On the Sublime | Page 3

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 trait�� 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 man of high heart and courage, as he seems, so was that martyr of independence, Longinus. Not without scruple, then, can we deprive Zenobia's tutor of the glory attached so long to his name.
Whatever its date, and whoever its author may be, the Treatise is fragmentary. The lost parts may very probably contain the secret of its period and authorship. The writer, at the request of his friend, Terentianus, and dissatisfied with the essay of Caecilius, sets about examining