characteristic of men to blame the present times. Genius may have been
corrupted, not by a world-wide peace, but by love of gain and pleasure,
passions so strong that “I fear, for such men as we are it is better to
serve than to be free. If our appetites were let loose altogether
against our neighbours, they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and
bring a deluge of calamity on the whole civilised world.” Melancholy
words, and appropriate to our own age, when cleverness is almost
universal, and genius rare indeed, and the choice between liberty and
servitude hard to make, were the choice within our power.

But these words assuredly apply closely to the peaceful period of
Augustus, when Virgil and Horace “praising their tyrant sang,” not to
the confused age of the historical Longinus. Much has been said of the
allusion to “the Lawgiver of the Jews” as “no ordinary person,” but that
remark might have been made by a heathen acquainted with the Septuagint,
at either of the disputed dates. On the other hand, our author (Section
XIII) quotes the critical ideas of “Ammonius and his school,” as to the
debt of Plato to Homer. Now the historical Longinus was a friend of the
Neoplatonist teacher (not writer), Ammonius Saccas. If we could be sure
that the Ammonius of the Treatise was this Ammonius, the question would
be settled in favour of the late date. Our author would be that Longinus
who inspired Zenobia to resist Aurelian, and who perished under his
revenge. But Ammonius is not a very uncommon name, and we have no reason
to suppose that the Neoplatonist Ammonius busied himself with the
literary criticism of Homer and Plato. There was, among others, an
Egyptian Ammonius, the tutor of Plutarch.

These are the mass of the arguments on both sides. M. Egger sums them up
thus: “After carefully examining the tradition of the MSS., and the one
very late testimony in favour of Longinus, I hesitated for long as to