Many of the tales within Apuleius’s The Golden Ass deal with romantic and sexual relationships, and in particular with characters who go to great lengths to try to hide their infidelity. A different but related issue is the relationship between mortals and the gods, where mortals are often asked to offer proof of their faithfulness. From the baker’s wife to Psyche to the fuller’s wife, one thing is clear: in both romantic relationships and religious ones, humans frequently can’t be trusted to uphold their promises of faithfulness.
At the same time, the stories take a nuanced approach to the advantages and disadvantages of faithfulness. While many characters eventually face the consequences of their actions, some, like Arete and Philesitherus, face few or no consequences for their lack of faithfulness. Philesitherus is nearly caught in the act of having sex with Arete (the wife of Barbarus) by Barbarus himself and is only saved through the intervention of an enslaved man named Myrmex. Nevertheless, in the end, Philesitherus tricks Barbarus, feigning innocence when he sees Barbarus in the forum and even accusing his collaborator Myrmex of being a liar. Philesitherus displays no loyalty either in marriage or in friendship, and yet he survives without punishment, while on the other hand, in a different part of the book, the loyal fiancé Tlepolemus is assassinated by the jealous would-be lover of his wife Charite. This raises the question of what loyalty is worth.
Arguably, the final book of The Golden Ass does emphasize the benefits of loyalty. After suffering for many years, Lucius is finally saved from being a donkey by his new religious devotion to the gods Isis and Osiris. The gods directly recognize his efforts and reward him for them. Nevertheless, this theme is complicated by earlier events in the story, where innocent and loyal characters sometimes face gruesome deaths, suggesting that faith, good intentions, and honesty aren’t always rewarded in life, which can be harsh and unfair.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Faithfulness and Loyalty ThemeTracker
Faithfulness and Loyalty Quotes in The Golden Ass
Okay, let me weave together various sorts of tales, using the Milesian mode as a loom, if you will. Witty and dulcet tones are going to stroke your too-kind ears—as long as you don't turn a spurning nose up at an Egyptian papyrus scrawled over with an acute pen from the Nile. I’ll make you wonder at human forms and fortunes transfigured, torn apart but then mended back into their original state.
First of all, I swear to you solemnly by this Sun above, a god who sees everything, that the story I’m telling is true—and I ought to know. To do away with any doubts you may still have, when you come to the nearest town, which is where these events took place—and they took place out in public—you’ll find them under general discussion.
Helplessly surveying this new body, I saw I was not a bird but a donkey. I wanted to complain to Photis, but human voice and gesture had been taken from me.
In a certain city there lived a king and queen who had daughters three in number and illustrious in beauty. Though the two born first were quite gratifying enough to look at, praise and publicity on a mortal scale were held to be adequate for them. But the youngest girl’s gorgeousness was so extraordinary, so remarkable that the poverty of human speech prevented any proper description or even encomium.
But the instant the lamp elucidated the secrets of the bed to which she brought it, she saw the sweetest beast, the gentlest wild thing in the world, Cupid himself, that gorgeous god, at gorgeous rest.
But from the time you were a toddler, you weren’t properly socialized.
Believe me, I’m moved by your tearful pleas, and I’d like to be of service, but I can’t fall out with my kinswoman.
My daughter, no more moping from you. Have no anxiety for your family tree, sky-high as it is, or for your own prestige because of this marriage with a mortal.
But she! As soon as she saw the young man and heard mention of a brothel and a pimp, she started to laugh and wiggle ecstatically, so I felt justified in condemning the entire sex… At that moment, the character of all women, as a class, was subject to a donkey’s censure.
But with lamentable dispatch, Fortune (you know her by now), who was inflexible in persecuting me, headed off such a convenient dodge and set up a new ambush for me.
Leave off your troublesome weeping and your wailing so alien to my brave deeds. I have taken revenge on the gore-caked annihilator of my husband.
At last, both tasks were completed, and the workman, beset by all misfortunes, had to carry the jar all the way to where the man who cuckolded him was staying.
As the baker reviewed these indignities, his spouse, for whom insouciant arrogance was by this time second nature, called down curses on the fuller’s wife in the most hateful terms.
But these fine—in fact excellent—arrangements, made with the purest intentions, couldn’t hide from Fortune, whose will was death. She prodded cruel Jealousy to head straight for the young man’s house.
Lo, I come to your aid, Lucius, moved by your pleas—I, the mother of the universe, queen of all the elements, the original off-spring of eternity, loftiest of the gods, queen of the shades, foremost of the heavenly beings, single form of gods and goddesses alike.
Soon, shaved to the skin again, I went joyfully about the duties of this venerable priesthood, founded in the time of Sulla. I did not cloak or conceal my baldness, wherever I went and whomever I met.
