JOSEPH DEFILIPPO

Curiositas has long been recognized as an important theme in
Apuleius' Golden Ass, for obvious philological and critical reasons. The
word itself is found in a literary text only once in extant Latin prior
to Apuleius, ¹ whereas it occurs twelve times in the Golden Ass alone,
not to mention twelve occurrences of the adjective curiosus. ² Yet
these words occur not only frequently, but also in ways which make
clear that they represent a notion of great interpretive importance.
It is curiositas, for instance, that precipitates both Lucius' and
Psyche's stories. Lucius' curiositas is irremediably piqued at hearing
of Pamphile's magical powers and leads to the disastrous attempt at
metamorphosis on which all subsequent action depends:

At ego curiosus alioquin, ut primum artis magicae semper optatum nomen
audivi, tantum a cautela Pamphiles afui, ut etiam ultro gestirem tali magis-
terio me volens ampla cum mercede tradere. . . . (2. 6. 1-4)

I am most grateful to Christina Dufner, Michael Frede and Howard Jackson for their
comments on earlier drafts of this essay, and to an audience at Duke University for
a number of challenging criticisms. This essay is descended from one that was written
for J. Arthur Hanson's Princeton seminar on Apuleius in the spring of 1984; it is
dedicated to his memory.

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