The change in the tone of telling the whole story is significant for while the earthy character of the original folk-tale occasionally appears and there are recurrent glimpses of Lucianic wit and satire, Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_ is neither a comic romance nor a satire as Lucian’s clearly was. Apuleius wrote a serious novel, a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress of the Ass-Man in his quest for knowledge of marvels. Whereas Lucian through satire degraded a simple folk-tale, Apuleius exalted it by making the journeyings of Lucius a search for the spiritual meaning of life. His hero walks alone. The love romance in his story, the Cupid and Psyche tale, starts with the Platonic conception of the relation of Eros and Psyche, Love and the Soul, and therefrom is lifted to the realm of the Olympian gods. And finally the retransformation of Lucius is no chance event, but a salvation wrought out by the mystic worship of Isis. The subjectivity infused in the plot by these additions is enhanced by the fact that the hero-narrator Lucius is identified with the author, implicitly at first in the Preface and in incidental comment of author to reader; in the last book by the identification of Lucius with “the poor man of Madaura” so that the whole narrative becomes personal experience. This fact involves another difference from the structure of the Greek love romances. The action of these love romances, as Riefstahl points out,[368] is a “closed” one: in the misfortunes which threaten the lovers through Fortune, they must always remain faithful to each other and stout-hearted in order to be re-united. So the circle of the action is “closed,” for it is a great cycle in the life of the hero which places him at the end just where he was in the beginning. The action in Apuleius is “open,” for the hero is bound and pledged to nothing. He goes through his adventures with a light heart. He does not need to prove his faith to any one. He does not need to stand up to a test or even to remain true to himself. He must needs wander, but there is no set purpose in his journeyings. His sufferings are as spiritual as corporeal. He is aware too of the misery of others in the world. And in profound despair he must beg divine aid.