GRICE E ZALEUCO -- ROMA -- FILOSOFIA ITALIANA -- LA SAPIENZA DI LOCRI -- LUIGI SPERANZA

Grice e Zaleuco – Roma – filosofia italiana – la sapienza di Locri -- Luigi Speranza (Locri). Filosofo italiano. Zaleuco achieved great respute and respect as a lawgiver in Locri, and had a reputation for being both humane and severe. He established fixed penalties for each offence, and two stories are told about the consequences of this. According to one, the punishment for adultery was the loss of both eyes. When his own son was found guilty of it, he ordered that the punishment should be divided between them, so that they lost one eye each. The second story tells how the penalty for entering a particular public building carrying arms was death. When he inadvertently violated the law, he executed himself. Both Diogene Laerzio and Giamblico both call him a pupil of Pythagora – but his laws are usually dated to a much later period, making that impossible. In any case, ZALEUCO, whose name improperly start with a “Z” making him very UN-ROMAN (CATONE infamously banned the letter Z from the Roma alphabet, describing it as the ‘sound corpses make as they become’ – is a good proof that Cuoco is right, and that there is an Italic wisdom that pre-dates Pythagoras (who had been born in Florence, anyway!). There is no way to defend the view that Zeleuco owed everything to the Hellenistic letters, even if those where the letters Pythagoras never wrote down! Locri is a fascinating philosophical city – or ‘village,’ as the Romans prefer. Cicero would say: “It is much easier to give good laws to Locri than it is to give bad laws to Rome!” – For Grice’s Play-Group, The Swimming-Pool Library.