La Réserve : Livraison du 05 novembre 2015

Francis Goyet

The meaning of apostrophe in Longinus’s On the Sublime (16, 2)

First publication : Translations of the Sublime. The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre, éd. Caroline van Eck, Stijn Bussels, Maarten Delbeke and Jürgen Pieters (Actes du colloque Pre-histories of the sublime, Gand, janvier 2008), Leyde, Brill, 2012, p. 13-32

Texte intégral

  • 1 On the Sublime, ed. D. A. Russell (Oxford, 1970), 129. – I will refer to Lo...

1On the sublime seems to give apostrophe an emblematic role among all the figures, since it is mentioned first in its catalogue of figures, starting in chapter 16, with a Demosthenes example conjuring up the dead. But the meaning of apostrophè in this particular context (16, 2) is very far from being clear ; as Donald A. Russell notes, in a laconic way, here it is ‘not the usual sense of this term’.1 My purpose is to give this occurrence its specific meaning, rather unusual indeed. I will contend that the Greek word apostrophè here does not describe a particular figure, but comments on what a figure is, generally speaking.

2But to start with, we have to remember what is the ‘usual sense’ of the figure called apostrophe. Or, rather, what were its usual senses during the Antiquity. The story of the apostrophe is the story of a drastic simplification, from a wide plurality of senses to a single meaning. Therefore, my inquiry will consider Antiquity more than the Moderns. My ‘Antiquity’ will include early modern treatises and translations of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, when my ‘modernity’ will start after Boileau’s translation of Longinus, that is to say, roughly speaking, the XVIIIth century.

  • 2 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IX, 2, §§ 38-39 ; henceforth quoted in D. ...

3All this will be a commentary of Quintilian’s brief remarks on apostrophè :2

[38.] Speech ‘averted’ from the judge, which is called Apostrophe, is also remarkably effective, whether (1) we turn on the adversary (‘What was that sword of yours doing, Tubero, in the field of Pharsalus ?’) or (2) proceed to some kind of invocation (‘On you I call, ye hills and groves of Alba’) or (3) to an appeal designed to create odium (‘O Porcian and Sempronian laws !’). [39.] The term Apostrophe is also applied to anything which serves to distract the hearer from the question at issue : ‘I never swore at Aulis with the Greeks / to uproot the race of Troy’. But this effect can be achieved by many different Figures, whenever we pretend either that we expected something else, or that we feared something worse, or that the ignorant may think that the matter in hand is more important than it is : compare the Prooemium of Pro Caelio.

  • 3 We will not take in account Quintilian’s number (3) : one may consider his ...

4First, I will recall the two traditional senses of the figure called apostrophe : Quintilian’s numbers (2) and (1), inuocatio and auersio ad aduersarium (§ 38)3. We shall then proceed, in my second point, to a closer examination of the Demosthenes’ example as analysed in this chapter 16 of On the sublime : the famous oath conjuring up the dead of Marathon is neither an inuocatio nor an auersio ad aduersarium. Finally, in my third point, we will try to go further than these purely negative conclusions. In order to give this peculiar ‘apostrophe’ a positive meaning, we will need to consider, among other clues, Quintilian’s paragraph 39 and the other sense he gives to apostrophè : auersio ad rem.

1. The two usual senses of the figure called apostrophe : inuocatio and auersio ad aduersarium

5My argument here is quite simple : the current meaning, inuocatio, has superseded another one, auersio.

  • 4 ‘The term exclamatio is restricted to apostrophe by Rhet. Her. IV, 22’ : La...

  • 5 Lamy B., La rhétorique ou l’art de parler (1715), ed. C. Noille-Clauzade (P...

  • 6 Lamy, 233, quoting Is 45, 8 : ‘Isaïe apostrophe le ciel et la terre pour le...

  • 7 ‘L’apostrophe se fait lorsqu’un homme étant extraordinairement ému, il se t...

6Today, an apostrophe is an invocation, an exclamatory address, especially to the absent or dead, or the non-human4. As Bernard Lamy puts it in 1715, with this figure one ‘addresses the heavens, the earth, the rocks, the forests’, etc.5 His only examples are from the Bible. An afflicted David curses the mountains of Gilboa, where king Saul has just been killed in battle : ‘Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain […]’ (II Sm I, 21: I replace Lamy’s text by the King James version). Lamy’s second and last example is the following : ‘Isaiah apostrophes the heavens and the earth, let them give him the Messiah he is expecting so impatiently, Drop down, ye heavens, from above […]’.6 Following rhetorical tradition, Lamy ranks the apostrophe among the vehement figures : ‘An apostrophe is made by a man who, being extraordinarily moved, turns to all sides’.7 Such extraordinary emotion implies that the apostrophe is one of the figures partaking of the sublime.

  • 8 ‘L’apostrophe signifie [originally] conversion’ (Lamy, 233). Cf. the transl...

  • 9 Lausberg § 762. Mazzucchi C. M., 218, gives further references, à propos of...

  • 10 The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (Oxford, 1989), s. v. apostr...

7But this is only the inuocatio of Quintilian, which is a specific case, when his general category is auersio, in English ‘diversion’.8 As Heinrich Lausberg defines it, auersio or apostrophè ‘is “turning away” from the normal audience (the judges) and the addressing of another, second audience, surprisingly chosen by the speaker’.9 ‘Turning away’ reveals to the composition of apostrophè and auersio : strophè or uersio, ‘turning’ ; apo or a, ‘away’. The OED gives a dense and clear account of this former and larger meaning : ‘A speaker or writer suddenly stops in his discourse, and turns to address pointedly some person or thing’, and ‘a person present’ ; ‘modern use has extended it to the absent or the dead’, but ‘it is by no means confined to these, as sometimes erroneously stated’.10 Then, the apostrophe was first and foremost a sort of interruption in one’s discourse, along with a very physical ‘turn’ or ‘turning’ of the speaker’s body. According to this broader definition, the apostrophe has to be connected with the whole of the discourse, while with the specialized or modern definition, it has to do with the sort of persons or things apostrophized. In other words, much more emphasis was put on the moment when the apostrophe was used in a given speech.

  • 11 At least in the Vulgate : ‘Montes Gelboe nec ros nec pluviae veniant super...

8Lamy himself is still remembering that important aspect, since he adds to his first example the classic words introducing an apostrophe, ‘Et vous’ : ‘Et vous, montagnes de Gelboë’, rather than the simple ‘Mountains of Gilboa’ given by the Bible.11 Et vous is not an error, a mistranslation. Quite on the contrary, it reveals what is going on, by firmly connecting the words that follow with the preceding passage. Et vous signals to the inattentive reader that this is an apostrophe, the addressing of another audience. Those two little words are already present in the Latin examples Quintilian gives for apostrophè as a trope or word-figure : ‘et te, maxime Caesar’ (IX, 3, 24), ‘at tu […] Albane’ (IX, 3, 26).

  • 12 Fouquelin A., La rhétorique française, in Traités de poétique et de rhétor...

  • 13 For reticentia and correctio, see Lausberg §§ 887-889 and §§ 784-786.

9In a later treatise like Lamy’s, the Et vous is only a faint reminder of the former meaning. But if we jump back to 1555, we find in Antoine Fouquelin a description stressing the question of the moment in the speech. Indeed, Fouquelin creates a general category, the Interruption, which he defines as a ‘discontinuation de propos’, an interruption of the current topic, of the question at issue.12 This category includes four figures : digression, ‘aversion’ (i.e. apostrophe, auersio), reticence and correction.13 Fouquelin’s discontinuation reveals the criterion at work, for it is the contrary of the continuatio. The latter term described, in Latin, the uninterrupted course of a discourse, a given speech or oratio ideally being an oratio continua, that is, without any interruption. Granted, in the case of the apostrophe, the interruption is not due to the opponent, the judges or the audience, but to the speaker himself. But in both cases the very act of interruption speaks of violent forces breaking the continuity of the speech : in Lausberg’s words, the speaker ‘cannot be kept within the normal channels between speaker and audience’ (§ 762).

  • 14 Fouquelin Rhétorique, 388 : ‘incontinent il détourne sa parole à ce verre’...

  • 15 Fouquelin Rhétorique, 388, quoting Du Bellay, Prosphonématique, 1-8 ; Fouq...

10Following such criterion, Fouquelin constantly refers to issues of continuity when introducing his examples of apostrophe. For instance, the poet Ronsard is addressing his rich friend Jean Brinon, and ‘all of sudden he turns away and addresses this glass’14, that is, the precious glass that Brinon, a new Maecenas, has given the poet. But before quoting four lines addressed to the glass, Fouquelin has taken pains to quote three lines addressed to Brinon. Likewise, he quotes six lines from Du Bellay, addressed to Paris (‘Mère des arts, ta hauteur je salue’…), before quoting the two lines where the poet finally ‘turns to king Francis I’, ‘détourne sa parole au roi François’ : ‘Comment te peux assez chanter la France / Ô grand François, des neuf sœurs adoré ?’15 In a modern treatise, the lines addressed to Paris would probably be described as an apostrophe, since they address a non-human. But this would be a serious mistake for Fouquelin and for the entire rhetorical tradition, since the criterion for them is only the fact of addressing a new audience.

  • 16 Liddell H. G. and Scott R., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1968), s. v. ...

  • 17 Cicero, Lig. 9 : ‘commoueri uidetur adulescens’.

  • 18 For that unique wonder of a ‘turning away’ at the very beginning of a spee...

  • 19 On the sublime, ed. D. A. Russell, 146.

  • 20 See especially agchistrophôs at 22, 1, about inversions (huperbata) : ‘und...

11To conclude this point, the emphasis on continuity and interruption means that the extraordinary emotion does not stem simply from the person addressed, be it the dead or some non-human, King Francis or the glass given by a Maecenas. There is also a very strong emotion caused by the surprise. The speaker was quietly addressing the judge(s), and all of a sudden he turns all his body towards the accused, he ‘turns away from all others to one’.16 Applied to the young Tubero in Pro Ligario, such a dramatized effect is utterly disturbing, and as Cicero himself comments, ‘the young man seems to be troubled’.17 To interrupt is to disrupt. The interruption is a rupture ; it produces an effect of raptus, of the kind beloved by On the sublime. Therefore, when, in the auersio ad aduersarium, the speaker isolates his adversary, apostrophe is not at all, as Lausberg says, ‘an emotional move of despair on the part of the speaker’ (§ 762). It causes the despair of the person addressed, or rather ‘apostrophized’.18 And we should finally note that On the sublime does describe the auersio ad aduersarium, but… later in the treatise (27, 3), when Demosthenes addresses Aristogiton directly. As Russell points out, this recognizable move and what follows (27, 4) ‘are in fact instances of apostrophe’.19 This could be a sufficient argument for proving that the ‘apostrophè’ of 16, 2 is not an apostrophe in the classical senses of the term. Moreover, Russell does not mention the use in the treatise (27, 3) of two terms echoing apostrophè : near the end, the verb apostrephein (‘ton logon apostrepsen, swinging his speech round on to Aristogiton’, transl. Fyfe) ; and near the beginning, the substantive ‘agchistrophos’, which means a quick change, a sort of volte-face. The latter word, on which I shall comment in my general conclusion, is in itself an echo of the more classic apostrophè.20

2. Demosthenes’ oath (On the Crown, § 208) is not an apostrophe

12The oath is certainly Demosthenes’ most famous passage. The speaker connects the recent defeat of Athens against King Philip with the city’s greatest victories of the past, in order to justify Demosthenes’ own strategy – worth the crown his opponent Eschines is precisely denying him. In 16, 2, Longinus gives a famous analysis of this famous passage, in a clear attempt to emulate the sublime style of the original.

  • 21 Or, to quote the actual words of On the Sublime (transl. Fyfe) : ‘You were...

  • 22 On the Sublime, ed. D. A. Russell, 129.

13The analysis begins as follows. Demosthenes could have said, in a flat or natural manner (‘kata phusin’) : all right, you have been defeated, but nevertheless, you have been fighting for your liberty and Greece’s liberty as well, and in doing so you have imitated the glorious examples of your ancestors, who fought – victoriously – in Marathon and Salamis.21 The long sentence which follows describes what Demosthenes actually said. This sentence ‘needs a lot of breaking up in translation’, says Russell, who translates as follows :22

But instead of this, as though under inspiration and possession, he suddenly gives voice to the oath by the heroes of Greece – ‘By those who risked their lives at Marathon, you have not done wrong !’ Observe what he effects by this single figure of conjuration – here I call it apostrophe. He deifies his audience’s ancestors, suggesting that one should swear by men who fell so bravely just as though they were gods. He inspires the judges with the temper of those who risked themselves. He transforms his demonstration into an extraordinary passage of elevation and passion, and into the convincing appeal of this strange, amazing oath. At the same time he injects into his hearers’ minds a healing specific, so as to relieve them by these paeans of praise and make them as proud of the battle with Philip as of the triumphs of Marathon and Salamis.

14The only aspect recalling my previous considerations is the ‘suddenly’ at the beginning, translating exaiphnès. Let us remember there is a sudden change as well in the apostrophe described as an interruption : Demosthenes interrupts the normal flow of his discourse. This most important aspect is also stressed by Quintilian when he explains the last meaning of apostrophe or auersio – I shall come back to this last meaning in my own last point. But for now, I would like to stress, like Russell, that the oath is not an apostrophe in ‘the usual sense of this term’, or rather in the two usual senses of the term seen so far.

15Firstly, the oath is not an inuocatio, an exclamatory address to the dead. It is true that the dead are mentioned ; but the speaker still addresses the audience he was talking to, i.e. the people of Athens, ‘you’ : ‘By those who risked their lives at Marathon, you have not done wrong !’ It would be an inuocatio if the grammatical structure were : ‘You, who risked your lives at Marathon, I invoke you, they have not done wrong !’ This formulation would match the Cicero’s example of inuocatio given by Quintilian (IX, 2, 38) : ‘Vos enim iam ego, Albani tumuli atque luci’ (Mil. 85).

16Secondly, since the dead are not addressed, the oath is neither an auersio, that is, a ‘turning away’ from the normal audience and the addressing of another audience. It would be such an auersio if we had : ‘And you, who risked your lives’. This hypothetical formulation would recall of the typical ‘And you’ (‘Et vous’) we have seen. You the people, and you the dead. I the speaker was speaking to you, the people of Athens, and now all of a sudden I address myself to your dead ancestors, and you the people become a they. But this is not what we have here.

  • 23 Gabriel de Petra (Dalla Pietra), professor of Greek in Lausanne (Geneva : ...

  • 24 Vergil, Aen. III, 599. On obtestatio or obsecratio, see Lausberg § 760 ; o...

  • 25 In the original, ‘omotikon skhèma’ and ‘Dianoias’ are given in Greek chara...

  • 26 Quintilian uses sublimitas just before, among other terms describing Demos...

17Then, if the oath is not an apostrophe, what kind of a figure is it ? The answer is quite trivial. The oath is an oath. More specifically, in the words of Longinus, a ‘figure of conjuration, omotikon skhèma’. The praised Latin translation of 1612 adds form : ‘a form and figure of conjuration, jurisjurandi forma et figura’.23 This recalls Quintilian’s words, since for Quintilian Demosthenes’ famous oath is ‘illud ius iurandum per caesos in Marathone ac Salamine, this famous oath by those champions of the city who fell at Marathon and Salamis’ (XII, 10, 24). One could think of yet another term, the figure of obtestatio, that is, the glorious dead are to be our testes, they must attest to our courage. To introduce such idea of bearing witness, the English language typically uses ‘by’, and the Latin language ‘per’ – ‘per caesos in Marathone’, ‘per sidera testor’,24 etc. At any rate, the same Latin translator of 1612 links the omotikon skhèma with the furor, if not the sublime, since he adds in the margin : ‘omotikon skhèma or thought-figure (through which Demosthenes’ fury is expressed)’.25 The jurisjurandi figura is for him, as for Quintilian, quite enough to explain the sublimitas of Demosthenes in this passage.26

  • 27 Peri tôn ideôn, in Hermogenis Opera, ed. H. Rabe (Leipzig, 1913), 326-327 ...

18But this is probably too simple an explanation for Longinus. For the conjuration is a routine figure, not necessarily sublime in itself. In Longinus’s view, Demosthenes is indeed using a ‘figure of conjuration’, plus a ‘je ne sais quoi’ the treatise calls an apostrophè. Hermogenes (second century ad) makes the same distinction, about the same example, but in his own words : ‘That would no longer be simply an oath, but something else’, this something else being added by what he calls a methodos. It is worth quoting in full – since we are in his chapter on Simplicity (apheleia), ‘simple’ here refers to that category :27

  • 28 Patillon : ‘Il est encore naïf et éthique [èthikos and aphelès], en ce qui...

  • 29 Laurent : ‘Omnia autem illa sunt morata & simplicia, quae fiunt per sacros...

To prove one’s point by means of oaths rather than by using facts is also simple and reveals Character in the thought :28 ‘I call on all the gods and goddesses who rule Attica and Pythian Apollo,’ etc. [Demosthenes, 18, 141] or ‘First, Athenians, I pray all the gods and goddesses’ [18, 1]. There are numerous such examples in Demosthenes, and all these oaths reveal Character and are simple. The effect is the same if one binds the audience or the opponent with an oath.29 Oaths such as ‘By Zeus and the gods, do not accept’ [19, 78] are not maneuvers in a debate, but attempts to prove one’s character and to be persuasive. But if a speaker casts a proof or some other point that his valuable to his argument in the form of an oath, that is not simple and does more than just reveal Character. That would no longer be simply an oath, but something else that has been cast into this form. It retains its original force, but also takes on some additional quality because of the way in which it is presented, such as ‘No, I swear it by those of your ancestors who fought at Marathon,’ etc. [18, 208]. This is a glorious example and a proof that it was customary for Athens to struggle and to take risks on behalf of the freedom of the Greeks. But it has been cast in the form of an oath. This has produced Brilliance and Grandeur [lamprotès kai megethos], but it is not simple and does not just reveal Character.

  • 30 And ‘an approach’ elsewhere in Wooten’s translation, e. g. ‘The approach [...

19The end is more accurately translated by Gaspar Laurent (in 1614) and Michel Patillon. The something else added to the oath has been cast into a form by using a methodos : an ‘artificium (Laurent), a ‘méthode’ (Patillon)30. The method is not a form, or in other words it is not a figure or skhèma. Rather, the form or figure stems from the method :

[‘But if a speaker casts a proof’…] Toutefois si c’est une preuve ou un autre élément auxquels on applique une méthode [methodos] telle qu’ils prennent la figure d’une attestation solennelle, j’appelle alors cela autrement, mais non pas naïf ni éthique : en effet on n’aura plus là une attestation solennelle, mais autre chose, qu’une certaine méthode modifie en ce sens et qui, tout en gardant sa valeur propre, s’adjoint, par l’intervention de la méthode, quelque chose d’autre ; par exemple : ‘non, par ceux de nos ancêtres qui sont allés se battre à Marathon’, etc. C’est là en effet un exemple illustre et une preuve du fait que la Cité a pour coutume de lutter et d’affronter les dangers pour la liberté des Grecs : l’application d’une méthode qui en fait une attestation solennelle a produit de l’éclat et de la grandeur, mais non pas de la naïveté ni de l’éthos. (transl. Patillon)

Si verò artificio adhibito tractes argumentum ad decertandum, aut aliquid aliud, aliquid diuersum erit & non simplex, neque moratum. Nam obtestatio vel iuramentum non est illud genus : sed per artificiosam tractationem aliquid aliud factum est, ita vt in illud genus transeat, conseruans tamen propriam vim suam, assumit etiam aliquid diuersum, tractandi modo. Vt, Non certè […]. Artificio sic tractatum delabitur ad iuramentum & obtestationem factam : reddidit genus dicendi splendidum & magnum, sed non simplex, nec moratum, siue moribus quotidianis non vsurpandum. (transl. Laurent)

  • 31 See also Gibert B., La rhétorique ou les règles de l’éloquence (1730), ed....

20If we compare with Longinus, the general idea is the same. In On the sublime, ‘omotikon skhèma’ + ‘apostrophè’ ; in Hermogenes, ‘horkou skhèma’ + ‘methodos’. Although the figure is basic, it has a value added by the apostrophe or the method, whatever those terms mean. And this value added is what matters the most, whether it is the ‘sublime’ or, in Hermogenes’ words, ‘Brilliance and Grandeur’.31

  • 32 Cf. a preceding passage of the Peri tôn ideôn (ed. Rabe, 266-267, chapter ...

  • 33 9, 2, ‘tina, phèseis, tropon ?’ : ‘How ? you will ask. – Well, elsewhere I...

  • 34 J. Pigeaud’s translation (his italics), 64. One could also interpret in te...

21Thus ‘apostrophe’ (apostrophè) here for Hermogenes is not a figure, but a ‘method’ (methodos).32 To conclude this point, let us reconsider the litigious sentence in Longinus : ‘Observe what he effects by this single figure of conjuration [omotikon skhèma] – here I call it apostrophe [hoper enthade apostrophèn egô kalô].’ Or, in the 1612 Latin translation : ‘jurisjurandi forma et figura (quam hic ego Apostrophen voco)’. I would like to underline egô and enthade. Egô : the Greek or Latin pronoun adds emphasis – and in English one should write ‘I call it apostrophe’, or, in French, ‘c’est moi qui appelle cette figure une apostrophe’ – Carlo Maria Mazzucchi’s translation reads, ‘che io in questo passo chiamo apostrofe’. Enthade means ‘here’ : here, in this particular case, Demosthenes’ use of a particular figure is worth the name of ‘apostrophe’, or what I call so, in my own vocabulary. Likewise, in his own idiolect, Hermogenes calls it a ‘method’. Such a strong emphasis is directed towards a specific audience, the Roman reader of On the sublime, the ‘dear Terentianus’ of the very beginning, with whom was read Caecilius’s own treatise (1, 1). The egô is echoing a recurrent and impassioned conversation the author had on those topics with his friend. My dear, since we have read together literary critics (together, i.e. aloud), you know what my fads are, and you know ‘apostrophe’ is one of them. The hypothesis is that Longinus is here quoting one of his favourite words, exactly as he quotes one of his catchphrases on sublime, precisely after a question supposedly asked by Terentianus.33 All this betrays a vivid orality, and complicity, within an intellectual circle of friends engaged in some sort of disputatio, or serious and enthusiastic discussion of literary topics. In such a circle, buzzwords and phrases are circulating, they are coined for the occasion – and this idiolect has an extreme value but only inside the circle. ‘Apostrophe’ is one of those chic, mysterious words – as is chic the slogan-like sentence ‘le sublime est l’écho de la grandeur d’âme’.34

3. Demosthenes’ oath is an ‘apostrophe’, i.e. the quintessence of any figure

  • 35 Which actually announces five parts, in chapter 8. But, according to R. Gr...

22So here we have an emblematic example, Demosthenes’ oath by the glorious dead, and an emblematic term to comment it, the ‘apostrophe’, all of which standing at an emblematic place in the treatise. For one could easily consider chapter 16 as the beginning of the (main) second part of On the sublime.35 Up until chapter 15 were general and lofty remarks on megalophrosunè, imitation and phantasia. Now we enter a sort of catalogue, more pedestrian, more classical in style, with its expected lists. The main part of the catalogue consists in the figures – thought-tropes or skhèmata (chapters 16-29), word-tropes or tropoi (30-38) –, plus an ending or cauda on the order of words, etc. (39-42). Hence chapter 16 – Demosthenes’ oath – is the musical overture to the catalogue ; chapter 17, its theoretical introduction ; chapter 18, its first item, interrogation. And one has to wait until chapter 27 to find some examples of apostrophes in the classical sense of the term, that is, by the very end of the list of skhèmata.

23Such an overture, en fanfare, is clearly trying to be as lofty as the previous considerations, and to prevent the following lists from being too pedestrian, too boring. We must therefore ourselves widen our focus, when so far we have been intentionally short-sighted. I will now develop two sorts of arguments, namely, the general meaning of apostrophè and apostrephein, and the place of the passage on Marathon within a larger digression of On the Crown.

  • 36 For other examples, see my commentary on Du Bellay’s Deffence and Illustra...

24Even though today the word apostrophe has a very narrow and specialized meaning, the situation in Antiquity was quite the opposite. The word had a very broad range, it was for Greek speakers a living metaphor, and the substantive never lost its connection to the verb apostrephein. The same is true in Latin for auersio and auertere. We have here a good example of a very important rule for the reading of the rhetorical treatises, verb versus substantive. The verb shows us the essence of a given phenomenon, when in various contexts the substantive may have various senses, depending on its specific use hic et nunc.36 This common situation is not good news if you see rhetoric as a list of lists, with well identified items, where ideally one substantive designs one situation, and one only. But it is good news if you are out to think what is at stake in rhetorical theory – and for that purpose, we would need lists of the verbs used in the treatises, and not only of their substantives.

25Therefore, a compilation like Lausberg’s is forced to mention auersio twice. His index is nearly the only way to reunify the membra disiecta : ‘aversio : I) general : 808 ; 848-851 ; 860 ; II) of the apostrophe 762’. We have seen sense number II. Preceded by the title ‘apostrophe’, Lausberg’s §§ 762-765 are dealing with the usual sense of apostrophe. But we have not yet seen sense number I. Lausberg’s §§ 848-851 are so introduced by the title ‘aversio’ : ‘Apostrophe, discussed in §§ 762-765, stands in a wider systematic context : the figure comprises not only a turning away from the audience, but also a turning away from a matter being dealt with.’ In order to illustrate this point, Lausberg’s very first quotation is Quintilian’s paragraph 39, quoted in my introduction. The next quotations given by Lausberg put it still more clearly, the auersio is the converting ‘ad aliquam personam aut rem’. So, here we have a third rhetorical sense : auersio ad rem.

  • 37 His index lists only, s. v. apostrophè, three instances, §§ 271, 762 and 7...

  • 38 Ed. Rabe, 314, linked with apostrophè.

  • 39 Ed. Rabe, 20 and 318. See Anderson R. D. Glossary, 25 : apostrophè as ‘tur...

  • 40 As well shown by Mazzucchi C. M., ad loc. Anderson R. D. Glossary, 16, lin...

  • 41 Dionysius, Amm. 2 (in Aujac, VIII, 13, 1-2). In those chapters 23-27, On t...

26The same Lausberg has little to say for the Greek word apostrophè.37 He does not quote the numerous uses of the term by Dionysius of Halicarnassus – for instance, the changing of a plural into a singular. One has to look carefully at the end of Lausberg’s II to find that ‘Apostrophe is a particular case (cf. also Quint. Inst. 9.2.39) of the more general metabasis’ (§ 765). And indeed metabasis – in Hermogenes, for instance – means either auersio ad personam38 or auersio ad rem39. Again, metabasis is a very general term in Greek, referring to any kind of change. This discussion bring us back to Longinus’s chapter 27. His two examples of auersio ad aduersarium (27, 3 and 4) are the conclusion of a group of chapters, 23-27, dealing in fact with metabasis (last word of 27, 1). This is well shown by the titles added by Boileau : 23, ‘Du changement de nombre’ (i.e. changing a singular into plural) ; 24, ‘Des pluriels réduits en singuliers’ ; 25, ‘Du changement de temps’ ; 26, ‘Du changement de personnes’ ; 27, ‘Des transitions imprévues’. All this summarizes Dionysius40, and for instance Longinus’s 23, 2 is very close to a similar example in Dionysius, the Syracusans (plural) becoming the people or dèmos (singular)41.

27By checking the dictionaries and Lausberg’s index, we have therefore come back to chapter 27 and the usual sense of apostrophe. In other words, we have totally missed the point of chapter 16. What is at stake there ? My argument will now stress the place of the passage on Marathon within a larger digression by Demosthenes : On the Crown, 199-210. For in terms of turning away or changing – of apostrophè or metabasis –, a digression is in itself a turning away from one matter to another, an auersio ad rem. Moreover, the digression in this passage is named, by Demosthenes himself, a paradoxon.

  • 42 Translation by A. Portal (Oxford, 1814).

  • 43 Or, in Rowe G. O. translation, under the heading ‘Prodiorthosis’ (‘attempt...

28The digression is clearly noted by the speaker, at the end, just after his § 210 : ‘But having been led to mention the noble deed of your ancestors, I perceive that I have passed over some edicts and transactions, which are material. I intend therefore to return whence I have digressed [epanelthein].’42 The beginning of the digression is quite clear as well, § 199 : ‘But since he [Aeschinus] lays such mighty stress upon events, I will advance somewhat of a paradox [paradoxon eipein]. But, in the name of Jupiter, and all the gods, let none of you be surprised at the boldness of my expression [tèn huperbolèn thaumasè], but let him candidly examine what I say.’43 So the very beginning of the digression is trumpeting that the audience will hear something very special.

  • 44 Cf. the ‘genus admirabile’ in the exordium, rendering paradoxon skhèma : L...

  • 45 Quintilian, IV, 2, 107 : ‘ut habeat narratio suauitatem, admirationes, exs...

29Paradoxon is the equivalent of the Latin admiratio.44 The term in general means something that is against the audience’s expectation. More specifically, it is used by Cicero and Quintilian to describe a sort of digressive passage within a discourse. For them, an admiratio is a long and pathetic interruption of the narratio, as is the case here (roughly speaking : this third and last part of the On the Crown is but a sort of narration). For the narration should have, says Quintilian, ‘passages which charm : admirations, expectations, unexpected turns, conversations between persons, all kinds of emotion’.45 An admiratio is therefore a surprising digression. Such a passage has obviously to do with some sort of sublime. Demosthenes’ words tèn huperbolèn thaumasè refer very closely to two ideas beloved by Longinus, the figure of huperbolè and the thaumaston, aptly added by Boileau as a subtitle of the treatise, ‘Du merveilleux dans le discours’. Admiratio also recalls the mire Quintilian uses when first discussing the apostrophe : ‘mire mouet’ (IX, 2, 38). Inuocatio or auersio ad aduersiarum are, too, surprising and moving digressions. If we turn back to the famous oath, we now see that the oath is a short digression (§ 208) within a larger one (§§ 199-210), it is an interruption within an interruption.

30It is time to understand what this means. A digression is in itself a diversion, and in this sense it is an auersio ad rem. To quote again the words of Quintilian, ‘auersio quae a proposita quaestione abducit audientem’ : the auersio ‘distracts the hearer from the question at issue’ (IX, 2, 39). Later in the same chapter, Quintilian evokes the famous oath as a way of diverting the attention : ‘dum aliud agere uidemur, aliud efficimus’, we may ‘achieve another object from that which we seem to aim at’ (IX, 2, 62). So, when Demosthenes in § 199 announces a paradoxon, a digression that will surprise the audience, the surprise is not that important. The so-called surprise masks the real one, still to come. The announced surprise is, so to speak, a routine, as is a routine in Cicero the auersio ad aduersarium. Everyone in the audience expects Cicero to address his adversary directly, at one point or another. In such a long speech as On the Crown, the audience is pleased to have a digression, if it is a surprise it is a welcome and long-awaited one. But then, the oath comes as a real surprise, truly unexpected. We were rather quietly inside a comforting passage on noble and patriotic sentiments, and the noblest of all for Athenians, that their objecting to any kind of slavery at all cost (§ 203 ‘asphalôs douleuein’, cf. Thucydides, II, 63, 5). And all of a sudden, this leads the orator to burst into the oath. The surprise is that we had not at all expected such a burst. It is a real surprise, within an ordinary one, we had not been able to anticipate it.

  • 46 On licentia, see Lausberg § 761. I have developped on Lig. 9 in another ar...

  • 47 Cic. 39, 7.

31The same analysis applies to this other famous burst, by Cicero against Tubero (Lig. 9). Here, the passage we are in is the licentia or parrhèsia which began at § 6. Tubero himself thinks, as everybody else, that the topic is the relationship between Caesar and Cicero, the latter acknowledging ‘boldly’ (licentia) that he was on Pompey’s side, when in fact he is praising the dictator.46 No one had anticipated, not even Caesar, that it would be applied to Tubero himself, who was on Pompey’s side as well, the sword in hand at Pharsalus. The audience, kept busy deciphering the real meaning of the licentia, did not foresee the attack against the young adversary. For a surprise, it is quite a surprise indeed. Caesar himself, as reported by Plutarch, was so struck that he dropped the documents he was holding.47

32Cicero, like Demosthenes, has been using some sort of prodigious volte-face or coup de théâtre : in other words, a twist or ‘apostrophe’. And this is what Longinus calls a figure : ‘let us speak now of all the figures ; but let me show you, first, what is a figure’. An oath, yes, but what an oath, what an orator, what an ability for volte-face !

4. Conclusion

  • 48 I am not very much interested by the vexed question of the dating of Longi...

33We may now conclude. The intellectual date of On the sublime is not a problem : the treatise is a reaction to Caecilius’s own treatise, published around the time of Augustus. This reaction, for our concern, takes a stance on a controversial issue, that is, the definition of the figures or rather the skhèmata. We know from Quintilian’s chapter IX, 1 that this theoretical question was part of an intense debate within the many schools of rhetoric, in Rome, from Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Quintilian – that is, roughly speaking, from Augustus’s princedom to the end of the first century ad.48 We also know that the skhèmata are one of the rare points where Quintilian strongly disagrees with Cicero. Thanks to the word apostrophè, we may now sketch out what was at stake in this debate. Indeed, since strephein or trepein both mean ‘to turn’, this gives us a clue to re-read Quintilian. Let us just have a look at his two uses of uertere or auertere (IX, 1, 2 and 20).

  • 49 Quintilian adding : ‘or from their making changes in speech (hence their a...

  • 50 Or, in IX, 1, 11 : ‘proprie schema dicitur, in sensu uel sermone aliqua a ...

  • 51 The phrase refers to the Stoic philosophy of language. Cf. the same use of...

  • 52 See the foot-note in Lausberg’s § 499 (first written in 1960) : ‘the defin...

34At the very beginning of the chapter, Quintilian remarks that ‘many have held that Figures are Tropes’ : ‘plerique has [figuras] tropos esse existimauerunt’. One of the reasons given is that tropes ‘uertant orationem’, they ‘make changes in speech’ (IX, 1, 1-2) – tropos coming from the verb trepein.49 For sure, Longinus is one of those plerique. At the beginning of 16, 1, he uses tropos to name what the skhèmata are about, ‘for these too, if rightly handed [skeuazètai tropon], may be an important element in the sublime’, or, in Boileau’s translation (my emphasis) : ‘lorsqu’on leur donne le tour qu’elles doivent avoir’. So, when our author comments on Demosthenes’ oath by saying ‘here I call it apostrophè’, it means in Latin ‘this is what I call uertere orationem’, what I call changing either words or the order of the speech (oratio, ‘style’ or ‘speech’). By saying so, the author is trying to escape a superficial view of the tropos, a view he feels is shared by his friend Terentianus. The tropos is, in Quintilian’s terms, ‘sermo a naturali et principali significatione tralatus’, ‘the transference of expressions from their natural and principal signification’ (IX, 1, 4).50 This standard definition echoes the way Demosthenes’ oath differs from the ‘natural use’ (‘kata phusin chrèsis’, On the Sublime, 16, 2). In Longinus, the phrase introduces the normal or ‘natural’ style Demosthenes should have used.51 But be careful, my dear Terentianus : diverging from standard expressions is not an aim in itself. The speaker’s goal was not to create surprise for the sake of surprise. Surprise is but the superficial side of the whole process. The speaker does not want to surprise the audience, he wants to dominate it. The point is not mainly aesthetics or stylistics (‘théorie de l’écart’),52 but indeed rhetoric, with full persuasion at stake. Not only beauty but also force. For Quintilian, thought-figures and word-figures ‘add force and charm’ (‘et uim rebus adiciunt et gratiam praestant’, IX, 1, 1) : force before charm, uis before gratia. For Longinus, the point is exactly the same. At the end of his analysis, he says : ‘in all this by the use of the figure he is enabled to carry the audience away with him [sunarpasas ôcheto]’ ; or, in Boileau’s translation, ‘et par tous ces différents moyens renfermés dans une seule figure, il les entraîne dans son parti’.

35The second use of interest for us in Quintilian is auersa (IX, 1, 20) :

the Figure […] lends our words credibility and insinuates itself into the judges’ mind where it is not noticed. [20.] For, just as in fencing it is easy to see, parry, and repel direct blows and simple, straightforward strokes, while sidestrokes and feints [auersae tectaeque] are less easy to detect, and the art lies in making a threat which is not related to your real object [aliud ostendisse quam petas artis est], so oratory which lacks guile fights only with weight and drive, whereas if you use feints and vary your approach you can attack the flanks or the rear, draw off the defence, and, as it were, duck to deceive.

36We now recognize, in ‘aliud ostendisse quam petas’, another formulation of the ‘dum aliud agere uidemur, aliud efficimus’ (IX, 2, 62) by which Quintilian characterizes Demosthenes’ oath. I would say that this beautiful description is like an echo of Longinus, with the same taste for long metaphors, rather infrequent in Quintilian. An echo of Longinus, or more generally of the Greek circles avidly discussing the Caecilius’s treatise. The English translation of ‘tectae’ by ‘feints’ is very interesting as well, since it etymologically refers to fingere. It suggests Quintilian had elaborated his own theory of the figura as ficta or simulata through a meditation of the profound insights on auertere he found in the Greek discussions of the first century, discussions he is obviously familiar with. At the very least, Quintilian’s §§ 38-39 on apostrophè betray an awareness of what was at stake, among Greek circles, behind this apparently banal term.

  • 53 Lys., ed. Aujac II, 12, 6.

37The beautiful description closely reminds us of the prefix agchi in agchistrophos, the word describing a quick change, a sort of volte-face. We have seen this rare prefix is cherished by On the sublime. It is present as well in Dionysius.53 For that critic, a soldier-like orator like Iphicrates is a specialist of the straightforward strokes ; he does not have the grace or charis of a Lysias. He has only ‘stratiôtikè authadeia kai alazoneia’, rather than ‘rhètorikè agchinoia’ : in Aujac’s translation, ‘arrogance et vantardise de soldat’ and not ‘finesse oratoire’. In Quintilian’s terms, he ‘lacks guile’ : ‘astu caret’. The soldier-like Iphicrates is the rare example of an absence of figurae, or in Dionysius’s terms, of an absence of agchinoia, and in Longinus’s, of agchistrophè, of apostrophè. With this kind of speaker, you know from the start what is going to happen, while agchinoia or astutia stresses the orator’s ability to secretly design a real surprise, a successful diversion or auersio – and hence to be, strictly speaking, versatile (uersatilis, from uersare, itself coming from uertere).

38Quintilian is reusing and synthesizing the best of what a century of Greek discussions had to offer him, including (or not) Longinus’s treatise. But the Institutio shows his firm opposition to the consequences of versatility, namely an excessive and in his view’s superficial praise of some admirable passages, these admirationes which arouse thunderous applause. The Institutio takes a stance on a controversial issue, and its demarcation line is given by Fouquelin’s criterion : discontinuity vs continuity. Quintilian like Horace is strongly supporting the beauties of continuity, of the coherent construction of a whole. Longinus is, no less strongly, supporting the beauties of discontinuity : he loves interruptions, hyperbates, metabasis, etc. – in short, everything that recalls the need for an orator, gifted with a grand ethos and a great ability, to grasp the occasion or kairos. In a word, or a pun, On the sublime is the antistrophè of Quintilian. It is another version of rhetoric, a diverting one : a welcome diversion from the standard version.

Notes

1 On the Sublime, ed. D. A. Russell (Oxford, 1970), 129. – I will refer to Longinus and not to the ‘pseudo-Longinus’ : ‘the author [of On the Sublime] conventionally referred to as an otherwise unknown Longinus’ (G. A. Kennedy, in Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, ed. S. E. Porter [Leiden, 1997], 34).

2 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IX, 2, §§ 38-39 ; henceforth quoted in D. A. Russell’s translation (Cambridge, 2001) : ‘[38.] Auersus quoque a iudice sermo, qui dicitur apostrophe, mire mouet, siue aduersarios inuadimus : “quid enim tuus ille, Tubero, in acie Pharsalica ?” [Cicero, Lig. 9] siue ad inuocationem aliquam conuertimur : “uos enim iam ego, Albani tumuli atque luci” [Cicero, Mil. 85] siue ad inuidiosam inplorationem : “o leges Porciae legesque Semproniae !” [Cicero, Verr. V, 163] [39.] Sed illa quoque uocatur auersio quae a proposita quaestione abducit audientem : “non ego cum Danais Troianam excindere gentem / Aulide iuraui” [Vergil, Aen. IV, 425]. Quod fit et multis et uariis figuris, cum aut aliud expectasse nos aut maius aliquid timuisse simulamus aut plus uideri posse ignorantibus, quale est prohoemium pro Caelio.The first words of § 38 are for Quintilian the Latin equivalent of the Greek word apostrophè, cf.Sermonem a persona iudicis auersum (apostrophè dicitur)’ (IV, 1, 63), ‘Sermo uero auersus a iudice’ (IV, 2, 106).

3 We will not take in account Quintilian’s number (3) : one may consider his inploratio as a particular sort of inuocatio.

4 ‘The term exclamatio is restricted to apostrophe by Rhet. Her. IV, 22’ : Lausberg H., Handbook of literary rhetoric, ed. D. E. Orton and R. D. Anderson (Leiden, 1998), § 809 – Rhet. Her. does not have the word apostrophe, but conpellatio instead.

5 Lamy B., La rhétorique ou l’art de parler (1715), ed. C. Noille-Clauzade (Paris, 1998), 233 (cf. 240) : ‘il s’adresse au Ciel, à la terre, aux rochers, aux forêts, aux choses insensibles, aussi bien qu’à celles qui sont sensibles’ (my English translation).

6 Lamy, 233, quoting Is 45, 8 : ‘Isaïe apostrophe le ciel et la terre pour les prier de donner le Messie qu’il attendait avec tant d’impatience. Cieux, envoyez d’en haut votre rosée […]’.

7 ‘L’apostrophe se fait lorsqu’un homme étant extraordinairement ému, il se tourne de tous côtés’

8 ‘L’apostrophe signifie [originally] conversion’ (Lamy, 233). Cf. the translation by H. E. Butler (Cambridge, 1921) of the beginning of Quintilian’s § 38 : ‘Apostrophe also, which consists in the diversion of our address from the judge’.

9 Lausberg § 762. Mazzucchi C. M., 218, gives further references, à propos of On the Sublime 16, 2 : « Alessandro, Peri schèmatôn I 20 = pp. 23, 28-24, 20 vol. III Spengel ; Tiberio, Peri schèmatôn 7 = pp. 61, 28-62, 5 vol. III Spengel, in cui è riportata la fine del § 208 con l’apostrofe ad Eschine che leggiamo anche nel cap. 16, 4 del Sublime ; Phoibammon, Peri schèmatôn I 5 = pp. 49, 29-50, 2 vol. III Spengel ».

10 The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (Oxford, 1989), s. v. apostrophe1.

11 At least in the Vulgate : ‘Montes Gelboe nec ros nec pluviae veniant super vos’ ; idem in the translation by Lemaître de Sacy (died in 1684) : ‘Montagne de Gelboé, que la rosée et la pluie ne tombent jamais sur toi’.

12 Fouquelin A., La rhétorique française, in Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance, ed. F. Goyet (Paris, 2001), 385.

13 For reticentia and correctio, see Lausberg §§ 887-889 and §§ 784-786.

14 Fouquelin Rhétorique, 388 : ‘incontinent il détourne sa parole à ce verre’ (my translation).

15 Fouquelin Rhétorique, 388, quoting Du Bellay, Prosphonématique, 1-8 ; Fouquelin, 373, has already quoted the first six lines, as an example of ‘salutation’.

16 Liddell H. G. and Scott R., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1968), s. v. apostrephô.

17 Cicero, Lig. 9 : ‘commoueri uidetur adulescens’.

18 For that unique wonder of a ‘turning away’ at the very beginning of a speech, see Loutsch C., L’exorde dans les discours de Cicéron (Bruxelles, 1994), 286-287, on Cicero, Cat. I, 1 : ‘Cicéron a dû accompagner cette apostrophe fracassante d’un geste en direction de Catilina. Surpris par la virulence du propos, les auditeurs suivent spontanément de leur regard étonné le geste du consul, son bras levé et pointé en direction de l’un d’entre eux. Et, à la faveur de la confusion créée pendant une fraction de seconde, leur attention se trouve détournée sur Catilina. L’effet immédiat est une inversion des fronts : il n’y a plus d’une part un consul isolé, de l’autre un Sénat réservé et hostile ; désormais, le Sénat se retrouve regroupé, uni autour du consul, face à un Catilina isolé, mis au ban. […] Cicéron s’érige en porte-parole d’un Sénat désormais uni : abutere patientia nostra […] furor tuus nos eludet.’ ‘[L]’apostrophe est ainsi au service d’une tactique familière à Cicéron, dont le but est de regrouper les amis et d’isoler l’adversaire’.

19 On the sublime, ed. D. A. Russell, 146.

20 See especially agchistrophôs at 22, 1, about inversions (huperbata) : ‘under the stress of their excitement, like a ship before a veering wind, they lay their words and thoughts first on one tack then another, and keep altering the natural order of sequence’ (translation W. H. Fyfe). Pigeaud J., in his ed. of Longinus (Paris and Marseille, 1991), 37 : ‘Il ne faut pas oublier une qualité toute sportive et liée à la jeunesse : l’agilité à se retourner (to agchistrophon, IX, 13), que Longin reconnaît aussi à Démosthène (XII, 3), en somme le coup de rein.’ Hermogenes has only one agchistrophos, rather hard to understand (ed. Rabe, 106, l. 7) ; the only one in Dionysius of Halicarnassus is translated as follows by G. Aujac : ‘une telle harmonie […] est instable dans l’accord grammatical’ (Comp., in Opuscules rhétoriques, ed. Aujac, VI, 22, 6). For agchinoia in Dionysius, see my conclusion.

21 Or, to quote the actual words of On the Sublime (transl. Fyfe) : ‘You were not wrong, men of Athens, in undertaking that struggle for the freedom of Greece, and you have proof of this near home, for neither were the men at Marathon misguided nor those at Salamis nor those at Plataea.’

22 On the Sublime, ed. D. A. Russell, 129.

23 Gabriel de Petra (Dalla Pietra), professor of Greek in Lausanne (Geneva : J. de Tournes, 1612), 86. For form as an equivalent of figure, see ‘conformatio verborum / sententiarum’ (Cicero, De Oratore, III, 201 ; Lausberg § 602).

24 Vergil, Aen. III, 599. On obtestatio or obsecratio, see Lausberg § 760 ; obtestatio is a very frequent term in Melanchthon’s rhetorical analyses, and in his followers. See below its use in 1614 by Gaspar Laurent (1556-1636), who translates Hermogenes’ horkos by ‘per sancta obtestationem’ or ‘iuramentum et obtestetatio’).

25 In the original, ‘omotikon skhèma’ and ‘Dianoias’ are given in Greek characters : ‘omotikon skhèma figura Dianoias, (per quam furor Demosthenis in dicendo expressus)’.

26 Quintilian uses sublimitas just before, among other terms describing Demosthenes’ style : ‘ui, sublimitate, impetu, cultu, compositione superauit’ (XII, 10, 23). The famous oath is for Quintilian the climax of the orator’s triumphs. – Cf. Anderson R. D., Glossary of Greek rhetorical terms (Leuven, 2000), 25 : apostrophè in 16, 2 ‘describe(s) the rhetorical use of an oath’ and ‘a sublime use of this figure’ ; Demosthenes ‘turns to make an oath not to the gods but to those who fought in the battle of Marathon. He thus both deifies the former Greek victors and enables his audience to identify with them in the fight against Philip.’

27 Peri tôn ideôn, in Hermogenis Opera, ed. H. Rabe (Leipzig, 1913), 326-327 ; Latin translation by Gaspar Laurent, in Hermogenis Ars oratoria absolutissima (Genève : P. Aubert, 1614), 393-394 ; English translation by Cecil W. Wooten, in Hermogenes, On Types of Style (Chapel Hill and London, The University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 73-74 ; French translation by Michel Patillon, in Hermogenes, L’art rhétorique (s. l., L’Age d’homme, 1997), 425-426.

28 Patillon : ‘Il est encore naïf et éthique [èthikos and aphelès], en ce qui concerne la pensée, de garantir quelque chose par des attestations solennelles [horkos] et non par les faits’. Laurent : ‘Praeterea simplex genus & moratum fit in sententiam, quando aliquid per sanctam obtestationem’.

29 Laurent : ‘Omnia autem illa sunt morata & simplicia, quae fiunt per sacrosancta : atque etiam si auditores obtestetur per sacrosancta aut aduersarium’.

30 And ‘an approach’ elsewhere in Wooten’s translation, e. g. ‘The approach [methodouseis] that is typical of real Brilliance is to introduce the thought directly’ (Rabe 266, Wooten 34 ; Laurent 307 : ‘Methodum adhibetis qua fiat hoc genus dicendi splendidum’).

31 See also Gibert B., La rhétorique ou les règles de l’éloquence (1730), ed. S. Ben Messaoud (Paris, 2004), 282 : ‘Les serments employés au lieu de preuves sont dans le simple, mais non pas quand on jure par autre chose que par les choses saintes, ou par les dieux comme par les païens, ou par le saint nom de Dieu comme dans la vraie religion. Ainsi le serment que fait Démosthène à Marathon n’est point dans le simple. Cicéron de même en fit un en sortant de charge à la fin de son consulat, qui est très singulier en son espèce, et il est sublime, quoiqu’il jure par les dieux.’

32 Cf. a preceding passage of the Peri tôn ideôn (ed. Rabe, 266-267, chapter on Brilliance ; transl. C. Wooten, 34) : ‘It is also typical of the approach [methodos] that produces Brilliance to speak noble sentiments nobly, as Demosthenes does when he says : “No, I swear by those of our ancestors who fought at Marathon,” etc.’ He could have said : “I advised you rightly to fight on behalf of the liberty of the Greeks. For those who fought at Marathon acted thus.” This would have been stated in a noble way. But by using the oath [eis horkon] he has made the expression even nobler and has produced a brilliant passage.’ Patillon (370) : ‘Une autre méthode éclatante consiste à énoncer les faits illustres de façon à en augmenter le lustre […] : mais notre auteur en lui donnant la forme d’une attestation solennelle en a augmenté le lustre et lui a donné de l’éclat.’ Laurent (308-309) : ‘Pertinet quoque ad methodum splendidam […]. Sed orator ad iuramentum rem deduxit, sermonem reddens magnificentiorem atque splendidiorem.’

33 9, 2, ‘tina, phèseis, tropon ?’ : ‘How ? you will ask. – Well, elsewhere I have written something like this, “Sublimity is the true ring of a noble mind” [upsos megalophrosunè apèchèma]’.

34 J. Pigeaud’s translation (his italics), 64. One could also interpret in terms of complicity the fact, underlined in my own edition of Longinus, that the numerous hapax of the treatise are recoining, in Greek, stock-phrases of the Latin rhetoric.

35 Which actually announces five parts, in chapter 8. But, according to R. Granatelli (« Struttura del De Sublimitate e suoi valori pedagogici », Rhetorica, 321-347), On the Sublime ‘can be schematized according to a bipartite subdivision : (1) articulation of the subject matter, and (2) a pedagogical method that develops the rhetorical techniques related to that subject matter’, so the treatise is definitely a rhetorical handbook.

36 For other examples, see my commentary on Du Bellay’s Deffence and Illustration… : in French, mot de liaison describes a specific class of grammatical words, but the verb lier reveals the crucial phenomenon behind ; etc.

37 His index lists only, s. v. apostrophè, three instances, §§ 271, 762 and 763 ; and § 271 gives the same meaning than § 762.

38 Ed. Rabe, 314, linked with apostrophè.

39 Ed. Rabe, 20 and 318. See Anderson R. D. Glossary, 25 : apostrophè as ‘turning away from’ is connected to metabasis, parenthesis, alloiôsis. Anderson quotes a rare use by Alexander’s De Figuris, 1, 20 : apostrophè as ‘an accusation laid against one person but really intended for another’. Of little help in this instance is Rowe G. O. in Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, ed. S. E. Porter (Leiden, 1997), 139 (‘apostrophè, auersio [ad aduersarium]’) and 145 (‘metabasis, auersio [ad rem]’), without even a word-index to relate the two auersio.

40 As well shown by Mazzucchi C. M., ad loc. Anderson R. D. Glossary, 16, links those chapters 23-27 not to metabasis but to the related alloiôsis, this term being precisely the one used by Caecilius in his treatise (Fr. 75).

41 Dionysius, Amm. 2 (in Aujac, VIII, 13, 1-2). In those chapters 23-27, On the sublime use once metabasis and metabolè (23, 1) and twice antimetathesis : ‘tôn prosôpon antimetathesis’ (26, 1 ; cf. Dionysius, Thuc., Aujac VII, 24, 7, ‘prosôpon apostrophais’) ; ‘antimethistatai’ (27, 1).

42 Translation by A. Portal (Oxford, 1814).

43 Or, in Rowe G. O. translation, under the heading ‘Prodiorthosis’ (‘attempt to prepare the audience for a shocking or offensive statement’) : ‘I wish to say something surprising ; and, by Zeus and the gods, let nobody marvel at this extreme statement but attend with good will what I say’ (in Porter S. E. Handbook, 130).

44 Cf. the ‘genus admirabile’ in the exordium, rendering paradoxon skhèma : Lausberg § 64.3.

45 Quintilian, IV, 2, 107 : ‘ut habeat narratio suauitatem, admirationes, exspectationes, exitus inopinatos, colloquia personarum, omnes adfectus’ (I modify the translation by Russell, who gives ‘surprise, and rouse expectations, as well as unexpected turns’, etc.) ; Quintilian here explicitly quotes Cicero, Part. 32.

46 On licentia, see Lausberg § 761. I have developped on Lig. 9 in another article (Goyet F., « Les figures de pensée comme grands blocs, unités minimales pour construire un discours », Quintilien ancien et moderne, ed. P. Galand-Hallyn, F. Hallyn, C. Lévy et W. Verbaal éd., Turnhout, Brepols, to be published).

47 Cic. 39, 7.

48 I am not very much interested by the vexed question of the dating of Longinus, usually raising the problem of the actual meaning of chapter 44 (the end of the Republic at 44, 2 and the ‘world’s peace’ of 44, 6) : the dating would bring little to the intimate understanding of the treatise. I have not seen Crossett J. M. and Arieti J. A., The Dating of Longinus (Pennsylvania State University, 1975), who argue for a probable date around the middle of the century, under Nero ; for G. A Kennedy, ‘Date of composition and authorship are debatable, with perhaps majority sentiment now inclining to the second century ad’ (in Porter S. E ed., Handbook, 34). Caecilius could of course have been read with passion under the second century. But the possibility of a reading just after publication seems to me more consistent with the rhetorical issues of On the Sublime, as has been developped by C. M. Mazzucchi. The same Mazzucchi recalls that the gens of the Cassii Longini was, under Augustus, an important intellectual and political circle, longing for the Republic : in his view, a ‘Dionysius Longinus’ could then be a Greek (Dionysius) who acquired the roman citizenship, and was called Longinus to show his link with that family.

49 Quintilian adding : ‘or from their making changes in speech (hence their alternative name “Moves”)’ – ‘unde et motus dicuntur’.

50 Or, in IX, 1, 11 : ‘proprie schema dicitur, in sensu uel sermone aliqua a uulgari et simplici specie cum ratione mutatio, sicut nos sedemus, incumbimus, respicimus, in its proper meaning, schema means a purposeful deviation in sense or language from the ordinary simple form : the analogy is now with sitting, bending forwards, or looking back’ ; cf., at II, 13, 8 (where it refers to auersio ad rem, a changing in the ordo of the speech), ‘Expedit autem saepe mutare ex illo constituto traditoque ordine aliqua, et interim decet, ut in statuis atque picturis uidemus uariari habitus, uultus, status’. So mutatio is the same as uariatio (and uertere) and translatio ; as, in Greek, metabolè, apostrophè, etc. Cicero’s views are quite different : but see the first skhèmata he thinks of (Orator, 137) : ‘Sic igitur dicet ille [orator] ut uerset saepe multis modis eadem et in una re haereat in eademque commoretur sententia ; […] ut declinet a proposito deflectatque sententiam […].’

51 The phrase refers to the Stoic philosophy of language. Cf. the same use of ‘kata phusin’ in Dionysius (Dem., transl. Aujac, V, 9, 3), where it is linked to apostrephein : Demosthenes, like Thucydides, ‘détourne et éloigne [apostrephein] le langage de son emploi ordinaire [exèllachthai kai apestraphthai tèn dialecton ek tôn en ethei kai kata phusin], pour aller contre les habitudes de la plupart des gens et contre aussi le vœu de la nature’.

52 See the foot-note in Lausberg’s § 499 (first written in 1960) : ‘the definition of the “figura” […] corresponds to what present-day French stylistics understands by “écart”.’ But the écart theory is itself quite debatable, and indeed has been harshly debated in France during the 1960s and 70s.

53 Lys., ed. Aujac II, 12, 6.

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Pour citer ce document

Francis Goyet, «The meaning of apostrophe in Longinus’s On the Sublime (16, 2)», La Réserve [En ligne], La Réserve, Livraison du 05 novembre 2015, mis à jour le : 23/11/2015, URL : http://ouvroir.ramure.net/revues/reserve/174-the-meaning-of-apostrophe-in-longinus-s-on-the-sublime-16-2.

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Université Grenoble Alpes / U.M.R. Litt&Arts – RARE Rhétorique de l’Antiquité à la Révolution

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