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THE SKIN OF A SWALLOW: APULEIUS, METAMORPHOSES 6.26

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2019

Evelyn Adkins
Evelyn Adkins*
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University
*
[email protected]
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Extract

In Book 6 of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Lucius contemplates his possible death at the hands of the robbers. After one robber threatens to throw him off a cliff, he remarks to himself how easily such an act would kill him (Met. 6.26):

‘uides istas rupinas proximas et praeacutas in his prominentes silices, quae te penetrantes antequam decideris membratim dissipabunt? nam et illa ipsa praeclara magia tua uultum laboresque tibi tantum asini, uerum corium non asini crassum, sed hirudinis tenue membranulum circumdedit. quin igitur masculum tandem sumis animum tuaeque saluti, dum licet, consulis?’

‘Do you see that ravine nearby and the sharp rocks jutting into it which will impale you before you hit the bottom and tear you limb from limb? For that wondrous magic of yours gave you only the appearance and hardships of an ass, but in truth it surrounded you not with the thick hide of an ass but with the thin little membrane of a leech. Why not, therefore, take up your manly spirit at last and seek your safety while you can?’

Lucius seems to contradict the description of his metamorphosis at 3.24: pili mei crassantur in setas, et cutis tenella duratur in corium, ‘my hair thickens into bristles and my thin skin hardens into hide’. Met. 6.26 suggests that Lucius’ metamorphosis may not be as complete as it initially seemed: his skin is not the thick hide of an ass but the delicate membrane of a leech. This passage is further complicated by a textual dispute: where all modern editions and most translations read hirudinis, ‘leech’, our earliest and best manuscripts have hirundinis, ‘swallow’. I propose that we should restore ‘swallow’ on the testimony of these manuscripts and because it better reflects Lucius’ initial desire for an avian rather than an asinine transformation. My examination of this passage will also highlight the liminal nature of Lucius’ metamorphosis. Despite his apparent physical transformation, he remains caught between the human and the animal worlds in both mind and body.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , May 2019 , pp. 457 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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References

1 hirudinis appears in all major editions and commentaries from the twentieth century onwards: Helm, R. (ed.), Apulei Platonici Madaurensis Metamorphoseon libri XI (Leipzig, 1907, rev. 1913, 1931), 148Google Scholar; Gaselee, S. (ed.), Apuleius: The Golden Ass (London and New York, 1915), 286Google Scholar; Giarratano, C. (ed.), Apulei Metamorphoseon libri XI (Turin, 1929), 163Google Scholar; Robertson, D.S. (ed.), Apulée Les Métamorphoses, 2 vols. (Paris, 1940–5), 2.95Google Scholar; Hijmans, B.L. Jr., van der Paardt, R.T., Schmidt, V., Boerma, R.E.H. Westendorp and Westerbrink, A.G. (edd.), Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses, Books VI 25–32 and VII (Groningen, 1981), 9, 37–8Google Scholar; Martos, J., Apuleyo de Madauros Las Metamorfosis o El Asno De Oro (Madrid, 2003), 2.71Google Scholar; Zimmerman, M., Apulei Metamorphoseon libri XI (Oxford, 2012), 141Google Scholar. ‘Leech’, ‘horse-leech’, ‘sangsue’, ‘Blutegel’ and ‘mignatta’ appear in all the translations I have been able to consult, with the notable exceptions of Adlington, W. (transl.), The XI Bookes of the Golden Asse Conteininge the Metamorphosie of Lucius Apuleius (London, 1566, repr. multiple times), 64Google Scholar (‘swallow’), and Hunink, V. (transl.), Apuleius, De Gouden Ezel (Amsterdam, 2012 2), 169Google Scholar (‘zwaluw’). There is no corresponding passage in Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος to clarify the matter.

2 Cf. Robertson, D.S., ‘The manuscripts of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, I’, CQ 18 (1924), 27–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The manuscripts of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, II’, CQ 18 (1924), 85–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmerman (n. 1), xii–xviii.

3 Cf. F, fol. 153r; φ, fol. 47v. Both are available on the Biblioteca Laurentiana website (http://teca.bmlonline.it/TecaRicerca/index.html).

4 ‘hirundinis F, em. ς’: Giarratano (n. 1), 163; ‘hirudinis v’: Helm (n. 1), 148; ‘hirundinis F, corr. v’: Zimmerman (n. 1), 141. Robertson (n. 1), 2.95 and Martos (n. 1), 2.71 have similar notations.

5 Oudendorp, F. (ed.), Apuleii opera omnia I (Leiden, 1786), 433Google Scholar: hirudinis tenue membranulum. On the codex Fuxensis, see Hildebrand, G.F., L. Apuleii opera omnia (Leipzig, 1842), 1.lix, 1.lxxiiGoogle Scholar; Robertson (n. 2 [‘Manuscripts I’]), 29.

6 J.A. de Buxis, Apuleii opera omnia (Rome, 1469; repr. Rome, 1472, 1499; Venice, 1483, 1493; Vicenza, 1488, 1498), 1469, fol. 44r; 1493, xxv. The 1488 edition in the Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek has neither page nor folio numbers, but see http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00050598/image_95. The 1469 and 1493 editions are also available at https://www.bsb-muenchen.de/en/catalogues-databases/special-collections/. We do not know which manuscript(s) de Buxis used: cf. Robertson (n. 2 [‘Manuscripts I’]), 30, and (n. 1), 1.xlviii; Carver, R., The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford, 2007), 171–2 n. 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 According to Oudendorp (n. 5), 433, hirudinis tenue membranulum, the earliest scholars to prefer hirudinis were Fulvius (= Fulvio Orsini, 1529–1600) and Cardinal Seraphinus Oliverius. Orsini's reading may be preserved in Vat. Lat. 3384: cf. Gaisser, J.H., The Fortunes of Apuleius & The Golden Ass (Princeton, 2008), 308Google Scholar; on Orsini, see Sandys, J.E., A History of Classical Scholarship, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1903–8), 2.153–4Google Scholar. Oliverius's emendation was first printed in Scioppius, C., Symbola Critica in L. Apulei Philosophi Platonici Opera (Augsburg, 1594; repr. Leiden, 1605), 69–70Google Scholar in the 1605 edition.

8 Oudendorp (n. 5), 433: hirudinis tenue membranulum.

9 Oudendorp (n. 5), 433.

10 Hildebrand (n. 5), 1.492, hirundinis: ‘Sed hirudinis, quamquam in textu contra Mss. consensum non reposui, ipse tamen praefero. Hirudinis enim cutis tam tenera est ac mollis, ut totum eius corpusculum cutis videatur esse … Huc accedit, quod cutis hirundinis plumis est obducta, hirudinis vero nuda ac glabra, ut magis haec quam illa laedi possit.’

11 Giarratano (n. 1), 163; Helm (n. 1), 148. Both reject the unconvincing emendations of van der Vliet, J. (ed.), Lucii Apulei Metamorphoseon libri XI (Leipzig, 1897), 137Google Scholar (hominis) and Kronenberg, A.J., ‘Ad Apuleium’, CR 18 (1904), 442–7, at 443Google Scholar (harundinis).

12 Plin. HN 32.124 refers to a leech as rufa, ‘red’, and Serv. Samm. 670 calls leeches exos, ‘boneless’, but these are the only physical descriptors I have found.

13 Cf. Plin. HN 32.123; Scribonius Largus 199.

14 Cf. Plaut. Epid. 187; Hor. Ars P. 476; Cic. Att. 1.16.11.

15 Cf. Columella, Rust. 6.18.2; Plin. HN 8.29, 20.143, 23.55, 28.160; Celsus, Med. 5.27.12c.

16 Here the manuscripts have replaced hirudo with hirundo, but the anecdote is well known enough to correct this: cf. Hdt. 2.68; Arist. Hist. an. 8.612a20–4; Plin. HN 8.90; Ael. NA 3.11.

17 See, for example, Galen's De hirudinibus, reuulsione, cucurbitula, incisione et scarificatione.

18 Etymologicum Genuinum 70.2.

19 Cf. Ov. Met. 4.407–8; Plin. HN 11.228.

20 The distinction is unique to the Metamorphoses: in the Onos, Loukios comments after his transformation: ἐγὼ δὲ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα ὄνος ἤμην, τὰς δὲ φρένας καὶ τὸν νοῦν ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖνος ὁ Λούκιος, δίχα τῆς φωνῆς, ‘But though I was an ass in all other ways, I was human in mind and intellect, that very Loukios, except for my voice’ (Onos 15).

21 See also Met. 4.6, 9.30, 10.33. For ‘the gradual dissolution of [Lucius’] human identity’, see König, J., ‘Body and text’, in Whitmarsh, T. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel (Cambridge, 2008), 127–44, at 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Cf. Schlam, C.C., ‘Man and animal in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, in Hijmans, B.L. Jr., and Schmidt, V. (edd.), Symposium Apuleianum Groninganum (23–24 Oct. 1980) (Groningen, 1981), 115–42, at 131Google Scholar; Schlam, C.C., The Metamorphoses of Apuleius. On Making an Ass of Oneself (Chapel Hill, 1992), 106–8Google Scholar; Bradley, K., ‘Animalizing the slave: the truth of fiction’, JRS 90 (2000), 110–25, at 166Google Scholar; Finkelpearl, E., ‘The language of animals and the text of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in Keulen, W.H., Nauta, R.R. and Panayotakis, S. (edd.), Lectiones Scrupulosae: Essays on the Text and Interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in Honour of Maaike Zimmerman (Groningen, 2006), 203–21, at 203Google Scholar.