Having a Drink With Your Donkey: The Absurd in Antiquity

Inger Kuin is an Associate Professor of Classics General Faculty. She published a book about, arguably, antiquity’s funniest philosopher just this month (Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Thought of the Original Cynic) and maintains a website about her publications and research here: https://ingerkuin.com/

Often Classics is perceived as a highly serious undertaking, so it may come as a surprise that a lot of my research and teaching as a Classicist is actually about funny things: a Roman joke-book, visual puns on ancient Greek vases, and ancient philosophers’ educational use of humor, to name just a few. I have been asked to write something for you about laughter and humor in the Greco-Roman world in honor of National Absurdity Day. I could not have imagined a day more worth celebrating, or a more welcome assignment!

Studying ancient funny things and sharing them with students is extremely joyful, but it also provides us with profound insight (here comes the serious part!) into ancient lives and experiences, and sometimes even our own. If ancient poems, plays and images meant to be funny for people living many centuries ago in hugely different circumstances still make me and my students laugh, this suggests that there is some continuity to human psychology and cognition, especially since our sense of humor is such a finely tuned instrument. Also, because humans often deal with controversial or uneasy aspects of their society by means of humor, looking at the jokes of the ancient Greeks and Romans often allows us to see them engage with issues they do not talk about as much, or at all in serious texts.

High time to get to the drinking donkey! This semester I am teaching an advanced Latin course about a work known by two different titles: Metamorphoses and The Golden Ass. It was written in the second century CE by a polymath from Roman Africa named Apuleius. In the narrative a man named Lucius is turned into an ass when his experimentation with potent magical salves goes wrong. After changing hands many times, he ends up working as a beast of burden for two brothers in charge of catering for a large household.

Whenever he can, Lucius sneaks into the storeroom to feast himself on their wares. The ass fills out so much that the brothers start to suspect its involvement in the recurring disappearances of their supplies. They lie in wait and, peaking through a crack in the wall, catch Lucius in the act. At the sight of a donkey stuffing himself with human food, the brothers forget their anger, and burst out laughing.

Because no one would believe them otherwise, the brothers call out to the enslaved workers of the household to come and see the spectacle for themselves. More hilarity ensues and the hubbub draws the attention of the slave-owner and head of the household, Thiasus. He, too, when he peers through the crack in the wall is overcome with laughter, so much so that he gives himself a belly-ache. An enchanted Thiasus leads Lucius to his dinner party, to test what other human foods he might enjoy. When the ass gobbles up everything, even spicy chicken, the jester in attendance suggests they should see if Lucius will drink wine. Thiasus responds with glee: “You scoundrel, that is not a completely absurd joke!” (non adeo absurde iocatus es, furcifer). Right away the largest goblet they can find is filled with wine, and placed in front of Lucius-the-ass. He slurps it down through his lips in one gulp, and the party erupts in cheers.

When my students and I read this story in the original Latin there were laughs and chuckles, and we greatly enjoyed the vivid and absurd imagery of a wine-drinking donkey. Next, we talked about its implications for how the ancient Romans perceived the difference between humans and animals, and between enslaved and free people, since scholars have interpreted Lucius’ transformation into a pack animal in Metamorphoses as an intentional metaphor, on Apuleius’ part, for enslavement.

After the dinner party’s success, Thiasus tasks one of his freedmen with teaching the ass how to wrestle, to dance, and to communicate by shaking its head. Lucius tells the reader how he was careful to pretend that he was learning all these things from his teacher. He was afraid that if his owners found out that he already knew how to do them, they would see him as a monstrous portent of bad fortune, and kill him. Most likely, Lucius was right to be worried. The absurd can quickly tip over into the unsettling, especially when the viewer feels like they are no longer in control. Teaching your drinking donkey to dance may be fun, but finding out that it was secretly a skilled dancer all along is a different matter entirely. If we indeed understand the scene through the lens of slavery, as I think we should, it betrays an anxiety both about the institution’s need to dehumanize the enslaved, and the limits of this dehumanization, with the threat of revolt always simmering just beneath the surface. 

Apuleius still makes us laugh. At the same time, by having Lucius anxiously conceal his humanity from his owners, he forces us to think about what it means to be human, and how we treat those we consider non-human.