III. 2. 17.
φορβειᾶς δ᾽ ἄτερ, lit. “without a cheek-strap,” which was worn by
trumpeters to assist them in regulating their breath. The line is
contracted from two of Sophocles’s, and Longinus’s point is that the
extravagance of Cleitarchus is not that of a strong but ill-regulated
nature, but the ludicrous straining after grandeur of a writer at once
feeble and pretentious.

Ruhnken gives an extract from some inedited “versus politici” of
Tzetzes, in which are some amusing specimens of those felicities of
language Longinus is here laughing at. Stones are the “bones,” rivers
the “veins,” of the earth; the moon is “the sigma of the sky” (Ϲ the old
form of Σ); sailors, “the ants of ocean”; the strap of a pedlar’s pack,
“the girdle of his load”; pitch, “the ointment of doors,” and so on.


IV. 4. 4.
The play upon the double meaning of κόρα, (1) maiden, (2) pupil of the
eye, can hardly be kept in English. It is worthy of remark that our text
of Xenophon has ἐν τοῖς θαλάμοις, a perfectly natural expression. Such a
variation would seem to point to a very early corruption of ancient
manuscripts, or to extraordinary inaccuracy on the part of Longinus,
who, indeed, elsewhere displays great looseness of citation, confusing
together totally different passages.

9.
ἰταμόν. I can make nothing of this word. Various corrections have been
suggested, but with little certainty.

5. 10.