[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."