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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 November 2015
Was Homer sublime? The question is rarely asked today. Sublimity was once a staple of the ancient intellectual traditions, as Homer is perfectly suited to show. The present essay will take up the question of Homeric sublimity by examining four case studies drawn from ancient astronomy to literary criticism to Homer himself, who not only licensed but also inaugurated these later traditions. Longinus will lurk everywhere in the background, but part of the point of this essay is that Longinus, while broadly representative, is in fact a minority voice in the wider landscape of ancient thought, as is the purely literary critical perspective that he is usually assumed to represent. Just as sublimity transcends customary frameworks of experience by putting these radically into question, so does it challenge the ways in which we tend to carve up antiquity into domains and disciplines that are artificially removed from one another. Sublimity by its nature crosses over genres and discourses and brings out the underlying patterns of thought that they share. But now to our case studies, which will give us a clear entrée to the problem, and will supply us with criteria of what should or should not count as ‘sublime’, as we follow each case in turn.
1. Bowen and Todd (2004) here translate: ‘the [depth of] the sea below’. Goulet (1980), 139, (echoing Reinhardt [1921], 191) gets the accent right: ‘et la mer en contrebas’.
2. Reinhardt (1921), 191: ‘Groß ist das sicherlich gesagt und voller wundervoller Steigerung…und doch versagt auch dieser Ausdruck….’ Cf. also Kühn (1941), 51: ‘nicht daß er Homer kritisiert oder gar herabsetzt, im Gegenteil….’ Bowen and Todd follow Goulet (1980): ‘But this is expressed in an exaggerated way, and with striking expansiveness.’
3. For a similar subjection of aesthetic grandeur to philosophical irony, see Epict. Diss. 2.17.19 on Medea's slaughter of her children: ‘a magnificent act from one point of view (μεγαλοφυῶς ϰατά γε τοῦτο), it shows she had the right idea of what it means to have one's desires dashed’ (tr. Dobbin [2008]).
4. Cf. 1.8.1-18 and 113-23 Todd.
5. Posidonius is often treated as a predecessor to such kinds of speculation, but the evidence for this hypothesis is lacking, and there are plenty of other candidates available (not least, Crates of Mallos).
6. Cf. the way Longinus introduces the next passage in 9.6 (on Tartarus exposed to our gaze): ‘The images of the Theomachy are likewise extraordinary’ (ὑπερφυᾶ ϰαὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς θεομαχίας φαντάσματα).
7. τὸ δὲ ἐϰτὸς αὐτοῦ ϰενόν ἐστιν…. τούτου δὲ τὸ μὲν ὑπὸ σώματος ϰατεχόμενον τόπος ϰαλεῖται (‘what is outside [the cosmos] is void…. Of this [void] the [part] that is occupied by body is called “place”’ [tr. Bowen and Todd]—a usage the Aristotelians would reject).
8. ‘Through the quickest speed that we are capable of [Homer] displays the speed of the [divine] horses’ (διὰ τοῦ ὀξυτάτου τοῦ ἐν ἡμῖν ἐδήλωσε τὸ τάχος τῶν ἵππων). In the next comment, the divine horses are spoken of as ὁρμώντων, which recalls Longinus’ use of ὁρμή and ἐφορμήσωσιν in 9.5. But it is the D-scholia that most clearly express all the key elements in the passage that catch Longinus’ eye, and especially the conversion of speed into distance: ‘As far as a man can see, sitting on a lofty place (ἐπί τινος ὑψηλοῦ τόπου ϰαθεζόμενος) and looking off to the sea, to so great an extent do the divine steeds rush (ἐπὶ τηλιϰοῦτο μέγεθος ὁρμῶσιν)’ (Σ Il.5.770 D/Zs van Thiel).
9. Zizek (1989), 71.
10. I know of only two scholarly discussions that connect the Cleomedes passage with Longinus. The first (Kühn [1941], 51f.) does so in order to prove that the Posidonius lies behind both. But this is unprovable, and as weak as the pan-Posidonian hypothesis. The second (Bühler [1964], 24f.) mentions the parallel only to deny its relevance and the relevance of all such parallels in Longinus to ancient natural inquiry. I will return to these treatments below.
11. Porter (1992).
12. If so, then Cleomedes’ kyklikē theōria (as the MS tradition knows his title) would echo Crates’ sphairikos logos, or ‘theory of the sphere’ (Gem. 6.2), which is called a geometrikē theōria at [Heracl.] Quaest. Hom. 36.8. Could Cleomedes be actively criticizing Crates? Contrast Bühler (1964), 24.
13. Cf. Subl. 9.5: ‘How does Homer magnify ta daimonia?’
14. Cf. Cleom. Cael. 2.1.230 Todd (τῆς ἐπιπροσθούσης…ϰορυφῆς) and esp. 2.6.122-38.
15. A banal confirmation that he did is Socrates’ comment to Ion on the range of Homer's subject matter: it includes everything, including ‘the dealings of gods with one another and with men, the phenomena of the heavens (περὶ τῶν οὐρανίων παθημάτων), Hades, the genealogies of the gods and heroes’ (Ion 531c, tr. Russell), though to be sure Socrates is pressing Homer's poetry as far as possible in the direction of Hesiod's here.
16. 606.12-14 = 2.199.13-14 van der Valk.
17. Recall the inclusion of writings on physiologia as conducive to sublimity in Subl. 12.5, a point reiterated elsewhere in ancient criticism (e.g. Demetr. Eloc. 231; Men. Rhet. 3.336.25-337.32 Spengel), with carry-overs in more philosophically oriented criticism (above all, the Neoplatonists).
18. See Russell (1964), ad loc., for this parallel and for further parallels in Pliny, the Homeric scholia, Plutarch, and Philostratus (Her. 25.9).
19. ‘This is a hyperbole of a hyperbole (τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν ὑπερβολὴ ὑπερβολῆς)’ (Σ Q Od. 9.187).
20. ϰαὶ προσέτι ὑψηλοῦ ὄρους ϰαὶ ὑπερφαινομένου τῶν ἄλλων ὀρῶν (‘and what is more, the summit of a high mountain, one towering above [lit. “appearing above”] all the others’, tr. Innes).
21. Subl. 9.14. See Hunter (2009), 149-51, one of the very few scholars to recognize the significance of the Homeric passage for Longinus. Nevertheless, it is not sheer size alone (Hunter [2009], 150) but contrastive sizes, and indeed the very threat to the criterion of size, that matter most of all, as the scholium just quoted also notes.
22. Other such instances are detectable in the scholia to Homer. See Porter (2015), where these are discussed under the name of ‘critical hyperallage’.
23. The second occurrence of a hypsos-word in On Style is in 148, in a discussion of Sappho 111 L.-P., which likewise has to do with hyperbolically excessive size.
24. ἄλλως μὲν γὰρ ἴσως δυσήϰοος ἡ τῶν γραμμάτων σύμπληξις, ὑπερβολὴ δ’ ἐμφαίνουσα τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ ἥρωος (tr. Innes).
25. Bühler (1964), 21, and Russell (1964), ad loc., do not suggest anything like these possibilities, though Bühler mentions the Eris parallel in Demetrius, inter alia. There are of course other possible sources for Longinus, including [Heracl.] Quaest. Hom. 29 and P. Oxy. 410 (to be discussed below), but this particular combination is unique.
26. [μεγ]αλοπρεπέστε|[ρα] Radermacher: [μεγ]αλοπρεπέστε|[ρον] Lobel et Hunt.
27. See Janko (1992), ad loc. who also observes the correspondence.
28. See Thornton (1984), 195, who notes that the gods ‘do not typically know what it means to experience time’; instead, they occupy ‘a position outside time’. See also Purves (2006).
29. Thanks to René Nünlist for setting me on the right track with the specialized meaning of diairesis here; and see his discussion of this passage in Nünlist (2009), 143f.
30. Similarly, at Il. 15.694f., where Hector leads the attack ‘and from behind Zeus was pushing him onward / hard with his big hand, and stirred on his people beside him’, the critics remark that the imagery is astonishing (ἐϰπληϰτιϰόν), ‘if the hand of Zeus reaches down to earth and presses the mortal forward (μέχρι τῆς γῆς φθάνει θνητὸν ὠθοῦσα)’ (Σ bT Il. 15.695 ex.). I leave aside the more obvious cosmic images: the golden chain (Il. 8.19-27), Hera's anvils (Il. 15.16-28), theomachy, the cosmic apportionment of divine realms, and so on. By contrast, Il. 1.531-33 earns no such comment in the scholia, and deservedly so. While the passage marks a similar polar separation (Thetis goes down from Olympus, Zeus stays; the operative verb is διέτμαγεν, ‘they resolved to part ways’, followed by the line, ‘and she leapt into deep sea from shining Olympus’), the similarity is only partial: there is no drastic scene change from mortal to immortal realms; and we never follow Thetis on her downward journey: her parting is merely a departing; etc.
31. Nünlist (2009), 280, paraphrasing Σ bT Il. 18.356b ex.
32. Cf. also the parallel use of ἀϰρός to mark out narrative climaxes (e.g., Σ bT Il. 15.390 ex.).
33. These attributes often appear as adverbs in the scholia.
34. Gladstone (1889), 288; I have supplied the Greek (Od. 14.6f.).
35. My thanks to the conference organizers and editors of this volume, as well as fellow members of the original and memorable event at Santa Barbara.
