Chapter 4: False Wit

But  Timaeus is full of that other fault we have spoken of—I mean “false wit.” He is a man sufficient in other respects, though, and sometimes not barren in greatness in speeches and writings; he is a poly­ math and is intent on perceiving. Yet he is out to prove the mistakes of others while unconscious of his own, and from his “erotic” passion for always exciting strange conceptions, he often falls into the most adolescent kind of humor. 2. But I shall set down only one or two citations from this fellow, since Caecilius has indeed taken up most of them first. In praising Alexander the Great, he says:

He took over the whole of Asia in fewer years than it took Isocrates to write his “panegyric” speech about the war against the Persians.

Wonderful, this comparative judgment of the Macedonian with the sophist!0 Timaeus! It is obvious, you see, that Spartan manhood was left far behind that of Isocrates, since the Spartans took over Messene in thirty years, while he organized his Panegyricus in ten.

3. How does he voice his epigram about the Athenians who were seized in Italy?

Having been impious to Hermes and having mutilated his statues, they were for this reason punished, and not least on account of one man who was descended from the offended god: Hermocrates, the son of Hermon.

So it makes me wonder, my most pleasing Terentianus, how it was that he did not write also of the tyrant Dionysius:

Since, as we know, he was impious towards Zeus and Heracles, Dion and Heracleides for this reason took away his tyranny.4.

But why ought we speak of Timaeus when even those heroes—I am speaking of Xenophon and Plato (and they were from the Socratic gymnasium!)—sometimes forget themselves because of such trivial graces? Xenophon writes in his The Constitution of the Lacedaemonians:

The Spartans were as silent as stones, their eyes as motionless as those statues, and you would take them to be as modestly virginal as the pupils of their eyes.

It was appropriate for an Amphicrates and not for a Xenophon to speak of the pupils of the eyes as modest virgins—as if, by Heracles, one could be persuaded that the pupils of all those Spartans’ eyes were consistently virginal in their modesty, whereas, they say, the immodesty of anyone is expressed in nothing so much as in the eyes! Homer says of one who is headstrong, “Drunk, with the eyes of a dog.”

5. Timaeus, though, like a thief holding onto some kind of poison, did not leave this piece of false Xenophontine wit alone. Speaking of Agathocles, how he kidnapped his cousin (who had been given to another man) from her wedding and went off, Timaeus says:

Who would have done such a thing if he had had modest pupils in his eyes rather than whorish pupils?

6. And again, Plato, divine in other respects, when he wanted to say “writing tablets,” declares:

They shall place their writings m their temples on cypress memorials.

Another time, he writes:

As for the walls, Megill us, I would agree with the Spar­ tans in letting the walls lie down in the earth and sleep there, and not arouse them.

7. That Herodotean saying is not much different from this sort of writing, that beautiful women are a “pain in the eyes”—although, of course, there is some consolation in the fact that in Herodotus’ account, barbarians were the ones saying this, and they were in a drunken state; but such words should not come even out of the mouths of barbarians—because of the pettiness of soul involved—for there is no beauty in performing ugly actions before the ages.

Commentary

Timaeus: a Sicilian historian of the third century BCE noted for his carping manner. He was violently and lengthily attacked by Polybius (12).

that other fault: because of the lacuna, editors debate what the phrase “that other fault” refers to: Russell (p. 7 of his Introduction, n. 1) discusses the prob­lem and gives references to contempor­ ary discussions. Thus far Longinus has taken up the paratragic (“beyond the tragic”), the turgid, undergraduate wit, and parenthyrson (see ch. 3); he has said that undergraduate wit, if carried too far, degenerates into “false wit”—our candidate for “that other fault”—(see ch. 3, n. on false wit), but he did not discuss false wit at any length in ch. 3. In ch. 4, he returns to the topic, which he had interrupted for his discussion of parenthyrson.

Turgidity and undergraduate wit are extremes of “swelling,” but they are not exclusively excess and deficiency, for the deficiency of “swelling” has several forms. Two of these are undergraduate wit and parenthyrson; but undergradu­ate wit is a species of a larger genus, false wit. Since the word for “undergraduate wit” signifies a youth, and since Timaeus—Longinus’ first example of false wit—is markedly called a “man,” it would appear that false wit is adult undergraduate wit. See J. A. Coulter, “PERI YPSOYS 3.3-4 and Aristotle’s Theory of the Mean,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 5 (1964): 197- 213, where the problem is discussed at length.

erotic passion: for the strong word “erotic passion” see note on loving of esteem, ch. 35. An English phrase like “positive mania” would be more idio­matic. “Erotic passion” is the last of Longinus’ group of terms for this youth­ful vice.

“panegyric”: the most famous speech composed by Isocrates, the contempor­ary of Plato. At the end of the Phaedrus, Socrates says of the young Isocrates that he could, if he chose to, outstrip ev­eryone in philosophy. But Isocrates elect­ ed to devote himself to politics and pol­ itical science. Handicapped by a weak voice, he wrote rather than delivered speeches, something in part like a mod­ern political columnist or editorial wri­ter. Isocrates was also like the head of a “school of foreign affairs,” for he found­ed a school and numbered among his pupils many of the future leaders of the ancient Hellenic world. Furthermore, he was probably the most important rhetorician who ever lived; his concern for style led to the perfection of a bal­anced periodic sentence, the style adopt­ ed by Cicero and handed through him to western Europe, where it shaped the logic of most of Europe’s major lan­guages. His Panegyricus, a speech in praise of Athens and Athenian culture, took ten years to compose. The author’s sense of style was Tennysonian; he once composed a speech in which not one instance of hiatus occurred (no two suc­cessive words ended and began with vowels). Cf. R. P. Blackmur’s essay “Lord Tennyson’s Scissors,” Kenyon Review 14 (1952): 1-20.

Russell remarks that Longinus uses the word “sophist” (which turns up in the next sentence as a way of referring to Isocrates) only in a bad sense. This is the only use of the word in the text, but the derivatives of “sophist” that appear are derogatory. When Longinus censures a device as “sophistical”—as he does in 23.4—he is referring to the style of Gor­gias and the later rhetoricians, not to Isocrates. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Composition 19, ad fin.) distin­guishes sharply between Isocrates him­self, whose graces concealed his monot­ony, and his followers, who lacked the master’s grace.

comparative judgment: the Greek word technically means a critical judgment comparing two authors. Such a com­parison may be produced either (a) by a bloc-technique in which first the quali­ties of A and then of B are successively listed or (b) by a series of balanced clauses which set off comparable quali­ ties of each author against the other. Longinus performs a “comparative judgment” of the second kind between Demosthenes and Cicero in ch. 12.

For a splendid specimen of form (b) in English, see Johnson’s comparison of Dryden and Pope, in the Life of Pope, part of which we quote here:

The style of Dryden [in prose] is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform; Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden’s page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope’s is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller … If the flights of Dryden are therefore higher, Pope continues longer on the wind. If of Dryden’s fire the blaze is brigh­ter, of Pope’s the heat is more reg­ular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.

The passage is worth studying both for the subtle variety of its sentence­ structure, achieved within an almost formulaic design, and as an example of development (amplificatio: see ch. 12 of Longinus).

S. F. Bonner, in The Literary Trea­tises of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), p. 9, suggests that Caecilius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus pio­neered in the development of “compar­ative judgment.” The fragments of Caecilius are too scant to allow any judgment; Dionysius is a very painstak­ing and judicious master of the bloc­ technique of comparison. His extant specimens, however, do not reveal the sophisticated development which we find in Longin us. Perhaps the explana­tion lies in what Bonner calls the “polemical” quality of Longinus. Theon, in his Progymnasmata (Spen­gel 2.113-15), defines “comparative judgment” as a speech which estab­lishes something as better or worse than something else: it may deal with per­sons (like Ajax vs. Odysseus) or with things (like wisdom vs. courage), but the method will be the same. In com­paring persons, Theon recommends attention to things like birth, education, offspring, position, reputation, and physical condition.

voice his epigram: the noun of this verb is a Greek rhetorical term, defined, most simply, by the anonymous work On Figures (Spengel 3.116) as a device used at the end of a speech that is somewhat unexpected or paradoxical but not for­eign to what was said before. Although the English word “epigram” is about as close as we can come, it suggests too much a sentence of wit to the exclusion of stylistic elegances or pure intellectual force. Theon (Progymnasmata [Spen­ gel 2.91]) remarks that the device is not suitable for history or political speeches but for the stage and theatre. Hamlet’s line “The time is out of joint” or Mac­beth’s “Damned be him who first cries ‘hold, enough’ ” are examples of this kind of “epigram,” for a gnomic notion is embodied in dramatic diction and context. Hermogenes’ definition (On Invention 4.172 pp.196ff. in Rabe’s ed.) is so generalized as to be supersubtle: any expression attached to but coming from outside the subject matter, i.e., something said from the author’s or character’s point of view about some­ thing which is not strictly in accord with the truth, although it will have to be “true to nature.”

son of Hermon: the point of this epi­ gram is a pure example of false wit, for it depends on an implied belief that the etymological similarity of the name “Hermes,” the god, and “Hermocrates” are providential and not accidental; and, even worse, it justifies its theory of providentiality by the mere fact of ety­mological similarity. Even though the Greeks placed great importance on etymological significance, this specious epigram was too much for Longinus and for his contemporary Plutarch, who also censures it (Lives, Nicias I).

tyranny: since Longinus cannot here employ his customary device of exem­plifying the mannerism under analysis in the analysis itself, he resorts to direct parody. The force of his parody is somewhat vitiated by the fact that we know of no irreverence by Dionysius toward Zeus and Heracles.

Xenophon and Plato: the ancients thought very highly of Xenophon, far more than we do today, when he has even lost his place as required reading for second-year Greek—the Attic Gallic Wars. Milton conjoins them: “the divine Plato and his equal [probably contem­porary] Xenophon” (Apology for Smec­tymnuus, The Works of John Milton, ed. Patterson et al. [New York: Colum­bia University Press, 1931], 3.305). Xeno­phon wrote excellent Greek on a variety of topics: he continued Thucydides’ interrupted history and he is the author of the only extensive contemporary ac­count of Socrates besides the dialogues of Plato. (See also ch. 8, n. on On Xenophon.)

The Constitution of the Lacedaemoni­ans: The Constitution of the Lacedae­ monians 3.5.

…of their eyes: the pun on the Greek word for “maiden” and “pupil of the eye” is not translatable. Xenophon goes on to use as a synonym for “maiden” the word “virgin”; Timaeus extends the conceit even more by using the word “prostitute.” Aristotle (fr. 1, Ross), says that lovers prefer, above all other parts of the body, to gaze at the eyes, since it is there that the sense of shame dwells. Melville’s grotesque sexual pun at the end of his cetological chapter “The Cas­ sock” (95) in Moby Dick will serve as an example in English of the same sort of pun as here occurs in Greek. Those looking this up, however, should read the whole chapter in order to under­ stand the pun—and make sure that they have a correctly printed edition.

Amphicrates: see note in ch. 3.

Homer says: Iliad 1.225.

cypress memorials: Plato, Laws 5, 741C. The phrase does not—alas—seem excessively like false wit in English; perhaps a rough parallel might be the eighteenth century mannerism on men­ tioning low items in poeticized para­phrase, e.g., “swart tribes” for “Brow­nies” (Collins, Ode of Popular Super­stitions of the Highlands of Scotland, 23) or Cowper’s picture of ashes on a fire-grate (The Task 4.292-3):

The sooty films that play upon the bars, Pendulous.

Consider also Sir Richard Blackmore’s lines, from his poem, Job:

The finny tyrant of the spacious seas
Shall send a scaly embassy for peace.

These are quoted in The Stuffed Owl (see ch. 3, n. on false wit). The device is still with us, e.g., T. S. Eliot’s “liquid siftings” on the excrement of birds (“Sweeney Among the Nightingales”).

… and not arouse them: from Plato, Laws 6, 778D. Once again (see previous note), the vice does not seem conspicu­ ous in English, to which personifica­ tion and metaphor come so easily as Lo pass almost unnoticed. Perhaps this passage from Young’s Night Thoughts (1.122-23) will illustrate the kind of vice as we find il in English:

This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule.

Or this passage from Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent (ch. 8):

And so, many an unsuspected, seemingly honest man, with the old lust in his soul, would steal out by night with his machete and perhaps a pistol, to put his fingers in the pie of darkness.

a pain in the eyes: Herodotus 5.18. Nowadays we would thoroughly enjoy the wit and realism of Herodotus’ ac­ count but Longinus’ sensitivity to de­ corum often resembles that of the eighteenth century. Addison, in Spectator 160, reproaches both the Old and New Testaments, and Homer, for falling be­ low “the nicely and correctness of the moderns”: he lists examples of such indecorous images: “Solomon resem­bles the nose of his beloved to the tower of Lebanon … the coming of a thief in the night is a similitude of the same kind …. Homer illustrates one of his heroes encompassed with the enemy by an ass in a field of corn that has his sides belabored by all the boys in the village.” And Pope found this comparison so objectionable that he translated the word “ass” as “the slow beast with heavy strength indu’d” and describes the many clubs with which the boys beat the ass as a “wooden tempest.” In a lengthy note, he appeals to Boileau and Longinus as authorities for not translating mean and low words. When, in Book 9, Phoenix says that the baby Achilles used lo vomit on the old man’s shoulder, Pope prettifies the word and, in a note, remarks: “I wish I had the authority to say These verses were foisted into the text.” Cf. Jules Brody, Boileau and Longinus (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) and W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1954) esp. chs. 1-2.