On Two Stories in Apuleius

Abstract

The late B. E. Perry’s work on the stories of Aristomenes and Thelyphron in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses is a classic of its kind. Originally a by-product of his doctoral dissertation on Lucius of Patrae, it has stood the test of time as a critical analysis of Apuleius’s narrative style; Perry himself repeated his analysis with only minor changes of emphasis forty odd years later in The Ancient Romances, having energetically repelled a few attacks early in its career, and it holds the field still. His study on the two stories observes an effect which all readers sense in the text, perhaps without being aware of it as a distinct phenomenon, and traces this effect to certain causes which lie under the surface of the text. As he said: ‘I am trying to explain for myself and others the secret of that exceedingly strange and romantic effect which certain of (Apuleius’s) stories produce.’ He goes on to remark: ‘Only a part of this effect is produced by the subject matter as such’; that which is peculiar to Apuleius, ‘the unique element … which contributes most of a reader’s sense of mystification, even when he is not aware of it, is the absence of a natural and normally logical sequence of events …’