Full Answer
The robbers lodge in a cave at a village where they have old acquaintances. Despite the beatings Lucius endures, he decides to be on his best behavior for his new masters. An old hag serves the band as their hostess. Another group of bandits who pillage the region of Boeotia makes an entrance. This group has just lost its valiant leader, Lamachus.
Like the previous book, Book 4 depends on striking contrasts for much of its effect. The first phase of the narrative focuses on the two sets of robbers, and in particular on one bandit's account of his group's exploits in Thebes. As often is in Apuleius, the proper names of characters are speaking names or jesting allusions.
Though he was in mortal danger, he never forgot his role or ours or his courage, as he fought those gaping jaws, as if with Cerberus himself. As long as life was in him, he played out the task he’d chosen, now retreating, now resisting, with every turn and twist of his body, until he’d retreated from the house.
Psyche, for all her conspicuous beauty, reaped no profit from her charms. Gazed at by all, praised by all, no one, neither prince nor commoner, wishing to marry her, sought her hand. They admired her divine beauty of course, but as we admire a perfectly finished statue. Her two elder sisters, whose plainer looks had never been trumpeted through the world, were soon engaged to royal suitors and so made excellent marriages, but Psyche was left at home, a virgin, single, weeping in lonely solitude, ill in body and sore at heart, hating that beauty of form the world found so pleasing.
Her two elder sisters, whose plainer looks had never been trumpeted through the world, were soon engaged to royal suitors and so made excellent marriages, but Psyche was left at home, a virgin, single, weeping in lonely solitude, ill in body and sore at heart, hating that beauty of form the world found so pleasing.