The enduring appeal of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses lies not only in the delightful and often extravagant adventures the author stages within the narrative, but also in the finely woven network of philosophical, religious, and, more broadly, intellectually ambitious references that run through it. Confronted with this striking thematic and stylistic complexity, the reader is faced with a central problem of interpretation: how can the work’s playful, light-hearted character be reconciled with its more serious intellectual aspirations?
In The Shadow of an Ass, Jeffrey P. Ulrich revisits this long-standing interpretive dilemma and reframes the debate through the relationship between “philosophical choice” and “aesthetic experience”, a conceptual pairing already rooted in the cultural milieu of the Second Sophistic, where reading practices and aesthetic experience are understood as arenas for ethical exercise and the formation of judgment. The study builds on the now widely accepted view that the novel is marked by a form of understatement—that it is at once dulcis and utilis—yet it shifts the focus of analysis in an original way: rather than seeking the text’s ultimate meaning, Ulrich investigates the responses it elicits in its readers, thus situating the monograph within a productive and relatively recent critical trajectory in which, from the late 1960s onward, the center of interpretation increasingly moved from text to interpreter—a dynamic that, as the author himself observes (p. 22), is in fact far older. According to Ulrich, the Metamorphoses functions above all as a training ground for judgment aimed at its “lectores studiosi” (p. 294), who are invited to read—and thus, given the semantic range of lego, to choose. The reader must decide when to surrender to the narrative’s enchantment in pursuit of aesthetic gratification and when, conversely, to look beyond its ornate surface. The novel therefore teaches its audience to inhabit complexity, keeping the reader within an unresolved tension between moral instruction and pleasure, a “crossroads” at which the protagonist Lucius himself repeatedly stands, called in the course of his (mis)adventures to choose between a superficial pleasure and one more laboriously attained through the pursuit of wisdom. This choice between immersion in narrative pleasure and critical distance recurs iteratively for the reader as well, who is prompted, in the very act of reading, to modulate his or her degree of involvement. For this reason, the disposition of the ideal reader—like that of the soldiers in Met. 9.42, who, having entered a house once without finding anything, notice the donkey’s shadow, and on a second, more attentive look discover everything—must be one of careful scrutiny (in the author’s words, a “palinodic” or retrospective reading). From this perspective, the novel challenges its lector, ancient and modern alike, to undertake a genuine inquiry and an intellectual act of choice, even in the face of the opacity and polyphony that characterize its pages.
In the introductory essay, Encountering the Silenic and Sirenic Socrates: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Reading, Ulrich derives his interpretive framework for the novel from the ambiguous and metaphorical image of Socrates—Silenic, in that his value is not immediately visible to the eye, and Sirenic, in that his logos can weave a kind of enchantment. Like the philosopher, the Metamorphoses, beneath an aesthetically marked burlesque surface, conceals what Rabelais’ Gargantua calls “une céleste et impréciable drogue” (p. 2); and, like the mythical creatures with women’s faces, it can ensnare its readers through its voice. The issue, however, is not deception as such, but the manner in which the reader consents to exposure to it. To illustrate the double nature of Apuleius’ Punicae Milesiae, Ulrich aptly invokes an anecdote from the Historia Augusta (12.12; p. 5): these are stories that mesmerize Clodius Albinus with their trifles, holding him in an unproductive stasis that distracts him from serious affairs—yet only because he chooses to abandon himself to them passively. Such narratives are seductive and at the same time potentially dangerous, both for the modern reader and for the ancient one, each called upon to decide whether to remain caught in their charm or to transform it into an occasion for discernment.
In the first chapter, Setting the Stage for Apuleius: Choice Narratives from Homer to Augustine, Ulrich traces a genealogy of “choice narratives” in the Western tradition, showing that such texts do more than stage figures confronted with dilemmas; they also tend to involve their audiences proactively in an exercise of judgment. From the Odyssey, where Odysseus is repeatedly exposed to the enchantment of desire, to the myth of Heracles at the crossroads, these stories offer readers different models for responding to aesthetic pleasure and suggest ways of distinguishing what attracts from what genuinely benefits the soul. Within the Zeitgeist of the Second Sophistic with which Apuleius engages, such paradigms are repurposed for didactic and rhetorical ends. Ulrich argues that Apuleius situates himself within this tradition: the Metamorphoses—especially in Book 11—stages the “problem of choice”, and this problem does not end with Lucius’ story, even once it has “come to the harbor of Rest and the altar of Mercy” (11.15[.1][1]; p. 79), but flows over into that of the reader, who is in turn called upon to assess critically his or her own relation to the novel.
In the second chapter, Reading as a Choice in the Apuleian Corpus: The Mirror of the Text and the Demands on the Lector, Ulrich extends the inquiry to Apuleius’ entire corpus in an effort to reconstruct inductively a theory of reading. Through the distinction between the reader who remains absorbed in fascination and the lector scrupulosus, and through paradigms such as Odysseus and Socrates—ancient models of response to aesthetic experience reworked by Apuleius—he shows how the Madauran author consistently places readers before interpretive crossroads that cause them to oscillate between immersive and more critically reflective modes of engaging with textual pleasure. These crossroads entail a choice between such modes—one immersive, the other more critically reflective—a choice that ancient audiences, too, were expected to recognize and practice.
In Chapter Three, Entranced by the Mirror of Myth: Mimetic Contagion, Mytho-Mania, and Readerly Choice, drawing on Platonic aesthetic theory, Ulrich argues that in the Metamorphoses myth operates as an entrapping “mirror”: rather than a repository of encrypted allegorical truths. It presents itself primarily as a wondrous work of art that invites contemplative absorption. Yet precisely as such, it generates mimetic contagion, whereby the viewer internalizes and reenacts the paradigm observed. The sculptural group of Diana and Actaeon at Hypata (2.4) is exemplary: as Lucius lingers over it in Byrrhena’s atrium, he already figures as Actaeon’s double, sharing his voyeuristic disposition. (Such a reading constitutes, in my view, one of the volume’s most subtle and carefully argued theoretical claims.) Comparable tableaux function as a “mise en abyme” of the reading experience and crystallize the visual and seductive power myth exerts upon the reader.
In continuity with the preceding chapter, Chapter Four, Visualizing the Goddess: Religious-Erotic Choice in Mock-Platonic Encounters with the Divine, shifts the focus to Book 11, arguing that Isis’ epiphany inscribes itself within a broader Platonizing discourse on modes of vision. The encounter with the goddess is configured as an eminently aesthetic-sensory event, whose significance depends upon the manner of looking adopted. Drawing on Elsner’s distinction between “horizontal viewing”, associated with desire and immediate affective response, and “vertical viewing”, oriented toward transcendence (p. 199), Ulrich shows—by placing the portraits of Isis (11.3[.4-5]) and Photis (2.9[.6-7]) in close proximity—that religious experience likewise presupposes a hermeneutic choice. Far from imposing a univocal meaning, the epiphany sustains an interpretive aporia that implicates not only Lucius—driven by what Ulrich terms a “philosophico-maniacal” (p. 200) disposition, which throughout the novel prompts him to reread sensory experience through a Platonic lens—but also the reader, who must decide whether to remain at the level of aesthetic attraction or to orient himself toward epopteia. In this way, the chapter offers a fresh reframing of the long-standing question concerning the nature of the hero’s final conversion and the overall meaning of Book 11.
In Chapter Five, Paradigms of Life: Platonic Choice and Reader-Response in the Isis Book, the author interprets the Isis Book as a structural reworking of the eschatological Myth of Er in Republic 10. (A synoptic comparison of the relevant passages is provided in the appendix, pp. 309-10.) The architecture of the book—from the epiphany and the figures that appear during the procession to the final initiatory sequences—echoes the paradeigmata biôn among which, in Plato’s narrative, the souls are called to choose. Yet, as Ulrich argues, even the final conversion resists closure into a single, monofocal interpretation: interpretive responsibility is ultimately transferred to the reader, guided by Lucius—endowed with a quasi-demonic mediating function—who orients judgment without imposing a catechetical resolution.
The epilogue, Asinine Priest, “Madauran” Reader, brings into sharp focus the reader-oriented perspective that underpins the study as a whole. Lucius, frequently inclined to yield to aesthetic pleasure and curiositas, becomes the figure through whom the novel incorporates its reader, exposing him to the same risk of fascination and interpretive paralysis. Not only does Book 11 refrain from resolving the ambiguity surrounding the ultimate meaning of the conversion, but—particularly in light of the reference to Madaurensem at 11.27(.9)—it further foregrounds the slippage between author, narrator, and reader, making explicit the text’s internal construction of its addressee. Precisely because the narrative declines to impose a definitive resolution, reading ultimately emerges as an act whose responsibility must be continually assumed and renewed by the reader.
Taken as a whole, the study constitutes a substantial contribution, distinguished by the range of issues it addresses and by the coherence of its interpretive framework. It will be of interest not only to scholars of Apuleius and imperial Platonism, but also to those concerned with ancient aesthetics and reader-response approaches to classical literature. Despite the book’s ambitious scope and considerable conceptual density, its central ideas are reiterated with clarity across the chapters, allowing the reader to follow the argument without losing orientation. The substantial bibliography, carefully curated—spanning the Groningen Commentaries (GCA), Derrida, Iser and the Konstanz School, as well as earlier contributions by Gwyn Griffiths, Schlam, and Scobie—is selected for the genuine insight it brings to the argument rather than out of any desire for accumulation. The analysis, while not necessarily persuasive in every detail—e.g. as in the suggested phallic symbolism of the novacula (5.22[.1]; p. 233), which may invite hesitation—is consistently clear, thoughtful, and self-aware and, above all, does not aim at definitive or narrowly prescriptive conclusions, but at opening a complex critical horizon—one in which rapid conceptual transitions reflect a perspective grounded in close reading yet capable of moving toward a broader cultural view[2]. In this sense, the study offers a model of ambitious and carefully grounded scholarship.
Notes
[1] In the interest of the greatest possible precision, both here and in what follows, I supplement Ulrich’s references with the corresponding paragraph numbers of the Metamorphoses, using the standard numbering (e.g. Apvlei Metamorphoseon libri XI recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit M. Zimmerman). Paragraph numbers are given in square brackets to distinguish them from Ulrich’s own citations.
[2] From a typographical and material standpoint, the book is well produced and carefully edited. The indices (Index Locorum and Subject Index) are useful and make the volume easy to consult. The illustrations—nine in total, along with two helpful diagrams—are of high quality, though understandably in black and white. Misprints are almost entirely absent and deserve mention only for the sake of completeness, and in the hope of assisting a future reprint. On p. 314 (cf. also p. 14 n. 35 and p. 270 n. 67), for example, “Costantini” (Leonardo) appears as “Constantini”; “consume” s.v. Cavallo 1996 appears in place of “consumo”. On p. 315, s.v. De Biasi 2000, the correct title reads “…nelle opere… letterari”. At p. 318, s.v. Frangoulidis 1991, the journal title is missing the article “La”; at p. 320, s.v. Graverini 2010, the city should read “Alessandria”, and the publisher of the first edition of Graverini 2007 (= 2012a) is Pacini. On p. 329, s.v. Luzzatto 1996, the correct name is “Porfirio.” On p. 331, in the title of Moreschini 1989, “Plutarco” appears as “Plutarcho” (Italian titles normally capitalize only the first word; cf. Nicolini 2010). On p. 335, s.v. Rosati, one should read “immagine”, and on p. 340, s.v. Vannini 2018, “auctoriale” appears in place of the correct “autoriale”. With a view to future research, it may also be useful to take into consideration L. Pasetti, L’allegoria implicita. Una lettura medioplatonica del finale delle Metamorfosi apuleiane, MD, 85/2 (2020), 165-196.