It is absurd to compare the plot of the whole novel with the typical pattern of the Greek love romances and Fotis with their heroines as Riefstahl does.[369] The only great human love-story in Apuleius’ main plot, that of Charite, is a tragedy. It is like the Greek Romances in being a story of high life and in this too is unique among Apuleius’ novelle. But it is utterly different from the Greek love romances in structure and tone. The only parallel to them is to be found in the inset story of Cupid and Psyche. Here the tale is of two young lovers unhappily separated by the cruelty not of Fortune but of a greater goddess, Venus herself. And only after the hard testing of one of the pair, this time the lady, are the two lovers reunited. Thus the conventional happy ending of the plot is achieved. But for the author’s philosophical mind such a beautiful story must start with a touch of Platonic symbolism in the very names of the lovers, Cupid and Psyche, and must be concluded in high heaven, for only among the immortals may such perfect happiness be won forever. From this account of Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_ it is already clear that his great novel is a synthesis of various types of Greek Romances. Its closest parallel is in the Greek _Lucius or Ass_, for the bare outline of the plot of the first ten books is like that of the Greek work. But all recent research tends to prove that Lucian’s original _Metamorphoses_ was satiric in character, therefore very different in tone from Apuleius’ serious work. So although they share the characteristics of a romance of adventure, with stories of magic and of robbers forming principal episodes, the motivation and the aim of the two romances are utterly different. This difference is emphasized by Apuleius’ two longest and most startling additions to the plot, the love-story of Cupid and Psyche and the story of Lucius and Isis. Apuleius writes a love romance like the Greek only in the story of Cupid and Psyche. For the episode with Fotis is a sex-story of convenience and the Milesian Tales added to the plot of _Lucius or Ass_ carry out this Fotis-motif of sex and lechery.[370] The one long love-story of human beings, Charite’s story, is indeed a love romance of a noble lady and her noble lord, but it is a complete tragedy in episodes, tone and ending. Only the Cupid and Psyche story is the true type of Greek love romances.