But they have a third and yet nobler
use. They teach us to lift our own souls.
For witness to this and to the way of it I am going to call an
old writer for whom, be it whim or not, I have an almost 18th
century reverence--Longinus. No one exactly knows who he was;
although it is usual to identify him with that Longinus who
philosophised in the court of the Queen Zenobia and was by her,
in her downfall, handed over with her other counsellors to be
executed by Aurelian: though again, as is usual, certain bold bad
men affirm that, whether he was this Longinus or not, the
treatise of which I speak was not written by any Longinus at all
but by someone with a different name, with which they are
unacquainted. Be this as it may, somebody wrote the treatise and
its first editor, Francis Robertello of Basle, in 1554 called him
Dionysius Longinus; and so shall I, and have done with it,
careless that other MSS than that used by Robertello speak of
Dionysius or Longinus. Dionysius Longinus, then, in the 3rd
century A.
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