The sacred, the profane and the superstition on Apuleius: the experience of the sacred in Imperial Rome

Abstract

This study examines the representation of the sacred, the profane, and superstition in Apuleius’ Asinus aureus (Metamorphoses), investigating how these categories structure religious experience and cultic practices in Imperial Rome. The analysis focuses particularly on Books I, II, VIII, IX, and XI, where popular beliefs, accounts of witchcraft, and Greco-Oriental cults (frequently classified by the Romans as externa superstitio) appear with greater intensity, revealing how such phenomena were perceived by different social groups, including freedmen, common individuals, and members of the educated elite. Adopting a historical-literary approach, the study discusses the relationship between religio and superstitio, as well as the circulation and reception of Oriental cults across the Roman Mediterranean. It also re-examines the applicability of Mircea Eliade’s categories, incorporating contemporary critiques of their essentialist framework and assessing their limits in light of the specificity of the Roman religious system. Moreover, the analysis considers the instability of the autodiegetic narrator as a key element for understanding the literary construction of religious experience in the novel, since the accounts are filtered through irony, fabulation, and rhetorical strategies intrinsic to the genre. By integrating ancient literature, the history of religions, and social theory, this investigation seeks to contribute to the understanding of Roman religiosity and to the advancement of Apuleian studies in Portuguese-language scholarship.