Lucius\' Plutarchan Kinship Reconsidered

Lucius' Plutarchan Kinship Reconsidered At Metamorphoses 1.2, the narrative's protagonist, Lucius, tells us that he is on a journey to Thessaly where he has maternal roots. Lucius then namechecks two relatives: Plutarch, the Platonist author/statesman, and Plutarch's nephew, Sextus (identified as a philosopher). In Thessaly, Plutarch's name reappears when Lucius encounters his previously unknown aunt Byrrhena (familia Plutarchi ambae prognatae sumus, 2.3) Plutarch is never namechecked again and, as the narrative continues and Lucius loses the most obvious markers of his human identity (speech and form), the concept of family and kinship is subordinated. In Book XI, Lucius' religious identity replaces his familial ties. Reborn in the service of Isis, Lucius subsequently spends more time--both in the narrative and in the life it anticipates--away from his family than defined by it. What are we to make of Lucius' kinship with Plutarch? Scholarly responses vary. Walsh (1981) argued for Plutarch’s direct influence on Apuleius and that both attempt to reconcile their Platonism with Isiac cult practices, in particular. Mason (1983) suggested that naming a historically attested relative gives the fictional Lucius realistic social distinction which would have helped readers assess his moral failings more acutely. van Mal-Maeder (1998) surmised that Apuleius may have wanted to pay tribute to Plutarch in his narrative fiction to signal the narrative's philosophical interests and to bolster Apuleius' own serious spirituality. Surverying the scholarship on the matter, Hunink (2004) rejects Plutarch's direct influence on Apuleius' writing in favor of a shared cultural milieu between the two authors. Hunink proposes we understand the failures of Lucius as learned irony in light of his alleged kinship or, somewhat confusingly, as mere sprachenname. More recently, Keulen (2004), Kirichenko (2008), and Finkelpearl (2012) have focused on Lucius performing the very failures that Plutarch spends so much time decrying in his moral and philosophical treatises as both a character and narrator. In this presentation, I further these most recent discussions of Plutarchan kinship, Platonist morality, and Apuleian narrative sophistication by tracing the exploration of the humananimal boundary across Apuleius' corpus as well as Plutarch's. I argue that readers ought to consider Lucius' biological kinship with two philosophers as an alternative to Apuleius' implied philosophical kinship and, consequently, Lucius' approach to narrating his life as an alternative to Apuleius'. Lucius' boasting of his biological relationships and the social/intellectual cachet he implies it grants him parallels his pride in Isiac service, but his narrating of both parts of his life highlights his dehumanizing lack of philosophical rationality. Unlike Lucius, Apuleius carefully narrates his life experiences to the humanizing betterment of his audience members and to signal kinship with his philosophical heroes. In the presentation's first half, I discuss how Apuleius and Plutarch's shared Middle Platonist interests helped them innovate their approach to life writing as a complement to philosophically humanizing speech. In a climate where speech had even greater cultural currency, Plutarch and Apuleius both try to disambiguate the trendy flourish of rhetoric from its more serious counterpart in philosophical knowledge and moral development. Both equate unphilosophical speaking, reading, and interpreting with

Lucius’ Plutarchan Kinship Reconsidered an immorality that threatens the very humanity of its practitioners. Counter to their dehumanized peers, Plutarch and Apuleius pay heed to narrating as philosophical praxis similarly, delineating how one should speak, compose, remember, interpret, and teach in order to make moral improvement. They do so in their roles as character, author, and narrator. In the presentation's second half, I draw attention to Apuleius' attempts to portray himself as the kinsman of his philosophical heroes in these very roles and explain how he figured composing Metamorphoses, like lampooning faux intellectuals in the Moralia or outing pseudo-philosophers in Florida, as philosophical praxis. In the Metamorphoses, Apuleius presents Lucius, the character and narrator, as the limit case of these mistakes who literally loses his human identity as a result of them. In contrast, by creating a work that trains his reader's moralizing sensibilities towards narrative, Apuleius makes himself more a kinsman of Plutarch's than Lucius ever was. WORKS CITED Halliwell, S. (2009) The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton) van Hoof, L. (2010) Plutarch's Practical Ethics (Oxford) Hunink, V. (2004) "Plutarch and Apuleius" in The Statesman in Plutarch’s Works, Volume I: Plutarch’s Statesman and his Aftermath: Political, Philosophical, and Literary Aspects (Leiden) 251–60 Finkelpearl, E. (2011) ‘Egyptian Religion in Met. 11 and Plutarch’s DIO’ in U. EgelhaafGaiser and W.H. Keulen (eds), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass (Leiden), 183-201 Fletcher, R. (2014) Apuleius' Platonism: The Impersonation of Philosophy (Cambridge) Keulen, W.H. (2004) ‘Lucius’ Kinship Diplomacy: Plutarchan Reflections in an Apuleian Character’, in The Statesman in Plutarch’s Works, Volume I: Plutarch’s Statesman and his Aftermath: Political, Philosophical, and Literary Aspects (Leiden) 261–73 Kirichenko, A. (2008) ‘Satire, Propaganda, and the Pleasure of Reading: Apuleius’ Stories of Curiosity in Context’, HSCP 104, 339–71 van Mal-Maeder, D. (2001) Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Livre II: Texte, Introduction et Commentaire (Groningen) Mason, H. (1983) ''The Distinction of Lucius in Apuleius' "Metamorphoses"' Phoenix 37.2:135-143 Walsh, P.G. (1981) "Apuleius and Plutarch" in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, 20-32 (London)

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