The author is unknown. In the reference manuscript (Parisinus Graecus 2036), the heading reports "Dionysius or Longinus," an ascription by the medieval copyist that was misread as "by Dionysius Longinus." When the manuscript was being prepared for printed publication, the work was initially attributed to Cassius Longinus (c. 213-273 AD). Since the correct translation includes the possibility of an author named "Dionysius," some have attributed the work to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a writer of the 1st century CE. There remains the possibility that the work belongs to neither Cassius Longinus nor Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but, rather, some unknown author writing under the Roman Empire, likely in the 1st century. The error does imply that when the codex was written, the trails of the real author were already lost. Neither author can be accepted as the actual writer of the treatise. The former maintained ideas which are absolutely opposite to those written in the treatise; about the latter, there are problems with chronology. Among further names proposed, are Hermagoras (a rhetorician who lived in Rome during the 1st century AD), Aelius Theon (author of a work which had many ideas in common with those of On the Sublime), and Pompeius Geminus (who was in epistolary conversation with Dionysius). Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote under Augustus, publishing a number of works. Dionysius is generally dismissed as the potential author of On the Sublime, since the writing officially attributed to Dionysius differs from the work on the sublime in style and thought. Cassius Longinus Accredited with writing a number of literary works, this disciple of Plotinus was "the most distinguished scholar of his day." Cassius received his education at Alexandria and becomes a teacher himself. First teaching at Athens, Cassius later moved to Asia Minor, where he achieved the position of advisor to the queen of Palmyra, Zenobia. Cassius is also a dubious possibility for author of the treatise, since it is notable that no literature later than the 1st century AD is mentioned (the latest is Cicero, dead in 43 BC), and the work is now usually dated to the early 1st century AD. The work ends with a dissertation on the decay of oratory, a typical subject of the period in which authors such as Tacitus, Petronius and Quintilian, who also dealt with the subject, were still alive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longinus_(literature)



CASSIUS LONGINUS

c. 213-273 THE SUBLIME IN TEN WEB-PAGE PARTS - WEB-PAGE ONE

Translated by W. Rhys Roberts

Longinus, c. 213-273, Greek rhetorician and philosopher (Cassius Longinus), c. 213-273, Greek rhetorician and philosopher of the Neoplatonic school. He taught rhetoric at Athens. He later became counselor to Queen Zenobia of Palmyra; when the anti-Roman policy he had advocated failed, he was delivered to the Romans, who executed him as a traitor. Of his numerous rhetorical, philosophical, and critical works, only fragments remain. On the Sublime, a Greek treatise of literary criticism, was long attributed to Longinus, but it is now agreed that the author, often known as Pseudo-Longinus, lived in the 1st cent. A. D. 1 See D. St. Marin, Bibliography of the Essay on the Sublime (1967). 2

ON THE SUBLIME

PART ONE

Chapters I - VI

YOU will remember, my dear Postumius Terentianus, that when we examined together the treatise of Caecilius on the Sublime, we found that it fell below the dignity of the whole subject, while it failed signally to grasp the essential points, and conveyed to its readers but little of that practical help which it should be a writer's principal aim to give. In every systematic treatise two things are required. The first is a statement of the subject; the other, which although second in order ranks higher in importance, is an indication of the methods by which we may attain our end. Now Caecilius seeks to show the nature of the sublime by countless instances as though our ignorance demanded it, but the consideration of the means whereby we may succeed in raising our own capacities to a certain pitch of elevation he has, strangely enough, omitted as unnecessary. 2. However, it may be that the man ought not so much to be blamed for his shortcomings as praised for his happy thought and his enthusiasm. But since you have urged me, in my turn, to write a brief essay on the sublime for your special gratification, let us consider whether the views I have formed contain anything which will be of use to public men. You will yourself, friend, in accordance with your nature and with what is fitting, join me in appraising each detail with the utmost regard for truth; for he answered well who, when asked in what qualities we resemble the Gods, declared that we do so in benevolence and truth. 3. As I am writing to you, good friend, who are well versed in literary studies, I feel almost absolved from the necessity of premising at any length that sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression, and that it is from no other source than this that the greatest poets and writers have derived their eminence and gained an immortality of renown. 4. The effect of elevated language upon an audience is not persuasion but transport. At every time and in every way imposing speech, with the spell it throws over us, prevails over that which aims at persuasion and gratification. Our persuasions we can usually control, but the influences of the sublime bring power and irresistible might to bear, and reign supreme over every hearer. Similarly, we see skill in invention, and due order and arrangement of matter, emerging as the hard-won result not of one thing nor of two, but of the whole texture of the composition, whereas Sublimity flashing forth at the right moment scatters everything before it like a thunderbolt, and at once displays the power of the orator in all its plenitude. But enough; for these reflexions, and others like them, you can, I know well, dear Terentianus, yourself suggest from your own experience.

II

First of all, we must raise the question whether there is such a thing as an art of the sublime or lofty. Some hold that those are entirely in error who would bring such matters under the precepts of art. A lofty tone, says one, is innate, and does not come by teaching; nature is the only art that can compass it. Works of nature are, they think, made worse and altogether feebler when wizened by the rules of art. 2. But I maintain that this will be found to be otherwise if it be observed that, while nature as a rule is free and independent in matters of passion and elevation, yet is she wont not to act at random and utterly without system. Further, nature is the original and vital underlying principle in all cases, but system can define limits and fitting seasons, and can also contribute the safest rules for use and practice. Moreover, the expression of the sublime is more exposed to danger when it goes its own way without the guidance of knowledge,--when it is suffered to be unstable and unballasted,--when it is left at the mercy of mere momentum and ignorant audacity. It is true that it often needs the spur, but it is also true that it often needs the curb. 3. Demosthenes expresses the view, with regard to human life in general, that good fortune is the greatest of blessings, while good counsel, which occupies the second place, is hardly inferior in importance, since its absence contributes inevitably to the ruin of the former (Against Aristocrates 113, at Perseus). This we may apply to diction, nature occupying the position of good fortune, art that of good counsel. Most important of all, we must remember that the very fact that there are some elements of expression which are in the hands of nature alone, can be learnt from no other source than art. If, I say, the critic of those who desire to learn were to turn these matters over in his mind, he would no longer, it seems to me, regard the discussion of the subject as superfluous or useless...

III

Quell they the oven's far-flung splendour-glow! Ha, let me but one hearth-abider mark-- One flame-wreath torrent-like I'll whirl on high; I'll burn the roof, to cinders shrivel it!-- Nay, now my chant is not of noble strain.
(Aeschylus, tr. A. S. Way)

Such things are not tragic but pseudo-tragic--'flame-wreaths,' and 'belching to the sky,' and Boreas represented as a 'flute-player,' and all the rest of it. They are turbid in expression and confused in imagery rather than the product of intensity, and each one of them, if examined in the light of day, sinks little by little from the terrible into the contemptible. But since even in tragedy, which is in its very nature stately and prone to bombast, tasteless tumidity is unpardonable, still less, I presume, will it harmonise with the narration of fact. 2. And this is the ground on which the phrases of Gorgias of Leontini are ridiculed when he describes Xerxes as the 'Zeus of the Persians' and vultures as 'living tombs.' So is it with some of the expressions of Callisthenes which are not sublime but high-flown, and still more with those of Cleitarchus, for the man is frivolous and blows, as Sophocles has it,

On pigmy hautboys: mouthpiece have they none.
(Sophocles, tr. A. S. Way) Other examples will be found in Amphicrates and Hegesias and Matris, for often when these writers seem to themselves to be inspired they are in no true frenzy but are simply trifling. 3. Altogether, tumidity seems particularly hard to avoid. The explanation is that all who aim at elevation are so anxious to escape the reproach of being weak and dry that they are carried, as by some strange law of nature, into the opposite extreme. They put their trust in the maxim that 'failure in a great attempt is at least a noble error'. 4. But evil are the swellings, both in the body and in diction, which are inflated and unreal, and threaten us with the reverse of our aim; for nothing, say they, is drier than a man who has the dropsy. While tumidity desires to transcend the limits of the sublime, the defect which is termed puerility is the direct antithesis of elevation, for it is utterly low and mean and in real truth the most ignoble vice of style. What, then, is this puerility? Clearly, a pedant's thoughts, which begin in learned trifling and end in frigidity. Men slip into this kind of error because, while they aim at the uncommon and elaborate and most of all at the attractive, they drift unawares into the tawdry and affected. 5. A third, and closely allied, kind of defect in matters of passion is that which Theodorus used to call parenthyrsus. By this is meant unseasonable and empty passion, where no passion is required, or immoderate, where moderation is needed. For men are often carried away, as if by intoxication, into displays of emotion which are not caused by the nature of the subject, but are purely personal and wearisome. In consequence they seem to hearers who are in no wise affected to act in an ungainly way. And no wonder; for they are beside themselves, while their hearers are not. But the question of the passions we reserve for separate treatment.

IV

Of the second fault of which we have spoken--frigidity-- Timaeus supplies many examples. Timaeus was a writer of considerable general ability, who occasionally showed that he was not incapable of elevation of style. He was learned and ingenious, but very prone to criticise the faults of others while blind to his own. Through his passion for continually starting novel notions, he often fell into the merest childishness. 2. I will set down one or two examples only of his manner, since the greater number have been already appropriated by Caecilius. In the course of a eulogy on Alexander the Great, he describes him as 'the man who gained possession of the whole of Asia in fewer years than it took Isocrates to write his Panegyric urging war against the Persians.' Strange indeed is the comparison of the man of Macedon with the rhetorician. How plain it is, Timaeus, that the Lacedaemonians, thus judged, were far inferior to Isocrates in prowess, for they spent thirty years in the conquest of Messene, whereas he composed his Panegyric in ten. 3. Consider again the way in which he speaks of the Athenians who were captured in Sicily. 'They were punished because they had acted impiously towards Hermes and mutilated his images, and the infliction of punishment was chiefly due to Hermocrates the son of Hermon, who was descended, in the paternal line, from the outraged god.'I am surprised, beloved Terentianus, that he does not write with regard to the despot Dionysius that 'Dion and Heracleides deprived him of his sovereignty because he had acted impiously towards Zeus and Heracles.' 4. But why speak of Timaeus when even those heroes of literature, Xenophon and Plato, though trained in the school of Socrates, nevertheless sometimes forget themselves for the sake of such paltry pleasantries? Xenophon writes in the Policy of the Lacedaemonians: 'You would find it harder to hear their voice than that of busts of marble, harder to deflect their gaze than that of statues of bronze; you would deem them more modest than the very maidens in their eyes' (de Rep. Laced. III. 5., at Perseus)

It was worthy of an Amphicrates and not of a Xenophon to call the pupils of our eyes 'modest maidens.' Good heavens, how strange it is that the pupils of the whole company should be believed to be modest notwithstanding the common saying that the shamelessness of individuals is indicated by nothing so much as the eyes! 'Thou sot? that hast the eyes of a dog,' as Homer has it (Iliad 1.225, at Perseus). Timaeus, however, has not left even this piece of frigidity to Xenophon, but clutches it as though it were hid treasure. At all events, after saying of Agathocles that he abducted his cousin, who had been given in marriage to another man, from the midst of the nuptial rites, he asks, 'Who could have done this had he not had wantons, in place of maidens, in his eyes?' 6. Yes, and Plato (usually so divine) when he means simply tablets says, 'They shall write and preserve cypress memorials in the temples (Laws 5. 741c, at Perseus)

And again, 'As touching walls, Megillus, I should hold with Sparta that they be suffered to lie asleep in the earth and not summoned to arise' (Laws 6. 778d, at Perseus). The expression of Herodotus to the effect that beautiful women are 'eye-smarts' is not much better (Histories 5. 18, at Perseus). This, however, may be condoned in some degree since those who use this particular phrase in his narrative are barbarians and in their cups, but not even in the mouths of such characters is it well that an author should suffer, in the judgment of posterity, from an unseemly exhibition of triviality.

V

All these ugly and parasitical growths arise in literature from a single cause, that pursuit of novelty in the expression of ideas which may be regarded as the fashionable craze of the day. Our defects usually spring, for the most part, from the same sources as our good points. Hence, while beauties of expression and touches of sublimity, and charming elegancies withal, are favourable to effective composition, yet these very things are the elements and foundation, not only of success, but also of the contrary. Something of the kind is true also of variations and hyperboles and the use of the plural number, and we shall show subsequently the dangers to which these seem severally to be exposed. It is necessary now to seek and to suggest means by which we may avoid the defects which attend the steps of the sublime.

VI

The best means would be, friend, to gain, first of all, clear knowledge and appreciation of the true sublime. The enterprise is, however, an arduous one. For the judgment of style is the last and crowning fruit of long experience. None the less, if I must speak in the way of precept, it is not impossible perhaps to acquire discrimination in these matters by attention to some such hints as those which follow.