On the Sublime

by Longinus

Pages: 86

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About this book

Framed as a letter to a friend named Terentianus, this ancient Greek treatise asks what lifts writing above the merely correct. Its author is traditionally called Longinus, though the introduction here notes that his identity and date are still disputed, and the surviving text has gaps.

The English version is by H. L. Havell, published in 1890 with an introduction by Andrew Lang. Following the analysis printed at the front, the author names five sources of the sublime, among them grandeur of thought, figures of speech, graceful wording and a dignified arrangement of words, and he sets them against faults such as bombast and affectation. His examples range over Sappho, Plato, Demosthenes, Herodotus and Thucydides.

A closing section asks why his own age produces so few great writers. It is a work of literary criticism for readers interested in rhetoric, style and how the ancients judged eloquence.