Cassius Longinus

Cassius Longinus was a Greek rhetorician, literary critic, and Platonist philosopher of the 3rd century CE. He studied widely and was renowned in his day as a polymath—the Suda later called him "a living library and a walking museum"—and taught rhetoric and philosophy, numbering Porphyry among his pupils. He later served as adviser to Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, and after her revolt against Rome was executed on the orders of the emperor Aurelian around 273 CE. Surviving works are largely fragmentary, including portions of a rhetorical handbook (Ars rhetorica) and other excerpts. He is now distinguished from the anonymous author of On the Sublime, once ascribed to him.