Cassius Longinus

Cassius Longinus was a Greek philosopher and rhetorician who advised Zenobia of Palmyra and was executed for it. Born around 213, probably in Emesa or Athens, he studied under the Neoplatonist Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria — the same teacher as Plotinus — and taught for some thirty years in Athens, where Porphyry was among his pupils. He was renowned for learning rather than originality. Porphyry records the judgement that Longinus was a scholar but not a philosopher, and Eunapius called him a living library and a walking museum. He rejected the central Neoplatonist position that the Forms exist within the divine intellect rather than independently of it, which put him at odds with Plotinus. He was invited to Palmyra around 267 by Zenobia, who had become regent for her son after her husband Odaenathus was assassinated, and who was assembling a court of scholars in a wealthy caravan city that had grown rich taxing the trade between Rome and the east. He taught her Greek literature and served as an adviser. The ancient sources hold him responsible for the decisive political turn: that he encouraged Zenobia to assert full independence and to have herself and her son styled with imperial titles rather than governing in the Roman emperor's name. Aurelian took Palmyra in 272 and executed the advisers while sparing the queen. The treatise On the Sublime was attributed to him for centuries and is now assigned to an unknown author of the first century. Zenobia is said to have blamed her advisers for the revolt, which is why they died and she did not.

• Lived: 213 CE – 273 CE
• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: intellectual