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Cupid & Psyche: A Question of the Vision of Apuleius

Ken Dowden: The University of Birmingham

1. Apuleius’ Sincerity

There is no doubt that the author of the Golden Ass professed Platonism. This is not

something which we need to read out of his text, as we might in the case of

Heliodoros (Dowden 1996). We know that the real Apuleius propagated Platonic ideas

in his Carthaginian period, that he translated the Phaedo, knew his Platonic texts -

and other philosophical texts - in detail and generally, as Hijmans has shown,1 saw

Platonism and philosophy as a way of life, a bios. Perhaps the likeliest assumption is

that he adopted Platonism, taking it to his heart in some way, at that formative stage

of his education, in Athens. This gives us a lifelong portrait of Apuleius philosophus

Platonicus. It begins in Athens and continues through his Roman period, where I

have argued that he wrote the Golden Ass in the early 150s (Dowden 1994); it then

goes on past the philosophus formonsus ('pretty philosopher') of Oea, onward to the

megastar of Carthage and the author of surely authentic books de Platone to Faustino

filio ('On Plato - to his son2 Faustinus').

Yet, Platonism in the novel lies outside the mainstream of modern criticism and is

perhaps disagreeable to a 'stakeholder' culture where individual readers cease to be

educated by literature (or 'the Greek achievement') and prefer to engage

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democratically in its activities. These shifts in focus may indeed have the advantage

of constantly renewing our literature and describing what these works can do for

people of our age, but there is also an attendant danger of excluding Apuleius’ own

design from his novel. On some theories this may not matter, but it is surely an

analytic truth that it should matter to any student of the ancient world. In any case, it

will be seen that this biographically derived world-view and 'mythology' informs the

text.

What was Apuleius like? He seems to me rather 'Victorian', if not so stiff. When, as a

sophist, he performs his Platonic pieces, he stands in a position of authority in front of

his audience, dictating views. Most exactly, he perpetuates the master-pupil

relationship, or extends the guru-disciple relationship, of Athenian philosophers to the

Gelliuses and Apuleiuses of the young cultural élite. More impressionistically, he

resembles one great Victorian expression of authority - the conductor wielding the

newly-invented baton before an internal audience (the orchestra) and the audience

proper. In the world of Gellius and Lucian it was the job of self-professed

philosophers to lead and guide their audiences, as we can see from Gellius’

pilgrimage to the hut (ashram?) of Peregrinus outside Athens and from Lucian's

vitriolic testimony to the very special character of Peregrinus.

If, then, we find areas of Apuleius’ novel where religious and philosophical3 issues are

in some way raised, what interest might Apuleius have in these ideas - and what

interest should we ourselves take in them? Cupid and Psyche, the structural

equivalent of Aeneas’ katabasis (descent to the underworld), is the crucial point for

this decision. Perhaps it is a ‘folk-tale’, a popular story of some sort engagingly

incorporated into high literature, or perhaps we should pay attention to the hellenistic

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literary colour and enjoy this souvenir d’Apollonius. Though Fehling exploded the idea

of Grimm-style folk-tale in Apuleius,4 it is doubtless true that both folklorist and

hellenistic approaches uncover something of value in the text. At the same time both

approaches conform to modern critical culture and both evade the question of

meaning. Even, however, if a Platonic dimension is admitted in Cupid and Psyche,

will we be prepared to talk of more than just another colour on Apuleius’ palette, part

of the ‘literary texture’ and surface gloss? That restrictive approach, comfortable for

our irreverent if aesthetic age, is in some danger, maybe, of disparaging Apuleius’

commitment and the faith he - and others of his age - lived by.5

It is a convenient fiction, which scholars of religion now challenge, that the faith of the

pagan Roman aristocracy was in some way less than that of the emerging Christian

competition.6 Apuleius the committed Platonist is not an isolated phenomenon: I

have drawn attention elsewhere to the similarities between Justin, who slipped from

Platonism to Christianity, and Apuleius and also to the conflict between Justin and

that Roman establishment to which Apuleius was personally attached (Dowden 1994,

429-30). Fronto sniped at the Christians in the course of an oration in the Senate and

Marcus Aurelius had no time for them and their martyrs (11.3.2). Christians were

found so offensive that we can be sure of the depth of pagan conviction.7

Despite the indiscriminacy of characterising a whole age at once, we can still affirm

that the age in which Apuleius lived was one which was particularly concerned to

reassert traditional and historic values - the resurrection of the vocabulary of Ennius

and Plautus is not so very different from Herodes Atticus declaiming on the theme of

Nicias in Sicily (Philostratus, Vit.Soph. 574). Faced with the challenge of new

developments, notably in religion and philosophy, Antonine intellectuals could either

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incorporate the new into authorised traditional discourse or, if as in the case of

Christianity this was impossible, reject it outright. One feels the force behind that

rejection in the case of the Miller's Wife (9.14) whose monotheism is firmly attached to

her flagitia ('crimes' - so Apuleius is no Pliny) and also in the case of the Dea Syria

(8.27), a cult firmly rejected also by Florus. Conversely however, Isis is

accommodated into appropriate discourse through that ambitious myrionymity (11.5,

which nevertheless is careful to exclude the Dea Syria) which reached out through the

figure of the moon ultimately to a philosophical divinity. So too the priest Mithras is a

deliberately dissonant note to emphasise the broader applicability of these cults when

correctly understood in establishment language.

To sum up my rather general argument so far: we should not be tempted by priorities

in modern criticism or by our own personal disinclinations to cast aspersions on the

commitment of Apuleius to Platonic philosophy. His was a committed age on whose

firm rocks Justin and other Christians shipwrecked themselves.

2. Ideas in Dialogue (Rome in the 150s): Psyche and the

Valentinians

Rome in the early 150s was philosophically and religiously alive. This was the

environment in which Marcus Aurelius was growing to maturity - appreciating the

dour stoicism of Claudius Maximus (M. Aur. 1.15.1, 1.16.3). The influence of Sextus

nephew of Plutarch still lingered on (as we can see, e.g., from Met. 1.2). Apuleius, if I

am right, was busy on the Golden Ass - and if I am wrong was all the same in Rome

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at a formative intellectual age, allowed only to write nugae ('Trivia') by evolutionist

criticism. Christians irritated Lollius Urbicus the praefectus urbi and Justin in

particular complains to him in his Second Apology about the martyrdom of

Ptolemaeus, an event which may underlie Apuleius' tale of the Miller's Wife.8 At this

same time Valentinus was preaching and writing up an esoteric Gnostic soteriology

and already had his followers: he had arrived in Rome a Christian around 136-40, but

split with the more orthodox Christians probably on the accession of Pius I in 142. He

and his followers nevertheless remained within the church, despite hostility from

people like Justin and, in the next generation, from Irenaeus of Lyon who catalogued

and denounced gnostic heresies. Valentinus himself was still in Rome in the time of

Pope Anicetus (155-66).9 It is not clear to me how small a place intellectual Rome

was, or how ideas were disseminated between very different intellectual camps: public

lectures like those of Maximus a generation later10 and public disputes, like that

between Justin and the cynic Crescens, are clearly an important part. It is likely that

these camps were aware of each other and that their membership even overlapped

and, on occasion, defected. Valentinus platonised and gnosticised Christianity (just as

Lucian's Peregrinus abandoned it) and appears from his fragments to be, in Stead's

words, 'a biblical Platonist'; indeed, Chadwick has called him 'the most obviously

Platonic of all known gnostics'.11 Conversely, Justin (and others like him)12 moved on

from Platonism to conservative Christianity though he still wore Platonic clothing. How

did Apuleius view Valentinus? The more acceptable face of Christianity? And then

there is Valentinus' disciple Ptolemaeus who could just have been the very same

person as the Christian martyred around 152 (above).

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What exactly Valentinus, as opposed to his followers, taught is not easy to state

definitively.13 But what is of interest for us is the system attributed to his pupil

Ptolemaeus by Irenaeus, which doubtless draws heavily on Valentinus' original myth.

Heinrici (1897, 410-17) found substantial similarities between Ptolemaeus'

development14 of Valentinus' myth of Sophia and Cupid and Psyche in an article

which I myself built on in 1980.15 These similarities go beyond coincidence and

represent something more specific than Heinrici's (416) ‘dieselbe Sehnsucht nach

Erlösung’, as may be seen from the following analysis of Ptolemaeus' myth under

headings emphasising shared features.

Vocabulary

Aeon an immaterial, intellectual, godlike being

Achamoth the 'Anxiety' of Sophia

Pleroma the Plenitude, Gnostic heaven, where deficiencies do not exist16

psyche an intermediate substance between nous (the higher, intellectual and

moral part of us) and worldly material (e.g., body).

1. the story centres on a heroine - both are Soul;

There is one Sophia in Valentinus himself,17

but two, with characteristic Gnostic

proliferation, in Ptolemaeus - Sophia18

and, a sort of avatar, Sophia Achamoth. On any

Platonic reading, Sophia is the World-Soul and necessarily a prototype for our soul.19

One reason for this depiction is that, in the ideology of traditional Mediterranean

cultures, a single female is obviously deficient and requires a husband, a (cf

Scopello 1985, 120).

2. the fall of Sophia/Psyche is caused by a culpable act of trying to apprehend

God;20

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'Silence' restrains Nous from the attempt to reveal the limitless character of God to the

aeons, but Sophia tries to grasp it anyway and this is where trouble begins; this was a

fit of passion without the participation of her husband, and it consisted in the

(Iren. adv.haer. 1.2.1-2).

3. the soul is rescued as the result of an act of grace,21 by the intervention of a

divine redeemer;

WITHIN THE PLEROMA: Christ and the Holy Spirit are sent to bring the Aeons to an

understanding of the Father (Iren. 1.2.5).

OUTSIDE THE PLEROMA: Achamoth, deserted by the Logos, searches for the light (of the

Pleroma) and suffers woefully (Iren. 1.4.1). The Paraclete 'i.e. the Saviour' (standing in

for Christ) is sent to rescue her (Iren. 1.4.5).

4. the soul is married to the redeemer and has offspring.22

WITHIN THE PLEROMA: the Aeons are now all transformed into Noes (nous's, Iren.

1.2.6).

OUTSIDE THE PLEROMA: Achamoth is cured of her passions and, receiving with joy the

vision of the lights of the Paraclete's attendant Angels, becomes pregnant by them.

(Iren. 1.4.5).

AT THE END: 'When all the seed (of the Church) is perfected, Achamoth its mother will

move from the place of Middleness and come within the Pleroma and receive her

bridegroom the Saviour who is born from all (the aeons?) so that there may be a

marriage of Saviour and Sophia Achamoth ... and the Pneumatics, taking off their souls

and becoming intellectual spirit (), entering imperceptibly and unseen

within the Pleroma will be given away as brides to the Angels about the Saviour ... for

nothing of soul-character () may enter the Pleroma.' (Iren. 1.7.1)23

.

This is not just the sort of system that was in the air. It is a specific system of

appropriate date24 whose rhythm and intention correspond significantly with that of

Cupid and Psyche. Notably, curiositas causes the Fall - a feature distinctive to this

gnostic system.25

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There is much that is unknown and much that requires further research here.

Curiositas or periergia in the sense of ‘culpable looking’ requires an agreed history of

its own,26 but it does appear to be new at around this time in a myth of a Fall and the

Latin word, as is well known, only breaks through with Apuleius. Conceptually, it

clearly belongs to mystery religion, as a corollary of the secrecy which is its defining

characteristic. The act of grace surely belongs here too:27 the ancestor is Demeter

saving Kore from the world of death into which she has fallen through her own fault;

and another comparand is Isis saving Osiris from death. But there may be another

comparand that produces the gender distribution and marriage that we have in our

two myths - Dionysos and Ariadne.

What we are seeing is the reconciliation of alternative discourses. Plato himself is

somewhat godless. The soul must rise through its internal efforts, though it has the

natural force of the divine love to draw it up. The language of the Symposium or of

wings and white horse in the Phaedrus do not supply Apuleius with the moment of

grace - or indeed the Isiac last book. The one exception may be that moment in the

Politicus (273de) when the resumption of control of a faltering universe by its

demiurge provides a distant ancestor for Apuleius’ episode. Conversely, the language

of Eleusinian or Isiac myth does not on its own supply intellectual demands of the

highest form of Greek religion until it is myth-interpreted, first by 'Orphic' thinkers,28 but

most influentially through the Platonic intellectual koine. Thus the function, for

instance, of Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris is to draw the Isis religion into Platonic and

intellectual discourse - it is an aggressive, and authorising, act of interpretation.29

Equally, Gnosticism is about discourse or it is about nothing. In it are blended

Platonic-koine cosmology (e.g., from the Timaios), doctrine of the soul (presumably

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from the mysteries, translated into para-Platonic intellectual language)30, and the

jargon-delight of eastern and Egyptian magico-mysticism - whence Barbelo and

Achamoth and so on. This multiplicity of sources matters because it has the effect of

cumulating authority.

Cupid and Psyche's relationship to Valentinian discourse is close enough for

differences to be identified. The multiple cosmic levels and beings have largely been

stripped out. What is left is Venus as elementorum origo initialis ('first principle of the

elements',31 4.30 - in Gnostic-speak perhaps the arkhe of the Aeons). This is a light

and ironic touch, given her characterisation in the text, but it is a revealing one.

Venus is the driving force behind this myth as Isis, equally saeculorum origo initialis

('first principle of the Aeons'?, 11.5), will be for the whole novel. What looks like jest

now becomes serious later, as the process of metamorphosis of Venus into Isis

charges Venus retrospectively with significance. The female appears thrice over in

Ptolemaeus (Ennoia is the consort of the ultimate, original god; Sophia falls and is

recovered, leaving behind only Achamoth): in Apuleius Psyche is confused with

Venus - and Isis somehow lies behind Fortuna. In the foreground for Apuleius' story,

however, is the individual Psyche, more human, less cosmic.

I attempted to discern the detail of the Platonic discourse in my ‘Psyche on the Rock’

of 1982. That article attempted to read Cupid and Psyche as a Philo, a Plutarch (1.2,

2.3) or, later, a Plotinos would have read it - even if its allegorical method seemed to

recreate the critical approach of Fulgentius, anathema to a sensitive and learned

modern scholar.32 Yet, if Apuleius was a serious Platonist (and who are we to deny

that he was, accusing him of empty posturing and hypocritical gamesmanship?) and if

he was acquainted with the discourses in which intellectuals described the mysteries

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and in which Valentinus and his friends described cosmogony and the soul, then he

would have understood ‘Psyche on the Rock’. I do not believe, however, that it is a

complete account of the Platonism of our myth. One obvious lack is that it does not

take account of the particular vices which the sisters show, worldly ones as Carl

Schlam emphasised (Schlam 1992, 96), or the particular virtues which Psyche

attempts to learn progrediens ad modestiam ('on her first steps to decency and

propriety'), something which it might be illuminating to do in the company of de

Platone, Bk 2.

So, Cupid and Psyche must have some place in this dialogue of ideas. Otherwise,

paradoxically it would be necessary to suppose that Apuleius, an expert in Platonic

discourse and a person initiated in religions, had found this story in some more or less

contemporary author and used only its folksy shell, emptying out its religio-

philosophical contents. Where, then, does it fit in the stemma of mid-2nd century

ideas? Given the way in which Ptolemaeus and Valentinus built on their

predecessors, it is practically impossible that these gnostics were influenced by a

youthful Apuleius. There remain two possibilities: either there was a common source

for the introduction of curiositas (a mystery-source? Aristophontes of Athens?), or

Apuleius is re-setting gnostic mythology. In either case, what Apuleius is in effect

doing is to transpose the Valentinian myth into discourse culturally acceptable to the

Roman establishment. Thus Cupid and Psyche is a conservative work, but it all the

same colonises new religious ground. Platonic or mystic thesis, confronted with

gnostic antithesis yields Apuleian synthesis.

Apuleius is not alone in working up a soul story with Gnostic affiliation. Amongst the

Nag Hammadi texts (II, 6) is the Exegesis of the Soul, a story of the soul's fall,

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disgrace, suffering, longing, marriage and redemption, with what Scopello identifies as

novelistic characteristics.33 Its date is unclear: the Coptic manuscript could be

around 330/340,34 but the Greek original could be almost any date before that -

maybe not so much later than Apuleius and Valentinus. Plainly this text, with its

striking analogies to Apuleius' story, has a philosophical and cultic purpose, rather like

the one which Lucretius' persona advances, to sugar the pill. Apuleius' story on the

other hand imbues a work of literature with meaning. But, whatever the differences in

how one weights content and delectation, the Exegesis adds to the evidence for the

context and interpretation of Apuleius' central tale. It is full of suggestive detail, of

which I list some as I do not have time here for a complete review:

1. it uses the model of Odysseus' return

Odysseus is recalled, on Kalypso's island weeping, suffering, deceived, desiring return

and needing the indispensable help of heaven (Athena) to do so. EA 136.27-35,

Scopello 1985, 27 f.

2. it stresses the need for suffering and prayer as preliminaries to salvation

It cites Odysseus' need to call on Athena and John 6.44 (EA 135,1) (Scopello 1985, 30).

These details are relevant to Cupid saving Psyche and Isis saving Lucius.

3. the primordial condition of the soul is as a virgin beside the Father

EA 127.22-24, Scopello 1985, 45. This recalls the funeral procession of Psyche and

suggests her kingly father should hint at God, as in Fulgentius' interpretation, a detail

which even I (cf. Moreschini 1994, 64 and my n. 00 above!) had not been ready to adopt

at 1982, 338.

4. the soul is depicted as a slave

EA 128. 7-11, Scopello 1985, 45.

5. (change-of-mind)is the (beginning) of salvation, a definitive

and instant change of mentality

EA 135.21, Scopello 1985, 83 f., citing also Philo de mutatione 123 and quod deterius

95. The instant nature of mind-change may resolve some Apuleian difficulties, namely

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(1) the understanding of why Psyche at 6.5 simply renounces hope and gives herself up

to the police; (2) why the salvation of Lucius the ass is not so much a gradual,

Tendenzroman, business but a matter of perception, despair and prayer and 11.1.

3. Metamorphoses: cosmos, love and sleep

It is no surprise that metamorphosis turns out to be the key to the novel and its parts.

A welcome tendency in criticism focused on the word 'intertextuality' has been to

increase our sensitivity to evocation and mutation. It is therefore an entirely logical

consequence that Apuleius' Metamorphoses, both because of the allusive nature of

the author's writing and thinking and because of its subject and thematic method,

should be renewed by this type of critical attention. There is now no longer any need

to be worried by the different senses apparently given to the theme of curiositas or the

variable blameworthiness of sleep in the novel. Nor perhaps do we need to worry

about the conflicting levels of seriousness invited by the author or suggested by his

material. Nor does 'Psyche on the Rock' need to be difficult to assimilate: it explores

a particular area of the intertextuality of Cupid and Psyche, one which will not

correspond to the reading of many modern critics, though I allege that it does

correspond to the reading and intellectual environment of Apuleius himself. Even

'folk-tale' is an important intertext for the post-Grimm Nachleben of Apuleius, though I

allege that Apuleius would not have understood the concept of 'folk-tale', and that,

had it been explained to him, he would have viewed it with patrician contempt.

Cupid and Psyche is a vital stepping-stone in the metamorphosis of themes towards

their ultimate significance. The cosmic power of Isis (which a Valentinus would

certainly highlight) is already present in Venus, and is in fact prefigured in the portrait

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of the witches. In 1.8, an important chapter for the themes of the novel, the cosmic

powers of Meroe are described (caelum deponere - 'bringing the sky down' - and so

on) and culminate in the ability Tartarum ipsum inluminare ('to illuminate Tartarus

itself'). This is a skill also, apparently, possessed by Pamphile (2.5) and will recur,

transfigured, in the final book at the heart of Lucius' mystery experience - nocte media

vidi solem candido coruscantem lumine ('in the middle of the night I saw the sun

gleaming with bright light', 11.23)35 - and Lucius himself will appear ad instar Solis

exornatus ('decked out like the Sun', 11.24). This dazzling light in the darkness is,

then, long thematised by the time that Psyche illicitly approaches Cupid, lamp in hand,

and beholds the radiant hair of Cupid, splendore nimio fulgurante ('flashing with

extreme brilliance', 5.22).36 The sexual nature of the witches - voluptas Veneria

(‘Venus’ pleasure, sexual pleasure’) with Meroe (1.8), the danger of nexus Venerius

(‘sexual liaison’) with Pamphile (2.6) - prepare the crucial metamorphosis of the love

theme into longing for the divine in Cupid and Psyche, which makes possible the

asexual ardor for Isis in Book 11.37

Sleep too metamorphoses during the novel. Up to Cupid and Psyche sleep can be

culpable. The clearest illustration is in the story of Thelyphron (perhaps one of

Sisenna's Milesian Tales) 38 where his job is to vigilare ('stay awake', 2.22) over the

cadaver that turns out to bear his name. But a somnus profundus ('deep sleep') takes

hold of him and he looks as dead as the corpse (2.25). Thus the witches gain access

and he himself is mutilated. So, it seems, you are safe from witches if you are awake,

an interesting proposition, which also seems to drive the story of Socrates and

Aristomenes.39 There is no hope for Socrates, who iam sopitus stertebat altius ('by

now was fast asleep and snoring deeply', 1.11). Aristomenes on the other hand

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'through fear stays awake (invigilo) at first for some while'. Then he drops off and like

latrones ('brigands', another theme waiting to take off)40, the witches break in. This

takes us to Psyche's second sleep, at 6.21. Psyche opens the box she has gained

from her katabasis, breaching mystic rules as any Liberi patris mysta - initiate into the

rites of Father Dionysos (Apol. 55) - would know. Psyche herself must also know if

she is aware of Demeter's tacita secreta cistarum ('silent secrets of the boxes', Met.

6.2).41 Immediately she is overwhelmed by culpable sleep, infernus somnus ac vere

Stygius ('hellish sleep and truly Stygian'); she is nihil aliud quam dormiens cadaver

('nothing other than a sleeping corpse', Thelyphron and the corpse now merged). A

metamorphosis has taken place: no longer is failure of vigilance the fault; rather, it is

the opposite excess, too much looking (curiositas). But the principal difference is

Psyche's unlooked-for and unexpected rescue by Cupid - alias Amor the polar

opposite of Somnus, Amor who has the power of vigilandi.42

Psyche's first sleep (5.1) is refreshing and comes as she leaves the mortal world (at

'death') and enters the divine world. Both sleeps seem incorporated, transmuted, into

the pivotal sleep of Lucius at 11.1. Distanced now from the bustle of the profane

world (the Judgment of Paris that gives the prize to Venus, cf. that other Venus in

Cupid and Psyche), Lucius finds himself at the sea shore, as Justin once had,43 at his

moment of conversion. Exhausted, he lays himself down in quodam mollissimo

harenae gremio ('in a very gentle lap of sand', 10.35, cf. Psyche's florentis cespitis

gremio, 'lap of luxuriant grass', 4.35) and he is overwhelmed by a dulcis somnus

('sweet sleep', cf. dulce conquievit, 'she took a sweet rest', 5.1)44. He is about to enter

his own Cupid's palace. But now he wakes and feels the divinity is at hand; he does

not actually hear voices, like Psyche or the middle-Platonic Socrates45. Like Psyche

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(5.3), if with more religious intensity, he washes. He prays and now, as for Psyche at

her second sleep, an act of grace occurs: the agent is no longer the intermediary

daimon Cupid, but Isis the transmuted Venus, the very rerum naturae parens ('parent

of the universe', 11.5).

These instances of sleep are the transition to another world, or to otherworldliness.

That other world is, in several representations such as, maybe, that of Heliodoros, our

real home and the prototype for the journey is the return of Odysseus, allegorised (cf

Dowden 1996, esp. 280). The echoes of Cupid and Psyche are peculiarly dense at

the moment when Odysseus arrives home at Ithaca after all his trials. Conveyed by

the supernatural skill of the Phaeacians (cf Zephyrs), alone of his comrades (whose

atasthalie was their undoing, cf. Psyche's sisters), he is left in a mysterious landscape

surrounded by wealth. At this key moment of transition from one world to another,

Odysseus - in a remarkable and beautiful inspiration of antiquity's greatest poet - is

asleep. Dulce conquievit. As the Phaeacians arrive with Odysseus, there is an

ekphrasis with something iconic about it. It is the harbour of Phorkys (Odyssey

13.96), a portum Quietis (‘harbour of Rest’, Met. 11.15) if ever there was one, and it is

here that we find Porphyry's Cave of the Nymphs (Od. 13.103), with bees and their

honey, ever-flowing water and the entrances for men (to the North wind) and gods (to

the South wind). When Odysseus wakes, he meets the goddess Athene herself, her

identity concealed only a little longer, and he is Home - though some trials await him.

This, of course, is Odysseus' second (significant) sleep. I shall return to his first

presently.

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4. Philo, Gnostics and the Platonic Mainstream

Philo's method in interpreting the Old Testament, broadly, is to highlight themes and

(very often) to assign them a significance in the light of the soul's journey through life

and its attempt to return where it belongs. We are perhaps not inclined to associate

ourselves with his reading of these texts, though if he had written the Old Testament

we might be obliged to. The case is not dissimilar for the allegorising of Homer to

which Philo’s method is very obviously indebted and in both cases the function of this

style of interpretation is to map soteriological material onto texts which the interpreter

wishes to be vehicles of authority. In the case of Homer this is to borrow the authority

which Greek culture generally assigned to the author; in the case of the Old

Testament, this is to accredit non-Greek scripture by bringing it within accepted Greek

intellectual discourse and values.46

It is important for Philo that the discourse which he adopts is one which is shared and

recognised by the Greek soteriological theoreticians. This is vital for us, because so

far from Philo displaying some deviant mode of interpretation, he is in fact the most

copious evidence for what had been a widespread type of reading, in an area of

shortage of surviving evidence (otherwise I should have had to rely on such limited

texts as Pseudo-Herakleitos, Cornutus, Numenios and, proleptically, Porphyry on the

Cave of the Nymphs). It is a difficult problem for scholars of Philo to decide quite how

to describe the relationship subsisting between Philo and what we generally term

‘gnosticism’, but there is no doubt of the relationship.47 So, for instance, Stead once

observed that 'One can reconstruct most of the presuppositions of Valentinus merely

by rearranging Philo's mental furniture'.48 It is equally clear that this is more than just

17

a question of apparently marginal Philo and Gnostics: the third term is the

mainstream source of accreditation which these marginal thinkers lean on, again

difficult to describe with precision. Layton has characterised this as 'a non-Christian

esoteric philosophy somewhat resembling gnostic myth and imagery' (Layton 1987,

xvi). Wlosok, in the words of Pearson,

argues that (at the latest) by the time of the beginning of the Empire, there

existed a Platonizing pagan mystery-theology in which cult-myths and mystery-

rites were interpreted allegorically, in the light of a Platonism coloured by Neo-

Pythagoreanism ... Philo is a product of this development and its most important

representative.49

Alexandria clearly had a particular importance in these developments, representing a

melting-pot where Jewish, Platonic, mystic and early Gnostic ideas might meet and

cross-fertilise.50 It could even be that these feminine heroics in soul-stories such as

Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche are in some measure influenced by the Jewish tradition

of figures such as Esther, Judith and Susanna, as Scopello (1985, 51) argues in the

case of Gnostic soul stories.

My thesis for Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche is that Apuleius the Middle-Platonist and

man with an interest in the soul and mystery-religion, represents the mainstream on

which Philo and Valentinus drew (indeed Valentinus may also have known Philo

directly51 - and Apuleius could well have heard and read Valentinus) and which they

and others like them in turn probably modified. The difference from our interpretative

point of view, however, is that Philo may not have written the Old Testament, but

Apuleius did write Cupid and Psyche and it therefore authentically bears the sorts of

meanings which Philo foists onto the Old Testament and which a Pseudo-Herakleitos

18

foists onto Homer (though perhaps Vergil did too?).52 It is therefore entirely intelligible

why Cupid and Psyche looks so very similar to the Valentinian myth of Sophia and

why it responds, as I shall now show, to important elements in a Philonic reading.

5. Philo, Gnostics and the Platonic Mainstream on Sleep

One key theme to which Philo assigns a value is sleep. The asketes ('trainee'),

making earnest steps towards virtue, has good days and bad days, ’sometimes living

and awake, sometimes dead or asleep’ (de somniis 1.150). Those who lead a life of

luxury mistakenly think themselves fortunate, but in fact ’their whole life is sleep and

dream’ (de somniis 1.121). ’Deep and resounding sleep, by which every worthless

man is held fast, robs the mind of true perceptions and fills it with false images and

untrustworthy apparitions’ (de somniis 2.162). Happy those who, like ’people rising

from a deep sleep, suddenly, effortlessly and with no trouble see the whole kosmos'

(quod Deus immutabilis sit 97). Indeed the image of ‘deep sleep’ is common in Philo,

where it had been unknown in Plato.53 And the five daughters of Zelophahad

(Numbers 27), an allegory for the senses, pointed out that their father had no sons,

only daughters, 'since that which is inclined to remember, being naturally up and

awake, begets males, but that which is inclined to forget, allowing sleep of the

logismos ('reasoning faculty'), begets females' (de migratione 206). 'Sleep is a blind

thing' (de migratione 222). 'If the mind is harm-free and unimpaired, harassed by

none of the iniquities or feelings that produce the derangement of drunkenness, it will

renounce sleep, which implants forgetfulness and hesitation in the face of what needs

to be done, and welcoming wakefulness will be sharp-sighted for all that needs to be

19

seen' (de sobrietate 5). However, the most relevant passage comes in the de somniis

at 1.165:

All you souls who have tasted divine erotes ('passionate loves', 'Eroses'), rise

up as though from deep sleep and dispel the mist: hurry to the admired sight,

setting aside the slow and dithering hesitation (oknos), so that you can

perceive all the sights and sounds which the master of ceremonies has put on

for your benefit.

Philo’s attitude to sleep comes rather suddenly as a settled image (though he of

course knows other, less symbolic, uses of the word). It is clearly building on

something in the Hellenistic interpretative tradition that is not fully visible to us. Some

obiter dicta of Plato have evidently been taken up - a passage of the Republic that we

shall consider later and Laws 808b-c where night-time activity is recommended:

A lot of sleep is not naturally suitable for our bodies or for our souls or for

actions in this situation. People asleep are useless and might as well be

dead.54

To this, I very much suspect, is added a reading of Odysseus first (significant) sleep,

as his crew open the bag of winds (a sort of cista on this reading), an action which

prevents his return to his fatherland.

Other more centrally Greco-Roman writers knew this theme. I know of two instances

in Plutarch. In an important passage which looks from our limited knowledge like the

stepping stone between the Politicus and Apuleius, Plutarch talks of how the World-

Soul goes to sleep and forgets its duties, dragged down by body and its own nature,55

but its better aspect rouses it again towards the example of god (de animae

20

procreatione 1026e-f).56 The second example, in his Amatorius, exhibits 'waking'

amidst other related motifs: giving in effect an exegesis of the Phaedrus (esp. 250a-

256e), he talks about how Eros helps the soul recall what it has forgotten (764e).57

This is an experience like awakening to a great light. In fact the soul's waking time,

says Plutarch waxing Plotinian, is Yonder (764f). Love 'raises the soul and escorts it

up, in a kindly way (cf. grace) like a mystagogos beside one in a mystery-rite (765a).58

There indeed is something reminiscent of ritual about the episode of sleep and raising

in the Psyche story.

By the time of the generation after Apuleius’ stay in Rome,59 in a series revealingly

given in Rome, Maximus of Tyre gave a lecture (10 ‘If Instances of Learning are

Recall’) on soul, nous, the association of soul with worthy daimon (10.9). There he

talks of 'much darkness and deep sleep overtaking the conceptions of the soul' (10.6)

and remarks how life is for our souls 'a long dream lasting many years' (10.1).

The theme recurs frequently in the Gnostics: 'of the most constant and widest use is

the image of sleep' (JONAS 69), belonging with 'drunkenness' and 'oblivion' as

characteristics of the soul in its earthly existence, an existence which takes on the

characteristics of a former underworld (JONAS 68). Jonas cites inter alia the Hymn of

the Pearl (which Merkelbach used to illuminate the sense of Heliodoros) and the

Corpus Hermeticum 1.27 which reproaches 'earthborn men' for 'giving themselves to

drunkenness, sleep and the ignorance of God'. Most startlingly, the Gospel of Truth,

a work which authors (e.g., Dawson) often attribute to Valentinus himself, presents the

Aeons as falling from the godhead through an ignorance depicted insistently as

equivalent to being sunk in sleep - a sleep from which the Spirit must come and wake

21

them, so rescuing them.60 This is clearly by now very close indeed to Psyche’s sleep

and Cupid’s awakening of her.

Perhaps this image is best explained, a hundred years after Apuleius, by Plotinos:

So the soul dies, in the sense that a soul can, and its death is, still plunged in

the body, to sink in material (hyle) and to be filled with it and, emerging, to lie

there until it can somehow leap up and get its face out of the mud. This is what

is meant by 'arriving in Hades to fall asleep'.

Plotinos, Ennead 1.8.13 fin.

'This passage', said Thomas Taylor (1790/1), 'doubtless alludes to the antient and

beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche, in which Psyche is said to fall asleep in Hades;

and this through rashly attempting to behold corporeal beauty: and the observation of

Plotinos will enable the profound and contemplative reader to unfold the greater part

of the mysteries contained in this elegant fable.'61 But as Thomas Taylor also goes on

to observe, the ultimate source for this motif (as my quotation marks around 'arriving

in Hades to fall asleep' show) is Plato himself. At Republic 534c, the Good is under

discussion: unless people have a reasoned understanding of the Good, they have no

knowledge of it, or of anything good, at all. They may have opinion but 'dreaming and

dozing through their present life, before ever they wake up here, they have arrived in

Hades and have fallen totally asleep'. This is by no means what Apuleius or these

other authorities have been saying, but it looks as though it may well be a passage

that has developed in commentary within the Platonic koine into the standard

symbolic account which we see explicitly given by Plotinos (within which after all he

incorporates a souvenir of it). It is striking also that in Apuleius the arrival in Hades of

Psyche is so closely associated with her sleep, as though this passage of Plato was at

some level in Apuleius' mind as he wrote.

22

6. Psyche and Mythology: Ariadne, Andromeda, Sappho

It is difficult to accommodate Satyrs and Maenads within an account of Greek

mythology because they are mainly generic, decorative figures, without a myth.62

Eros and Psyche likewise seem to be primarily decorative characters but for Apuleius'

novel - otherwise their story is not on general release, though Plotinos and Fulgentius

allude to tellings.63 This leads in the LIMC article on 'Psyche' to a mistaken attempt to

structure generic representations (admittedly sometimes incorporated by Apuleius or

his source into the story) around Apuleius' account as though his account was 'the

myth'.64

The full curiosity of this situation has not been grasped. For Apuleius it is artificial (if it

is not taboo) to tell a story of Cupid and Psyche. The story-vacuum of these genre-

figures can only suck in motifs that characterise other stories according to the

intended dynamics of the Cupid and Psyche tale. Thus, more than ever, Cupid and

Psyche needs to be interpreted by the intertexts that flow in to fill the void. But there

is another aspect too: why and where are Cupid and Psyche, as genre figures, so

very important? Naturally, they appear in many different artistic contexts and not

always with the same significance (Schlam 1976). But a crucial role for them is on

sarcophagi, where they are evidently well suited to express eschatological hope in the

light of the Platonic koine.

23

The situation of Apuleius bears an interesting resemblance to the situation of

Valentinus as perceived by Dawson in a recent book on the development of

allegorical reading. For Dawson, Philo represents a first stage in which allegory is

used to reconstruct an existing text. But Valentinus represents a new and more

advanced stage, where the tendency to allegory leads to the construction of a new

text that derives its power from other, implicitly allegorised, texts.

Curiously enough, this mode of interpretation as composition gains much of its

effectiveness precisely because the new story contains oblique, sometimes

nearly subliminal, echoes of the old story.

Dawson 1992, 130.

I have suggested above that an obvious mythic intertext for Psyche's second sleep is

Ariadne - asleep, but rescued and immortalised by Dionysos. This does more than fill

the story-vacuum: it puts a slant on the Cupid and Psyche story which Apuleius (or

his source) is constructing. Cista, Ariadne, and flagellation alla Villa Item65 (with

another depiction of Dionysos and Ariadne) suggest the Dionysos-mysteries in which

we know, do not guess, that Apuleius was initiated (Apol. 55) and which may well

have been popular in Rome at this time, if we can judge from the Torre Nova

inscription.66 Doubtless this Dionysiac mystic context does not explain all, but equally

it is impossible to exclude it as an element in the complex that Apuleius is putting

forward. This is supported especially strongly by the sarcophagi. Koch and

Sichtermann observe that in the city of Rome the discovery of Ariadne by Dionysos is

the most frequent Dionysiac myth depicted, occurring some 23 times.67 It is not

difficult to see why this should be an especially appropriate theme for sarcophagi: the

soul, now asleep in death, is taken up to heaven. As Icard-Gianolio's analysis in

LIMC shows,68 Psyche is common in Bacchic processions,69 is found in the legend of

24

Dionysos and Ariadne, and in one particular sarcophagus 'Amor tient une torche près

de Bacchus banquetant avec Ariane à qui Psyché apporte une guirlande'.

Regardless of Apuleius' expertise in monumental masonry, we can see the climate of

ideas that surrounded him and how mythology, including Psyche's second sleep,

might be read. One further, extraordinary, example demands our attention: in the

tomb in Rome on the Viale Manzoni there is a figure depicted as Ariadne, who

appears to require interpretation in a Gnostic context. This Ariadne, Carcopino once

suggested (1956,126), is in fact the fallen Sophia of the Valentinians awaiting the

Redeemer.

What then of Psyche on the rock (4.32-35)? Here she is clearly Andromeda, from the

involvement of parents, hybristic comparison with the divinity and punishment by

exposure to a monster.70 In this case, the part of the winged Perseus is played by

Cupid, though he transmutes into the monster in the sisters' febrile imagination - as

evidence that they cannot 'read' Cupid. It is worth noting that a painting of

Andromeda is found in two other novels. In Achilles it figures in the author's game of

cat and mouse with the reader, pointing ultimately to Leukippe's capture and

release.71 In Heliodoros, it underpins the whole story - with whatever significance one

is prepared to attribute to it (I consider there are Platonic depths here - Dowden

1996). But in any case this is another myth that, given the right context is a salvation

myth ('Verheissung einer Rettung der Seele durch Gott', in the words of Merkelbach

1962, 11), and the casting of Psyche, the Soul, as both Andromeda and Ariadne gives

away the agenda. In fact Perseus and Andromeda are rare on sarcophagi, though in

Roman art as a whole Perseus and Andromeda is more popular than the Medusa

episodes.72 For a real parallel, one needs to go, as Merkelbach (1962, 12 n.1) has

25

said, to the depiction of the similar story of Herakles and Hesione on the vault of the

Basilica at the Porta Maggiore.

A final intertext, observed by Kerényi,73 should be taken fully into account. Psyche is

not chained to her rock (as you might expect from Andromeda). She is 'stood' on a

high peak, in summo cacumine statutam, and left crying. As she weeps, the aura

molliter spirantis Zephyri ('breeze of a Zephyr blowing gently') carries her gradually

down. Has she jumped? Perhaps not - it is left for her sisters to display their

temeritas by going that far (5.14, cf. 5.27). But the intertext remains Sappho leaping

from the rock of Leukas, an icon which formed the centrepiece of all the mythology

assembled by Pythagoreans for the roof of their basilica at the Porta Maggiore. The

rock is sacred to Apollo, god of Psyche's oracle. Sappho, as can be seen from Ovid

Heroides 15,74 has come for rebirth and pour vaincre l'amour profane dont elle était

consumée. It is the aurae ('breezes') which Sappho invokes (177) to save her in her

fall. Tu quoque, mollis Amor, pennas suppone cadenti ('You too, gentle Eros, place

wings beneath me as I fall', 179).75 Thus the fourth book closes and Psyche lands in

the fifth.

7. Conclusion

Cupid and Psyche, then, is a part of Apuleius' work that bears a non-coincidental

resemblance to Ptolemaeus' myth of Sophia Achamoth. Its significance must be

judged, not only by the literary context from which modern critics tend to arrive, but by

the actual environment of ideas, so far as we can reconstruct it, which immersed

26

Apuleius himself. The Valentinian Christians are one testimony to that environment.

Others include the mythic themes of sarcophagi, pagan religion (notably that of

Dionysos) and philosophy, the type of views held by opinion-leaders and intellectual

outcasts (notably the orthodox Christians) in Rome in Apuleius' day.

Where contemporary evidence runs out, rather than judge too much by that portion of

the iceberg which we can see, we should take soundings to gauge the character of

that part which we cannot see. Here Philo may be a century earlier, may be a Jew

and may be in Alexandria, but there are indisputable intellectual links to Philo's world

which Valentinus and his disciples demonstrate. Later, Plotinos delivers a developed

version of this tradition. Where the line from Philo to Plotinos crosses the 150s, there

stands Apuleius. My contention is simply that the Cupid and Psyche of this middle

Platonist needs to be interpreted in the light of that tradition and that, displaying the

themes it does, it evidently must be. 'One feels', said Henry Chadwick (in Layton

1980, 13), 'that gnosticism would have exercised powerful attractions over such a

man, with his strong interests in religion, sex and magic'. Maybe so, but gnosticism is

not a marginal quirk for which our Apuleius must be made to sign up: it is a visible

offshoot of the Platonising mystery thought to which mainstream authors might be

expected to subscribe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANRW = H. Temporini & W. Haase (edd.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen

Welt (Berlin).

27

EA = Exegesis of the Soul (see Scopello 1985).

LIMC = Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zürich).

J. Carcopino, De Pythagore aux apôtres: études sur la conversion du monde romain,

Paris 1956.

D. Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria, Berkeley

1992.

J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, London 1977.

K. Dowden, 'Psyche and the Gnostics', Symposium Apuleianum Groninganum,

Groningen 1981, 157-65.

K. Dowden, 'Psyche on the Rock', Latomus 41 (1982) 336-52.

K. Dowden, 'Apuleius' Roman Audience', in J.A. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the

Ancient Novel, Baltimore 1994, 419-34.

K. Dowden, 'Heliodoros: Serious Intentions', Classical Quarterly n.s. 46 (1996) 267-

85.

M.J. Edwards, 'The Tale of Cupid and Psyche', ZPE 94 (1992) 77-94.

W. Foerster, Gnosis, Eng. tr., 2 vols., Oxford 1972.

P. Habermehl, 'Quaedam divinae mediae potestates: Demonology in Apuleius' de deo

Socratis', GCN 7 (1996) 117-42.

G. Heinrici, 'Zur Geschichte der Psyche. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Skizze.', PrJ 90

(1897) 390-417, reprinted in: G. Binder & R. Merkelbach, Amor und Psyche ( = Wege

der Forschung, bd 126), Darmstadt 1968, 56-86.

B.L. Hijmans Jr., 'Apuleius, Philosophus Platonicus', in: ANRW II.36.1 (1987) 395-

475.

H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos: histoire du culte de Bacchus, Paris 1951.

28

H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. The message of the alien God and the beginnings of

Christianity2, Boston 1963.

E.J. Kenney (1990a), 'Psyche and her Mysterious Husband', in: D.A. Russell (ed.)

Antonine Literature, Oxford 1990.

E.J. Kenney (1990b), Apuleius: Cupid & Psyche, Cambridge 1990.

G. Koch & H. Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage ( = Handbuch der Archäologie 6),

München 1982.

B. Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, Vol. 1 ‘The School of Valentinus’ ( =

Numen, Suppl. 41.1), Leiden 1980.

B. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: a new translation with annotations and

introductions, New York 1987.

R. Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, München 1962.

C. Moreschini, Il mito di Amore e Psiche in Apuleio: Saggio, testo di Apuleio,

traduzione e commento, Napoli 1994.

L. Painchaud (ed.), L’Ecrit sans titre: traité sur l’origine du monde ( = Bibliothèque

copte de Nag Hammadi: Textes 21), Louvain and Paris 1995.

B.A. Pearson, 'Philo and Gnosticism', ANRW II 21.1 (1984) 295-342.

G. Quispel, 'The Original Doctrine of Valentine', VC (1947) 43-73.

G.N. Sandy, The Greek World of Apuleius; Apuleius and the Second Sophistic ( =

Mnemosyne, Suppl. 174), Leiden 1997.

A. Schiesaro, 'La «tragedia» di Psiche: nota ad Apuleio met. IV 28-35', Maia 40

(1988) 141-50.

C.C. Schlam, Cupid and Psyche: Apuleius and the Monuments, University Park,

Pennsylvania 1976.

29

C.C. Schlam, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: on Making an Ass of Oneself, London

1992.

M. Scopello, L’Exégèse de l’âme: Nag Hammadi Codex II, 6: introduction, traduction

et commentaire ( = Nag Hammadi Studies 25), Leiden 1985.

G.C. Stead, 'The Valentinian Myth of Sophia', JTS n.s. 20 (1969) 75-104.

R. van den Broek, Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity ( = Nag

Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 39), Leiden 1996.

J. Whittaker, 'Platonic Philosophy in the Early Empire', ANRW II.36.1 (1987) 81-123.

A. Wlosok, Laktanz und die philosophische Gnosis: Untersuchungen zu Geschichte

und Terminologie der gnostischen Erlösungsvorstellung, Heidelberg 1960.

30

ENDNOTES

1 Hijmans 1987, passim but eg 396-7, 416-7, 422, and esp. 470, a compelling vision.

2 This is what the Latin says though scholars have tried to evade the obvious meaning

and to allege, for instance, a fictional addressee - see Hijmans 1987, 414 for more

information.

3 Philosophy and religion are scarcely separable, cf. Hijmans 1987, 397 and n.7, and

Dowden 1996, 268-9 (on Heliodoros).

4 D. Fehling, Amor und Psyche: Die Schöpfung des Apuleius und ihre Einwirkung auf

das Märchen, eine Kritik der romantischen Märchentheorie, Wiesbaden 1977.

5 Why exactly does Kenney 1990, 193 n.59 feel it necessary to argue that Apuleius

need not have studied his Phaedrus very closely or approve the idea that 'a vague

knowledge of Eros in the Phaedrus' was just part of the rhetorician's stock-in trade?

And why does Edwards 1992, 93 feel it necessary to distance Apuleius from the world

of gnostic ideas and to dub him 'only an occasional philosopher'? Would we say such

things to Apuleius' own face? For a sensitive and balanced assessment of the nature

and depth of Apuleius' Platonism - and how he acquired it - now see Sandy 1997, 22-

36 and ch. 5.

6 Eg, R.L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, New Haven and

London 1984, ch. III 'The Piety of the Persecutors'.

7 On hostility to Christians, see, eg, M. Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire,

Eng.tr., London 1988, 160-1. Fronto's speech concerned with Christians probably

only in passing, R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, Harmondsworth 1986, 427.

31

8 Dowden 1994, 429-30. B. Baldwin, 'Apuleius and the Christians', LCM 14.4 (1989)

55.

9 Dawson 1992,127; Foerster 1972, i.121 (with slightly different dates). 'Remained

until Anicetus': Irenaeus Haer. 3.4.3.

10 Under Commodus in the 90s; full title: Maximus of Tyre, Lectures Given in Rome

during his First Visit ().

11 G.C. Stead in Layton 1980, 78. Intriguingly, he sees Valentinus' Aeons as a

development of the Platonic Forms (ibid. 88). Chadwick in Layton 1980, 11-12.

12 Tatian, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria - Wlosok 1960, 113-4 and nn.

13 See, eg, G.C. Stead in Layton 1980, 75ff, G. Quispel ibid. 123-5; Quispel 1947;

Stead 1969.

14 Both Heinrici 1897 and Dowden 1981 make the mistake of attributing Ptolemaeus'

system, without further thought, to Valentinus.

15 Gnostic ideas are taken up again, apparently without knowledge of Heinrici 1897 or

Dowden 1981 (or Dowden 1982), by Edwards 1992, 87-92.

16 For a study of pleroma, see V. MacDermot, ’The Concept of Pleroma in

Gnosticism’, in: M. Krause (ed.), Gnosis and Gnosticism ( = Nag Hamadi Studies 17),

Leiden 1981, 76-81.

17 Quispel 1947, 45, based on Iren. adv.haer. 1.11.1. Cf. Stead 1969, 88-89, with the

qualification 'one erring Sophia'.

18 Surprisingly, Sophia is declared to be the 'father' of (female) Achamoth at Iren.

1.4.1; even more curiously, Sophia is declared 'male and a father' at Philo, de fuga

52. Generally on Philo as a seedbed for the Gnostic Sophia, see Stead 1969, 96-7

and Pearson 1984, 314, discussing R.M. Wilson, The Gnostic Problem: a study of the

32

relations between Hellenistic Judaism and the Gnostic Heresy, London 1958, 183-

202.

19 World-Soul, cf. Plotinus 2.9 (Against the Gnostics) §4, with H. Chadwick in Layton

1980, 12. 'She represents the evil (i.e. responsible for the origin of evil) world-soul,

which is also the prototype of the human soul which falls from its true home through

attachment to matter' (my parentheses), Stead 1969, 100 - thus both Venus-Isis and

Psyche.

20 This transcendence of God is familiar also in Philo, cf. Pearson's account of Jonas

(Pearson 1984, 304-6), and is an important feature of the new Pythagoreanising

Platonism of Eudoros which may underlie the ‘mainstream’ which I discuss in section

4 below, cf. Wlosok 1960, 53, Dillon 1977, 127-8.

21 Kenney 1990b,14 usefully stresses the strictly undeserved character of the

salvation of both Psyche and Lucius. Scopello 1985, 30 comments, on EA 135.4-15

(see below), ’bien que la collaboration de l’âme soit nécessaire, c’est par la grâce

qu’on obtient le salut.’

22 This coresponds to the doctrine (G.C. Stead in Layton 1980, 92) that the elect will

be united with heavenly bridegrooms and enter the pleroma (Gnostic

heaven/Olympus) 'becoming themselves intelligible Aeons' (Clement, Excerpta ex

Theodoto 64.1). The acutal offspring, Voluptas (Met. 6.24), is parallelled in the

Treatise without Title (Nag Hammadi II.5) 109.16-22 (Painchaud 1995, 174-5) where

Eros, descending to the level of earth, begets (the Greek word is actually in

the Coptic text); Painchaud (1995, 364) implausibly derives the Gnostic use from

Apuleius’ ’version du conte’, but usefully compares Philo, de Opificio 161.

23 Also, with significant implications for ascribing this element to Valentinus, in

Clement, Excerpta ex Theodoto 63.1, cf. Quispel 1947, 72-73, 44.

33

24 Evidently, if Ptolemaeus was the martyr of c. 152. But equally the system is

reported already in Irenaeus in 180.

25 Cf. Stead 1969, 78 (characteristic of his version A), and Plotinos 2.9.4 (not

mentioned); Scopello 1985, 66 comes straight out and calls this Valentinian cause of

the fall ’curiositas’. Particular to Valentinus: 'The nature of Sophia's fault is one of the

most variable features of the myth', Stead 1969, 102.

26 The bibliography on Apuleian curiositas is of course sizeable, but I draw particular

attention to C. Moreschini, Apuleio e il Platonismo, Firenze 1978, ch. iii for his balance

between technical philosophic reference and wider reference.

27 Edwards 1992, 81-2 cites Plotinos 3.5.9 for the moment of salvation: psyche living

with nous (= Cupid, cf. Dowden 1982), separated from nous, and then once again

begin filled (plerotheisa cf. the Gnostic pleroma) with logoi. But inasmuch as Plotinos

here calls to mind a moment of salvation (and it is very abstract - how exactly does a

soul get a logoi-refill?), he is reflecting religious tradition.

28 F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens, Berlin 1974.

29 Similarly later Julian’s Hymn to the Mother of the Gods 166b makes her acceptable

to thinking circles by depicting her as the source of the intellectual and demiurgic

gods.

30 Dillon 384-9, if unsympathetically, charts something of the use Gnostics such as

Valentinus made of Plato. Whittaker 1987, 121-3 accommodates Gnosticism more

generously within the developing climate of ideas that also included Middle Platonism.

31 'Elements' include such things as Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Sun, Moon, and

even the Aeon, cf. R. Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3rd ed.,

Stuttgart 1927, 225; there is also a discussion in J.G. Griffiths, The Isis Book, Leiden

1975, 301-3.

34

32 'Tanto vale, allora, riprendere il metodo e le conclusioni del Dowden che

richiamano, l'uno e latre, Fulgenzio ... Credo che non sia necessario dar toppo peso a

questo revival di Fulgenzio', Moreschini 1994, 63-4. Is the problem perhaps that

Cupid & Psyche actually requires, in part, a particularly literal form of intertextuality

(allegory) to which modern critics find it hard to subscribe (though late antiquity and

the renaissance could do so readily, cf. Moreschini 1994, 26)? So, to say that 'Charite

is Dido' is interesting and provocative because obviously approximate and tantalising,

but to say that 'Psyche is soul and Cupid her personal daimon, Platonic Love' is to be

wooden, literal, and 1500 years out of date like Fulgentius. Cupid & Psyche perhaps

exhibits what one might term the intertextuality of the matrix. This, I think, explains the

striking paradox that a Moreschini who writes brilliantly on Apuleio e il platonismo

(Firenze 1978) must reject a part, or too large a part, for Platonism in the novel and in

its central myth/mise en abyme. Apuleius’ philosophica too can be related to Gnostic

thought: see, on the de Platone 190-1 and such issues as negative theology, van den

Broek 1996, ch.3.

33 Scopello 1985, 46-48, 96, clearly under the influence of M. Philonenko, whose

Joseph et Aséneth (Leiden 1968) had been distinguished by its knowledge of novel

material. We need to think, however, of a much less antiseptic world than one where

the Greek novel itself is the source for the supposedly novelistic characteristics of this

reworking of the soul story; this type of fiction is already in a way present in Philo's

Old Testament and has a complex and contaminated near-Eastern tradition as well as

Greco-Roman; Scopello’s focus on an Alexandrian milieu for the author of the

Exegesis (1985, 97, 100) is obviously beneficial. I am grateful to an anonymous

reader for drawing my attention to Scopello’s excellent volume.

34 Scopello 1985, 1; clearly not composed in Coptic, cf. ibid. 13-16.

35

35 The brilliant light is used in a verbal echo in de deo Soc. 3 (coruscamine lumen

candidum) to evokes the transcendent god, so impossible to apprehend, of Plato’s

Timaeus 28c (Wlosok 1960, 226).

36 'The whole chapter is crowded with suggestions of brilliant light and splendour', as

a referee remarks, cf. also Kenney 1990b, 169.

37 This is, of course, a dialectic between Heavenly and Pandemic love, cf. Kenney

1990, 176-7.

38 Pupillus ego Mileto profectus, 2.21.

39 Cf. also Lucius, who must evigilare in the house of Pamphile (2.6).

40 K. Dowden, 'The Unity of Apuleius' Eighth Book and the Danger of Beasts', in H.

Hofmann (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, Vol. 5, 1993, 91-109 at pp. 97-8,

104-6.

41 On the cista mystica see Merkelbach 43, who notes its appearance in funerary art

and, notably in view of the thesis I am presenting on foreshadowing, its appearance

as the cista secretorum capax at 11.11. Demeter's cista is highlighted by Heinrici

1897, 406.

42 This, admittedly, in a rather bathetic passage of the de deo Socratis (§155), cf.

Habermehl 1996, 122, attempting with some difficulty (n.25) to link this surely relevant

binary opposition to Cupid and Psyche. J. Beaujeu, Apulée: Opuscules

philosophiques, Paris 1973, 237 n.3 refers to their presence in the iconography of a

Louvre sarcophagus, an interesting context (cf. below).

43 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 2-3. Dowden 1994, 429, 433-4.

44 I find it hard not to refer this rest to the Gnostic - the repose that

results from union with the divine (Scopello 1985, 78) - on which a book can be, and

36

has been, written: J. Helderman, Die Anapausis im Evangelium Veritatis ( = Nag

Hammadi Studies 18), Leiden 1984.

45 Apuleius, de deo Socratis; Plutarch, de genio Socratis; Maximus of Tyre, Or. 8-9.

46 Of course it also does much more than this ideologically, see Dawson 1992, 113.

47 Precisely where one positions the following in relation to each other is a matter of

scholarly dispute, well outlined by Pearson 1984 and visible throughout the ANRW II

21.1 volume: Philo, mythological Gnosis, philosophical Gnosis, mainstream

philosophy, and whatever doctrine was believed by participants in various mystery

religions.

48 Stead 1969, 90, cf. Stead in Layton 1980, 93-4, clearly perceiving Philo and the

Gnostics as sharing a particular Platonic vision. See also G. Quispel, 'Philo und die

altchristliche Häresie', ThZ 5 (1949) 429-36.

49 Pearson 1984, 310, with convenient brevity reporting Wlosok 1960, esp. 48-179.

50 Cf van den Broek 1996, ch.7 (’Jewish and Platonic Sepculations in early

Alexandrian Theology: Eugnostus [Eugnostus the Blessed is a Nag Hammadi text],

Philo, Valentinus, and Origen’, and 127: ’the Valentinian Ogdoad depends on a

Platonized amplified Jewish-gnostic myth of Anthropos and Sophia of the type found

in Eugnostus’.

51 Dawson (1992, 18) and Layton (1987, xvi) think that Valentinus may have known

Philo's work - he did after all live for the first 35-40 years of his life in Alexandria (cf.

Dawson 127). Chronologically, Valentinus could without difficulty have heard Philo.

52 On writer as allegorist, see further section 6 below.

53 From the TLG CD-ROM: no combinations of and in Plato, but plenty in

Philo, eg Cher. 62, Deus immutabilis 39, Abraham 70.

37

54 The passage is cited by H. Balz, s.v. ‘’ in: G. Friedrich (ed.) Theologisches

Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, vol. 8 pp. 545-556 at p. 547.

55 The fact that the baser elements are innate in the soul and that the higher are an

apport from god is reflected in the sisters being Psyche’s family, but her husband

Cupid not being so.

56 The theme is also found in Albinos 14, as is noted by Dillon 1977, 205-6, who finds

the provenance of the idea puzzling. Stead 1969, 101 emphasises the particular

closeness of the de procreatione to Valentinian thought.

57 In addition this obviously requires connection with Apuleius himself on Amor and

Somnus (see above).

58 Cited by Kenney 1990, 193.

59 Dating to Commodus in the Souda s.v. ‘Maximos’; Eusebios confuses him with

Claudius Maximus the stoic gentleman (cf. M.B. Trapp, Maximus Tyrius (sic)

Dissertationes, Stuttgart & Leipzig 1994, lvi).

60 Gospel of Truth §§29-30 in J.M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library, Leiden

1977, 43.

61 From Th. Taylor, 'A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries', reprinted

in K. Raine & G.M. Harper, Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings, London

1969, 348-9.

62 K. Dowden, Uses of Greek Mythology, London 1992, 166.

63 Plotinus, Ennead 3.5.2-3, 6.9.9 'which is why Eros and Psyche are paired together

both in art and in myth'; Fulgentius, Mythologiae 3.6 on Aristophontes of Athens who

told the same story as Apuleius enormi verborum circuitu in the course of his

Dysaresteia.

38

64 I am in the good company of Carl Schlam (1976, 32): ‘Virtually none of the

representations can be interpreted reliably as illustrating a narrative ... Some incidents

in the tale may, on the other hand, reflect representations.’

65 Cf Merkelbach 1962, 48-9.

66 AJA 37 (1933) 232-3. Jeanmaire 1951, 470-1. Agripinilla's son was consul in 150;

her family came from Lesbos and the inscription has been drawn into connection with

Longus, not only by Merkelbach 1962, 192-4.

67 Koch-Sichtermann 1982, 193. 'L'art tardif manifestera une prédilection pour le motif

de la rencontre d'Ariane endormie ...', Jeanmaire 1951, 345.

68 LIMC 7.1 p. 572, cf. Koch-Sichtermann 1982, 215 on 'die Darstellung des

schlafenden Paares von Eros und Psyche neben der schlafenden Ariadne auf

dionysischen Sarkophagen'. See also Schlam 1976, ch. v, esp. p. 22.

69 ‘The monuments associate Eros and Psyche most closely with Dionysos among the

divinities’, Schlam 1976, 23.

70 See, eg, Merkelbach 1962, 11 (Kenney 1990b, 19 n.81 rightly stresses the oddity of

my mssing this point in Dowden 1982). Schiesaro 1988, 147 also cites Andromeda

(as well as Iphigeneia, Dido and Medea, intertexts which are less close and less

useful for interpretation), signalling notably the account of Manilius 5.538 ff. and esp.

545 ff.

71 S. Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel, Princeton 1989, ch.2.

72 Rare, Koch-Sichtermann 180; Andromeda not Medusa, L.J. Roccos in LIMC 7.1 p.

347, cf. K. Schauenburg in LIMC I.1 pp. 778-84.

73 C. Kerényi, ‘Der Sprung vom Leukasfelsen: Zur Würdigung des unterirdischen

Kultraumes von Porta Maggiore in Rom’, ARW 24 (1926) 61-72 at p. 70-1;

Merkelbach 1962, 13.

39

74 Carcopino 1956,10-11. It looks to me as though Apuleius has been reading

Heroides 15, as it includes, though not in a comparable structure, a number of the

elements of Cupid and Psyche: the silva where Sappho rests her lassos artus (143-

62) has some of the characteristics of the grove at Cupid's palace; mollis Amor and

his pennae appear at 179, Zephyri at 208, Venus orta mari at 213, and Cupido at 215;

in addition, Phaon (cf. Cupid) is the missing master of the grove.

75 The fact of 'Pythagorean' speculation about Sappho and Phaon is attested by Pliny,

HN 22.20.