It may, however, be plausibly argued that the circle is more apparent than real, resulting from a kind of ambiguity in the word πηγαί. If Longinus had slightly altered his expression, so as to make it something of this kind, “There are five points [or ways, or aspects] in which ὕψος may be attained, thought, feeling, ‘figure,’ diction, and composition,” he would be much less vulnerable. And, after all, this is probably what he meant. Any suggestion, however, of paralogism which might arise from this and be confirmed by the curious introduction in the third of the Figures, as if they were machines for automatic sublime-coining, must be dispelled by the remarks on Passion of the right kind as tending to sublimity, and by the special stress laid on the primary necessity of μεγαλοφροσύνη, whereof ὕψος itself is the mere ἀπήχημα or echo. Unfortunately here, as so often, the gap comes just in the most important place. When the cloud lifts, however, we find ourselves in one of the most interesting passages of the whole, the selection of “sublime” passages from Homer. A little superfluous matter about Homer’s “impiety” (the old, the respectable, Platonic mistake) occurs; but it matters not, especially in face of the two praises of the “Let there be light” of the Jewish legislator, “no chance comer,” and of the great ἐν δὲ φάει καὶ ὄλεσσον of Ajax, the mere juxtaposition of which once more shows what a critic we have got in our hands. Not quite such a great one perhaps have we—yet one in the circumstances equally fascinating—in the contrasted remarks [Sidenote: _Longinus on Homer._] on the _Odyssey_. Longinus is not himself impious; he is no Separatist (he is indeed far too good a critic to be that). But he will have the Romance of Ulysses to be “old age, though the old age of Homer.” “When a great nature is a little gone under, philomythia is characteristic of its decline.”[229] Evidently, he thinks, the _Odyssey_ was Homer’s second subject, not his first. He is “a setting sun as mighty as ever, but less intense”: he is more unequal: he takes to the fabulous and the incredible. The Wine of Circe, the foodless voyage of Ulysses, the killing of the suitors—nay, the very attention paid to Character and Manners—tell the tale of decadence. Footnote 229: μεγάλης φύσεως ὑποφερομένης ἤδη ἰδιόν ἐστιν ἐν γήρᾳ τὸ φιλύμυθον.