Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass is that it contains several self-contained stories nested within the main story of Lucius and his quest to transform from a donkey back into a human. These nested stories-within-the-story (sometimes called “inset tales”) often help illuminate part of the main plot, and—in some cases—they even contain their own nested stories. The tone and content of the inset tales varies greatly, ranging from the tragic to the comic, and while some are grounded and natural, others feature extensive coincidences or supernatural elements. Ultimately, the variety of stories contained within The Golden Ass testifies to the wide variety of reasons for storytelling. Stories can entertain, inform, trick, act as an allegory, or act as an argument, and throughout The Golden Ass, they do all of the above.
Stories are important to the characters in the book. Even in unexpected moments, the characters find themselves telling long, elaborate tales, which perhaps suggests just how interested they are in trying to make sense of their lives and the world they live in. At one point in the story, for example, the baker tells his spouse, the baker’s wife, a story about an unfaithful woman (the fuller’s wife) who tries to conceal a lover when her husband comes home early. Instead, however, the fuller’s wife ends up accidentally killing her lover. Though the baker doesn’t say so directly, this story implies that he knows his own wife is unfaithful and perhaps that he is even threatening that things could end badly for her and her lover. While entertaining the audience, this story is also a means by which the baker confronts his wife’s betrayal. By showing how characters like the baker navigate their world through stories, Apuleius argues that stories have the power to communicate beliefs and illuminate truths more effectively than other forms of speech.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Power of Stories ThemeTracker
The Power of Stories 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.
Well, I was a curious person. The moment I heard the word witchcraft, representing my lifelong aspiration, I shrugged off any need to play it safe with Pamphile.
Dawn, her rose-colored arm shaking the reins over horses decked out in scarlet medallions, had just launched her chariot into the sky when Night ripped me from peaceful sleep and turned me over to Day.
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.
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 the rich man’s mind was completely gone. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated, or even distracted, by the presence of so many fellow citizens.
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.
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.
