Introduction

Among the curiosities of literature is the sustained interest in rhetori­cal technique throughout antiquity and the middle ages. When we think of the precious authors and works lost, we often shudder in amaze­ment at the careful preservation of the handbooks, so many of them, so sterile and repetitive, so multiplying in distinctions that vie in subtlety with Aquinas and Scotus, but distinctions on a subject matter that seems to merit the contempt which Bacon expressed for scholasticism:

For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.

Perhaps we shall best grasp what rhetoric and rhetorical theory meant to the ancients if we look not at the glowing words of Isocrates in praise of the logos, nor even at the clinical analysis of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, but at the anonymous pages of some late rhetorician, to be found in the drab pages of Rhetores Graeci, Volumen XIV, the Prolegomenon Sylloge (ed. Hugo Rabe [Leipzig: Teubner, 1931], pp. 14-15). There the author addresses himself to the question, “Why rhetoric?”, and in his answer we see the poignant importance which the discipline had for men who knew from experience that, without the form of logos called speech, there could be no culture or civilization.

Why rhetoric? To order and ornament the life of men and the polity. This is why the rhetorician is called “political”…there are three species of rhetoric—legal, advisory, panegyrical, and without these the polity can­ not be established.

The author then examines each kind—its operation and its aim: the legal aims at justice; the advisory at counseling us to turn toward the good and away from vice for our own advantage; the panegyric at what is fine. At the end of each, like a refrain in a chorus, come the words: “without this, the polity cannot be established.”

Such, then, is the aim of panegyric, of praise: to extol the good and to censure vice. Neither Roman emperors—with notable exceptions, like Marcus Aurelius, who went out of his way to hear the precocious rhetori­cian Hermogenes, and who once lectured the Roman Senate on the immor­tality of the soul—nor Roman culture much cared to hear its vices censured. The Latin voice of Juvenal, for all his passion and power, all his rhetorical philosophy, could not dent them; what chance had a small written speech, Platonic in its rhetoric, Aristotelian in its logic, composed by an unknown Greek, have on that culture? We may hope that in our day, which has seen one revival of its accidental preservation, we may experience another revi­val, in which more attention is paid to the moral as well as the aesthetic benefit to be gained from its pages.

As Samuel H. Monk has shown,^[1] that first revival came when Longinus had a huge vogue in the eighteenth century; a rough parallel would be the mixed vogue and influence of Freud on the first half of the twentieth century. As with Freud, Longinian terminology, insight, and viewpoint became such a part and parcel of both the critics and their laity that in the nineteenth century he was simply subsumed.^[2] His influence has continued to operate in this subsumed and subterranean way in the twentieth century. Yet if we take the three most influentially famous critics of antiquity­ Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus—it is to Longinus that contemporary students make their most sympathetic and empathetic response. The rea­sons are not hard to find. First, Longinus combines sophistication of critical expertise with spontaneity of response. Second, he passes his critical judg­ments with skill and wit and he is perfectly willing to make aesthetic evaluations in clear and superior tones. He bases his aesthetic on his high sense of man’s dignity, which he places squarely in the logos (chapter 7 especially), but he sees this human superiority as taking its origin in responses to grand natural phenomena—such as volcanoes and oceans­ and their authentic artistic evocations. In short, Longinus makes literary criticism an art.

It is virtually certain that Longinus is writing to rebut the views of Caecilius of Calacte, a rhetorical theorist whose life spanned the first century BCE and the first century CE and who was a friend and contem­porary of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Longinus attacks Caecilius with vigorous outbursts of indignation and amazement. Indeed, the excuse for writing On the Sublime came from a reading of Caecilius which Longin us and Terentianus conducted together (1.1); it was the defects of Caecilius’ work which roused their interest in the subject, for Caecilius failed to treat it worthily by omitting the main points; furthermore, Caecilius gave thou­ sands of examples but never discussed the means of attaining the sublime. In rebuttal, Longinus takes the very principles advanced by Caecilius, chooses a parallel set of authors, and proceeds to perform his own compari­son as a means of demolishing those principles. In the process, Longinus hopes to be writing something useful for men in public life. Sublimity is to have a practical use.

The Structure of On the Sublime

Longinus’ treatise is cast in the form of a classical oration. Such a speech, as Aristotle (Rhetoric 1414b ff.) observes, has four parts: the exordium, narra­tive (also referred to as “exposition”), proof, and peroration.^[3] The exor­dium, Aristotle says, may be either irrelevant to the speech, as when Isocrates engages in a tirade against the sophists in his speech in praise of Helen, or intimately connected with the speech. Longinus launches imme­diately into his subject, referring to Caecilius’ book on sublimity, which he and his pupil Terentianus found insufficient. He never digresses from his subject during the exordium, even when he discusses the side-issue of whether art or nature is responsible for sublimity. The subject matter of the exordium is praise or blame, advice, an appeal to the hearer. The speaker must persuade the hearer that the subject is important, that it concerns his own interests, that it excites wonder, and that it is pleasant. Longinus fulfills these criteria: he blames Caecilius for not setting down the manner in which we might lead our natures to greatness; he praises Caecilius, however, for his seriousness and his eagerness to perceive; he advises Terentianus to engage in critical decision with him; and he appeals to Terentianus four times, calling him “my dearest Postumius Terentianus,” “fellow pupil,” “my dear friend,” and “my most pleasing Terentianus.” The topic, Longin us says, is important, for what we have in common with the gods is “good deeds and truth,” and this speech will pursue truth and is in itself a “good deed”; it is certainly in Terentianus’ interests, for they shall “theorize on something useful for men in political life.” In studying sublimity they will learn what excites wonder, which, with its stunning power, prevails everywhere; the work will be pleasant, for it will be the mutual project of Longinus and “most pleasing Terentianus.”

A good exordium, Aristotle continues, ought also to pave the way for what follows, and we find in Longinus’ exordium an adumbration of the rest of the work. The exposition is prefigured in the short definition of sublimity as a kind of height and conspicuous excellence in speeches and writings; the phrase “mantle of the ages” will be echoed in ch. 7, the discussion of the test of time; the proof is adumbrated in the discussion of technique and nature, which figures again and again in chapters 9-43. And finally, the peroration with its discussion of cultural decline is, we would suggest, hinted at in the comments in 1.4 concerning persuasion and ecstasy-for, Longinus will argue in chapter 44, decline results from an internal moral degeneration, not from political causes. The exordium concludes with a statement of its value:

If, as I declare, he who looks down on those engaged in useful learning would make for himself a peroration of these things, he would no longer consider theorizing on the subject “too much” and useless.

An exposition—we shall use the alternative term, since one cannot “narrate” about an inanimate thing like sublimity—is a setting down of the facts of a case or situation so that the audience will be familiar with them and be able both to grasp the whole situation and to relate the succeeding proofs to its various parts. It may be compared loosely with a lawyer’s brief. The virtues of an exposition are agreed upon by all the rhetorical hand­ books: clarity, conciseness, and persuasiveness.

Because of the lacuna which comes between chapters 2 and 3, we do not know how Longinus effected his transition from introduction to exposi­tion. We pick up in the middle of a quotation, which Longin us is using to help define sublimity in an Aristotelian manner: the location of the mean by defining the extremes. Thus “swelling” is overstepping the limit of what is sublime; “undergraduate wit” is a deficiency. Because these vices are closely allied to sublimity, the prospective writer must be aware of them; hence Longinus defines and illustrates them and provides an account of what is responsible for them: the craze for novelty.

Having discussed the extremes, Longinus is now ready to define sublim­ity more fully than in his introductory definition (1.2); to provide a test for recognizing it; and to list its parts in accordance with the two categories of nature and technique, mentioned in the exordium (2.2). As the introduction had not been the irrelevant prelude allowed by Aristotle to the epideictic speech, but had instead adumbrated the exposition, so the exposition states more fully and clearly the casually introduced topics of the introduction. And as the exordium had adumbrated the exposition, so the exposition adumbrates the proofs and the peroration: chapter 5 refers to specific rhetorical devices to be discussed in the proof; chapter 7 discusses briefly the relationship of rhetoric to moral worth, the subject of the great peroration. The restated definition of sublimity appears in chapter 7: the test of time.

The two kinds of causes for sublimity—those coming from nature and those from nature and technique (or from technique alone)—are enumer­ated in chapter 8. The fivefold enumeration of the springs most productive of sublimity, with appropriate subdivisions, provides an outline for the third section of the speech.

The third part of a speech presents the “demonstration” or “proof.” The terms are used almost interchangeably by the rhetorical handbooks, although some make a distinction.^[4] Proofs, says Aristotle (Rhetoric l 355b35 ff.) come in two classes: (a) those that lack technique, like witnesses, evidence resulting from torture, and affidavits; those that are the result of technique, which are produced out of ourselves, by our character, by how the audience is disposed toward us; and (b) by the speech itself, i.e., does it say—or seem to say—what is true. Aristotle conjoins the words “demonstration” and “proof” as he begins his discussion of the matter (Rhetoric l 417b21): “The proofs ought to be demonstrative.” Such proofs will vary in their demonstrative power and exactness in accordance with the kind of speech: in court-cases, hard data and evidence are possible and consequently best; in epideictic speeches, however, the facts are taken on trust-e.g., when we hear a Fourth of July oration, we do not inquire whether George Washington really did chop down the cherry tree. In deliberative speeches, where counsel is being offered for the future, demonstration is more difficult than in lawsuits.

Longinus’ “speech” lies midway between the epideictic and the delibera­tive, for he is praising sublimity in rhetoric and is also counseling his young friend, and his readers, to strive for sublimity. His proofs consist of examples-both good and bad examples, either of which he can use to confirm his theory. And the examples depend on his taste and judgment, which few modern critics have questioned. In those places where we do question his taste or judgment, we are generally ignorant of Greek usage, rhythm, pronunciation, and so forth, a knowledge of which might enable us to see how really perceptive Longinus is. As a critic, he is that rare thing: a beautiful combination of insight and cogency, plus style, a virtue that Aristotle’s Poetics lacks.

The section of “proofs” is the longest of the four parts which survive in the manuscript; it extends from ch. 9 through ch. 43, about 50% of the extant text. Longinus refers to the largest single part of it—the technical section on “figures” (chs. 16-29)-as a “parenthesis” (29.2). Although he had censured Caecilius for trying to define by example (1.1), it was not possible for him, of course, to do his job without examples, for they are the “body” of his demonstration. Similarly, Dionysius of Halicarnassus omitted detailed examples in his analysis of Thucydides; and, when taken to task by his friend Ammaeus for the omission, regretfully turning to the method of “those who busy themselves with handbooks on technique and introduc­tions to speech-writing,” he abjured the “epideictic” form (Letter to Ammaeus 2.1).

The peroration, like the exordium, Aristotle says (Rhetoric 1419b), ought to dispose the hearer favorably towards the speaker and unfavorably towards the adversary; it should develop and diminish; it should excite the emotions of the hearer; and it should recapitulate. The use of a conversa­tion, startling after continuous exposition, surely disposes the hearer favor­ably, and especially to Longinus’ arguments, which are subtle and pro­found. The arguments of both the philosopher and Longinus are developed at length, and, in his remarks, Longinus neatly diminishes the philosopher’s points. Topics like the decline of culture—and its causes, whether political or moral—always arouse the emotions, for such are topics on which men are likely to argue.

Since one function of a peroration is to recapitulate the proofs of the demonstration, Longinus faced a difficulty in fulfilling this function: to recapitulate the various rhetorical devices by name would be dull and uninformative. Hence, he chose to “occult,” to hide their clarity by using them in the course of his philosophic and emotional arguments and in the characterization which provides the substantive form of his peroration. Development (discussed in chapter 11) Longinus parodies in the analogy drawn by the philosopher between pygmies and his contemporaries; imag­ery (discussed in chapter 15) is used throughout chapter 44—in the image of occult elucidation, the image of a harem, and the image of swaddling clothes, an image which calls too much attention to itself—a vice he had censured in Hyperides; asyndeton (discussed in chapter 19) is striking in the transition from paragraph 11 to paragraph 12; polysyndeton (discussed in chapter 21) is used in Longinus’ own speech: “hybris and lawlessness and impudent shamelessness”; change in number (discussed in chapter 23) occurs when the philosopher shifts from the plural “household servants” to the singular “slave.” And we leave it to the reader to find the rest.^[5]

Longinus and the Philosophers

After adequate study and practice in dialectic, geometry, astronomy, after the pain of intellectual and discursive agony, the Platonic soul suddenly catches fire and, by means of that seminal flame, blasts and bursts its way into the vision of ecstasy (Seventh Epistle 341c; Symposium 210e). The Longinian sublime operates in the same way: after long arid stretches and reaches of technique in the theory of rhetoric, the artist—whether of speech or writing—suddenly (12.4; 35.4) bursts into a fire of loftiness and sublimity; a kind of emotion (pathos) that both results from action (praxis) and is itself a kind of action (praxis: see Aristotle, Poetics l 452bl I). Such an artist is primarily a soul, the mere resonance of which is sublimity (9.2).

Such a comparison necessarily leads to a syncretistic synthesis of Plato and Aristotle; we have tried, in our Commentary, to show how parts of Stoic philosophy and terminology are subsumed in Longinus’ work. (For the Epicureans, of course, there is no place in Longinus’ world of technique and transcendence.) The Commentary will also show, passim, how much Longinus is Aristotelian in his methodology and terminology: if he is a Platonist at his own moments of sublimity, he is Aristotelian in those arid stretches which prepare the way to the flashing moments. And yet, for all of the Platonic spirit and the Aristotelian methodology, Longinus cannot ultimately be classified as either, any more than he can be classified as a Stoic. The differences between him and the philosophic schools are as illuminating as the similarities.

For Plato, transcendence is metaphysical: the soul goes “beyond being.”^[6] The world of nature is a world of flux, impermanence, imperfection. For Longinus, the aesthetics of this world, of nature, is its own metaphysical ultimate; in Platonic terms, Longinus remains on one of the lower rungs of the ladder of love, for in Plato the end is a knowledge of beauty itself, abstracted from all earthly manifestations (Symposium 211C).

For Aristotle—except in Book Lambda of the Metaphysics—this world is an end in itself: in those few awkward pages of the Nicomachean Ethics (1100al10-1101b9) where Aristotle discusses Solon, his views of an afterlife are tentative and doubtful; and these are all that survive to us of whatever views Aristotle may have had on the matter. In the Hymn to Hermeias, Aristotle’s view is not materially different from that of Cicero in The Dream of Scipio. Thus far Aristotle and Longinus concur. But when Aristotle discusses art-once again, in the extant works—his view never rises above the clinical. Neither in the Poetics nor in the Rhetoric do we ever find mention of sublimity as a transcendent experience; and even the famous theory of catharsis is described and analyzed as an experience of the soul in the sense of that word which Aristotle uses exclusively in the On the Soul. And the On the Soul (De Anima) deals with the soul as it is in this world. Longinus, with his emphasis on the “sudden” and blinding ecstasy of the sublime psychically far transcends Aristotle’s artistic theory, at the same time that Longinus falls short of Plato’s metaphysical transcendence.

Although Longinus is not a Stoic, he could scarcely have failed to be influenced by the Stoics. In chapter 7, he praises—in accordance with Stoic doctrine—the man who rejects all external goods, for such a man recognizes that they are not within his control; he rejects them through greatness of soul. There are, moreover, a great number of similarities in terminology with the Stoics.^[7] But Longinus differs with them fundamentally on the important matter of natural decay; a cyclic conception of death and rebirth is a prominent feature of Stoicism (e.g., Chrysippus [von Arnim 11.337 entry #1174]). This theory is applied in various simplified forms by Cicero, Seneca the Elder, and Tacitus as a possible explanation for the decline in oratorical greatness. But for Longinus, with his emphasis on nature as the source and model for both sublimity and its allied technique, a theory of cyclical decay would have been anathema-and he so indicates by never treating it as worthy of rational attention.

The Translation

There are a number of English versions of Longinus; this translation alone may claim to be an instrument of explication. Earlier English versions are readable, literate, and sometimes felicitous, but they are too often nothing more than paraphrase, looser and freer than what passed for translation in the eighteenth century.

The argument for such free versions is twofold: first, individual Greek words often have nuances that would be lost if the same English word were used each time, and, since context enables the translator to know which nuance is intended, he feels justified in using as many English words for the one Greek term as he chooses. Second, English idiom often does not allow the same word to be used each time. It seems, however, worthwhile to have at least one version which will provide the English reader with a diction as consistent as possible, a close approximation of Longin us’ syntax, and-by means of these-an appreciation of his tone of learned elegance and academic playfulness.

We have made the following translation of On the Sublime with these points in mind. To remedy the defects-though creating new ones of our own-we first compiled by computer an index of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and particles appearing in the Greek text. Use of this enabled us to make the vocabulary quite consistent. Students who do not know Greek but who wish to “explicate” Longinus will, we hope, find this translation serviceable.

Next, we avoided many standard translations of major critical terms in Longinus. The word “frigidity,” for example, as a term for a stylistic vice has no meaning nowadays, although our own age is the special victim of this mania. Hence, we have translated it as “false wit,” and for its allied terms μειρκιώδης and παιδαριώδης: we have used “undergraduate wit” and “adolescent humor.” The terms were not chosen to “jazz up” a classic; they are expressions currently used in the academic world to designate vices of style popular among the “bright young men” who write for Playboy, Esquire, and Time.

We have sought to be as literal as possible, even when we have had to stretch normal English idiom to do so; we have endeavored to follow the syntax of the original as closely as English syntax allows. Though this will produce some periods rather lengthy for modern taste, it is necessary to show two things: Longin us’ mastery of organized argument and his skill, now playful, now malicious in exemplifying the device, or vice, which he is discussing as he discusses it. We hope by this means to capture and convey Longinus’ tone of learned elegance.