e witches and the people of Hypta had disfigured Thelyphron. Other incidents that are similar to stories in myth occur throughout the novel. Like these two incidents, the others also follow the pattern of showing that things occurring in everyday Greek life (having sexual relations with a slave and getting attacked by an angry mob) were nearly synonymous with divine tales. Following Lucious’ transformation to an ass, he takes on a more frontal assault towards the minor religions present in the Roman Empire at the time. He outright calls the eunuch priests that worship the Syrian Goddess frauds. The priests stay “Where the public were very kind to them: in particular they made a good deal of money by professing to tell fortunes. Between them, these pious frauds composed an all-purpose oracle for the Goddess to deliver by their mouths, and used it to cheat a great many people who came to consult her on all sorts of questions.” (Graves, pg. 198-199)By not revealing the specifics of the religion of the eunuchs, Apuleius leaves open the possibility of applying the fraudulent aspect to other outside religions in the empire. With a short paragraph he discredits several cults in the empire as being money driven and simply not true. It is also evident, however, that the public does not share Lucius’ distrust of the foreign goddess. In fact, they appear to be very open to her, and consequently to other deities. While discussing the wife of one of his owners, a miller, Lucius states that “She also professed perfect scorn for the Immortals and rejected all true religion in favor of a fantastic blasphemous cult of an ‘Only God.’ In his honor she practiced various absurd ceremonies which gave her the excuse of getting drunk quite early in the day and playing the whore at all hours.” (Graves, pg. 204) This attack is much more serious than the one on the eunuch because of the mention of “...
