Julia Gaisser on Lucius the narrator

The redoubtable Julia Haig Gaisser has much to say about Apuleius and his afterlife in The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton University Press, 2008). A sample chapter is available here.  In it, she discusses the shifting persona of the narrator in the Metamorphoses:

"From the beginning of the novel Apuleius depicts a hero fundamentally different from himself. Lucius is a Greek from Corinth and a relation of the famous Plutarch,⁶² whereas Apuleius is a Roman from North Africa. Lucius is credulous and foolish, both as a man and as an ass; Apuleius presents himself as a sophisticated man of the world. Lucius bungles his efforts at magic—or has them bungled for him, when Fotis gives him the wrong ointment (Met. 3.24). The Apuleius we see in the Apology may or may not be an actual magician; he could never be an incompetent one. But Lucius also resembles Apuleius.⁶³ Both men are peripatetic provincial intellectuals of good family. Both have an interest in magic. Both are eloquent orators in both Greek and Latin. Both have ties to Platonic philosophy: Apuleius is an avowed Platonist, and Lucius is related to Plutarch and Sextus, both Middle Platonic philosophers. Perhaps most important, both are initiated more than once into mystery cults, and Lucius’ conversion to Isis is told so powerfully that it has often been taken to reflect Apuleius’ own religious experience. ⁶⁴
These resemblances in themselves, however, are not enough to identify Lucius with Apuleius. Lucius’ experiences need not even be derived or adapted from those of Apuleius.⁶⁵ In the social and intellectual world of the second century, there must have been many young men not unlike Lucius—aspiring sophists at the beginning of their careers, traveling the world, dabbling in religion and philosophy (and perhaps magic), and eager for sexual and other adventures. If Apuleius had been such a youth, so were many others. It is important to remember, too, that ultimately the figure of Lucius has its origin in the lost Greek Metamorphoses by “Lucius of Patrae,” from which the plots of both Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and the Onos of Pseudo-Lucian were derived.⁶⁶
To some extent, however, it is naive to seek Lucius’ identity and relation to Apuleius. He is Apuleius’ creature if not entirely his creation, a persona like that of the magician in the Apology, which the author may assume or set down at will. In the Metamorphoses, too, just as in the Apology and Florida, Apuleius’ real aim is self-display. ⁶⁷ The object is not to identify the “real Apuleius” (or the “real Lucius,” for that matter) but to dazzle the reader by assuming multiple and contradictory personae.⁶⁸ Not only Lucius’ transformation to an ass and eventual recovery of his human form, but also the changes and confusions in the identities of author, narrator, and other speakers, justify the title Metamorphoses. ⁶⁹
Apuleius draws attention to his impersonations in the Metamorphoses in two famous passages, strategically placed at the beginning and end of the novel. In each he presents the question of his own identity vis-à-vis that of his speaker as a conspicuous and unsolvable problem. In the first passage he gives us too few clues to arrive at an answer; in the second the clue leads to an impossible contradiction.
The proem (Met. 1.1) explicitly raises the question of the speaker’s identity. ⁷⁰ “Quis ille?” (Who is this?), the speaker asks, and then proceeds to describe himself—unhelpfully—as a Greek of Attic, Corinthian, and Spartan stock who has learned Latin in Rome with great diffi culty and begs pardon for any faults in the language with which he will tell his “Greekish tale” (fabulam Graecanicam). The description fits neither the North African Apuleius nor the Greek Lucius (whose Latin seems perfectly adequate for his career in the Roman law courts at the end of the novel).⁷¹ Other answers have been proposed (the speaker is an actor outside the story, like the prologus in Plautine comedy, or perhaps even the book itself, etc.);⁷² but in fact Apuleius has given us no way to decide. The unidentifiable speaker is another of Apuleius’ personae, made deliberately mysterious and intriguing in order to announce and advertise the writer’s protean powers at the opening of his novel. The important detail is the question itself (“quis ille?”): Apuleius is the speaker; what part is he playing now?
Near the end of the novel (Met. 11.27) Apuleius ostentatiously forces the reader to confront the problem of his relation to his hero.⁷³ The puzzle is laid out in a vision, which Lucius says was related to him by a priest of Osiris named Asinius Marcellus. (The name is signifi cant, as he points out unnecessarily.) ⁷⁴ Asinius says that Osiris himself had urged Lucius’ initiation into his rites:

For the previous night, while he was arranging garlands for the great god, he thought he heard from his mouth (with which he pronounces each one’s destiny) that a man from Madauros was being sent to him, a very poor one. He should at once prepare his initiation rites for him; for by his providence the glory of learning was in store for the man and a great reward for himself.⁷⁵

The subject of the prophecy must be our hero, the Greek Lucius, but as the “man from Madauros” he can be only Apuleius, the North African author. The paradox is a red herring wrapped up in indirect statement, and it smells appropriately fi shy. ⁷⁶ Apuleius holds on to it just long enough to put on the mask of Lucius, or perhaps to let Lucius put on the mask of Apuleius, giving the reader a final reminder of his powers as an impersonator. ^77"