On 30 May 2021, the online open classics journal Antigone published a piece written by the Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer about the ancient Roman novel The Golden Ass, which was originally written in Latin in the late second century CE by the North African writer Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (lived c. 124 – c. 170 CE). Antigone promoted the article on their Twitter account. Their announcement begins with the words: “Today we are delighted to share an article by Peter Singer, renowned philosopher and animal rights advocate…”
Antigone’s publication and promotion of Singer’s article immediately sparked backlash over the fact that Singer has spent the past three and a half decades publicly advocating that infants who have observable physical disabilities at birth should be killed. He even co-authored and published an entire book in 1985 titled Should the Baby Live?: The Problem of Handicapped Infants, in which he advocated this.
Many classicists, myself included, feel that Antigone should not have published Singer’s article about Apuleius because, even though the article itself did not discuss infanticide, he is not the sort of person that they should be platforming. Even beyond this, though, Singer’s take on The Golden Ass is so extraordinarily bad that, even if he didn’t have a long history of advocating infanticide, no classics journal should have published it.
Singer’s absolute astonishment at having never heard of The Golden Ass
Peter Singer spends nearly the first half of his article talking about how, until just a few years ago, he had no idea that people in ancient times even wrote novels. He explains how astonished he was to find out not only that ancient novels exist, but that one of them, The Golden Ass, is told from the first-person perspective of a donkey (or, more accurately, a man who gets turned into a donkey when a magic spell goes awry).
Singer expresses his absolute bafflement at how he could possibly have gone nearly his whole life without ever hearing about such a work. He says that he concluded that the only possible explanation was that the work couldn’t really be any good, saying:
“Why did I know so little about this work? My bookshelves have several meters of books about animals, including a fiction section that includes Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877), Brigid Brophy’s Hackenfeller’s Ape (1953), Richard Adams’ The Plague Dogs (1977), J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals (1999), and Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (2014). The obvious explanation for the absence of The Golden Ass from the works with which I was familiar was that, despite Zimler’s praise of its literary qualities, it can’t be really be a good work of literature.”
Singer’s assumption that, if a work of literature is obscure, then it must be bad strikes me as almost comically naïve. If Singer genuinely made this assumption, this would only seem to indicate that, until now, he has read extremely few works of literature that are not famous.
In any case, it’s hardly surprising that Singer had not heard of The Golden Ass until recently, since it is a work of ancient literature and nearly all works of pre-modern literature are obscure to nearly everyone who is not a professional scholar specializing in the study of the pre-modern world. Singer’s field of study is contemporary moral philosophy, not ancient literature, so it makes sense that there are many works of ancient literature with which he is unfamiliar.
The average person can be expected to have heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Oidipous Tyrannos, Antigone, Medeia, the Aeneid, and probably little else—not because the other surviving works of ancient literature are bad, but simply because they are not commonly taught in schools and they are so ancient that people aren’t generally seeking them out on their own. Of the works Singer lists from his own bookshelf, all were written within the past 150 years and all but one were written within the past seventy years.
ABOVE: Ancient Mesopotamian terra-cotta relief plaque dating to between c. 2250 and c. 1900 BCE, depicting Gilgamesh slaying the Bull of Heaven
As I discuss in this article I wrote in January 2020, there is actually quite a significant corpus of surviving and attested ancient Greek and Roman novels. Some of the surviving ancient novels are quite good. A few other surviving ancient novels aside from The Golden Ass include The Satyrica by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, A True Story by Loukianos of Samosata, Leukippe and Kleitophon by Achilleus Tatios, Daphnis and Chloë by Longos of Lesbos, and the Alexander Romance.
Unfortunately, English literature scholars have been stubbornly and ignorantly insisting for over a hundred years that the first novel is Robinson Crusoe purely out of British cultural chauvinism. Many English literature scholars feel the need to insist that the novel is a uniquely British invention, even though it quite demonstrably is not. The verifiable fact that Apuleius, an African man, wrote a novel over 1,500 years before Daniel Defoe is simply unbearable for them.
Nonetheless, as far as works of ancient literature go, The Golden Ass is certainly one of the least obscure. As Singer even mentions in his article, the work was widely read in late medieval and Renaissance Europe. Giovanni Boccaccio, Miguel de Cervantes, and William Shakespeare all almost certainly drew inspiration from it.
Also, as the scholar of ancient military history Bret Devereaux points out in a thread on Twitter, The Golden Ass has been translated and adapted into European languages for hundreds of years. None other than the famed Italian political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli wrote his own Italian-language poetic adaptation of The Golden Ass in 1517 titled L’asino d’oro, written in eight cantos of terza rima. The novel was translated into English by William Adlington in 1566—no less than sixty years before the first English translation of Thoukydides’s Histories of the Peloponnesian War.
ABOVE: Portrait of the Italian political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote his own Italian-language poetic adaptation of Apuleius’s novel The Golden Ass
Singer’s lack of understanding or appreciation for Apuleius’s inset stories
In any case, Singer goes on to describe his impression after reading the book:
“Notwithstanding my low expectations, I started out on it – and immediately got my third surprise. The Golden Ass is a rollicking first-person tale told by a man whose curiosity about magic results in him getting turned into a donkey. It boasts lots of action, a wide array of interesting characters, erotic adventures, and vivid depictions of life and love over 1800 years ago.”
“As a novel, however, it does have one major drawback. The donkey, with his big ears, hears many people telling stories, and insists on retelling them to us. Some of them are entertaining, but the overall effect of so many digressions is that the reader ceases to be gripped by the main narrative of the adventures of the donkey. This, I thought, must be why the work is so little known and read.”
Singer does not seem to realize that The Golden Ass belongs to the ancient literary genre of the fabula Milesiaca, or “Milesian fable.” This genre received its name from a very early Greek novel called The Milesian Tale, which was written by an author named Aristeides in the second century BCE. Works in this genre usually consisted of a first-person framing narrative in which the narrator encounters various people who tell various inset stories. This is why the very first line of The Golden Ass begins with the words:
“At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram…”
This means:
“But let me join together various fables for you in that Milesian style…”
The inset stories are as integral a part of The Golden Ass as the inset stories of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron or Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. If you take them out, you may still have a novel, but that novel is no longer The Golden Ass.
ABOVE: A Tale from the Decameron, painted in 1916 by the English painter John William Waterhouse
How the inset stories are actually an important draw of the novel
Even if we simply ignore how integral the inset stories are, both to the novel itself and to the genre to which it belongs, Singer’s impression that these stories must be the reason why The Golden Ass is “so little known and read” is about as far from the mark as it is possible to be. The inset stories have, in fact, historically been a huge part of the reason why the novel has been so popular. In fact, in some cases, the inset stories are actually more famous than the novel itself.
The Golden Ass’s inset tale of Cupid and Psyche in particular has had far-reaching literary influence, far beyond what the novel’s framing narrative has had. The French writer Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (lived 1685 – 1755) almost certainly drew conscious inspiration from Apuleius’s narrative of Cupid and Psyche when she wrote her original novel-length story La Belle et la Bête (i.e., “The Beauty and the Beast”), which she published in 1740.
Villeneuve’s story has, in turn, become the source for literally hundreds of renditions and adaptations, including the 1991 Disney animated film that most Americans under the age of forty remember watching at some point as children.
ABOVE: Illustration by Walter Crane for The Beauty and the Beast, a very famous story that is almost certainly inspired by Apuleius’s story of Cupid and Psyche
The story of Cupid and Psyche has also spawned dozens, if not hundreds, of paintings and sculptures. For instance, one of the most famous works of Neoclassical art is the marble sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, the first version of which was carved by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova between 1787 and 1793. This sculpture depicts a scene taken directly from Apuleius’s narrative.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by Antonio Canova on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris
Much more recently, in 1956, the British novelist C. S. Lewis, who is best known as the author of the children’s fantasy book series The Chronicles of Narnia, published a novel based on the story of Cupid and Psyche titled Till We Have Faces. In the novel, Lewis retells the story from the perspective of Orual, who, in his version, is Psyche’s older sister.
You can probably see why, at this point, Singer’s insistence that the inset stories are a problem doesn’t make sense. Many of the people who read The Golden Ass are actually drawn to it by the inset stories it contains. Singer may not personally like the inset tales, but he can hardly argue with any serious credibility that they are somehow the reason so few people today have heard of the novel.
ABOVE: Image of the front cover of C. S. Lewis’s 1956 novel Till We Have Faces, based on Apuleius’s story of Cupid and Psyche
Singer’s abridged version
All of this, however, is simply a lead-up for Singer to announce that he has published his own abridged version of The Golden Ass that omits all the inset tales and includes only the framing narrative about the donkey. His decision to cut out all the inset stories is so daft that, as Singer himself admits, even the translator for his edition, Ellen Finkelpearl, a professor of Ancient Studies at Scripps College, adamantly disagrees with it and only agreed to go along with his plans to create a new edition because she wanted to bring more attention to the novel. Singer writes:
“She doesn’t share my view of the embedded stories (as she prefers to call what I think of as digressions) but nevertheless enthusiastically agreed to provide a lively modern translation of my abridged version, in order to find a new readership for The Golden Ass and a greater appreciation of Apuleius.”
Thus, it seems that the whole purpose of Singer’s article is simply to advertise for his own unnecessarily bowdlerized version of The Golden Ass that literally no one other than himself wanted or asked for.
Conclusion
The Golden Ass is truly a great novel and I do recommend reading it, but, if you want to read it, then, for goodness sakes, don’t read Peter Singer’s version. You don’t need to give this man who supports literally murdering infants your money just so you can read a bowdlerized version of a work that is in the public domain that has already been translated into English in its entirety dozens of times.
I personally read Apuleius’s The Golden Ass for the first time in a somewhat battered used copy of Jack Lindsay’s translation, published in 1960 by Indiana University Press. Unlike Singer’s edition of Finkelpearl’s translation, Lindsay’s translation actually includes the full novel with all the inset tales.
I thought the translation was pretty decent when I first read it, although I will admit that I read it at a time when I didn’t know enough Latin to compare it directly to the original and I haven’t gone back to compare it line-for-line since then. There are other, more recent translations that may be better.
ABOVE: Front cover of Jack Lindsay’s 1960 translation of The Golden Ass, which is the translation that I read the novel for the first time
Dear Spencer
You are showing your small-mindedness here and exhibiting and undergraduate delight in trying to cut down a tall poppy.
Here is one of the West’s leading public intellectuals admitting his ignorance of ancient literature and trying to convey it to a wider audience. You should be celebrating this and revelling in it, rather than trying to cut him down to size with snide comments and gloatingly pointing out all the things he got wrong.
First, Singer’s position on severely handicapped children is not an example of gratuitous cruelty but the result of long intellectual inquiry and detailed consideration of the evidence and rigorous logical thought. Now it may be that he is wrong, as many people including myself believe, but the mature way to respond is not to “de-platform” him, as you advocate, but to respond to his arguments with the same rigour with which he presents them.
Meanwhile, despite being arguably wrong on the issue of handicapped children, this is not his central contribution to philosophy and ethics, not to the human race, and I think it needs to seen against the major contributions he had made to modern thinking and indeed modern living. His impact cannot be underestimated, especially in the areas of animal welfare, climate change, the recognition of women’s rights, and our moral responsibility in general. What is even more remarkable is that he tries to live by his moral precepts, and goes significantly out of his way not to harm animals or do anything that will add to global warming and so on and also puts his money where his mouth is by allocating a substantial proportion of his salary to what used to be called “good works”.
When you have done as much as Peter Singer to improve the human condition you might have earned the right to slag off at him for his minimal knowledge of classical literature. But hopefully you would then be mature enough to treat him with more respect. Isn’t it great that someone of Peter’s standing is prepared to publicly acknowledge his ignorance?
Secondly, you claim that “The Golden Ass” is a “great novel”. Surely on reflection you must see this as an exaggeration. Like you, I read it in my teens and have occasionally come back to it in the intervening years, but not because it was a “good read” but rather as a source for the culture and mythology of the time, and (as you point out) especially for the Eros and Psyche story which is a paradigmatic human tale. But it is not one of the great stories, let alone one of the great novels, and you need to see it for what it is, despite your great love of all things antiquarian.
I haven’t yet read Singer’s article not his rewrite of TGA, and they may or may not be as full of flaws as you claim, and it may be important to call him out on them, but Singer is not a charlatan like Jordan Petersen or Joseph Campbell, but a genuine credit to the human race, so when he gets things wrong, let him know respectfully and not in a undergraduate nitpicking diatribe.
Disclosure: Peter Singer is a personal friend, but I would have written the above even if I only knew him by reputation.
I have actually met Peter Singer in person myself. I went to a lecture he gave at IU Bloomington in fall 2018 about animal rights. (This was long before I knew anything about his support for killing disabled infants.) I already felt horribly guilty about eating meat before I went to that lecture, but I think that Singer made a very compelling argument that eating meat—or certainly at least meat from animals raised in factory farms—is morally wrong. After the lecture, there was an opportunity to ask questions. I went up and asked him a question about how we can practically implement the ethical standards for which he was arguing.
So far, I have not gone fully vegetarian, which is something I’m ashamed of, but I have been trying to cut back on how much meat I consume in general and to cut meat from mammals out of my diet completely. Singer is not totally responsible for this, but I won’t deny that his lecture influenced my thinking.
I never claimed that Singer argues that infants who are disabled should be killed simply for the sake of “gratuitous cruelty.” I understand that his position is based on reasoning; his reasoning is, in fact, part of the problem. Singer’s position is based on the ableist assumption that infants who are born with severe disabilities cannot live happy or fulfilling lives. The problem is that, as disability rights activists have pointed out, it is possible for people with severe disabilities to live happy and fulfilling lives. I had a very good friend growing up who was born with spina bifida that prevented him from using his legs and I’m pretty sure he’s glad that his parents didn’t kill him as soon as he was born.
You point out Singer’s other work. There are certainly things that he and I agree on. The problem with what you’re arguing here is that Singer’s other work on animal rights and so forth cannot compensate for the fact that he advocates killing disabled infants. When person is so horribly and persistently wrong about such a big moral issue, their supporters cannot simply insist that they deserve a free pass just because they were right about some other stuff.
I would not have written this article if it were not for Peter Singer’s advocacy of killing disabled infants, or, at the very least, if I did write it, I would have been much nicer. Knowing Singer’s position on killing infants, though, I don’t feel so bad about being rude to him in expressing my opinion of his work.
Moving on to the second issue you raise here, I am firmly convinced that any assessment of whether a literary work is good or not is inherently subjective and no work can be considered, objectively speaking, a “Great Work.” When you say that The Golden Ass is “not one of the great stories, let alone one of the great novels,” what you mean is that you did not personally care for it all that much. And that’s fine. You’re allowed to have your opinion. I have my own complaints about the novel, but I still think it is pretty good.
In any case, my argument in this essay is less about assessing the literary merits of The Golden Ass and more about pointing out the flaws in Singer’s assumption that the inset stories are the reason why the novel is so obscure nowadays and that the novel would have greater appeal if we just cut all those stories out.
Dear Spencer
It was your dismissive tone I was complaining about. I wasn’t challenging your impressive knowledge of antiquity compared to Peter’s confessed ignorance of it.
And I do think there are objective, if fuzzy, criteria for judging works of art, including literature, so that we can say Hilary Mantell is a better writer than Dan Brown, even though more people read and enjoyed “The da Vinci Code” than “Wolf Hall”. But that discussion will have to wait for another day.
Meanwhile, as someone who relishes picking up inconsistencies, it will amuse to to learn that “The da Vinci Code” actually has no codes in it! See my “Da Vinci, dark materials and dogs in the night”. Australian Rationalist, Number 69, Summer, 2005.
Best wishes
Ian
Great post, Spencer! Thank you! Peter Singer is definitely one of those people I just wish would leave the public sphere. And surely it’s obvious that a work of literature like The Golden Ass, so far removed from us in time and culture, should be approached with an open and flexible mind.
According to a couple of online dictionaries I just checked, ‘platform’ is a noun… “not platforming” an author is a novel creation of yours… interesting and easy to understand, however it is worrying because “not platforming’ smells badly of “censorship in a politically correct way”… you, I and anyone else may disagree with somebody but censorship or “not platforming” is not a good thing, it is like social media lynching…
An ass is a donkey no more no less, so what is a donkeyhole? 🤣🤣
The use of the word “platform” as a verb is fairly common nowadays in these kinds of discussions. I certainly did not coin this usage of the word myself. In English, it tends to be fairly common for people to turn nouns into verbs.
There is a significant difference, though, between simply not giving someone a platform and censorship. A journal or a company is under no obligation to publish any individual person’s work and they are free to decide whose work they want to publish, based on any criteria. Censorship, by contrast, generally involves authorities engaging in invasive actions, such as forcing a company not to publish something that they were otherwise going to publish, forcing bookstores not to sell certain works that they were otherwise going to sell, forcibly shutting down a company’s website, and so forth.
If Antigone simply decided not to publish Peter Singer’s essay about Apuleius on their own without outside authorities intervening in any way, that would simply be them not giving Singer a platform. On the other hand, if the United States government forced Antigone to not publish Singer’s essay, that would be censorship.
These days, in English, you can verb any noun you want 🙂
I await with bated breath Mr Singer’s new, abridged, edition of the Bible.
Thanks for an interesting article. I never realized that The Golden Ass was a novel which I suppose shows my lack of knowledge of ancient literature.
Ah, I finally disagree with you! :o) It had to happen eventually, but it has been years!
You are saying that Singer’s positions on a completely unrelated topic disqualify him from commenting on something else. I must disagree. Whether I find his take on a topic like infanticide deplorable certainly determines my willingness to support his work in other areas, it also certainly doesn’t disqualify him from the areas of his expertise.
I mean, what if he espoused something really disreputable, like it being acceptable to put pineapple on a pizza. Should I then discount his positions on philosophical matters?
The point that his article was wrong, wrong, wrong is the valid critique, but not his other “ideas” that are unrelated to the topic.
A few points:
Singer’s view on how to deal with infants born disabled, or found to be such before birth, is highlighted by various media as a sensational way to attract attention, audience, readership (including in this article? You got me!) .
But as someone else has pointed out, it is far from his main area of concern. I have heard him respond to criticisms of this position and he makes some reasonable arguments for it but also about how advances in medical science and care etc continually shifts the line at which it might be acceptable.
One problem I have with public intellectuals is how they seem bound to defend previously held positions because, well. that’s how they made their name. Another problem I have with them, and ”celebrities” generally, is that their views on any subject are given more attention or credence than they deserve (just as this piece does to Singer’s presumptive effort!).
So what if Singer has put out his own version of The Golden Ass without understanding its provenance and cultural context? Many people rework the classics all the time, some do it better than others.
Anyone is entitled to respond to this reworking of The Golden Ass but I recommend it should be on the merits of the work itself, comparing Singer’s efforts (and justifications for the major changes) to the original. His views on anything else are irrelevant.
Just to be clear, Singer is not advocating that all disabled children should have their lives terminated as a matter of course. He is suggesting that in very severe cases it may be OK for parents to weigh up the probable outcomes and the best interests of the child and to decide on balance that in some instances the most humane course may be not to try to keep that child alive at all costs. So the spina bifida case quoted above is totally beside the point.
“You don’t need to give this man who supports literally murdering infants your money just so you can read a bowdlerized version of a work that is in the public domain that has already been translated into English in its entirety dozens of times.”
I have met Singer (via Skype) back in Fall semester 2014 when I was doing my senior thesis on animal rights (part of which including a critique of his All Animals Are Equal essay) and I can tell you (as someone who has read virtually all of his books (excluding his short books on Marx and Hegel and some of the post-2016 stuff) that he does not support “murdering infants”. He argues that, for instance, babies born without a brain have no moral status (not being sentient) and so will not be harmed by being euthanized by physicians. Nowhere does Singer argue that infants in general do not have moral status. He is a father himself and so that would create some rather strong cognitive dissonance if he held such a belief. I suggest read the third edition of his book, Practical Ethics, for a more complete understanding of his views (slightly outdated as he is no longer a preference utilitarian as of 2015).
“Singer’s position is based on the ableist assumption that infants who are born with severe disabilities cannot live happy or fulfilling lives. The problem is that, as disability rights activists have pointed out, it is possible for people with severe disabilities to live happy and fulfilling lives. I had a very good friend growing up who was born with spina bifida that prevented him from using his legs and I’m pretty sure he’s glad that his parents didn’t kill him as soon as he was born.”
This is another strawman. Singer does not argue, in print or via lecture, that people with evere disabilities in general cannot have fulfilling lives. He argues that, once a disibility or illness (one of the examples he gives is someone who experiences severe internal burning that causes one to scream constantly all night even after being given morphine, see his chapter in Practical Ethics that I mentioend) then that person’s life, objectively, is not worth living. I agree. If someone is in a hopeless state where even morphine cannot ease one’s pain, then it is meaningless to say that life has any value for that person. That is a view even Pope Pius XII would agree with (one of the few popes who would agree with Singer were he alive, Singer actually quotes Pius in his book Rethinking Life and Death) so I hardly see it as bad as you make it out to be.
“The problem with what you’re arguing here is that Singer’s other work on animal rights and so forth cannot compensate for the fact that he advocates killing disabled infants. When person is so horribly and persistently wrong about such a big moral issue, their supporters cannot simply insist that they deserve a free pass just because they were right about some other stuff.”
You are sounding more like Pope Saint John Paul II (as opposed to his predecessor that I mentioned) the more I read about your view of Singer. Singer has met with the “disability” activists (i.e. the ones who shouted down his lectures) and it seems said activists had absolutely no idea what Singer’s views were other than what their priest had told them. Singer isn’t saying infants born with down syndrome have no moral status (he repeatedly addresses that claim in his books and talks). He’s saying extreme cases are the ones where the judgment should be up to the parents and the physicians (you’re making it sound like he advocates random people like you and me go out and kill infants).
Further reading (as mentioned):
Practical Ehics, Third Edition
Rethinking Life and Death
Point of View of The Universe (more meta-ethics than applied ethics but still worth reading).
“He argues that, once a disibility or illness (one of the examples he gives is someone who experiences severe internal burning that causes one to scream constantly all night even after being given morphine, see his chapter in Practical Ethics that I mentioend) then that person’s life, objectively, is not worth living. I agree. If someone is in a hopeless state where even morphine cannot ease one’s pain, then it is meaningless to say that life has any value for that person”
That argument has a huge problem, many of the lives of our far and not so far ancestors were short and brutal, hell today we have exploitation running the system. Those people suffer their whole lives, does this mean that their lives is not worth living?
To the reply that well we can change their conditions compared to a severe disability, one there is an is/ought difference, and what is is the only criteria available to base ethical behaviour on (when it is practical at least), two who is to say advances in medicine will be slower than in social justice, three it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism…
To the reply that it is qualitatively different, that would be based on internal experiences so we can’t know for sure, but you’d have to do a proper study to see if that is the case and I suspect not since humans tend to adapt to everything, even constant abuse or pain.
On people born without brains, you must be using hyperbole because you cannot survive without one, but I assume you’re talking about a vegetative state, that would not really be living, and we’d get back to end of life ethics, which is significantly different from Singer’s advances and much less controversial.