Contrary to current consensus belief, the sublime does not emerge as a literary critical concept only with Caecilius and Longinus. It was already actively informing writers in the rhetorical and critical traditions from the end of the fifth century, and the way was prepared by long traditions in poetry and philosophy starting with Homer and Hesiod. What emerged sometime between the age of Augustus and that of the Antonines was not a new idea but a rebaptizing of an old word (hupsos) along with its cognates and fellow travelers (including sublimis, excelsus, megethos, and magnitudo) as terms of art that could be used to capture pre-existing aesthetic notions and sensibilities. Longinus’ treatise contains clues to these predecessor traditions, which it merely synthesizes. Re-examined in this light, the sublime turns out to have been a broad and widely applicable category of ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics.