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The topics of gender and sexuality in Pseudo-Lucian’s The Ass and its corresponding Latin text, Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, have been extensively studied and written on. However, most of this research utilizes these texts to better understand different forms of gender and sexuality within the Roman Empire. I argue that within Pseudo-Lucian’s The Ass these representations communicate more to us about the “normative” masculine perception of gender and sexuality than they do the perspectives of the women and non-normative men presented throughout the narrative. As the story is told through Lucian, a “normative” masculine man, all of these representations of gender and sexuality are filtered through this perspective. Therefore, by analyzing these representations we can better understand the ways that normative masculinity was threatened by any deviations from these norms within the Roman Empire. I have conducted this analysis by drawing parallels between The Ass and The Golden Ass in order to highlight the choices of the author of this text within these representations. Furthermore, I have utilized a close analysis of the language of this piece through my own translation and contextualized these representations within existing scholarship. This paper looks at the ways that Lucius reacts to “feminized” masculinity, women’s autonomy, and female sexuality in order to better understand how gender ideals and actual complex identities were negotiated and understood. First, I analyze Lucian’s attitudes towards “emasculation” through the topics of castration and loss of sexual autonomy. Next, I look at Lucian’s interactions with the priests in order to understand his attitudes towards “feminization” of other male individuals. Finally, I look at his attitudes towards female sexuality and autonomy through his sexual encounters with women throughout the work.

This multi-part analysis gives a holistic view of Lucius’s attitudes towards the ideas of gender and sexuality from his normative, male perspective. Through a close analysis of the anxieties of this “normative” masculinity, we can better understand non-normative gender identities and sexualities in this period without conflating these representations from a normative perspective with the reality of these identities in the past.