The Golden Ass

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Of all the thought provoking elements found in the book “The Golden Ass” there are four particular components of the book which I believe truly articulate a holistic idea of what life was like in Rome. The four components are as such: crime, sexuality, religious corruption, and religious salvation. Following Apuleius’ picaresque style of story-telling placed me in a front-seat ride to the good, the bad, and especially the ugly of the Roman era, allowing me to consider the historical recount of Rome in a different perspective. In the early parts of the book, we grow familiar with the narrator Lucius, a modest man whose travels to Thessaly are for business purposes. We also learn very early about Lucius’ ongoing curiosity with the supernatural …show more content…
157). Lucius even witnessed the priests engaging in homosexual acts with young boys “they were fired with unspeakable longing to perform the most despicable…their abominable kisses.” (p.158). Firsthand, Lucius gets to see the corrupted practices of these divine religious leaders but yet, despite learning such things he grows deeply discouraged by his proceeding trials and longs for religious salvation. After a sincere prayer he then finds refuge and salvation in the goddess Isis who returns him to his human form. Lucius undergoes three different cycles of initiations, all at the hands of priests but this does not shake his new found pledge to the goddess considered the fate she delivered him from. These two elements of the story work simultaneously to show how powerful religious salvation was considered to be in the empire. For Lucius to journey as an ass through the empire and uncover some of the most intimate spoils of the religious world, then to disregard those experiences to submit to that very same force, believing is it there he will find his salvation are ironic series of events. But this example of situational irony effectively displays both the power and importance the people of the empire believed religious salvation to have. It had the power to deliver its people from their worst possible states and make them new (the importance), which in turn gained the people’s life-time pledge to these gods and their religions (the power). And Lucius’ initiation(s) exemplify this
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