The Golden Ass: Book 4 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.