On the Sublime

About this Longinus while much is written, little is certainly known. Was he a descendant of a freedman of one of the Cassii Longini or of an eastern family with a mixture of Greek and Roman blood? The author of the Treatise avows himself a Greek and apologises as a Greek, for attempting an estimate of Cicero. Longinus himself was the nephew and heir of Fronto, a Syrian rhetorician of Emesa. Whether Longinus was born there or not and when he was born are things uncertain. Porphyry, born in 233 A. D. , was his pupil .