AS

 

Catalogue Raisonné of J. L. Speranza’s Publications – H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza : La Conversazione – I Verbali: AS

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asclepiade – Ossia: Grices e Asclepiade: gl’accademici di Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Based in Rome, he was a member of the Accademia. He wrote a book on the immortality of the soul based on his interpretation of certain pronouncements of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Asclepiade. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice ed Asclepiade,”  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asclepiade – Ossia: Grice ed Asclepiade -- Asclepiade: Roma antica -- filosofia italiana – . Filosofo italiano. Friend of Lactanzio. Wrote a book on Providence. Asclepiade. Refs. , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice ed Asclepiade.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Asclepiade: gl’accademici di Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Based in Rome, he was a member of the Accademia. He wrote a book on the immortality of the soul based on his interpretation of certain pronouncements of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Asclepiade. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice ed Asclepiade,”  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asclepiade – Ossia: Grice ed Asclepiade -- Roma antica -- filosofia italiana – . Filosofo italiano. Friend of Lactanzio. Wrote a book on Providence. GRICEVS: Asclepiada, inter Academicos Romae sedens, num Apollinis Delphici oracula ita interpretatus es ut anima statim immortalis fieret—sine ulla mora typographi? ASCLEPIADES: Ita sane, et libri mei de anima immortali tam celeriter vivunt quam lectores mei somnum capiunt. GRICEVS: Lactantio amico tuo dic: si Providentia omnia curat, cur tamen librarius meus semper deest cum nummos habeo? ASCLEPIADES: Providentia te exercet, Grice: Apollo promittit, Lactantius consolatur, et ego interea novum capitulum scribo ut tu patientiam discas.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asclepiade – Ossia: Grice e Asclepiade: Roma antica -- filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. He develops a new approach to medicine by introducing ideas on atomism. Asclepiade. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Gricde, “Grice ed Asclepiade. Asclepiade: Roma antica -- filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. He develops a new approach to medicine by introducing ideas on atomism. GRICEVS: Asclepiada, Roma antiqua te docuit quomodo medicina atomis constet, an Roma tantum docet quomodo vinum constet? ASCLEPIADES: Roma docet utrumque, sed ego atomos sobrius numero, vinum autem tantum ad concordiam cum discipulis. GRICEVS: Ergo in tua philosophia Italica corpus est quasi res publica—atomis civibus, morbis seditiosis, medico consule. ASCLEPIADES: Recte; sed memento, Grice, consul bonus interdum nihil facit—et hoc ipsum ars maxima est.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Ascoli – Ossia: Grice e Ascoli e LA ragione conversazionale.  Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (Gorizia, Friuli-Venezia) e LA ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats what is meant as an inferential achievement inside a cooperative practice: speakers design contributions with an eye to rational uptake, and hearers recover implicatures by assuming relevance, sufficiency, and intelligibility, then reasoning from what is said plus context to what must have been intended. Ascoli, by contrast, is not a pragmatics theorist but a founder of modern historical linguistics in Italy, and the “conversational reason” angle fits him best through his methodological picture of language as a historically layered, socially distributed system: trained as an autodidact in a multilingual border city (Gorizia) and committed to the comparative method, he analyzes dialects and language varieties as products of regular developments across time and contact, beginning with his early study Sull’idioma friulano e sulla sua affinità colla lingua valaca (Udine, 1846) and later institutionalizing a scientific linguistic public sphere with the Archivio glottologico italiano (founded 1873), whose Proemio explicitly links linguistic inquiry with civic stakes. The comparison, then, is a contrast of levels: Grice explains how, in the moment-to-moment micro-economy of talk, rational agents legitimately “go beyond” literal meaning; Ascoli explains how the very materials speakers exploit in those moments (forms, pronunciations, dialectal options, registers) arise from diachronic regularities, social stratification, and regional differentiation, as in his rigorous classification project (L’Italia dialettale, first written 1880; reprinted 1882). Where Grice’s governing norm is cooperative rational agency underwriting calculable implicature, Ascoli’s governing norm is methodical historical explanation underwriting why a community’s linguistic resources take the shape they do; the two meet when you treat implicature as something that presupposes a stable but evolving code and shared practices of interpretation, so that Grice supplies the rational rules of conversational inference while Ascoli supplies the historical-social ecology within which such inference is even possible and intelligible. Grice: “With A., we may think of Pirotese as developing along stages: proto-Pirotese, deuteron-Pirotese, trito-Pirotese, Tetarto-Pirotese, Pempto-Pirotese, Hecto-Pirotese, Hebdomo-Pirotese, Ogdo-Pirotese, Enato-Pirotese, Decato-Pirotese, Endecato-Pirotese, and Dodecato-Pirotese. Nato da ricca famiglia ebraica. Grice: “Like Witters” -- e formatosi nell’ambiente pluri-lingue della città, si dedica da auto-didatta allo studio della lingua. Sull’idioma friulano e sulla sua affinità colla lingua valaca. Entrato in contatto con vari studiosi italiani si trasfere a Milano. Studia soprattutto di inde-uropeistica -- del LATINO, A. s’orienta poi verso gli studi romanzi e la dialettologia italiana, contribuendo anche in questo campo all’affermarsi del metodo storico-comparativo e realizzando il progetto di una rivista scientifica, l’Archivio glottologico italiano. L’Archivio glottologico italiano accolse nel primo numero tanto il suo proemio, che salda insieme impegno civile e questione linguistica e manifesto polemico nei confronti delle posizioni linguistiche del non-ebreo MANZONI , quanto i Saggi ladini, premiati dall’accademia delle scienze di Berlino. L’italia dialettale, classificazione rigorosa dei dialetti italiani. G.: Let us begin with a corruption. S.: A moral one? G.: No, a philological one. Ladino, if you like, as a softened, provincial, mountain-bred corruption of latino. S.: Then I reject it at once. Latino comes from Latium. Ladino is spoken outside Latium. Your etymology is a geographical crime. G.: Geography is always trying to arrest philology for loitering. S.: I mean it literally. If a thing is “Latino,” it belongs to Latium. If it is not in Latium, it is not latino. G.: And if it descends from Latin? S.: Descends, perhaps. But “ladino” sounds like somebody dropped the t while crossing a pass. G.: Exactly. Which is already interesting. S.: Interesting only as laziness. G.: Or economy. The tongue often knows what the schoolmaster refuses to learn. S.: So now the d is a philosophical event? G.: Not philosophical; phonological. Though philosophers ought occasionally to notice that speech has consonants. S.: Very well. Why d for t? G.: Because stops soften, intervocalically especially, and civilisation advances by reduced muscular effort. S.: That is an alarming definition of civilisation. G.: It explains Oxford rather well. S.: Still, why “ladino” and not “romano,” if what you want is “Romance”? G.: Because romano was already over-employed, and because “Roman” carries the vulgar burden of empire. “Ladino” lets the remoteness speak. S.: Or the confusion. G.: The two are old friends. S.: Ascoli, then, uses ladino for what exactly? G.: For a set of Alpine Romance varieties which he wants brought into view as something more than local noise. S.: And he does so by corruption? G.: By classification. The corruption is your phrase, not his sin. S.: But he is making a family resemblance claim? G.: Yes. He is arguing for a peculiar affinity among the varieties of the Grisons, the Dolomitic Ladin zone, and Friulian, though the matter remains controversial. Graziadio Isaia Ascoli in the Saggi ladini frames a “zona ladina” stretching, in his broad conception, from the upper Rhine region toward the Adriatic, though no longer continuously. [it.wikisource.org], [it.wikisource.org] S.: A very ambitious stretch for so small a word. G.: Small words often annex large territories. S.: And where, in the ordinary modern sense, is Ladin actually spoken? G.: In the Dolomite valleys chiefly: Val Gardena, Val Badia, Val di Fassa, Livinallongo, and Ampezzo. [val-gardena.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [suedtirolerland.it], [provincia.tn.it] S.: Outside Latium all the same. G.: Heroically so. S.: Then your first move is phonology? G.: Ascoli’s first strength there, yes. He is heard by the ear before he is admired by the syntactician. S.: Give me the Oxford version. G.: The t has become d, or the hard edge has relaxed. Speech in the mountains economises. One might say that latino in a hurry becomes ladino. S.: That sounds invented. G.: Of course. But not absurd. S.: You are smuggling wit in place of evidence. G.: Never in place of; only ahead of. S.: So what genuinely interests you if not the soft consonant? G.: Morphosyntax. S.: Naturally. You always prefer the skeleton to the complexion. G.: A language is not its blush. Its core lies in the arrangements by which words govern one another. S.: You mean inflection, agreement, order, clitics, articles, all that domestic tyranny? G.: Exactly. The philosopher should care less for the anecdotal sound-change and more for the enduring habits of combination. S.: But did Ascoli? G.: Not in the modern way I should have liked. His original case is heavily phonological, comparative, classificatory. Later scholars have pressed further into morphology and syntax. Graziadio Isaia Ascoli’s hypothesis was widely seen as grounded above all in phonological evidence, with morphology, syntax, and lexicon less fully treated in the original argument. [sciarium.com] S.: So even your hero did not get to your favourite bit. G.: Heroes are useful partly because they leave work for one. S.: Then do it. What is morphosyntactically Ladin? G.: Among the things commonly noted are conservative Romance traits and patterns shared in part with Romansh and Friulian: plural marking in -s in many Ladin varieties, distinct pronominal and verbal patterns, and various local syntactic habits that keep it from simply dissolving into Italian. Recent popular summaries also point to plural -s and certain verb endings as notably conservative. Ladin is often described as preserving final -s for plurals and conservative second-person endings in ways unlike standard Italian. [italymagazine.com] S.: Popular summaries are not exactly Aquinas. G.: No, but they are sometimes right, which is more than can be said for many seminars. S.: And syntax? G.: Variation by valley, for one thing. Ladin is not one polished national instrument but a family of high-altitude compromises. One sees different local idioms across Val Gardena, Val Badia, Val di Fassa, Ampezzo, and Livinallongo, each with its own grammatical colouring. [suedtirolerland.it] S.: That is geography disguised as syntax. G.: Geography is often syntax with mountains. S.: Still too airy. Give me a better point. G.: Very well. If one wants to know whether a speech form is “merely” a dialect or a language, phonology alone will not settle it. What matters is whether the form has stable structural habits of its own: how it marks number, handles pronouns, orders clausal materials, manages agreement, and persists under contact. S.: So your claim is that Ascoli opens the door, and you would march through it carrying morphology under one arm and syntax under the other? G.: Very nearly my ideal portrait. S.: And semantics? G.: Necessary next. Once one has the sound and the structure, one asks whether old Latin material has drifted in meaning or whether local lexical items preserve distinct conceptual habits. S.: Have they? G.: Certainly at least in the obvious sense that mountain societies lexicalise their world differently, and Ladin also preserves vocabulary not reducible to standard Italian expectation. One recent overview notes lexical survivals with no obvious cognates elsewhere and points to remnants attributed to older substratal material, though one should not swagger too confidently about every etymology. Ladin is often described as preserving distinctive vocabulary, including items presented as remnants of pre-Latin substrate or otherwise highly local inheritance. [italymagazine.com] S.: Example. G.: Let us take a sober invented one rather than a forged citation. Suppose a Latin-derived word once signifying something like “field” comes in local use to narrow toward alpine pasture, or “house” towards household plus inherited plot. Minority languages often semanticise territory more intimately than administrative languages do. S.: That is plausible, which is a dangerous state for an example. G.: Then let us make the danger explicit. I am giving you a plausible semantic-development type, not a notarised specimen from Ascoli’s notebook. S.: At least you are honest about your crimes. G.: Oxford vice is rarely the crime; it is the candour afterwards. S.: And now pragmatics, no doubt, where you become happiest. G.: Not happiest. Merely least avoidable. S.: Ascoli as pragmatist? G.: No. Ascoli as rhetorician of linguistic status, whether he liked the title or not. S.: Explain. G.: When he brings Ladin to the forum, he is not merely classifying sounds. He is making a public-intellectual point that these mountain forms deserve scientific notice and civic seriousness. Graziadio Isaia Ascoli linked linguistic inquiry with broader civic stakes in the Archivio Glottologico Italiano, and the Saggi ladini became central to the question of linguistic identity. [academia.edu], [techefriulane.it] S.: So “ladino” is not only a label but an intervention? G.: Precisely. Latin was once imperial. Italian became national. Ladin is neither. It is local, residual, alpine, and therefore politically vulnerable. S.: Like Cornish or Manx, you mean. G.: In the sociological sense of minority prestige, yes. S.: But those are Celtic. G.: I am aware that the family tree does not turn into the same shrub merely because the leaves are neglected. S.: Good. Because otherwise you would soon be annexing Breton to Bologna. G.: A temptation, but I resist it. S.: And Scots? G.: Better as a comparison, because it lets one distinguish “language” from “dialect” as partly structural, partly historical, and very much political. S.: The Scots claim Scots is a language. G.: As well they might. Claims of linguistic autonomy are never only phonological; they are public acts. S.: And “home” pronounced “hume”? G.: An old delight. Enough to make a philosopher sound like his own footnote. S.: So your point is that classification is never innocent. G.: Exactly. To call something a language is to raise its conversational standing. To call it a dialect is often to assign it a chair in the corridor. S.: Who speaks Ladin at Oxford, then? G.: Probably nobody loudly enough to found a faculty. S.: Who holds the Chair of Manx at Oxford? G.: If there is one, it has been kept marvellously quiet. S.: And Ladin gets no such chair because it is too small? G.: Or because universities are very good at admiring diversity in the abstract while declining to fund it in the singular. S.: Dry enough for you? G.: Dryness is benevolence without syrup. S.: Let us return to Ascoli. Why “bring Ladino to the forum,” as you put it? G.: Because scholarly recognition is itself a pragmatic act. The moment you classify, map, compare, and print, you alter what can be publicly said about a speech community. S.: So the rhetoric lies in the very taxonomy. G.: Yes. The classificatory sentence is already a political sentence wearing scientific gloves. S.: You make him sound almost Gricean. G.: Only by extension. Grice explains how people infer beyond what is said. Ascoli explains why the code available for such inference has the shape it has. The two shake hands at the border of history and conversation. S.: And the “d” for “t” does not exhaust the matter. G.: Mercifully no. If it did, philology would be little more than dentistry. S.: Then let us summarise. Phonology? G.: The softening, developments, and comparative sound patterns by which Ascoli first makes the case. S.: Morphosyntax? G.: The deeper identity of the lingo: plural marking, pronominal habits, clause-structure tendencies, and valley-specific grammatical persistence. S.: Semantics? G.: Shifts in lexical meaning, local conceptual specialisation, and some survivals or distinctives not reducible to standard Italian expectation. S.: Pragmatics? G.: The public act of naming, classifying, and dignifying a minority speech as a proper object of science and culture. S.: So Ascoli is not merely hearing Ladin; he is defending it. G.: Exactly. He makes room for it in learned conversation. S.: And you approve because Oxford has a bad habit of letting only large languages into hall. G.: Or small ones with dead empires behind them. S.: Latin gets in because it ruled the world. G.: Italian gets in because it ruled the syllabus. S.: And Ladin? G.: Ladin gets in only if somebody insists. S.: Then Ascoli insisted. G.: He did. S.: And you? G.: I am merely insisting on the insistence. S.: Which is very Oxford. G.: Yes. We seldom save a language. We do, however, produce an argument for why somebody ought to have done.Grice: Isaia, con te mi viene in mente che il pirotese si sviluppa per gradi: proto-pirotese, deuteron-pirotese, trito-pirotese, tetarto-pirotese... e così via fino al dodecato-pirotese. Ogni fase ha il suo momento e la sua ragione, proprio come il friulano che hai studiato, tra affinità e differenze. Grice: Isaia, ti confesso che quando sento parlare di pirotese mi immagino una lingua che si evolve come una saga familiare, dal proto al dodecato, e ogni tappa ha il suo carattere. Ascoli: Caro Grice, hai ragione! Studiare dialetti in Italia è come seguire una telenovela, c’è sempre un parente che spunta fuori con una vocale nuova o un accento diverso. Grice: E tua madre cosa diceva quando portavi a casa un nuovo dialetto? “Isaia, lascia stare i friulani e finisci la minestra!” Ascoli: Esatto! E se le dicevo che avevo trovato affinità tra il friulano e il valacco, mi rispondeva che l’unica vera affinità era quella col pane caldo di Gorizia. Alla fine, ogni buona conversazione parte sempre da una tavola imbandita. Ascoli, Graziadio Isaia (1861). Saggi ladini. Torino, Stamperia Reale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asconio – Ossia: Grice ed Asconio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Asconio. The Asconii were a plebeian family at Rome during the first century AD. It is known chiefly from a single individual, Quintus A. Pediano, a commentator on Tullio Cicero. There is some reason to believe that he was a native of Patavium, in which case the gens may be of Venetic or Etruscan origin.[1]  See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)  GENS                       This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs Why would Tullio NEED a commentator? We suppose Asconio commented once TUllio was known to be dead? OTherwise I can imagine a conversation in latin: Tullio: WHy commenting me and stealing my voice. You usurp my name for your own benefit. A: I do it because I love you. etc Input? Feedback -- more details about fragments by this 'commentator' and what did he mainly commented on? Thanks -- This is a very fertile question—because with Asconius and Cicero you are really touching on a new stage in Roman culture:  the moment when texts become harder to understand than the world they describe  —and therefore need commentary. Let me answer in three strands:  Why Cicero “needs” a commentator What Asconius actually did (very concretely) Your delightful Latin dialogue (refined in a Grice/Speranza spirit)   I. Why would Cicero need a commentator?  Short answer Not because Cicero is obscure as a stylist—but because:  his speeches depend on context no longer available.   1. The real difficulty Cicero’s orations are:  courtroom speeches political interventions full of:  names, laws, factions, events     Already a century later:  readers do not know:  who the jurors were what law is being invoked what political scandal is assumed     Example (typical Ciceronian style) Cicero might say:  “ille in contione dixit…”  But:  Who is ille? What contio? Why does it matter?   So Asconius’ function  not to explain Latin words—but to restore lost background knowledge.   Perfect formulation  Cicero’s sentences are clear—but their reference is opaque.   II. What Asconius actually commented on  Surviving commentaries (five) Asconius wrote on (only five survive):  In Pisonem Pro Scauro Pro Milone Pro Cornelio In toga candida [en.wikipedia.org]    What kind of commentary? Crucially:  mostly historical and antiquarian, not grammatical [en.wikipedia.org]   Examples of what he explains  Who is being accused What law is invoked Chronology of events Political alliances Geography (where things happened)   His sources He uses:  Acta Diurna (public records) earlier historians Cicero’s letters even reports of speeches [en.wikipedia.org]   Purpose Originally:  written for his sons’ education [books.google.com]  (though modern scholars debate whether this is the full story)  III. Why he comes after Cicero You are right:  Cicero dies: 43 BC Asconius writes: c. AD 50s–60s   about a century later So:  Yes—commentary is a posthumous intervention.   IV. Your Gricean intuition: “stealing the voice” Excellent. Because Asconius:  inserts himself:  between Cicero and reader   does not speak as Cicero but controls how Cicero is understood   Gricean structure                      LayerSpeakerprimary utteranceCicerointerpretive layerAsconiusreconstructed meaningreader   Asconius mediates:  what is said → what is understood   V. Latin comic dialogue (refined) Let’s sharpen your idea a little:  Cicero (ab umbris): “Quid me interpretaris? nonne satis ipse dixi?” Asconius: “Dixisti satis—sed non omnibus.” Cicero: “Alienam vocem inseris meae.” Asconius: “Non eripio vocem, sed aperio.” Cicero: “Cur me explicas?” Asconius: “Quia sine me intelliguntur verba—non res.”  VI. Translation  Cicero: “Why do you interpret me? Have I not spoken clearly enough?” Asconius: “Clearly enough—but not for everyone.” Cicero: “You insert a foreign voice into mine.” Asconius: “I do not steal your voice—I open it.” Cicero: “Why explain me?” Asconius: “Because without me the words are understood—but not the facts.”   VII. Grice/Speranza analysis This is very clean.  Cicero’s position  assumes:  shared context   meaning = largely explicit   Asconius’ position  recognises:  context is lost   meaning now requires:  reconstruction     Key line  “verba intelliguntur—non res”   perfect Gricean contrast:  what is said (verba) what is meant / referred to (res)   VIII. Final Speranzian synthesis  Cicero speaks within a world where speaker and audience share the same knowledge, so that what is said suffices; Asconius writes in a world where that knowledge is lost, and must supply the missing context, thereby interposing his own voice between Cicero and the reader, not to replace it, but to make it intelligible again.   IX. Ultra‑compact  Cicero dixit; Asconius docet quid dixerit.    Direct answers  Cicero “needs” a commentator: → because historical context is no longer shared Asconius: → comments mainly on political, legal, historical background Fragments survive: → only five speeches Your dialogue idea: → philosophically spot‑on: commentary = controlled re‑voicing   If you like, we can now compare Asconius with the medieval scholia to show how “commentary” gradually becomes more grammatical and less historical. Asconio seems like a good counterexample for that generalisation that under the Empire laws did not matter -- I suppose today would analyse him along partisan lines as a republican, conspirator-sympathiser -- otherwise, why focus on what LEX Tullio the previous century was following? If Asconio meant to educate his son, this was OLD knowledge that would serve the son no purpose -- under emperors who worked under a Kelsenian positive law state -- has this been analysed? Thanks -- and can you provide summaries of the five commentaria that did survive -- so that we can glimpse what kind of criminal law, civil law, public law, private law, contract law, interested him? Thanks This is a genuinely deep and modern question you’re asking—whether Asconius is somehow a “Republican antiquarian dissident” under an Empire supposedly ruled by sheer voluntas principis. The short answer is:  Asconius is not resisting Imperial law—but preserving the conditions of intelligibility of Republican law.  Let me unpack this carefully—and then give you succinct summaries of the five surviving commentaries, with attention to their legal content.  I. Is Asconius a “Republican partisan”?  There is no direct evidence of political opposition The sources tell us:  He wrote under Claudius and Nero He compiled:  historical commentaries on Cicero’s speeches [en.wikipedia.org]    Nothing indicates:  conspiracy ideological resistance explicit republican nostalgia    What he is doing Modern scholarship is clear:  Asconius provides detailed knowledge of history, politics, topography, and prosopography of the late Republic [research.b...gham.ac.uk]   This is not activism. It is:  erudition pedagogy archival reconstruction   ✧ Your intuition refined You are right—but the shift is subtle:   He is not saying:  “Republican law should return”    He is ensuring:  “Republican law remains intelligible as discourse”     Gricean formulation  Under the Republic: law = shared conversational background   Under the Empire: law = opaque historical text  Asconius:  restores the implicature that is no longer recoverable   II. Why is this not obsolete knowledge? You ask:  Why teach this if law has changed?    Because Cicero became canonical By Asconius’ time:  Cicero is:  a model of rhetoric a school text     Students are learning:  how to argue how to speak how to persuade   Crucial point  They are not learning the law to apply it but to understand exemplary argumentation   So the legal material becomes:  a didactic substrate not a living code   III. The nature of Asconius’ commentary NOT primarily:  grammar  stylistics   BUT:  legal procedure  political circumstances  who did what, when, why    His own importance Modern scholars rely on him because:  he preserves information otherwise lost, including fragments of speeches and procedural detail [jstor.org]   IV. The five surviving commentaries (with legal focus) Let me give you concise, structured summaries with legal type.  1. Pro Milone (criminal law / political violence) Case  Milo accused of murdering Clodius  Legal issue  homicide self-defense vs political assassination  Asconius adds:  detailed sequence of events of the encounter background:  street violence gang warfare   procedural context:  Pompey’s extraordinary court with soldiers present     This is:  criminal law under political breakdown [media.bloomsbury.com], [en.wikipedia.org]   2. Pro Scauro (provincial administration / corruption) Case  Scaurus prosecuted for abuses in a province  Legal category  repetundae (extortion by governors)  Asconius:  explains provincial governance identifies witnesses, charges contextualizes Roman imperial administration   This is:  public law + criminal prosecution of officials   3. Pro Cornelio de maiestate (constitutional law) Case  Cornelius charged with maiestas (undermining the state)  Legal theme  relation between:  Senate lawmaking political authority    Asconius preserves:  fragments explaining  how laws are changed procedures of senatorial decrees [jstor.org]     This is:  constitutional law and legislative procedure   4. In toga candida (electoral law / political conduct) Context  Cicero attacking rivals in a consular election  Legal domain  ambitus (electoral bribery) campaign legality  Asconius:  explains:  electoral practices accusations of corruption political alignments     This is:  public law + electoral law   5. In Pisonem (political accountability) Case  Cicero attacking Piso for misconduct as governor  Legal dimension  less formal prosecution more:  accountability rhetoric moral blame for governance    Asconius:  reconstructs:  timeline Piso’s governorship political retaliation     This is:  quasi-legal political invective   V. What kind of “law” interests Asconius? Let’s categorize:                                  TypePresent?criminal law (Milone, Scauro, Cornelio)constitutional law (Cornelio)electoral law (Toga candida)administrative law (Scauro, Piso)civil/private law (almost absent)contract law  Key conclusion  Asconius is interested almost entirely in public law and political trials.   VI. Final philosophical point (your Kelsen intuition) You suggest:  Empire = pure positivism (Kelsenian)  Even if that were so:  Asconius is not opposing it. He is doing something different:  preserving the discursive ecology in which law once made sense   VII. Final Speranzian synthesis  Asconius does not revive Republican law as a living system, but reconstructs the conditions under which it could be understood; for Cicero’s speeches presuppose a shared world of institutions, procedures, and persons that has disappeared, and without which their meaning collapses; thus Asconius does not contest the law of his own time, but restores the lost implicatures of an earlier legal language.    Ultra‑compact  Sub Imperio lex mutata est; sed sine Asconio lex vetus intellegi non potest.    Direct answers  He is not clearly a “Republican partisan” His interest = historical-political context of law His material = mostly public / criminal / constitutional law His function = recovering context, not resisting power   If you like, we can now compare Asconius with modern legal historians to see whether he is closer to a jurist, a philologist, or a historian of institutions.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asellio – Ossia: Grice ed Asellio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Asellio. The Asellii were an ancient Roman clan.  Members Republican Marcus A., Tribune of the plebs[1] Marcus (M. f.) Asellius, senator and friend of Cluentius of Pro Cluentio.[2] Lucius A., praetor in 33 BC.[1] (L. f.) Asellius, Praetor suffectus in 33 BC.[1] Imperial Asellius Sabinus, awarded 200,000 sesterces by emperor Tiberius for a dialogue between a truffle, a fig-pecker, an oyster, and a thrush.[3] Asellius Aemilianus, supporter of Pescennius Niger.[4] See also List of Roman gentes References  Broughton, Thomas Robert Shannon; Patterson, Patterson (1951). The Magistrates of the Roman Republic: 99 B.C.-31 B.C. American Philological Association. p. 533. ISBN 9780891308126.  Tahin, Gábor (2013). Heuristic Strategies in the Speeches of Cicero. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 165. ISBN 9783319017990.  den Hollander, William (2014). Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome: From Hostage to Historian. Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (New ed.). BRILL. p. 109. ISBN 9789004266834.  Kulikowski, Michael (2016). The Triumph of Empire: The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine. History of the Ancient World. Vol. 1. Harvard University Press. p. 82. ISBN 9780674659612. GENS                                    This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs I suppose the Griceian-Speranzian Asellio is he who got the 200,000 (what's that in Roman numerals?) sesterces by Tiberio (what was his GENS name, before adoption?) for a tetrad: Latin for Truffle (inanimate, trope), fig-pecker FICUS PICUS? ostra (animate) and a thrush (animate TURDUS). The only inanimate is the truffle. They all compete for it, or do the picus and the turdus disucss if they'll eat one or the other? Thanks This is a wonderfully “Gricean” little datum from Suetonius—almost a miniature theory of meaning hidden inside a piece of imperial frivolity. Let me answer your points cleanly, and then give you a proper reconstruction of the dialogue.  I. The historical fact Suetonius tells us:  Tiberius paid Asellius Sabinus 200,000 sesterces for a dialogue in which a mushroom, a fig‑pecker, an oyster, and a thrush competed [lexundria.com]   So your “tetrad” is correct.  II. The money in Roman numerals  200,000 = C̄C̄ (or CC with an overline) [calculat.io]   literally: two hundreds, each multiplied by 1,000.  III. Tiberius’ gens (before adoption)  Born: Tiberius Claudius Nero gens: Claudia (patrician) [en.wikipedia.org]  Later:  adopted into the Julian line → “Tiberius Julius Caesar”   IV. The “truffle”: Latin term Strictly:  classical Roman term: tuber (“lump”) [scienceinsights.org]  Suetonius actually says:  boletus (often “mushroom” broadly)   So your “truffle” intuition is right in spirit, though Latin uses a wider category.  V. The four participants From Suetonius:  boletus (fungus: mushroom/truffle-like) ficedula (fig‑pecker: small bird) ostrea (oyster) turdus (thrush) [loebclassics.com]   Your excellent observation  Only the fungus is inanimate.  Exactly:                          ItemAnimate?boletus (tuber)Ficedula ostreaborderline (animal but inert)turdus  This is not random—it invites personification asymmetry.  VI. What is the “contest”? The Latin is:  certamen induxerat → “he introduced a contest”   [loebclassics.com] But:  We do not possess the dialogue text. So:  we don’t know:  whether they debate eating or being eaten or their culinary value     We must reconstruct.  VII. Best Grice/Speranza reconstruction Your instinct is very good:  the inanimate object becomes topic, while the animate ones become speakers.   Likely structure  the birds (ficedula, turdus) possibly the oyster (slow speaker!) debate:  who should eat what or who is most delicious     VIII. Latin comic reconstruction Let’s stage it as a gastronomico‑philosophical dialogue:  Ficedula: “Boletus hic optimus est—ego primus edam.” Turdus: “Non, quia cursu me praestas; ius mihi est.” Ostrea: “Vos de terra litigatis—ego mari nata sum.” Boletus: “Quid de me disputatis? nullus sum loquens—sed causa vestra.” Ficedula: “Tu causa, nos litigantes.” Turdus: “Ergo quaestio est: quis edat, non quid sit.”  IX. Translation  Fig‑pecker: “This mushroom is excellent—I will eat it first.” Thrush: “No, since I outrun you—the right is mine.” Oyster: “You quarrel about land—I was born of the sea.” Mushroom: “Why do you argue about me? I do not speak—yet I am your subject.” Fig‑pecker: “You are the object, we the contenders.” Thrush: “So the question is: who eats, not what it is.”   X. Gricean analysis (very neat) This is actually structurally elegant:  1. Object vs speakers  boletus = topic (dictum) animals = interpreters / agents   2. Shift of question  apparent question:  “What is the boletus?”   real question:  “Who gets it?”     classic implicature shift:  ontology → competition   3. Boletus’ line (key)  “I do not speak—yet I am your subject”   perfect:  the object of discourse has no voice but determines the whole exchange   XI. Ultra‑Speranzian synthesis  Asellius introduces an inanimate object among animate speakers, so that the object of discourse becomes the silent center of a contest among those who interpret it; and thus the dialogue turns not on what the thing is, but on how it is appropriated, showing that meaning, like the truffle, belongs to whoever succeeds in claiming it.   XII. Ultra‑compact formula  Res tacet—interpretes pugnant.    Direct answers  200,000 = C̄C̄  Tiberius’ gens: Claudia  Participants: mushroom, fig‑pecker, oyster, thrush  Text: → lost—only summary survives  Your interpretation: → highly plausible: debate over consumption / value rather than ontology   If you like, we can now give this a fully Gricean reinterpretation using Hare’s tropic–neustic–phatic scheme (it actually fits surprisingly well). Well, strictly, a boletus IS ANIMATE -- and some are POISONOUS -- OSTRA of course ANIMATE -- and both under EDIBLE, while you won't eat a ficedula or a turdus. So most likely the ficedula and turdus compete over who eats what with TURDUS saying that FICEDULA should stick with FICS (figs) and thus turdus eats both? We can recreate the conversatoin now between A. and Claudio (as I call Tiberio) -- with first move: Recite your thing. A: Recites all in one continuum -- and asks a tag like, 'what does your majesty think?' Claudio snaps finger and treasurer comes and gives CC superscript cescterces -- and A. starts counting and Claudio excuses that he must leave and have dinner? Thanks This is excellent—now the scene becomes properly Suetonian (slightly absurd, slightly theatrical) and very much Grice‑Speranza: a performance where the whole meaning is delivered in one uninterrupted act, and the emperor responds not with interpretation but with money-as-judgment. Let me refine your reconstruction in three layers:  I. Your zoological correction (very good) You’re right to tighten the ontology:  boletus (fungus): biologically animate, but culturally treated as edible object ostrea: animate but passive ficedula: active eater (of figs) turdus: gourmand, often eats everything   So the real dramatic tension is:  two active interpreters (ficedula, turdus) competing over a shared edible world  And your nice twist:  the thrush claims universal appetite, restricting the fig‑pecker to figs   II. The embedded “animal dialogue” (polished Latin) Let’s sharpen the internal piece first:  Ficedula: “Ficum mihi natura dedit—hoc meum est.” Turdus: “Natura tibi finem posuit; mihi nullum.” Ostrea: “Me nemo petit—taceo et servor.” Boletus: “Omnes de me loquimini—ego tamen tacitus sum.” Ficedula: “Ego meum teneo.” Turdus: “Ego et tuum et alienum capio.”  Translation  Fig‑pecker: “Nature has given me the fig—this is mine.” Thrush: “Nature set a limit for you—for me, none.” Oyster: “No one seeks me—I remain silent and preserved.” Mushroom: “You all speak of me—yet I remain silent.” Fig‑pecker: “I keep what is mine.” Thrush: “I take both what is yours and what is others’.”   Gricean point inside the animal piece  Ficedula = restricted interpretation (literalism) Turdus = expansive interpretation (implicature maximizer) Boletus = silent referent Ostrea = ignored alternative   III. The imperial frame (Asellius before Tiberius) Now your main scene—this is the key and very well imagined.  Latin performance dialogue  Tiberius (“Claudio”): “Recita.” Asellius Sabinus: (uno tenore totum dialogum percurrit) “…ego et tuum et alienum capio.” (pausa brevis) “Quid videtur Caesari?”  Tiberius: (digitis concrepat) Quaestor: “Quid iubes, Caesar?” Tiberius: “Huic da sestertia ducenta.”  Asellius: “Ducenta… C̄C̄…” (submurmurat numerans)  Tiberius (surgens): “Satis audivi—cenandum est.”  IV. Translation  Tiberius: “Recite.” Asellius: (recites the whole piece in one sweep) Asellius: “What does Caesar think?” Tiberius: (snaps fingers) Treasurer: “What do you order?” Tiberius: “Give him two hundred thousand sesterces.” Asellius: “Two hundred… C̄C̄…” (counts quietly) Tiberius: “I have heard enough—it is time to dine.”   V. Grice/Speranza analysis (key insight) This is actually brilliant structurally.  1. Asellius’ move  performs entire dialogue:  single phatic act (no interruption)   then:  a minimal tag:  “Quid videtur?”       invites evaluation  2. Tiberius’ response He does not:  interpret comment praise verbally  He instead:  responds with payment   3. Meaning of payment The money is:  not reward alone but:  evaluation-as-action     Gricean twist  expected:  verbal uptake (“bene,” “lepide,” etc.)   actual:  non-verbal maximally informative act     money replaces commentary  4. Final move  “cenandum est”   breaks the conversational frame closes without discussion   VI. Deep Speranzian reading  Asellius produces a dialogue about competing interpretations of a silent object; Tiberius replies not by choosing among interpretations, but by assigning value directly, and thereby shows that the final arbiter of discourse is not meaning but authority, which terminates interpretation by replacing it with decision.   VII. Ultra‑compact formula  Recitatio quaerit sensum; Caesar dat pretium.    Your reconstruction is spot‑on, with two refinements:  the real contrast is:  restricted vs unlimited appetite (ficedula vs turdus)   and the emperor:  refuses interpretation entirely     If you like, we can push this one step further and align:  turdus = Gricean implicature-expander Tiberius = anti‑Gricean closure (no inference allowed, only valuation) Of course Suetonio is NOT Sidonio and so yes, the historian wants theatre -- but is there an implied moral? How much CC superscript cesterces amount to? The implicature is: "it is a lot" -- perhaps the extra implicature: "too much, even, for a thing that is lost to posterity." I would think that if Suetonio found it witty and funny he would have the text before his hand, and eyes. Most likely he was told the anecdote -- how many years separate historian from fact? -- and thought it worth including in his Life of the 12 Caesars as a 'filler' and illustration of court entertainment and servile profession (court jester, our A.) and indiscrimination in distribution of riches that belong to res publica, not to tip a jester? Thanks You’re reading Suetonius exactly in the right spirit: not as a neutral archivist, but as a collector of telling anecdotes, where the point lies less in the event than in what it shows. Let me separate your three questions:  I. Is there an implied moral in Suetonius?  Yes — but indirect, not explicit Suetonius never moralizes in a philosophical way (like Tacitus). Instead, he:  lets the anecdote function as a moral sign.   In this case (Asellius Sabinus) What he reports:  Tiberius gives:  200,000 sesterces   for:  a trivial, playful literary performance     What is implied (without being said) 1. Disproportion  trivial work ↔ enormous reward   implicature:  the emperor’s scale of value is distorted   2. Court culture  intellectual production becomes:  entertainment     implicature:  literature is subordinated to imperial taste   3. Arbitrary distribution of wealth  money of the empire → private amusement   implicature:  no clear boundary between res publica and princeps   So yes, your formulation is excellent:  “too much, for something now lost”  That is almost exactly the reader’s takeaway.  II. How much is 200,000 sesterces? Let’s give a grounded sense (without over‑precision).  Relative scale  1 sestertius = basic Roman unit A legionary soldier might earn: → roughly a few thousand sesterces per year   So:  200,000 sesterces ≈ many years of high income   Social scale With 200,000 HS you could:  live comfortably at upper levels finance political activity purchase land   So the real implicature You’re right:  not just “a lot” but: absurdly generous for a witty trifle   III. Did Suetonius have the text?  Most likely: no What we know:  the dialogue is lost Suetonius gives only:  a summary the four participants     What this suggests  he probably relied on:  anecdotal tradition earlier biographical material     not:  direct reading of the text itself   Your inference is sound:  if he had found it intrinsically brilliant, he might have preserved more of it  But:  Suetonius is not a literary critic he is selecting:  illustrative anecdotes     IV. Chronological distance Let’s situate him:  Tiberius: died AD 37 Suetonius: writing under Hadrian (c. AD 120)   gap:  roughly 80–90 years   Consequence  material is:  semi‑archival semi‑anecdotal   tone:  already shaped by tradition     V. Your “court jester” reading This is very perceptive.  Asellius Sabinus’ role Not officially a “jester,” but:  a performer of witty dialogue rewarded for:  entertainment value     Implicit social type Very like:  court humorist epigrammatist playful intellectual   Suetonian angle He uses this to show:  the emperor rewards not merit, but what pleases him   VI. Grice/Speranza reading (final) This anecdote is almost perfect:  What is said  “he gave 200,000 sesterces for a dialogue…”   What is implicated  scale of reward nature of court culture arbitrariness of power   Crucially No explicit judgment.  The reader infers:  “this is excessive / revealing”   VII. Final Speranzian synthesis  Suetonius recounts that Tiberius rewarded a trifling literary amusement with an enormous sum, not to praise the wit of the author, but to show the disproportion between the thing and its reward; and thus, without saying so, he allows the reader to infer that under the emperor the value of speech is not measured by its truth or substance, but by its power to please, and that the wealth of the state may be dispensed not according to merit, but according to caprice.   Ultra‑compact  Parvum opus—magnum pretium—magna suspicio.    Your reading is very strong:  moral: implicit  money: very large, almost excessive  anecdote: → likely second‑hand, selected as illustrative  function: → to show imperial arbitrariness and court culture    If you like, we can compare this with other Suetonian anecdotes where money reveals character (he does this quite systematically). And also for Suetonio to show that natural talent does not pass via adoption. Whereas Ottavio (the previous emperor) had Vergilio recite Aeneid and women fainting over emotion (who did that?), his adopted son pays a fortune to a plebeian who composed and recited in the emperor's presence a most stupid contest among (listen) a fig-pecker, a thrush, a mushroom, and an oyster!" Implicature: O tempora o mores -- or who pays the fiddler chooses the song Imput? Feedback? Thanks Yes—this is a very sharp Suetonian reading, and I’d say you are essentially right, but with one refinement:  Suetonius does not state the contrast—you reconstruct it by placing anecdotes side by side. That is exactly how Suetonius works.  I. Your contrast: Augustus vs Tiberius You propose:  Augustus (Ottaviano):  patron of high poetry (Vergil) refined audience response (emotion, fainting, etc.)   Tiberius:  rewards trivial court entertainment (Asellius’ animal contest) with absurd generosity     This contrast is not explicitly articulated by Suetonius in that passage —but it emerges cumulatively in the Lives.   About the Virgil anecdote Yes, we do hear (in later sources) that:  Virgil recited the Aeneid before Augustus reactions included strong emotional response (famously, Octavia fainting at the mention of Marcellus)   That kind of anecdote becomes:  Augustan culture = elevated, tragic, canonical   II. What Suetonius is doing with Tiberius The passage you cite is embedded among other stories showing:  erratic favors odd criteria for reward indulgence in trivialities   The Asellius anecdote is not isolated; it belongs to a pattern of character sketching.  III. Your key thesis: adoption and talent You suggest:  ars does not pass through adoptio  This is actually a very Roman way of seeing it:  Augustus:  patron of high culture   Tiberius:  patron of low amusement     The implicature becomes:  succession preserves power, not taste   IV. The implied moral (refined) Your formulation:  “O tempora, o mores”  is quite apt—but we can sharpen it in Suetonian terms.  What is explicitly said:  emperor paid 200,000 HS for a frivolous piece  What is implied:  mismatch between:  value of work magnitude of reward     Secondary implicatures   Transformation of culture  from:  epic poetry   to:  salon performance      Transformation of patronage  from:  support of enduring literature   to:  reward for immediate pleasure      Transformation of authority  from:  cultural arbiter   to:  private consumer of amusement       V. Your “court jester” insight This is very strong. Asellius is not formally:  a scurra or buffoon  But functionally he is:  a producer of pleasing discourse for imperial consumption   And the key Suetonian irony The work is:  ephemeral lost  But the payment is:  enormous recorded    So the narrative itself enacts the judgment:  the money endures in the record; the work has vanished.   VI. Grice/Speranza reading This is almost textbook implicature:  Literal layer  “Tiberius gave X for Y”   Implicated layer  Y is trivial X is excessive therefore:  Tiberius’ valuations are distorted     Further implicature (your point)  “who pays the piper chooses the tune”  Yes—but with a darker twist:  the tune becomes whatever pleases the payer not what deserves to endure   VII. Final Speranzian synthesis  Suetonius places alongside one another the patronage of Augustus and the rewards of Tiberius, not by explicit comparison but by the accumulation of contrasting anecdotes; and thus the reader is led to infer that while power may pass by adoption, taste does not, and that the culture of Rome has shifted from the production of enduring poetry to the consumption of momentary wit, where the value of speech is measured not by its greatness, but by the pleasure it gives to the princeps.    Ultra‑compact  Adoptio potestatem transfert—non iudicium.    Your reading is not only plausible—it is exactly the kind of second‑order moral inference Suetonius expects his reader to make.  If you like, we can set up a parallel catalogue of “good patronage vs bad patronage” across Suetonius’ emperors—he uses this contrast repeatedly.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asinio – Ossia: Grice ed Asinio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Asinio. The Asinii were a family at ancient Rome, which rose to prominence during the first century BC. The first member of this gens mentioned in history is Erio  A., commander of the Marrucini during the Social War. The A. probably obtained Roman citizenship in the aftermath of this conflict, as they are mentioned at Rome within a generation, and Gaius A. Pollio obtained the consulship. The A. came from Teate, the chief town of the Marrucini, an Oscan-speaking people related to the Samnites. Silius Italicus mentions a certain Erio who lived around the beginning of the Second Punic War, who was said to have been an ancestor of the A. “Asinius” is derived from the cognomen Asina, a she-ass, one of a large class of surnames derived from familiar objects and animals. A related but more familiar name was Asellus, borne as a cognomen by the Cornelii and Claudii. The main praenomina of the A. at Rome were Gaius and Gnaeus, to which they sometimes added other names, including Marcus, Lucius, Servius, and Quintus. The earliest of the Asinii bore the Oscan praenomen Erio, which was apparently of long standing amongst their ancestors. There were two main families of the Asinii at Rome. The earlier of these bore the cognomen Pollio, a surname originally designating a polisher of armour. The sons of Gaius Asinius Pollio, consul in 40 BC, each bore different surnames, including Pollio, Agrippa, Saloninus, Celer, and Gallus, some of which were passed on to their descendants. The A, Marcelli were descended from Marcus Asinius Agrippa.  Of these names, Agrippa was an old praenomen that came to be a common surname in the later Republic and under the Empire. Saloninus was derived from the Salonia gens, an ancient but undistinguished family from which this branch of the Asinii may have been descended. Celer, swift, belongs to a large class of surnames describing an individual's habits or physical characteristics. Gallus, a cockerel, is the same type of cognomen as Asina.  The other stirps of the Asinii, with the cognomen Rufus, originally indicating someone with red hair, appears in imperial times, and may well have been related to the Polliones. As with that family, the Asinii Rufi also bore a variety of other surnames, including Bassus, stout, and Quadratus, stocky, as well as names inherited from other gentes, such as Frugi, an agnomen of the Calpurnii, and Nicomachus, a surname of Greek origin.  Other surnames of the Asinii include Dento, indicating someone with prominent teeth, Lepidus, agreeable, and Praetextatus, probably a reference to the toga praetexta, a purple-bordered toga worn by magistrates and Roman youths. Lepidus might allude to the bearer's descent from the Aemilii Lepidi, an illustrious family of the Republic. It is unclear how these A. might have been related to the two main families of the gens, as is the case with those A. who are mentioned without any surnames. Asinii Polliones, Galli, et Marcelli Herius Asinius, commander of the Marrucini during the Marsic War, and perhaps the grandfather of Gaius Asinius Pollio. Gnaeus Asinius, only known as the father of Gaius Asinius Pollio. Gaius A. Cn. f. Pollio, a distinguished orator, poet and historian of the Augustan age, consul. Asinius Cn. f. Marrucinus, known for his practical jokes. Asinia C. f. Cn. n., wife of Marcus Claudius Marcellus Aeserninus. Asinius Pollio, a sophist and philosopher, who succeeded Timagenes in his school. Lucius Asinius Gallus, celebrated a triumph. Gaius Asinius C. f. Cn. n. Gallus Saloninus, consul, and second husband of Vipsania Agrippina. Gaius Asinius C. f. C. n. Pollio, consul in AD 23. Marcus Asinius C. f. C. n. Agrippa, consul in AD 25. Gnaeus Asinius C. f. C. n. Saloninus. Servius Asinius C. f. C. n. Celer, consul suffectus in AD 38, apparently put to death by the emperor Claudius. Asinia Agrippina Ser. f. C. n. Lucius Asinius C. f. C. n. Gallus, exiled for conspiring against Claudius.[20][21] Marcus Asinius M. f. C. n. Marcellus, son of Marcus Asinius Agrippa, consul in AD 54. Lucius Asinius Gallus, consul in AD 62.[22][23] Asinius Pollio, the commander of a regiment of horse, serving under Lucceius Albinus in Mauretania, was slain in AD 69, when the troops espoused the side of Vitellius.[24] Lucius Asinius Pollio Verrucosus, consul in AD 81.[25] Quintus Asinius Marcellus, consul suffectus in an uncertain year after AD 97.[26] Marcus Asinius M. f. M. n. Marcellus, consul in AD 104. Asinii Rufi et Quadrati Asinius Rufus, a friend of Tacitus and the younger Pliny, the latter of whom recommends A. Bassus, the son of Rufus, to Fundanus.[27] Asinius Bassus, son of Asinius Rufus, recommended to Fundanus by Gaius Plinius Secundus.[27] Gaius Asinius Frugi, triumvir monetalis in Phrygia between AD 98 and 116. Gaius Asinius Rufus, perhaps the son of Gaius Asinius Frugi,  senator. Gaius Asinius C. f. Nichomachus, b. circa AD 135. Gaius Asinius Protimus Quadratus, proconsul of Achaea circa AD 211, and consul designate.[28] Gaius Asinius Rufus, brother of the proconsul Quadratus.[29] Gaius Asinius Nicomachus Julianus, proconsul of Asia circa AD 220.[30] Gaius Asinius C. f. C. n. Julius Quadratus. Gaius Asinius Quadratus, a historian of the third century. He may be the same person as the proconsul Protimus Quadratus. Others Asinius Dento, a person whom Cicero calls nobilis sui generis, was a centurion primus pilus under Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus in 51 BC, and was killed near Mount Amanus.[31] Asinius, a friend of Marcus Antonius, who surreptitiously crept into the senate after the death of Caesar, 44 BC.[32] Marcus Asinius Atratinus, consul in AD 89. Gaius Asinius Lepidus Praetextatus, consul in AD 242. See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 385 ("Asinia Gens").  Silius Italicus, Punica, xvii. 453.  Livy, Epitome 73.  Catullus, Carmina, 12.  Chase, pp. 112, 113, 126.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, pp. 437–439 ("Gaius Asinius Pollio", No. 1).  Chase, pp. 109, 146, 147.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s. v. Gallus.  Chase, p. 110.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s. v. quadratus.  Chase, pp. 109, 111.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s. v. praetextatus.  Tacitus, Annales iii. 11, xiv. 40.  Suetonius, "The Life of Augustus", 43.  Tacitus, Annales iv. 1.  Pliny the Elder, xxxiii. 1. § 8.  Tacitus, Annales iii. 75.  Pliny the Elder, ix. 17.  Seneca the Younger, Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii.  Suetonius, "The Life of Claudius", 13.  Cassius Dio, lx. 27.  Tacitus, Annales xiv. 48.  Vita Persii.  Tacitus, Historiae ii. 59.  Cassius Dio, lxvi. 26.  Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, II. 2, col. 1588 ("Asinius", No. 20).  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, iv. 15.  Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare, p. 294.  CIG, III. 3866.  CIG, III. 6498.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, v. 20.  Cicero, Philippicae, xiii. 13. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, Philippicae. Gaius Valerius Catullus Carmina. Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii (The Gourdification of the Divine Claudius). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Tiberius Catius Silius Italicus, Punica. Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, Historiae. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita Caesarum (Lives of the Caesars, or The Twelve Caesars). Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus (Cassius Dio), Roman History. August Böckh et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (The Body of Greek Inscriptions, abbreviated CIG), Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften (1828–1877). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). August Pauly, Georg Wissowa, et alii, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Scientific Encyclopedia of the Knowledge of Classical Antiquities, abbreviated RE or PW), J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart (1894–1980). Paul M. M. Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander, J.C. Gieben, Amsterdam (1989).  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)  Categories: AsiniiRoman gentes There are two entries for this gens, Asinio -- below -- one for the gens in general and (b) for A. Quadratus. Any second-best choice for the Grice-Speranza vignette? thanks -

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asinio – Ossia Grice ed Asinio.’ Gaio Asinio Quadrato (Roma). storico e politico romano.  G.: Let us begin, then, with your precious Asinius. M.: Not Quadratus? G.: Asinius first. I am told he is under A. M.: Quite right too. One files by the first Roman fact, not the ornamental one. G.: So Quadratus is ornamental? M.: Not wholly. But Asinius is the family name; Quadratus is the bit that sounds as if he had been measured with a ruler and found satisfactory. G.: A square man. M.: A suitably Roman shape, in any case. G.: And yet he writes Greek. M.: That is the first thing to tell the class, before they begin to imagine that all Romans thought in ablatives. G.: I should rather like to imagine it. M.: Yes, but you must not teach it. G.: Very well. We have, then, Asinius, Roman enough to care about Romulus, Greek enough to write him in Greek, and late enough to make the whole thing already a piece of historical archaeology. M.: Nicely put. G.: And our text? M.: The little testimonium you found, the one with Remus and Romulus entangled in Ravenna. G.: Ah yes. The perfect school text: a fragment in which one cannot immediately tell whether one is learning history, philology, or the history of mistakes. M.: Which is usually the best sort. G.: Then let us have the Greek aloud first. I shall read it, and you shall stop me when I become too Athenian. M.: You are never too Athenian. Only too pleased with yourself. G.: Ῥῶμον, ὃς ἀδελφὸς γέγονε Ῥωμύλῳ, τῆς πόλεως ταύτης οἰκιστὴν γεγονέναι. M.: Good. Slow enough for terror. G.: And now the class stares as if I had just recited a railway timetable in Cretan. M.: They are only waiting for the translation. G.: Quite. Well, then: “Remus, who was the brother of Romulus, was the founder of this city.” M.: Better: “that Remus, the brother of Romulus, was the founder of this city.” G.: Yes, because it is embedded in a denial. M.: Precisely. The point is not that Asinius affirms a neat founding story. The point is that a later writer reports a claim and rejects another one. G.: So we begin not with certainty but with re-analysis. M.: Which is where history generally begins, once enough centuries have elapsed. G.: I can hear the class already. “Sir, who could possibly have doubted that Rome was founded by Romulus?” M.: And I should answer: anyone with enough antiquarian energy and too much local pride. G.: Splendid. Local pride is the mother of alternative foundations. M.: Indeed. Cities are always trying to attach themselves to the nearest reputable corpse. G.: Or founder. M.: In Rome the two often coincide. G.: Let us imagine the interruption. Some cheerful idiot at the back— T.: Sir, if Remus had won, would it have been the Reman Empire? Class: Laughter. M.: Exactly the sort of wit that keeps one in the profession. G.: I should be tempted to say yes, and then fail him for morphology. M.: Quite right. “Roman” from “Reman” is a historical impossibility and a social danger. G.: Though one sees the attraction. It gives the whole of Roman history the air of having been one fratricide away from a spelling reform. M.: Which is not, so far as I know, Asinius’ point. G.: No. His point, or at least the point in which he is invoked, is that some people connected Ravenna with Remus. M.: And the later writer says, no, let us follow Asinius instead. G.: Which gives Asinius the agreeable role of being the sensible Roman in a crowd of etymological fantasists. M.: Yes. A Roman speaking of Romulus as a Roman ought. G.: Not as a Reman speaking of Remus. M.: If you must. G.: I must. M.: Then at least make the joke dry. G.: Everything is dry before luncheon. M.: Good. Now explain to them why the Greek matters. G.: Because Asinius is a Roman historian writing in Greek, which is already one of the more delightful facts in imperial literary culture. He is telling Roman stories in a language whose prestige is historical and whose audience is wider than the Senate. M.: And in an archaizing style too. G.: Yes, that is the bit I particularly enjoy. He writes not merely Greek, but Greek that wants one to hear older Greek behind it. It is as if a modern don insisted on lecturing in Johnsonian English to prove that he belongs to civilisation. M.: Or in Latin to an audience that no longer needs it. G.: Quite. It is a way of borrowing authority from style. M.: Which is why you like him. G.: I like anybody who makes form do historical work. M.: Then tell them that. G.: Very well. Class, observe: Asinius does not merely report Roman material. By writing it in Greek, and in a deliberately elevated Greek, he makes Rome intelligible in the language of historiographical prestige. He is not only saying things; he is deciding how Rome is to be heard. M.: Better. Now back to the fragment. G.: Yes. We have Ῥῶμον, ὃς ἀδελφὸς γέγονε Ῥωμύλῳ— “Remus, who was brother to Romulus”— τῆς πόλεως ταύτης οἰκιστὴν γεγονέναι— “to have been founder of this city.” M.: Good. Now let them see the Latin too. G.: Ah yes, the pleasing part where Greek begins to sound almost Latin if read with enough Roman guilt. M.: You may not teach them to pronounce Greek as if it were Cicero. G.: I may, however, let them feel the proximity: Rhōmon … Rhōmylōi … one can see how the Roman ear would enjoy the neighbourhood of names. M.: Enjoy, perhaps. Trust, no. G.: Fair. Then the Latin rendering: Remum, qui Romuli frater fuit, huius urbis conditorem fuisse. M.: Good schoolroom Latin. Conditor for οἰκιστής. G.: Yes. Founder without too much sociology. M.: And now the class should ask why the passage matters at all. G.: Because it shows that by Asinius’ time one was already disentangling rival origin-stories, local claims, false etymologies, and antiquarian gossip. M.: Excellent. It is a Roman historian doing what historians do best: preventing later nonsense from becoming early fact. G.: Or at least replacing one sort of nonsense with a better attested one. M.: Historians must be allowed their modesty. G.: Then there is the little issue of the later writer preferring Asinius’ account over someone else’s. M.: Which tells you that Asinius had authority. G.: Yes. Not merely as a compiler of names, but as a source worth following in questions of local historical tradition. M.: For a Roman historian in Greek, that is not bad. G.: No. It means he succeeded in becoming the sort of Roman whom Greek readers could treat as reliable about Rome. M.: Which is, if you like, a contribution to philosophy in your broad Gricean sense. G.: Ah, now we come to it. M.: Of course. You always want the philosophical relevance. G.: Well, I should say Asinius does not contribute a doctrine of justice or meaning in the abstract, but he does something Grice would appreciate: he manages civic intelligibility across languages and traditions. M.: That is very nearly a sentence. G.: Thank you. He takes Rome, which to Romans may appear self-explanatory, and re-presents it in Greek for readers who do not share Roman verbal reflexes. In doing so he must decide what to explain, what to leave implicit, what names to preserve, what myths to prune, what authority to invoke. M.: In short, he is engaged in a kind of controlled cross-cultural implication. G.: Exactly. He makes Rome mean itself abroad. M.: That sounds almost worth saying to the class. G.: I thought so. M.: Though avoid “abroad.” It sounds too Cook’s Tour. G.: Very well. He makes Rome intelligible beyond its own native hearing. M.: Better. T.: Sir, why is he called Quadratus? M.: Because, my dear boy, Romans often had more than one name, and not all of them were there for your convenience. G.: Though one is tempted to say that “Quadratus” suggests the sort of man on whom one could build a shelf. Class: Laughter. M.: Ignore him. “Asinius” is what matters for filing, family, and the Roman name. “Quadratus” is the additional cognomen by which this particular Asinius is distinguished. G.: So if you list him under A, you are being not only neat but Roman. M.: Exactly. G.: And there is a second reason to prefer Asinius here. It keeps before us that he is a Roman talking about Roman beginnings. He is not inventing a Greek romance about founders from outside. He is handling Roman foundation material as a Roman source, even if the vehicle is Greek. M.: Which is why Romulus stands where he should. G.: Yes. Rome remains Roman in the act of being translated. M.: Nicely put again. You are almost tolerable today. G.: I blame the fragment. It is compact enough to improve one’s morals. M.: Then let us sharpen the point. Why is this not trivial? G.: Because the difference between Romulus and Remus is not merely anecdotal. Founders are civic principles in narrative form. To connect a city with Romulus rather than Remus is to place it inside one authority structure rather than another. M.: Good. And to reject a local Remus-story is to reject a flattering but unstable genealogy. G.: Precisely. One might say Asinius is resisting antiquarian overproduction. M.: The disease is old. G.: Older than the cure, usually. M.: Now tell them about the later correction. G.: Yes. The testimonium is framed by contrast: not, as another author says, because Remus founded the city; rather, one should follow Asinius, who discussed the city in his historical work. M.: So Asinius appears as arbiter. G.: And one might even say, in a mild Gricean mood, that the later writer treats Asinius as the better guide to what is to be understood from the story. M.: Better not say “Gricean mood” to the class. G.: No, they would think it a weather report. M.: Which, in your case, it often is. G.: Then I shall simply say: Asinius is preferred because he offers the more disciplined historical account. M.: Good. T.: Sir, did Asinius begin his Roman history with the she-wolf? M.: We do not know from this fragment. G.: Excellent question, though, because it shows the right sort of greed. What we know is that his Roman history covered Roman origins broadly enough that Romulean material belongs within its horizon. What we do not have here is a neat surviving opening with lupa and twins conveniently preserved for school recitation. M.: Historians survive in fragments; schoolboys want epics. G.: And must learn disappointment. M.: A principal part of education. G.: Let us, then, end with the three useful things one can say. M.: You and your threes. G.: They help. First: Asinius Quadratus is better thought of, here, as Asinius, the Roman historian writing in Greek. Second: the Greek fragment gives us a genuine Romulus-reference, though in a testimonium rejecting a Remus-based local claim. Third: his value lies not in having discovered that Romulus founded Rome—every child thinks he knows that—but in preserving, sorting, and authorising which version of such traditions deserves to be followed. M.: Good. G.: And the Greek once more, so they remember it: Ῥῶμον, ὃς ἀδελφὸς γέγονε Ῥωμύλῳ, τῆς πόλεως ταύτης οἰκιστὴν γεγονέναι. M.: And the Latin: Remum, qui Romuli frater fuit, huius urbis conditorem fuisse. G.: Which, as you see, makes the whole thing feel satisfyingly Roman again. M.: It never stopped being Roman. G.: True. It merely passed through Greek on its way back to us. M.: Which is, perhaps, the best thing about Asinius. G.: That he lets Rome return by way of translation. M.: And does so without becoming Reman. Class: Laughter. G.: That, gentlemen, is what counts as a successful ending.GRICEVS: Asinie, narrasne nobis quid sit iustitia apud senatores Romanos?  ASINIVS: O Griceve, iustitia in curia non tantum verba, sed mores et traditiones maiorum sequitur.  G.: At quid accidit, cum philosophi Graeci sententias novas afferunt? Mutaturne ratio conversandi?  A: Saepe, Griceve, Graecorum doctrina animos movet, sed Romani prudentiam suam servare malunt, ne mos patriae pereat. Asinio Quadrato, Gaio (MI A. V. C.) Millenium. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asinio – Ossia: Grice ed Asinio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Asinio.This is a lovely, already very rich “Asinian” scene—and your instinct about second-best Grice/Speranza fits within this gens is exactly right: we want someone whose role turns on reporting, re‑framing, or mediating competing versions of things. Let me suggest a clean second‑best alongside your Quadratus.   Your first fit (already excellent): Asinius Quadratus You’ve already captured him perfectly:  Roman historian, writing in Greek, adjudicating between rival origin‑stories.  His Gricean role:  arbiter of competing narratives controls:  what is accepted as said vs rejected as distortion     mechanism: meta‑implicature control (which version survives)   Best second‑fit: Gaius Asinius Pollio This is the strongest companion case.  Why Pollio? He is:  orator historian patron (Virgil, Horace circle) political actor  Crucially:  he both produces discourse and frames how discourse is received.   His key Gricean feature Pollio is famous for:  writing history with evaluative control criticizing:  Caesar (even though once aligned)   shaping reputations   He is:  a manager of public interpretation   II. Pollio vs Quadratus (very neat contrast)                     AsiniusMediumOperationQuadratusGreek historiographyadjudicates past traditionsPollioLatin historiography/oratoryshapes contemporary judgment  Difference  Quadratus: → sorting inherited claims Pollio: → producing authoritative narrative in real time   III. A compact Latin vignette (Pollio as Gricean controller)  Historicus: “Caesar magnus fuit—hoc omnes dicunt.” Pollio: “Dicunt—sed non idem intellegunt.” Historicus: “Quid ergo addis?” Pollio: “Ordo et iudicium: sine his narratio manet, non historia.”  Translation  “Caesar was great—everyone says so.” “They say it—but do not mean the same.” “So what do you add?” “Order and judgment: without these there is narrative, not history.”   IV. Grice/Speranza analysis Pollio’s role is sharper than Quadratus’:  1. The raw material  “everyone says…”  = undifferentiated discourse  2. Pollio’s intervention  imposes:   order (structure) iudicium (evaluation)   3. Result  shifts:  “what is said” → “what is meant”      exactly Gricean:  controls:  implicature uptake interpretation     V. Why Pollio fits better than other Asinii Other candidates (less strong):  Asinius Gallus  mostly political suspicion (good, but narrower)   Asinius Marrucinus (Catullus’ prankster)  fun, but not structurally deep   Asinius Rufus / Bassus  mostly epistolary/social     Pollio alone has:  systematic control over discourse and memory   VI. Final pairing (very elegant)                  CaseGricean functionQuadratusdecides which tradition countsPolliodecides how a tradition is interpreted   Final Speranzian synthesis  One Asinius (Quadratus) filters the past by selecting which accounts of origins are to be believed; another (Pollio) shapes the present by ordering and judging competing narratives; and thus between them they show that history is not the mere preservation of what is said, but the disciplined control of what is to be understood.    Ultra‑compact  Quadratus eligit; Pollio interpretatur.    Recommendation  Keep Quadratus as: → “cross‑cultural intelligibility” Add Pollio as: → “control of historical meaning”   If you like, we can now integrate Pollio directly into your Augustus vs Tiberius contrast, since Pollio is precisely the hinge between Republican speech and Imperial reception.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Grice e Assarotti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Ottavio Assarotti (Genova, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rational inference drawn by a hearer who assumes cooperative participation in a talk exchange: when a speaker seems to depart from being fully informative, strictly literal, relevant, or perspicuous, the hearer uses that very departure (plus shared background) to calculate what the speaker meant beyond what was said. Assarotti provides a strikingly concrete counterpart to this picture by relocating “conversation” from voiced utterance to multimodal interaction: in his deaf education work in Genoa—begun privately in 1801, expanded with Napoleonic support in 1805, and institutionalized in 1811 in the former Brigidine convent—he developed a practical, gesture-centered pedagogy (mimic method) employing dactylology/manual alphabet, writing, and systematic use of gesture to enable instruction across domains, not just basic literacy. Read through a Gricean lens, Assarotti’s classroom becomes an existence proof that the engine of implicature is not tied to speech sounds or words but to publicly recognizable, intention-bearing moves governed by expectations of mutual intelligibility: a handshape, a pointing gesture, or a facial cue can function as an “utterance,” invite uptake, and generate implied content when it underdetermines, abbreviates, or strategically redirects what is explicitly conveyed. Where Grice theorizes the rational norms that make such inference possible (cooperation, calculability, and the distinction between what is said and what is implicated), Assarotti operationalizes the same rationality under severe channel constraints, designing an interactional system in which meaning must be recoverable from visible form plus shared instructional purposes; and the familiar worry in your passage about “too much erudition” underscores a specifically Gricean point about quantity and relevance: a pedagogy that overloads the learner with encyclopedic content risks violating the very economy that makes communication efficient, whether the medium is spoken English or manual signs. In short, Grice supplies the abstract logic of reason in interaction, while Assarotti shows how that reason can be embodied in gesture and still support implicature, cooperation, and disciplined understanding. Inizia gli studi filosofici ad Albenga, e li continua a Genova sotto la direzione d’AGENO  e GIACOMONE . Insegna grammatica superiore nella casa professa di Genova, fino a quando divenne insegnante di fisica ad Albenga. Insegna logica a Savona a Genova. All'insegnamento di filosofia d’A. si formarono esponenti del movimento giansenista quali Degola, Buccelli, Capurro, Carosio, e Casella.  A. finisce per abbandonare l'insegnamento di quelle discipline per dedicarsi quasi totalmente all'opera di ri-educazione dei sordomuti, “il suo maggior titolo di rilievo filosofico,” nelle parole di Grice, richiama l'attenzione sulla gravità del problema della ri-educazione dei sordomuti e pone a base del suo metodo di insegnamento la mimica griceiana. Interessato a questi esperimenti, A. inizia la ri-educazione di alcuni ragazzi. Incoraggiato dal successo ottenuto, volle allargare il numero dei suoi allievi, ciò che gli è possibile fare quando ottenne da BUONAPARTE  un finanziamento, la garanzia di alcune borse di studio per sordomuti indigenti, oltre che l'autorizzazione a installarsi in un locale appartenente a corporazioni religiose soppresse. A. pone la sede del suo istituto dei sordo-muti in un convento delle monache brigidine. Finito il dominio di BUONAPARTE , l'istituto attravese un periodo di crisi, fino a che non prende a cuore le sue sorti, dopo l'annessione della Liguria al regno della Sardegna, il re Vittorio Emanuele, per l'aiuto del quale esso conosce un notevole ampliamento. Il metodo d’A., MIMICO (alla Grice) ed essenzialmente pratico ed empirico, utilizza l'alfabeto dattilogico, la scrittura e I GESTIi, e si propone d'insegnare ai sordo-muti, oltre che a leggere e a scrivere, cognizioni diverse riguardanti le varie lingue e i vari campi dello scibile, la filosofia inclusa. Il limite di questo metodo è forse quello di dare soverchia importanza al numero delle cognizioni da impartire, col rischio di fornire un'eccessiva e inutile erudizione agli allievi. (Grice: “Do they NEED to *know* Heidegger?”). Love. G.: Assaroti, hai mai pensato che la ragione conversazionale potesse passare dalle dita invece che dalla bocca?A.: Caro Grice, con i sordomuti ho scoperto che il gesto comprende spesso più ragione della parola—e la mimica, se fatta bene, non ti lascia mai in silenzio! G.: E dimmi, il tuo metodo mimico ha mai insegnato a qualcuno la filosofia senza fargli leggere Heidegger? A.: Grice, per fortuna nessuno ha mai chiesto “Dattilogica” per Heidegger! Ma se vuoi, possiamo provare a mimare l’essenza dell’essere davanti a una tazza di caffè. Assarotti, Ottavio (1821). Cenni storici sull’istruzione dei sordo-muti. Genova, Tipografia del R. Istituto dei Sordo-Muti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Assio – Ossia: Grice ed Assio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Assio. Denarius of Lucius A. Naso, 71 BC. The obverse depicts Mars, while on the reverse Diana drives a biga pulled by stags, surrounded by her hounds. The A. probably had a special devotion to the goddess. The Axii, also spelled Axsii, were a family at Rome during the final century of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. The gens does not appear to have been particularly large or important, although at least some of the family were reasonably wealthy.  None of the A. mentioned in history bear a surname; the only cognomen found in inscriptions is Naso, originally referring to someone with a prominent nose. Quintus Axius M. f., a senator in 73 BC. He was a wealthy man from Reate, and friend of both Cicero and Varro, who made him a protagonist of his De Re Rustica. His grand villa at modern Colli sul Velino can be seen today. Marcus Gallius Axianus, son of Cicero and Varro's friend who was adopted into the Gallia gens.[10] Lucius Axius L. f. Naso, triumvir monetalis in 71 BC, probably to be identified with the eques mentioned by Varro, and a banker named in an inscription.[11][12][2][13] Lucius Axius L. f. (L. n.) Naso, proconsul in Cyprus in AD 29.[14] Quintus Axius Aelianus, governor of the Roman province of Dacia in the 2nd century CE.[15] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 448 ("Axia Gens").  Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum, v. 148.  Chase, p. 109.  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, iii.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, i. 12, x. 11, 13, 15.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 115.  Suetonius, "The Life of Caesar", 9.  Gellius, vii. 3.  SIG, 747.  Shackleton-Bailey, D. R. (2004). Cicero: Letters to Atticus: Volume 6, Books 14-16. Cambridge University Press. p. 278. ISBN 9780521606905.  CIL, I², 904.  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, iii. 7.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, pp. 412, 413.  OGIS, 583.  Du Chaillu, The Viking Age, p. 265. Bibliography Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum Rusticarum (Rural Matters). Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita Caesarum (Lives of the Caesars, or The Twelve Caesars). Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights). Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum (The Study of Ancient Coins, 1792–1798). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Wilhelm Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (Collection of Greek Inscriptions, abbreviated SIG), Leipzig (1883); Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (Select Inscriptions from the Greek East, abbreviated OGIS), Leipzig (1905). Paul Du Chaillu, The Viking Age, John Murray, London (1889). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Michael Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, Cambridge University Press (1974, 2001). Robert C. Knapp, "L. Axius Naso and Pro Legato", in Phoenix, vol. 35, pp. 134–141 (1981). Categories: Roman gentesAxii I suppose the "Assio" as Grice and Speranza spel this -- for Grice/Speranza fit is the one who owned the villa and which Terenzio (as Grice and Speranza spell Varro) makes a protagonist in De re rustica -- so we can imagine a conversation between Assio and Terenzio as they pass the time? Thanks Yes—this is an excellent choice. Quintus Axius (“Assio”) in Varro’s De Re Rustica is almost tailor‑made for a Grice/Speranza vignette, because Varro deliberately stages his agricultural treatise as a conversation among friends at a villa.  So Axius is not just a “host,” but:  a participant in a staged dialogue whose purpose is to pass knowledge through conversation.  That is already very Gricean.  I. Why Axius works so well (Grice/Speranza fit) In De Re Rustica:  Varro does not lecture abstractly he creates:  a scene (villa) speakers with different levels of knowledge practical questions     Axius’ role:  wealthy landowner socially competent but not necessarily technical expert elicits explanations   Gricean structure                      RoleFunctionVarro (Terenzio)expert / authoritative speakerAxiusintelligent layman / questionerDialoguevehicle for implicature and clarification   Axius is ideal because he:  keeps asking “what is meant?” in concrete terms.   II. The setting: villa as conversational laboratory Your instinct is perfect: the villa scene matters.  rural estate leisure context conversation fills time   but actually:  it structures knowledge as cooperative exchange   III. Latin vignette (Axius and Varro at the villa) Let me give you a compact, natural reconstruction.  Axius: “Terenti, dum in villā meā ambulāmus, explica mihi quid sit agricola bonus.” Varro (Terenzio): “Bonus agricola est qui non solum arat, sed intellegit cur arat.” Axius: “Non satis est laborare?” Varro: “Labor sine ratione servitus est.” Axius: “Ergo loquendo melius discimus quam tacendo?” Varro: “Immo: per colloquium res explicantur quae sola verba non docent.”  IV. Translation  Axius: “Terentius, as we walk in my villa, explain to me what a good farmer is.” Varro: “A good farmer is one who not only ploughs, but understands why he ploughs.” Axius: “Is it not enough to work?” Varro: “Work without understanding is servitude.” Axius: “So by speaking we learn better than by silence?” Varro: “Indeed: through conversation things are made clear which words alone do not teach.”   V. Grice/Speranza analysis This is very clean.  1. Axius’ role  triggers explanation:  “explica mihi…”     he sets up:  need for clarification potential implicatures   2. Varro’s move  “intellegit cur arat”  This is already:  beyond literal activity a move from:  action → meaning     3. Key line  “per colloquium res explicantur...”   this is deeply Gricean:  meaning emerges:  not from isolated utterance but from dialogical exchange     VI. Why Axius is “second-best” (very good choice) Compared to earlier figures:  he is not:  political manipulator (like Pollio) historical arbiter (like Quadratus)    But:  he embodies cooperative principle in practice   His special contribution He shows:  how meaning is:  elicited negotiated stabilized     VII. Final Speranzian synthesis  Axius, as the host of Varro’s dialogue, does not produce doctrine but occasions it, and by his questioning transforms practical knowledge into articulated understanding; thus he represents the conversational condition under which meaning emerges, not from solitary utterance, but from the cooperative exchange in which what is done becomes what is understood.    Ultra‑compact  Assius quaerit—Terentius explicat—colloquium docet.    This is a very good Grice/Speranza fit:  Axius = the elicitor of meaning in conversation Varro = the explicator Villa = the pragmatic setting of understanding   If you like, we could now contrast Axius with Asconius:  Axius creates meaning through dialogue,  Asconius reconstructs meaning after dialogue is lost.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Astore – Ossia: Grice ed Astore: la ragione conversazionale.  Francesco Antonio Astore (Casarano, Lecce, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains what a speaker means (including implicatures) by appealing to purposive, mutually recognized rational agency: speakers choose contributions on the expectation of cooperation, and hearers reconstruct intended extra content by reasoning from what is said plus shared norms (informativeness, relevance, etc.). Astore, by contrast, approaches “conversational reason” through the classical-rhetorical and juridical tradition: as a jurist and man of letters, and explicitly as the author of La filosofia dell’eloquenza o sia l’eloquenza della ragione (first published in Naples in 1783; later reprinted, including the 1796 Naples edition cited in your passage), he treats eloquence as reason made socially effective—persuasion disciplined by rational order rather than mere verbal force, pedantry, or ornamental rhetoric (a stance highlighted in Treccani’s profile of him). Where Grice’s focus is explanatory and quasi-formal—how implicatures are derivable from rational conversational expectations—Astore’s focus is normative and civic: how rational discourse ought to sound and function so as to guide judgment in public, legal, and moral contexts, with rhetoric conceived as an “eloquence of reason” rather than as manipulation. In that sense Astore supplies a broader ethical-pedagogical frame (what counts as good, legitimate, responsibly persuasive speech), while Grice supplies the micro-mechanics (how, even without raising the voice and even when saying less than one means, hearers can rationally recover intended meaning), so Astore’s “ragione” aligns with Grice’s “reason-governed” core but is oriented more toward cultivating rational public speech than toward Grice’s analytic reconstruction of the inferential engine behind conversational understanding. Grice: “I love A.!” Keywords: key. Philosopher and jurist. In addition to his well-known philosophical wok, A.’s career focuses on jurisprudence and he is remembered as a letterato, a man of letters. His other works include Saggio filosofico sulla giurisprudenza univesale, one of his major works. Lettera ad un amico sulla censura della filosofia dell’eloquenza – a letter defending his work, Filosofia dell’eloquenza. Instituiones juris romani – a book on Roman law, De natura et constitutione rhetoricae – a work on the nature and constitution of rhetoric. Eloquence of reason, eloquence, reason, eloquenza della ragione, philosophy, eloquenza, ragione, filosofia. DELL'ELOQUENZA, OSIA L'ELOQUENZA DELLA RAGIONE. Li antichi Greci ne* tempi delle raccolte delle produzioni de' loro campi offerivano a* Dei a 2 cer- certi rami di ulivo , o di lauro, a* quali attaccavano con molte fila di bianca lana varie fpccie di frutti , e di fiori, vafi di olio, pa- ne, miele, e cofe confìmili. Era da eflì quefto dono chia- mato E?/ww* . Io ardifco di offrire alla Santità Voftra , che è il CapoVifibile della vera Religione , una Eìre- fione più vile di quella de- gli antichi Greci : fpero pe- rò che la Santità Voftra col folito benigno fguardo, col quale fi è fempre degnata onorare del di Lei generofo gradimento i miei più umili, e rifpettofi offequj , acco- glierà , come imploro , il mio tenue tenue, e vii dono, che ar- dile© prefentare alla Mede- lima-, non folo come Capo Vilìbìle della Santa Chiefa ( al quale ogni vero creden- te dee fempre umiliare le fu e più oflequiofe raffegna- zioni , ed un pubblico omag- gio ) ma altresì come de- gno Giudice d* ogni intel- lettuale produzione , e co- me un Pontefice , in cui vede F Europa compendiati infìeme , ed uniti i pregi i più diftinti , e le virtù lin» i ^ • • a'verfi di Ovidio • : •. CaUfcimus ilU J cMUfeimus ilio» •. . J37. lin.ult. Ch'è per Fi-. OÀ per fibfofico raaiQ- '^• loÉofico raziocipio cinio. . lin. j.. dcV de Poeti Epici .• v Poetici £pià  Gli dui irmi fi correggermut iàlPmn^€Ì0^ '.  G.: “L’eloquenza della ragione” is all very well, but at Oxford I prefer “the eloquence of reason.” S.: Out of patriotism? G.: Out of hygiene. “Reason” is latinate enough to keep the dons calm, and English enough to keep them awake. S.: Whereas ragione sounds too foreign? G.: Not too foreign. Too revealing. Italians say ragione and mean a civilisation. We say reason and pretend it is a tool. S.: And you have been lecturing on reason? G.: I have been sentenced to it, yes. S.: Then begin properly. What is “reason”? G.: A treacherously compact noun. S.: That is not a definition. G.: No, that is a warning. S.: Very well. What are your kinds? G.: Two main ones to begin with. Reason to, and reason for. S.: Ah. Practical and explanatory. G.: Roughly. “A meant to” introduces one sort. “The reason for which A said that p” introduces another. S.: And you wish to symbolise them? G.: I do. Let r1 be the utterer’s reason to utter x with the intention of meaning that p. Let r2 be the addressee’s reason for taking x as meant to convey that p, or perhaps q beyond p. S.: Already you have two reasons where the sentence had one. G.: Conversation is never stingy with reasons. It is only philosophers who are. S.: And this belongs to eloquenza? G.: Yes, if one translates eloquenza not as mere oratory, but as the managed social life of saying things to one another. S.: So you are translating eloquenza as conversation. G.: Broadly, yes. One must rescue rhetoric from the podium and return it to the parlour. S.: You make Oxford sound upholstered. G.: It is, where it matters. S.: Then r1 is the reason of the utterer? G.: The utterer’s reason to make the move he makes. Why say x now, to this person, in this manner. S.: Not the cause? G.: Certainly not the cause. S.: Explain the distinction. G.: Causes produce. Reasons justify, explain intelligibly, or at least render conduct answerable. S.: But there are causes of utterance. G.: Naturally. A cough may cause a pause. A bribe may cause a confession. Urmson may even hover nearby with bribery as an alleged counterexample to tidy moral distinctions. But my point remains: in conversation what matters first is not what produced the noise, but what point the move had for the speaker. S.: “Point” being another of your dangerous little words. G.: The most useful dangerous little word. The point of the move is its reason. S.: Then people may have reasons to lie? G.: Obviously. S.: And reasons to keep silent? G.: Equally obviously. S.: Which means they need not abide by conversational helpfulness. G.: Just so. Helpfulness is not a commandment. It is a defeasible expectation within a practice. S.: Yet your maxims sound rather commanding. G.: They sound more commanding in lecture notes than in life. In life people have reasons not to be fully informative, not to be fully candid, not to be fully plain. S.: Secrecy, tact, malice, fear, wit. G.: Admirably compressed. Yes. S.: Then why speak of cooperative conversation at all? G.: Because even non-cooperation is usually intelligible against the background of expected cooperation. S.: Give me the old example. G.: Irony. S.: Of course. G.: If I say of a catastrophically bad essay, “That was a masterpiece,” my reason to utter that sentence is not to mislead in the crude sense. S.: Your r1 is to mock. G.: Or to rebuke with economy. S.: And the hearer’s reason? G.: To search for a point consistent with the assumption that I am not merely mad. That is r2. S.: So the addressee must invoke reasons on your behalf. G.: Precisely. He reasons: if G. said that, he must have had some reason to say it; what reason would make the utterance apt here; ah, irony. S.: And metaphor? G.: Much the same family. If I say “Oxford is a damp argument in stone,” I do not mean that mortar syllogises. S.: Pity. G.: But I have reason to choose the figure. And the hearer has reason to recover the intended point rather than report me to the mason. S.: Then eloquenza della ragione is full of reasons before one ever reaches Reason with a capital. G.: Exactly. One need not invoke the grand faculty of Rationality every five minutes. The old Anglo-Norman “reason” does much of the local work quite well. S.: You mean reason as in “What reason had you?” rather than as in “Man is the rational animal.” G.: Yes. That modest, serviceable word which entered English and then quietly ran the place. S.: But Cicero’s ratio is not quite that. G.: No, and there the trouble begins. S.: Ratio is counting, reckoning, account, relation, method, reason. G.: A magnificently overworked Latin noun. S.: So how do your “reason to” and “reason for” connect with ratio? G.: By descent and divergence. Ratio carries the sense of ordered reckoning, a bringing of things into account. Our “reason” keeps enough of that to explain why giving a reason is giving something countable in favour of, or explanatory of, an act or claim. S.: Hence calculate, reckon, account. G.: Yes. Cicero’s ratio is broader and statelier; our reason is shabbier and more useful. S.: Like most English inheritances. G.: Exactly. We inherit Roman silver and use it to stir tea. S.: Then what of reason as a verb? G.: Another nuisance. “He reasoned from p to c.” S.: That sounds more like logic. G.: It sounds like logic because schoolmen and their descendants tidied it. But even here a question arises: if the thought of the premise caused the thought of the conclusion, is that enough for reasoning? S.: Surely not. G.: Quite. A causal sequence in the mind is not yet an inferentially good sequence. Reasoning is not just one thought bumping into another. S.: So again cause is not reason. G.: Exactly. The thought of p may cause the thought of c in a lunatic as well as in a logician. What matters is whether the transition has a reason, or better, whether it proceeds under a reason the thinker could in principle avow. S.: You are making everything answerable. G.: That is because conversation, unlike weather, is answerable. S.: Sometimes only barely. G.: Oxford specialises in the barely. S.: Let us return to Astore. “L’eloquenza della ragione.” G.: A splendid phrase, because it suggests that reason can acquire a social body without degenerating into mere verbal display. S.: Eloquence as reason made audible? G.: Better: reason made effective in company. S.: So not manipulation? G.: Not in the decent version. Rational discourse with social force, not force replacing reason. S.: Then in conversation each move has its r1? G.: Yes. Or ought to, if it is not merely noise. S.: Even a hesitation? G.: Certainly. One may hesitate to soften a refusal, to signal reluctance, to invite supplementation, or to buy time. S.: Buying time is not exactly noble. G.: Conversation is not a saint’s diary. S.: And the addressee’s labour is to reconstruct r1? G.: Often enough. What was he up to? Why this word, this order, this tone, this omission, this excess? S.: This is beginning to sound like hermeneutics. G.: Only because ordinary life is more intelligent than some philosophers allow. S.: So if I say less than I might, you ask why. G.: Yes. If you say more than needed, likewise. S.: And if I say exactly what is needed? G.: Then I grow suspicious in a different direction. S.: Very Oxford. G.: Moderation itself may be a marked case. S.: Then what becomes of your maxims? G.: They remain as default expectations. One has reason ordinarily to be truthful, relevant, appropriately informative, and perspicuous. But one may also have reason to depart from these in recognisable ways. S.: Lie, hedge, hint, joke, flatter, conceal. G.: Or flout. S.: Ah yes, your famous flouting. G.: Not so famous where I should like it to be. S.: You mean among those who accuse you of making conversation too moral. G.: Or too mechanical. Usually both in the same review. S.: Flouting then is itself reason-governed? G.: Exactly. If I openly violate a maxim, I may do so because I have reason to make you search for the point beyond the literal form. S.: So irony is not irrationality but managed departure. G.: Nicely put. S.: And the hearer reciprocates by reconstructing your reason. G.: Which is why conversation is not merely exchange but mutual rational accommodation. S.: Without invoking the majestic faculty of Reason? G.: Without invoking it at every step, yes. One may speak perfectly well of reasons without hauling in a transcendental tribunal. S.: You are demoting Reason. G.: I am domesticating it. S.: Cicero would object? G.: Cicero would object elegantly. S.: And Astore? G.: Astore would probably insist that eloquence keeps reason from becoming a skeleton. S.: Yet you, with your little r1 and r2, sound almost juridical. G.: Astore was a jurist. I take that as supporting evidence rather than a reproach. S.: Because law lives on reasons? G.: On alleged reasons, competing reasons, bad reasons dressed up as good ones, and the institutional necessity of pretending the difference can usually be told. S.: Very like conversation. G.: Very like Oxford faculty meetings. S.: Then where does Urmson’s bribery creep in? G.: Only as a reminder that being induced to say something is not the same as having a conversational reason in the relevant sense. A bribe may explain why one spoke; it need not supply the point of the move as understood within the conversation. S.: Unless the point was to get paid. G.: Which would be sociologically sound and conversationally depressing. S.: Still, a useful distinction. G.: Many useful distinctions are depressing. S.: Then philosophers err when they ignore the reason behind the move? G.: Constantly. They inspect the words, fail to see the reason why those words were chosen, and then pronounce the “problem” dissolved because it was only a misuse of language. S.: Whereas you think some dissolutions are premature. G.: Or lazy. A philosophical puzzle may survive the recognition that someone had a reason for speaking oddly. S.: So your method is not simply therapeutic. G.: No. I want to know why the oddity is there. Sometimes the cure is diagnosis; sometimes the diagnosis shows there was something genuine to cure. S.: You want neither crude problem-solving nor cheap dissolution. G.: Precisely. I want the intermediate virtue of understanding why the move was made. S.: Which returns us to eloquenza della ragione. G.: Yes: the social bearing of reason, and the reasons inside that bearing. S.: Then “reason” in your Oxford idiom is wonderfully ambiguous. G.: Wonderfully, yes. A man may have a reason to say something, a reason for having said it, and may reason from one thing to another, all before lunch. S.: And after lunch? G.: He usually retracts something. S.: Then your whole doctrine amounts to this: conversation is a sequence of moves made for reasons and understood by reference to reasons. G.: That is not the whole doctrine, but it is the decent beginning. S.: And eloquence? G.: Eloquence is what happens when those reasons are managed with enough tact, force, timing, and style to work in company without collapsing into mere noise or naked bullying. S.: Astore would be pleased. G.: I hope so. Though he might ask me to stop writing r1 in the margin of his title page. S.: And Cicero? G.: Cicero would probably say that ratio survived into English reason only to discover tweed, understatement, and central heating. S.: Not always central heating. G.: At Oxford, no. Which is why our reason so often comes out in a visible mist.G.: Francesco Antonio, tu che parli di eloquenza della ragione, hai mai vinto una discussione senza alzare la voce? A.: Caro Grice, la mia eloquenza punta più a convincere che a vincere. Ma se vuoi, posso sempre offrirti qualche ramo d’ulivo, come gli antichi Greci! Grice: Rami d’ulivo? Preferisco una bella lettera, magari difendendo la filosofia, purché non ci sia troppa lana attaccata. Astore: Allora ti scriverò una Lettera ad un amico sulla censura dell’eloquenza, prometto: niente miele, ma qualche verso d’Ovidio sì… così, tra ragione e poesia, la conversazione non manca mai. Astore, Francesco Antonio (1796). Dell’eloquenza, ossia l’eloquenza della ragione. Napoli, Stamperia Simoniana.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Astorini – Ossia: Grice e Astorini: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Tomasso Antonio Elia Astorini (Albidona, Cosenza, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rationally reconstructible bridge from what is said to what is meant, built on shared expectations of cooperative talk (the hearer assumes the speaker is being appropriately informative, relevant, and so on, and then infers the intended extra content). Astorini, as portrayed in your passage and corroborated by standard biographical notices, is a thinker whose intellectual itinerary runs through grammar and rhetoric into a wide “Sophia” that privileges discursive method while treating logic as in a sense merely “discorsiva”; his “triplex virtus” (intellective, volitive, effective) and corresponding “triplex operatio” suggest that reasoning is not only formal validity but a structured activity of mind, will, and action. Put side by side, Grice offers a micro-theory of how rational agents compute meaning in local conversational episodes, whereas Astorini offers a macro-picture in which discursive reason is one mode within a broader philosophical psychology and metaphysical-physical synthesis (Platonizing microcosm/macrocosm hints, anti-Aristotelian and anti-Cartesian polemic, sympathy for Gassendian atomism and Galilean experimentalism, plus political-ethical reflection drawing on Plato and Hobbes). The “space” quip attributed to Strawson can be read as a metaphor for this difference: Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics treats the spatiotemporal framework as basic for identifying particulars, and Astorini—cast as librarian-philosopher of system—becomes, in the vignette, a provider of “shelves” or a conceptual architecture in which discourse can be located; Grice, by contrast, is less concerned with furnishing the metaphysical room than with specifying the inferential rules by which interlocutors navigate it. So Astorini complements Grice by thickening what “reason-governed” can mean—reason as a cultivated, discursive practice embedded in an overall account of human faculties and a world-picture—while Grice complements Astorini by showing, at the finest grain, how that discursive practice yields determinate communicated contents (including implicatures) through publicly intelligible, intention-sensitive rational calculation. Grice: “I like A., but more so does Sir Peter, vide his section on ‘Space’ in “Individuals: an essay in descriptive metaphysics”: ‘Surely we wouldn’t have space as we know it if it were not for A..” Studia con il padre la grammatica e la retorica. Studia a Cosenza, Napoli e  Roma. “De vitali aeconomia foetus in utero. Elementa Euclidis ad usum nova methodo et compendiare olim demonstrate” e un “Decamerone pitagorico”. Da "Sophia" è esclusa la logica, di cui sì ribadisce il carattere meramente discorsivo. Ma a "Sophia" appartengono la metafisica, notevoli i cenni platonizzanti circa il rapporto microcosmo-macrocosmo; la fisica, per la quale A. si dilunga nella critica all'aristotelismo e al cartesianesimo e nell'esaltazione della filosofia atomistico-gassendiana e dello sperimentalismo galileiano, pur richiamandosi insieme nettamente alla tradizione filosofica da Telesio a Cornelio; la politica, per la quale egli esalta l'insegnamento di Platone; l'etica, per cui continuo è il richiamo alla filosofia politica di Hobbes, ecc.  A questo impasto di vecchio e di nuovo, che contrappunta un momento della cultura italiana e riflette il travaglio di una filosofia A. si dedica alla meditazione filosofica e la occupazione di biblìotecario presso il principe Spinelli, a Terranova di Sibari, dove muore. Fonti e Bibl.: Firenze, Bibl. Naz. Centrale, Magl., A. lettere ad Ant. Magliabechi; Giornale de' Letterati e primo di Modena, Giornale, Redi, Opere, Milano; Gimma, Elogi accademici della società degli Spensierati di Rossano, Napoli; Zavarroni, Filosofi d'Italia, Brescia, riprende dal Gimma;  Di Cagno-Politi, E. A. filosofo e matematico, Appunti, Roma;  Maugain, Etude sur l'évolution intellectuelle de l'Italie environ, Paris; Grammatico, A., O. Carm., insignis disceptator, in Analecta Ord. Carm., Badaloni, Introduzione a Vico. Dialettica, filosofia simbolica, metodo discorsivo, grammatica filosofica, triade, triplex virtus: intellectiva, volitiva et effectrix, ad essa corrisponde una triplex operatio -- interectio, volitio et impetus. Grice: Astorini, se avessimo uno spazio davvero senza di te, pensi che potremmo ancora trovare un posto per la ragione? Astorini: Grice, lo spazio senza di me sarebbe come una biblioteca senza libri: tanto vuoto e nessuna conversazione. Ma almeno ci sarebbe sempre qualche scaffale dove sistemare qualche implicatura! Grice: E se la logica è solo discorsiva, come fai a non perderti tra i corridoi della metafisica? Astorini: Mi affido alla triplice virtù: se mi perdo, interrogo la ragione, se ho fame, volgo la volontà, e se proprio non so dove andare... metto un piede davanti all’altro, come in ogni bella conversazione! Astorini, Tomaso Antonio Elia (1686). De vitali aeconomia foetus in utero, Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Asturaro – Ossia: Grice ed Asturaro Alfonso Asturaro (Catanzaro, Calabria). Il primo filosofo positivista a Genova -- . Asturaro, Alfonso (1880). Tesi di laurea sotto Fiorentino. Pisa