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
A young man from a nearby town, who had been enslaved by Charite, appears and begins a story about how she and her family have all died.
The sudden death of Charite and Tlepolemus shows once again how fickle Fortune can be—the two of them are struck down at what seemed to be the height of their success.
Themes
In the story, there’s a young man from a rich family who nevertheless has a rough reputation and is named Thrasyllus. Thrasyllus is one of Charite’s suitors and is jealous when he finds out she’s engaged to Tlepolemus instead. When Thrasyllus hears that Tlepolemus has rescued Charite from the bandits, he pretends to be one of the well-wishers, all the while hatching a plot.
As with many of the stories in The Golden Ass, the primary motivation behind this tragedy is jealousy. Thrasyllus is in many ways a twisted counterpart to Tlepolemus, using similar means of deception but for a selfish plot rather than a selfless one.
Themes
One day, Thrasyllus accompanies Tlepolemus on a hunting expedition. They expect to be hunting docile goats, but instead they find a wild boar, which slices through their hunting dogs. Thrasyllus suggests they face the boar bravely rather than running away. Tlepolemus attacks the boar, but Thrasyllus instead uses his spear to attack Tlepolemus’s horse’s leg. Tlepolemus falls down and is attacked by the boar and then by Thrasyllus’s own spear. Thrasyllus lets Tlepolemus die and kills the boar too.
This scene is ironic because while it seems like Thrasyllus and Tlepolemus are hunting game, in fact it is Thrasyllus who is hunting Tlepolemus. The fact that Thrasyllus kills Tlepolemus like a boar emphasizes how little he regards his supposed friend and how far he is willing to go in order to satisfy his own jealous greed.
Themes
Charite is overcome with grief. She tries to kill herself with every method that doesn’t involve a weapon, but Thrasyllus does whatever he can to keep her alive. Eventually, Thrasyllus gets impatient with how long Charite mourns and confesses how he feels to her, which horrifies Charite. Charite sees that the whole thing was a plot by Thrasyllus.
In his greed, however, Thrasyllus is unable to comprehend how Charite herself is reacting to the situation. Perhaps overconfident after his seeming success, Thrasyllus underestimates the difficulty that Charite will prove to be.
Themes
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One night, the ghost of Tlepolemus comes to visit Charite. He confirms that Thrasyllus assassinated him and tells her to run away from Thrasyllus. Charite shares this vision with no one. She promises Thrasyllus that she is only avoiding him because she needs to mourn her husband for the required period of time in order to avoid awakening his vengeful ghost. Thrasyllus is still impatient, so Charite pretends to give in and says that while she won’t marry Thrasyllus until after the mourning period, they can meet up sooner, as long as they are discreet.
The return of Tlepolemus’s ghost shows once again how people can influence the present even after death. Despite being a captive victim for much of the story, here Charite begins to show some ingenuity and craftiness. This scene suggests that perhaps deception is more acceptable when someone is forced into it by their circumstances.
Themes
Charite tells Thrasyllus how he can sneak up to her bedroom. He does so, but a nurse offers him wine laced with a narcotic and he falls into a deep sleep. Charite tells Thrasyllus’s sleeping body that instead of killing him, she’ll gouge his eyes out for revenge. She does so with a hairpin. Charite then goes to Tlepolemus’s coffin and tells the whole town what Thrasyllus did. She kills herself with Tlepolemus’s sword so that she can join him. And so the young man ends his story.
Gouging out eyes is a common punishment in Greek and Roman stories. In this case, perhaps it is fitting that Thrasyllus is punished in this way for looking greedily at Charite. Though the ending of the story is tragic, there’s a harsh justice in Thrasyllus at least getting a punishment that fits his misdeeds.
Themes
The audience is moved by the young man’s story. The enslaved people wonder what to do now that their enslavers are dead. They are afraid of their new enslavers and run off, and Lucius is taken along. They are warned that the way is dangerous and that there are bandits ahead, but they press on anyway. When they make it to one town, they are attacked by country people who believe they are bandits but who stop once they realize the misunderstanding.
As someone very familiar with Greek literature, the author Apuleius would have likely taken inspiration for Lucius’s journey from Homer’s Odyssey, one of the most famous stories about a journey of all time. Just as Odysseus was tossed on the sea from island to island, Lucius as a donkey seems to be passed around from owner to owner.
Themes
The humans and animals in the group recover from being attacked. They continue to travel for a while and then stop in a hamlet to rest. Lucius begins to tell the story of a notable crime that was committed in the town. An enslaved man was in love with a free woman, causing him to set his enslaver’s granary on fire. The free woman was herself upset to have all that done in her name, so she hanged herself. The enslaver responded by torturing and killing the man.
The violence and injustice of the story that Lucius tells is perhaps inspired by the story he just heard about Tlepolemus and Charite. Both stories capture how sometimes human life can be ended through sudden and often unfair violence.
Themes
In another town, people try to buy Lucius. He is eventually sold to Philebus, who takes Lucius back to some “priests” who also act as male sex workers. They are disappointed to see that Lucius is a donkey and not a man. Lucius’s new owners load him down and take him around town, using him to hold the money they make from their sex work, all while giving the outward appearance of a religious group. The priests are having sex with a young man when suddenly they are interrupted by some other men who believe Lucius is their stolen donkey. Lucius’s owners run off with him again.
Although this section satirizes the hypocrisy of some supposed religious adherents, it would be wrong to interpret it as a satire of all religion, given how loyalty to the gods is rewarded in other parts of the book. The association of religion with sex work suggests that many people use religion in a transactional way to get money.
Themes
Lucius ends up on the estate of a tenant farmer, whose cook has promised to prepare a stag’s leg for everyone to eat. But the stag’s leg is stolen by a dog. When the cook finds out that the stag leg is missing, he recommends killing Lucius to cook his haunch instead.
Lucius finds himself in the worst danger of the journey: perhaps this section can be read as a parody of how the poor and the people at the bottom of society, like Lucius, are sometimes metaphorically “eaten” (exploited) to further the whims of the rich.
Themes
