside the remainder of Apuleius’ rich and
variegated corpus? This is a longstanding question in classical scholarship, and little progress
has been made, as evidenced by the lack of consensus. Unsatisfied with narratological and
sophistic readings (Winkler 1985, Harrison 2000) a few scholars have recently been trying to
revive a Platonic approach to Apuleius (e.g. O’Brien 2002 and Kirichenko 2008) by building
off suggestive leads found in older scholarship (Thibau 1965, Schlam 1970, DeFillippo
1990). O’Brien’s and Kirichenko’s findings are promising, but they adequately address
neither 1) the Metamorphoses , nor 2) the questions about Apuleius’ embryonic use of
Neoplatonic allegory and symbolism that they open. This paper poses and answers one such
question about a pivotal and hitherto puzzling juncture in the Cupid & Psyche narrative.
Drawing on other, more obviously Platonizing, parts of Apuleius’ corpus, it suggests
specific interpretations of Psyche’s four ‘helpers’, which lead us into questions about the
philosophical background that Apuleius must have had in mind while writing. Shortly after
Habit drags Psyche by her hair to present her to Venus’ gaze and after Psyche has been
whipped by Melancholy and Sorrow, Psyche is subjected to four tasks. In turn, formiculae ,
an harundo , an aquila , and a turris come to Psyche’s aid. Their help and Psyche’s “work”
has been the subject of allegorical speculation in much scholarship, especially Jungian
scholarship. However, although the Jungian approaches are generally provocative, they are
also generally anachronistic. This paper proposes to take the allegorical interpretation of the
four tasks seriously while trying to frame that interpretation within Apuleius’ own
daemonology.
One particularly tricky problem will be to understand the fourth task involving the
‘far-seeing tower’ ( prospicua turris ). In order to flush out the symbolism here one needs to
visit the Sibyl’s warnings to Aeneas at Aeneid 6 and, surprisingly and more expressly, the
complex Philolaic cosmological system. With the Platonic symbolism of this episode in
hand, a possible repercussion for the status of Cupid as a kind of fifth ‘helper’ is also
explored. The interpretation bears, as well, on a passage clé in Metamorphoses 11, and so
shows how Apuleius uses one part of his novel as a kind of inner commentary on another,
namely here the narrator’s initiation into Isiac cult.
Of course, it will not settle the debate about the relation of the Metamorphoses to
Apuleius’ more Platonic writings, but this paper will go some way toward vindicating the
more recent scholarly work on Apuleius’ Platonism. Moreover, it will provide evidence that
approaches to the Metamorphoses that take seriously the novel’s Platonic allegory and
symbolism are fruitful and that such approaches give us a window into the practice of
Apuleius’ poetics. In sum, following the hints in the Latin text that Apuleius leaves for the
reader, this paper demonstrates that Psyche’s four tasks ( Met . 6.10-20) are written within a
Platonico-Pythagorean frame. To conclude, the paper then speculates about the importance
of the symbolism of the four tasks for the Cupid & Psyche story as a whole, submitting that
Apuleius has written an exhilarating vignette of middle Platonic self-initiation.