Appendix A: Supplementary Notes

1.1. what sort of thing...essentially is: The Greek word translated “essentially is” is ὑπάρχω, which signifies “to begin (from) underneath.” The sense of “initiate” predominates in earlier Greek; by the time of Aristotle, it means “exist really” (e.g., Aristotle, De Caelo 297b22, Metaphysics I046bl0), as distinct from “appear φαίνομαι)”. It is generally translated as “is,” though in more technical contexts one finds “subsists”; but a distinction was observed even in antiquity: W. Dittenberger Sy/loge inscriptionum Graecarum 587.2-3: “a man who is εἰμί) good and who is essentially (ὑπάρχω) well disposed.” The distinction made by Chrysippus (Diels, Doxogr. Graec. 462.1—that ὑπάρχω used of the present, ὑφίστημι of the past and future—does not seem to have been generally observed. Thus, for example, we find Philo, On the Creation I 72, saying that God “is (εἰμί) and is from eternity (ὑπάρχω)” (Loeb tr.). Longinus uses the word to indicate what the essential nature of a thing is: compare the uses in 7.1 and 24.2.

1.3 thrown around their glorious reputations: the verb “throw around (περιβάλλω)” contains several idiomatic possibilities: (I) one may throw x (accusative) around y (dative); (2) one may throw x (dative) around y (accusative); (3) in the middle, the verb can also mean “amplify, expand, and surpass” (LSJ). As we shall see, Longinus is probably playing with these notions as well. Translators differ: Prickard elects for “throwing eternity around their reputations”; Fyfe blends: “clothed them with immortal fame”; Grube is loosely free: “to which great writers owe them supremacy and lasting renown”; Dorsch is similarily free: “won for themselves an eternity of fame”: Russell, in his edition, translates “clothed their own glorious deeds with eternity”; in his translation, “have given life Lo their own fame.”

With Prickard, we have elected for (1): the image is of investing, i.e., throwing x (accusative) around y (dative). Russell is aware of both possibilities (I) and (2), though his reference Lo a supposed parallel (erroneous in its numeration: he means 40.2, not 40.1) disregards the difference between the active and middle uses of the verb. His point, that ἑαυτῶν decides for (1, is beautifully observed.

Since the “ages” are greater than any individual reputation, they can do more for the individual reputation than the reputation can do for them: cf. 9.3; I 4.3; 36.2. The full phrase “glorious reputation εὔκλεια )” is intended to suggest both the strong sense of the simple root κλέος (as far back as Homer)and the added strength of the compound εὔκλεια (Homer, Antiphon, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, etc.: LSJ).

Longinus may also be playing with the sense of “surpass” (cf. 36.2). Further, he may be playing with the technical rhetorical sense of περιβάλλω, and, more especially, the noun περιβολή: commoner, however, in later rhetoricians like Hermogenes and Philostratus.

2.3 “too much” and useless: the word for “too much περιττός),” as Russell observes, often takes its flavor from the adjective with which it is coupled. Funda­ mentally it suggests excess, though not necessarily in a pejorative sense: it may simply mean “extraordinary” or “odd” in mathematics. Aristotle (Politics 1265a) uses it of the literary quality of the Platonic dialogues-they are “striking” (LSJ). In 40.2, Longinus refines this meaning to diction, where he opposes it to words that are common and public; in 3.4, the quality of excess is distinctly pejorative. Perhaps the closest parallel occurs in 34.2, where Longin us says that it may be “too much,” i.e., unnecessary, to go through all this for those who understand.

3.1 bold: along with “impressive (σέμνος),” the word “bold ὀγκηρός)” is fre­ quently used of tragedy, as here in ch. 3. (E.g., Sophocles remarked that in the plays of his first period-all of which we have lost-he imitated Aeschylean “boldness [ὅγκος)”). What is signified is a dynamic, not a static, quality, achieved by expansion (see Aristotle, Rhetoric I 707b26ff.). Our verb “swell,” as in T. S. Eliot’s line “to swell a prologue,” conveys the sense: to produce a sense of bigness by growing size, and to demand attention to one’s impressiveness by expansion. Such expansion may be solid, in which case ὅγκος is good, or puffy and spongy and loose, in which case ὅγκος is bad. Coupled with the phenomenon is a sense of boldness; e.g., Plato (Laws 728E) conjoins the synonymous “puffed-up” and “audacious (θρασύς).” Milton’s description of Satan in the presence of Gabriel (Paradise Lost IV.985-89)shows both the physical and aesthetic and moral senses of the phenomenon:

On th’ other side Satan alarm’d Collecting all his might dilated stood, Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremov’d:
His stature reacht the Sky, and on his Crest Sat horror Plum’d.

Such words for ὀγκηρός as hitherto used by translators-“pompous, majestic, dignified, grand, magniloquent”-do not convey the complex sense properly. Hence we have used “bold” with full sense of its etymological significance (see regular note).

3.2. high-flown: the Greek word is μετέωρα; its pejorative sense here probably derives from Aristophanes’ play lampooning Socrates, the Clouds, as well as from various derogatory uses in Plato of the derivative μετεωρολογία. In Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius (7.32), the word is used to describe Domitian as being “raised up” with expectation of hearing something sensational, a use paralleled by Philo (On the Change of Names 67). As the parallels from Philo and Philostratus show, the word signifies an empty and unjustified sense of exaltation.

3.4. run aground on a listing and vicious emulation: the verb translated “run aground ἐποκέλλω)” was emended to ἐξοκέλλω by Wilomowitz, a reading which Russell accepts in his text primarily on the grounds that “the lexica give no instance of ἐξοκέλλω used metaphorically.” The fineness of Wilamowitz’ s perception seems at first supported by such metaphorical uses of ἐξοκέλλω as we find, for example, in Dio Cassius 67.14, where Domitian is said to have persecuted many for “drifting away into” Jewish ways. So, too, Dio uses ἐξοκέλλω in 57.13 to suggest one of the alternative explanations for the shift in Tiberius’ character: either he was a hypocrite or “his good nature drifted away.” Yet both of these passages exploit the force of the prefix E which signifies “out of,” “away from”-that is, drifting off course; the natural result of such drifting away from or off course is to run aground, but the writers who use the form ἐξοκέλλω wish to emphasize not so much where those who drifted eventually ended but where they drifted from. Starting well, they ended ill. Longinus, on the other hand, wishes to emphasize where the drifters ended; hence he uses the prefix ἐπι. For this reason we have kept the reading of the ms. (Furthermore, Aristotle [Mirabilia 844a30] seems to use the word metaphori­ cally of tunny-fish.)

4.1 intent upon perceiving: the Greek word, ἐπινοητικός:, is translated as “full of ingenuity” (Havell), “ingenious” (Roberts), “acute” (Prickard), “full of ideas” (Fyfe), “ingenious” (Russell, who also suggests “original” and “inventive”). The nexus of words based on the root νοῦς; (mind) which Longinus uses is very large; we have, so far as possible, tried to use words based on the root”-cept,” e.g., concept, “perception,” etc. The noun from which is derived the adjective used here appears twice in the work (1.2 and 32.3). In the first use, Longinus argues that Caecilius must be pardoned for his errors because of his seriousness and his “intentness on perceiving,” that is, he was concerned to be perceptive even if, in fact, he was superficial. In the second use—a noble passage on the nature of man—Longinus says that the whole cosmos does not suffice for the thrust of man’s powers of theoretical perceptiveness (διάνοια); his “intentness of perceiving ἐπίνοια)” steps outside of the limits of the bounding universe. The word, then, unless otherwise specified, is highly complimentary, for it is grounded in the nature of man which enables him to be and to perceive the sublime, or, at the very least, to have a longing to do so.

6.1 the result of much experiment: Greek observance of the distinction between experience ἐμπειρία) and experiment (πεῖρα) may be illustrated by a few citations. In Plato’s Laws (857D), we read that doctors who practice solely by “experience” are “without rationale” or, as the Loeb renders it, “devoid of theory” (ἄνευ λογοῦ). Plato contrasts such doctors with those who discuss disease in the light of its origin and with reference to the whole nature of the body (cf. also in Plato, Gorgias 463B, 465A; Laws93A, Phaedo 220B). Aristotlie (Poetics l 459b32) says that the hexameter has been found most suitable for epic as a result of experiment. In Hellenistic times, Polybius (12.25d. I), stressing the power of verbal dexterity, makes the same distinc­ tion and uses the same medical analogy: doctors who know only theory, acquired in libraries, can out-argue doctors who have made an experimentation that is true to the nature of their accomplishments; verbal skill can, Polybius admits, prevail against the approved scrutiny conferred by real work. Three centuries later (first century A.O.), Philo observes the same distinction between “experience” and “experimentation” in On the Special Laws 4.153: doctors do not obtain their positions by lot, but are “approved after scrutiny by means of “experimentation.” And a century later, Hermogenes distinguishes the two words carefully, on the opening page of his book On Ideas: imitation and emulation, he says, which function only with “bare experience ἐμπειρία) and a kind of irrational contact,” will not hit what is right; one must instead “experiment” (πειράω) with what is knowable and teachable. Galen, a somewhat younger contemporary of Hermo­ genes, makes decision depend on experiment, in his work On the Diagnosis of the Emotions (3.2-3). In his essay On the Black Bile (8.1), he says that cognition of the subject came to him only by means of “long experimentation” (πεῖρα).

7.2. exultant resemblance: the ms. reading is ἀνάθημα, which is almost universally taken as a textual crux. The Greek word means literally “that which has been set up.” In Homer it means “delight, ornament” (Odyssey 1.152 and 21.430); it later refers to anything offered or set up in a temple, a “votive offering.” Grube seems almost alone in translating the ms. (“we receive it as a joyous offering”; see his article “Notes on the ῞Υψος, “American Journal of Philology 78 [1957): 364-65, where he cites in addition to Homer parallels from Plato’s Hippias Minor 364B and Critias (110B). Russell asserts that such a meaning is “impossible.” Emendations are numerous, the closest being ἀνάστημα, i.e., “prominence, erection,” which Russell translates as “exultant pride.” It is best to keep the ms. reading. The argument of the passage is based on an elaborate comparison: “just as… somehow in this way.” The soul is to examine literature carefully, so as not to be deceived by an “image” of greatness, by what is puffed up and worthy of contempt. Longinus then elaborates the point in a sentence which may be presented schematically thus:

A. Our souls are lifted up by true sublimity
AA. and are filled with delight and great glory
B. taking on a kind of joyful ?
BB. as if themselves having given birth to what they heard.

The ms. reading ἀνάθημα acquired metaphorical uses early; for example, Socrdtes says to Hippias (Hippias Minor 364B): “You speak well, Hippias, and your reputation will be an ἀνάθημα (memorial or testament, like a statue) to your wisdom both for the city of Elis and for your parents.” Similarly, Isocrates—in a moving passage from his Antidosis (7), written when he was 87—says that he wishes to leave a speech that will be a memorial of himself (as a likeness of his mind) and which will outlast “bronze statues (ἀναθήματα).” Euripides, extending the image further (fr. 518: Nauck), says that good children are a “kind of treasure to homes and ava{)i,µara for those who bore them,” that is, living memorials and images. The meaning “resemblance” is clear in all three passages.

Longinus, then, is playing with such metaphorical senses as these: he may, in fact, be alluding to the passage from Euripides. Both he and his master Plato are fond of comparing the activities of the soul, as it conceives ideas, to pregnancy and birth (e.g., 9.1, 14.3, the first of which led Manutius to emend ἀνάθημα to παράστημα). The verb “take (λαμβάνω)” is used of the soul as it experiences particular emotions and also of partaking in marriage; the compound ἀναλαμβάνω means “to conceive a child”; it is possible that the ms. here should read ἀναλαμβάνω and that the second ἀνα fell out because of its close proximity to ἀνάθημα. The soul, when it hears something sublime, undergoes its own process of conception and gestation; it is “filled” πληρόω used of pregnant women) with exaltation and glory—”as if it had itself given birth to what it heard.” What the soul takes on is a likeness to the original creation of the literary work, a statue (ἀνάθημα), which is called “exultant,” the kind of emotion felt by the mother of a baby or by an artist who has created a work of art. And just as the original work of art was a kind of offspring of the artist’s soul, so the experience of that work of art is a parallel offspring to the soul of the audience. Longin us makes this psychic parallelism the way for men to advance their souls to sublimity.

7.4 speeches and writings: the exact meaning of λόγων much disputed: “people of different literary views,” “languages,” “manners” (reading τρόπων), “historical periods” (reading χρόνων). We have translated it as usual.

9.2 than any speech: here appears the first use made by Longinus of the word λόγος in the singular; for its plural meaning see ch. I n. on speeches and writings. He is, of course, punning on the double sense of the word: the sublimity of Ajax’s silence transcends both speech and reason. The silence of Ajax is irrational (with­ out logos) for he is intransigent, and inarticulate, even in death. Of course, given the irrationality, no speech could be found. But in the underworld, where all things suffer a Dead Sea change, silence may be lifted up to sublime eloquence.

9.12. emotional experiences: the Greek word is πάθημα, which is to be distin­ guished from πάθος (translated as “emotion”); the ending –ημα denotes the result of an action. The meaning of “emotion” seems to preclude its being “action” in the strict sense of the term, and Greek has no cognate with the root παθ ending in the active termination—σις; Aristotle, however, (Poetics l 452bl I) classifies πάθος as a “destructive action (πράξις ).” When the -µa ending is added, the word signifies the change undergone by the thing which feels the πάθος. Longinus uses the word only one other time (10.1), and with the same neat precision: Sappho takes her πάθος—erotic madness—-and selects the “emotional” experiences (παθήματα) that are attendant on it. In Greek logic, πάθημα signifies an “accidental” property.

9.13 its own measures: two verbs appear in the ocean-image: ὑποχωρέω and ἐρημόω: the first was used, without a prefix, in 9.9, where the author of Genesis is said to have “made room” for the power of God in a worthy manner. The simple verb means to “make” or “give” room, that is, to draw back so that the presence and force of something else can move in. Longinus uses the simple form only once again, in 44.12, where he says “it is best to make room for what comes next.” In describing Homer here, Longinus adds the prefix ὑπο–, which has three senses (LSJ): it means “under” and applies to verbs of both rest and motion; it shows a gradual process; it suggests secrecy. The first two meanings are applicable to Longinus’ verb ὑποχωρέω: the ocean is said to be “giving way down into itself gradually,” just as the old Homer was gradually sinking. The difficulty is caused by the phrase “into himself (εἰς ἑαυτόν),” for we do not have two parties, as in the passage where Moses made room for God’s power, but only one, Homer—or his analogue, the ocean. The same verb is used of eels withdrawing into the depths (LSJ), and by Aristides Quintilianus, a third century ce. author, to describe the ebb of the tide (On Music 3. I 7). Aelian (On Animals 10.48) uses two verbs, both with the ὑπο– prefix, to describe the movement of the Nile with respect to “its own boundaries (ἑαυτοῦ μέτρα).” Longinus’ word “ebbings (ἄμπωτις:)” is used both of the ocean and of rivers; thus we may deduce the simile; as the god Ocean floods the land and then sucks back his waters, so the divine Homer was a flood in the/liad and sucked back his powers in the Odyssey. “Flood” is a frequent metaphor in Longinus for the sublime genius at the height of its powers (12.2, 35.4).

The second verb used by Longinus (ἐρημόω) means “to desert, to leave wasted, to be solitary”; from it we get our words “eremite” and “hermit.” It is generally taken as passive here, but it is better to construe it as middle: Ocean is withdrawing into itself and deserting itself, that is, abandoning, leaving the land which it had flooded. Its desertion is located “around its own peculiar measures” (i.e., borders). The preposition “within (περί)” Russell finds difficult and even suspect; but Longin us’ use of περί to mean “in” or “within” has a parallel in l0.3, where Sappho is said not to have one emotion within (περί) her but a company of them. The use in 34.2 is also close: Hyperides has many urbanities “in (περί)” him.

Longin us, then, is creating out of the materials taken from Homer himself his own brilliant image for the declining Homer. The word “wandering,” with which the Greek sentence closes, is, as Russell suggests, a conceit: Homer wanders in his hero’s wanderings. The flood-image dominates over the tidal image. In the Iliad, there had been a “pouring” of emotions one after another (9.13); now the flood is over and the ocean withdraws into itself, deserting its flooded kingdom for its own boundaries. It is better to see floods as the primary image rather than tides, although the latter is possible, for “flood” suggests better than “tide” the overwhelming sublimity and power of Ocean, both the god and the natural phenomenon.

There is a striking parallel to the image in Chapman’s Bussy D’Amboise (I.ii.153 ff.):

His great heart will not down, ’tis like the sea,
That partly by his own internal heat,
Partly the stars’ daily and nightly motion,
(Their heat and light), and partly of the place
(The divers frames), but chiefly by the moon,
Bristled with surges, never will be won
(No, not when th’ heart of all those powers are burst)
To make retreat into his settled home,
Till he be crown’d with his own quiet foam.

As in the passage from Longinus, the image and the object of the image modulate back and forth.

IO. I brings itself out: the mss. all read ἐκφέρω (bring out) here; Tollius emended to ἐμφέρω (bring in), an emendation approved but not accepted by Pearce but now so widely accepted that Russell does not even include the ms. reading in the apparatus of his big edition. Editors appeal to a supposed parallel in 12.2. Ch. I 0 begins a new section, marked by the transitional phrase “come, now”; it deals with the principle of selection τὸ ἐκλέγον ). Longinus first defines the nature of the material available to the writer, which consists of parts, only some of which have a natural connection with one another. As a result of this fact, he says, a necessary cause of sublimity is the ability to select from—and here we meet the crux-phrase. Pearce’s analysis of the ms. reading—although he preferred the emendation—is excellent: the ἐκφερομένα are those things which, as far as they stand out in the eventus, “offer themselves to the poet who is handling the matter.” There is no notion of “bring in,” for the material is conceived of as an existing whole—the parts are “fundamentally in session with their material,” as Longinus says. The verb “bring out,” whether middle or passive, refers to those parts which offer themselves to the artist’s power of selection.

The supposed parallel passage (12.2) is not really relevant: there Longinus is discussing “development,” which he defines as “filling in with from all the parts and commonplaces” that “contribute” or “bring in” to matters. But “parts” here includes both those that adhere by nature and those which do not, for commonpla­ ces are, by definition, not organically related material. In 10.1, the disputed passage, Longin us specifically says that the parts selected are those which “come at the right moment” and are compared in their wholeness to a body: the image also supports the notion of what grows from within rather than what comes from outside.

13.2 the story says: again, logos in the singular, which can also mean “what men say,” i.e., common speech, traditional accounts. Once again Longinus appears to be punning on the meaning of logos. Apollo, the god of reason (logos), is also the god of inspiration. The common account or “story” is that what happens at Delphi is both divinely inspired and rational.

14.2 sketch beforehand: we introduce here one of our very few emendations, which Russell’s apparatus shows M. L. West to have arrived at also: the mss. have “sketch in addition”: by dropping one letter we change it to “sketch beforehand” and avoid the pleonastic effect of “also καί)” and “in addition (πρός)”—not that Longinus does not employ the combination elsewhere (e.g. 15.1). The change is not major and is perhaps unnecessary.

15.5 And Aeschylus is audacious: a very difficult sentence syntactically, for it consists of two concessive clauses, the first of which is interrupted by a long quotation plus a subordinate clause modifying the subject of the quotation, followed by the main clause. Aeschylus is the subject of the first two clauses, Euripides of the main clause. The problem is complicated by the fact that, in the first concessive clause, Longin us praises Aeschylus, in the second he censures him: the censuring clause only is to be taken with the main clause; the two concessive clauses are themselves in opposition. The sentence yields to analysis but requires effort.

20. I “The assailant… by voice”: Longin us’ word for “assailant” is τύπτων, whose root appeared in the word “vivid typical description” just before the quotation; it also means “boxer,” that is, one who strike blows. The word for “victim” has the same root as “emotion πάθος ).” The word translated as “bearing” is “figure (axflµa ).” It is difficult not to believe that Longin us chose his quotation with some awareness of all these puns.

20.2 Next...standing still: Longinus continues his play on words: the verbs “advance” and “remain at a standstill” are, in the Greek text, juxtaposed; “qui­ etude” is said to lie in “standing,” a word which also means “revolutionary faction, discord,” and which is, in addition, a rhetorical term: Hermogenes wrote at length on arciat<: in the sense of “issues” (Spengel 11.133-74).

21.2 catapult: the Greek word is ὄργανον, a word with even more applications than its usual English translation “instrument.” Without an adjective, it still commonly meant “an instrument of war”; in conjunction ἀφίημ it clearly refers to a catapult. The picture of emotion as a missile catapulted out of the psyche fits with the use of “impulse” in the definition given in ch. 20.2.

22.1. stamp: Longinus uses the word χαρακτήρ only here, although it had long been a standard term in criticism to signify the various “styles”—e.g., Demetrius (35, 36) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Composition 1). Neither Demetrius nor Dionysius uses any mollifier (see ch. 32); Longinus inserts one (“as it were”), with, perhaps, a kind of inverse wit; he wishes to re-vitalize the etymological impact which had been lost in the technical application to criticism: χαρακτήρ meant originally the mark engraved on coins or stone.

23.1 change: the word used—ἐνάλλαξις—is a “variation” of the usual term ἀλλοίωσις (making something other than it is).” As Russell observes, ἀλλοίωσις was the term used by Caecilius. Tiberius in his book On Figures (Spengel III.80), lists the five items which Caecilius said were affected by ἀλλοίωσις: word, case, number, person, and tense. Longinus has “varied” Caecilius’ list by omitting “word” and substituting “gender.” These are really the same—species for genus—as Zonaeus makes clear in his book On Figures (Spengel IIl.168). Both Zonaeus and Alexander (On Figures [Spengel III.33]) include “emotion” in their lists; that subject was omitted by Caecilius, much to Longinus’ distress.

23.3 Jocasta: Russell notes the two examples of hiatus, which surround the word “Jocasta”; presumably some joke is intended by such an excess, since hiatus, like incest, was something to be avoided. Hiatus occurs when a word ending with a vowel precedes a word beginning with a vowel: the result is a gap in the flow of the voice which the Greeks found ugly. Dryden quotes one permissible and one ugly example from Chapman’s translation of Homer (preface to Examen Poeticum):

Apollo’s priest to th’Argive fleet doth bring.

“There,” Dryden remarks, “we see he makes it not the Argive but th’Argive, to shun the shock of the two vowels immediately following each other. But… he gives a bad example of the quite contrary kind,” whereupon he quotes:

Th’army’s plague, the strife of kings.

Here, Dryden says, the hiatus produces “a most horrible ill-sounding gap betwixt” the word “the” and “army’s.”

23.4 exaggeration: the ms. reads “exaggeration αὔξησις),” i.e., boasting, claim­ ing qualities and attainments for oneself in a proud way. Most editors accept Robortello’s emendation “development (αὔξησις) Longinus defines development in 12.1: he says that his definition is different from that generally given, for he makes it consist of “multiplicity (πληθύς).” Here in ch. 23, however, he does not use either word, for he is discussing “pluralizing (πλήθος)”, not “multiplicity (πληθύς).” Throughout the text he consistently uses cognates of πλήθος (pluralizing) to signify grammatical plurals; hence the cognate used here cannot be taken as equivalent to “multiplicity” and, consequently, to “development.” In view of all this, and also of the fact that synonyms for boasting are frequent in the chapter, we have retained the ms. reading. “Exaggeration” is the aim: plurality, hyperbole, and emotion are the means.

27.2 the use should have priority: Roberts translates, “this figure should be used by preference,” an interpretation preferred in general. Russell not only objects to the interpretation but also adopts Manutius’ emendation to πρόσχρησις. LSJ list the meaning “use by preference” but cite only Longinus and mark the sense “dub­ ious.” Russell argues that the prefix προ– “in compounds seldom (and perhaps never) means ‘in preference,’ unless some clear idea of choice or value is present in the simple verb.” His emendation, however, requires us to conclude that Longinus used the prefix 1rpoa without any etymological impact—and such is not Longinus’ way. Given Longinus’ normal sensitivity to the elements which make up a compound word, plus the fact that this is the only use of the word in the text (or of any of its cognates), we are better off retaining the ms. reading. If we examine the simple form of “use (χρῆσις)” in Longinus, we find its use here would be—to use the author’s own term—”cold,” for he has introduced his sentence with the words “For this reason” because he wishes to make a special point about the “use” of this device. And the point is that the use has “priority” in special situations, which Longinus classifies in the clause that follows. Since the prefix προ– often indicates priority (e.g., in such words as προέδρα [the front seat in a theatre]), it was perfectly proper for Longinus to use πρόχρησις in this sense.

30.1 are often thoroughly blended: the verb is variously translated: “developed one through another” (Roberts); “mutually interlaced” (Prickard); “presented” (Einar­ son); “unfold together” (Grube); “involved with each other” (Russell). Russell’s note simply has “are completely entangled with one another.” Einarson’s interpre­ tation of. the manuscript is ingenious and deserves mention: “Since however the thought of the discourse and the expression—and the greater part of either—has been unrolled [i.e., as an ancient book was enrolled in the process of reading], come, if of the expressive part there be certain things yet left, let us consider in addition” (square brackets Einarson’s).

33.4. extraneous material: what the word we have translated as “extraneous” means is debated: Russell summarizes the critical opinion concisely in his note. He tends to agree with Grace B. Ruckh’s article (Classical Philology 29[1942]:p. 256), in which the author argues, on the basis of criticisms made in the ancient scholia (notes to classical authors), that Longinus is alluding to pedantic fault-finders. Longin us uses the word three times: here, 7. I, and 22.4. It seems always to refer to what is inessential or irrelevant.

33.4: most luckily: it is, of course always difficult to know how aware ancient writers were of the root “chance, luck τύχη )” in its various compounds. Because Longinus has a great sense of etymology, we have assumed that he is aware of the root meaning. The simple form of the adjective εὐτυχής) he uses only once, in 16.4, where it is used in a strictly non-literary context. The compound adjective ( ἐπι ἐπιτυχής), however, is used three times (here, 15.3, 22.1), and always in a strictly literary context. The word denotes successful attainment of an end and often is exactly like our word “felicitous” or “happy” when used in literary criticism. It would be possible, here, to think that Longinus used the word deliberately: Theocritus is now flawless everywhere, but, if we except the parts of his poems strictly irrelevant to his genre, he “turns out to be” successful, that is, luck as well as art played a part in his success.

34.1. number...greatness: the ms. reads, in place of “greatness”—Pearce’s emendation-the phrase “by the true (τῷ ἀληθεῖ).” So far as we can presently tell, no parallel exists for “the true” used in any other way than as an adverbial accusative. Furthermore, even if we should someday find a parallel in form, in logic the contrast of “number” and “truth” makes no sense.

We must, then, either emend the word “true” or add to it some noun. Whichever we chose, the alteration must indicate a quality or kind different from number, or must at least be a periphrasis suggesting such a quality. Pearce elected to change “true (ἀληθής)” to “greatness (μέγεθος); others have tried to supply some word like opoc; (in the sense of “standard”).

Ordinarily in Greek, when an author wishes to say that something occurred “by x, not by y,” both nouns are used without a definite article. But Longinus, in 35. has: “not in greatness [no article] but actually in the number…” And the phrase used here supplies us not only with a grammatical parallel, but one exactly corresponding in sense as well: a contrast between mere statistics and quality of excellence. Longinus makes τhe point in summary; it is exactly the same point which he made when he introduced the problem, in ch. 33. There are, he says, two questions LO be asked: (a) whether flawed greatness is better perfect correctness (33.1 ); (b) whether more numerous excellences (πλείους) or greater ones (μείζους) should carry off first prize (33.1 ). The word “greatness,” τhen, supplies us with a parallel that is both logical and consistent with the argumemt as a whole.

34.2 his urbanities are ineffable…inimitable charm: the passage is a unit, marked by an intricate assonance of interwoven alliteration and a balanced variation of pretty phrasing. Between the words “ineffable” and “inimitable” Longinus inserts the words which he says cannot be said and imitates the graces which he says cannot be imitated. The pattern of alliteration and assonance may be most clearly seen in a list, although the device lacks charm:

ἅαφατα         αστεϊμοί
 εύγένεια       εἰρωνεὶς      εὐπάλαιοτρον
σκώμματα    ἐπικείμενα
ἄμουσα         ἀνάγωγα
διασυρμὸς    ἐπιδέξιος
κωμικόν        κέντρον
πολὺ             παιδιᾶς      ἐπαφρόδιτον
ἀμίμητον        ἐιπεῖ  

The qualities in the list are phrased with extraordinary variety of syntax, which ranges from the word “good breeding” to the involved long clause “jokes… fittingly.” The various and varied elements are given unity partly by the alliterative assonance and partly by their genus, that is, all the terms describe Hyperides’ wit. Longinus displays his own wit by concluding this athroismos (see ch. 23) with the word “charm”: Hyperides is so well bred that his wit wants power. We may compare the use of the word in Philostratus (Life of Apollonius 6.3), where the youthful and handsome boy Timasion is said to devote much attention to his body and its “gymnastic charm.”

35.1. but also in their number does he fall short: the Greek Lext is vexed. The crux-word ἀπουσία, which means “absence.” Virtually all editors have emended the word to ὁ Λυσίας (Lysias). Until now, Grube has stood alone in defending the ms. Grube translates:

He is not deficient in the greatness of his virtues, but rather because they are frequently absent .

38.2 introduction: the Greek word is εἰσβαλή, literally, a “throwing-in”; it con­ tinues the set of etymological puns on the root of “hyperbole.” To “throw beyond” (hyperbole) al the point where you “throw in” is indeed hyperbolic. Longinus is mocking Isocrattes’ mistake not only as a technical error but also to expose the debased conception of rhetoric which underlies it. Isocrates’ failure is to be con­ trasted with the success of Demosthenes (16.3).

38.3. dramatic circumstance: although the noun can and does signify what we have translated as “dramatic circumstances” (Russell: “a great crisis”), it is also a technical term in rhetoric. Hermogenes, in his book On Invention (Spengel 11.212), includes it under the heading “practical arguments”; he says that it applies to our speeches, our business, our lawsuits, our hypotheses, and our lives, for it includes place, time, manner, person, responsibility, and action. The Latin rhetoricians (e.g., Aurelius Augustin us: Halm, p. 141) list parts of “circumstance” in the manner of a modern journalist: quis, quid, quando, ubi, cur, quemn ad modum. The example taken from Thucydides combines all these plus greatness and an outburst of emotion; hence the language, no matter how incredible it may seem literally, will convey its own persuasion.

38.5. ecstasy. the ms. reads ἐξετάσεως, emended by Portus (and accepted by Russell without comment) to “ecstasy (ἐξετάσεως).” The word ἐξετάσις (“scrutiny, review”) appears nowhere else in Longinus, nor does it appear to be a technical term, as a noun, in the rhetorical handbooks. No listed meaning of the word makes sense, with the remotely possible exception of “order, arrangement” (LSJ). Perhaps the use of ἐπίτασις (38.6) a few lines below confused the scribe. In view of the parallel points made by Longin us in I 7.2 and 32.4, we accept the emendation, for by using “ecstasy” he links the introduction, exposition, and demonstration of his “speech” as he approaches his peroration.

40. what ought to be constrained: Longinus has in mind the effective power of extreme conciseness-like that of Thucydides or a Spartan letter (see. ch. 38 n. on he had a farmland)—as contrasted with an excess of the virtue. His word (conciseness συντομία )” is listed by Aristotle as one of the three virtues of prose (see ch. 33, n. on excellences). As there could be conciseness in thought, so there could be a conciseness in language and rhythm; and as there could be an excess of one, so therec ould be an excess of the other.

43.2 blank books of papyrus: literally, “papyrus sheets of books”; the phrase has been much emended. Toup, whose emendation Russell accepts in part, wished to change it to “jars of onions.” Russell accepts “jars” but keeps “book,” though he admits that “jars of books” is odd. Since Longinus is at pains to pick out all the “low” items mentioned by Theopompus—”grain sacks” and “burlap bags”—it is hard to believe that he would have overlooked “jars of onions” had they been there. Furthermore, Toup’s own parallel passage (Jeremiah 36.2 in the Septuagint) supplies the answer, for Jeremiah makes it clear that these are books of blank sheets: “Take a roll of a book and write therein all the words that I have spoken…” (KJV). Toup was especially bothered by the problem of how books could be useful to the Persians—an odd query to come from a scholar. Blank books, of course, would have been useful for keeping records. “Books” appears to be authentic, for it is in the text as quoted by Athenaeus, who does not, however, have χάρται or anything else. The phrase “other useful things” is to be taken with “burlap bags,” which would otherwise be empty. If it be necessary to emend at all, one can simply omit xdprai as a gloss on books designed to show that they were blank. The slang meaning of “burlap bags”—Persian trousers—-does not seem directly relevant.

44.1 occult: Manutius wished to emend the verb “occult (ἐπιπροσθέω)” to “set down in addition ἐπιπροστίθημι),” and editors have almost universally accepted the emendation. To do so is to lose the wit of the original, and to manufacture problems, for this emendation has necessitated others to support it. Russell summarizes the problem.

The verb “occult,” which Longinus used earlier in the work (32.2), means “cast a shadow by means of which measurements are taken”; “to stand in the way of,” either as protection or as an eclipsing celestial body; and “to intercept or prevent” the view of someone else (LSJ).The point being “occulted” in these several ways is a profound one: why did oratory decline?—and (since oratory was virtually syn­ onymous with culture in antiquity)—why did culture decline in the first centuries of the Christian era? Longinus will “occult” the subject in a multiplicity of metaphors; he will “protect” Terentianus from superficial and conventional views; and he will “intercept or prevent” these views from full expression. The subject was a dark one, and we may or may not find Longinus’ answer impressive; but we ought to see it as the culmination of his concern for aiding men to engage successfully in the most sublime model of conduct that pagan antiquity knew: articulate service in and administration of the polity.

44.4. boils: a compound form of the verb ζέω, to which Longinus had objected as low and cacophonous in Herodotus (43.1). It is appropriate here because the subject is “low”—a slave—and because the form does not contain so many sibilants as that in Herodotus. Russell objects to the word as inappropriate “to the passive quality of submission” and suggests emending it to “the non-classical. . .’revives'” (ἀναζέω). But of course Longinus refers to the natural resentment of man at being deprived of his divine power of speech (logos). Roman comedies how us how pert and saucy slaves could be with their master; the slave revolts, of which that led by Spartacus in the first century bce is only the most famous, show the darker side of the picture.

44.5. mouths: the text is badly corrupt throughout the sentence; “dwarves” (νᾶνοι)” is νάοι; the verb parallel to “restricts” is a meaningless group of letters συνάροι)”; and in the last clause the word “mouths στόμασι )” was emended by Scaliger to “bodies (σώμασι),” an emendation universally accepted. Since we do not know what the parallel verb is, it seems reckless to change “mouths” to “bodies”; the logic of the passage requires some verb different not simply in degree but in kind as well (“not only…but also”). Because dwarves were produced both by cramping confinement and by deprivation of food, “mouths” may well be the right reading. Some kind of “bond” may have been put all around their mouths, like a muzzle on a dog, to prevent any chance feeding by a sympathetic passer-by or even by self-cannibalism. Since we do not know the details of dwarf-rearing, we cannot tell.

If Scaliger’s emendation be accepted, however, a verb indicating difference both of degree and of kind must be devised. Many emendations for the meaningless letters συνάροι have been suggested (see Russell’s note and apparatus); to these we would like to add one more-the verb σθνερείδω, which means to “compress tightly, to bind tightly with a bond.” It is used of binding or strapping a boxer’s fists with thongs (Theocritus 22.68) and of hands bound tightly on a prisoner (Euripides, lphigeneia in Taurus 457); and the simple form is used of bandages put on too tightly(LSJ).The subject of both verbs will be “cages”; the object of both verbs will be “development”: the confinement not only restricts growth from developing naturally but also cramps and binds it in, like the feet of Chinese women in former ages.

Such, at least, is the kind of verb needed if we read “bodies”; other emendations may work about as well. So long as the emendation is of this nature, the philo­ sopher’s analogy will work out symmetrically and even schematically:

• imperial citizens: dwarves
• slavery of empire: cages
• swaddling-clothes: bonds

Over the course of several generations, it would be possible to breed mini-men and slaves just as it was possible to breed miniature dogs. Furthermore, the external technique implied would fit with the philosopher’s view, that because of cultural decline is purely external. Remove the cage of empire and the bonds of custom and the resultant freedom would produce a cultural revival.

If we read “mouths,” the metaphor is not so sustained-though of course we need not give the philosopher credit for sustaining a metaphor in the manner of Longinus and of his master Plato-but it will make sense: imperial slavery will have muzzled the free speech of man. Neither the syntactical nor metaphorical difficulties are insuperable. The cages, like muzzles, affect both the development of the body and the “development”—in its rhetorical sense—of the mind and its organ, the mouth. We have therefore retained the m.s. reading.

44.8 its own bloated parts: there is a textual crux here: the phrase “its own parts” has modifying it the letters καπανητα, which is not a word: consequently most editors simply delete it (see Russell for emendations). We would suggest the word καπανίκος, which Aristophanes uses (Frogs 492) to describe meals. Hesychius interpreted the word to mean “enormous”; we have translated it “bloated” to continue the luxurious extravagant lives that have died of dropsy swellings. Russell thinks that, if any emendation is accepted, there ought to be a parallel adjective for “immortal parts,” but Longinus does not always aim for such Isocratean balance. The sting of the epithet lies partly in the absence of any balancing adjective, partly in the force of “develop.” Because the immortal parts are not developed, there is no quality to be described; they have dwindled and withered away. “Develop,” of course, picks up the philosopher’s use of the word in the conceit of the pygmies (44.5), for once again Longinus is distinguishing between a difference of degree and a difference of kind.

Behind the notion of immortal parts lies the Platonic notion that the logos is divine; see Russell’s note for citations.