Appendix B: Caecilius of Calacte

Caecilius is mentioned eight times in the surviving text of Lon­ ginus, in chapters I, IV, VII, XXXI, and XXXII. The excuse for writing On the Sublime came from a reading of Caecilius which Longinus and Teren­ tianus conducted together (1.1); it was the defects of Caecilius’ work which aroused their interest in the subject, for Caecilius failed to treat it worthily by omitting the main points; furthermore, Caecilius gave thousands of examples but never discussed the means for attaining the sublime (1.1). In 4.2, Longinus concedes that Caecilius has antici­ pated him by collecting most of the prime bad examples of “frigidity” in Timaeus; the grudging admission is as close as Longinus comes to prais­ ing Caecilius for anything other than serious intention. In 8,1, Lon­ ginus censures Caecilius particularly for omitting to treat emotion as one of the constituents of sublimity, a charge repeated in 8,4. In 31.1, Longinus finds an expression worthy of praise, even though Caecilius “unaccountably” censures it. Lqnginus classifies Caecilius with the­ orists who are too rigorous in their rules for setting a limit to the number of consecutive metaphors allowed (32.1); Demosthenes, says Lon­ ginus, should be our norm. And, in 32.8, Longinus mounts his most sus­ tained attack on Caecilius, who presumed to argue that Lysias was super­ ior to Plato. In rebuttal, Longinus takes the very principles advanced by Caecilius, chooses a parallel set of authors, and proceeds to perform his own comparison (σύγκρισις)”as a means of demolishing those prin­ ciples. We have analyzed this synkrisis elsewhere.