FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30  
31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>   >|  
not by a world-wide peace, but by love of gain and pleasure, passions so strong that "I fear, 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." Melancholy words, and appropriate to our own age, when cleverness is almost universal, and genius rare indeed, and the choice between liberty and servitude hard to make, were the choice within our power. But these words assuredly apply closely to the peaceful period of Augustus, when Virgil and Horace "praising their tyrant sang," not to the confused age of the historical Longinus. Much has been said of the allusion to "the Lawgiver of the Jews" as "no ordinary person," but that remark might have been made by a heathen acquainted with the Septuagint, at either of the disputed dates. On the other hand, our author (Section XIII) quotes the critical ideas of "Ammonius and his school," as to the debt of Plato to Homer. Now the historical Longinus was a friend of the Neoplatonist teacher (not writer), Ammonius Saccas. If we could be sure that the Ammonius of the Treatise was this Ammonius, the question would be settled in favour of the late date. Our author would be that Longinus who inspired Zenobia to resist Aurelian, and who perished under his revenge. But Ammonius is not a very uncommon name, and we have no reason to suppose that the Neoplatonist Ammonius busied himself with the literary criticism of Homer and Plato. There was, among others, an Egyptian Ammonius, the tutor of Plutarch. These are the mass of the arguments on both sides. M. Egger sums them up thus: "After carefully examining the tradition of the MSS., and the one very late testimony in favour of Longinus, I hesitated for long as to the date of this precious work. In 1854 M. Vaucher[2] inclined me to believe that Plutarch was the author.[3] All seems to concur towards the opinion that, if not Plutarch, at least one of his contemporaries wrote the most original Greek essay in its kind since the _Rhetoric_ and _Poetic_ of Aristotle."[4] [Footnote 2: _Etude Critique sur la traite du Sublime et les ecrits de Longin._ Geneva.] [Footnote 3: See also M. Naudet, _Journal des Savants_, Mars 1838, and M. Egger, in the same Journal, May 1884.] [Footnote 4: Egger, _Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs_, p. 426. Par
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30  
31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Ammonius

 

Longinus

 

author

 

Footnote

 

Plutarch

 
Critique
 

choice

 

historical

 

Journal

 
favour

Neoplatonist

 
carefully
 

tradition

 

Aurelian

 

examining

 

perished

 

reason

 

suppose

 

busied

 

criticism


uncommon

 

arguments

 

literary

 

Egyptian

 

revenge

 

opinion

 

Longin

 

ecrits

 

Geneva

 

Sublime


Aristotle

 
traite
 

Naudet

 

Histoire

 

Savants

 
Poetic
 

Rhetoric

 

inclined

 

Vaucher

 

hesitated


precious

 

concur

 

original

 

resist

 

contemporaries

 

testimony

 
school
 

Melancholy

 

cleverness

 

civilised