(De Sublimitate), an enquiry into the causes and styles of sublimity in speaking and writing. Of him Pope says :—A Greek by birth, born about A.D. 213. He travelled to the East and was made professor of Greek to Queen Zenobia, of Palmyra. He persuaded her to revolt against Rome, and when her city was taken by the Emperor Aurelian, Longinus was put to death, declaring in his last words,
'This world is but a prison, and happy is he who gets out of it soonest.'
Of many works only one, attributed to him on somewhat doubtful authority, has been preserved, the treatise (De Sublimitate), an enquiry into the causes and styles of sublimity in speaking and writing. Of him Pope says :—
'Thee, bold Longinus, all the nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire:
An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just;
Whose own example strengthens all his laws,
And is himself the great Sublime he draws.'—Essay on Criticism, 675.