The Golden Ass

by

Apuleius

The Golden Ass: Book 4 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Around noon, the bandits stop with Lucius at a small village with some old people who greet the bandits with kisses and excited conversation. The bandits take some of the load off of Lucius. He looks around and finds a rose bush, which he rushes to eat. Right before eating, however, he realizes that the flowers are actually laurel roses, which are different from normal roses and very toxic. Even after realizing this, Lucius considers eating some of the toxic flowers, but a young man from the village stops him.
Once again, Lucius is taunted by a rose bush that nearly ends his ordeal, but in this case, it turns out the seemingly helpful plant is actually a deadly poison in disguise. Yet again, this is a case in the book where outward appearances are deceiving and help to hide a darker truth on the inside.
Themes
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Quotes
The bandits keep moving in the afternoon heat. While they travel, the other donkey collapses in exhaustion and can’t be moved, even with whipping. They split the donkey’s load between Lucius and a horse, then throw the donkey over a cliff. They make their way to the robbers’ mountainside cave, where they live with their families. The robbers eat and drink, bragging of how they sacked Milo’s house. One of them begins telling a story about how it’s easier to steal from big houses because enslaved people are more likely to protect their own things than the things their rich enslavers own.
Being turned into a donkey forces Lucius to experience life the way that people at the very bottom of society do. Whereas before, he was upset if a host didn’t offer proper hospitality, now he must struggle and labor to even stay alive. This change shows once again how Fortune can be fickle and how all it takes is one decision or one moment of bad luck to change a person’s fortune.
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The robber begins a story about arriving with a group of other thieves at the gate of the city of Thebes. They make preparations for their upcoming robbery of a moneychanger named Chryseras, and then they wait for nightfall. During the robbery, Lamachus (the leader of the thieves) is suddenly surprised when Chryseras sneaks up on him and nails his hand to a door. Chryseras then goes to his roof and calls to all his neighbors that there’s a fire.
The purpose of this story with the thieves will become clearer later. In some ways, the bad luck of the expert thief Lamachus could be seen as similar to the bad luck that Lucius himself has recently experienced—or perhaps in both their cases, it isn’t bad luck but the consequences of greed.
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With no other options, the thieves cut off part of Lamachus’s arm and flee. As a thief, however, Lamachus doesn’t want to live without his hand, so he stabs himself and dies. Another thief named Alcimus tries to rob an old woman’s cottage and gets tricked by her and pushed out a window, falling to his death.
As a thief, Lamachus’s swift hands are a fundamental part of his identity. For this reason, it is particularly upsetting for him to lose a hand, and this is why he decides to kill himself rather than trying to find a new identity.
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Mourning both Lamachus and Alcimus, the thieves give up in Thebes and go to nearby Plataea to see a gladiator named Demochares, who even fights wild animals, like bears. Lately, the bears have been dying of heat and illness. The thieves take one bear and skin it to use the fur as a disguise.
The deaths of Lamachus and Alcimus hint that this new scheme will also go badly, but the thieves are too blinded by greed to quit, despite what the consequences might end up being.
Themes
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The thief Thrasyleon gets dressed up in the bear skin. The other thieves put him in a cage and offer him as a gift to Demochares with a forged letter saying that the bear is from one of Demochares’ friends. The narrator thief suggests to Demochares that he should set up the bear somewhere within his manor, so that it can be away from the other sickly bears. He agrees.
The disguise of Thrasyleon in bear skin is yet another case of a character changing their identity for deceptive purposes. Thrasyleon experiences the benefits of being a bear during the planned robbery, but he will also have to face the consequences. Though Thrasyleon doesn’t literally transform into a bear, his situation can be compared to that of Lucius, who has in fact been turned into a literal donkey.
Themes
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That night Thrasyleon sneaks out of his cage, kills the guards, then opens the gate for the other thieves. At first, the robbery seems successful, but then they are suddenly caught by an enslaved boy, who alerts the rest of the house. Someone unleashes the dogs against Thrasyleon (who still looks like a bear). He manages to fight them off at first, but they slowly overwhelm him.
In the disguise of a bear, Thrasyleon begins to act like a bear. This suggests that people often eventually become what they pretend to be, even if they pretend to be something as outrageous as a wild animal.
Themes
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The narrator thief exclaims that it’s a shame for a rare creature like a bear to be wasted on dogs. Thrasyleon is eventually torn apart. They don’t realize Thrasyleon is a human until a butcher cuts him open the next day. Meanwhile, the other bandits escape. The narrator thief concludes his story and says that that is how they got the loot and how his three companions died. The whole gang toasts their fallen comrades.
The fact that Thrasyleon’s identity as a human isn’t discovered until the next day suggests how fully the bear disguise has become a part of him. Though the thieves ultimately did escape with money, the story shows that they paid a heavy cost for this benefit.
Themes
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The bandits go out again at night, leaving Lucius behind. He goes to a stream to drink. The bandits come back looking uneasy and with a new pretty hostage, who is crying. The bandits are holding her hostage to extort her rich parents. The girl keeps complaining and threatens to kill herself. An old hag who works with the robbers says that if the girl does anything to threaten the robbers’ ransom money, they’ll burn her alive. The girl pleads for mercy from the woman and begins telling her a story.
Because Lucius is still a donkey, he is able to observe the story that unfolds between the hostage and the old hag as an outsider. While at first their story might seem like a diversion from Lucius’s, in fact the old hag and the hostage are two of the most important characters in the story after Lucius. Lucius’s interest in the old hag and the hostage makes sense because he has already established himself as a lover of other people’s stories.
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In the hostage girl’s story, her cousin is a couple years older than her, and he is a distinguished citizen in his city. He and the girl are engaged. But at a family ceremony to celebrate the union, some bandits intrude and kidnap the girl, while no one else in the family resists. Later, the girl dreams that her husband has been killed by the robbers, but she wakes suddenly.
Some elements of the hostage’s story bear a resemblance to Lucius’s. For example, Lucius himself was on the verge of a happy occasion (eating a rose to turn back into a human) at the moment when the robbers interrupted and kidnapped him.
Themes
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The old hag tells the young hostage to cheer up and promises to tell her a nice story to distract her. In the story, there is a king and queen with three beautiful daughters, with the third daughter (Psyche) being the most beautiful. People come from far away to praise the youngest daughter as if she’s Venus. All around, people begin to stop venerating Venus in the usual temples and instead focus all their veneration on the girl. This angers the real Venus.
The story of Cupid and Psyche is the longest story-within-a-story in The Golden Ass, and it is arguably the centerpiece of the whole book. In the beginning of the story, Psyche seems to anger the goddess Venus simply by being born. This shows how fickle the gods can be and how mortals don’t always deserve the anger they get.
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Venus decides that she’ll make Psyche pay. She sends her winged son, Cupid, to go see the girl. For revenge, Venus wants Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with someone totally inappropriate and pathetic.
Venus’s decision to punish Psyche by making her fall in love with someone unsuitable emphasizes how people can make bad choices due to romantic or sexual feelings.
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Meanwhile, despite Psyche’s beauty, no one wants to marry her. Psyche’s father, the king, is upset and makes a sacrifice to Apollo, asking for a wedding for his youngest daughter. Apollo prophesies that Psyche will marry something inhuman and snake-like that will destroy the world.
Psyche’s punishment seems to be unfair—she is not a victim of her own tragic flaws but truly innocent. This shows how Fortune works in strange ways and how sometimes a person can have too much of a good thing (like beauty).
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Psyche’s parents dress her up in funeral clothes and lead her to a crag where she will supposedly meet her new husband. The townspeople leave her there at the crag, and she is terrified, but just then, the West Wind comes to comfort her, lifting her up and taking her from the top of the slope down to the valley beneath.
Like many characters in the inset tales, Psyche experiences a sudden reversal of fortune. Though she had been prepared for a funeral-like ritual, the Western Wind’s intervention suggests that she is in for a more comfortable future than what Apollo predicted.
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