Apuleius' Metamorphoses, Vergil's Eclogues, and the varying challenges of Greek genres

The novel emerged as a successful literary form in the Greek-speaking world. Latin culture, instead, did not provide as fertile a ground for extended prose narrative. One possible reason for this lacklustre reception could be that Greek novels usually presented themselves as psychagogic, entertaining, pleasurable, ‘sweet’ – definitely not something the Roman elite could appreciate without reservation, even in the decidedly Philellenic 2nd-century Empire. The recent scholarly emphasis on the Romanization of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses – the Latin adaptation of a Greek story – should not conceal the fact that typical elements of the Greek novels are copious in this text from the very beginning: the crucial role of Fortune, false deaths, attempted suicides, and so on. Its geographical setting is (mainly) Greek, and Greek are the names of all the characters. The literary program announced by the Prologue fully embraces the Greekness of the genre by advertising a Milesian story that will be pleasurable and sweet, a fabula graecanica. On the whole, one can say that the novel is characterized by a nuanced but constant appropriation of aspects of Greek culture by a Roman intellectual. Subtle textual hints and general analogies point to Vergil’s Eclogues in particular as a model for Apuleius’ endeavor. There we have Greek characters moving through a culturally mixed landscape, and frequent references both to Greek models and to Roman and Imperial themes. The Eclogues also programmatically refer to the prototypical locus amoenus of Plato’s Phaedrus, and to the winning seductiveness of the song of the cicadas or other insects: Vergil’s shepherds fully abandon themselves to those enticing sounds, while Plato says philosophers should stay awake and intellectually active. Apuleius’ Prologue, among other passages, apparently encourages the readers of the novel to behave like Vergilian shepherds, and to let themselves be enchanted by a lepidus susurrus. Apuleius, a prominent Platonic philosopher, manipulates in a self-ironic and provocative way words and images previously used by Plato to emphasize the superiority of philosophy over entertaining fiction, and then by Vergil and others to reaffirm the value of poetic inspiration. His novel negotiates a difficult and narrow path that tries to combine entertainment and education, to espouse Greekish sweet seduction without rejecting traditional Roman values. The Metamorphoses was not met with the immediate and lasting success enjoyed by Vergil’s Eclogues, and this different outcome is thought-provoking although one can only speculate on its causes. Apuleius’ appropriation of Greek ideals was probably too disturbing for the Roman culture of his time, nor was it combined with a strong commitment to Imperial ideology like Vergil’s bucolic poems. The educational value one expected from the work of a philosopher was too implicit, and the novel did not enjoy the support of a Maecenas either. Apuleius’ self-irony and provocation were not understood and he ended up being read literally: the Metamorphoses was only considered as a seducing but useless Milesian story.