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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2025
This note argues that the second line of the oracle in Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche (Met. 4.33.1) alludes to Ovid’s Am. 1.1.2. Like its Ovidian model, Apuleius’ line marks a shift in genre, and offers a further hint of the role Cupid will play in the rest of the story.
I thank David Kutzko for providing comments on a draft of this and also the journal’s editor and readers for providing useful feedback.
1 E.g. E.J. Kenney, Apuleius. Cupid & Psyche (Cambridge, 1990), 132 says of the seventh and penultimate line: ‘Oracular ambiguity wears thin here, for love was the only power in the mythological universe of which this [description] was true.’
2 E.g. Kenney (n. 1), 131–2; M. Zimmerman et al., Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses, Books IV 28–35, V and VI 1–24. Cupid and Psyche. Text, Introduction and Commentary (Groningen, 2004), 86–9. For the influence of love poetry in Cupid and Psyche more generally, see S. Mattiacci, ‘Neoteric and elegiac echoes in the tale of Cupid and Psyche by Apuleius’, in M. Zimmerman et al. (edd.), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass II: Cupid and Psyche (Groningen, 1998), 127–49, at 136–43 for this prophecy; S. Parke and P. Murgatroyd, ‘Love poetry and Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche’, CQ 52 (2002), 400–4.
3 I quote from M. Zimmerman’s Oxford Classical Text (Oxford, 2012). All translations are my own.
4 Discussion and parallels in Zimmerman et al. (n. 2), 86 and B.L. Hijmans, ‘Apollo’s sn(e)aky tongue(s)’, in W.H. Keulen, R.R. Nauta, S. Panayotakis (edd.), Lectiones Scrupulosae: Essays on the Text and Interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in Honour of Maaike Zimmerman (Ancient Narrative Supplementum 6) (Groningen, 2006), 15–27, at 19–20.
5 J. McKeown, Ovid: Amores. Text, Prolegomena and Commentary (Leeds, 1989), 2.7–14 provides a detailed discussion of these two couplets and Ovid’s models.
6 For additional proof of the deliberate care in these lines, see the acrostic MONS in the first four lines noted by J. Gore and A. Kershaw, ‘An unnoticed acrostic in Apuleius Metamorphoses and Cicero De Diuinatione 2.111–12’, CQ 58 (2008), 393–4.
7 For the programmatic importance of this word and its likely allusion to Propertius 2.1.41–2, see A.M. Keith, ‘Amores 1.1: Propertius and the Ovidian programme’, in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VI (Leuven, 1992), 327–44, at 337–8.
8 For additional references to this and related etymologies, see R. Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991), 201–2.
9 E.g. Ov. Am. 3.9.3–4 flebilis indignos, Elegia, solue capillos: | a, nimis ex uero nunc tibi nomen erit (‘unbind your unworthy hair, mournful Elegy: ah, now your name will be especially true’).
10 Zimmerman et al. (n. 2), 87.
11 For the textual issues in the first lines of Apuleius’ oracle, see Zimmerman et al. (n. 2), 87.
12 In this case, I count prepositions and conjunctions (but not the enclitic -que) as separate words.
13 Ovid’s choice to use a four-word line may have been influenced by Prop. 1.1.2, which also has four words and ends with cupidinibus.
14 For a useful overview of the issues here, see Hijmans (n. 4).
15 On the Ovidian nature of Cupid and Psyche, see K.F.B. Fletcher, The Ass of the Gods: Apuleius’ Golden Ass, the Onos Attributed to Lucian, and Graeco-Roman Metamorphosis Literature (Leiden, 2023), 129–60, passim.