Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Golden Ass, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Power of Stories
Faithfulness and Loyalty
Identity, Transformation, and Curiosity
Consequences of Greed
Summary
Analysis
Psyche keeps herself busy looking for Cupid and trying to think of ways to make things up to him. She comes to a shrine with some wheat and barley piled carelessly in front of it, and she begins sorting the grains. As she does, the goddess Ceres comes upon her.
Psyche’s interest in cleaning up near the shrine shows reverence. Despite the difficulties she has recently faced, she remains faithful to the gods.
Themes
Ceres tells Psyche that Venus is looking for her and that she has promised vengeance. Psyche falls to Ceres’s feet and weeps, asking for help. Ceres is moved by her pleas, but she also doesn’t want to upset Venus. The best Ceres is able to do is to leave Psyche alone.
Psyche continues to wander. She finds a temple to Juno and prays for help. Like Ceres, Juno also wants to help but can’t because she doesn’t want to upset Venus. Psyche is devastated and decides that her only remaining course of action is to turn herself in to Venus and hope for the best.
Many episodes in The Golden Ass repeat with minor differences. For example, this section on Juno is very similar to the section on Ceres that just finished. In this case, the repetition helps emphasize how afraid the other gods are of getting on the wrong side of Venus.
Themes
Venus steps up her search for Psyche, sending the messenger god Mercury to issue proclamations that whoever turns over Psyche will get seven kisses from Venus and one thrust of her tongue.
Venus’s exhaustive search shows the depths of her determination, once again emphasizing how powerful jealousy can be as a motivating force.
Themes
Get the entire The Golden Ass LitChart as a printable PDF.
One of Venus’s servants sees Psyche as she comes up towards Venus’s manor and immediately grabs the girl, turning her over to Venus. Venus has Psyche whipped. She declares that because of the uncertainty over the circumstances of Psyche’s pregnancy, her child will be illegitimate—if it gets born at all.
Venus’s harsh treatment of Psyche reflects the harsh irrationality of love. Venus has already exerted her control over the other gods by preventing them from interfering, and here she goes even further by threatening Psyche’s child’s future.
Themes
Venus attacks Psyche and then throws a random assortment of grains, including wheat, barley, millet, poppy seeds, lentils, and more, at her. She tells Psyche to sort everything by evening. She then leaves to go to a banquet.
This attack on Psyche recalls the earlier scene where Psyche was cleaning up grains in front of a shrine. The task Venus picks is deliberately tedious and too long to complete in the amount of time given.
Themes
Psyche is too stunned to begin sorting. Suddenly, some ants begin to help her. When Venus gets back, she’s drunk and surprised at Psyche’s work but says she couldn’t have done it herself. But Cupid was locked up the whole time.
Just as the river helped Psyche earlier, now the ants help her, too. This seems to suggest that people like Psyche, who are faithful to and respectful of the gods, sometimes receive aid from unexpected places.
Themes
For the next challenge, Venus says that Psyche must get some golden wool from sheep that graze in the distance. At first, Psyche only goes intending to kill herself in a river, but she hears a heavenly voice warning her not to jump in a river but also warning her not to approach the sheep yet—they are savage and will kill mortals, except during the midday sun when they rest. Psyche succeeds in getting golden wool, but Venus still isn’t pleased.
Psyche again receives help from nature, suggesting that perhaps the extent of Venus’s rage is in fact unnatural and that the ants and the river are trying to restore balance. The killer sheep that look docile recall many other disguised killers from throughout the book, like the poisonous plant that Lucius nearly eats.
Themes
Venus offers another challenge: Psyche must go to the source of a river at the peak of a mountain and capture some of the water in a small crystal cup. Psyche goes and finds that the journey up the mountain is perilous, potentially deadly. The waters themselves tell Psyche to give up and turn back. Just then, though, an eagle from Jupiter comes by and helps Psyche get some of the water, which Psyche then takes back to Venus.
As king of the gods, Jupiter is perhaps the one who feels most comfortable overturning Venus’s authority. The helpful eagle contrasts with the deceptive bird that the witch Pamphile turns into. Water can symbolize purification, and perhaps this trial symbolizes how Psyche is beginning to overcome her previous errors, like her curiosity about Cupid’s identity.
Themes
Venus is angry with Psyche for succeeding and offers yet another challenge. She asks her to go take a box down to Proserpina in Tartarus, the underworld, and ask if Venus can have a day’s worth of Proserpina’s loveliness (since she has used up some of her own loveliness worrying about Cupid).
Proserpina lives in Tartarus because she was abducted by the god of the underworld. In some ways her situation mirrors that of the hostage, and perhaps her role in the story is to reassure the thieves’ hostage (who is listening to the story of Cupid and Psyche) that her story may still have a happier ending.
Themes
Psyche believes this task is certain death and so she goes to the top of a tall tower, intending to jump off. But the tower warns her that if she goes to the underworld that way, she’ll have no means of getting back. The tower tells her a better way to Tartarus. She must also take a barley-cake in each hand and two small coins in her mouth.
The food and the money are significant. In most cases, characters are driven to make bad decisions by either hunger or greed. Here, however, a small amount of food and a small amount of money are required to stay connected to the world of the living, suggesting that perhaps a more controlled hunger or desire for wealth is a regular part of living.
Themes
One coin is for Charon, the ferryman on the river of death, who will demand payment. Then, one of the barley-cakes should be used to pacify the underworld’s three-headed guard dog. This will allow Psyche to make her way to Proserpina, who will give Psyche a box that she is not allowed to open. Finally, on the way back, she can use the remaining barley-cake and coin in the same way.
The underworld as described here is consistent with how the underworld is depicted in many other Greek and Roman works, perhaps most notably The Odyssey. The box that Psyche isn’t allowed to open provides another test for her curiosity.
Themes
Psyche does as instructed. On the way back from Proserpina, though, she is tempted to open the box and take a tiny dab of Proserpina’s loveliness. But as soon as she opens the box, she falls asleep.
Psyche is overcome by her own curiosity again, suggesting that even after the suffering she’s endured, she hasn’t learned from her mistakes.
Themes
Cupid, meanwhile, can no longer bear Psyche’s absence. He flies to find her and sees that she has been undone by her own curiosity again. He wakes her up and instructs her to finish her task, which she does.
This time, however, Psyche is lucky enough to be rescued, perhaps in part because she has earned help by enduring her previous trials.
Themes
Cupid is afraid of how Venus has been so sober lately, so Cupid himself drinks more. One time, he gets drunk and flies to Jupiter to plead his case about Psyche. Jupiter says that Cupid has never been particularly respectful of the gods, but he is still fond of Cupid and will help him on two conditions: that Cupid learns to watch out for his competitors and that Cupid pay him back by finding a mortal woman who is particularly lovely.
The drunkenness of Cupid and Venus suggests that love itself often manifests in erratic and uninhibited ways, just like a drunk person. Before, Jupiter was the one god who openly defied Venus by sending an eagle to help Psyche, and here he defies her again—but on the condition that Cupid give him something in return.
Themes
Jupiter orders a council of the gods and proposes that they end Cupid’s wild behavior by letting him settle down with Psyche. In order to satisfy Venus, Jupiter proposes making Psyche immortal so that she’ll be a more satisfactory bride. They all plan a lavish wedding. Psyche and Cupid are married, and they have a daughter called Pleasure. Thus ends the old hag’s story to the hostage.
The fact that Psyche must be made immortal to stay married to Cupid shows how marriage cannot endure between people of highly unequal status. The happy ending of Psyche’s story (despite all the suffering along the way) is perhaps meant to suggest that the hostage’s story may have a happy ending, too, despite her current suffering. On the other hand, it could be related to the larger frame story of Lucius, who seems to be undergoing a series of trials that aren’t necessarily directly caused by the gods but are similar to what Psyche endured.
Themes
Lucius is sorry he wasn’t able to write down the old woman’s story. The bandits come back and load up Lucius (who is still a donkey). They make him walk until he falls. They talk about getting rid of him but decide to make him finish carrying the baggage before throwing him off a cliff.
The section once again emphasizes the precarious state that Lucius lives in as a donkey. He is forced to do hard work and threatened with death. This section highlights how poorly people at the bottom of society are treated.
Themes
Lucius tries to break free, but the old hag sees him and grabs him. The young hostage watches this, but instead of helping the older woman, she mounts Lucius. She asks the gods for help in escaping, promising to reward Lucius if he helps. They run off together.
While the hostage shares a similar goal to Lucius, the old hag tries to thwart both of them. This brief section dramatizes a struggle between older and younger generations.
Themes
Lucius struggles, but he can’t stop the hostage from leading them right back to the robbers. The robbers apprehend them and take them back. They plan to slit Lucius’s throat and sew the naked girl into his belly so she can be left out in the sun and eaten by worms.
Lucius’s attempt to escape only makes things worse. At this point, he seems to be experiencing only bad fortune. The punishment the thieves devise for the hostage is perhaps inspired by the fate of their dead comrade Thrasyllus, who died in a bear skin.
Themes
