Brando Legott, Florida State University
Apuleius’ interest in Platonic myth in the Metamorphoses is a well-established topos in
scholarship. This presentation will interpret Apuleius’ Metamorphoses as engaging with Plato’s
didactic and philosophical exercise of inserting muthoi into his dialogues and working within a
similar framework, albeit on a larger scale. Tilg (2014) has reconciled the work’s comic and
philosophical elements, applying the designation of a ‘philosophical novel,’ Ulrich (2020) and
Hooker (1955) have noted the connections of Platonic myth to Apuleius’ work by focusing on
specific episodes throughout the novel, and Winkle (2013) has identified Lucius’ white horse as
a Platonic throughline, attaching the novel to Plato’s eschatological myth in the Phaedrus. While
each of these approaches has examined a particular aspect of the Metamorphoses from a Platonic
angle (especially the tale of Cupid and Psyche and the culminating presence of Isis), my
examination will demonstrate that Apuleius presents the entire Metamorphoses as a Platonic
myth. To achieve this, I apply the set of eight markers which Most (2012) has programmatically
identified as characteristic features of Platonic muthoi.
Although three of Most’s criteria pertain exclusively to the literary form of the
philosophical dialogue (Plato’s myths have a single speaker, are told by an older interlocutor,
and fall at the beginning or end of their dialogue), Apuleius includes Socrates’ death beneath the
Plane tree where the Phaedrus should begin to mark the symbolic death of philosophical
dialogue. Through this, I suggest, Apuleius formally alters the literary register of Platonic myth
from dialogue to that of the novel, circumventing the dialectic logos of philosophy. On Most’s
remaining five markers (myths are psychagogical, based on older, oral sources, are based around
narration, are unverifiable, and derive authority from tradition), Apuleius declares the
psychagogical effect in the prologue by stating “Lector intende: laetaberis” (1.1), suggesting the
reader will be delighted by reading the contents with a hermeneutical lens. The novel is
ultimately based on the Egyptian religious tradition through its culmination with Isis, highlighted
by the mention of Plutarch. By departing from dialogue, the novel proceeds through narration
rather than dialectic. Apuleius highlights the myth as unverifiable through Lucius’ engagement
with the skeptic of Aristomenes in 1.2-4. Lucius’ identity as the actor and narrator complicates
the criterion that muthoi are not based on personal experience, yet Apuleius distances himself as
the author from Lucius through the biographical information in the prologue, enabling Lucius’
work to stand as its own tradition.
The proposed interpretation does not seek to undermine alternate readings, but rather to
elucidate them by offering a holistic interpretation of the Metamorphoses as a literary
reenactment of Platonic myth, rewriting Plato’s genre of dialogue to the philosophical novel.
Given Apuleius’ commitment to making Platonic philosophy more accessible to Roman
audiences as evidenced by works in his corpus such as De deo Socratis and De Platone,
Apuleius adopts Plato’s mythmaking and reframes it within the literary context of the Second
Sophistic, creating a new literary format of expressing Platonic philosophy.