Chapter 9: Nobility of Nature: Homer

But in fact the first of these has the most powerful part, and I mean nobility of nature; all the same, we must, even here—even if it is something one is born with and does not acquire—rear up our souls as much as we can to greatness and make them, as it were, pregnant over and over again with a noble inspiration. 2. In what way, you will ask. I have written in another place something like this: sublimity is the resonance of greatness of mind. As a result, sometimes a bare thought, by itself, without a voice, is wonderful because of its nobility of mind, as the silence of Ajax in the Nekuia is great and more sublime than any speech. 3. Now first it is entirely necessary to set down beforehand how it is that the true public speaker ought to have a sensibility neither low nor ignoble. You see, those whose sense of things and behavior in the whole of life are petty and appropriate to a slave are not the sort who would bring out something wonderful and worthy of the ages; but the speeches and writings of those whose thoughts are grave are, as is likely, greatest. 4. And in this way what is beyond nature falls to those who most presume to have this sensibility, as Alexander the Great did when he said to Parmenio: “I would have been content.”

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… the distance from earth to heaven. And one might say this to be the measure no more of Strife than of Homer. 5. How unlike Homer is that Hesiodic saying about Sorrow, if, of course, The Shield is to be attributed to Hesiod: out from nostrils mucus flowing.

He has made the picture not powerful, but hateful. But how does Homer magnify the daemonic:

As far as a man may see with his eyes into the mist,
As he sits on a hill-top gazing down on a wine-dark ocean,
Just so far leaped out the divine high-echoing horses.

He measures the leap of the steeds by a cosmic distance. Now who would not be likely, because of this hyperbolic greatness, to exclaim that if the horses of the gods should leap twice like that they would no longer find in the cosmos a place to land? 6. And beyond nature too are the things he has imagined about the Battle of the Gods:

Heaven, mighty Olympus, trumpeted; unseen Hades, Lord of the dead souls underneath, trembled in horror, Trembled upon the throne and screamed, lest then Earthshaker Poseidon break earth open, His home be seen by mortals and immortals, Dire, mould’ring, hated in heaven.

Do you see, fellow pupil, how the earth is split open from its profound depths, Tartarus itself laid naked, the whole cosmos appears to overturn and break up-everything at once-heaven and Hades, the mortal and the immortal-how everything at once shares together in the war and in the danger of the fighting? 7. But though these are frightening, if one were not to take them as allegory, they are otherwise impious and unobservant of what is appropriate. In my opinion, you see, Homer in representing the wounds, factions, revenges, tears, bonds, and all-confused emotions of the divinities has (to the extent of his capacity) made the human beings in the Trojan tales into divinities and the divinities into human beings. But though to us, who are subject to hard destiny, death lies ahead as a haven from evils, he has made not the nature but the lucklessness of the divinities into something for the ages. 8. But much better than the fighting of the divinities are the ways in which he has made the daemonic element stand up as something truly undefiled, great, and undiluted, such as—and the passage has been worked out by many before us—the lines on Poseidon:

Great ridges, woodlands trembled,
Crested peaks, the Trojans’ city, the ships of the Grecians,
Under moving Poseidon’s feet immortal; he walked on, Strider of waves, and playing whales from sea depths Ever emerge to behold their master. And,
Ocean exulting and parting his waves, onward his horses flew.

9. In this way also the lawgiver of the Jews, a man who did not just happen, since he made room for the power of the divine and made it appear in accordance with its worthiness, says in the introduction to his Rules, “God said”—-what?—”Let there be light, and there was; let there be earth, and there was.” 10. Perhaps I would not be troublesome, fellow pupil, if I should set down one more citation from Homer and his scenes about humans, for the sake of learning how it was his custom to keep up with heroic greatness. Suddenly mist and impenetrable night take hold of the fighting of the Hellenes; there Ajax, being without device, says:

Father Zeus, from mist these sons of Achaea deliver; Make the sky clear, and give it to our eyes to see; And in the light, at least, destroy us.

How truly the emotion is Ajax’s: you see, he does not pray to live (the request is too low for a hero); but since in the incapacitating gloom he did not have a way to apply his manhood to anything noble, being therefore under pressure because he works to no effect in the fighting, he requests light as swiftly as possible, so as to find a funeral shroud entirely worthy of his excellence-even if Zeus should fight against him. 11. But Homer breathes like a favorable breeze right there in the trials of Ajax and has himself felt no other emotion than [what these lines express]:

Mad as Ares, shaking spears, or a fire destructive,
Mad down ridges he goes, in thickets deep m a woodland,
Foam of froth on lips.

All the same, throughout the Odyssey (and this we must also theorize about for many reasons) he shows that when a great nature is declining, there is—and this is a peculiarity of old age—a love of myth. 12. It is clear for many reasons that he composed it second; indeed we know it from his having throughout the Odyssey introduced as episodes of the Trojan War what was left over from the emotional experiences of those at Ilium; and, heaven knows, from his having presented as in payment of a long recog­ nized debt wailings and lamentations for heroes. You see, the Odyssey is not other than a peroration to the Iliad:

There brave Ajax lies, and there Achilles;
There Patroclus lies, who counselled equal of heaven, There my own dear son.

13. And the same thing is responsible, I take it, for his making the whole body of the Iliad, written when his spirit was at its acme, dramatic and full of conflict, while the Odyssey is more of a narrative tale—a thing that is peculiar to old age. As a result, one may liken Homer in the Odyssey to a sun setting, the greatness of which remains apart from its intensity. He does not, you see, any longer observe a pitch equal to that of the Trojan section of the poem, nor does he keep the sublimities on a level, without any dips, nor is there a similar pouring of emotions one on the other, nor a sense of flexibility and political life made dense by imagery based on truth; but both his absorption and wanderings in the mythic and the hard to believe appear in the ebbing of his greatness, as the ocean withdrawing gradually gives room to itself and deserts within its own measures. 14. In speaking of these things, the storms in the Odyssey have not really escaped my notice nor have the lines on the Cyclops and some other lines; but my tale is of old age-still, it is the old age of Homer; notwithstanding this, in all of these the mythic consistently prevails over the action. I have discussed these side issues in order to demonstrate how very easily things great in nature once past their acme are turned into showy trifles-such as the lines on the wineskin and those on the men fed like swine in Circe’s house (“howling piglets,” as Zoilus said), and Zeus reared like a youngling by and among doves, and the ten days without food in the shipwreck, and the unpersuasive lines on the slaughter of the suitors. What else, you see, might we say of these episodes than that they are in the dreams of Zeus? 15. And what I have said about the Odyssey should be investigated for a second reason also, so that you might understand how, when their emotion is past the acme, great prose-writers and poets slip off into characterization. Such is the description of characterization in Odysseus’ household, as if it were a kind of comedy of character.

Commentary

Here begins the third part of Longin us’ “speech” (see Introduction), the “de­ monstration” or “proof.”

This chapter has always been a favor­ ite with readers, partly because of its luminous acumen, partly because of its splendid encomium of Homer, partly because it preserves one of the few extensive fragments of Sappho, partly because of its noble phrasing. Gibbon’s famous comment emphasizes the unique ability of Longinus to adapt his own style to the nature of his particular subject:

The ninth chapter is one of the finest monuments of antiquity. Till now I was acquainted only with two ways of criticizing a beautiful passage: the one to show by an exact anatomy of it the dis­ tinct beauties of it and whence they sprung; the other, an idle exclamation or general encomium which leaves nothing behind it. Longinus has shown me that there is a third. He tells me his own feelings upon reading it, and tells me with such energy that he communicates them. I almost doubt which is more sublime, Homer’s Battle of the Gods or Longinus’ apostrophe to Teren­ tianus upon it. Journal (September 3, 1762)

In 1.1, Longin us had said that Caecilius failed to show us the methods for strengthening our natures toward some progress in greatness. Here, in ch. 9, he says that even if greatness be a gift rather than an acquisition, still we can “rear up” our souls to a position where we “stand alongside it.” Technique and method, then, are ways of achieving a vertical progress parallel to, even if not identical with, natural sublimity. Since human sublimity is achieved best through logos (ch. 39), and since rhe­ toric is a logos about logos, man’s greatness and sublimity will always comprise an inseparable blend of nature and technique; but the parts can be dis­ tinguished by technique (ch. 2). On “rearing up” this “second nature,” see ch. 44, n. on abilities we have in us.

resonance: generally translated as “echo” (Pearce, Roberts, Grube, Rus­ sell, Dorsch); Prickard has “the note which rings” and Fyfe has “true ring.” The Greek verb from which it comes means to “sound, ring, peal” (LSJ); it is used of metal, grasshoppers, the tinkle one gets in one’s ears. The verb “re­ sound” is perhaps the most accurate and general translation.

silence of Ajax: the scholiast on Homer (Odyssey 11.536) remarks that Ajax’s silence is clearly better than the speeches of the tragedians. Aeschylus, who imi­ tated Homer carefully, employed the device frequently: the most notable ex­ ample occurs in the protracted silence of Cassandra in the Agamemnon. Had Longinus been minded to, as Greek critics universally were not, he could have cited, as a Latin example, Virgil’s famous imitation, in the meeting of Dido and Aeneas (Aeneid 6.440-76). Addison wittily prides himself (Tatler 133) on being the first to discover the resemblance of the two scenes. Tatler 133 deals with the effect which silent moments and scenes in literature exert as “more significant and sublime than the most noble and expressive elo­ quence, and … on many occasions the indication of a great mind.” English tragedians, Addison says, are defective in using the device.

On Greek critical silence with respect to Roman literature, see G.M.A. Grube, A Greek Critic: Demetrius on Style (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), p. 15. Grube’s introduction con­ tains an excellent summary of Greek critical theory.

I would … content: the full story is told in Arrian’s Alexander (2.25.2): Parmenio was one of Alexander’s generals; after one of the high points of his master’s campaigning he said that if he were Alexander, he would stop fighting; Alexander replied that he would, too, if he were Parmenio. Russell quotes an amusing parallel from Sterne’s Tristam Shandy (ch. XXXIX), which mentions the name Longinus.

Strife: the description of the goddess Strife appears in the Iliad (4.440 ff.):

At first she rears her crest a little bit, but then

She fixes her head in heaven and steps on the earth.

Hesiod: Longinus’ doubt about the authenticity of this work (The Shield of Heracles) is shared by many, but the question is still disputed. The verse quoted is line 267. The poem is a kind of miniature epic, technically called a “lay”; there is a brief but good descrip­ tion and criticism of the poem in Sir Maurice Bowra’s Landmarks in Greek Literature (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1966), pp. 65-66. Compari­ sons of Homer and Hesiod are inevita­ ble. There survives an ancient poem entitled The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, in which the two poets compete by reciting favorite passages; although Hesiod loses every Lime, he is awarded the prize al the end because he celebrates farming and peace whereas Homer cele­ brates war.

mucus flowing: Longinus goes on to call this image “hateful” rather Lhan “frightening”; the distinction is itself nicely distinguished from that made in 3.1, where the images were described as what we “sense below ourselves” rather than “frightening.”

William Smith, in his eighteenth century translation, observes that Mil­ ton handles a loathesome scene—the lazar-house in Paradise Lost XI.479 ff.-with “judiciousness”:

A Lazar-house it seem’d, wherein were laid

Numbers of all diseas’d, all maladies

Of ghastly spasm, or racking Lor­ Lure, qualms

Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,

Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,

lntestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,

Daemoniac frenzy, moping mel­ ancholy,

And moon-struck madness, pin­ ing atrophy,

Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,

Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint­ racking rheums.

The problem here is like thal of low diction: see ch. 43.

daemonic: an extremely hard word to translate; technically a daemon is a kind of divinity imermediate between gods and man. In antiquity such a being could be either good or bad; our word “demon,” derived from it, is only bad. The Homeric passage is from Iliad 5.770-72.

Battle of the Gods: the quotation is conflated from Iliad 20.61-65, 21.338 and 750. In general, Longinus seems to quote from memory; to have conflated lines so far apart suggests how well the ancients were able to keep in mind what they read. Demetrius (83) objects to the opening line of the quotation: the met­ aphor, he says, is appropriate to petti­ ness rather than to greatness, for the whole heaven is too big to be compared to one trumpet.

you see: Longinus’ sentence imitates the split which he is describing; even the repeated use of “at once”-logically unnecessary-contributes to the sense of excitement.

allegory: Allegorical interpretation of Homer is of very early ancestry; it goes back to the sixth century B.C., to Me­ trodorus of Lampsacus. The most extensive collection we have of such interpretation is found in the Homeric Questions of Heracleitus, a late compilation (first century A.D.), which begins exactly like Longinus: “Homer is everywhere impious, unless he be allegorized.” Grube (A Greek Critic, p. 134) traces the history of the word. The term “allegory” itself literally means “addressing something in another or different way.” Allegory is different from metaphor because it affects not one word but many. Cicero (Letters to Atticus 2.20.3) says that he will obscure his discussion of the current and dangerous political situation “in allegories.” Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Letter to Pompeius 2) complains of Plato’s “long and numer­ ous allegories, which have neither right measure nor right timing.” By the time of Quintilian, the word has almost our modern meaning: in 8.6.44, he says that Horace’s poem on “Ship of State” (Odes 1.4) is an allegory. In 8.6.54, how­ ever, Quintilian shows that he is famil­ iar with the rhetorical connection of allegory and irony. For the technique of allegorizing consider this interpretation by Charles Feidelson, Jr., of the passage from Moby Dick quoted as passage C in chapter 3 (n. on beyond the tragic):

In one way, the sea mocks Pip by preserving him alive (his “finite body” is saved) but mad (his “in­ finite soul” is drowned). But where­ as the previous discussion of Pip in this chapter emphasizes the “unnatural” aspects of his expe­ rience, this passage primarily deals with the compensations for his suffering. From this standpoint, he has been granted an insight that seems mad to normal men but is really “heaven’s sense.” The depths of the sea were like the earliest foundations of the uni­ verse (“the unwarped primal world”) where wisdom is hidden, and also like the realm of God, where creation goes on eternally. The coral insects building up their reefs through aeons were like the divine (“God­ omnipresent”) force that made the land on the third day of Crea­ tion (Genesis 1:9). God himself became present to Pip in the form of a Great Weaver with his foot on the Loom of Time (a phrase used in chapter XLVII). (Herman Melville, MobyDick, ed. Charles Feidelson, Jr. (In­ dianapolis, New York: Bobbs­ Merrill, 1964), p. 530, n. 7.)

haven from evils: The image goes back at least as far as Aeschylus and appears in Epictetus and Cicero. Longinus’ words fall into iambics, as Russell ob­ serves, and may contain a submerged quotation.

the lines on Poseidon: A conflation of several passages from the Iliad: 13.18, 20.60, I3.l 9, 27.29. For an excellent dis­ cussion of the passage as an example of Longinus’ conception of the “sublime” see Erich Auerbach’s Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (New York: Parnheon Books, 1965) pp. 225-28.

the lawgiver of the Jews: A citation by a Greek critic from a biblical source is almost unique; hence the passage has been suspected as no authentic. Lon­ ginus’s quotation does not correspond with the ancient Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint; either he was quoting from memory, or—if he was himself Jewish, like Caecilius—he may simply have made his own translation. Philo (That the Worse is Wont to Attack the Better 79), in commenting on a passage from Genesis, 4.10, says that he will confine himself to the ideas, but he “sublimity” of the style is, he says, ”well known to all who are not unini­ tiated in literature.” His remark will not, presumably, have been addressed only to Jews, whether those who read Hebrew or the Greek Septuagint; it will therefore apply also to non-Jews, or Jews who had drifted almost completely away from their ancestral faith. Caeci­ lius was apparently Jewish and may have fit either category. Philo describes Moses by the word “lawgiver”; his Life of Moses is one of his most extensive works and is clearly aimed at a non­ Jewish audience. It is possible that Longinus read the book, and the fol­ lowing points made by Philo perhaps make the possibility likely: I) on the opening page, Philo calls Moses the “lawgiver of the Jews”; 2) he says that one reason for his writing the life of Moses is the failure of Greek writers to pay attention to him, although know­ ledge of Hebrew culture is widespread; 3) he says (1.31) that Moses was superior to chance (see next note), and tells the story of Moses and Pharaoh’s daughter in such a way as to demonstrate the point; 4) Philo’s account of the way in which the Septuagint was composed suggests widespread knowledge of and about it (11.25 ff.). Philo’s own Greek versions of the Hebrew often differ from those of the Septuagint Russell’s note provides a summary of the controversy over the authenticity of the passage; his conclusion is sound: “The burden of proof lies with those who think the passage interpolated …. we have here a sort of parenthesis in the discussion … Compare the reference to Hesiod in 9.5, which illustrates Homer by contrast as does this by similarity. Neither is essential, both are helpful.”

just happen: the phrase is a regular Greek idiom used to show that the point in question, thought extraordi­ nary, is not the result of chance but of explicable causes (see previous note). If Longinus were a Hellenized Jew, the little phrase “did not just happen” which he applies to Moses, and which he does not elaborate at all, may reveal a lingering Hebraic piety. At all events, Longin us is introducing an alien author to a pagan audience and claiming for him a respect equal to that given Homer.

Rules: The Rules are the Nomoi, i.e., the Pentateuch, usually referred to as the Torah or Law. One often acquires a new sense of ancient works by translat­ ing their titles accurately, e.g., Plato’s Polity instead of Republic: its connec­ tion with Aristotle’s Politics becomes clearer.

what: The syntax is difficult; we follow the punctuation and logic of William Smith and Russell. As Smith remarks (and claims the observation to be origi­ nal), “That interrogation between the narrative part of the words of the Almighty himself, carries with it an air of reverence and veneration. It seems designed to awaken the reader and raise his awful attention to the voice of the great Creator.”

being without device: The Greek is the negative form of the word from which we derive “machine,” the word used in the Latinized Greek phrase deus ex machina, that is, a mechanism for solv­ ing a problem. Our older use of the English word “device,” as in the bibli­ cal phrase “neither knowledge nor device,” catches both senses.

Ajax … says: The quotation is from Iliad 17.645-47. The simple clauses of Ajax’s request, and even some of the diction (“deliver us” and “give us”), are remm1scent of the Lord’s Prayer, in which reverence and simple dignity are also combined.

funeral shroud: The word in the plural refers to funeral rites. The metaphor suggests the divine light enwraps him like a shroud as he dies and is buried. It is a metaphor used by Philostratus in Lives of the Sophists (502, 590, 600), where famous rhetoricians are said to have glory or good will as their “funeral shroud.” In Homer, as throughout anti­ quity, burial was an elaborate process. The fullest account in Homer is given in the burial of Hector (Iliad 24.718 ff.); Lucian, in his essay On Lamentation, shows how elaborate the practice was in late antiquity.

Mad as Ares … lips: Homer, Iliad 15.605-07. The quotation is slightly adapted to make the words, which in Homer describe Hector, applicable to Homer himself.

love of myth: Aristotle, in the Nicoma­ chean Ethics ( l l l 7b34), says that certain kinds of men like to sit around and tell stories; there is something of the same pejorative sense as we find in Longinus.

composed it second: Whether Homer wrote the Iliad or the Odyssey first was much debated in antiquity. Russell’s note contains a summary of the argu­ ments and references.

episodes: The word “episode” is used by Aristotle (Poetics l 452b20) to denote one of the quantitative parts of tragedy (prologue, episode, exode, and chorus). It refers to someone entering a place where others (the chorus in a tragedy) are already located; the result is an “incident”or “scene,” or—if long enough, an “act” in a play.

peroration: Almost universally trans­ lated as “epilogue” (Roberts, Prickard, Fyfe, Einarson, Russell, Dorsch); Grube has “sequel.” “Epilogue” is little more than a transliteration of the Greek word; its two senses in English are not accu­ rate renderings (one, a short piece com­ ing at the end of a play, addressed to the readers; two, the concluding section of a novel, designed to complete the plan of the book). Longin us uses the noun only one other time (12.5), where it has its normal technical sense, the peroration of a speech. Einarson, in his note, sug­ gests “peroration” as an alternative translation and properly points out that, in the later rhetoricians, a perora­ tion contained as one of its three parts an appeal to pity. Longinus shows that he is using the word here with this point in mind: the epilogue, he says in ch. 12, is one of the places where intense emo­ tion is appropriate. Longinus’ use of the word, then, is a bold rhetorical image: he conceives of the Iliad and the Odyssey as one great “speech-writing,” of which the Odyssey is the peroration.

The emphasis on “wailings and lamen­ tations,” which produce pity, and the parallel use in ch. 12, confirm this interpretation.

There brave Ajax ... dear son: Homer, Odyssey 3.109-11.

acme: The word is probably a pun, for the word “acme” also has a special meaning in rhetorical terminology. It means something like a supreme effort, a culmination, of poetic and psychic energies in a brief passage or a single sentence. Hermogenes associates the vir­ tue especially with Homer, and all three uses of the word in Longinus (here and in 9. I 4 and 9. I5) refer to Homer.

sun: In 17.2Longinusemploysanother image of the sun; there he says that as the dimmer lights of the stars are ob­ scured by the brillance of the sun, so the rhetorical sophisms dim out when great­ ness is poured over them from every­ where. Sappho (frag. 34) uses a similar image of the moon: “Around the lovely moon the stars lose their brilliant beauty when her silver light illumines the world at its fullest.”

political life: As Russell notes, “Lon­ ginus judges Homer here from the standpoint of a teacher of [political speeches].” Plato, in his dialogue Ion, attacks the view of Homer as the father of all knowledge; but later rhetoricians constantly cite Homeric examples, and a paean to Homer similar to Ion’s appears in pseudo-Plutarch’s Life and Poetry of Homer. Longinus himself thought of his work as an aid for men in political life (1.2).

its own measures: The passage is diffi­ cult and much disputed; Russell sum­ marizes the various interpretations and arguments. Longinus uses two natural metaphors for the aging Homer: the setting sun and the withdrawing ocean. Both images picture a glory and sub­ limity that are lessening. What picture does Longinus have in mind-(a) the normal flow and ebb of the ocean or (b) some extraordinary flow and ebb? We argue, for a variety of reasons, that the phrase “its own measures” suggests interpretation (b): the measures of the ocean are not determined only by low tide but by high tide as well. If the ocean is withdrawing to its own measures, those measures must be the flexible ones determined by normal ebb and flow. Hence the ocean will have flooded and then withdrawn. The flood will repre­ sent Homer at his most sublime, in the Iliad; the withdrawal will represent Homer in his gradual decline, in the Odyssey. Consult the Supplementary Note in Appendix C for the full argu­ ment.

discussed these side issues: Although the verb in Greek is usually translated as “digressed,” the English word is mis­ leading, for it suggests irrelevance. Use of the device was, though not necessary, never irrelevant: it was an attempt to bring in material of a subordinate, and emotional, nature as a way of reinforc­ ing the main point. The Romans trans­ lated the noun as both digressio and aggressio.

howling: Russell raises the question of whether the Greek word means “squeal­ ing” or “weeping.” “Is Zoilus com­ plaining about the vulgarity of the des­ cription or the improbability of pigs shedding tears?” Longinus uses the word only here. We have translated the word as “howling” to preserve the ambiguity.

the wineskin... the suitors: The inci­ dents alluded to occur in Homer in the following places: the wineskin: Odyssey 10.17: the piglets: Odyssey 10.237; the chick: Odyssey 12.62; the shipwreck: Odyssey 20.447; the suitors: Odyssey 22 passim.

Zoilus: A fourth century (bce) Cynic, he has become the type of the carping, nil-picking critic for his sustained attacks on Homer; his nickname was “he who goads al Homer.” His closest English analogue is the eighteenth cen­ tury critic John Dennis, who used the same kind of brutally captious logic on the poems of Pope. None of Zoilus’ work survives except for the quotations in the Homeric scholia.

the dreams of Zeus: The allusion has not been identified. Russell cites Dio Chrysostom (11.129), where the Odys­ sey is called a dream. The problem is grammatical: is the genitive objective or subjective—do the dreams come from Zeus or are they about Zeus or are they the dreams which he has? Russell, probably rightly, elects for the last: Homer is the Zeus of poets. If so, then the phrase is perhaps a jocular allusion to the proverbial phrase “Homer nods,” which is modeled on the pictures of Zeus sleeping while events escape his notice: see Iliad 24.346-60 and Lucian’s Timon 2-3.

emotion… characterization: Aristotle says that each of Homer’s two major poems has a twofold nature: the Iliad is simple and straightforward and emo­ tional; the Odyssey is complex and deals with characterization (Aristotle, Poetics 1459bl4-16). Works that dealt with character and characterization, that is, which were what we call “realistic,” were in antiquity generally comic, for they lacked “seriousness and tension” (Russell). The plays of Menander—of which we now have a complete speci­ men, the Dyscolus—make very clear what the ancients meant by “characteri­ zalion.” Neither Longinus nor Aristotle means that the characterization is better in the Odyssey than in the Iliad; the characters in the Odyssey are what we call more natural, more lifelike, more domestic. The Elizabethan genre of “domestic tragedy” (e.g., Heywood’s A Woman Killed With Kindness) as com­ pared withh Hamlet or Macbeth reveals the same difference in characterization. An anonymous Art of Rhetoric (Spengel 1.427-28) defines emotion as an “opportune condition of the psyche, exciting a more intense attraction or repulsion, such as pity, anger, fear, hate, desire. It differs from character or char­ acterization thus: emotion is hard to excite, character is easy to excite, for character is a disposition of the soul that is ingrained and hard to let go of, such as that of fathers for their sons.” Deme­ trius, in his book On the Structure of Sentences, remarks that character is often revealed by the jokes a man tells (171), and that the letter, like the dia­ logue, is full of character: nowhere more than in letters, he says, do men reveal their souls and their characters.

Sophocles described the plays of his last period (e.g., Electra, Philoctetes) as plays of characterization and the best (Plutarch, Moralia 79b). Neoptolemus is more natural and lifelike than Hae­ mon or Antigone; so, too, in Shake­ speare we can see a greater naturalness in Miranda and Ferdinand, however lightly they are sketched in detail and significance, than in Cordelia and Edgar. In Homer, we may compare the characterization of Telemachus and the swineherd with such figures from the Iliad as Patroclus and Diomedes. Works dominated by emotion go to extremes either of sublimity or baseness; those dominated by characterization work in a narrower range of human nature.

a comedy of character: The phrase is often translated “comedy of manners” (Roberts, Grube, Einarson, Russell); Prickard, Fyfe, and Dorsch render it, as we do, “comedy of character.” The phrase “comedy of manners” has per­ haps too close an association with Res­ toration comedy to be quite accurate; even today it suggests sophisticated life in the upper classes, as in the plays of Noel Coward. In modern times, the novel best illustrates the mode, e.g., Richardson, Fielding, Jane Austen, Thackeray—Dickens sometimes, though he tends to burst the bonds of this mode and become too full of emo­ tion—Trollope, and Marquand. Greek novels were not a serious genre and were too highly romantic to be used as illustrations by the ancient critics, although they have many natural touches.