Cloth binding. Black lettering with gilt title on front cover.

This volume brings together the three most influential ancient Greek treatises on literature. Aristotle’s Poetics contains his treatment of Greek tragedy: its history, nature, and conventions, with details on poetic diction.

The essay On the Sublime, usually attributed to “Longinus” (identity uncertain), was probably composed in the first century CE; its subject is the apprion of greatness (“the sublime”) in writing, with analysis of illustrative passages ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato. In this edition,

The treatise On Style, ascribed to an (again unidentifiable) “Demetrius”, was perhaps composed during the second century BCE. It is notable particularly for its theory and analysis of four distinct styles (grand, elegant, plain, and forceful).

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of the Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.

Little is known about his life. Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At seventeen or eighteen years of age he joined Plato’s Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC.  He established a library in the Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication.

Aristotle’s views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of physical science extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. Some of Aristotle’s zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century. He also influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies (800–1400) during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as “The First Teacher”, and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply “The Philosopher”, while the poet Dante called him “the master of those who know”. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and John Buridan.

Aristotle’s influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.

Aristotle has been called “the father of logic”, “the father of biology”, “the father of political science”, “the father of zoology”, “the father of embryology”, “the father of natural law”, “the father of scientific method”, “the father of rhetoric”, “the father of psychology”, “the father of realism”, “the father of criticism”, “the father of individualism”, “the father of teleology”, and “the father of meteorology”.

On the Sublime (is a Roman-era Greek work of literary criticism dated to the 1st century AD. Its author is unknown but is conventionally referred to as Longinus or Pseudo-Longinus. It is regarded as a classic work on aesthetics and the effects of good writing. The treatise highlights examples of good and bad writing from the previous millennium, focusing particularly on what may lead to the sublime.

Longinus critically applauds and condemns certain literary works as examples of good or bad styles of writing. Longinus ultimately promotes an “elevation of style” and an essence of “simplicity”. To quote this famous author, “the first and most important source of sublimity [is] the power of forming great conceptions.”  The concept of the sublime is generally accepted to refer to a style of writing that elevates itself “above the ordinary”. Finally, Longinus sets out five sources of sublimity: “great thoughts, strong emotions, certain figures of thought and speech, noble diction, and dignified word arrangement”.

The effects of the Sublime are: loss of rationality, an alienation leading to identification with the creative process of the artist and a deep emotion mixed in pleasure and exaltation. An example of sublime (which the author quotes in the work) is a poem by Sappho, the so-called Ode to Jealousy, defined as a “Sublime ode”. A writer’s goal is not so much to express empty feelings, but to arouse emotion in her audience.

In the treatise, the author asserts that “the Sublime leads the listeners not to persuasion, but to ecstasy: for what is wonderful always goes together with a sense of dismay, and prevails over what is only convincing or delightful, since persuasion, as a rule, is within everyone’s grasp: whereas, the Sublime, giving to speech an invincible power and [an invincible] strength, rises above every listener”.

According to this statement, one could think that the sublime, for Longinus, was only a moment of evasion from reality. But on the contrary, he thought that literature could model a soul, and that a soul could pour itself out into a work of art. In this way the treatise becomes not only a text of literary inquiry, but also one of ethical dissertation, since the Sublime becomes the product of a great soul. The sources of the Sublime are of two kinds: inborn sources (“aspiration to vigorous concepts” and “strong and enthusiastic passion”) and acquirable sources (rhetorical devices, choice of the right lexicon, and “dignified and high composition”).

Demetrius a Cynic philosopher from Corinth, who lived in Rome during the reigns of Caligula, Nero and Vespasian (37–71 AD).

Demetrius was the intimate friend of Seneca, who wrote about him often, and who describes him as the perfect man:

Demetrius, who seems to have been placed by nature in our times that he might prove that we could neither corrupt him nor be corrected by him; a man of consummate wisdom, though he himself disclaimed it, constant to the principles which he professed, of an eloquence worthy to deal with the mightiest subjects, scorning mere prettinesses and verbal niceties, but expressing with infinite spirit, the ideas which inspired it. I doubt not that he was endowed by divine providence with so pure a life and such power of speech in order that our age might neither be without a model nor a reproach.

His contempt for worldly riches is shown by his reply to Caligula who, wishing to corrupt him, offered him two hundred thousand sesterces. Demetrius replied, “If he meant to tempt me, he ought to have tried to do so by offering his entire kingdom.”

He was also a friend of Thrasea Paetus and was with him when Thrasea was condemned to death (66 AD). We hear of him again in the reign of Vespasian (c. 70 AD), when, curiously, he defended Publius Egnatius Celer against the charges brought against him by Musonius Rufus. He was exiled from Rome in 71 AD, by Vespasian, along with all other philosophers.

Demetrius is sometimes identified with the Demetrius of Sunium mentioned by Lucian.  However, Demetrius was a very common name in the Roman world, and Demetrius of Sunium was probably, (but not certainly), a different, later Cynic.