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Longinus,  On the Sublime  36.3 responds to ‘the writer’ who argued that ‘the faulty colossus is not better than Polyclitus’ Doryphorus’. This passage raises several questions: who is ‘the writer’ to whom Longinus responds? How should we understand Longinus’ complex reply? And which ancient statue is the ‘colossus’ in this comparison? This article offers an interpretation of the passage in its context, and re-examines the identifications of the ‘colossus’ that have been proposed so far: the Colossus of Rhodes, the Colossus of Nero, and Phidias’ statue of Zeus in Olympia. Having argued that none of these statues is a satisfactory candidate for Longinus’ ‘faulty colossus’, this article asserts that the comparison between the colossus and the Doryphorus was introduced in a critical discussion of the styles of Plato and Lysias: Plato is a sublime writer whose excessive use of metaphors comes with occasional mistakes, whereas Lysias is the model of faultless accuracy. The context strongly suggests that Longinus 36.3 responds to the Augustan critic Caecilius of Caleacte, who claimed that ‘Lysias is altogether superior to Plato’ (Longinus 32.8). Such ancient comparisons between Lysias and Plato were provoked by Socrates’ criticism of Lysias in Plato’s  Phaedrus , which suggests a solution to our problem. In his praise of Socrates’ oratory Phaedrus mentions a statue in Olympia, which we may identify as the ‘faulty colossus’: it is the famous colossus of Zeus, an archaic statue of hammered gold, dedicated by the Cypselids. The fact that Augustan critics describe Plato’s sublime style as ‘archaic’ or ‘old-fashioned’ supports this new interpretation.

Longinus 36.3: The Faulty Colossus and Plato’s Phaedrus