Appendix A: The Problem

The earliest manuscript gives us the name “Dionysius Longinus” as the author in citing the title of the book; a table of contents for the same manuscript, however, lists the author as “Dionysius or Longinus.”

This fact is the germ of the problem, even though the word “or” may be a later addition. A late manuscript emphasizes the problem by recording the author as “anonymous.” The author, then, was (1) someone named “Dionysius Longinus;” (2) someone named either “Dionysius” or “Longinus;” or (3) someone whose name we do not know. No other possibilities exist.

The name “Dionysius Longinus” presents certain problems, though not insuperable ones: it is a combination of a Greek and a Latin name, an unusual though not unknown occurrence in antiquity. We have no rec­ ord of any person named “Dionysius Longinus,11 It remains, then, a dis­ tinct possibility that the work in question was written by someone named “Dionysius Longinus,” and M.J, Boyd has argued for this possibility (see M.J. Boyd, “Longinus, the Philological Discourses and the Essay on the Sublime,” CQ, N.S. vii (1957) 39-46).

The attribution to “Dionysius or Longinus” raises the following problems: first, two ancient critics, both famous, are named “Dionysius” and “Longinus” respectively. The first would, in all probability, re- fer to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived during the first century B.C.; the second would, in all probability, refer to Cassius Longinus, the famous critic of the third century ce, As both were among the more well-known literary critics of antiquity, scholars seeking to explain the attribution “Dionysius or Longinus” have assumed that the scribe who copied the manuscript, impressed by the quality of the work and not knowing to whom to attribute it, credited it to one or the other of these two famous critics. Such a conjecture presupposes one of the following:

1. that the scribe had reason to choose one of these two rather than any number of other ancient critics, reasons other than those based on ter­ minus post quem, since there would have been many eligible candidates possible after the date 1 ce;
2. that the scribe lived at a time when, if the author was someone other than either of these two, all knowledge of him had ceased to exist;
3. that the scribe’s literary sensitivity was so good as to perceive the greatness of the work in question but not so good as to be able to ascertain, on any grounds ava1lable to him, that it was unlike either Dionysius of Halicarnassus or Cassius Longinus in style or organization—although we do not possess enough of Cassius Longinus to make this claim with complete confidence (see Appendix L).

To reconcile these various presuppositions is impossible. If scholars today can differ as widely as they do—and we have ample knowledge of the vitae of the scholars—how can we reconstruct the quali­ fications of unknown scribes dating back to the tenth century ce? The most that we can do is to express gratitude, both to the unknown scribe and his even more unknown predecessors, for possessing a literary sensi­ tivity which preserved for us this remnant of classical greatness.

The unknown scribe, then, if the attribution to “Dionysius or Longinus” be valid, was no more able than we to determine the date of the author: for him, as for us, the possibilities extended from the first century bce to the third century ce.

That manuscript which reports the author as “anonymous” does not alter these possibilities, for the author cannot have existed before the first century bce, nor does a century after the third century ce carry even the remotest plausibility.

We may now consider mention of the putative author made by later writers. Here we confront insuperable problems, first in clarity of context; second, in reliability of manuscripts. Both references are, like the earliest extant manuscript, medieval, although the exact dates are unknown. One John of Sicily, whose date is approximately in the eleventh century ce, refers, and cites from memory, as he admits, a passage in Sophocles’ play Orithyia. It is clearly the same passage cited by Longinus in ch. III. Directly John of Sicily mentions the name “Longinus” as having spoken of the passage “more precisely” in “the 21st of the philological [works].” The passage occurs in the commentary written by John of Sicily on the work of Hermogenes, On Ideas. Hermogenes, whose dates we know well (second century ce), was not discussing Sopho­ cles: he had used a literary term denoting a certain kind of literary vice (στόμφος) and its cognates). Longinus treats the vice, and the word, in ch. III, which lacks its beginning, and cites passages from Aeschylus and Sophocles as examples. It is natural to assume one of the following:

1. that John of Sicily read our Longinus;
2. that he had some secondary source which cited our Longinus;
3. that he had some author named Longinus other than our Longinus, perhaps Cassius Longinus, who treated the vice and cited the same passage from Sophocles;
4. that he had some secondary source which cited another author named Longinus who treated the vice and cited the same passage.

We may consider these possibilities in order.

1. that John of Sicily read our Longinus

Nothing in our mss. of Longinus indicates that the work in question is or is not part of a series, numbered and en- titled “the philological [works].” Furthermore, the reading “the philological [works]” is an emendation for a manuscript reading which is meaningless. John of Sicily’s treatment of the vice is far fuller than that of Longinus, although Lon­ ginus may have dealt with it further in the lacuna of two missing pages. John’s account contains a discussion of the various cognates of στόμφος, where Longinus simply seems to use the word in passing (3.1 and 32.7). Therefore, John knew a good deal more about the word, and the vice, than is con­ tained in our ms. of Longinus, regardless of what other source he used for his information. He does not cite the passage from Aeschylus as Longinus does.

To this we may add the known fact that certain passages turn up over and over again in the rhetorical handbooks. Although the vice does not appear to have been treated under the noun-form in the extent handbooks—of which we possess a good many, though by no means all—it is possible that the vice and this passage were commonplace, either before or after Longinus, who admits (1.1) that his predecessor on the subject, Caecilius, gave “thousands of examples.”

Despite all these legitimate possibilities, the fact remains that between Longinus and John of Sicily no other extant writer treats this vice with this example. It is pos­ sible, then, that John had a ms. of Longinus.

2. that he had some secondary source which cited our Longinus

The later rhetorical handbooks frequently cite earlier ones, either by name or by the vague “they say.” No extant writer before John of Sicily either mentions Longinus by name or cites an anonymous “they say” with any clear reference to Longinus. In view of our huge losses of ancient literature, the omission is significant but not conclusive.v

3. that he had some author named Longinus other than our Longinus, perhaps Cassius Longinus, who treated the vice and cited the same passage from Sophocles;

We have no evidence for any Longinus who wrote literary criti­ cism other than the author of our work and Cassius Longinus Once again, in view of our losses of ancient literature, the fact is significant but not conclusive. There may have been a good many critics named Longinus; the work in question may have been written by someone other than a man named Longinus, whose name and memory were lost Cassius Longinus was the author of numerous works, many of which we do not even have names for; and in view of the stylistic variety in genres and the imitative skill of many ancient writers, Cassius Longinus may have written such a work. But see Appendix L.

4. that he had some secondary source which cited another author named Longinus who treated the vice and cited the same passage

This possibility is a combination of possibilities (2) and (3); the same arguments are applicable.

John of Sicily again mentions the name Longinus, and again quotes-­ in a somewhat different form—the same passage from Genesis which appears in 9.9 of On the Sublime. Here John says that not only do the Christians admire this passage, “but also the best of the Greeks, Longinus and Demetrius of Phalerus.” No further identification of the name “Longinus” is given here; either John thought it would be clear to everyone that the author was Cassius Longinus or, as was common among medieval writers, he was simply and ignorantly citing sources. Although Cassius Longinus was famous in late antiquity, we have no reason to assume that he was famous in the eleventh century. The author of On the Sublime may have had a great reputation in antiquity, all knowledge of which we have lost, although it is not likely. That the name Longinus, with two passages cited in Qn the Sublime, should turn up in John of Sicily is a striking coincidence.

A rhetorician of the fifth century ce, Lachares, mentions as “good men and knowing in all wisdom Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Lon­ ginus the philologer who arranged together books of discourses and Her­ mogenes, who set forth the work called ‘On Issues’.” Some (see Boyd, 43 ff.) have emended the words “the philologer11 to “the philological,” making it go with “discourses.” The word “philologer” was used of Cas­ sius Longinus even during his lifetime, although he was more usually called “the critic” (see Boyd, p. 44, n. 4). Because of the brevity in Lachares’ account, we can only assert that there was a Longinus who wrote literary discourses, a fact which we already knew from John of Sicily; and we can, with some probability, assume that it was Cassius Longinus, whose reputation in antiquity was very great. Against this is the possible, but not probable, argument that there was another Longinus, famous enough to be bracketed with Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Her­ mogenes, without any need to differentiate him from Cassius Longinus, and that this other Longinus, despite such fame, has simply dropped out of all memory.

One other piece of external evidence in sense (b) (above) survives: an anonymous scholiast, whose date is set somewhere between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The anonymous scholiast is superior to John of Sicily in one detail: he correctly locates Aristophanes’ use of the root στόμφος as the Clouds, where John had said the Frogs. On the other hand, the scholiast does not mention Sophocles, and his mention of Aeschylus does not include the passage cited by Longinus. He does, how­ ever, specifically refer to the “21st of the philological discourses (φιλόλογοι ὁμιλίαι)” of Longinus—a slightly different title from the garbled text of John, for he adds the noun “discourses (ὁμιλίαι.).”

It is clear, then, that both John of Sicily and the anonymous scholiast had access to, either directly or through some secondary source—Boyd suggests a sixth century annotated edition of Hermogenes— a work by one Longinus which contained at least twenty-one separate sections dealing with “philology” or literature. The use of the noun “discourse” in connection with intellectual works goes back at least to Xenophon, although it seems to be most common in later times, i.e., from the first century βce on. No conclusive determination can be reached on this basis. Similarly, the word “philological (φιλὀλογος),” although it tends, in antiquity, to refer to one interested in literary history rather than literature, and hence was of a lower rank intellectually, does not allow for definite conclusions. As we note in Appendix L, Porphyry records the judgment rendered about Cassius Longinus by Plo­ tinus: “He was a philologer, but in no sense (οὐδαμῶς) a philosopher.” The preface of a book on philosophers written by Cassius Longinus and quoted by Porphyry in his Life of Plotinus (20) would support the judg­ ment of Plotinus, for it resembles literary history more than it does literary criticism. So, too, does Eunapius’ statement (Vitae Sophistarum 4.1.3), that Cassius Longinus was a “living library and a walking mu­ seum.” The author of On the Sublime is highly literate but not a poly­ math (see also Appendix L).

G.P. Goold, in his article “A Greek Professorial Circle at Rome” (TAPA 92[1961):168-78), cites a number of parallels between Manilius, the author of the Astronomica about whom nothing is known, and Longinus. The parallels, says Goold, show that Manilius was inspired by Longinus, and thus establish the year 12 A.D. as a probable date for the author of on the Sublime. Goold argues that since the “Longinian” phrases do not naturally fit the context of Manilius_as they naturally do fit the con­ text of On the Sublime, it must be that Manilius took from Longinus, and not the other way around. But the parallels which he cites are not peculiar to Longinus: in one case, for example, Longinus quotes Timaeus9 the parallel in Manilius could be no more than another allusion to Timaeus. That the other “parallels” do not flow so smoothly in Manilius is an assertion, and Gοold’s examples which are supposed to show that the context of Longinus is more suited than the context of Manilius are net entirely convincing. For example,

De subl. 35.3: “Wherefore not even the entire universe suffices for the thought and contemplation within the reach of the human mind, but our imaginations often pass beyond the bounds of space.”

Manilius 4.159: “They will discover paths to the skies, and after completely mapping out the heavens with numbers and meas­ ures, their genius then will pass beyond the orbits of the stars.”

It is best, then, to accept the date suggested by Goold1s parallels as only a scantly possible terminus ante quem; since other evidence seems to point in another direction, the date (12 A.D.) is perhaps better as a terminus post quem.