The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR

Additional services for The Classical Review:

Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here

The Quotation from Genesis in the De sublimitate (IX. 9)

W. Rhys Roberts

The Classical Review / Volume 11 / Issue 09 / December 1897, pp 431 - 436 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00051878, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00051878

How to cite this article: W. Rhys Roberts (1897). The Quotation from Genesis in the De sublimitate (IX. 9). The Classical Review, 11, pp 431-436 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00051878

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 128.122.253.228 on 02 May 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 431

XXI 205, 206. Mart, ii 8 7 'quasi si manifesta negemus' HeinsiuSj quae si some MSS, quasi nos Si mihi lingua foret, tu nostra iustius others. ira, qui mihi tendebas retia, dignus eras. VI 139, 140. Cydippe has been telling Acontius how coldly and rudely she treats his rival: then Lemniadum facinus culpo, non miror, come these lines, 'locus corruptus', as Iason. Heinsius says: ' si mihi lingua foret' is a quamlibet iratis ipse dat arma dolor. truly amazing irrelevancy ; and besides, she has a tongue. Gronovius proposed ' si me iratis is not in P, which has nothing dignaforem', and van Lennep ' si mens aequa between quamlibet and ipse: it is added by foret': the latter is just the sense required the second hand and occurs also in a few but the words are these : other MSS. G and most MSS have quam- libet (or quaelibet or quodlibet) ad facinus, mens nisi iniqua foret, tu nostra cet. which is unmetrical and evidently interpo- msnisi is much like mihisi, and iniqua is lated from the hexameter. iratis gives almost the same as lingua. almost the reverse of the sense required, but for that very reason is probably a relic of the truth and no interpolation. Bentley XXI 237, 238. and J. F. Heusinger proposed infirmis, com- paring am i 7 66 'quamlibet infirmas ad- Vnde tibi fauor hie? nisi quod nous, iuuat ira manus'; and this is accepted by Sedlmayer Ehwald and Palmer. Then, when forte reperta est ipse has been altered with Madvig to iste or quae capiat magnos littera lecta deos. ilk, the sense is altogether satisfactory. Cydippe is not saying that such a ' littera' But there is another word which has as has really been invented : she mentions the good a sense, as good a parallel, and more notion as barely conceivable; so ' quod likeness to iratis: reperta est' is wrong. Two of our scanty quamlibet ignauis iste dat arma dolor. authorities give nisi forte noua reperta est. Write See Cato monostich. 23 (P.L.M. Baehr. iii p. 237) quoted by Heinsius: ' quamlibet nisi noua forte reperta est cet: ignauum facit indignatio fortem'. Compare iv 111 ' nisi si manifesta negamus' A. E. HOUSMAN. Heinsius, nisi P, nisi nos the other MSS;

THE QUOTATION FROM GENESIS IN THE DE SUBLIMITATE (IX. 9).

IN the ninth chapter of the Be Sublimitate fore, to require, and it will certainly repay, the following passage occurs : Tavrg KO.1 6 iw a brief discussion with special reference to 'IOVSGUCOV Oea/xoOirrj';, ofy 6 TV^WV avrjp, iireiSr/the doubts which scholars have at various ripr TOV Oeiov Svva/uv Kara ryv a£iav c^copijtre times .cast upon its authenticity. Among the Ka£er)vev, t&Ovs ev TQ flafioXrj ypctyas T5Vdoubters have been Franciscus Portus in the vofntiiv ' ftirtv 6 6c6s ' r)S>s,sixteenth century, Daniel Wy ttenbach in the Kal tyhitro- yevecrOio yq, KCLI eyevero.' Similarly,eighteenth, and Leonhard Spengel1 and Louis the legislator of the Jews, no ordinary man, Vaucher 2 in our own century. The views having formed and expressed a worthy concep- of the two last critics invite particular tion of the might of the Godhead, writes at the attention, and it will be convenient to con- very beginning of his book of laws, ' God said' sider those of Vaucher first. —what? ' Let light be, and it was: let earth Vaucher's judgment, upon this point as be, and it was.' 1 Specimen Emendationum in Cornelium Taciturn. The passage is at once a celebrated and Monachii, 1852. (like the treatise in which it is found) a 2 Etudes Critiques sur le TraiU du Sublime et sur somewhat neglected one. It seems, there^ Us Merits de Longin. Genfeve, 1864. 432 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. upon others, is somewhat warped by his pre- although he was the first editor to place possessions. His object, throughout his textual criticism of the Be Sublimitate on ingenious but unconvincing book, is to prove satisfactory footing by recognising the that Plutarch is the author of the Be eminence of P, Spengel does not reject Sublimitate. And with this theory the words on the ground of insufficient di quotation from Genesis but ill accords, in mentary support. It is not the external, bi view of Plutarch's general attitude towards the internal evidence, that causes him the Jews and of the absence of any direct regard the section as an interpolation. Thfl reference to the Jewish scriptures in his words do not seem to him to be at home in accepted works. This preoccupation led their surroundings. He would no doubt; Vaucher to emphasize unduly the fact that have agreed with F. A. Wolf, whom howevfflr the passage is not found in the Paris MS. he does not quote, that they seem to have 2036. The Codex Parisinus (P) belongs to 'fallen from the skies.'2 the tenth century and is, beyond comparison, But a glance at the context will show that the best of the existing manuscripts of the the degree of abruptness with which the Hept "Yi^ovs. But it has suffered mutilation, passage is introduced has been greatly not in this part only, but unfortunately in exaggerated, and certainly need awaken several others. It is here, however, that little surprise when found in a work which the largest gap occurs, one which marks the is by no means free from digression and loss of as much as one quaternion (that parenthesis. And in truth the abruptness signed KE) out of a total of seven. But of would in some respects be greater if the the eight leaves thus missing from P, two passage were away. The general subject of (the first and the last) have been preserved the ninth chapter is nobility of nature as a in the remaining MSS., which are usually source of lofty diction. Quoting one of his held to be copies derived, directly or indi- own best things in a rather off-hand manner, rectly, from P at a time when it still retained like a true critic, the author says at the the two leaves. The first leaf is represented, beginning of the chapter: ' In some other in all the editions of the De Sublimitate, by place I have written to this effect: " Sub- the words a>s K&V TOIS irtpl lB,evoVToq iyio limity is the echo of a great soul." ' (yeypcuftd TTOV /cat irepwOi TO TOIOSTOV VI/^OS (i€yakopo- fj.ev rjpicio-Oriv (viii. 1-ix. 4), and the eighth by 1 lx the words TO eir' ovpavbv 66aXfi6tiriv

1 I should perhaps mention here that I hare a F. A. Wolf, Vorlemmgen Uber die Alterthunuwu- recently had an opportunity of examining P 2036-for senschaft, i. 330: 'Diese Scelle fallt wie rom Efimmel myself in the JJibliotheque Nationale, hinejn.' THE CLASSICAL EEVIEW. 433 and if thou must slay, slay in the light." '1 therefore, abundant opportunity of observing Now Spengel would have us believe that sec- the writer's habits of citation,4 And it has tion 9 is but a marginal comment—the work been suggested that, here as elsewhere, he of some Christian or Jew—on Ajax' call for has been influenced, unconsciously no doubt, light, as quoted in section 10. We cannot by his love of rhythm and parallelism :— deny that such a gloss, singularly inept though it would be, might conceivably have yevlcrOto £>s, Kal iyevero. been entered in the margin, and from thence iO yfj, Kal 5 transferred into the text at the wrong point. But to this doubly improbable possibility But this and all similar suggestions, however most impartial judges will prefer the likeli- interesting, must be subject to the reserva- hood that the passage stands where it was tion that we do not know the exact nature first placed. And it may be added that the of the source upon which the author is hand of the author of the Treatise seems drawing. clearly revealed in minute points of wording, It is necessary, moreover, to bear in mind such as the ravry nai (cp. ix. 4) with which 2 that the more inexact the quotation, the less the passage is introduced. reason will there be for regarding the pas- Another objection raised, on internal sage as an interpolation. Only a Jew, or a " grounds, to the quotation is that it is not Christian, would have been likely to inter- only unexpected but inexact. The first portion polate it, and Jew or Christian would have of the divine fiat differs slightly, and the done the work with care and accuracy. Be- second differs altogether, from the original sides, such an interpolator would hardly have as we know it. The question, indeed, sug- been content with describing Moses as ' no gests itself whether the passage can—with ordinary man.' Altogether, the arguments reference to any original known to us— in favour of the theory of interpolation properly be described as ' a quotation' at all. seem weak and precarious. The manuscript It reproduces the substance rather than the attestation is adequate; the passage har- precise form of three verses at the beginning monises with the context; the freedom in of Genesis. The verses may be transcribed quotation is like our author and unlike an here from the latest text of the Septuagint interpolator. version, though we ought not to take it for It remains, however, to glance at certain granted that the author had that version in difficulties, of an d, priori nature, which have his mind or before his eyes, nor yet that he been thought to attend this reference to the is echoing a Hebrew text in every way Jewish lawgiver in the work of a Greek identical with ours. I. 3 : Kal efatv 6 6(6%writer. And we are thus brought face to YevrflvfTia <£««• icai iyevero <£fis. I. 9 : KOX face with the question of the authorship, and tZirev 6 Oeos Swax^/™ To vSwp TO vTroKarm rov the date, of the Be Sublimitate. We have ovpavov tis (ravayiayr/v /Ai'av, Kot 6tf>6rfTti> f) &]pa- hitherto spoken vaguely of ' the author,' and Kal iyivtro OVTOJS. 10 : Kal SKaXea-ev 6 Ofosrrjv s it will be best still to do so. It is a £r)pav yrjv. Such ' conflations' are not un- choice between so doing and using some such natural when words are quoted from memory, designation as 'Longinus' (in inverted and they are specially common in our author. commas) or even Psevdolonginus. I hope Two examples, in which lines from different elsewhere to discuss in detail the difficult books of the Iliad are combined, will be problem of the authorship, but I am afraid found in sections 6 and 8 of this very that, with the evidence at present within chapter. The whole treatise is, it need reach, we cannot do more than acquiesce in hardly be recalled, a small treasury of the inscription which, in one of the manu- extracts taken from the most various authors, scripts, attributes the treatise to an —Sappho and on the one hand, ' anonymous' writer. However, the views Aratus and Timaeus on the other. There is, currently held upon the matter may be,

1 roughly but conveniently, ranged under two ix. 10 : ox^s &" tol vi£ iiropos avTri pvifat iir' f/tpos uTos the third century and Longinus, Queen >Ax<"»>', Zenobia's minister; or to (B) the first century Troliftsov 8' aXBfrqv, Sht S oip8a\fio'icriv t$«r0af and some unknown writer. What peculiar S pi 24v Si i l & The contextual evidence, for and against the 4 passage, is succinctly set forth by Giovanni Canna, Cp. H. Hersel, Qua in citandis scriptorum et DeTla Sublimity: Libro attrihutio a Cassio Longino. poetaruin locis auctor libelli irepl Styovs usussitratione. Firenze, 1871. Pp. 18, 19. Berlin, 1884. * Or should we see a reflection of i 3, 6, rather 6 J. Freytag, Deanonymi irtpl Srfiovi sublimi genert than of i. 3. 9, 10 ? dicendi. Hildesheim, 1897. P. 77. NO. CI. VOL. XI. !< h 434 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. difficulties, then, are presented by the passage him. Thus viewed, the extract may upon the first of these suppositions, and upon regarded as a vague recollection, and repro- the second? For upon both suppositions duction, of Caecilius. The suggestion is now* alike difficulties have been felt and urged. generally accepted. But while the theory- It has already been mentioned that Portus may be regarded as highly probable, .weS (1511-1581 A.D.) was the first scholar to ought, I think, to recognise that the author1! express misgivings with regard to the general conception of Moses does not seem; authenticity of the section. In his day, and to be entirely based upon this fragment of for long afterwards, the traditional ascription his writings. The very words ' no ordinary of the treatise to the historical Longinus was man' seem to imply some independentj undisputed. But Portus thought it unlikely knowledge extending beyond this isolated that the Longinus of history would be quotation. The writer possesses the general * acquainted with the Jewish scriptures. In knowledge that he" is dealing with 'the this view he has not found many to follow Jewish lawgiver,' whose actual name seem- him. For was not Longinus a pupil of the ingly he does not think his readers will.; leading Neoplatonists at Alexandria, and has require. He possesses also the particular not he himself ranked ' Paul of Tarsus' high knowledge that the passage is to be found in the hierarchy of Greek oratorical ' at the very beginning of his laws.' It may genius 11 further be noted that he appears to direct 1 But this is not all, for the commentator special attention to the sublimity of the Schurzfleisch of Wittenberg has provided us passage by his somewhat rhetorical use of with an independent suggestion, with the the interrogative pronoun in introducing it. design of removing the difficulty, if difficulty There can be no doubt, however, that the there be. In view of the wider acceptance traditional view that Longinus was the which Schurzfleisch's suggestion has gained author is steadily losing ground. Scepticism since an earlier date has been claimed for the first commenced at the beginning of this Treatise, it is important to observe that it century, in the year 1808, when Amati was made by him as far back as the year 1711, directed attention to the fact that manu- when no one- had begun to doubt that script authority pointed not to 'Dionysius Longinus was the author. His words are Longinus' as the author, but rather to worth quoting : ' Longinus f ortasse non tarn 'Dionysius or Longinus.' Into the details of septuaginta seniores legit, quam hoc ex- the controversy that followed we cannot emplum a Caecilio rhetore, qui TTJV Sd£av here enter. Enough to say that the best 'IovSaios crcxjibi ra 'EXXTJVIKO. vocatur a Suidacritica, l opinion now attributes the work to mutuatus est.'2 He thus threw out the some writer, yet to be identified, of the first pregnant hint that the illustration may have century, and that the passage under review been taken, not directly from the Septuagint, must, if its authenticity is to be placed but from Caecilius. Caecilius, the rhetorician beyond question, be shown not to be incon- of Calacte and the contemporary of Dionysius sistent with that supposition. At this point of Halicarnassus, is described, in Suidas' the likelihood of the author's obligation in biographical notice of him, as 'in faith a this as in other matters to Caecilius, who Jew.' 3 It is, therefore, quite possible, as flourished in the time of Augustus, comes Schurzfleisch saw, that the author, whose again to our aid; and the likelihood is per- Treatise takes a similar'work by Caecilius haps all the greater if the author followed as its starting-point, may have borrowed him closely in time as well as in general this Hebraic illustration of sublimity from treatment. But independently of this, it would not be difficult to show that the 1 The reference of course is to the fragment (if it is Graeco-Roman world of the first century was to be regarded as genuine) given, e.g., by Yaucher, no stranger to the history and the antiquities Etudes, p. 309. of the Jews.* 2 Schurzfleischius, Animadversiones ad Dionysii Longini irepl fyovs commentationem. Vitembergae, Wolf, indeed, in a passage already cited, 1711. P. 23. 3 admitted this. He thought that the section For Caecilius reference may be made to Theodore was probably a gloss by a Christian, though Reinach, Quid Judaeo cum Verre (in Revue dcs fitudes Juives, xxvi., 36-46) and to F. Caccialanza, be would not expel it from the text, especi- Cecilio da, Calotte e V Ellenismo a Roma nel secolo d' ally as'the text itself was so fragmentary. Auguato (in Mivista di Filologia e d' Istruzione But he states expressly that he does not Classica, xviii. 1-73). An article, by the present writer, on Caecilius of Calacte: a contribution to the 4 This point was emphasized (Philologus I. pp. history of Greek Literary Criticism, will be found in 630, 631 : year 1846) by G. Koeper, who also identi- the current number (71) of the American Journal fied, from the Scholia to the Iliad, the of Philology. Ammonius mentioned in c. xiii. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 435 base his scepticism on bhe inherent improba- cently started in conversation with me.'3 bility of any reference to Moses. The name The question was the dearth of high natures of Moses, as he remarks, occurs even in and high utterance in that age, and the ex- Strabo's writings; and he might have added, planation, suggested the philosopher, was to in those of Diodorus Siculus and earlier be found in the decline of the spirit of writers still.1 freedom. ' To-day, he went on, we seem in The question of early references to, or our boyhood to learn the lessons of a quotations from, the Old Testament in Greek righteous servitude, being all but swathed, writers deserves more attention than it seems when our thoughts are yet young and hitherto to have received. The late Dr. tender, in its customs and observances, and Edwin Hatch's ' Essay on Early Quotations without a taste of the fairest and most from the Septuagint' does not profess to be animating source of eloquence (by which, he more than its title implies. Professor Kyle's added, I mean freedom), so that we emerge ' Philo and Holy Scripture' is exhaustive in no other guise than that of sublime flat- within its field; but the example it sets terers. This is the reason, he maintained, needs perhaps to be followed in other direc- why no slave ever becomes an orator, tions. In his introduction Prof. Ryle states although all other faculties may belong to with truth that 'Philo's testimony to the menials. In the slave there immediately Septuagint text has the twofold value of burst out signs of fettered liberty of speech, being earlier, by more than two centuries, of the dungeon as it were, of a man habitu- than our earliest extant MS.; and of being ated to buffetings.' ('oi fie vvv ioiKa/iev ei) derived from a non-Christian, a Graeco- mu8o/ua0cis clvai oouXetas SiKaCas, Tots aurijs Judaic, source, separate in time and charac- eOecri Kai iTrin/jSevfuwa' i$ airaXSiv CTI povr]fia- ter from the great mass of other evidence.' rmv fiovov OVK h/etnTapyaviofievoi Kai ayevoroi The section we are discussing (especially if KakXiarov Kai yovi/juardTOV Xoyatv vafiaros, TT/V we are right in conjecturing that Caecilius iktvOepiav' Zr] 'A.eyco, Sioirep oi'Sev on /irj is its parent) possesses a somewhat parallel A eKySai'vo/xcv jueyaXo^vcis'. Sia TOVTO interest, an interest which is in some respects aAAas Ifeis xai «is OIKCTOS mirrtiv not less but greater because of the want of iaffKev, SovXov 8i /t^Seva yivecrOai prjropa.' 'exact correspondence between the . passage evOvs yap a.va£eiv TO dirappijo-taoTov Kai olov and any originals known to us. ep,povpov wrb (rwrjOeias aei K€KOvSvXMTfievov. It is important to notice not only the Be Sublim. xliv. 3, 4). Now this passage words contained in the section, but also the will be found to present some remarkable way in which they are introduced. They points of resemblance, in thought and word- are attributed to 6 rStv 'IouSaiW Oeo-fioOerTtis,ing, with a passage of Philo which deserves a designation which corresponds closely with full quotation : eyib 8'oi riOavfiaKa, el TreV with which Philo himself introduces a quota- oiroxTovv £ioT7y/tei'i

KOK€Ii/.evoi (De Subl. author, and as the production, if not of a xxii. 1) may be compared with avdcXfco/ievos Jew, yet of a man who revered Moses and Trpos eKarepov fitpovs SSe naKeure (Philo, De Homer in equal measure (Mommsen, Romische Vita Mosis, iii., p. 678). And the likeness Geschichte, Y. 494). But against this tenta- is seen in single words as well as in clauses. tive suggestion of Jewish origin must be In the section just quoted from the De weighed the general tone and character of Sublimitate, we note the Philonic word ix. 9, and the fact that in xii. 4, when about ctp/ios, and others elsewhere such as eiraX- to compare Cicero and , the A.17A.OS, KaTaoTccAxTciKi), TrpoKOtr/x^/xa, fnayeipelov, author uses the words, ' if we as Greeks are irpoo~moypa rrjv yvu>/it]v 0eo> Trpofraviyeiv, KO! passage. If this is so, it seems a matter for SoKi/*a£eiv TOV 17/ieTepov vo fi.06 err)v, some regret. I do not know that the section el T"qv re