Psyche and her Mysterious Husband

Abstract

Abstract John J. Winkler has argued that the title conventionally given to Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 4. 28-6. 24 ‘is fundamentally abu sive to the narrative technique of the tale’, which is (in part at all events) a detective story in which the identity of Psyche’s husband is not revealed explicitly until she takes the lamp to him. It is true that a reader skilled in deciphering literary riddles and conversant with Apuleius’ poetic models ought to have little difficulty in putting a name to the cruel, wild, winged being described by the oracle, before whom Jove, the gods, and the Underworld itself all quail (4. 33. 1-2). Never theless, as Winkler notes, ‘Even the reader who comes to the tale knowing [or, it may be added, speedily foresees] the out come must bracket that knowledge as he watches characters who do not know the outcome grapple with the problem’-the situation, one may note in passing, in which Menander’s audiences were placed. However, even the fully switched-on reader that I believe we are entitled to postulate for this rich and sophisticated novel has to grapple with the problem of Cupid’s identity in a sense not acknowledged by Winkler. For there is not one Cupid in Apuleius’ story, but two.