And in which Katie decides to start introducing posts in the manner with which Charles Dickens introduced chapters in Oliver Twist.
The Festival of Risus: Accounts of the Battle in III.3-5
In the festival of Risus, Lucius has the inwitting starring role. Apuleius gives to his readers four versions of the events of that night, and he leaves enough ambiguity in each to lend some uncertainty as to which, if any, is the the true account. The four accounts are from the narrator, the prosecutor at Lucius’s mock trial, Lucius himself at his trial, and then from Photis, who later gives an explanation for why the animated goat skins were tapping on the door. Each of the stories also raises enough questions that none can be trusted to be the “true” version of the events. Apuleius has presaged the movie “Rashamon” by several hundred years by telling a story from numerous perspectives, and the multiple tellings of the story reveal more of the characters narrating than they do of the event itself. In Book III, chapters 3-5, Apuleius uses Latin syntax, style, and vocabulary to lend a mock-epic feel to the Risus battle and to build the characters of the bailiff and Lucius.
The evening before, after he had been drinking, Lucius encountered corpora at the door of the house of his host, and he engaged them in battle. The next morning, he finds himself dragged to the town square to face charges of willful murder, and the bailiff gives the damning testimony. Beginning halfway through chapter 3 in book III, we read the bailiff’s testimony.
First, the bailiff attempts to establish his moral authority and impeccable attention to duty, so his testimony can be trusted. The bailiff declares he will tell his story cime fide, and that he was attending to his duties with scrupulosa diligentia. In this way, the bailiff establishes himself as a trustworthy witness, honest in his words and his actions. He painstakingly describes his duties as the watchman, check every door, one by one. In the opening paragraph, the bailiff reports his own actions as impeccable. By setting up the bailiff as faithful, by-the-numbers protector, Apuleius brings his actions later into more vivid contrast.
Second, the bailiff undercuts his own veracity by describing a battle in which he did not attempt to interfere or aid those being slaughtered. If he saw people still alive and at the mercy of the swordsman, why did he not interfere? How could he be close enough to hear three of the victims spirantes, breathing their last, and yet not be a part of the battle? The words the bailiff uses to describe the battle are bloody and vivid, such crudelissimum, sanguine, and palpitantes, and the shock the words would bring partially serves to mask the ambiguity of the events.
Finally, he casts himself as a mockery of a bailiff by allowing a murderer caught in the act of slaughter to escape, lending doubt to his story because his own actions are not reasonable.
et ipse quidem, conscientia tanti facinoris merito permotus, statim profugit et, in domum quandam praesidio tenebrarum elapsus, perpetem noctem delituit
If the perpetrator of such a great crime statim profugit, why didn’t the bailiff follow him? Why wait until morning to seize the swordsman? Despite the bailiff’s laudatory opinion of himself, his actions when he came across a slaughter in action casts more doubt than confirmation on his own faithfulness. On the other hand, if the man was able to slip away under the cover of darkness, how would the bailiff know of it? The bailiff’s actions could have been unbecoming an officer, or else the story he is telling is not strictly true.
The bailiff uses a descending three-fold description of Lucius building up to his call for Lucius’s punishment.
habetis itaque reum tot caedibus impiatum, reum coram depresnum, reum peregrinum (3.3)
The first two descriptors, impiatum and depresnum, seem to be building up to a triumphant third descriptor that will seal Lucius’s depravity. Instead, Apuleius inserts peregrinum, and the juxtaposition with the other two adjectives lends a comic, anti-climatic tone to his speech, which signals to the reader that the bailiff may not be a reliable or serious source of information.
When the bailiff has finished, it Lucius’ turn to speak. He follows the model set forth by the bailiff, in that he first establishes his reliability as a witness, reports of the incident and his own heroism, and ends with a plea to the court for a favorable decision.
By first acknowledging the weight of the evidence against him, namely, the bodies lying before him under the blanket, Lucius presents himself as a reasonable human being who is able to speak articulately on his own behalf. This is necessary because of the sobbing that Lucius had fallen into upon hearing the bailiff’s account. Then, Lucius says with a smile that he was not in full possession of his faculties at the time of the incident, due to a state of drunkenness. By conceding this small fault, Lucius seeks to excuse the larger one. He then invokes the name of his host, Milo, a worthy citizen known to his audience. Since Lucius is not able to draw upon his own reputation, since he is a stranger there, he seeks to establish reliability by associating himself with a respected member of the community whose mercy he will need.
Having carefully established his honesty and openness to the best of his ability, Lucius moves to his own description of the night before, and he invents entire speeches and a murderous cohort in his creativity. He defends his actions by attributing them to a indignation (indignationis rationabilitis) at a crime he found taking place. Lucius contrasts his own behavior of interfering with a crime in progress against that of the bailiff, who, by his own report, came across a crime and stood idly by.
Lucius describes the robbers actions when he first came across them, when they were treating the doors of the doorframe by twisting apart the hinges. In keeping with the self-righteous tone of the story, Lucius tosses in some commentary, referring to the door hinges:
quae accuratissime adfixa fuerant (3.5). In his attempt to clear himself of any wrongdoing, Lucius overshoots the mark and starts implicitly criticizing his host for not taking greater care with his own home. Lucius again casts himself as the humble hero when he describes why he chose to attack the thieves. He went on a killing spree among them because boni civis officium arbitratus, because he judged it to be his duty as a good citizen.
Then a leader of the robbers emerges, a man et manu promptior et corpore vastiorat whose fate the true blame for the events of the night before can be blamed. Rather than merely denying his own guilty, Lucius also attempts to shift the blame to a scapegoat. As there is no scapegoat ready at hand, he invents one, and in order to increase his own heroism, Lucius must increase the threat posed by the newly hatched bloodthirsty lead robber.
The leader gives a speech, and the style and vocabulary of the speech is meant to evoke a battle speech made before a heroic showdown for the fate of a country or a god. The verbs are hortatory subjunctives rather than imperatives, because a noble leader will lead his peers instead of his subordinates.
'heus pueri, quam maribus animis et viribus alacribus dormientes adgrediamur. omnis cunctatio, ignavia omnis facessat e pectore: stricto mucrone per totam domum caedes ambulet.qui sopitus iacebit, trucidetur; qui repugnare temptaverit, feriatur. sic salvi recedemus, si salvum in domo neminem reliquerimus.' (3.5)
'Come on, boys, let us burst in on those sleeping with manly courage and swift strength. Let the hestitation be gone from us all, let cowardice flee from our chests: with a drawn sword, let us walk slaughter through this whole house. He who lies there sleeping, let him be butchered; he who attempts to fight back, let him be slain. Thus we will return safe, if we will leave no one safe in the house.'
The leader urges his fellows to exhibit maribus animis et viribus alacribus, virtue and speed more akin to warriors than to skulking thieves. Lucius places these noble words in the mouth of the head thief to build him us as a formidable and worthy opponent, so when Lucius attacks, it is because he is filled with courage himself. The hortatory subjunctives and the future-more-vivid conditions that follow evoke an epic such as the Adenoid. However, since it is a miserable home raid instead of a battle for the ages, the effect is comical instead of heroic. The leader is calling for cowardice to flee from their chests as they plan to surprise unarmed civilians while they are sleeping, which does not seem to match the kind of deeds for which bravery is necessary.
After reporting the robber leader’s rousing speech, Lucius returns to describing the action. Having previously said that a large numbers of robbers were threatening his host’s home, he accounts for their absence by proudly “confessing” that the robbers on the edges turned at ran at the fearsome sight of him. The use of fateor here by Apuleius is ironic, as Lucius is entirely inventing the event he is claiming to confess. Lucius also explains the presence of his sword as a prophylactic carried precisely for this kind of danger, instead of a weapon which might mark him as a danger from which to be protected.
In his report of the incident, Lucius uses vocabulary that seems to echo some of the words used by the bailiff in his account. For instance, the root of cunctae (all, every) in 3.3 is repeated in the thief leader speech as cunctatio (delay, hesitation). While cuncta and variants appear all throughout Metamorphoses, cunctatio appears only one other time. Lucius could be said to have picked up on the bailiff’s vocabulary in order to construct a speech of his own to put in the robber leader’s mouth.
Apuleius was aware of the epics and the literature that came before him. He took the stirring words of battle speeches and put them in the mouth of a conveniently invented robber leader. If those stirring call to action had been on behalf of the protection of citizens, it might have been a noble speech. But since it is comically out of place and because the battle contemplated is a miserably dirty home raid, the speech is the mockery as well as an homage to the ancient epics. If we take the speech to be an indication of Lucius’ education as well as Apuleius’s, then the Lucius’s story reveals him to be inventive and confident as well as sensitive. No other ancient stories where the main male character spend so much time in tears comes to mind. Instead of a stoic or angry response to being dragged before the court, Lucius begins to sob.
The version of the story Lucius tells, complete with good citizen posturing and fabricated villains, illuminates Lucius’s nature, just as the bailiff’s version with posturing of his own and his curious inactions casts doubt in the reader’s mind as to what were the true events. Apuleius’s style emphasizes the comic elements of the event, even as the rivers of blood begin to flow. The other two accounts of the event also reveal much about their speakers: Lucius’s behavior late at night paints him as impetuous and brave, although sometimes foolish. Photis’s story later of accidently enabling the enchantment of the goat skins seems at first to expose her character as innocent and good-hearted, and then upon closer examination, the unexplained coincidence of the target of the Risus festival being accidentally fooled by the goat skins casts suspicion on Photis and belies her innocent demeanor. Apuleius uses each of these accounts of the event to reveal characters and add comedy and style to his novel.
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