Few will dispute that this passage in Genesis belongs to the sublimest order of literature. It is of the utmost interest that Longinus (whoever he was) should have recognized this fact. Whoever he was—whether the true Longinus, or an unknown rhetorician of the first century. Whether it belongs to the age of Augustus or Aurelian, it is equally noteworthy that the Greek writer should have admitted that the sublime might be exhibited by Moses as well as by Homer. It is quite clear, however, that Longinus did not take his quotation from the Hebrew Bible itself or from the Greek translation. Had he known the Bible, he must have made much fuller use of it. Read his analysis of the sublime quoted above. He could, and would, have illustrated every one of his five conditions from the Bible, had he been acquainted with it. Moreover, the quotation from Genesis is inexact. There is no text: God said: Let there be earth, and there was earth. Obviously, as Théodore Reinach points out, the reference is taken from the sense, not the words, of Genesis 1. 9 and 10. Longinus, therefore, either knew it from hearsay, or he had found the quotation in the course of his reading.
This latter suggestion was made as long ago as 1711 by Schurzfleisch—how Matthew Arnold would have jibed at a man with such a name commenting on the Sublime! Longinus quotes a previous treatise on the Sublime by a certain Caecilius. His predecessor, says Longinus, wasted his efforts “in a thousand illustrations of the nature of the Sublime,” while he failed to define the subject. Be that as it may, Longinus quotes Caecilius several times, especially for these very illustrations. It is by no means improbable, then, that Longinus’ reference to Genesis was derived from Caecilius, who may have paraphrased from memory rather than have quoted with the Bible before him. Now, Suidas informs us that Caecilius was reported to be a Jew. Reinach (Revue des Études Juives, vol. xxvi, pp. 36-46) has provided full ground for accepting the information of Suidas, which is now generally adopted as true.
Caecilius belonged to the first century of the current era, and, born in Sicily, the offspring of a slave, he betook himself as a freedman to Rome, where he won considerable note as a writer on rhetoric. The Characters of the Ten Orators was one of his most important books; several histories are ascribed to him; and, as we have seen, he wrote a formal treatise on the Sublime, which gave rise to the better-known work attributed to Longinus. It is not clear whether Caecilius was a born Jew or a proselyte. Probably the theory that best fits the facts is that of Schürer. We may suppose that the rhetorician’s father was brought to Rome as a Jewish slave by Pompey, and was then sold to a Sicilian. In Sicily, the son, who bore the name Archagathos, received a Greek education, and was freed by a Roman of the Caecilius clan. The freedman would drop his own name, and adopt the family name of his benefactor, according to common practice. Schürer offers a very acute, and I think conclusive, argument against the view that Caecilius was a convert to Judaism. A proselyte would have exhibited much more zeal for his new faith. In the works of Caecilius, I may add, his Judaism seems more a reminiscence than a vital factor. It is, on the whole, more likely that he came of Jewish ancestry than that he was himself a new-made Jew. Reinach contends that because he was a proselyte, Caecilius knew the Bible only superficially, and hence arose his misquotation of Genesis. Is that a probable view to take? If we conceive, with Schürer, that the father of Caecilius, a born Jew, had passed through such vicissitudes, being carried a slave from Syria to Rome, transferred into an alien environment in Sicily, we can well understand that the son would possess but a superficial memory of the Bible. On the other hand, a proselyte would have become a devotee to the Scriptures, the beauties of which had burst upon his mind for the first time. He would not misquote. The chief Jewish translators of the Bible into Greek (apart, of course, from the oldest Alexandrian version) were, curiously enough, proselytes to Judaism. Perhaps it would be too far-fetched to suggest that Caecilius had a particular reason to remember the first chapter of Genesis. His original name, Archagathos, is not a bad translation of the Hebrew “very good” (tob meod) which occurs prominently in the story of the Creation.
Unfortunately, none of the works of Caecilius is preserved. We know him only by a few fragments. Plutarch described him as “eminent in all things,” yet neither Schürer in his earlier editions, nor Graetz in any edition, placed him where he ought to be—to use Reinach’s phraseology—in the phalanx of the great Jewish Hellenists, with Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus. Caecilius was the restorer of Atticism in literature, a piquant rôle for a Jew to play. Yet it is a part the Jew has often filled. An instructive essay could be written on the services rendered by Hebrews to the spread of Hellenism, not merely in the ancient world, but also in the medieval and modern civilizations.
THE PHOENIX OF EZEKIELOS
“The plumage,” writes Herodotus (ii. 73), “is partly red, partly golden, while the general form and size are almost exactly like the eagle.” The Greek historian was describing the phoenix, the fabled bird which lived for five hundred years. According to another version, she then consumed herself in fire, and from the ashes emerged again in youthful freshness. Herodotus likens the phoenix to the eagle, and the reader of some of the Jewish commentaries on the last verse of Isaiah 40 and the fifth verse of Psalm 103 will find references to similar ideas. In particular to be noted is Kimhi’s citation of Sa’adya’s reference to the belief that the eagle acquired new wings every twelve years, and lived a full century. Such fancies easily attached themselves to Isaiah’s phrase and to the psalmist’s words: “Thy youth is renewed like the eagle.” The biblical metaphors, in sober fact, merely allude to the fullness of life, high flight, and vigor of the eagle; there is nothing whatever that is mythical about them.
What passes for one of the most famous descriptions of the phoenix is contained in the well-known Greek drama of the Exodus (or rather Exagogê) written by the Jewish poet, Ezekielos. This writer probably flourished rather more than a century before the Christian era. It is commonly supposed that he lived in the capital of the Ptolemies, in Alexandria; but it has been suggested by Kuiper that his home was not in Egypt, but in Palestine, in Samaria. If that be so, it is a remarkable phenomenon. We should not wonder that a Jew in Alexandria composed Greek dramas on biblical themes, with the twofold object of presenting the history of Israel in attractive form and of providing a substitute for the heathen plays which monopolized the ancient theatre. But that such dramas should be produced soon after the Maccabean age in Palestine would imply an unexpected continuity of the influences of Greek manners in the homeland of the Jews. Ere we could accept the theory of a Palestinian origin for Ezekielos, we should need far stronger arguments than Kuiper adduces (Revue des Études Juives, vol. xlvi, p. 48, seq.).
The drama of the Exodus—which was apparently written to be performed—follows the biblical story with some closeness. We are now, however, interested in a single episode, preserved for us among the fragments of Ezekielos as quoted by Eusebius (Prep. Evangel., ix. 30). A beautiful picture of the twelve springs of Elim and of its seventy palms is followed by a description of the extraordinary bird that appeared there. I take the passage from Gifford’s Eusebius (iii, p. 475). A character of the play, after the Greek manner, is reporting to Moses:
Another living thing we saw, more strange
And marvellous than man e’er saw before,
The noblest eagle scarce was half as large;
His outspread wings with varying colors shone;
The breast was bright with purple, and the legs
With crimson glowed, and on the shapely neck
The golden plumage shone in graceful curves;
The head was like a gentle nestling’s formed;
Bright shone the yellow circlet of the eye
On all around, and wondrous sweet the voice.
The king he seemed of all the winged tribe,
As soon was proved; for birds of every kind
Hovered in fear behind his stately form;
While like a bull, proud leader of the herd,
Foremost he marched with swift and haughty step.
Gifford has no hesitation in accepting the common identification of this bird with the phoenix. Obviously, however, Ezekielos says nothing of the mythical properties of the bird; he merely presents to us a super-eagle of gorgeous plumage and splendid stature, unnatural but not supernatural. Even the magnificence of the superb bird pictured by Ezekielos is less bizarre than we find it in other authors. Ezekielos’ figures sink into insignificance beside those of Lactantius, who tells us that the bird’s monstrous eyes resembled twin hyacinths, from the midst of which flashed and quivered a bright flame. If Ezekielos really refers to the phoenix, how does it come into the drama at all? Gifford has this note: “There is no mention in Exodus of the phoenix or any such bird, but the twelve palm-trees (phoenix) at Elim may have suggested the story of the phoenix to the poet, just as in the poem of Lactantius. Phoenix 70, the tree is said to have been named from the bird.” The word phoenix has, I may add, a romantic history. It means, literally, Phoenician. Now, certain of the Phoenician race were the reputed discoverers and first users of purple-red or crimson dyes. Hence these colors were named after them, Phoenix or Phoenician. The Greek translation, in Isaiah 1. 18, renders “scarlet” by Phoenician. The epithet was applied equally to red cattle, to the bay horse, to the date-palm and its fruit. It was also used of the fabulous bird because of its colorings. Gifford supposes, then, that Ezekielos knowing of the palms reached at Elim in the early wanderings of Israel, introduced the bird into his drama. The palms at Elim are indeed described by this very word (Phoenician) in the Greek translation of the Bible which Ezekielos used (Exodus 15. 27). The lulab is also termed phoenix in the Greek of Leviticus 23. 40.