Longinus (literature) - Authorship of On The Sublime

Authorship of On The Sublime

The author is unknown. In the reference manuscript (Parisinus Graecus 2036), the heading reports “Dionysius or Longinus," an ascription by the medieval copyist that was misread as "by Dionysius Longinus." When the manuscript was being prepared for printed publication, the work was initially attributed to Cassius Longinus (c. 213–273 AD). Since the correct translation includes the possibility of an author named "Dionysius," some have attributed the work to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a writer of the 1st century AD. There remains the possibility that the work belongs to neither Cassius Longinus nor Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but, rather, some unknown author writing under the Roman Empire, likely in the 1st century. The error does imply that when the codex was written, the trails of the real author were already lost. Neither author can be accepted as the actual writer of the treatise. The former maintained ideas which are absolutely opposite to those written in the treatise; about the latter, there are problems with chronology.

Among further names proposed, are Hermagoras (a rhetorician who lived in Rome during the 1st century AD), Aelius Theon (author of a work which had many ideas in common with those of On the Sublime), and Pompeius Geminus (who was in epistolary conversation with Dionysius).