GRICE E ZALEUCO: DVRA LEX SED LEX -- LA SAPIENZA DI LOCRI -- LUIGI SPERANZA PEL GRUPPO DI GIOCO DI H. P. GRICE -- THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY, VILLA SPERANZA

 

Grice e Zaleuco – dura lex sed lex -- Roma – filosofia italiana – la sapienza di Locri -- Luigi Speranza (Locri). Filosofo italiano. He achieves great respute and respect as a law-giver in Locri, and has a reputation for being both humane and severe. He establishes fixed penalties for each offence, and two stories are told about the consequences of this. According to one, the punishment for adultery is the loss of both eyes. When his own son is found guilty of it, he orders that the punishment should be divided between them, so that they lose one eye each. The second story tells how the penalty for entering a particular public building carrying an arm is death. When he inadvertently violates the law, he executes himself. Both Diogene Laerzio and Giamblico call him a direct pupil of Pythagora – but his laws are usually dated to a much later period, making that impossible. In any case, Z., whose name improperly starts 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 Z. owes everything to the Hellenistic philosophy, 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.