Chapter XLIV

There is still another point which remains to be cleared up, my dear Terentian, and on which I shall not hesitate to add some remarks, to gratify your inquiring spirit. It relates to a question which was recently put to me by a certain philosopher. "To me," he said, "in common, I may say, with many others, it is a matter of wonder that in the present age, which produces many highly skilled in the arts Of popular persuasion, many of keen and active powers, many especially rich in every pleasing gift of language, the growth of highly exalted and wide-reaching genius has with a few rare exceptions almost entirely ceased. So universal is the dearth of eloquence which prevails throughout the world.

2 "Must we really," he asked, "give credit to that oft-repeated assertion that democracy is the kind nurse of genius, and that high literary excellence has flourished with her prime and faded with her decay? Liberty, it is said, is all-powerful to feed the aspirations of high intellects, to hold out hope, and keep alive the flame of mutual rivalry and ambitious struggle for the highest place.

3 "Moreover, the prizes which are offered in every free state keep the spirits of her foremost orators whetted by perpetual exercise;[1] they are, as it were, ignited by friction, and naturally blaze forth freely because they are surrounded by freedom. But we of to-day," he continued, "seem to have learnt in our childhood the lessons of a benignant despotism, to have been cradled in her habits and customs from the time when our minds were still tender, and never to have tasted the fairest and most fruitful fountain of eloquence, I mean liberty. Hence we develop nothing but a fine genius for flattery.

[Footnote 1: Comp. Pericles in Thuc. ii., +athla gar hois keitai
aretes megista tois de kai andres arista politeuousin+.]

4 "This is the reason why, though all other faculties are consistent with the servile condition, no slave ever became an orator; because in him there is a dumb spirit which will not be kept down: his soul is chained: he is like one who has learnt to be ever expecting a blow. For, as Homer says--

5
"'The day of slavery
Takes half our manly worth away.'[2]

"As, then (if what I have heard is credible), the cages in which those pigmies commonly called dwarfs are reared not only stop the growth of the imprisoned creature, but absolutely make him smaller by compressing every part of his body, so all despotism, however equitable, may be defined as a cage of the soul and a general prison."

[Footnote 2: _Od._ xvii. 322.]

6 My answer was as follows: "My dear friend, it is so easy, and so characteristic of human nature, always to find fault with the present.[3] Consider, now, whether the corruption of genius is to be attributed, not to a world-wide peace,[4] but rather to the war within us which knows no limit, which engages all our desires, yes, and still further to the bad passions which lay siege to us to-day, and make utter havoc and spoil of our lives. Are we not enslaved, nay, are not our careers completely shipwrecked, by love of gain, that fever which rages unappeased in us all, and love of pleasure?--one the most debasing, the other the most ignoble of the mind's diseases.

[Footnote 3: Comp. Byron, "The good old times,--all times when old
are good."]

[Footnote 4: A euphemism for "a world-wide tyranny."]

7 "When I consider it I can find no means by which we, who hold in such high honour, or, to speak more correctly, who idolise boundless riches, can close the door of our souls against those evil spirits which grow up with them. For Wealth unmeasured and unbridled is dogged by Extravagance: she sticks close to him, and treads in his footsteps: and as soon as he opens the gates of cities or of houses she enters with him and makes her abode with him. And after a time they build their nests (to use a wise man's words[5]) in that corner of life, and speedily set about breeding, and beget Boastfulness, and Vanity, and Wantonness, no base-born children, but their very own. And if these also, the offspring of Wealth, be allowed to come to their prime, quickly they engender in the soul those pitiless tyrants, Violence, and Lawlessness, and Shamelessness.

[Footnote 5: Plato, _Rep._ ix. 573, E.]

8 "Whenever a man takes to worshipping what is mortal and irrational[6] in him, and neglects to cherish what is immortal, these are the inevitable results. He never looks up again; he has lost all care for good report; by slow degrees the ruin of his life goes on, until it is consummated all round; all that is great in his soul fades, withers away, and is despised.

[Footnote 6: Reading +kanoeta+.]

9 "If a judge who passes sentence for a bribe can never more give a free and sound decision on a point of justice or honour (for to him who takes a bribe honour and justice must be measured by his own interests), how can we of to-day expect, when the whole life of each one of us is controlled by bribery, while we lie in wait for other men's death and plan how to get a place in their wills, when we buy gain, from whatever source, each one of us, with our very souls in our slavish greed, how, I say, can we expect, in the midst of such a moral pestilence, that there is still left even one liberal and impartial critic, whose verdict will not be biassed by avarice in judging of those great works which live on through all time?

10 "Alas! I fear that for such men as we are it is better to serve than to be free. If our appetites were let loose altogether against our neighbours, they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and bring a deluge of calamity on the whole civilised world."

11 I ended by remarking generally that the genius of the present age is wasted by that indifference which with a few exceptions runs through the whole of life. If we ever shake off our apathy[7] and apply ourselves to work, it is always with a view to pleasure or applause, not for that solid advantage which is worthy to be striven for and held in honour.

[Footnote 7: Comp. Thuc. vi. 26. 2, for this sense of
+analambanein+.]

12 We had better then leave this generation to its fate, and turn to what follows, which is the subject of the passions, to which we promised early in this treatise to devote a separate work.[8] They play an important part in literature generally, and especially in relation to the Sublime.

[Footnote 8: iii. 5.]

NOTES ON LONGINUS

[Transcriber's Note: Citation format is as in the printed text. The last number in each group appears to refer to clauses in the original Greek; there is no correspondence with line numbers in the printed book.]

I. 2. 10. There seems to be an antithesis implied in +politikois tetheorekenai+, referring to the well-known distinction between the +praktikos bios+ and the +theoretikos bios+.

4. 27. I have ventured to return to the original reading, +diephotisen+, though all editors seem to have adopted the correction +diephoresen+, on account, I suppose, of +skeptou+. To _illumine_ a large subject, as a landscape is lighted up at night by a flash of lightning, is surely a far more vivid and intelligible expression than to _sweep away_ a subject.[1]

[Footnote 1: Comp. for the metaphor Goethe, _Dichtung und Wahrheit_,
B 8. "Wie vor einem Blitz erleuchteten sich uns alle Folgen dieses
herrlichen Gedankens."]

III. 2. 17. +phorbeias d' ater+, lit. "without a cheek-strap," which was worn by trumpeters to assist them in regulating their breath. The line is contracted from two of Sophocles's, and Longinus's point is that the extravagance of Cleitarchus is not that of a strong but ill-regulated nature, but the ludicrous straining after grandeur of a writer at once feeble and pretentious.

Ruhnken gives an extract from some inedited "versus politici" of Tzetzes, in which are some amusing specimens of those felicities of language Longinus is here laughing at. Stones are the "bones," rivers the "veins," of the earth; the moon is "the sigma of the sky" (+(lunate Sigma)+ the old form of +(Sigma)+); sailors, "the ants of ocean"; the strap of a pedlar's pack, "the girdle of his load"; pitch, "the ointment of doors," and so on.

IV. 4. 4. The play upon the double meaning of +kora+, (1) maiden, (2) pupil of the eye, can hardly be kept in English. It is worthy of remark that our text of Xenophon has +en tois thalamois+, a perfectly natural expression. Such a variation would seem to point to a very early corruption of ancient manuscripts, or to extraordinary inaccuracy on the part of Longinus, who, indeed, elsewhere displays great looseness of citation, confusing together totally different passages.

9. +itamon+. I can make nothing of this word. Various corrections have been suggested, but with little certainty.

5. 10. +hos phoriou tinos ephaptomenos+, literally, "as though he were laying hands on a piece of stolen property." The point seems to be, that plagiarists, like other robbers, show no discrimination in their pilferings, seizing what comes first to hand.

VIII. 1. 20. +edaphous+. I have avoided the rather harsh confusion of metaphor which this word involves, taken in connection with +pegai+.

IX. 2. 13. +apechema+, properly an "echo," a metaphor rather Greek than English.

X. 2. 13. +chlorotera de poias+, lit. "more wan than grass"--of the sickly yellow hue which would appear on a dark Southern face under the influence of violent emotion.[2]

[Footnote 2: The notion of _yellowness_, as associated with grass,
is made intelligible by a passage in Longus, i. 17. 19. +chloroteron
to prosopon en poas _therines_.+]

3. 6. The words +e gar ... tethneken+ are omitted in the translation, being corrupt, and giving no satisfactory sense. Ruhnken corrects, +alogistei, phronei, ptoeitai, e p. o. t.+

18. +splanchnoisi kakos anaballomenoisi.+ Probably of sea-sickness; and so I find Ruhnken took it, quoting Plutarch, _T._ ii. 831: +emountos tou heterou, kai legontos ta splanchna ekballein+. An objection on the score of _taste_ would be out of place in criticising the laureate of the Arimaspi.

X. 7. 2. +tas exochas aristinden ekkatherantes.+ +aristinden ekkatherantes+ appears to be a condensed phrase for +aristinden eklexantes kai ekkatherantes+. "Having chosen the most striking circumstances _par excellence_, and having relieved them of all superfluity," would perhaps give the literal meaning. Longinus seems conscious of some strangeness in his language, making a quasi-apology in +hos an eipoi tis+.

3. Partly with the help of Toup, we may emend this corrupt passage as follows: +lumainetai gar tauta to holon, hosanei psegmata e araiomata, ta empoiounta megethos te pros allela schesei sunteteichismena+. +to holon+ here = "omnino." To explain the process of corruption, +ta+ would easily drop out after the final +-ta+ in +araiomata+; +sunoikonomoumena+ is simply a corruption of +sunoikodomoumena+, which is itself a gloss on +sunteteichismena+, having afterwards crept into the text; +megethos+ became corrupted into +megethe+ through the error of some copyist, who wished to make it agree with +empoiounta+. The whole maybe translated: "Such [interpolations], like so many patches or rents, mar altogether the effect of those details which, by being built up in an uninterrupted series [+te pros allela sch. suntet.+], produce sublimity in a work."

XII. 4. 2. +en auto+; the sense seems clearly to require +en hauto+.

XIV. 3. 16. +me ... huperemeron.+ Most of the editors insert +ou+ before +phthenxaito+, thus ruining the sense of this fine passage. Longinus has just said that a writer should always work with an eye to posterity. If (he adds) he thinks of nothing but the taste and judgment of his contemporaries, he will have no chance of "leaving something so written that the world will not willingly let it die." A book, then, which is +tou idiou biou kai chronou huperemeros+, is a book which is in advance of its own times. Such were the poems of Lucretius, of Milton, of Wordsworth.[3]

[Footnote 3: Compare the "Gefluegelte Worte" in the Vorspiel to
Goethe's _Faust_:
Was glaenzt, ist fuer den Augenblick geboren,
Das Aechte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren. ]

XV. 5. 23. +pokoeideis kai amalaktous+, lit. "like raw, undressed wool."

XVII. 1. 25. I construct the infinit. with +hupopton+, though the ordinary interpretation joins +to dia schematon panourgein+: "proprium est _verborum lenociniis_ suspicionem movere" (Weiske).

2. 8. +paralephtheisa+. This word has given much trouble; but is it not simply a continuation of the metaphor implied in +epikouria+? +paralambanein tina+, in the sense of calling in an ally, is a common enough use. This would be clearer if we could read +paralephtheisi+. I have omitted +tou panourgein+ in translating, as it seems to me to have evidently crept in from above (p. 33, l. 25). +he tou panourgein techne+, "the art of playing the villain," is surely, in Longinus's own words, +deinon kai ekphulon+, "a startling novelty" of language.

12. +to photi auto+. The words may remind us of Shelley's "Like a poet _hidden in the light of thought_."

XVIII. 1. 24. The distinction between +peusis+ or +pusma+ and +erotesis+ or +erotema+ is said to be that +erotesis+ is a simple question, which can be answered yes or no; +peusis+ a fuller inquiry, requiring a fuller answer. _Aquila Romanus in libro de figuris sententiarum et elocutionis_, Sec. 12 (Weiske).

XXXI. 1. 11. +anankophagesai+, properly of the fixed diet of athletes, which seems to have been excessive in quantity, and sometimes nauseous in quality. I do not know what will be thought of my rendering here; it is certainly not elegant, but it was necessary to provide some sort of equivalent to the Greek. "Swallow," which the other translators give, is quite inadequate. We require a threefold combination--(1) To swallow (2) something nasty (3) for the sake of prospective advantage.

XXXII. 1. 3. The text is in great confusion here. Following a hint in Vahlin's critical note, I have transposed the words thus: +ho kairos de tes chreias horos; entha ta pathe cheimarrou diken elaunetai, kai ten polupletheian auton hos anankaian entautha sunephelketai; ho gar D., horos kai ton toiouton, anthropoi, phesin, k.t.l.+

8. 16. Some words have probably been lost here. The sense of +plen+, and the absence of antithesis to +houtos men+, point in this direction. The original reading may have been something of this sort: +plen houtos men hupo philoneikias _paregeto_; all' oude ta themata tithesin homologoumena+, the sense being that, though we may allow something to the partiality of Caecilius, yet this does not excuse him from arguing on premises which are unsound.

XXXIV. 4. 10. +ho de enthen helon, k.t.l.+ Probably the darkest place in the whole treatise. Toup cites a remarkable passage from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, from which we may perhaps conclude that Longinus is referring here to Thucydides, the traditional master of Demosthenes. _De Thucyd._ Sec. 53, +Rhetoron de Demosthenes monos Thoukudidou zelotos egeneto kata polla, kai prosetheke tois politikois logois, par' ekeinou labon, has oute Antiphon, oute Lusias, oute Isokrates, hoi proteusantes ton tote rhetoron, eschon aretas, ta tache lego, kai tas sustrophas, kai tous tonous, kai to struphnon, kai ten exegeirousan ta pathe deinoteta.+ So close a parallel can hardly be accidental.

XXXV. 4. 5. Longinus probably had his eye on the splendid lines in Pindar's _First Pythian_:

+tas [Aitnas] ereugontai men aplatou puros hagnotatai
ek muchon pagai, potamoi d'
hameraisin men procheonti rhoon kapnou--
aithon'; all' en orphnaisin petras
phoinissa kulindomena phlox es bathei-
an pherei pontou plaka sun patago+,

which I find has also been pointed out by Toup, who remarks that +hagnotatai+ confirms the reading +autou monou+ here, which has been suspected without reason.

XXXVIII. 2. 7. Comp. Plato, _Phaedrus_, 267, A: +Tisian de Gorgian te easomen heudein, hoi pro ton alethon ta eikota eidon hos timetea mallon, ta te au smikra megala kai ta megala smikra poiousi phainesthai dia rhomen logou, kaina te archaios ta t' enantia kainos, suntomian te logon kai apeira meke peri panton aneuron.+