On the Sublime | Page 3

the famous essay is, if
not by Plutarch, as some hold, at least by some author of his age, the
age of the early Caesars.
The arguments for depriving Longinus, Zenobia's tutor, of the credit of
the Treatise lie on the surface, and may be briefly stated. He addresses
his work as a letter to a friend, probably a Roman pupil, Terentianus,
with whom he has been reading a work on the Sublime by Caecilius.
Now Caecilius, a voluminous critic, certainly lived not later than
Plutarch, who speaks of him with a sneer. It is unlikely then that an

author, two centuries later, would make the old book of Caecilius the
starting-point of his own. He would probably have selected some recent
or even contemporary rhetorician. Once more, the writer of the Treatise
of the Sublime quotes no authors later than the Augustan period. Had
he lived as late as the historical Longinus he would surely have sought
examples of bad style, if not of good, from the works of the Silver Age.
Perhaps he would hardly have resisted the malicious pleasure of
censuring the failures among whom he lived. On the other hand, if he
cites no late author, no classical author cites him, in spite of the
excellence of his book. But we can hardly draw the inference that he
was of late date from this purely negative evidence.
Again, he describes, in a very interesting and earnest manner, the
characteristics of his own period (Translation, pp. 82-86). Why, he is
asked, has genius become so rare? There are many clever men, but
scarce any highly exalted and wide-reaching genius. Has eloquence
died with liberty? "We have learned the lesson of a benignant
despotism, and have never tasted freedom." The author answers that it
is easy and characteristic of men to blame the present times. Genius
may have been corrupted, not by a world-wide peace, but by love of
gain and pleasure, passions so strong that "I fear, for such men as we
are it is better to serve than to be free. If our appetites were let loose
altogether against our neighbours, they would be like wild beasts
uncaged, and bring a deluge of calamity on the whole civilised world."
Melancholy words, and appropriate to our own age, when cleverness is
almost universal, and genius rare indeed, and the choice between
liberty and servitude hard to make, were the choice within our power.
But these words assuredly apply closely to the peaceful period of
Augustus, when Virgil and Horace "praising their tyrant sang," not to
the confused age of the historical Longinus. Much has been said of the
allusion to "the Lawgiver of the Jews" as "no ordinary person," but that
remark might have been made by a heathen acquainted with the
Septuagint, at either of the disputed dates. On the other hand, our
author (Section XIII) quotes the critical ideas of "Ammonius and his
school," as to the debt of Plato to Homer. Now the historical Longinus
was a friend of the Neoplatonist teacher (not writer), Ammonius Saccas.

If we could be sure that the Ammonius of the Treatise was this
Ammonius, the question would be settled in favour of the late date. Our
author would be that Longinus who inspired Zenobia to resist Aurelian,
and who perished under his revenge. But Ammonius is not a very
uncommon name, and we have no reason to suppose that the
Neoplatonist Ammonius busied himself with the literary criticism of
Homer and Plato. There was, among others, an Egyptian Ammonius,
the tutor of Plutarch.
These are the mass of the arguments on both sides. M. Egger sums
them up thus: "After carefully examining the tradition of the MSS., and
the one very late testimony in favour of Longinus, I hesitated for long
as to the date of this precious work. In 1854 M. Vaucher[2] inclined me
to believe that Plutarch was the author.[3] All seems to concur towards
the opinion that, if not Plutarch, at least one of his contemporaries
wrote the most original Greek essay in its kind since the Rhetoric and
Poetic of Aristotle."[4]
[Footnote 2: _Etude Critique sur la traité du Sublime et les ecrits de
Longin._ Geneva.]
[Footnote 3: See also M. Naudet, Journal des Savants, Mars 1838, and
M. Egger, in the same Journal, May 1884.]
[Footnote 4: Egger, Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs, p. 426. Paris,
1887.]
We may, on the whole, agree that the nobility of the author's thought,
his habit of quoting nothing more recent than the Augustan age, and his
description of his own time, which seems so pertinent to that epoch,
mark him as its child rather than as a great critic lost among the somnia
Pythagorea of the Neoplatonists. On the other hand, if the author be a