1. Introduction to the text:
   1. Original title: Peri Hypsous
   2. The text is a spirited and uplifted work, challenged and inspired later authors like Gibbon, Dryden, Addison, Goldsmith, Fielding, Sterne and Pope.
   3. First Marc Antoine Muret, a French critic evaluated the text.
   4. Manuscript written in Greek and assigned to Dionysus of Halicarnassus, a historian of the 1st Century B.C.
   5. Then assigned to Cassius Longinus of Palmyra, a Syrian rhetorician and philosopher of 3rd Century A.D.
   6. Both the guesses were wrong. It is mostly accepted now that mysterious Longinus lived about the 1st century A.D.
   7. The original document exists in 11 manuscripts over a third of which are missing.
   8. Addressed to Postumius Terentianus (a bright young Roman who studied literature with Longinus), might be a fictional persona.
   9. There is a reference to ‘Caecilius’, little Treatise On The Sublime, a work by a Jewish Sicilian grammarian of the 1st Century B.C.
   10. Longimus is called the first romantic philosopher because he gave importance to the first two sources of sublimity which are innate and natural unlike Virgil and Horace who gave importance to the last three learnable skills. Longinus also gave importance to emotion and imagination like a romantic.
   11. Longinus’s text talks about sublimity in literature. This sublimity consists in a certain distinction or excellene of discourse. Genius is innate, it can not be learned. Sublimity is the product of a genius, truly eloquent man must have a mind that is not mean and ignoble. The greatness of Speech is the province of those whose thoughts are deep. Lofty expressions come naturally to the most high minded man.
   12. nature is an organic instinct, it is the first clause and the fundamental creative principle in all activities, natural genius is needed to show the sublimity in text.
   13. A particular system has to be developed for the display or the expression of the genius that the person has. Certain rules must be followed.
   14. Difference between Caecilius’s and Longinus’s idea of sublimity:
       1. Caecilius first discusses the nature of sublimity , Longinus is not happy with Caecilius’s theory of sublimity and identified that as trivial. He identified two parts of systematic treatise:
          1. Definition
          2. Hierarchy of Important events.
       2. Caecilius focused only on examples to define sublimity and ignored how to achieve sublimity, (He focused on WHAT and not on HOW) Longinus as a philosopher thinks the duty of a philosopher is to guide novice writers to write sublimity insead of only describing them.
2. What do we mean by Sublime and Sublimity?
   1. Sublimity consists in a central distinction or excellence of discourse.
   2. Genius is innate it is not something that can be learnt and nature is the only art that begets it. Nature is the first cause and fundamental creative principal in all activities. nature takes the place of good fortune, art that of good counsel.
   3. The function of a system is to prescribe the degree and the right moment for each and to lay down the clearest rules for use and practice.
   4. The true sublime uplifts ourselves, we are filled with joy and there is a sense of purification. Sublimity admits the eternal value and acceptability in all ages, sublime texts are eternal.
3. Five Sources of Sublimity:
   1. Nuesis: Ability to form grand conceptions and noble thoughts.
   2. Sphodrom kai enthousiastikon Pathe: Stimulus of powerful and inspired emotion (both are largely innate in nature, the products of nature)
   3. Schema: figures of thought and figure of speech (rhetorical figures)
   4. Phrasis: Noble diction
   5. Ekstasis: Dignified and elevated word arrangement.
4. The first two can not be learned, they are natural and innate qualities of a genius, when the last three can be learned and furnished.

Text Analysis of On the Sublime – Longinus

1. Chapter I: What is sublime?
   1. Sublime texts are distinct and excellence in expression.
   2. The effect of elevated language upon an audience is not  persuasion but transport.
   3. Sublimity flashing forth at the right moment scatters everything before it like a thunderbolt, and at once display the power of the orator in all its plentitude.
2. Chapter II: Art
   1. Genius says, there is the producer of genius and does not come by teaching. Nature is the mother of genius. (We remember the last line of Philip Sidney’s ‘Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show’: “Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”)
   2. Demusthenes, a great Athenian oratortor of 4th Century B.C.), Gorgias, Callisthenes (Nephew of Aristotle, historian dealing with the achievements of Alexander the Great) use jargons but they are not genius.
   3. Fortune (Nature) and Counsel (Art)