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FABULATOR LATINUS Apuleius' Best Known Work, the Golden Ass, Raises CHAPTER SIX FABULATOR LATINUS Apuleius' best known work, the Golden Ass, raises a number of issues addressed in previous chapters: Greek sources, translation, adaptation and patchwork compilation. It is also the most thoroughly studied work in the Apuleian corpus. Accordingly, this chapter will be restricted to the issues just enumerated with one addition: the relationship of this Latin novel to the ancient Greek novel. 1 Greek Sources An important source of information for delineating the Greek origins of Apuleius' Latin adaptation are the various subscriptions contained in the manuscript known as F (Codex Laurentianus 68, 2). It served as the basis of all the extant manuscripts of the Golden Ass and during the period 395-7 was read and edited (legi et emendavi) by Sallustius both in Rome and in Constantinople. Whenever Sallustius refers to the novel by title he invariably cites it by the Greek title, the Metamorphoses, e.g.: "The end of Book 10 of the Metamorphoses. I, Sallustius, read and edited it profitably in Rome. The beginning of Book 11. "2 Thus the earliest known reference to the novel by title lends support to the likelihood of its Greek derivation. 3 As will be explained below, the Milesian affiliation that Apuleius assigns to the novel also implies Greek origins for the Latin adaptation. 1 Sandy 1994. Bowie and Harrison 1993 provide an up-to-date survey and bibliographical guide to the ancient novel. 2 Methamorfoseon Libri X. Excipio. Ego Sallustius legi et emendavi Romae felix. lncipio Libri XI, p. 266, ed. R. Helm (Leipzig: Teubner, 3rd ed., 1931 ); the dates and locations of Sallustius' editorial work derive from his subscrition at the end of Book 9, p. 236, ed. Helm. See also Rives 1994: 279, n. 17. 3 Some thirty years later St. Augustine (C. D. 18. 18) uses the Latin title "Asinus Aureus" (Golden Ass); still later, in the fifth or sixth century, Fulgentius uses the two titles interchangeably. 234 CHAPTER SIX Apuleius himself announces the Greek pedigree of the novel in the opening sentence and reaffirms it in the penultimate sentence of the first chapter. '"But I would like to stitch together for your benefit various tales written in the Milesian style that you favour,'" begins the novel. The dramatized narrator Lucius concludes the introduction to his stitched-together compilation in these words, "'We begin our Greekish story."' As well, the narrator's emphatically Greek lineage reinforces that of the story and simultaneously bridges the divide between the two cultures of classical antiquity. A native of Greece with ties of kinship and education to its principal urban centres and the family of Plutarch, he worked hard in Rome to teach himself Latin. Apuleius likens this process of bridging the two linguistic cultures to a stunt rider jumping from one horse to another. The adjective "Milesian" is not unambiguous, but its "made-in­ Greece" implications are unmistakable. Aristides of Miletus was the author of a collection of novelle known in classical antiquity as Milesiaca, that is, Milesian Tales. Only one word of his collection of Greek tales survives, and the ten short surviving fragments of the Roman historian Sisenna's Latin translation of Aristides' work add nothing of value to attempts to reconstruct it. 4 Ancient references to the Milesiaca unanimously characterize it as vulgar, even obscene, which is difficult to reconcile with Apuleius' characterization of the honeyed tale of Cupid and Psyche as "Milesian" (4. 32. 6). 5 We may safely conclude, however, that the adjective "Milesian," however ambiguous, connotes at the very least a Greek component in the tone, style, structure or the contents of Apuleius' Latin adaptation. The adjective "Graecanica," which I translated "Greekish" to avoid the architectural connotations that the word "Grecian" now has in English, in the words of Mason, "means something like 'adapted (into Latin) from Greek.' "6 He cites for this interpretation the authority of the first-century B. C. Roman polymath Varro. In his On the La.tin Language (10. 70-2) Varro distinguishes between the adjectives "Greek" and "Greekish." A Greek noun that retains its Greek declensional form in Latin is Greek; one that has been altered to conform to Latin morphology is Greekish. 4 Scobie 1975: 66-7. 5 Scobie 1975: 67. 6 Mason 1978: 1. .
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