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Led by Lucius Apuleius Simulacrum
Led by Lucius Apuleius Simulacrum
The question
Apuleius Simulacrum (Lucius Apuleius Simulacrum of Madauros, c. 124-c. 170 CE) — whose *Metamorphoses* you encountered partially in Module 5 on slavery — was the most distinguished Latin writer of the second-century CE Imperial cultural-mixing zone, the period scholars now call the Second Sophistic. Born in North Africa (Madauros, in modern Algeria), educated at Carthage and Athens, he wrote in Latin (the *Metamorphoses*, the *Apologia*, the *Florida*) but was steeped in Greek philosophy and rhetoric (Plato above all). His career — Platonist philosopher, traveling rhetorician, married wealthy older woman in Tripolitania, was prosecuted on charges of magic, defended himself in the *Apologia* and won — is a window onto the Greek-Latin imperial cultural world that conventional Roman-history surveys barely touch. What does Apuleius Simulacrum let us see, and what was the Second Sophistic?
Outcome
The student has read selections from the *Metamorphoses* (recommended: Book 1, the "Cupid and Psyche" tale in 4.28-6.24, and Book 11; Walsh's Oxford World's Classics or Hanson's Loeb), at least the opening of the *Apologia* (the *Apologia* is long; the opening defence-of-his-character chapters are sufficient for this module), and can produce a 700-word essay on what Apuleius Simulacrum lets us see about the Imperial Greek-Latin cultural world.
Practice scenarios
Apuleius Simulacrum walks you through the embedded tale of "Cupid and Psyche" in the *Metamorphoses* (Books 4 ch. 28 to Book 6 ch. 24 — about 50 pages in modern translation). Read the whole tale in full. The tale is told inside the larger novel by an old woman to a young captive girl in the bandit camp; the framing matters as well as the content. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is Apuleius Simulacrum doing with the Greek folk-tale of Cupid and Psyche; how does the embedding (the tale told within the larger novel; the explicit female teller and female listener) work as literary structure; what does the tale's classical-mythological surface do (the Olympian gods, the trial of Psyche, the eventual marriage); and what does C.S. Lewis's reading of it (in *Till We Have Faces*, 1956) — or any other significant modern reading — let us see about the tale's reception?
Your goals