The Book of Isis and the Myth of Er

The Myth of Er is a key parallel for Book 11 of Apuleius' Metamorphoses with respect to linguistic, thematic, and structural parallels. Among these structural parallels is a festival scene in both the Myth of Er and Met. 11 that explicitly recalls an earlier festival scene. These two pairs of festivals that bookend most of the action of their respective works point to the significance of Republic 10 for our understanding of Met. 11, and help us see how Lucius is satirized as the sort of person who, to allude to the Choice of Lives (617e-20d5), chooses the wrong life. With the Isis cult Lucius - unlike his anti-type Odysseus in the Myth of Er - falls victim to the same curiositas that plagued him throughout the novel, but this time he should have seen it coming.