BE

 

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bebbio – Ossia: Grice e Bebbio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bebbio. The Bebii are a family at ancient Rome. The first member of the gens who obtained the consulship was Gnaeus B. Tamphilus. During the later Republic, the B. were frequently connected with the PATRICIAN family of the Emilii. The main praenomina of B, during the Republic were Quintus, Gnaeus, Marcus, and Lucius, all of which were common names throughout Roman history. In addition to these, they occasionally used Gaius and Aulus. Other names occur under the Empire.  Branches and cognomina The cognomina of the Baebii are Dives, Herennius, Sulca, and Tamphilus. The last, borne by the oldest family of the Baebii appearing in history, is the only surname which appears on coins, where it is written Tampilus. All of the consuls and most of the praetors of this gens during the Republic belonged to this branch of the family. Chase describes their surname as one of considerable curiosity, suggested by some scholars to be of Greek origin, but perhaps an Oscan name sharing a common root with the Tampia gens, who may have been of Sabine origin. Certainly Herennius, borne as a surname by one of the Baebii, was originally an Oscan praenomen. In imperial times, one family of the Baebii settled around Saguntum, the Spanish town over which the Second Punic War had begun.[6]  Baebii Tamphili Quintus Baebius Cn. f. Tamphilus, an envoy sent to Hannibal at Saguntum in 219 BC, and then to Carthage.[7][8][9] Quintus B. (Tamphilus), tribune of the plebs in 200 BC, opposed a motion to declare war on Philip V of Macedon, and accused the Senate of warmongering; perhaps the eldest brother of the consular Baebii. Gnaeus Baebius Q. f. Cn. n. Tamphilus, praetor in 199 BC, was assigned to Cisalpine Gaul, where he was defeated by the Insubres; the consul Lucius Cornelius Lentulus replaced him, and sent B. to Rome. Consul in 182, B. fought against the Ligures with some success. Marcus B. Q. f. Cn. n. Tamphilus, consul in 181 BC.[14][15] Gnaeus B. (Cn. f. Q. n.) Tamphilus, praetor urbanus in 168 BC. The following year, he was one of five legates sent into Illyricum.[16][17] Marcus Baebius Q. f. Tamphilus, triumvir monetalis in 137 BC. (Marcus) Baebius (Tamphilus), tribune of the plebs in 103 BC, attempted to veto the agrarian law of his colleague, Saturninus, who had proposed that veterans should be granted parcels of land in the province of Africa. B. was stoned and forced to flee. He may be the same Marcus B. who was put to death by Marius in 87 BC. Gaius Baebius Tamphilus, appears on a coin of uncertain date.[1] Other Baebii of the Republic Quintus Baebius Herennius, tribune of the plebs in 216 BC. He was a relative by marriage of Gaius Terenzio Varro, and actively supported his candidacy for the consulship against the senatorial elite, who objected to Varro's humble origins. According to Livy, B. criticized the emergence of a new elite forged from the patricians and plebeian nobiles, altering the traditional social structure.[22][23][24][25][26] Lucius Baebius Dives, probably the same Lucius Baebius who was sent by Scipio Africanus as one of the ambassadors to Carthage in 203 BC. He was afterwards left by Scipio in command of the camp. Praetor in 189 BC, received Hispania Ulterior as his province, but was attacked by the Ligures on his journey, and died at Massilia.[27][28][1][29] Marcus Baebius, one of the three commissioners sent into Macedonia in 186 BC, to investigate the charges brought by the Maronitae and others against Philip.[30][31] Quintus Baebius Sulca, one of the ambassadors sent to Ptolemy VI Philometor of Egypt in 173 BC. He had probably been praetor in 175.[32][33][34] Lucius Baebius, one of three commissioners sent into Macedonia in 169 BC, to inspect the state of affairs there, before Lucius Aemilius Paullus invaded the country.[35][36] Aulus Baebius, a prefect under the command of Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 167 BC. He was left in command of a garrison at Demetrias, and became involved in the internal political struggles of the Aetolian League. He used Roman soldiers to surround a meeting of the Aetolian Senate, and allowed Aetolian soldiers to massacre five hundred and fifty attendees. Proscriptions and exiles followed. Paullus may have been complicit, for he received complaints circumspectly, took no action against the Aetolian leaders, and censured Baebius only for allowing Roman soldiers to take part. Baebius was afterwards condemned at Rome.[37][38][39] Gaius Baebius, tribune of the plebs in 111 BC, bribed by Jugurtha to quash the investigation of Gaius Memmius.[40][41][42] Gaius Baebius, appointed by Sextus Julius Caesar in 89 BC as his successor in the command of the Siege of Asculum during the Social War.[43] Marcus Baebius, put to death by Marius and Cinna when they entered Rome in 87 BC. Instead of being killed by any weapon, Baebius was literally torn to pieces by the hands of his enemies.[44][45] Marcus Baebius, a brave man, slain by order of Lucius Calpurnius Piso in Macedonia, in 57 BC.[46][1] Aulus Baebius, an eques of Asta, in Hispania, deserted the Pompeian party in the Spanish War in 45 BC, and went over to Caesar.[47] Baebius, a senator who served under Publius Vatinius in Illyria. On the murder of Caesar, in 44 BC, the Illyrians rose against Vatinius, and cut off Baebius and five cohorts which he commanded.[48] Gaius Baebius, one of the military tribunes in 31 BC. Baebii under the Empire Gaius Baebius Atticus, eques and governor of Noricum.[49] Baebius Massa, formerly governor of Baetica, for the maladministration of which he was condemned in AD 93. He avoided punishment through the favour of the emperor Domitian, under whom he became a notorious informer.[50][51][52] Lucius Baebius Avitus, enrolled in the senate by Vespasian, and procurator of Lusitania.[53] Lucius Baebius Honoratus, consul suffectus in AD 85.[54] Publius Baebius Italicus, consul suffectus in AD 90, and purported author of Ilias Latina.[54] Lucius Baebius Tullius, consul suffectus in AD 95, and proconsul of Asia from 110 to 111.[54] Quintus Baebius Macer, consul suffectus in AD 103, and praefectus urbi in 117.[55][56] Baebius Marcellinus, aedile in 203 AD, was unjustly condemned to death under Septimius Severus, because by his baldness and senatorial rank, he vaguely resembled a man reported to have heard about a dream that the nurse of a certain Apronianus had once had, to the effect that Apronianus had become emperor.[57] Lucius Baebius Juncinus, an equestrian officer, perhaps the father or grandfather of Lucius Baebius Aurelius Juncinus.[58] Baebius Macrinus, a rhetorician, mentioned along with Julius Frontinus and Julius Granianus, as one of the teachers of the emperor Alexander Severus.[59] Lucius Baebius Aurelius Juncinus, prefect of Egypt from AD 213 to 215.[60][61] Baebius Macer, praetorian prefect during the reign of Valerian.[62] Lucius Baebius Cassianus, of the tribus Voltinia in southern Gaul.[63][64] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 452, 453 ("Baebia Gens").  John Briscoe, "The Second Punic War: The Elections for 216 B.C.," in Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 8, p. 80.  Rawson, "Sallust on the Eighties?", p. 166.  Chase, p. 115.  Chase, p. 140.  Boscs-Plateaux, Un parti hispanique à Rome?, p. 599.  Livy, xxi. 6, 9, 18.  Cicero, Philippicae, v. 10.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 237.  Livy, xxxi. 6.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 324, 326 (note 3).  Livy, xxxii. 7, xxxix. 56, xl. 44.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 327, 381.  Livy, xl. 18, 35.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 383, 384.  Livy, xliv. 17, xlv. 17.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 428, 435.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 563, 565 (note 6).  Aurelius Victor, De viris illustribus, 73.  Brunt, "The Settlement of Marian Veterans", p. 278.  Andrew Lintott, "Political History, 146–95 B.C.," in Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 9, p. 95.  Livy, xxii. 34.  PW, "Baebius", No. 26.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 249, 253 (note 3).  Lazenby, Hannibal's War, p. 74.  Smith, The Roman Clan, p. 330.  Livy, xxx. 25, xxxvii. 47, 50, 57.  Polybius, xv. 1, 4.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 312, 313, 315 (note 8), 361.  Polybius, xxxiii. 6.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 373.  Livy, xlii. 6.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 402, 403 (note 3), 409.  Chaplin, Livy: Rome's Mediterranean Empire, pp. 20, 27.  Livy, xliv. 18.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 426, 430.  Livy, xlv. 28, 31.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 436.  Grainger, The League of the Aitolians, pp. 529, 530.  Sallust, Bellum Jugurthinum, 33, 34.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 540, 541.  PW, "Baebius", No. 10.  Appian, Bellum Civile, i. 48.  Appian, Bellum Civile, i. 72.  Florus, iii. 21.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Pisonem, 36.  Caesar, De Bello Hispaniensis, 26.  Appian, Bella Illyrica, 13.  Ségolène Demougin, Prosopographie des chevaliers romains julio-claudiens (43 av. J.-C. - 70 ap. J.-C.), (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1992) pp. 404f  Tacitus, Historiae, iv. 50, Agricola, 45.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, vii. 33.  Juvenal, Satirae, i. 34.  Géza Alföldy, "Spain," in Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 11, p. 454.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for A. D. 70–96".  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, iv. 9. § 16.  Aelius Spartianus, "The Life of Hadrian", 5.  Cassius Dio, Roman History, lxxvi. 8, 9.  CIL X, 6976 = ILS 1434.  Aelius Lampridius, "The Life of Alexander Severus", 3.  Westermann, Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity, p. 131.  CIL X, 7580 = ILS 1358  Flavius Vopiscus, "The Life of Aurelian", 12.  CIL XII, 2934.  Michel Provost, Carte Archeologique de la Gaule: Le Gard, p. 386. Bibliography Wikimedia Commons logo Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gens Baebia.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Baebia Gens". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 452.  Primary sources Polybius, Historiae (The Histories). Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Pisonem, Philippicae. Gaius Julius Caesar (attributed), De Bello Africo (On the African War). Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust), Bellum Jugurthinum (The Jugurthine War). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Satirae (Satires). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Historiae; De Vita et Moribus Iulii Agricolae (On the Life and Mores of Julius Agricola). Lucius Annaeus Florus, Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum Omnium Annorum DCC (Epitome of Livy: All the Wars of Seven Hundred Years). Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War); Bella Illyrica (The Illyrian Wars). Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus (Cassius Dio), Roman History. Aelius Lampridius, Aelius Spartianus, Flavius Vopiscus, Julius Capitolinus, Trebellius Pollio, and Vulcatius Gallicanus, Historia Augusta (Lives of the Emperors). Sextus Aurelius Victor, De Viris Illustribus (On Famous Men). Secondary sources La Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Archaeological Map of Gaul, abbreviated CAG), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1931–present). Françoise Des Boscs-Plateaux, Un parti hispanique à Rome?: ascension des élites hispaniques et pouvoir politique d'Auguste à Hadrien, Casa de Velázquez (2005). P.A. Brunt, "The Settlement of Marian Veterans", in The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1988, 2004) Jane D. Chaplin, Livy: Rome's Mediterranean Empire: Books Forty-One to Forty-Five and the Periochae, Oxford University Press (2007). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Hermann Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (Select Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated ILS), Berlin (1892–1916). Paul A. Gallivan, "The Fasti for A. D. 70–96", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 186–220 (1981). John D. Grainger, The League of the Aitolians, Brill (1999). J.F. Lazenby, Hannibal's War: A Military History of the Second Punic War, University of Oklahoma Press (1978). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). 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). Elizabeth Rawson, "Sallust on the Eighties?" in Classical Quarterly, vol. 37 (1987). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). C. J. Smith, The Roman Clan: The gens from Ancient Ideology to Modern Anthropology, Cambridge University Press (2006). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). William Linn Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity, American Philosophical Society (1955). Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vols. 8: "Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 B.C."; 9: "The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146–43 B.C."; 11: "The High Empire A.D. 70–192", Cambridge University Press.   Categories: BaebiiRoman gentes

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bebbio – Ossia: Grice e Bebbio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bebbio. For this 'Bebbio' as Grice and Speranza spell him, the choice I -- you provide choice II -- is the one who according to Livio (for which you may provide the Latin) 'criticised the emergence of an ELITE forged from PATRICIANS cum NOBILE PLEBS, altering the traditional social structure -- the implicature seems to be that B. was PLEBS and NON nobilis – Thanks Excellent choice—Quintus Baebius Herennius is one of the sharpest “social‑structure” voices in Livy, and you’ve caught the key implicature exactly:  criticism of a new elite = implicit self‑placement outside it.  Let me give you:  (I) Livian Latin (compressed but faithful in spirit) (II) a four‑move dialogue (III) the implicature unpacked (IV) a second‑best fit for the gens    I. Livian kernel (reconstructed from Livy 22.34) Livy has Herennius attacking the Senate for producing:  conflatam ex patribus plebeque nobili novam aristocratium quasi factionem  We can compress to a usable Latin cue:  “ex patribus atque nobilibus plebeis novum genus potentiae coaluisse” (that from patricians and noble plebeians a new form of power has coalesced)    II. Conversatio I — Bebbius Herennius  SENATOR (1) “Bebbi, cur nobiles culpas? idem enim cum patribus rem publicam gerunt.” (Baebius, why do you blame the nobles? They govern the state together with the patricians.)  BEBBIVS (2) “Non iam distinctio est: ex utrisque coiit nova potentia.” (There is no longer a distinction: from both has arisen a new power.)  SENATOR (3) “Nonne hoc stabilitatem affert?” (Does this not bring stability?)  BEBBIVS (4) “Stabilitas paucorum fit, libertas multorum minuitur.” (The stability of the few is achieved, the freedom of the many diminished.)  +> that the emerging ‘noble plebeian’ elite excludes men like Bebbius himself, who by criticising it implicitly identifies as outside the newly consolidated ruling class   III. Your key implicature (spot on) You are absolutely right: What is said  “a new elite has formed”  What is meant  “it is not inclusive” “it displaces older, broader plebeian participation”  What is further implied  “I am not part of it.”   Gricean structure  No explicit: → “I am excluded” But: → complaint presupposes marginalisation    Elegant Speranzian formulation  Qui novam potentiam vituperat, se ab ea separatum ostendit.  (He who criticises the new elite shows himself separated from it.)   

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bebbio – Ossia: Grice e Bebbio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bebbio. Second-best fit: Gaius Baebius (bribed by Jugurtha) This is an excellent contrast.  The case  tribune bribed to stop an investigation openly compromises procedure   Why Gricean Because:  official role: → guardian of the people actual behaviour: → suppresses inquiry   Mini-dialogue  POPVLVS (1) “Baebi, cur quaestionem sistis?” (Baebius, why do you halt the inquiry?)  BAEBIVS (2) “Tempus non est aptum.” (The time is not suitable.)  POPVLVS (3) “An veritas tibi displicet?” (Or does the truth displease you?)  BAEBIVS (4) “Quaedam reticenda sunt utilitatis causa.” (Some things must be kept silent for the sake of advantage.)  +> that the stated procedural reason (“not the right time”) conceals a corrupt motive, which the audience is expected to infer without being told   V. Why this is second-best  strong pragmatic mismatch between:  role action   generates: → suspicion → inference    VI. Final Speranzian synthesis  In Baebius Herennius, the denunciation of a newly consolidated aristocracy carries the implicature of exclusion, revealing a speaker positioned outside the emerging nexus of power; while in the corrupt tribune Baebius, the formal language of procedural delay conceals private advantage, so that in both cases the surface of political speech diverges from its underlying meaning, which must be supplied by attentive inference.    Ultra‑compact  Herennius: novam potentiam dicit → se exclusum ostendit Baebius corruptus: moram dicit → lucrum subintelligitur    Answer  Your reading is exactly right: → critique = self‑location outside elite Best fit: Herennius (elite critique) Second-best: Baebius bribed by Jugurtha (concealed motive)   If you like, we can now contrast Herennius with a nobilis plebeius speaking from inside the elite, to show reversed implicatures.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Beccaria – Ossia: Grice e Beccaria: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale.  Cesare Beccaria Bonesana, marchese di Gualdrasco e Villareggio (Milano, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats everyday talk as a rational, cooperative enterprise in which hearers infer what is meant (implicated) from what is said by assuming an accepted purpose of the exchange and corresponding norms (maxims), so that brevity, relevance, and strategic underinformativeness are not defects but resources that allow cancellable implicatures to be calculated; Beccaria, especially in his reflections on style (notably the Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile, 1770) and as echoed in the passage you give, approaches communicative rationality from the side of rhetorical-psychological economy, arguing that an expressed main idea must keep its primacy while accessory ideas should be minimal, chosen to demand the least effort and to sustain attention, with the unexpressed or “tacit/understood” filling intervals without letting the central conception drift too far—so that what later Grice would theorize as implicature is, for Beccaria, a controlled management of what is left unsaid to preserve force and clarity rather than to license open-ended pragmatic enrichment. Where Grice makes the bridge from sentence meaning to speaker meaning by explicit appeal to intentions recognized as such and to public principles of cooperative inference, Beccaria’s “conversational reason” is closer to an aesthetics and ethics of communication: do not multiply senses, avoid losing the addressee, keep the imagination “in motion,” and treat excessive explicitness as a risk that interrupts overall effect; in short, Beccaria anticipates the value of leaving content unspoken for reasons of cognitive economy and persuasion, while Grice provides the formal pragmatic account of how such omissions become determinate, inferable meanings under reason-governed conversational norms. Grice: “I would call B. a Griceian, but I’m not sure he would call me a Beccarian! His explicit, rather than implicated, Griceian ideology is in his lo stilo conversazionale, where notes that the implicaturum ain’t a part of the sintassi of the EXPLICATED proposizione. Senses should not be multiplied. Thy addressee may get thy sense, but trust he shall lose interest if thou keep’st multiplying, and risking that he shan’t get thy original sense in the last place! Like me a unitarian philosopher, his ‘I piaceri’ is a pleasant read! If I met at pubs, B. meets at the caffe, and likes it. Unfortunately, Italians only know B. for his tract on guilt and punishment, and don’t even  consider him an ITALIAN philosopher, but one of dei pigne, of the illuminismo lombardo, the landscape of Italian philosophy being much more diverse than our Oxonian dialectic! A most essential Italian philosopher, referred to me  when exploring moral/legal right. Educated at Parma, he teaches political economy at Milan. He meets reformist VERRI. A crime against the state is the most serious. Si dove spiogere gl’animi fuori di se stessi, in continuo movimento. Un’idea espressa accessoria è debole, e la scelta si fa su di quella che ne risvegliano il minore sforzo. La differenza tra l’una e l’altra essendo minma, più forte è la destate che l’idea ESPRESSA, evitando il rischio che la idea o intenzione dell’autore si perde di vista e confunde ed, interrotto riesca l’effetto del tutto sopra l’immaginazione non legata da sufficiente forza all’esterna manifestazione sensibile. L’idea ESPRESSA occupa il tempo ch’esclude l’idea TACIUTA o SOTTINTESA, altrimenti di troppo allontano il concepimento dell’idea principale. L’idea accessorie forte dov essere minima in ciascun momento d’impressione, lasciando nel voto l’intervallo necessario all’espressione, ch’èsupplito dall’idea NON espressa. Implicatura conversazionale, VIRGILIO implicatura di Didone. G.: “Fanatical,” did he say? S.: He did. A delightful little bomb to throw at one’s own education. G.: Delightful only if one survived it. The Jesuits at Parma were not running a finishing school for conversational implicature. S.: Then what does “fanatical” implicate? Pure abuse? G.: Not pure. Never pure. He is too measured for that. “Fanatical” carries both complaint and diagnosis. S.: Diagnosis of what? G.: Of an education felt as excessive in zeal, constricting in method, and hostile to what he later calls the development of human feeling. [britannica.com] S.: So negative, then. G.: Primarily negative, yes. But with a faint residue of tribute. S.: Tribute? To fanaticism? G.: To severity. One often abuses one’s schooling in the language of one who has nonetheless been sharpened by it. S.: Very English. G.: Very European, I fear. S.: Etymologically, then? G.: Since you insist: fanum, a temple. Fanaticus, originally the temple-possessed, the religiously over-charged. So when Beccaria calls the education “fanatical,” he suggests not merely strictness but an institutional piety gone over into excess. S.: Which is rather good. G.: Rather dangerous, which is why it is good. S.: Yet he leaves Parma and goes to law. G.: Exactly. Pavia, law degree, 1758. A proper Lombard trajectory: if one is well-born and not entirely useless, one studies law. S.: Why especially Lombard? G.: Because Lombardy had that excellent vice of taking administration seriously. S.: Worse than Oxford? G.: Oxford takes administration seriously only after denying that it exists. S.: So Beccaria is never one of your Facoltà di Filosofia e Lettere men. G.: Certainly not. He belongs to law, reform, economy, and style. Which is precisely why philosophers later stole him. S.: There it is again: theft by philosophy. G.: The noblest kind. One steals those who thought better than their official faculty. S.: Then Montesquieu enters? G.: Yes. He turns the legal mind outward. If the Jesuits made Beccaria disciplined and the law made him exact, Montesquieu made him political. S.: And contractualist? G.: In broad moral architecture, yes. Not in the sense of forever drafting an explicit covenant on parchment, but in the sense that law is human arrangement, public reason, reciprocal restraint, calculable utility, and the state is answerable for its coercions. S.: You are very close to Delitti e pene already. G.: I shall resist. Today we stay with money. S.: Pity. G.: Not at all. Monetary disorder is criminal law without blood. S.: A beautiful sentence. G.: Thank you. It is also true. S.: Then give me the title. G.: Del disordine e de’ rimedii delle monete nello Stato di Milano. In the fuller bibliographic form, one also gets “nell’anno 1762.” [it.wikisource.org], [searchwork...anford.edu] S.: That is already a good title. One hears both diagnosis and cure. G.: Precisely. “Disordine” and “rimedii.” An Italian title with one eye on disease and the other on administration. S.: And published where? G.: In Lucca, in 1762, because censorship in Milan objected to his criticism of Austrian monetary methods. [it.wikipedia.org], [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] S.: So already a lawyer writing as if economy were dangerous. G.: Economy is dangerous whenever governments mishandle coinage. S.: Explain the tract. G.: It concerns the circulation and valuation of gold and silver coin in the Milanese state, and Beccaria attempts a rational reconstruction of monetary value and monetary disorder. [it.wikipedia.org], [societasto...ombarda.it] S.: “Rational reconstruction” sounds awfully like you. G.: Only because reason occasionally existed before Oxford. S.: Give me one of his definitions. G.: Gladly. He writes, “Il valore è una quantità, che misura la stima che fanno gli uomini delle cose, le monete sono pezzi di metallo che misurano il valore.” [it.wikipedia.org] S.: That is remarkably neat. G.: Too neat for some economists, which is why I like it. S.: Translate. G.: “Value is a quantity that measures the esteem men place on things; coins are pieces of metal that measure value.” S.: So money is measure, not magic. G.: Exactly. And once money is measure, disorder in money is disorder in public intelligibility. S.: Ah. So we are back to conversation after all. G.: We never truly left it. Currency is the conversational medium of exchange among strangers. S.: A half-crown shelling sixpence and twopence, as I said, is also a conversational medium. G.: A peculiarly Oxonian one, because only an Oxford man can discuss pre-decimal coinage as if it were a branch of metaphysics. S.: You mean Beccaria was not annoyed by quaint denominations as such? G.: No. His point is not antiquarian irritation. His point is that arbitrary distortions in the relation between nominal value and metallic content produce systemic confusion. S.: Say more. G.: He wants stable principles. Equal quantities of metal should correspond to equal numbers of lire in every coin; the relation between gold and silver should be treated consistently; and one should value coin by the fine metal, not by alloy, minting expense, or decorative nonsense. [it.wikipedia.org] S.: That sounds almost Euclidean. G.: It was written in geometric order: definitions, theorems, corollaries. Beccaria at twenty-four already writing as if coinage deserved a proof. [it.wikipedia.org], [it.wikisource.org] S.: Did he really begin that way? With geometry and coins? G.: Very respectably. One begins with money before one reforms punishment. It keeps one modest. S.: And the opening? G.: The opening is rather good. He says the disorder of the monetary system is so important for public and private reasons that it is no wonder it is among the commonest topics of discussion in nations unfortunate enough to experience it. Then he complains that most men lack the vigour to ascend to first principles and analyse their confused ideas. [illuminism...ombardo.it] S.: That already sounds like a philosopher. G.: It sounds like a lawyer who has read enough philosophy to become impatient with mere complaint. S.: More from the opening. G.: He adds that declamations, theses, and aphorisms on money are usually no better than silence; and he proposes to make the truth sensible “col metodo, colla precisione,” by tearing away the veil that covers it from the public. [illuminism...ombardo.it] S.: That is superbly Enlightenment. G.: And superbly Lombard. One hears the administrative soul learning rhetoric. S.: So where is Oxford in this? G.: Everywhere and nowhere. Oxford loved clarity in style but often preferred obscurity in institutions. Beccaria applies clarity to public machinery. S.: Whereas we apply it to undergraduates. G.: When we can catch them. S.: But surely Oxford had coin absurdities of its own. G.: Naturally. Sterling before decimalisation was a masterpiece of inherited irrationality made tolerable by habit. S.: Half-crowns, florins, shillings, sixpence, twopence. G.: Yes, but Beccaria’s complaint is not simply complexity. It is mismatch. A monetary sign-system that ceases to correspond intelligibly to what it is supposed to measure undermines economic trust. S.: So this is semiotics in metal. G.: Very good. Coins as “segni reali di valore,” real signs of value, as one Lombard source nicely summarises him. [societasto...ombarda.it] S.: Then Beccaria is already a philosopher of signs before style and punishment. G.: In embryo, yes. Money is one of his first systems of signification. S.: And his law degree matters because? G.: Because law teaches him that institutions depend on public legibility. A bad coin is like a bad statute: it pretends to settle exchange while introducing uncertainty. S.: That is nearly Benthamite. G.: Only with more civilisation. S.: And the contractualism? G.: Indirectly present. If political society rests on arranged relations among persons, then measures, punishments, and exchanges must be publicly rational and not merely inherited by inertia. S.: Montesquieu again. G.: Yes. Comparative reason, institutional reason, legal reason made historical. S.: Yet he remains very Italian. G.: Entirely. He does not become a system-builder in the German fashion. He becomes something better: a reforming mind with style. S.: “A lawyer who happened to write well,” as you called him. G.: Which is too weak a formula, but pleasantly insolent. S.: Then strengthen it. G.: A lawyer who wrote with philosophical economy and reforming intelligence. S.: Better. G.: Slightly less rude, which is a pity. S.: Do you think the “fanatical” schooling helped produce the later insistence on precision? G.: I think it likely. Oppressive systems often produce either collapse or exact rebels. S.: Beccaria being the second. G.: Yes. He takes the rigour and rejects the spirit in which it was first imposed. S.: Very contractarian again: he keeps the form, revises the terms. G.: Nicely done. S.: Then tell me why philosophers at Oxford should care for the monetary tract. G.: Because it shows Beccaria already concerned with public reason, measurement, signification, and the minimisation of systemic confusion. S.: Still sounds like economics. G.: Economics is often philosophy with ledgers. S.: I dislike ledgers. G.: That is why you are not fit for Lombardy. S.: Or for a bursarship. G.: Much the same thing. S.: So in 1762 he is twenty-four, law-trained, anti-fanatically educated, Montesquieu-haunted, and writing about money. G.: A highly promising combination. S.: And not yet punishing anyone. G.: Not on paper, at least. S.: Could one say his concern is already for cognitive economy? Clear sign, clear measure, minimal confusion? G.: One could. It anticipates the later Beccaria on style: do not multiply obscurities, do not overburden the mind, keep the main point visible. S.: Which is very close to your own remarks on explicitness and implicature. G.: The family resemblance is there. Leave enough unsaid to keep the hearer active; do not leave so much unsaid that the point is lost. S.: And in money? G.: A coin too obscure in value or too arbitrary in relation to content is like an utterance whose force cannot be recovered. S.: So a bad monetary system is a bad conversation. G.: Between state and public, yes. S.: That is rather good. G.: Beccaria helps. S.: Tell me the later titles, since you promised. G.: Dei delitti e delle pene, naturally; then the Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile; then the economic writings, including the Elementi di economia pubblica. [archive.org], [toc.library.ethz.ch] S.: A rather broader man than the penal legend suggests. G.: Exactly. The crime of posterity is to reduce him to punishment. S.: Whereas you would restore money and style. G.: Along with coffeehouses and Lombard intelligence. S.: There is your Oxford link, then. We had pubs; they had caffè. G.: And occasionally they thought more clearly in them. S.: One last question. If Beccaria had encountered our pre-decimal currency, what would he have said? G.: He would have said that if a nation can survive a half-crown, it can survive anything, but that survival is not yet rational order.Grice: Beccaria, se la nostra conversazione si fa troppo complicata, pensi che il messaggio sparirà dentro l’espresso? Beccaria: Grice, assolutamente! Dico sempre che più la frase è semplice, più il gusto è intenso—proprio come il caffè. Se continuiamo ad aggiungere zucchero, nessuno sentirà il vero senso. Grice: Dovremmo moltiplicare le idee, o lasciarle sedimentare come la schiuma sul cappuccino? Beccaria: Meglio lasciarle riposare, Grice. Altrimenti, quando arrivi al fondo, non ricorderai più cosa stavi bevendo—o dicendo! Beccaria, Cesare (1758). Matriculazione. Facolta di Legge, Pavia.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bedoni – Ossia: Grice e Bedoni. Bedoni.  Grice: Bedoni, dimmi, la ragione conversazionale in Italia funziona meglio davanti a un buon bicchiere o a una bella passeggiata? Bedoni: Grice, dipende dalla stagione! In primavera preferisco la passeggiata: le idee volano come le rondini. In inverno, il bicchiere aiuta a scaldare le implicature. Grice: E se la conversazione diventa troppo calda, rischiamo di bruciare qualche implicatura per strada? Bedoni: Tranquillo, Grice! In Italia recuperiamo tutto con una battuta: l’importante è non perdere il sorriso, nemmeno tra filosofi.

 

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellavitis – Ossia: Grice e Bellavitis: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicature del proto-pirotese.  Giusto Bellavitis: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicature del proto-pirotese. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally recover what a speaker means beyond what is strictly said by presuming cooperative, purposive talk and deriving cancellable implicatures from systematic expectations about relevance, informativeness, truthfulness, and clarity; the Bellavitis passage, by contrast, treats “conversational reason” as something that can be engineered into the linguistic code itself, imagining a rigorously designed universal language (with roots, numerical markers, and explicit verbal “voices” for tense, mood, intention, and even dubitative/interrogative force) that would minimize ambiguity and thereby make reasoning precise because the medium is precise. Where Grice locates much of meaning in pragmatic inference triggered by underdetermination and strategic economy (including cases where what is not encoded must be inferred), Bellavitis embodies the opposite ideal: reduce the need for implicature by over-specifying form—turning intention and modality into overt morphology, standardizing derivation, and even adapting the system to telegraphic transmission with dot-dash-line conventions and numeric phrase codes (so that “I am thirsty” can be compactly and unambiguously signaled, then refined by added digits). In Gricean terms, Bellavitis is effectively trying to shift communicative load from pragmatics to semantics and syntax: make the speaker’s intended force and content so explicitly encoded that the hearer need not rely on conversational maxims to bridge gaps; but for Grice, that very gap-bridging is not a defect of natural language but a rational achievement of interlocutors, and implicature is a feature of cooperative intelligence, not merely noise to be eliminated. Thus the comparison highlights a deep divergence: Bellavitis’ “lingua filosofica” pursues a calculus-like ideal where better symbols yield better thought, whereas Grice’s reason-governed account treats ordinary conversation as already governed by rational norms whose flexibility, context-sensitivity, and reliance on inference are precisely what make communication powerful rather than confused. Grice: “Like B’s lingua, my proto-pirotese is a joke on Chomsky, since he’d say that ‘deutero-‘ is a formative praefix!” proto-, deutero, trito-, tetarto-, pempto-, hecto-, hebdomo-, ogdo-, enato-decato-, endecato-, e dodecato-. Dei lincei, insegna a Padova, progetta una lingua universale, citata da VAILTAI, un sistema di comunicazione su uno scarno sistema di derivazione da radici lessicali, costruzioni e desinenze pel grado degl’aggetivi, VOCI verbali per ESPRIMERE tempo, modo, INTENZIONE, indicativo, condizionale, potenziale, dubitativo, interrogativo. La parola si compone da radici, numeri e SEGNI. Quando gl’uomini conversano sulle cose ragionano attraverso le parole che a queste sono associate. È una lingua semplice, rigorosa e perfetta che conduce delle idee dalle medesime caratteristiche. Una lingua ambiguo e imprecisa è sintomo di ragionamento e idee confusi. La lingua esatta vale a pensare in maniera esatta e ciò è ben nota nelle differenze di conversazioni dei arimettici e filosofi. È tutta basata sulle cose fisici,  mediante traslati esprime imperfettissimamente un’idea astratta, o un ente  d'immaginazione. Una lingua precisa descrive esattamente la natura e la realtà e si configura allo stesso tempo come l'ordine alfabetico delle sole  consonanti contenute in esse. Sul finire del suo saggio, e forse anche sulla scia dei lavori precedenti, B. si preoccupa di rendere fruibile la sua lingua filosofica anche mediante l'uso del telegrafo. La LETTERA è indicata dal punto, il trattino, e la linea. Propone la FRASE associata a un numero di tre cifre. ‘Ho sete'  62 nel VOCABOLARIO è indicata - -. -, che si speciticata apponendo un numero indicanti qualcosa di più preciso, 12, acqua: ... -. Presenta tipi d’alfabeto, basati sulla corrispondenza di simbolo e numero all’IDEA, utile ai marinei e ciechi. S’innesta nella glosso-poiesi, rivelando particolare attrazione pella teoria arimmetica. Formalismo, deutero-esperanto, Symbolo, Austin, shag/shaggy/shaggier/shaggiest Minnaja ideologiia. Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza, Veneto.  Grice: Bellavitis, dimmi, la tua lingua universale funziona meglio al telegrafo o a tavola davanti a un piatto di polenta? Bellavitis: Grice, se devo essere sincero, la polenta aiuta a chiarire le idee; il telegrafo, invece, serve per chi ha fretta di dire “Ho sete” in tre punti e due linee. Grice: E se qualcuno confonde la radice con il condizionale, rischiamo di parlare senza capire o basta aggiungere una cifra? Bellavitis: Nessun problema, Grice! Nel proto-pirotese basta una linea in più e si sistema tutto. In fondo, l’importante è non perdere il sorriso, anche se la frase “Ho sete” diventa “Ho fame” per errore. Bellavitis, Giusto (1832). Calcolo delle equipollenze e sue applicazioni. Padova: Minerva.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Belleo – Ossia: Grice e Belleo. Belleo.  Grice: Belleo, dimmi, la conversazione italiana è più ricca quando si parla di paradossi o di pasta? Belleo: Grice, i paradossi si sciolgono meglio davanti a un piatto fumante—ma attento, che tra verità e errore si rischia di scottarsi. Grice: E se uno trova più implicature nella carbonara che nella filosofia, deve cambiare ricetta o cambiare argomento? Belleo: Cambiare argomento, Grice! La carbonara non sbaglia mai, mentre in filosofia basta un cucchiaio di ironia per recuperare qualsiasi implicatura—senza perdere il sorriso.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellieno – Ossia: Grice e Bellieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bellieno. The Bellieni or Billiena are a family at ancient Rome. B. is the form that occurs in writers, while Billienus is more common in inscriptions. Members of this gens are first mentioned toward the end of the Republic. Lucius B. obtained the praetorship in 107 BC, but was prevented from obtaining the consulship. The B. occur in history down to the time of Caesar, after which the family faded into obscurity; but others are known from inscriptions. Tullio Cicero refers to a Gaius Annius Bellienus, and from this it has been inferred that Bellienus might be a cognomen of the Annia gens; but even if this Bellienus or some of the others mentioned in history are correctly identified as Annii, the evidence from inscriptions demonstrates that Bellienus was a separate nomen gentilicium. The name belongs to a class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -enus, frequently found in Picenum and Umbria. Such names were typically derived from other gentilicia, rather than from place names, as was the case with the similar gentile-forming suffix -anus; in this case probably Bellius, also found as Billius, Belius, and Bilius. The main praenomina of the Bellieni were Lucius, Gaius, and Marcus. Other names occur infrequently, including one instance of the Oscan praenomen Salvius, appearing in the filiation of one of the family. The Bellieni do not seem to have been divided into distinct families. They used a number of personal surnames, including Niger and Rufus, referring to black or red hair, respectively; Dexter, literally "right-handed", but figuratively "lucky" or "skilled"; Genialis, "genial"; and Vitalis, "vital". Actiacus was assumed by a soldier who had fought at the Battle of Actium. Messor, the name of another soldier, refers to one who reaps or mows.[3] Several women of this gens bore Secunda or Tertia as surnames; these were old praenomina that gradually came to be treated as cognomina, typically being placed at the end of the name, although they retained their original individualizing function. Lucius C. f. Bellienus,[i] praetor in 107 BC, served under Gaius Marius in the war against Jugurtha and Bocchus. He is probably the same person as the Gaius Bellienus who was prevented from obtaining the consulship by the repeated selection of Marius. Tullio Cicero describes him as an accomplished orator, and learned in the law. Gaius Annius Bellienus, legate of Marcus Fonteius in Gallia Narbonensis, circa 74 BC.[9][10] Bellienus, praetor circa 68 BC, was captured by pirates during his year of office. Events such as this, and the capture of another praetor, Sextilius, led to the granting of proconsular authority to Gnaeus Pompeius the following year, and his war against the pirates. Lucius Bellienus,[ii] uncle of Catiline, ordered by Sulla to kill Quintus Lucretius Afella, and condemned. Lucius Bellienus,[iii] whose house was burnt down after the murder of Caesar in 44 BC.[16] Marcus Billienus M. f. Actiacus, a soldier in the eleventh legion, fought at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and was subsequently one of the colonists who settled at Ateste.[17] Lucius Billienus S. f., named in an inscription from Beregra in Picenum, dating to the late first century BC, or early first century AD, together with Lucius Billienus Niger and Gaius Billienus Rufus.[18] Lucius Billienus Marathus, built a tomb at Casilinum in Campania for himself and his wife, Cornelia Prima, dating to the late first century BC, or early first century AD.[19] Lucius Billienus L. f. Niger, named in an inscription from Beregra, together with Gaius Billienus Rufus, possibly his brother, and another Lucius Billienus.[18] Gaius Billienus L. f. Rufus, named in an inscription from Beregra, together with Lucius Billienus Niger, possibly his brother, and another Lucius Billienus.[18] Billienus, named in an inscription from Rome, dating to the first half of the first century AD.[20] Gaius Billienus C. l. Philogenes, a freedman, built a tomb for himself and Gaius Laecanius, another freedman, at Pola in Venetia and Histria, dating to the first half of the first century AD.[21] Billiena Secunda, buried at Rome, was the wife of Paezon, a slave of Gaius Bellicius Natalis, perhaps the consul of AD 68.[22] Titus Billienus Dexter, a native of Libarna, was a speculator, or scout, serving in the century of Rufus, probably in AD 119.[23] Undated Bellieni Billiena, the wife of Didius Barbus and mother of Didia Decuma. She and Oppianica built a tomb for her daughter at Larinum in Apulia.[24] Billienus, named in an inscription from Pompeii in Campania.[25] Gaius Billienus C. l., a freedman buried at Praeneste in Latium.[26] Lucius Billienus, buried at Patrae in Achaia.[27] Billiena Donata, the wife of Quintus Valerius Restutus, and mother of Valerius Ingenuus, a soldier in the fourteenth legion, and Valeria Restuta, who died aged twenty. Donata's husband built a family sepulchre at Savaria in Pannonia Superior.[28] Gaius Billienus Fructus, dedicated a monument at Rome to his wife, Geminia Cauma, aged fifty-two.[29] Lucius Bellienus Genialis, buried at Puteoli in Campania, aged thirty-three years, seven months, and fourteen days, with a monument from his wife, Fannia Secundina.[30] Billiena Marcellina, buried at Aquileia in Venetia and Histria.[31] Lucius Bilienus Messor, a centurion named in an inscription from Vindonissa in Germania Superior.[32] Billienus M. (f.?) Met[...], named in an inscription from Aquileia.[33] Lucius Billienus Neo, named in an inscription from Rome.[34] Billiena Secunda, buried at Rome in a tomb built by the freedman Aulus Octavius Diocles for himself, his freedmen, and several others.[35] Billiena Sal. f. Secunda, the wife of Gnaeus Sulpicius Luccio, and mother of Lucius Sulpicius Severus, who named his parents in his will, according to an inscription at Mediolanum in Cisalpine Gaul.[2] Billiena Ɔ. l. Tertia, a freedwoman named in an inscription from Praeneste.[36] Gaius Billienus Vitalis, built a monument at Poetovio in Pannonia Superior for Gaius Cornelius Verus, a native of Dertona in Liguria, and veteran of the second legion, aged fifty.[37] Lucius Billienus L. l. Z[...], a freedman who became a grocer at Rome.[38] Footnotes  Or perhaps Lucius Annius Bellienus, or Gaius Bellienus.  Possibly an Annius.  An Annius in some sources. See also Bellienus List of Roman gentes References  Chase, p. 118.  CIL V, 6103.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s. v. dexter, genialis messor, niger, rufus, vitalis.  Chase, p. 172.  Kajava, Roman Female Praenomina.  Sallust, Bellum Jugurthinum, 104.  Cicero, Brutus, 47.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 551, 552 (note 3).  Cicero, Pro Fonteio 4.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 105.  Plutarch, "The Life of Pompeius", 24.  Cicero, Pro Lege Manilia, 32, 33, 53.  Appian, Mithridatica, 93.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 138, 141 (note 3).  Quintus Asconius Pedianus, In Toga Candida p. 92, ed. Orelli.  Cicero, Philippicae ii. 36.  CIL V, 2501.  Picus, 2006, 264.  CIL X, 4044.  NSA, 1914, 377, 13.  CIL V, 138.  CIL VI, 13590.  CIL VI, 2375.  CIL IX, 751.  CIL IV, 1125.  CIL XIV, 3328.  Rizakis, La cité de Patras, 100.  CIL III, 14066.  CIL VI, 19008.  CIL X, 2165.  InscrAqu, i. 923.  Nesselhauf and Lieb, "Inschriften aus den germanischen Provinzen und dem Treverergebiet", 67.  InscrAqu, i. 922.  CIL VI, 13589.  CIL VI, 23261, CIL VI, 38682.  CIL XIV, 3377.  CIL III, 4057.  CIL VI, 9532. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Brutus, Philippicae, Pro Fonteio, Pro Lege Manilia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia. Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Quintus Asconius Pedianus, Commentarius in Oratio Ciceronis In Toga Candida (Commentary on Cicero's Oration In Toga Candida). Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bella Mithridatica (The Mithridatic Wars). Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus (Cassius Dio), Roman History. 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). Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (News of Excavations from Antiquity, abbreviated NSA), Accademia dei Lincei (1876–present). 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). Bruna Forlati Tamaro, "Inscrizioni Inedite di Adria" (Unedited Inscriptions from Adria, abbreviated "IIAdria"), in Epigraphica, vol. 18, pp. 50–76 (1956). Herbert Nesselhauf and Hans Lieb, "Dritter Nachtrag zu CIL XIII: Inschriften aus den germanischen Provinzen und dem Treverergebiet" (Third Supplement to CIL XIII: Inscriptions from the Germanic Provinces and the Lands of the Treveri), in Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission, vol. 40, pp. 120-228 (1959). Picus: Studi e ricerche sulle marche nell'antichità (Studies and Research on Marks from Antiquity), Macareta (1981–present). Giovanni Battista Brusin, Inscriptiones Aquileiae (Inscriptions of Aquileia, abbreviated InscrAqu), Udine (1991–1993). Mika Kajava, Roman Female Praenomina: Studies in the Nomenclature of Roman Women, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae (1994). Athanasios D. Rizakis, Achaie II. La cité de Patras: Épigraphie et histoire (Achaia II: The City of Patras: Epigraphy and History), Athens (1998). Category: Roman gentes

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellieno – Ossia: Grice e Bellieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bellieno. For this gens, (I) -- and you provide your second best (II) is the one ordered to kill someone for which he was himself later condemned. The Griceian logic is that, if under duress or by mere military command, he felt he OUGHT to. Yet, a rational agent CHALLENGES the legality of an order. Input? Feedback? Thanks This is an excellent Bellienian case—you’ve isolated a classic clash between obedience and rational responsibility, which is extremely Gricean. Let me give you:  (I) your case (order → execution → condemnation) in dialogue form (II) the Grice/Speranza analysis (III) a second‑best case from the gens    I. Conversatio I — Bellienus and the Sullan order  Situation:  Sulla orders Bellienus to kill Afella Bellienus obeys later condemned   Dialogus SULLA (1) “Belliene, Afellam interfice.” (Bellienus, kill Afella.)  BELLIENVS (2) “Imperium tuum sequendum mihi est?” (Must I follow your command?)  SULLA (3) “Imperator sum; non quaeritur, fit.” (I am the commander; it is not questioned, it is done.)  BELLIENVS (4) “Quod iussum est feci—nunc quid iustum sit intellego.” (What was ordered I did—now I understand what is just.)  +> that acting under orders does not absolve the agent from responsibility, since the later condemnation presumes he ought to have evaluated the justice of the command himself   II. Grice/Speranza analysis You’ve put your finger exactly on the philosophical core:  1. The surface logic (military)  command issued obedience expected   implicature:  “obedience is sufficient justification”   2. The later judgment  Bellienus is condemned   implicature collapses:  “obedience alone is not sufficient”   3. Gricean contradiction Two incompatible conversational frameworks:                  FrameworkMaximMilitary“Do not question authority”Civic/legal“Act rationally and justly”   Bellienus is caught between:  non‑questioning compliance vs rational accountability    Your key insight (perfectly put)  a rational agent ought to challenge the legality of an order  Exactly:  the later condemnation presupposes: → he could have judged otherwise   Latin crystallisation  Imperium sequitur—sed ratio iudicat.  (One follows command—but reason judges.)   III. V. Final Speranzian synthesis  In Bellienus’ obedience to Sulla, the agent acts under a command whose legitimacy is assumed in the moment but later revoked, revealing that authority does not extinguish individual responsibility; while in the captured praetor Bellienus, the persistence of title without power shows how institutional meaning can outlast its practical conditions, so that in both cases the force of words—whether command or rank—depends upon a rational framework that may later undermine them.    Ultra‑compact  Bellienus (Sulla): iussus fecit → tamen tenetur Bellienus (piratae): nomen manet → potestas deficit    Answer  Your core case: → perfect Grice/Speranza example of obedience vs rational agency Second-best: → Bellienus the captured praetor (title vs reality)   If you like, we can next compare this with later Roman legal doctrine (“iussum principis”) to see whether Rome ever fully resolves this tension.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellieno – Ossia: Grice e Bellieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bellieno. Second-best fit: Bellienus captured by pirates (praetor) This is surprisingly strong Grice material.  The case  a praetor is captured by pirates office remains authority is suspended physically   Why Gricean? Because:  title implies: → power, dignity, command situation shows: → total vulnerability   Mini-dialogue  NAUTA (1) “Hic est praetor Romanus.” (This is a Roman praetor.)  PIRATA (2) “Praetor? captivus est.” (A praetor? He is a captive.)  NAUTA (3) “Ergo imperium eius manet?” (Then does his authority remain?)  PIRATA (4) “Nomen manet—potestas abiit.” (The name remains—the power is gone.)  +> that institutional titles retain their semantic prestige even when the conditions that make them effective have disappeared   IV. Why this is second-best  sharp gap between:  title (semantic authority) reality (pragmatic impotence).

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellio – Ossia: Grice e Bellio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bellio. The Bellii, also written Billia and Bilia, are a family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens are mentioned in history, but several are known from inscriptions. As the Bellii are not mentioned by ancient writers, there are no traditions relating to the origin of this gens, and the nomen is not listed among the gentilicia for which Chase was able to ascribe a particular origin; it resembles other gentiles formed using the suffixes -ilius, -ellius, and -illius, frequently derived from cognomina ending in -ulus, but sometimes from words ending in -illus or -ellus. The root was probably bellus, handsome or beautiful, but the use of surnames such as Clemens and Pacatus by some members of this gens suggests that the name was associated with bellum, war. The nomen Duilius or Duellius was derived from an older form of bellum, and so might be a cognate of Bellius. The nomen Bellienus seems to be derived from this gentilicium, which may give a clue to the geographical origin of the family, since the suffix -enus was common in names from Picenum and Umbria, and some of the inscriptions of the Bellii are from Pisaurum in Umbria. The main praenomina of the Bellii were Gaius, Marcus, Titus, and Numerius. The first three were very common throughout Roman history, while Numerius was somewhat more distinctive, and typical of the Roman countryside. The only other regular praenomen found among the Bellii was Lucius, perhaps the most abundant of all Roman names. Primus, given in the filiation of a Roman matron from Gallia Narbonensis, was an archaic praenomen, but in its masculine form it was little used in historical times, except as a surname, or in Cisalpine Gaul, where unusual praenomina were fashionable. It could have been the praenomen of the woman's father, but was more probably his surname. Suavis, given in another filiation, is not known as a praenomen, and may also have been the father's surname, but because one of the persons named in the same inscription was either a slave or freedwoman, it may be that the Suavis referred to had been a slave, or at least was not a Roman citizen, and so did not possess a regular praenomen.  Branches and cognomina There is no evidence that the Bellii were ever divided into distinct families. They used a variety of personal surnames, some of which belonged to freedmen, and were their original personal names. Other surnames included Belliolus, a diminutive of Bellius, evidently given to a little boy; Clemens, gentle, mild; Marcellinus, a diminutive of Marcellus, probably indicating that an earlier ancestor was named Marcellus; Pacatus, peaceful, calm; Plautus, given to someone with broad or flat feet; and Reginus, indicating someone who came from Rhegium.[5][6]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Bellia, inscribed on some pottery from the present site of Aventicum in Helvetia.[7] Bilia Ɔ. l., a freedwoman named in an inscription from Rome.[8] Belia Primi f., the wife of Marcus Vibius Campanus, buried at Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis.[9] Bellius, set up a monument at Catalaunum in Gallia Lugdunensis; perhaps the same Bellius named in inscriptions from Durocortorum and Bagacum in Gallia Belgica.[10] Bellius, named in an inscription from Aquae Grani in Germania Inferior.[11] Bilius, named in an inscription from Pompeii in Campania.[12] Billius, the father of Parthenis, a young woman buried at Rome, with a monument from her father, her husband, Restitutus, and friend, Saturninus, aged twenty-three years, eight months, and fourteen days.[13] Bellius Suavi f., the husband of Novia, named in an inscription found near Schönenberg-Kübelberg, formerly part of Germania Superior.[14] Lucius Bilius T. f, buried at Pisaurum in Umbria, along with his brother, Titus, in a tomb built by Titus' wife, Rutilia Prima, dating to the late second or early third century.[15] Marcus Bilius C. f., named in an inscription from Atria in Venetia and Histria.[16] Titus Bilius T. f., the husband of Rutilia Prima, was buried at Pisaurum, together with his brother, Lucius, in a tomb built by Rutilia in the late second or early third century.[15] Numerius Billius N. l. Amandus, a freedman buried at Rome during the latter half of the first century, aged fifty-eight.[17] Bellia Atticia, the daughter of Bellius Atticianus, who dedicated a monument in his memory at the present site of Anglefort, formerly part of Gallia Lugdunensis.[18] Bellius Atticianus, buried at the present site of Anglefort, aged twenty-five years and six? days, with a monument from his daughter, Bellia Atticia.[18] Gaius Bellius C. f. Belliolus, the son of Gaius Bellius Octavius and Firmia Sextiola, buried at Lugdunum in Gallia Lugdunensis, aged seven years, four months, and four days.[19] Numerius Billius Clemens, dedicated a monument at Rome to his wife, Cusinia Capitolina.[20] Marcus Bilius Epictetus, a soldier serving in the century of Gnaeus Pompeius Pelas at Rome in AD 70.[21] Marcus Bilius M. l. Eros, a freedman named in an inscription from Rome.[22] Bellius Eutyches Sallustius, dedicated a monument to his wife, Sextia Panthia, at Ostia in Latium.[23] Bellia Laetina, built a tomb for herself and her family at the present site of Borojevici, formerly part of Dalmatia.[24] Marcus Bellius Marcellinus, made a libationary offering to Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the local god, found at Obernburg am Main, formerly part of Germania Superior.[25] Bellia Nicobule, the wife of Gaius Bellius Fortunatus, and foster-mother of Bellia Trophime, a girl buried at Rome in the second century.[26] Bellia C. f. Octaviola, the daughter of Gaius Bellius Octavius and Firmia Sextiola.[19] Gaius Bellius Octavius, the husband of Firmia Sextiola, and father of Gaius Bellius Belliolus and Bellia Octaviola.[19] Gaius Billius Pacatus, a native of Dertona in Liguria, one of the soldiers named on the Tropaeum Trajani, a monument built by Trajan in Moesia Inferior, honouring the Roman servicemen who died fighting the Dacians in AD 101 and 102.[27] Bellius Plautus, named in a libationary inscription dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, found at the present site of Walheim, formerly part of Germania Superior.[28] Bellius Reginus, buried at the present site of Anglefort, aged twenty, with a monument set up by his heirs.[29] Bellia Secundilla, buried at the present site of Blauzac, formerly part of Gallia Narbonensis.[30] Gaius Bellius Sosius, the husband of Bellia Nicobule, and foster-father of Bellia Trophime, a girl buried at Rome during the second century.[26] Marcus Bellius Te[...], named in a libationary inscription dedicated to Mithras at Argentoratum in Germania Superior.[31] Bellia Trophime, foster-daughter of Gaius Bellius Sosimus and Bellia Nicobule, buried at Rome during the second century, in a tomb built by her foster parents and Julia Fortunata, aged seven years, ten months, and twenty days.[26] Billia T. f. Veneria, named in an inscription from Lugdunum.[32] See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, pp. 122–124.  Chase, p. 124.  Chase, p. 118.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. bellus, bellum.  Chase, p. 110.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. clemens, pacatus, Reginus.  Sylvestre, "Les graffitis sur céramique d'Avenches", 23.  CIL VI, 38095.  CIL XII, 3226.  CAG, li. 1, p. 317, 2, pp. 265, 311, 357.  CIL XIII, 10010.  CIL IV, 1333.  CIL VI, 37347.  CIL XIII, 6159.  CIL XI, 6409.  IIAdria, 17.  CIL VI, 6757.  CIL XIII, 2554.  CIL XIII, 2079.  CIL VI, 6740.  CIL VI, 200.  CIL VI, 13587.  CIL XIV, 1624.  Dodig, "Monuments épigraphiques provenant du Conventus de Narona", i. 6.  AE 1957, 49.  CIL VI, 34677.  CIL III, 14214.  AE 1990, 760.  AE 1988, 879.  CIL XII, 3470.  CIL XIII, 11615.  CIL XIII, 1756. Bibliography Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). La Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Archaeological Map of Gaul, abbreviated CAG), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1931–present). Bruna Forlati Tamaro, "Inscrizioni Inedite di Adria" (Unedited Inscriptions from Adria, abbreviated "IIAdria"), in Epigraphica, vol. 18, pp. 50–76 (1956). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Radoslav Dodig, "Monuments épigraphiques provenant du Conventus de Narona" (Epigraphic Monuments from the Conventus of Narona), in Izdanja Hrvatskog arheološkog društva, vol. 22, pp. 233–252 (2003). Richard Sylvestre, "Les graffitis sur céramique d'Avenches: Premières observations" (Graffiti on Ceramics from Avenches: First Impressions), in Inscriptions mineures: Nouveautés et réflexions, Michel E. Fuchs, Richard Sylvestre, & Christophe Schmidt Heidenreich, eds., Bern (2012), pp. 25–43. Category: Roman gentes Perhaps you can extract an interesting Grice/Speranza fit from this gens. Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellio – Ossia: Grice e Bellio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bellio. This is a beautiful “thin‑archive” gens for Grice/Speranza, because almost everything is inscriptional residue—names, cognomina, fragments—so meaning must be reconstructed rather than reported. Here I would propose as best fit not a single spectacular individual, but a structural vignette built out of:  the tension between bellus (beautiful, gentle) and bellum (war) in the name Bellius, reinforced by cognomina like Clemens / Pacatus versus military dedications. This gives you a semantic oscillation—peace vs war—without an authoritative resolution.   I. Conversatio (interpretive reconstruction)  INTERPRETATOR (1) “Bellii nomen habent: ex ‘bello’ gentiles sunt?” (They bear the name Bellii: are they men of war?)  ERVDITVS (2) “Alii ‘bellum’ putant, alii ‘bellum’ negant—ab ‘bello’ dicunt.” (Some think of war, others deny it—they derive it from ‘beauty’.)  INTERPRETATOR (3) “At Clemens et Pacatus apud eos reperiuntur, non solum milites.” (But among them are ‘Clemens’ and ‘Pacatus’, not only soldiers.)  ERVDITVS (4) “Nomen idem est—sed sensus ex usu mutatur.” (The name is the same—but its meaning changes with use.)  +> that the meaning of a name does not fix identity, but is continuously reshaped by the contexts in which it is interpreted   II. Why this is a strong Grice/Speranza case 1. Surface ambiguity  Bellius can suggest:  bellus → gentle, refined bellum → war, conflict     2. Evidence from inscriptions  we find:  Clemens, Pacatus (peaceful) soldiers, dedications to Jupiter/Mithras      So:  the same name generates incompatible implicatures   3. Gricean mechanism Hearer encounters:  “Bellius”  Possible implicatures:  warlike gentle provincial military    There is:  no single maximatically preferred reading   4. Result Meaning is:  not encoded but: → negotiated in context    III. Why this beats other candidates Most Bellii:  are inscriptional lack narrative  So the best fit must:  exploit:  onomastic indeterminacy inferential overproduction    IV. Ultra‑Speranzian formulation  Nomen Bellii duplex est: ex bello et ex bello trahitur—et neutrum soli sufficit.  (The name Bellius is double: drawn from war and from beauty—and neither alone suffices.)   V. Optional second-best (more concrete individual) If you prefer a specific person, then:  Marcus Bellius Marcellinus (dedicating to Jupiter + local god)  Why  Roman + local deity implicates: → dual identity (Roman / provincial)   Mini‑vignette CIVIS (1) “Marcelline, Iovi et deo loci paras?” (Marcellinus, do you sacrifice to Jupiter and to a local god?)  MARCELLINVS (2) “Utrique idem honor debetur.” (The same honour is owed to both.)  +> that Roman identity in the provinces does not replace local belonging but coexists with it   Final Speranzian synthesis  In the Bellii, whose name itself oscillates between beauty and war, and whose members occupy both civil and military spaces, meaning is not stabilized by origin but generated by context, so that identity emerges not from what is said by the name, but from the interpretations that it invites and sustains.    Ultra‑compact  Nomen dicitur—identitas quaeritur.    Answer  Best fit: the semantic ambiguity of “Bellius” itself Second-best: Marcellinus (Roman/local dual cult)   If you like, we can now contrast Bellius with a gens whose etymology is unambiguous, to see how implicature shrinks when meaning stabilizes.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellizio – Ossia: Grice e Bellizio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bellizio. The Bellizi are an aristocratic family at ancient Rome, which flourished during the first and second centuries. The B. rose to prominence from Gallia Narbonensis, attaining senatorial status with Gaius B. Natalis, who was appointed consul suffectus. “B.,” spelt Vellicius in several inscriptions of Lucius Bellicius Sollers, belongs to a class of gentilicia formed from cognomina ending in -icus. The root, Bellicus, means "fierce" or "warlike", being one of an abundant type of surname originally derived from the character of the bearer. The earliest Bellicii appearing in history bore the cognomen Natalis, a Latin adjective referring to the circumstances of one's birth or nativity, although the circumstance through which this became their surname is unknown. Sollers, belonging to a soldier of the early second century, denoted someone thought particularly skilled or clever. The names of subsequent generations of this family probably indicate their descent from other distinguished families of the era, as well as several illustrious families of the Republic. Of particular note are Flaccus, a common surname originally bestowed on someone with large or floppy ears, borne by prominent branches of the Fulvii and Valerii, and Torquatus, famous from the Manlia gens, who acquired it as the result of a legendary combat between Titus Manlius Imperiosus and a giant Gaul, whose torque Manlius claimed as a token of his victory. The surname was borne for centuries by the Manlii, and later by a branch of the Junii who were descended from them.  Gaius Bellicius Natalis, consul suffectus in AD 68.[9][10] Gaius Bellicius C. f. Natalis Gavidius Tebanianus, son of Gaius Bellicius Natalis, consul, was consul suffectus in AD 87, serving from the Kalends of May to the Kalends of September. Tiberius Claudius Tib. f. Augustanus Lucius Bellicius Sollers, a distinguished soldier, had been prefect of the ala Gallica, military tribune with the Legio II Augusta, and prefect of a cohors of the Praetorian Guard, and had been awarded dona militaria for service in Germany. Later adlected into the Senate, advanced to praetor, and consul suffectus prior to AD 118.[13][14] Bellicius Tebanianus, consul suffectus in AD 118.[15] Gaius Bellicius C. f. C. n. Flaccus Torquatus Tebanianus, son of Gaius Bellicius Tebanianus, consul, was consul suffectus in AD 124.[16][17] Gaius Bellicius C. f. C. n. Flaccus Torquatus, son of Gaius Bellicius Flaccus Tebanianus, the consul of 124, was consul in AD 143.[18] Gaius Bellicius C. f. C. n. Calpurnius Torquatus, the son of Tebanianus, and brother of Flaccus Torquatus, the consul of 143, was consul in AD 148.[19] See also List of Roman gentes References  CIL XV, 887,03, CIL XV, 887,04, CIL XV, 887,05, et seq.  Chase, pp. 126, 127.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. bellicus.  Chase, pp. 110, 111.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. natalis.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. sollers.  Chase, p. 109.  Livy, vii. 9, 10.  AE 1985, 770.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for the Reign of Nero", pp. 292 ff, 311.  Fasti Potentini, AE 1949, 23; 2003, 588; 2005, 457.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for A. D. 70–96", pp. 190, 217.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, v. 4.  CIL V, 3337, CIL V, 3338 = ILS 1031, CIL V, 3356 = ILS 2710, CIL III, 13250 = ILS 5968.  AE 1950, 00068, AE 2002, 1762.  CIL III, 7371, CIL XII, 169.  Oliver, "The Senatorial but Not Imperial Relatives of Calpurnia Arria", pp. 347–349.  AE 1940, 62.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244, AE 1906, 174. Bibliography Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). James H. Oliver, "The Senatorial but Not Imperial Relatives of Calpurnia Arria", in American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 55 (1951). Paul A. Gallivan, "Some Comments on the Fasti for the Reign of Nero", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 24, pp. 290–311 (1974); "The Fasti for A.D. 70–96", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 186–220 (1981). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Categories: BelliciiRoman gentesGallia Narbonensis For this gens, we can have a conversation of that one who was 'adlected' (whatever that means) to the Senate -- as a good case of cursus honorum. We can have a conversation where he tells his grandson all that he did so each of his moves reflects a different position. Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellizio – Ossia: Grice e Bellizio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Bellizio. This is an excellent Bellician vignette because Lucius Bellicius Sollers gives you almost the whole cursus honorum in miniature:  cavalry prefect (praefectus alae) military tribune prefect of a Praetorian cohort recipient of military decorations adlected into the Senate praetor consul  The crucial word is adlectus. In Roman usage, adlectio means:  being formally admitted into a higher order (here, the Senate) without having reached it solely by the ordinary sequence of offices.  So for a Grice/Speranza treatment, the interesting implicature is:  "I entered the Senate" +> that merit and imperial favour had accelerated what otherwise would have taken a longer route.    Conversatio: Bellicius Sollers and his grandson (1) Grandson NEPOS: “Ave, avuncule; quomodo ad tantam dignitatem pervenisti?” (Grandfather, how did you attain such high rank?)  (2) Bellicius BELLICIVS: “Primum alae Gallicae praefectus fui.” (First I was prefect of the Gallic cavalry wing.)  (3) Grandson NEPOS: “Et postea?” (And afterwards?)  (4) Bellicius BELLICIVS: “Deinde tribunus militum in secunda Augusta legione factus sum.” (Then I became military tribune in the Second Augusta Legion.)  (5) Grandson NEPOS: “Num ibi cursus tuus finitus est?” (Did your career end there?)  (6) Bellicius BELLICIVS: “Minime; cohorti praetoriae praefui, dona militaria accepi, in senatum adlectus sum, praetor factus, ac tandem consul.” (Not at all; I commanded a Praetorian cohort, received military decorations, was adlected into the Senate, became praetor, and finally consul.) +> that military excellence created the expectation that he deserved admission to the senatorial order, even before completing every ordinary step by the traditional route   Why this is a particularly Gricean case The fascinating element is not the consulship itself. It is the phrase:  in senatum adlectus sum  A hearer in Rome would immediately infer:  this was no ordinary soldier, powerful patrons stood behind him, recognized merit justified exceptional advancement.  None of that is explicitly said. The statement merely records admission. The rest is conversationally supplied.   Speranzian tag  Miles eram; senator factus sum.  The explicit content is biographical. The implicature is:  virtus militiae viam ad dignitatem aperuit.  ("Military merit opened the road to rank.") That seems to me the strongest Grice/Speranza fit in the gens Bellicia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Belloni – Ossia: Grice e Belloni, Camillo. Belloni, Camillo. Grice: Camillo, dimmi la verità: la conversazione italiana si fa meglio davanti a un caffè o a una tazza di tè inglese? Belloni: Caro Grice, davanti a un caffè, naturalmente! Il tè è per chi ama i silenzi, il caffè è per chi ama le parole che girano veloci. Grice: Ma se parliamo troppo in fretta, non rischiamo di perdere qualche implicatura per strada? Belloni: Fa parte del gioco, Grice! In Italia, anche se qualcosa sfugge, siamo bravissimi a recuperare col sorriso.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bellezza – Ossia: Grice e Bellezza: la ragione conversazionale del Philosopher’s Paradox Paolo Bellezza: la ragione conversazionale del Philosopher’s Paradox. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers routinely and rationally get from what is said to what is meant by assuming a cooperative, purposive “talk exchange” regulated by maxims (quantity, quality, relation, manner) and by treating apparent violations as evidence for implicatures that can be inferred and, typically, cancelled; the passage you cite frames Bellezza as shifting attention from this Gricean rational reconstruction of everyday inference to a “philosopher’s paradox” tradition in which conversation is a site where reason repeatedly slides between law and nature, truth and error, because meanings are liminal and double-gripped “like a two-handled vase,” so that what is “true in one sense” can be “false in another,” with paradox functioning not as a breakdown of cooperation but as an endemic feature of how philosophical commonplaces arise from the promiscuity of adjacent senses. Where Grice treats paradoxical effects as diagnostically local (often traceable to a maxim being flouted, to ambiguity, or to a shift in level between semantics and pragmatics) and therefore as something a disciplined theory can explain without granting paradox any deep metaphysical dignity, Bellezza treats paradox as structurally productive: error is mixed with truth, contradiction can assist inquiry, and the conversational arena is precisely where such mixtures become visible and philosophically generative, so that “reason” here is less a set of inferential norms underwriting stable communicative intentions than an art of navigating transitions, equivocations, and oppositions that are not merely to be eliminated but are constitutive of philosophical thinking in and through talk. Grice: “My source!” Tocca la serie di significati che la parola in conversazione può assumere, i quali tengono più o meno dell’uno o dell’altro dei due estremi. Vi accenna il lizio trattando il modo con cui il sofista costringe 1’avversario a dare nel PARADOSSO, uno parlare secondo natura a chi parla secondo la legge. Una cosa è giusta secondo la legge ma non secondo natura e si riusce al PARADOSSO. Una cosa, giudizio, proposizione, raziocinio, è vera in un certo senso ma falsa in senso diverso. La cosa è come un vaso a due manici. Trapassa dalla verità all’errore e viceversa, della contiguità e la promiscuità. È il problema, rilevato e formulato è un luogo comune del filosofo. Hi sumus qui omnibus veris falsa quædam adiuncta esse dicamus tanta similitudine ut in iis nulla insit certi iudicandi et assentiendi nota. Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in præcipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere. CICERONE. Nulla falsa doctrina est quæ non aliqua vera intermisceat. L'errore dell’uomo è sempre mescolato colla verità, e chi sapesse ben fare la scerna, da quello potrebbe questa bene spesso venire dedotta GIOBERTI. Una gran parte delle verità che il filosofo – like Wisdom – Grice, “whom I cite in ‘Metaphysics’ -- stabilisce, è inutile se 1'errore non esiste. È più facile vincere il pregiudizio dell’animo debole coll’errore che colla verità; la quale bene spesso non ha forza per persuadere LEOPARDI. Dimentichiamo che c’è un’anima di bontà nella cosa cattiva e di verità nella cosa falsa. L’errore è come una pietra dove inciampia e cade chi va avanti alla cieca e per chi sa alzare il piede diventa scalino. Cntraddire alla verità è una maniera anche codesta d’aiutare uno che cerchi la verità l’errore che i filosofo  v’incontra l’assurdo della risoluzione e pretende sciogliere un paradosso intende senz’altro errore. CATTANEO. Stoppani. Il vero si nasconde quasi dietro un paradosso davanti a cui s’arresta l’ingegno meticoloso, mentre il più eletto lo scavalca animoso. Sighele Bellucci: Raboni. Il pensiero estremo. Lo yoga devozionale. Paradosso. Manzoni. Arti. Milano, Lombardia. Grice: Bellezza, il tuo “paradosso” è come un vaso a due manici: lo prendi dalla verità e ti ritrovi nell’errore senza neanche macchiare la toga. Bellezza: E tu, Grice, con quel “My source!” sembri un cameriere che porta citazioni al tavolo e poi pretende la mancia dell’implicatura. Grice: Io porto solo il menù: se ordini “natura” e ti arriva “legge”, la colpa è del cuoco sofista. Bellezza: Allora brindiamo: la conversazione è Milano, Lombardia—tutti ci passano, e nessuno ammette di essersi perso. Bellezza, Paolo (1901). Il pensiero estremo. Milano, Tipografia Editrice Lombarda.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bene – Ossia: Grice e Bene e la ragione conversazionale. Grice: “I like him.” Influential medieval master of rhetoric. Bene. Firenze, Toscana. Grice e Bene. Bene (Firenze, Toscana) e la ragione conversazionale. Grice: “I like him.” Influential medieval master of rhetoric.  Grice: Bene, raccontami, la ragione conversazionale in Toscana è più dolce o più pungente? Bene: Caro Grice, in Toscana la ragione è come il vino: se ne parli troppo, si scalda; se ne parli poco, si raffredda. Bisogna trovare la misura giusta, altrimenti la conversazione si trasforma in un monologo! Grice: Ah, ma il monologo non è mai riuscito a convincere un pubblico fiorentino! Preferiscono il botta e risposta, magari condito con un po’ di ironia. Bene: Appunto, Grice! Qui a Firenze si dice che anche le statue rispondono se le provochi con la domanda giusta. E se sbagli domanda, ti danno il silenzio come implicatura. Bene (1340). Rhetorica. Firenze, Toscana.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bene – Ossia: Grice e Bene: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Tancredi.  Tommaso del Bene: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Tancredi. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rational, intention-sensitive upshot of cooperative talk: what is meant beyond what is said is inferred because speakers are presumed to be (ceteris paribus) truthful, relevant, appropriately informative, and perspicuous, so that departures from these expectations trigger calculable inferences. Del Bene’s treatment of Tancredi and the duel, by contrast, belongs to a casuistical-theological and juridico-moral culture in which “reason” is not primarily the hearer’s on-the-fly reconstruction of a speaker’s intention but the disciplined weighing of conscience, oath, lying, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and legitimate authority; accordingly, “implicature” is less a conversational product of maxims and more a normative residue of what one’s words and acts commit one to under moral theology (e.g., what follows from an oath, what is permitted under duress, what counts as mendacium, what courts may judge). In that setting the duel and its apologies function like staged disputations where what is left unsaid is governed by prudence, censorship, and the boundaries between theology, royal tribunals, and ecclesiastical immunity—so a Gricean lens highlights how Del Bene’s rhetoric relies on shared background assumptions (honour, chivalric ethos, jurisdictional limits) to move an audience without spelling everything out, while a Del Bene lens would press Grice to acknowledge that conversational reason is never merely cooperative etiquette but is always already embedded in institutions of judgment and accountability. Online cataloguing sources that are easiest to confirm about the author’s print footprint tend to list works such as De officio S. Inquisitionis circa haeresim and Dubitationes morales (often associated with Avignon printings and Cardinal Albizzi in later notices) alongside Venetian materials connected with Pareri/Apologia in duello traditions, but the exact bibliographic details for Brieve apologia del Tancredi (Rome, 1652) and related imprints vary across older bibliographies, so the safest comparison point is conceptual rather than archival: Grice gives a logic of inference from utterances within cooperative exchange, whereas Del Bene exemplifies a logic of inference from utterances within a moral-legal order where “what you said” can bind you independent of what you privately intended. Grice: “Molto bene”. Apologia del Tancredi, Summa theologica, de officio s. inquisitionis circa haeresim, de immunitate et iurisdictione ecclesiastica, morale, de comitiis. Insegna a Roma. Brieve Apologia del Tancredi, Poema di Ascanio Grande. Si trova dietro l’apologia De Comitiis yfeu Parlamenti! ac inciijfnter (T corollarie de aliis moralibas marerii!, precipue de ecclefinQica immunitate, Dubitationes morales. fttmpt. Nemejìi Trichet i6\g in Avemonefumpt. inf. cor. dedicatoria al Card. Francesco Albizi. Questo su il saggio, per cui dove partir di Napoli. Prese in esso a trattare della morale, che nfguarda i tribunali regi, e gli dessi sovrani. Materia assai delicata, e che vuole altri lumi di quelli, che aver suole il volgo de’moralidi, Opus abfolutìjfimum in z. parte! di/lributttm. O* Mar. Ant. Ravaud de Conscientia; de radice re/liturioni1 aliarumque obligationum <2Tpcenarum, ut eucommunicationii et irregularitatt! eu delitto de Comieiii seu Parlamenti!, ubi etiam da alagiti contrattibus; de donativi! tributis (T fubjìdio Caritativo ó.De  Di tatti cotefli titoli fi fregia in virj suoi libri. Senti. Titt. che cita i reijitlri di S.Ao'* ea della Val- le; e perciò debboao correggerli il SavanaroU Gtrarth. Eccl. Tttt. Striti, E poi Avtniont Jo. Fiat. T.z. in f. Il MazzuecheHi s’è ingannato r eli attribuire a quell’Opera le aggiunte fatte dall’Autore al libro dt Offi. ti Y. Inquisitionit. Vezzofi lot. tannoi, z. cenfura il Mazzucchelii d’aver det-. t».  circa h<trejim cum Bulli* tam voteti- bus quam recentioribus Additiones de loci De Juramento, in quo de ejus 0 voti rclaxationibus cui Dectftonet S- Rotte Romana accedunt fumpt. guetan,  da Capoa, ha rime nel Sello libro delle Rime di diverfi eccell. Autori nuovamente raccolte ec. da G. Rufcelli. L' Imprefe della Mae/làrapprefentate nel tumolo ptr la Jua, morte eretto dalla fedèlifs. citta de.’f Aquila ec. Aquila Lepido Faci (Giuf. dilettò di poesia volgare degl’arcadi, dei velati. Tafuri. Monteverdi, Tasso. Moralia, mos, morale, cavalleria, il santo cavaliere, mendacio, mentire, iuramento, morale, abiuratio, conscienza. Maruggio, Taranto, Puglia. Grice e Bene. Grice: Tommaso, dimmi la verità, con tutta la morale e le apologie che hai scritto, il Tancredi sarebbe stato promosso o bocciato da un tribunale regio? Bene: Caro Grice, dipende se Tancredi ha portato la cavalleria o solo la coscienza! Se arriva con il mos, magari convince qualcuno anche senza spada. Grice: E se invece mente, ma lo fa per il bene superiore, la sua abiurazione conta come peccato o come furbizia? Bene: Ah, Grice, in tribunale e in poesia, una piccola menzogna può diventare un grande giuramento! Ma alla fine, come diceva sempre il santo cavaliere, meglio perdere un titolo che perdere il senso dell’umorismo. Bene, Tommaso del (1652). Brieve apologia del Tancredi. Roma

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Benincasa – Ossia: Grice e Benincasa: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto.  Carmine Benincasa (Eboli, Salerno, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by presuming cooperation and rationality in talk (the Cooperative Principle and its maxims), so that additional meaning is often inferred as a conversational implicature rather than encoded in the words; Benincasa, by contrast, is best read as extending the “reason” of interpretation beyond utterances to public cultural objects—images, monuments, and urban settings—so that what counts as “implicated” meaning is not primarily produced by a speaker flouting maxims but by a city’s shared repertoire of viewing practices, taboos, jokes, prudery, and aesthetic conventions that make certain responses predictable. In your passage, the open-air male nude becomes an interpretive test case: the statue “says” nothing, yet it reliably elicits readings (civic pride, classicism, provocation, embarrassment, tourism, moral commentary), and Benincasa’s “turn of interpretation” can be framed as shifting attention from sentence-level inference (Grice) to the hermeneutic conditions that govern public meaning-making in the first place—what a passerby is entitled, licensed, or socially pushed to infer. Online bibliographic anchors support the timeline you cite: Benincasa’s early book Chiesa e storia nel card. Suhard e nel Vaticano II appears in 1967 with Edizioni Paoline (library catalogue records list 548 pages, Rome, 1967), while La svolta dell’interpretazione: memoria e profezia is catalogued as 1972 (B. Carucci, Assisi-Roma), which fits your contrast between Grice’s rational calculus of implicature in conversation and Benincasa’s broader, art-critical hermeneutics where implication is “plastic” and civic—generated by context, tradition, and spectatorship rather than by conversational maxims alone. Grice: “B. is a good one; my fvaourite is his ‘la svolta dell’interpretatzione,’ for that is what Boezio knew ‘hermeneias’ was! a turning point!” – Studia a Roma. Dopo aver completato tutti i suoi studi iniziò a lavorare come traduttore di testi letterari (tra altri, Hans Urs von Balthasar) per poi organizzare e curare mostre d'arte.  Membro della Commissione Consultiva Arti Visive della Biennale di Venezia e consigliere del Ministro per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali.  Insegna a Macerata, Firenze e Roma. Scrisse saggi storico-critici su vari artisti. Chiesa e storia L'interpretazione tra futuro e utopia, Poetica della negazione e della differenza” Il Giudizio Universale, Sul manierismo: come dentro uno specchio, Babilonia in fiamme: saggi sull'arte contemporanea, Architettura come dis-identità, L'altra scena: saggi sul pensiero antico, medioevale e contro-rinascimentale, Anabasi Architettura e arte” (Dedalo, Bari); “Alle soglie del sapere” Ed. del Tornese” Miró 2C, Kokoschka La mia vita” (Marsilio, Venezia); Oriente allo specchio 2C, Roma); Verso l'altrove: Fogli eretici sull'arte contemporanea” Electa, Milano); Alvar Aalto” Leader); Umberto Mastroianni Monumenti” (Ed. Electa, Milano); Il colore e la luce L'arte contemporanea” (Ed. Spirali, Milano); “André Masson “L'universo della pittura” Mondatori, Milano; Spirali/Vel,  "Alfio Mongelli: infinito futuro", Joyce et Company, Il tutto in frammenti: arte Professore: una nuova interpretazione storica” (Giancarlo Politi, Milano). La citta disalerno ricerca repubblica repubblica archivio  repubblica biennale-il- psi-fa-incetta-di-poltrone. html1http://ricerca. repubblica. it repubblica/archivio/ repubblica artisti-rasputin-nel- mondo- dei- telefoni. html2 lacittadisalerno/ cronaca fece-amare-l-arte-all-italia-, Errori giudiziari. i nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto, implicatura plastica, la svoglia dell’interpretazione,  mastroianni, il segno del teatro, rito, mascara, anabasi, arte come dis-identita, futurismo. Grice: Carmine, dimmi la verità, i nudi maschili nella statuaria italiana all’aperto sono una questione di implicatura o di coraggio? Benincasa: Dipende dall’ora e dal luogo, Grice! Se è domenica a Firenze, l’implicatura sta nel non prendersi troppo sul serio. E se piove, tutti si preoccupano di interpretare la pioggia, non il marmo. Grice: Allora la svolta dell’interpretazione è quando ci si accorge che la gente guarda più il contorno che il contenuto? Benincasa: Esatto, Grice! La città è un grande palcoscenico, e i nudi all’aperto sono solo la scusa per una battuta spiritosa o per una riflessione profonda, a seconda di chi passa davanti. Così, ogni statua diventa una barzelletta, oppure una teoria, ma mai entrambe nello stesso istante. Benincasa, Carmine (1967). Chiesa e storia del cardinale Emmanuel Suhard e il Concilio Vaticano II. Edizioni Paoline.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Benvenuti – Ossia: Grice e Benvenuti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice: “A good thing about B.’s discussion of Agostino’s semiotics is that Benvenuti has a strictly philosophical background, rather than in grammar or linguistics or belles lettres,  Cesare Donato Benvenuti (Montodine, Cremona, Lombardia). la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers infer what a speaker means beyond what is said by assuming cooperative rationality and using maxims to calculate implicatures; in contrast, Benvenuti’s Augustinian focus relocates the engine of “implication” from conversational maxims to a general semiotic-epistemic mechanism in which a sign is anything that, beyond its sensory appearance, makes something else come to mind, so that inference is built into signhood itself. In De doctrina christiana II Augustine distinguishes signa naturalia (e.g., smoke→fire, footprint→animal, facial expression→emotion) from signa data or conventional signs (given intentionally to convey what is in the mind), and Benvenuti’s tripartite framing in your passage (semiotic triangle, taxonomy of signs, inferenza) aligns Augustine with an inferential model of meaning rather than a purely representational one; the key difference from Grice is that for Augustine/Benvenuti the paradigmatic “implicature” is not generated by a cooperative maxim being apparently flouted but by the sign’s power to trigger a warranted transition in the interpreter (smoke licenses “there is fire”), whereas for Grice that inferential transition is specifically calibrated by speaker-intentions within a talk exchange. At the same time, they converge in a striking way: Augustine’s “given signs” exist to transfer what is in one mind into another, which is structurally close to Grice’s intentionalist account of speaker-meaning, but Augustine treats this as one species within a broader ontology of signs (natural and given), while Grice starts from communicative intention and then explains how further meanings (implicatures) arise from rational norms of interaction. So, read comparatively, Benvenuti’s “Augustine as the first Gricean” is plausible if the emphasis is on intention and interpretive inference, yet the deeper contrast remains that Augustine’s semiotics makes inference foundational to signification as such, while Grice makes inference foundational to conversational pragmatics specifically, with cooperation and reason-governed expectations doing the work that Augustine assigns to the general logic of signum/res and the natural/given divide. Grice: “A good thing about B.’s discussion of Agostino’s semiotics is that Benvenuti has a strictly philosophical background, rather than in grammar or linguistics or belles lettres, or even ‘theory of communication.’ Therefore, he INTERPRETS Augustine as *I* do! You gotta love B.. He dedicated his life to the semiotics of Agostino (who never knew he was a saint), the first Griceian. Benvenutti divides his discussion of Agostino’s semiotics in three: the semiotic triangle, the taxonomy of signs, and inferenza – For Agostino, ‘segno’ contrasts with ‘cosa.’ And a sign can signify ‘naturaliter’ (fumo, orma, volta). Or non-naturaliter – daglia animali including homo – prodotto dall’uomo – a ‘gesture’ that has to be perceived by one of the five senses – or by the senses – auditum (parola detta) – visum (segno scritto). Studia a Roma caso di coscienza per emanare i giudizi. Esaminatore. Dell' antica puncupazione di canoni, l'invasione di Longobardi, Vita Chericale comune, Povertà Evangelica sandria. Ill.Zin Canone del Concilio Romano, atribuito à Silvestro vien intejaper Buplio Diacono. Comunità Chericalen e laChiesa d Ales O o. DI 1 1 Turonense. Che fece Leobina Vescovo nella Chiesa Carnotenje. Dalle proibizioni del Concilio Arelaten fededucesi il metodo del vivere Chericale di que' tempi.Vita Regolare ne' Cherici espressa nel Concilio di Tours. De vivere in comune de Chericj in Romaforzo il Pontificato di Gregorio Magno. Note  Fonte: Francesco Sforza Benvenuti, Storia di Crema, p.37Filosofia Filosofo Teologi italiani Montodine NapoliTraduttori dal latino. paganismo, religione romana antica, paganesimo ario in Italia, i romani, i ostrogoti, i longobardi, religione romana, religione ostrogota, religione longobarda, mitologia romana, mitologia ostrogota, mitologia longobarda, cultura romana, cultura ostrogota, cultura longobarda, le fonte pagane della teoria del segno in Agostino – semeion, signum, segno, segnare, segnante, segnato. Antecedenti di una teoria unitaria del segno. Grice: Cesare, spiegami una cosa: Agostino avrebbe mai immaginato che il fumo di un camino potesse diventare oggetto di tanto ragionamento? Benvenuti: Caro Grice, Agostino era avanti! Per lui, anche un’impronta lasciata nel fango poteva generare una teoria semiotica, altro che fumo negli occhi. Grice: Quindi se un gesto vale come un segno, quando agito le mani per spiegarmi meglio, sto producendo filosofia o solo confusione? Benvenuti: Dipende dalla giornata, Grice! Ma ricorda: per Agostino, anche la parola detta e quella scritta sono viaggi per i sensi. Se poi ci aggiungi un sorriso, magari passi direttamente dal segno all’inferenza senza nemmeno accorgertene! Benvenuti, Cesare Donato (1819). Storia di Crema. Crema.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Berardi – Ossia: Grice e Berardi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale telepatica.  Antonio Berardi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del duello. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rational, intention-sensitive inference: hearers assume cooperative norms and work out what is meant beyond what is said (including when a speaker appears to violate expectations) by reconstructing the speaker’s communicative intentions in context; by contrast, the Berardi/Bernardi material you cite locates “reason” in the Renaissance arts of dialectic and moral-philosophical justification, where disputed practices like the duel are argued over through topical invention, definition, and the disciplined management of equivocations rather than through Grice’s maxims-based pragmatics. In Antonio Bernardi della Mirandola (1502–1565), the duel (monomachia/duellum) becomes a test-case for how dialectical reasoning and moral philosophy can legitimate a practice “according to reason” while still allowing a separate theological verdict (a distinction Bernardi explicitly makes in his Disputationes of 1562, which includes an extended treatment “ex professo” of monomachia), and the contemporary plagiarism/priority controversy around Giovan Battista Possevino’s Dialogo dell’honore (printed posthumously 1553 and widely reprinted, with modern discussion by Pietro Giulio Riga) underscores how, in that world, what is “implied” often rides on shared commonplaces of honour, reputation, and interpretive charity within a learned controversy. The upshot for a Grice comparison is that Berardi/Bernardi-style “conversational reason” is not primarily the micro-logic of how a listener calculates an implicature from a single utterance, but the macro-rationality of a disputational culture in which argument is a kind of regulated combat: the duel is both topic and model, and “implication” is closer to what follows from accepted loci, definitions, and moral classifications than to what follows from cooperative conversational expectations. Grice: “We discussed B. with Sir Peter – when we were tutoring on ‘Categoriae’. Surely this is not propedeutic logic! This is pure metaphysics, and even pure physics!” B. held the same view! On top, I love B. because he does not use ‘logica,’ which he thinks for ‘kids,’ but ‘dialettica,’ which is real philosophy!” Studia a Bologna sotto Boccadiferro, l’autore di un trattato sui luoghi comuni d’Aristotele, e POMPONAZZI. A Roma conosce Bembo, Casa e Giovio, e si conquista una fama di lizio.  Monomachia. Il duello è legittimo secondo la ragione e la filosofia morale, duello cavalleresco, umanista Forlivesi Zambelli. procedendo sempre con equivoci e confusion di vocaboli e con perpetui sofismi talvolta intrigatissimi e difficili e talvolta manifesti e palesi  Eppure, narra Maffei che dell'opera di B. quattro doppie si stima modesto prezzo. La scienza cavalleresca è tanto ricercati, che quattro doppie è pur stata valutata un'edizione dell'Ariosto, quella di Venezia per Valvassori,  sol per poche righe, che in alcuni luoghi vi si trovano con titolo di Pareri in Duello. In quanto all'accusa di plagio dita apertamente da B. a Possevino, essa è abbastanza giustificata. Possevino scolaro di B. e questi ha dal maestro il suo lavoro sul duello per copiarlo, ma Possevino non si fa alcuno scrupolo di rafazzonarlo alquanto per poterlo far passare come proprio. È vero peró, che la pubblicazione del saggio non avvenne per opera di Possevino, ma di suo fratello, ed anzi vuolsi, che Possevino morendo raccomanda al fratello di non pubblicare il saggio sul duello da esso lasciata, ma il fratello non tiene conto di questa raccomandazione, tanto più, che al dire del Tiraboschi, a vincer i suoi scrupoli gl’era opportinamente giunta all'orecchio, autore del saggio, ed egli a tale notizia presta fede. Tiraboschi, che dapprima aveva difeso G. B. Possevino dall'accusa di plagio doveva finire per persuadersi, che tale accusa era ben fondata. la legittimita dei duellisti, duo-machia. roma, duellisti, statua di due duellisti antichi, armi bianchi. Mirandola, Modena, Emilia-Romagna  Grice: Antonio, il duello filosofico è più una questione di dialettica o di sciabole affilate? Berardi: Grice, la vera dialettica si fa con parole taglienti, mica con armi bianche! Ma qualche volta, in biblioteca, le discussioni sono più rumorose di un duello in piazza. Grice: Sarà per questo che Possevino ha preferito copiare il trattato piuttosto che sfidare il maestro: meno rischi di finire trafitto, più possibilità di vincere per astuzia! Berardi: Esatto, Grice! In filosofia come nei duelli, chi ha il miglior parere vince la statua in piazza, chi perde si consola con una doppia edizione dell’Ariosto. Berardi, Antonio (1580). Pareri in duello. Venezia: Valvassori. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bernardi – Ossia: Grice e Bernardi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del duello.  Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Bernardi: la ragione conversazionale.  Jacopo Bernardi (Castel di Godego, Treviso, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers get from what is said to what is meant by presuming cooperative rationality and inferring implicatures from a speaker’s adherence to (or artful departure from) conversational maxims; the “governance” is procedural and interactional, and the extra meaning is justified by publicly recoverable reasoning about intentions in context. Bernardi’s stance in your passage (Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua, 1845) relocates governance from conversational procedure to a moral-theological teleology of language: speech is grounded in the divine nature and rational perfection of the human creature, its origin tied to creation rather than animal exclamation, and its proper use indexed to virtue (truthfulness) with sins of language (lying, slander, blasphemy) treated not as pragmatic misfires but as moral faults; so, where Grice treats implicature as a rationally cancellable by-product of cooperative exchange, Bernardi treats the “unsaid” as what conscience and doctrine already bind the speaker to (the rectus usus of words), making conversational reason less a set of inferential expectations and more a normatively charged discipline aimed at right-speaking as right-living. In that comparison, Grice’s maxims look like thin, defeasible norms for making talk work, whereas Bernardi’s “reason of language” is thick and eschatological: conversation is answerable not only to interlocutors but to a higher tribunal of truth and moral order, so the deepest “implicatures” are not clever inferences from relevance or quantity but ethical entailments of being the kind of rational-divine speaker humans are meant to be. Online bibliographic listings and digitized catalogues do at least corroborate the basic anchor that Bernardi’s Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua appeared in Venice with Giuseppe Antonelli in 1845, framing him as part of the nineteenth-century Italian debate on language origins and proper usage, but his interest is less “pragmatics” than the moral constitution of speech, which makes him a useful foil to Grice precisely because he converts conversational rationality into a doctrine of linguistic virtue rather than a logic of cooperative inference. Grice: “I like B. – his approach is eschatological, like mine!” Filosofo poliedrico, in Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua, B. affronta il dibattito sulla lingua all’ASCOLI con un approccio moralistico, fortemente influenzata d’una prospettiva scatologica. B. mette in relazione la lingua colla natura divina dell'uomo, con un focus sul retto uso nell’esercizio della virtù  morale. La natura profonda della lingua è come espressione dell’intelletto umano, in contrasto colla forma di comunicazione animale. L’origine della lingua si riallaccia a una creazione divina tramite una evoluzione guidata d’un principio morale, esortazndo all’utilizzo e corretto della parola, e condannando la menzogna, la maldicenza e la bestemmia: l’ammaestramento filosofico per concentrarlo dalle sparse membra vivificate nel cuore della provincia, abbiamo deplorato insieme e altamente quella sentenza ferale. Indarno per molte voci autorevoli e per quella dell'insigne vescovo nostro, che risona francamente nello approvare l'argomento, ch'io pure sceglievo per la prolusione agli studi fra noi , dopo aver detto. Credere che non è necessario nè conveniente il figurarsi che il divino al primo uomo imboccasse tutto intero la lingua, e gli fosse grammatica e vocabolario, soggiunge: a Que’tanti che fanno d’ESCLAMAZIONE INARTICOLATA e dal SENTIMENTO ANIMALE germinare la lingua, suppongono, dopo la formazione, umanamente inesplicabile, a dell' uomo senziente, una seconda ancora più inesplicabile perchè assurda quando dividon di tempo dalla prima dell’uomo intelligente, e così per negare il mistero, moltiplicano i misteri togliendone però quel sublime, che li fa degni dell’umana RAGIONE. Essendo l’uomo creato nella pienezza delle sue facoltà, come pieno e perfetto nell'esser suo è l'esercizio della intelligenza, ne consegue che pieno e perfetto dove essere quello della PAROLA. La proposizione è di tale evidenza che non ha bisogno di prova. Ammeno il fatto della CREAZIONE, l’altro non è che l’esplicazione. G.: Bernardi gives us “origine,” and I refuse to let the word be treated as a mere clerical nuisance. S.: Naturally. Oxford only mistrusts origins when they are French. G.: Or when they are too successful. The French Academy, in one of its tidier moods, declared the origin of language a prohibited topic. S.: Because it was obscene? G.: Because it was speculative. Which, in France, is considered worse. S.: So no one was to ask where language came from? G.: Not under respectable conditions. The question was judged vacuous, pseudo-problematic, unfit for disciplined minds. S.: And Bernardi asks it anyway? G.: He does. Though in a tone rather more episcopal than I should usually prefer. S.: The Church enters at once, then. G.: In Italy it seldom waits in the corridor. Bernardi thinks language belongs with the divine nature of man, creation, virtue, recto uso, and all the rest. S.: Which you dislike. G.: Not entirely. I dislike the theology only when it pretends to be explanatory. S.: But you are willing to use “God” as an exegetical device? G.: Yes, provided one can supply a rational reconstruction in naturalistic terms afterward. S.: That sounds like smuggling. G.: It is translation. S.: Then what is your actual point about origine? G.: That signum does not have two unrelated senses when applied to natura and institutione. S.: But surely it does. One says “those dark clouds mean rain,” and one says “I mean that p.” G.: Exactly. And the temptation is to declare a schism where there is only development. S.: Development from what to what? G.: From natural consequentiality to controlled, will-governed signification. S.: That sounds wonderfully pompous. G.: Thank you. S.: Explain. G.: If x is a sign of y, there is some relation of consequentia between x and y. S.: In both cases? G.: In both cases, yes. The relation is more primitive in the natural case, more institutionally managed in the non-natural one, but not therefore equivocal. S.: So dark clouds and rain, on the one hand; utterance and meaning, on the other. G.: Precisely. In the first, the consequence is not ad placitum. In the second, it becomes available for use under intention and convention. S.: You are collapsing a great deal. G.: I am unifying a great deal. S.: Ontogenesis first, I suppose. G.: Necessarily. One sees the matter more clearly in the child than in the theologian. S.: Your child? G.: Any reasonably cooperative child, though my own has provided ample field data. S.: You mean you are a nursery ethnographer. G.: Oxford fathers are, when they are not pretending to be metaphysicians. S.: Then what does the child show? G.: That signalling begins not with explicit semantic sovereignty but with guided uptake. Gesture, cry, glance, pointing, insistence. S.: Animal exclamation, as Bernardi would put it, and reject. G.: He rejects too much and too soon. The child’s cry is not yet speech, but it is not therefore irrelevant to speech’s emergence. S.: Because? G.: Because it already recruits another’s intelligence through recognisable consequence. S.: So if the child raises its arms, it means “pick me up.” G.: Not at first in the full non-natural sense. But it comes to function as a controlled signal because caregiver and child stabilise the link. S.: Stabilise by what? Repetition? G.: Repetition, expectation, success, correction, and eventually intention recognised as such. S.: Then ontogenesis is your bridge from natural sign to communicative sign. G.: Exactly. The bridge is not magical. It is habituated inferential practice under increasing control. S.: “Inferential practice” in a nursery is a bit rich. G.: Babies are richer than philosophers in such matters. S.: Then phylogenesis? G.: The same issue on the larger scale. How a species moves from reading signs in nature to making signs for one another. S.: And here the French objected. G.: They objected partly because no one could experiment on proto-language with proper Academy decorum. S.: Quite right too. G.: Quite wrong. Lack of direct experiment does not make the question senseless. S.: It does make it dangerous. G.: Only to tidy minds. S.: So Bernardi’s “origine” is useful even if his answer is ecclesiastical? G.: Exactly. The question survives the sermon. S.: What was the sermon, in brief? G.: That man was created in the fullness of his faculties, hence with intelligence already proper to word, and therefore language must be understood under divine perfection rather than emerging from inarticulate exclamation. S.: He says that very strongly. G.: Strongly enough to save himself some anthropology. S.: You do not want to save yourself any. G.: No. I want anthropology, developmental psychology, comparative behaviour, and a little patience. S.: Then return to signum. G.: Gladly. Signum, segnare, signare: all these suggest marking, indicating, letting one thing stand toward another in a way available for uptake. S.: Still sounds like two senses. G.: Only if one insists that natural indication and intentional indication differ in kind rather than in governance. S.: “Governance” again. G.: An excellent word. In the natural case, x governs inference to y by causal or nomic regularity. In the communicative case, x governs inference to y by intention operating over shared expectations. S.: So in both cases there is consequentia. G.: Yes. That is the univocal core. S.: But one cannot cancel dark clouds. G.: Precisely. Natural signs are not cancellable in the Gricean way; communicative signs often are. S.: Which suggests difference. G.: Difference in control conditions, not in the bare sign relation. S.: Then “those dark clouds mean rain” and “I mean that p” are connected because the second exploits the hearer’s readiness to move from one item to another under recognised linkage. G.: Beautifully put. S.: I am learning. G.: Try not to show it. S.: And Bernardi by speaking of origine hints at this continuity? G.: He hints despite himself. Once you ask where language comes from, you are forced to consider transitions rather than dogmatic partitions. S.: Unless one says “God gave it.” G.: Which is a splendid way of ending inquiry before it becomes interesting. S.: Yet you allow “God” as shorthand. G.: As shorthand for the demand that the transition be intelligible and not merely accidental. S.: Nature as a goddess, then. G.: If one likes mythology with one’s biology. S.: Oxford does. G.: Only when classical. S.: You mentioned signare and segnare. Why insist on those verbs? G.: Because they keep before us the act-character of signs. A sign is not merely a thing; it figures in a practice of marking, indicating, notifying. S.: Natural signs do not act. G.: No, but they function within a practice of reading. Human signification then grows by turning what is read into what is made legible. S.: That is rather fine. G.: It was available all along. S.: Then from dark clouds to “I mean” the path is: natural reading, proto-signal, stabilised uptake, intentional control, conventional system. G.: Yes. Ontogenesis recapitulates enough of the transition to make phylogenesis less mysterious. S.: Dangerous phrase, “recapitulates.” G.: I know. I use it with prophylactic irony. S.: And where does the Church become “anti-Oxonian,” as you put it? G.: At the point where explanation is replaced by pious insistence that because man is created, language must arrive full-grown with him. S.: Bernardi even says grammar and vocabulary need not have been spooned into Adam, but the full exercise of word belongs with the full exercise of intelligence. G.: Yes, which is subtler than crude divine dictation, but still too impatient with gradual emergence. S.: He thinks denying mystery multiplies mysteries. G.: A very ecclesiastical complaint. S.: Is it false? G.: Not always. Some secular accounts are indeed incompetent. But from that it does not follow that naturalistic reconstruction is impossible. S.: Then what is needed? G.: A rational genealogy: how controlled signs emerge from natural manifestations under social intelligence. S.: A genealogy of “meaning.” G.: Exactly. S.: And the animal? G.: The animal is indispensable. Not because animal cries are already language, but because human language is not intelligible if treated as descending into nature from nowhere. S.: Bernardi fears that. G.: He fears degradation. I fear discontinuity. S.: A fair difference. G.: Quite. S.: How would you put the univocity thesis succinctly? G.: Signum always involves one item’s standing in a relation apt to ground passage to another item. S.: Even where the relation is arbitrary? G.: “Arbitrary” means selected or sustained ad placitum, not disconnected from inference. S.: So arbitrariness is about institution, not about unintelligibility. G.: Precisely. A conventional sign may be arbitrary in form, but its functioning still depends on learned consequence within a practice. S.: Then “tree” means tree because there is a socially ratified path from sound to concept. G.: Yes, and that path is no less a consequentia for being social. S.: You are making consequence wider than the logicians like. G.: Logicians are too often under the impression that consequence took degrees only in their own company. S.: And you think language proves otherwise. G.: I think conversation proves otherwise every afternoon. S.: Then why were the French so severe? G.: Because “origin” questions tend to attract mythology, and the Academy preferred falsifiable sobriety. S.: A respectable preference. G.: Respectable and overreactive. One may over-police a bad neighbourhood and accidentally prohibit the honest citizen. S.: Bernardi as the honest citizen? G.: No, Bernardi as the pious smuggler of a real question. S.: Better. G.: Accuracy before charity. S.: What would an Oxford treatment look like? G.: Less bishop, more child. Less creation, more development. Less prohibition, more reconstruction. S.: And perhaps less horror at animal continuity. G.: Quite. S.: Yet still no reduction of meaning to mere clouds and rain. G.: Certainly not. “I mean” introduces intention, and intention introduces reflexive recognitional structure. S.: You had to say that eventually. G.: It was waiting. S.: So the path is not from sign to signification by miracle, but from natural indication to intentional indicating by stages. G.: Exactly. S.: And Bernardi helps by forcing the issue under the word origine. G.: He does. The title is better than parts of the doctrine. S.: Which is often the case. G.: Especially in theology. S.: Then one last thing. Is “retto uso” wholly alien to your picture? G.: Not wholly. Once one has language, questions of correct use inevitably arise. But correctness should not be confused with divine destination. S.: So lying, slander, blasphemy are not what make language possible. G.: They are parasitic moral phenomena upon a prior communicative capacity. S.: Bernardi reverses the order. G.: He moralises the foundation. S.: And you naturalise it. G.: While leaving room for normativity after the fact. S.: Which means one can keep “God” in commentary if one pays in reasons. G.: Very neat. S.: Then the punchline? G.: The French forbade the origin of language as too speculative, the Church explained it too quickly, and Bernardi managed to be useful by being wrong in exactly the right place.Grice: Jacopo, secondo te la lingua umana nasce davvero per esclamazione inarticolata come dicono i teorici, o è solo un modo elegante per far sembrare la filosofia una partita a scacchi? Bernardi: Grice, se fosse tutto esclamazione, avremmo solo filosofi che urlano e nessuno che ci spiega il mistero! Io preferisco pensare che la parola venga dalla creazione perfetta: come il caffè quando è appena versato, non quando resta freddo sul tavolo.Grice: E dunque, Jacopo, la menzogna e la maldicenza sono solo errori grammaticali o sono veri peccati del linguista troppo distratto? Bernardi: Caro Grice, il linguista distratto finisce col parlare come un animale, ma se usa bene la parola può persino convincere il vescovo a prendere un biscotto invece che giudicare la grammatica! Bernardi, Jacopo (1845). Essenza, origine e retto uso dell’umana lingua. Venezia: Antonelli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bernardo – Ossia: Grice e Bernardo: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale della tradizione iniziatica itala.  Giuliano di Bernardo (Benne, Biella, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale della tradizione iniziatica itala. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rational, intention-based inference: hearers assume cooperation (and maxims of quantity, quality, relation, manner) and so can work out what is meant beyond what is said, including cases where a speaker is indirect or strategically elliptical; on that model, the “governing” rationality is public, defeasible, and reconstructible from conversational practice. Di Bernardo, as your passage frames him, shifts the spotlight from everyday talk to norm-governed systems and initiatic tradition: the closest analogue to Gricean implicature is not primarily a maxim-flout but the way meaning and commitment arise from rules, roles, and shared recognitional practices (a handshaking culture, ritualized forms, insider/common-knowledge background), so that what is “implied” is often implied by institutional form rather than by conversational economy alone. That makes a useful contrast: Grice’s implicature is calculable from cooperative discourse; Di Bernardo’s “implicature of initiatic tradition” is intelligible as what a participant is entitled (or obliged) to read into a move given a normative system—very close in spirit to deontic logic’s concern with what follows from norms, permissions, and obligations, except that here the “system” is as much symbolic and communal as formal. More concretely online: the University of Trento thesis catalogue (BiblioApss) lists Di Bernardo’s 1966/1967 sociology thesis as Studio preliminare sulla possibilità di applicare la logica deontica in sociologia (rel. Giorgio Braga; correl. Alberto Pasquinelli; shelfmark SO9), which supports your 1967 deontic-logic anchor; and later bibliographies consistently mark his early published work in the same direction (e.g., Logica, norme, azione, Trento: Istituto Superiore di Scienze Sociali, 1969; Introduzione alla logica dei sistemi normativi, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972), letting you present him as a figure who would naturally reinterpret “conversational reason” less as Grice’s etiquette of inference and more as a rule-structured, tradition-sustaining practice in which what is meant is bound to norms, recognition, and authorized forms of saying and doing. Grice: “I like B.: he is a philosophical mason – but then most Italian philosophers are, as a way of NOT being Roman!” Studia a Trento. Insegna a Trento. filosofia delle scienze sociali,logica delle norme. Socialista. Tiene posizioni di aperto contrasto col cattolicismo. Al centro di polemiche anche con i vertici del GOI, B. decide di dimettersi dalla carica di Gran maestro al termine della Gran Loggia annuale a Roma alla quale si era presentato dopo aver redatto atto costitutivo e statuto di una nuova Obbedienza, la Gran Loggia Regolare d'Italia. Al vertice del GOI gli succede Ghinoi.  L’Obbedienza si regge su uno sparuto gruppo di Logge fuoriuscite dal GOI, caratterizzandosi per l'uso esclusivo del rito inglese Emulation. Otto anni dopo la fondazione, viene espulso dalla GLRI; gli succede alla guida dell'Obbedienza Venzi. Quindi avvia un nuovo progetto di un ordine paramassonico, denominato Dignity Order, che tuttavia non è un'Obbedienza regolare. Pur dichiarando di essere fuoriuscito dalla Massoneria, Di Bernardo da anni si presta a rilasciare interviste e dichiarazioni sull'argomento sia a giornalisti che ad organi inquirenti. Nel  ha polemizzato con il GOI dopo aver reso una dichiarazione alla Commissione Antimafia relativa a presunte rivelazioni di Loizzo (vedi ). Il GOI ha annunciato l'intenzione di denunciare Di Bernardo per diffamazione e calunnia. Il lo stesso Di Bernardo annuncia di voler a sua volta querelare il Gran Maestro del GOI Stefano Bisi per diffamazione. La querela di B. a carico di Bisi viene archiviata per insussistenza.  Aldo Alessandro Mola, Gelli e la P2: fra cronaca e storia, Bastogi Editrice Italiana, unitn.  Il Gran Maestro: chi è B.  Mola.  Pubblicazioni di unitn. Fra tradizione e rinnovamento: la lunga traversata del deserto, GOI.   Aldo A. Mola,  801 e ss.  Mola, Di Bernardo fonda la nuova la tradizione iniziatica italica, logica dei sistemi normativi, normativa sociale, l’implicatura del massone, psicologia filosofica, Homo sapiens sapiens. Grice: Giuliano, la tradizione iniziatica italiana è più un labirinto filosofico o una cena tra amici che non si ricordano mai dove hanno messo il grembiule? Di Bernardo: Grice, direi che è come una riunione di loggia dove tutti discutono se servire il caffè con o senza zucchero e alla fine si decide per il rito inglese solo perché nessuno ha portato la moka. Grice: E allora, Giuliano, la filosofia massonica si fa sulle scale tra una querela e una dichiarazione alla Commissione Antimafia, o basta una stretta di mano e si passa oltre? Di Bernardo: Grice, finché c’è implicatura conversazionale, anche le polemiche possono diventare una tradizione: l’importante è non perdere il filo, né quello del grembiule né quello del discorso. Bernardo, Giuliano di (1967). Logica deontica. Trento.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Berneri – Ossia: Grice e Berneri: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- filosofia italiana nel ventennio fascista.  Camillo Berneri (Lodi, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- filosofia italiana nel ventennio fascista. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how an audience reconstructs what a speaker means beyond what is literally said by assuming cooperative rationality (maxims/Cooperative Principle) and treating strategic departures from those norms as evidence for inferable implicatures; on this picture, “reason” is a local, interactional engine that makes indirectness intelligible and accountable. Berneri, by contrast, is best read (as your passage suggests) as a case of filosofia militante, where talk, pamphlet, and polemic are not primarily devices for maximizing cooperative coordination but instruments of struggle against authoritarian control; this shifts the center of gravity from Grice’s micro-rationality of conversational inference to the macro-conditions of who is allowed to speak, under what risks, and with what audiences (the “game” is rigged, so the implicatures become tactical—coded signals, rallying cues, and politically necessary indirections shaped by surveillance, exile, and factional conflict). In that sense, a Grice/Berneri comparison highlights that implicature can be generated not only by polite cooperation but also by constrained adversarial contexts: speakers still rely on shared inferential norms, but the point is often to evade suppression, mobilize solidarity, or expose propaganda rather than to optimize mutual understanding. As for bibliographic anchoring, online catalogues and standard biographies typically cite Berneri’s early anti-fascist output in the early 1920s, including Mussolini, un dittatore (often dated 1922) and his activity in libertarian periodicals; however, the specific imprint “Psicologia d’un dittatore” as a 1922 Milan volume is sometimes given in secondary lists and can vary by catalogue, so if you want maximum precision for your entry it’s worth cross-checking the exact title/year against a national catalogue record (e.g., ICCU/SBN) before fixing the citation. Grice: ‘I like B.; of course we need to know more about his philosophical background and education – he represents the epitome of what Italian philosophers call ‘filosofia militante,’ but then I fought the Hun – so I was militante, too!”. Di padre originario di Ronco, si trasfere a Milano. A Reggio, milita coi scialisti di Reggio Emilia – Mussolini, Psicologia d’un dittatore", Masini, Milano. Comitato Centrale della Federazione Giovanile Socialista reggiana, e dopo aver collaborato all'Avanguardia (organo nazionale della FGS), rassegna le dimissioni dalla FGS, attraverso una lettera ai compagni, avendo maturato convinzioni anarchiche. Sarà colpito dal gesto dei compagni che, nonostante le dimissioni, vorranno che presieda un'ultima riunione della FGS a Reggio, e dal gesto del mentore Prampolini, che lo convocherà per conoscere le ragioni del suo dissenso. Berneri ricorderà sempre "i dolci ricordi del mio catecumenato socialista". Si trasfere ad Arezzo dove frequenta il liceo. Escluso dall’accademia militare di Modena per le sue idee, è inviato al fronte. Ancora in servizio, è confinato a Pianosa in occasione dello sciopero generale. Collabora a periodici libertari. Si laurea a Milano. Insegna a Camerino. Pronta e decisa si manifesta la sua avversione al fascismo e mantene contatti con gl’antifascisti diffondendo il battagliero Non mollare. Molto intensa è  l'attività nell'unione anarchica. Inaspritasi la dittatura fascista,  s’espatria in Francia. Gremmo, Bombe, soldi e anarchia: l'affare B. e la tragedia dei libertari. Guidi, "Nostra patria è il mondo intero". B. e "Guerra di Classe" a Barcellona, pubblicato dall'autore, Milano. Berti, Sacchetti, Un libertario in Europa. B.i: fra totalitarismi e democrazia. Atti del convegno di studi storici, Chessa, B., Lo spionaggio fascista all'estero, Fedel (e prefazione di Franzinelli), Comandante Libero, Socialismo socialista libertario. Abolizione ed estinzione dello stato, Anarchismo e federalismo. Anarchici Assassinati con arma da fuoco Vittime di dittature comuniste. normalizazzione, delirio racista. Grice: Camillo, la filosofia italiana nel ventennio fascista era davvero una partita di calcio o più una partita di scacchi con la pedina anarchica fuori dal tabellone? Berneri: Caro Grice, se il fascismo voleva giocare a scacchi, io preferivo la dama: niente regole fisse, ogni mossa è battaglia, ma la filosofia non si lascia confinare, nemmeno sulla casella nera. Grice: E Mussolini, allora, era più un arbitro che fischia a caso o un portiere che si dimentica di difendere la porta? Berneri: Direi, Grice, che Mussolini puntava più a tirare il pallone fuori dallo stadio! Ma tra uno sciopero e una fuga in Francia, la partita si è fatta mondiale e la filosofia – la vera militante – ha trovato sempre il modo di segnare, anche senza reti. Berneri, Camillo (1922). Psicologia d’un dittatore. Milano, Lombardia.  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Berti – Ossia: Grice e Berti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura della morte di Cicerone.  Enrico Berti (Valeggio sul Mincio, Verona, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura della morte di Cicerone. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers infer what a speaker means beyond what is said by presuming cooperative rationality and deriving conversational implicatures from context and expectations (so the “reason” in conversation is a practical inferential discipline keyed to speaker-intentions and maxims), whereas Enrico Berti’s central preoccupation is not the micro-pragmatics of everyday implicature but the rationality proper to philosophical discourse as dialectic and rhetoric in the Aristotelian lineage: a form of reason that is not reducible to scientific method but works through debate, objection, and argumentative testing aimed at truth (hence his recurring emphasis on dialectic, contradiction, and the “ways of reason”). Put comparatively, Grice gives a model of how conversation, at the level of ordinary exchanges, is norm-governed so that indirectness is intelligible and controllable; Berti gives a model of how philosophical reasoning itself is dialogical (Socratic/Aristotelian) and therefore conversational in a thicker sense, where what counts as “rational” is tied to publicly assessable argument-forms, the management of aporiai, and the disciplined handling of opposition rather than to implicature-calculation as such. Online reference points that sharpen the Berti side of the comparison include Treccani’s account of Berti’s work on “dialettica” and on the distinction between philosophical and scientific rationality (e.g., Ragione filosofica e ragione scientifica nel pensiero moderno, 1977; Le vie della ragione, 1987) and bibliographies noting his early publication stream beginning in 1959 (including an article version of L’interpretazione neoumanistica della filosofia presocratica in Studia Patavina 6/2, 1959, pp. 225–259), which fits your passage’s picture of Berti as an Aristotelian “cartographer” of dialectical reason—one who would naturally recast “the death of Cicero” not as the end of talk but as a reminder that philosophical meaning lives by the continuation of disciplined dialogue. Grice: “I like B.; of course he has philosophised on the only two philosophers worth philosophising about Plato and Aristotle – his interest is in the ‘number idea’ in Plato, the unity in Aristotle, and various other things – notably Socratic dialectic as the basis for both! I also love his courtesy: cf. Sir Peter, “Introduction to logical theory,” versus the gentle “Un invito alla filosofia,” – for philosophy needs to be invited to, rather than intro- and extro-ducted to and fro’!” Si laurea a Padova sotto GENTILE. Insegna a Perugia e di storia della filosofia nella stessa Università.  Si trasferisce all'Padova, dove insegna storia della filosofia. È poi docente anche nelle Ginevra, di Bruxelles, Interessato particolarmente al lizio, ne ha intravisto le tracce nella metafisica, nell'etica e nella politica in particolar modo pel problema della contraddizione e la dialettica. S’inserisce nel dibattuto sul del rapporto filosofia/scienza, e fonda la filosofia su una razionalità non rapportabile a quella scientifica, ma piuttosto alla dialettica e alla retorica. S’interessa a riproporre unaa metafisica, in una concezione umile o povera come consapevolezza della problematicità, e dell'insufficienza, dell'esperienza, considerata nella sua totalità.  L'interpretazione neo-umanistica della filosofia itala Crotone,  la porta di Velia; accademia e lizio 'unità del sapere; contraddizione la dialettica della struttura originaria, Bontadini; struttura del discorso; dalla dialettica alla filosofia prima, Ragione scientifica e ragione filosofica, Le vie della ragione Le ragioni del lizio Storia della filosofia lizio metafisica, In principio era la meraviglia. grandi questioni della filosofia, Il Sumphilosophein Invito alla filosofia, La ricerca della verità in filosofia, dialogo satirico, un "falso d'autore" attribuito ad Aristotele, Eubulo o della ricchezza: dialogo perduto contro i governanti ricchi. dei Lincei VELIA VELINO Melisso GIRGENTI, LEONZIO, Gorgia, ROMA PORTICO ORTO Lucrezio Accademia  ANTONINO res publica il bene buono bello filosofia politica. G.: “Presocratica,” then. There is a barbarity for you. S.: You object already? G.: Deeply. It is a Germanic future tense disguised as a historical label. S.: You mean Vorsokratiker. G.: Precisely. “Before Socrates,” as if Parmenides in Elea spent his afternoons anxiously awaiting the arrival of an Athenian moral nuisance. S.: He might have. Great men cast long shadows backwards. G.: Only in very bad historiography. S.: But the label is useful. G.: So is influenza, in forcing people to stay at home. Usefulness is not innocence. S.: Then why does Berti use presocratica in 1959? G.: Because by 1959 the label had acquired scholarly respectability, and because Italy, having imported enough German classifications, occasionally forgot to inspect their metaphysical luggage. S.: Anti-Teutonic again. G.: Always where deserved. S.: Yet you do not deny the class of thinkers. G.: Of course not. I deny the absurdity of defining them by what comes after rather than by what they were doing. S.: You prefer what? Archaic Greek philosophy? Itala sapienza? Men from hot places thinking in fragments? G.: Better all of those than a term that makes Socrates the teleological centre of men who never met him and often lived inconveniently far away. S.: Elea, Crotone, Acragas, Miletus, Ephesus. G.: Exactly. South of the Tiber if one wants the Italian geography of imagination, and east of Athens if one wants the Greek reality of it. S.: So Berti, born in the Veneto, ought not to care. G.: On the contrary. Italians care very much for philosophers who happened to have done their best work in what later became Italy. Elea and Crotone are an irresistible temptation. S.: National annexation by metaphysics. G.: A noble vice. S.: But why would a Venetian or Veronese mind care about Magna Graecia? G.: Because Italian philosophy has always had the vice of treating the peninsula as retrospectively unified by thought, even when it was, at the time, gloriously disunited by politics. S.: Rather like Oxford treating all before 1066 as a mere preface to William. G.: Splendid. Yes. Go to the Tower of London and you get pre-William and post-William. You do not get the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy as lived reality. S.: So “presocratic” is like “pre-William.” G.: Exactly my complaint. A label structured by posterity’s favourite rupture. S.: The Romans did better? G.: Much. Ab urbe condita looks backward to a founding act, not forward to a saviour. S.: Unless the saviour builds the city. G.: Do not complicate my Roman nostalgia. S.: Too late. But back to Berti. “L’interpretazione umanistica della filosofia presocratica.” What is that opposing? An anti-humanistic interpretation? G.: In effect, yes. Or at least a scientistic, philological, doctrinal, or metaphysical reduction that forgets the human stakes of those early thinkers. S.: Human stakes in Parmenides? G.: Certainly. To ask what is, what can be thought, what can be said—those are not geological questions. S.: They may feel geological. G.: Only in German seminars. S.: And Berti in 1959 is resisting that? G.: I think so. He is already looking for a way to make ancient philosophy philosophically alive without merely turning it into source-criticism or doxographical archaeology. S.: Yet he ends up mostly with Plato and Aristotle. G.: As any sensible man does at Oxford. S.: There you are. Oxford is all Plato and Aristotle. G.: More or less. Plato, if you are literary and metaphysical; Aristotle, if you are logical and hopeful. S.: And the pre-socratics? G.: An occasional garnish. Enough Heraclitus to make one sound deep, enough Parmenides to make one sound severe, and enough Zeno to inconvenience undergraduates. S.: That is unfair. G.: It is exact. S.: You mean one could get through Oxford learning Republic, Sophist, Theaetetus, Categories, De Interpretatione, bits of Ethics and De Anima, and scarcely meet Empedocles? G.: One could do so comfortably. S.: Why? G.: Because Oxford is suspicious of fragments. Fragments encourage atmosphere, and atmosphere leads to Germans. S.: Kranz and Diels, you mean. G.: Diels and Kranz, yes. Not Kranza and Deller, however much your memory wishes to continentalise them. S.: Diels-Kranz then. Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. G.: The very title is a machine for making scraps look canonical. S.: But they are canonical. G.: Canonical scraps, yes. Which is not quite the same as a curriculum. S.: You dislike the word “fragment.” G.: No, I dislike what scholars do with it. A fragment is a survival. It is not a licence for inflation. S.: Yet Heidegger inflated them magnificently. G.: Heidegger could inflate a preposition. S.: And Aristotle, as you say, “goes crazy” about them in the Metaphysics. G.: Aristotle cannot leave his predecessors alone. He domesticates them by criticism. S.: Which is useful. G.: Very. But it also means that even when Oxford thinks it is teaching Aristotle, it is smuggling in the pre-socratics through Aristotle’s grievances. S.: So the pre-socratics survive as Aristotle’s enemies. G.: Or as his necessary ancestors, which is another version of the same impoliteness. S.: And Socrates himself? G.: Curiously under-described as a philosopher of his own right in Oxford, because by the time you get him, you are already reading him through Plato or as the prelude to Plato. S.: So “presocratic” is doubly unfair. It makes Socrates central and effaces Socrates himself. G.: Very good. You are almost a historian of philosophy. S.: Heaven forbid. G.: Indeed. At Oxford, if you focus too much on Plato or Aristotle, you cease to be called a philosopher and begin to be called a historian of philosophy. S.: Not Berti, though. G.: Not Berti, because he is one of those Italians who manage the old trick: to read the history of philosophy philosophically. S.: Which Oxford finds vaguely suspect. G.: Unless done by someone already dead. S.: Then why “umanistica”? G.: Because he wants to reclaim those early thinkers from interpretations that make them either primitive scientists, cryptic theologians, or museum exhibits in ontology. S.: Primitive science is the usual schoolbook line. G.: Yes, “from myth to reason,” as if Anaximander were an overachieving weather clerk. S.: And Berti resists that. G.: I think he resists the flattening. “Humanistic” suggests that these thinkers are engaged in total questions of existence, order, speech, justice, measure, community. S.: Pythagoras and community, certainly. Rather too certainly. G.: Quite. The danger with Pythagoras is that one ends up with beans, harmony, and police. S.: Crotone was not Oxford, then. G.: No, though both believed in discipline and strange diets. S.: And Elea? G.: Elea has the incomparable advantage of having Parmenides and Zeno in one place, which makes it metaphysically over-endowed. S.: Yet they go to Athens. G.: Zeno certainly enters the Athenian orbit, and Parmenides through Plato’s imagination is made to do so too. That is the bridge Berti no doubt finds important: south Italian origins, Athenian transmission, later canonical digestion. S.: So the “presocratics” are not really outside Plato’s world. G.: No. Plato makes them part of his stage machinery. And Aristotle turns them into his first chapter. S.: Then perhaps the label “presocratic” is just practical. G.: Practical labels are the most dangerous because they are rarely examined. S.: Berti examines it by interpreting them humanistically. G.: Or at least by refusing to let the label define the substance. S.: But is there not something anti-humanistic in the German style? G.: In its worse moments, yes. A tendency to let philological exactitude become a substitute for philosophical tact. S.: And Diels-Kranz is guilty of that? G.: Not guilty, precisely; but conducive. One ends up teaching numbers, fragments, testimonia, and sigla as if philosophy had broken out into cataloguing. S.: Oxford prefers whole dialogues and treatises. G.: Exactly. One can teach Republic and know where one is. One can teach Categories and terrify the young. One can teach De Interpretatione and pretend the whole of language begins with apophansis. S.: And Nicomachean Ethics. G.: To reassure the morally serious. S.: And De Anima. G.: To reassure the physiologically anxious. S.: Whereas Melissus gives one little pedagogical shelter. G.: Melissus gives one magnificent boredom, which is not quite the same thing. S.: Cruel again. G.: He is best in small quantities. S.: So Berti’s 1959 move is almost anti-Oxonian. G.: In the choice of topic, yes. In the manner of handling it, perhaps not. He is too dialectical, too Aristotelian, too philosophically serious to be merely a collector of fragments. S.: Yet he was under Gentile, you say. G.: Which is another Italian complication. One can come through the residue of idealism and still end up doing Aristotle with uncommon sobriety. S.: That sounds like a compliment. G.: It is. S.: Then tell me why Oxford never quite let the Vorsokratiker catch on. G.: Because the German package arrived with too much apparatus and not enough tutorial convenience. S.: Tutorial convenience as criterion of truth. G.: Of curriculum, certainly. S.: One cannot easily assign a weekly essay on fragments 8, 16, and 22 of Empedocles without producing tears. G.: Exactly. Whereas “Discuss the divided line” or “Can the categories be exhaustive?” at least gives the pupil something solid to misunderstand. S.: So the pre-socratics are pedagogically awkward. G.: And institutionally homeless. Too early for classicists who prefer language, too speculative for historians, too fragmentary for the ordinary philosophy tutor, and too German for comfort. S.: That is a fine cluster of disadvantages. G.: Which is why Berti’s interest is interesting. S.: You approve of him for making them philosophical again? G.: I do. Even if I dislike the title he inherited. S.: “Presocratica” still offends. G.: It always will. It is history as if narrated by the victors’ index. S.: Then what would you call them? G.: Early Greek philosophy, if sober. Archaic Greek thought, if broad. Italic-Aegean beginnings, if feeling expansive. Anything but a label whose whole structure depends on a man not yet alive to them. S.: You are very severe on futurity. G.: Only in nomenclature. Teleology is one thing; stationery another. S.: And the anti-Teutonic sentiment? G.: Entirely healthy in moderate doses. One must occasionally remind scholars that a title like Fragmente der Vorsokratiker is not the voice of Being but the voice of a Berlin publisher. S.: That is excellent. G.: Thank you. S.: So if Berti writes “interpretazione umanistica,” he is not sentimentalising but rescuing. G.: That is the charitable reading, and I think the right one. S.: From anti-humanistic readings? G.: From reductive ones. Making them mere physicists, mere source-material, mere preludes, mere stepping stones. S.: Which is what “presocratic” already tempts one to do. G.: Exactly. The title contains the danger the essay may be trying to cure. S.: Then the punchline is that Berti uses a bad label to correct the bad habits the label encourages. G.: Yes. A thoroughly philosophical manoeuvre: accept the inherited nonsense, then think against it.Grice: Enrico, la morte di Cicerone è davvero la fine del dialogo, o solo l’inizio di una nuova implicatura? Berti: Caro Grice, forse è come Platone e Aristotele al bar: si discute dell’unità e poi arriva la dialettica a chiedere il conto. Grice: Ah, la filosofia deve essere invitata, non spinta a prendere il caffè freddo. Sir Peter avrebbe scritto “Introduzione alla logica”, ma io preferisco “Un invito alla filosofia”, con pasticcini. Berti: Ecco, Grice, alla fine tra la meraviglia e la contraddizione, resta solo la consapevolezza che il discorso non si chiude mai—neanche quando arriva la morte di Cicerone. Berti, Enrico (1959). L’interpretatzione umanistica della filosofia presocratica. Padova. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bertinaria – Ossia: Grice e Bertinaria: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana. Francesco Bertinaria (Genova, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers move from what is said to what is meant by assuming cooperative rationality and deriving conversational implicatures as disciplined, context-sensitive inferences (often prompted when an utterance looks under-informative, off-topic, or otherwise strategically indirect), whereas Bertinaria, as your passage presents him, is not building a micro-pragmatics of inference but a cartography of Italian philosophy in which indole and vicende name the historically shaped dispositions, cultural temper, and intellectual trajectories that determine what Italian thinkers are even trying to do when they “philosophize.” Set against Grice, Bertinaria’s “conversational reason” would be less about maxims and calculability and more about the background-horizon that makes certain implicatures natural within a tradition: what gets left unsaid because it is supplied by shared civil, religious, and metaphysical inheritances (Vico/Romagnosi, Portico/Orto, eclecticism à la Cicero), so that the logic of implication is mediated by a national-philosophical style before it becomes a local conversational move. Online bibliographic records sharpen the specifics: Bertinaria (1816–1892) published Sull’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana with Giuseppe Pomba in Turin in 1846 (available in full via Google Books/Internet Archive; later reissued 1866), and his surrounding works include the 1846 Antologia italiana article Concetto della filosofia e delle scienze inchiuse nel dominio di essa and later Torino/Genova university appointments (chair of Filosofia della storia at Torino in 1860, then Genova in 1865); those details reinforce the contrast that, where Grice theorizes the rational machinery inside a single exchange, Bertinaria theorizes the longue durée preconditions—historical, institutional, and temperamental—within which any Italian exchange becomes intelligible and within which certain implicatures feel like “common culture” rather than inference. Grice: “I would call Italian surnames colourful – as Chumley is colourful! B’s surname likely comes from the Italian given name Bertino. I like B.; he is, like me a philosophical cartographer – in his case, of ‘filosofia italiana’ for which he has identified ‘indole’ e this or that ‘vicenda,’ – now J. L. Austin once remarked that ‘sake’ has no denotatum – but ‘vicem’ does!” Studia a Pisa. Insegna a TorinoLa filosofia italiana Compendio di storia della filosofia Discorso sull'indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana Concetto della filosofia e delle scienze inchiuse nel dominio di essa, «Antologia italiana»”; “Disegno di una storia delle scienze filosofiche in Italia dal Risorgimento delle lettere sin oggi, Antologia italiana», “Concetto scientifico della storia, Prospetto dell'insegnamento della filosofia della storia” (Stamperia dell'unione tipografico editrice, Torino); “Della teoria poetica e dell'epopea latina, Torino); filosofia della storia, filosofia del diritto biologia e sociologia, La storia della filosofia e la filosofia della storia” «Riv. cont.», Estr.: Baglione, Torino); “Sulla formola esprimente il nuovo principio dell'enciclopedia” «Riv. cont.»,Il positivismo e la metafisica” «Riv. cont.»,  Estr.: Negro, Torino); “Scienza, Arte e Religione, «Gerdil» Dell'origine, progresso e condizione presente della filosofia civile, Riv. la funzione ontologica della rappresentazione ideale; “Concetto del mondo civile universale, evoluzione e il trascendentale lo stato l'incivilimento la civiltà nativa di VICO e ROMAGNOSI psicologia fisica ed iperfisica antagonismo sociale la critica esaminato e il trascendente, l'assoluto l’esoterico, SERBATI Ercole Rovere NERONE, ANTONINO Eis éautóv. ha carattere di dolcezza e pietà; abbraccia la morale del portico. Che se questi romani dell’orto e il portico asi mantennero fedeli ad un solo sistema, CICERONE  da esempio d’un eclettismo: nella morale prefere il sistema del portico, nella teoretica l'accademia, accettandovi anche l'orto e il lizio. Grice determinazione dell’assoluto. Grice: Francesco, cartografo filosofico, l’indole italiana è più dolce o più epica? Qui a Oxford, il massimo che tracciamo sono percorsi tra biblioteche e pub. Bertinaria: Grice, la mappa italiana va dalla pietà del portico alla moralità dell’orto, ma ogni tanto ci fermiamo in una piazza per discutere se il trascendente può ordinare un caffè macchiato. Grice: E il principio assoluto, allora, lo troviamo tra le enciclopedie o tra le chiacchiere di Vico e Romagnosi? Bertinaria: Dipende, Grice: se la filosofia si fa storia, ogni vicenda diventa una strada italiana—ma quando si chiude il portico, resta solo la dolcezza della conversazione, che in fondo è la vera metafisica. Bertinaria, Francesco (1850). Discorso sull’indole e le vicende della filosofia italiana. Torino: Antologia Italiana

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Bertini – Ossia: Grice e Bertini: Giovanni Maria Bertini (Pancalieri, Piemonte). Studia sotto Rayneri at Carmagnola. G.: Let us begin, S., where continental philosophy so often begins: not with a university chair, but with a liceo professore di filosofia. S.: A type unknown to the English imagination, or known only as something faintly improper. Oxford likes to believe philosophy descends on the young from the clouds of Greats after they have had enough Greek to deserve it. G.: Whereas in Piedmont it appears to arrive in adolescence embodied in a man with a timetable, a black coat, and a doctrine. S.: Precisely. Bertini has Rayneri at Carmagnola before he has Ornato, and before he has Turin. That sequence matters. G.: Because Rayneri gives philosophy before Ornato gives style. S.: Better: Rayneri gives philosophy before Ornato gives a second birth in Plato and Jacobi. G.: And Greek? S.: Greek is there early too, which is what makes Bertini so characteristic. Before the philosophical conversion ripens, there is already rhetoric, Greek study, the old humanistic preparation. That is the continental trick: classics and philosophy are not enemies, nor even departments; they are phases of the same formation. G.: Unlike Oxford, where classics is respectable and philosophy is what happens if you stay too long in the room. S.: Or if you are not careful with Aristotle. G.: So Rayneri first. What had he given Bertini? S.: Not, so far as we can securely see, a shelf full of books in Bertini’s school years. Rayneri’s importance seems initially oral and pedagogic. That is the point worth insisting on. The first philosophical imprint is not bibliographical but personal. G.: Which makes him parallel to Ferri for Carlo Cantoni. S.: Exactly. Ferri at Casale Monferrato for Carlo Cantoni, Rayneri at Carmagnola for Bertini: in both cases the decisive force is the liceo teacher before the university professor. G.: That is already a major difference from the Oxonian myth, where school may teach Latin and Greek, but philosophy itself is not supposed to have happened yet. S.: Yes. Grice can later say he got rationalism from his father, or from habits of mind, or from the machinery of Literae Humaniores. But the idea that a school “professor of philosophy” had already planted the matter in him at fifteen would sound almost continental to the point of infection. G.: And then Bertini’s first attested publication is already a necrology. S.: Necrologia Ornato, 1842, in L’Eridano. A young man of twenty-three or twenty-four, writing not merely on a corpse, but on a source. G.: Because Ornato is not just dead matter for him. S.: Not at all. Ornato is post-laurea friendship, influence, and transmission. The necrology is not accidental memorialism. It is, as one might say, filial philosophy in print. G.: You are sentimental today. S.: Only structurally. The chronology compels it. Bertini studies philosophy under Rayneri before Turin. He takes his laurea young, before twenty-one. After the laurea he becomes close to Ornato. Then comes the Platonic-Jacobian turn. G.: Let us keep those stages clean. Pre-Ornato philosophy is Rayneri. Post-laurea deepening is Ornato. S.: Precisely. And one must not falsify the “after his laurea he became Ornato’s friend” formula into “therefore they first met after the laurea.” G.: Because they may well have known of each other earlier, especially in that Piedmontese corridor. S.: Yes, but what is attested is friendship and strong influence after the degree, not first encounter. G.: Good. Now, what happens to the young Bertini after the necrology? S.: He expands. And that is one of the most interesting things about him. The early publication record is not a narrow philosophical apprenticeship. It already includes obituary writing, Gioberti, education, then by 1855 Plato and Aristotle in Rivista contemporanea. G.: So the publication list itself stages an enlargement. S.: Quite. Let us rehearse it. Earliest attested piece: the 1842 Necrologia Ornato in L’Eridano. Then a Giobertian-catholic piece in 1847. Then Della gratuita educazione del popolo in 1848. Then in 1855 the Saggio sul Fedro di Platone and the review of Bonghi’s Metafisica di Aristotele in Rivista contemporanea. G.: It sounds almost too neat: first memorial philosophy, then national-intellectual polemic, then pedagogy, then Plato and Aristotle. S.: The life of a provincial intellectual in print, yes. Provincial in the honorable nineteenth-century sense: deeply local, but not small. G.: Let us pause over provincial. Oxford likes to universalise itself by capital letter. The University, The Schools, The Press, The Chair. Everything else becomes either “provincial” or “redbrick” or some moor with a syllabus. S.: And yet here in Piemonte and Lombardia the so-called provincial institutions are doing the actual work of formation. Carmagnola, Casale Monferrato, Turin, later Pavia and Milan. Philosophy is not waiting for London to notice it. G.: Or for Oxford to approve it. S.: Quite. Which is why the Piedmontese line is so revealing. Rayneri at the liceo, Ornato as post-laurea inspirer, Bertini at Turin, then Carlo Cantoni under Bertini, after Ferri at Casale. One could draw it like a genealogy, except that genealogies flatter blood and this is all pedagogy. G.: And in the middle of it Jacobi suddenly appears, to the alarm of any English classicist. S.: Quite rightly. For in Oxford one may know Jacobi as a name in the history of ideas, but not as a living mediator of Plato. G.: Whereas Ornato seems to have made precisely that transmission. S.: Yes. Ornato is not merely “also interested in Jacobi.” He appears to have been strongly influenced by Jacobi, to have translated Jacobi in manuscript, and to have held Plato and Jacobi together in a single spiritual-philosophical orientation. G.: Which he then passes to Bertini. S.: Exactly. That is why the phrase “Plato and Jacobi” in Bertini’s formation is not a casual list. It is a coupled inheritance. G.: And the years? S.: Late 1830s into 1842, essentially. Ornato dies in 1842. Bertini is still very young. So the friendship and influence are compressed into a narrow but formative interval. G.: Narrow intervals often do the longest work. S.: That is why schools matter more than universities psychologically. The university can refine; the school can imprint. G.: Then Bertini becomes, in effect, for Carlo Cantoni, what Rayneri had been for him: a philosophical presence institutionalised. S.: Yes, though with a difference. Bertini is at the university, not the liceo, in Carlo Cantoni’s case. The exact structural parallel is Rayneri to Bertini, Ferri to Carlo Cantoni. But Bertini still represents the same continental pattern of person-centered transmission. G.: And now to the divergence from Oxford. S.: Gladly. Oxford likes to narrate education as if philosophy appeared only after sufficient exposure to Greek particles and Latin periods. The schoolmaster is formative, yes, but not “in philosophy” in the continental mode. G.: Clifton gives you discipline, classics, perhaps a sense of tone. It does not usually give you a professore di filosofia who later reappears behind your thesis title. S.: Exactly. Whereas in Carmagnola and Casale the philosophical teacher is already there, and is not merely preparing one for the university, but shaping one’s conceptual habits before one arrives. G.: Which may explain why continental philosophy so often looks genealogical and Oxonian philosophy so often looks like a discovery one has made oneself. S.: Very good. Oxford cultivates the illusion of autonomous arrival. The Continent is often more honest about influence. G.: Back to Bertini’s works. How shall we characterise their enlargement? S.: He begins under the sign of influence, but he does not remain there. The Necrologia on Ornato is a memorial gesture, but already a philosophical one. The later pieces show widening concern: religious-philosophical polemic, public education, Plato, Aristotle, and eventually the history of philosophy as an academic field. G.: So not just a Platonist. S.: No, though Plato remains a privileged pole. What expands is the frame. Bertini moves from formative influence toward institutional synthesis. He becomes, eventually, a university professor of history of philosophy. G.: And that title itself is revealing. History of philosophy is not merely philosophy with footnotes; it is a way of making the whole past available as material for formation. S.: Exactly. And that too differs from certain Oxonian habits, where history of philosophy may be tolerated as a respectable annex but not always felt as the living bloodstream of philosophical education. G.: Unless the dead philosopher happens to speak excellent Greek. S.: Or can be translated into ordinary language and made to confess. G.: Which Bertini, being a better European, does not require. S.: He requires Greek, Jacobi, Ornato, Rayneri, and then the university machinery of Turin. G.: Let us mention Turin properly. Pre-Ornato, Bertini has already moved from Pancalieri to Carmagnola, studied rhetoric, begun Greek privately, studied philosophy under Rayneri, won the Collegio delle Province competition, and gone to Turin for letters. S.: Yes. So by the time Ornato becomes a major influence, the young Bertini is not a blank slate. The philosophical disposition is already there; Ornato does not create it ex nihilo. G.: He redirects it. S.: Or deepens it. Rayneri gives early philosophical form, likely Rosminian and pedagogic. Ornato gives the Platonic-Jacobian inflection and a more elective philosophical friendship. G.: Then the early publications bear the marks of both breadth and piety. S.: Piety in the large sense, yes. A necrology, an educational piece, a Giobertian essay, Platonic and Aristotelian studies. These are not yet the publications of a narrow specialist; they are the publications of a man forming himself publicly. G.: Publicly, but in journals with names like L’Eridano. S.: Which is one of the glories of the thing. The Po under a classical title, Turin in learned local dress, and a young philosopher entering print through a review whose name already provincialises the universal and universalises the provincial. G.: Oxford would have called it “The Journal” and left everyone else to infer which one. S.: Exactly. Oxford’s localism masquerades as universality. Piedmont’s universality often arrives under a local sign. G.: And then Carlo Cantoni later enters through Bertini into Jouffroy. S.: Yes, and there the line acquires a new French-facing turn. Ferri at Casale awakens the vocation, Bertini at Turin supervises the thesis on Jouffroy, and the old anti-psychologistic Kantian future begins to germinate. G.: Which means Bertini is both heir and transmitter. S.: That is his real importance. He stands midway in a chain: Rayneri to Bertini, Ornato to Bertini, Bertini to Carlo Cantoni. G.: A school philosopher, a grecist-Jacobian, a university mediator, and then the later Kantian. S.: A beautiful chain, and thoroughly un-Oxonian in its candid reliance on teachers. G.: You mean Oxford has teachers too. S.: Of course. But it likes to pretend they are occasions rather than causes. G.: Whereas Bertini’s life makes causes visible. S.: Yes. The liceo professore di filosofia, the early Greek, the post-laurea friendship, the first necrological publication, the widening print record, the academic chair: the structure is almost embarrassingly legible. G.: Which is why one must resist the temptation to reduce everything to Jacobi or everything to Plato or everything to “the history of philosophy.” S.: Exactly. The growth is layered. Bertini is not converted once; he is formed successively. G.: And perhaps that is the continental lesson. S.: Which one? G.: That philosophy is not born in a vacuum, nor merely in a lecture hall, but in those successive educational forms by which a young man first hears a voice, then reads a language, then buries a master, then reviews a Greek dialogue, then becomes himself the kind of man who can alter another’s future. S.: That is almost too good. G.: It is your line. S.: Then I shall deny it later and claim it was jointly produced. G.: Like a proper Oxonian? S.: No, like a proper Piedmontese with better footnotes.Bertini, Giovanni Maria (1839). Laurea, Torino. 

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betilieno – Ossia: Grice e Betilieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Betilieno. The B. are a family of ancient Rome. Only a few members of this gens are mentioned in Roman writers, all from the early decades of the imperial era. Other B. are known from inscriptions.  The earliest inscriptions of the B. are from Aletrium in Latium, where the architect Lucius B. Varus was active, and Publius B. Hapalus built the town wall. This was likely the town where the B. originated. “B.” belongs to a class of gentilicia formed using the derivative suffix -enus, representing -inus with stems ending in -i. Such names were usually formed from other gentilicia, but occasionally from place names. The chief praenomina of the B. were Publius, Marcus, and Lucius, all of which were amongst the most common names throughout all periods of Roman history. Epigraphy also provides instances of Gaius and Titus, which were also very common. Gaius Betilienus M. f., together with his brother, Marcus, made a donation to Jupiter at Aletrium in Latium, dating between the latter half of the second century and the early first century BC.[3] Marcus Betilienus M. f., together with his brother, Gaius, made a donation to Jupiter at Aletrium.[3] Lucius Betilienus L. f. Varus, an architect who built an aqueduct and several public buildings at Aletrium.[4] Publius Betilienus M. f. Hapalus, one of the municipal duumvirs at Aletrium, built the town wall decreed by the Roman Senate in the years following the outbreak of the Social War in 91 BC.[5] Betiliena T. T. l. Philematio, the freedwoman of two men named Titus B., was buried at Casilinum in Campania, in a tomb dating from the latter half of the first century BC.[6] Betilienus Antiochus, built a shrine at Rome, dating between the late first century BC and the middle of the first century AD, on behalf of the freedman Lucius Caninius Libanus, to honour the latter's patrons and former masters, Lucius Caninius and his wife. Antiochus is also mentioned on a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating between the reign of Augustus and the end of the first century.[7] Publius B. Bassus, triumvir monetalis during the reign of Augustus.[8][1] Gaius B. Sp. f. Silo, built a tomb at Mutina in Cisalpine Gaul, dating from the Augustan period, for himself and his mother, the freedwoman Blaesiena Tertia.[9] Marcus Betilienus Ɔ. l. Tigranes, a freedman buried at Rome, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century.[10] Publius B. Carpus, inurned at Rome, along with Publius Betilienus Cures and Publius Betilienus Primigenius, in a first-century cinerarium also housing the ashes of Nucerinus, his wife, Flavia Zoë, and Pomponia Thallusa.[11] Publius B. Cures, inurned in a first-century cinerarium at Rome, along with Publius Betilienus Carpus, Publius Betilienus Primigenius, and others.[11] Publius Betilienus Primigenius, inurned in a first-century cinerarium at Rome, along with Publius Betilienus Carpus, Publius Betilienus Cures, and others.[11] Publius Betilienus Eu[...], buried in a first-century tomb at Antium in Latium.[12] (Betilienus) Capito, father of the B. Bassus whom Caligula had put to death in AD 40, was ordered to witness the execution, and when he asked to be permitted to close his eyes, the emperor ordered his death as well. Capito endeavoured in vain to save himself by falsely accusing others of comspiring against the emperor, but his claims grew so outlandish that they were disbelieved, though they led Caligula to imagine that he was surrounded by plotters, and thus hastened his downfall.[13] Betilienus Bassus, whom Cassius Dio calls "Cassius Betillinus", perhaps the grandson of the moneyer Bassus, was a quaestor serving the emperor Caligula. He was tortured and put to death by order of the emperor in AD 40.[14][13][1] Betilienus Anthus, one of the Decurions at Sora in Latium, named in an inscription dating from AD 83.[15] Publius Betilienus Synegdemus, probably a freedman, built a tomb at Portus in Latium for his friend, Lucius Sittius Crescens, dating from the reign of Trajan. Synegdemus himself was later buried at Portus in a family sepulchre built by his wife, Betiliena Antiochis, who was subsequently inurned there by Marcus Cosconius Hyginus.[16] Betiliena Antiochis, the wife of Publius Betilienus Synegdemus, was probably a freedwoman. She built a sepulchre at Portus for her husband and family, dating from the reign of Trajan, and was subsequently inurned there by Marcus Cosconius Hyginus.[16] Undated Betilieni Betilienus, named in an inscription from Sicily.[17] Marcus Betilienus, the owner of a pottery, where slaves named Aeneas, Luc(rio?), Mar(cipor?), Metr[...], Philippus, and Ruma worked. Their makers' marks have been found on ceramics from, among other places, Brundisium in Calabria, Canusium in Apulia, Hasta in Liguria, Baeterrae in Gallia Narbonensis, Ephesus in Asia, and the sites of modern Faiyum (formerly Crocodilopolis) and Qasrawet in Egypt.[18][19][20][21][22] Betiliena A[...], built a tomb at Rome for Publius Ofellius, perhaps her husband or son, and herself.[23] Publius Betilienus Bassus, a potter whose maker's mark appears on ceramics from Iguvium in Umbria. He could be the same person as the Augustan era moneyer.[24] Marcus Betilienus Chresimus, one of the duumvirs at Praeneste in Latium, according to pottery stamps of uncertain date.[25] Publius Betilienus Chresimus, one of the duumvirs at Praeneste, and evidently the owner of a pottery, according to stamps of uncertain date, found on ceramics from Praeneste and the site of modern Valmontone in Latium.[26] Lucius Betilienus L. l. Eros, a freedman named in an inscription from Ateste in Venetia and Histria.[27] Publius Betilienus Liberalis, named in a bronze inscription from Rome, indicating that he was a Christian.[28] Betiliena Nice, a woman inurned at Rome, aged twenty-six years, nine months, and eight days.[29] See also List of Roman gentes References  William Smith, "Bassus, Betilienus", in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 471.  Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", p. 118.  CIL I, 3105.  CIL X, 5807.  CIL X, 5806.  CIL X, 4043.  CIL VI, 7482, CIL VI, 7581a2.  Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum, v. 150.  AE 1976, 220.  CIL VI, 6946.  CIL VI, 18468.  CIL X, 6698.  Cassius Dio, Roman History, lix. 25.  Seneca the Younger, De Ira, iii. 18.  EE, viii. 1, 892.  Thylander, Inscriptions du port d'Ostie, 45, 46, 232.  AE 1989, 342i.  AE 1993, 499c, AE 1993, 499d, AE 1993, 499e, AE 1993, 384b, AE 2002, 1409c.  CIL I, 2339, CIL I, 3494ab1, CIL I, 3494ab2, CIL I, 3494ab3, CIL I, 3495, CIL I, 3496, CIL I, 3497, CIL I, 3498,1, CIL I, 3498,2, CIL I, 3498,3.  Sammelbuch Griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten, xxvi. 16456,52.  Desy, Les timbres amphoriques de l'Apulia républicaine, 1115.  Grelle and Pani, Le Epigrafi Romane di Canosa, 30.  CIL VI, 23374.  NSA, 2000, 1–104.  CIL XIV, 4091,07.  CIL XIV, 4091,04, CIL XIV, 4091,07, CIL XIV, 4091,23,2.  AE 1997, 630.  CIL XV, 8119.  CIL VI, 13570. Bibliography Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), De Ira (On Anger). Lucius Cassius Dio, Roman History. René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Philippe Desy, Les timbres amphoriques de l'Apulia républicaine. Documents pour une histoire économique et sociale (Amphora Stamps from Republican Apulia: Documents for an Economic and Social History), Oxford (1989). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum (The Study of Ancient Coins, 1792–1798). Francesco Grelle, Mario Pani, Le Epigrafi Romane di Canosa (The Roman Epigraphy of Canusium), Edipuglia, Bari (1985, 1990). Wilhelm Henzen, Ephemeris Epigraphica: Corporis Inscriptionum Latinarum Supplementum (Journal of Inscriptions: Supplement to the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, abbreviated EE), Institute of Roman Archaeology, Rome (1872–1913). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (News of Excavations from Antiquity, abbreviated NSA), Accademia dei Lincei (1876–present). Friedrich Preisigke et alii, Sammelbuch Griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten (Collection of Greek Documents from Egypt), Karl J. Trübner, Strassburg (1915–present). Hilding Thylander, Inscriptions du port d'Ostie (Inscriptions from the Port of Ostia, abbreviated IPOstie), Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae, Lund (1952). Category: Roman gentes For this gens (I) -- you provide the second-best Grice/Speranza fit (II) -- is the one who told Caligula (birth gens name?) -- in, say, 10 conversational moves -- that this and that and th'other is a conspirator to Caligula, to the point that he loses all Griceian credibilit -- why? Input? Feedback? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betilieno – Ossia: Grice e Betilieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Betilieno. This Betilienian is almost certainly the best Grice/Speranza fit in the gens. Why? Because Capito discovers the limits of credibility. At first he possesses information. Then he possesses too much information. And finally he possesses information that nobody believes. Cassius Dio and Seneca preserve the episode in which Caligula orders Capito to witness the execution of his son, Betilienus Bassus. When Capito asks merely to close his eyes, Caligula orders him to die as well. In desperation, Capito begins accusing various people of conspiracy; but the accusations become so extravagant that they cease to be believed, even while increasing Caligula's paranoia. The sources explicitly say that his allegations grew incredible. cite not available from provided passage; derived from the cited Dio and Seneca references in your text only as summarized there.  I. Conversatio: Capito and Caligula Scene Capito has just seen his son condemned.  CALIGVLA (1) “Adesto et mortem filii tui specta.” (Stand here and watch your son's execution.)  CAPITO (2) “Si licet, princeps, oculos claudam.” (If it is permitted, princeps, I shall close my eyes.)  CALIGVLA (3) “Qui videre recusat, mori quoque potest.” (He who refuses to watch may die as well.)  CAPITO (4) “Multos scio qui de te male cogitant.” (I know many who think ill of you.)  CALIGVLA (5) “Quos dicis?” (Whom do you mean?)  CAPITO (6) “Ille, et ille, et multi alii.” (That one, and that one, and many others.)  CALIGVLA (7) “Tot coniurati sunt?” (Are there so many conspirators?)  CAPITO (8) “Plures etiam, si vera audire vis.” (More still, if you wish to hear the truth.)  CALIGVLA (9) “Mirabilia narras.” (You tell astonishing things.)  CAPITO (10) “Sero fit incredibilis qui nimium credi cupit.” (He who wishes too much to be believed becomes unbelievable.)  +> that exaggeration destroys the very credibility on which accusation depends  Why Grice would enjoy this Capito violates what we would call the Maxim of Quality. Not necessarily because he knows his accusations are false, but because:  he produces more accusations than his evidence can support; he speaks under duress; the hearer begins to suspect strategic motivation.  Thus:  the content of each accusation matters less than the collapse of trust in the accuser.  A splendid Gricean lesson:  credibility is not additive.  Ten accusations are not ten times more persuasive than one accusation. Sometimes they are less persuasive.  II. Speranzian contrast  Capito: speech becomes unbelievable through excess. Varus: action becomes meaningful without speech.  Or, more compactly:  Capito nimis dixit; Varus paene nihil dixit, sed opus locutum est. ("Capito said too much; Varus said almost nothing, but the work spoke.").  That would be my ranking:  Capito before Caligula — collapse of credibility. Varus the architect — civic implicature through public works.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betilieno – Ossia: Grice e Betilieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Betilieno. My second-best Betilienian fit I would choose: Lucius Betilienus Varus, the architect of Aletrium Not because architecture is inherently Gricean, but because he built:  an aqueduct, public works, civic infrastructure.  The interesting implicature is Roman and civic: A Roman inscription saying merely:  "Varus built the aqueduct"  implicates much more:  wealth, public spirit, local prestige, municipal ambition.   Mini-vignette CIVIS: “Quid reliquisti posteris, Vare?” (What have you left to posterity, Varus?) VARVS: “Aquam.” (Water.) CIVIS: “Tantum?” (Only that?) VARVS: “Qui aquam dat, civitatem dat.” (He who gives water gives a city.)  +> that public works communicate civic virtue without explicitly claiming it 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betuzio – Ossia: Grice e Betuzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Betuzio. The Betuzi or Betitia, occasionally in Roman writers Betucia or Beticia, are a family from the late Roman Republic to imperial times. It is best known from the orator Titus B. Barrus, much admired by Tullio Cicero, but by the second century its members had attained consular rank. The chief praenomina of the Betutii were Gaius, Lucius, and Marcus, which were the most common of all Roman names. A few of Betutii bore other common praenomina, including Sextus, Publius, Gnaeus, Titus, and Quintus. An early inscription from Bovianum Vetus in Samnium shows that at least one family of Betitii used Manius, while a filiation from the early second century gives an example of Numerius.  The only distinct family of the B. under the Republic bore the surname Barrus, which was in use from at least the late second century BC to the first century AD. During the first century, a family of Betitii from Aeclanum in Samnium came to prominence, bearing the surname Pius, perhaps originally Pietas. This family is still found in the early third century, and perhaps was ancestral to the Betitius Perpetuus of the early fourth century. Betutii Barri Lucius Betucius Barrus, in 113 BC accused the Vestal Virgin Aemilia of breaking her vow of chastity. Aemilia was defended in court by Lucius Licinius Crassus. Titus Betucius Barrus, a native of Asculum in Picenum. Cicero described him as the most eloquent of all orators outside of Rome. He also delivered a famous speech at Rome against Quintus Servilius Caepio, who was slain during the Social War.[2][3][4] Publius Betutius P. f. Barrus, named in a first-century funerary inscription from Peltuinum in Sabinum.[5] Others Gaius Betutius M. f., named as a witness in an inscription from Aquinum in Latium, dating from the latter half of the first century BC or the first half of the first century AD, along with the freedman Publius Alfius Philomusus.[6] Betutia M. l. Privata, a freedwoman, buried at Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis, in a tomb built by her husband, the freedman V[...]ius Anterotis Varus, for himself and his wife, dating from the late first century BC, or the early first century AD.[7] Marcus Betutius C. f., dedicated a tomb at Venusia in Samnium, dating from the first half of the first century, for the freedwoman Flavia Philematio.[8] Manius Betitius, at least one, or possibly several individuals buried along with Betitia Demetria and perhaps another Betitia, in a family sepulchre at Bovianum Vetus in Samnium, dating between the Augustan era and the end of the first century.[9] Betitia Demetria, buried along with one or more persons named Manius Betitius, and perhaps another Betitia, in a family sepulchre at Bovianum Vetus, dating between the Augustan era and the end of the first century.[9] First century Betutius Venustus, named in a sepulchral inscription from Asculum Picenum, dating from the early first century.[10] Betutia Q. l. Fausta, a freedwoman, named along with several other freedmen and women, in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century.[11] Betutia T. l. Festa, a freedwoman named, along with the freedman Titus Betutius Karus and various other freedmen and women, in a sepulchral inscription from Aquileia in Venetia and Histria, dating from the first half of the first century.[12] Betutia Sex. l. Fusca, a freedwoman buried at Aquileia, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century. She may be the same Betutia Fusca who dedicated a tomb to Sextus Betutius Vienna and others.[13] Titus Betutius T. l. Karus, a freedman named, along with the freedwoman Betutia Festa and various other freedmen and women, in a sepulchral inscription from Aquileia, dating from the first half of the first century.[12] Publius Betutius C. f., buried in a first-century tomb at Viola in Liguria, aged thirty-five.[14] Marcus Betutius M. l. Diligens, a freedman named in a first-century inscription from Bergomum in Cisalpine Gaul.[15] Gaius Betitius Eunus, left a legacy in his will that was used to build the first-century tomb of Gaius Vibuleius Gallus.[16] Gaius Betutius Eutychetus, one of the seviri Augustales at Peltuinum, buried in a first-century tomb at Furfo, dedicated by his children, Betutius Maximus and Betutia Maxima.[17] Gaius Betutius Encolpus, made an offering to Mercury, recorded in a first-century inscription from Sirmio in Venetia and Histria.[18] Marcus Betutius M. l. Faustus, a freedman, dedicated a first-century sepulchre at Bergomum for himself and the freedwomen Sophe and Minicia Crocis.[19] Marcus Betutius M. l. Inachus, a freedman, built a first-century tomb at Bergomum for himself and the freedwoman Cornelia Alenda.[20] Betutia C. f. Maxima, along with her brother, Betutius Maximus, dedicated a first-century tomb at Furfo for their father, Gaius Betutius Eutychetus.[17] (Gaius) Betutius C. f. Maximus, along with his sister, Betutia Maxima, dedicated a first-century tomb at Furfo for their father, Gaius Betutius Eutychetus.[17] Betutia Ɔ. l. Quarta, a freedwoman buried at Albingaunum in Liguria, in a first-century tomb built by her son, Publius Granius Hyla, a freedman and one of the sodales Augustales, for himself and his mother.[21] Mania L. f. Betutia Pro[...], named in a first-century inscription as the flaminica, or wife of the flamen of the imperial cult at Ticinum.[22] Gnaeus Betutius Primus, one of the municipal officials at Casilinum in Campania in AD 15.[23] Sextus Betutius Sex. f. Vienna, signifer of the Legio IX Hispana, buried at Aquileia, in a tomb dating from the middle part of the first century, built by his client, the freedwoman Betutia Fusca for herself, her patron Vienna, the freedman Sextus Betutius Secundus, and Marcus Salvius Primus.[24] Betutia Sex. l. Fusca, a freedwoman, dedicated a tomb at Aquileia, dating from the middle part of the first century, for herself and Sextus Betutius Vienna, her patron, her fellow freedman Sextus Betutius Secundus, and her friend, Marcus Salvius Primus.[24] Sextus Betutius Sex. l. Secundus, a freedman, buried at Aquileia, in a tomb dating from the middle part of the first century, built by the freedwoman Betutia Fusca, for herself, Secundus, her patron, Sextus Betutius Vienna, and friend, Marcus Salvius Primus.[24] Lucius Betutius Justus, named in an inscription from Pompeii in Campania.[25] Lucius Betitius Placidus, named on ceramic tiles from Pompeii.[26] Lucius Betutius Q. f. Niger, a soldier in the second cohort of the Praetorian Guard, buried at Pompeii, aged twenty, having served for two years, in a tomb dating between AD 60 and 79.[27] Gaius Betitius C. f. Pietas, prefect of the Cohors I Flavia Commagenorum, a mounted Auxiliary unit, later served as quaestor and one of the municipal duumvirs, probably at Aeclanum in Samnium, where he was buried in a late first- or early second-century tomb, dedicated by his son, Betitius Pius, and wife, Neratia Procilla.[28][29] (Gaius) Betitius C. f. Pius, the son of Gaius Betitius Pietas and Neratia Procilla, together with his mother, dedicated a late first- or early second-century tomb at Aeclanum for his father.[28] Gaius Betitius Secundus, dedicated a tomb at Beneventum in Samnium, dating between the late first century and the middle of the second, for his wife, Neratia Jucunda.[30] Second century Gaius Betutius, buried at Emerita in Lusitania, aged forty, in a second-century tomb built by his mother, Asperinia.[31] Betutia Helias, buried at Aeclanum, in a tomb dedicated by Marcianus, probably her husband.[32] Betitia N. l. Pontina, a freedwoman buried at Aeclanum, in a second-century tomb built by her husband, Quintus.[33] Betutia Procula, along with her father- and mother-in-law, Tamusius Adjutor and Turronia Epictesis, dedicated a second-century tomb at Puteoli in Campania for her husband, Lucius Turronius Adjutor, aged thirty-six years, forty days.[34] Lucius Betutius L. f. Furianus, the centurion primus pilus of the Legio I Italica, became one of the municipal duumvirs at Ariminum in Cisalpine Gaul, and a patron of the colony, as well as serving as curule aedile and flamen of the cult of Nerva during the reign of Trajan.[35][36] Betitia C. [...], donated one hundred pounds of silver for the ornamentation of a structure at Aeclanum, some time between the beginning of the second century, and the early third.[37] Betitia Elegans, the wife of Quintus Julius Castrensis, with whom she built a second- or third-century family sepulchre at Rome.[38] Betutia T. l. Philete, a freedwoman named in an inscription from Patrae in Achaia, dating from the second or third century.[39] Betitius Pius, the owner of slaves named Silva and Callimedons, buried in second- or third-century tombs at Venusia in Samnium. Silva's tomb was built by her fellow slave, Alphius, while Callimedons' was built by his son, Amarantus.[40] Betitia Quintiliana, a young woman buried at Aeclanum, aged sixteen years, ten months, in a second- or third-century tomb built by her grieving father, Betitius Rufinus, for his daughter and her husband, Claudius Justinus.[41] Betitius Rufinus, built a second- or third-century tomb at Aeclanum for his daughter, Betitia Quintiliana, and her husband, Claudius Justinus.[41] Betitius Rufus, built a second- or third-century tomb at Aeclanum for Fannia Erculia, his wife of twenty-six years, two months.[42] Betutia Sertoriana, named in an inscription from Cales in Campania, dating between AD 138 and 140.[43] Betitia C. f. Justa, honored with an inscription by Epaphroditus Herma and other freedmen, by a decree of the Decurions at Aeclanum, dating from the Antonine dynasty.[44] Gnaeus Betutius Proculus, a soldier from Luna in Etruria, serving in the second cohort of the Praetorian Guard at Rome in AD 143, under the centurion Caecilius.[45] Gaius Neratius C. f. C. n. C. pron. C. abn. Proculus Betitius Pius Maximillianus, a man of consular rank, who held a number of other public offices and priesthoods during the mid-second century, recorded in a series of inscriptions from Aeclanum.[46][47] Neratia Betitia Procilla, a flaminica named in an inscription from Aeclanum, dating between AD 147 and 161, mentioning Faustina the Younger.[48] Betitia M[...], ordered a statue for Marcus Mindius be built from the proceeds of her will, according to an inscription from Aeclanum, dating from the latter half of the second century. Evidently related to the Betitia Secunda who was the wife of Marcus Mindius Hirpinus.[49] Betitia C. l. Secunda, a freedwoman, buried at Frequentum in Samnium, in a family sepulchre built by her husband, Marcus Mindius Hirpinus, for Betitia, along with their son, also named Marcus Mindius Hirpinus, and the elder Hirpinus' mother, Julia Restituta.[50] Betitia C. f. Maximilla, buried at Aeclanum, in a tomb built by her husband, Gaius Vibius Hilarius, for himself and his family, dating from the latter half of the second century.[51] Betitius Callistus Isena, built a tomb at Beneventum, dating between the middle of the second and the middle of the third century, for his wife, Satria Vera.[52] Gaius Betitius Derisor, built a tomb at Beneventum, dating between the middle of the second and the middle of the third century, for Peregrina, a slave or freedwoman.[53] Gaius Betitius Honeratus, buried at Aeclanum, in a tomb built by Gaius Critonius Justus, dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third.[54] Gaius Betitius Sextio, together with Betitia Secundina, Betitius Sextio, Betitia Helene, and Betitius Firminus, probably his children, dedicated a tomb at Comum in Cisalpine Gaul, dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third, for his wife, also named Betitia Helene.[55] Betitia Helene, buried at Comum, in a tomb dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third, built by her husband, Gaius Betitius Sextio, together with Betitius Secundina, Betitius Sextio, Betitia Helene, and Betitius Firminus, presumably her children.[55] Betitia (C. f.) Secundina, presumably the daughter of Gaius Betitius Sextio and Betitia Helene. Together with her father and siblings, she built a second- or third-century tomb for her mother at Comum.[55] (Gaius) Betitius (C. f.) Sextio, presumably the son of Gaius Betitius Sextio and Betitia Helene. Together with his father and siblings, he built a second- or third-century tomb for his mother at Comum.[55] Betitia (C. f.) Helene, presumably the daughter of Gaius Betitius Sextio and Betitia Helene. Together with her father and siblings, she built a second- or third-century tomb for her mother at Comum.[55] (Gaius) Betitius (C. f.) Firminus, presumably the son of Gaius Betitius Sextio and Betitia Helene. Together with his father and siblings, he built a second- or third-century tomb for his mother at Comum.[55] Sentia Betutia, dedicated a tomb at Parma in Cisalpine Gaul, dating between AD 160 and 250, for Gaius Ae[...] Pau[...], her husband of fifteen years.[56] Gaius Betitius Sabinus, along with his wife, Ninnia Elpis, dedicated a late second- or third-century tomb at Rome for their son, Ninnius Charito. The inscription is probably forged or modern.[57] Gaius Betitius Maximillianus, consul suffectus in an uncertain year between AD 193 and 211.[46][58] Third century Gaius Betitius Pius, the master of a slave named Felicianus, mentioned in an early third-century inscription from Aequum Tuticum in Samninum.[59] Betitia Pia, the mistress of a slave named Successus, named in a bronze inscription from Aeclanum, dating from the first half of the third century.[60] Gaius Betitius Callianax, buried at Aeclanum, in a third-century tomb built by his wife, Hygia.[61] Gaius Betitius C. f. Pius, probably consul suffectus in an uncertain year before AD 217, is mentioned among the patrons of the city of Canusium in AD 223. His wife is likely the Fuscinilla named along with him in a bronze inscription from Aeclanum dating between AD 221 and 230.[46][62][63] Betitia Plotina, a girl from a senatorial family, named in an early or mid-third century inscription from Beneventum.[64] Fourth century Betitius Perpetuus, thought to be a descendant of Gaius Betitius Pius, was Corrector of Sicily around AD 312 to 314. He was probably the father of Betitius Perpetuus Arzygius.[65][66] Betitia Pullentina, buried at Teanum Sidicinum in Campania, aged forty-six years, four months, and sixteen days, on the fourth day before the Nones of September[i] in an uncertain year between AD 341 and 400, in a Christian tomb built by her husband, Claudius Bassus.[67] Betitia, buried in a Christian tomb at Rome, dating from the latter half of the fourth century, built by her husband, Theoctestus.[68] Faltonia Betitia Proba, the wife of Clodius Celsinus Adelphius, praefectus urbi in AD 351, authored the Cento Vergilianus de Laudibus Christi, which still exists, as well as a poem about the war between Constantius II and Magnentius, which ended in 353. Their sons were Quintus Clodius Hermogenianus Olybrius, consul in 379, and Faltonius Probus Alypius, praefectus urbi in 391.[69][70] Betitius Perpetuus Arzygius, a man of consular rank, mentioned in connection with Etruria and Umbria in AD 366.[71][72] Betitius, buried in a Christian tomb at Aeclanum on a Wednesday in AD 376, or possibly 378.[73] Undated Betutii Betitius, buried in a family sepulchre at Rome.[74] Gaius Betitius, probably the owner of Eutychus, according to an inscription from Lutetia in Gallia Lugdunensis.[75] Lucius Betutius C. f., named in an inscription from the present site of Ceresara, formerly part of Venetia and Histria, along with Sextia Prima and Betutia Tertulla, apparently members of his family.[76] Lucius Betutius L. f., buried at Placentia in Cisalpine Gaul, along with his sons, Lucius Betutius Rufus and Gaius Betutius Salvius, and his daughter-in-law, Cintullia Maxima, in a family sepulchre built by his grandson, Lucius Betutius Tenax.[77] Marcus Betutius L. f., a potter whose maker's mark was found on ceramics from Velleia in Cisalpine Gaul.[78] Statius Betutius, a potter whose maker's mark has been found on ceramics from Baeterrae in Gallia Narbonensis.[79] Marcus Betutius Ametistus, named in a sepulchral inscription from Aquinum, along with the freedwoman Betutia Lexis.[80] Gaius Betutius Bassinus, along with Quintus Betutius Gratinus, made an offering to Mercury at the site of modern Gilly-sur-Isère, formerly part of Gallia Narbonensis.[81] Betutius Encolpus, buried at Rome, in a tomb built by his son, Betutius Fortunatianus.[82] Sextus Betutius Euprepes, dedicated a sepulchre at Ucetia in Gallia Narbonensis for the freedwoman Betutia Olympina and himself.[83] Betutius Fortunatianus, built a tomb at Rome for his father, Betutius Encolpus.[82] Publius Betutius Fortunatus, buried at Rome, in a sepulchre built by his wife, Betutia Urania, for herself and her family.[84] Quintus Betutius Gratinus, along with Gaius Betutius Bassinus, made an offering to Mercury at the site of modern Gilly-sur-Isère.[81] Gaius Betutius Hermes, one of the seviri Augustales at Vicus Augusti in Gallia Narbonensis, had a plaque dedicated to Mars out of the proceeds of his will.[85] Betutius Ingenuus, dedicated a sepulchre at Rome for his wife, Seia Serena, and their family.[86] Betutia Ɔ. l. Lexis, a freedwoman buried at Aquinum, aged six, with an inscription also naming Marcus Betutius Ametistus.[80] Betutia Nereis, dedicated a tomb at Rome for her husband, Gellius Onesimus, and their family.[87] Betutia Olympina, a freedwoman buried at Ucetia, in a sepulchre built by Sextus Betutius Euprepes for himself and Olympina. Betutius Phyr, named in an inscription from Rome.[88] Gaius Betitius Pius, named on a bronze label from an uncertain province.[89] Betutia Polla, dedicated a tomb at Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis for her husband, Sextus Betutius Trypho, and herself.[90] Betutia Prima, built a tomb at Nemausus for herself and her friend, Publius Popilius Victor.[91] Betutia L. f. Procula, a young woman buried at Ravenna in Cisalpine Gaul, aged sixteen years and thirty days, in a tomb built by her parents, Lucius Betutius Proculus and Caesia Victrix.[92] Lucius Betutius Proculus, along with his wife, Caesia Victrix, dedicated a tomb at Ravenna for their daughter, Betutia Procula.[92] Lucius Betutius L. f. L. n. Rufus, buried at Placentia, along with his wife, Cintullia Maxima, father, Lucius Betutius, and brother, Gaius Betutius Salvius, in a family sepulchre built by his son, Lucius Betutius Tenax.[77] Gaius Betutius L. f. L. n. Salvius, buried at Placentia, along with his father, Lucius Betutius, brother, Lucius Betutius Rufus, and sister-in-law, Cintullia Maxima, in a family sepulchre built by his nephew, Lucius Betutius Tenax.[77] Betutius C. f. Satto, a veteran of the Legio VII Gemina, buried at Tarraco in Hispania Citerior, in a tomb built by his friend, Marcus Julius Fidelis.[93] Betutia Secunda, named in an inscription from Narbo, along with persons named Lamponius and Primigenius.[94] Lucius Betutius L. f. L. n. Tenax, built a family sepulchre at Placentia for his parents, Lucius Betutius Rufus and Cintullia Maxima, grandfather, also named Lucius Betutius, and uncle, Gaius Betutius Salvius.[77] Betutia L. f. Tertulla, named in an inscription from the site of modern Ceresara, along with Lucius Betutius and Sextia Prima, apparently members of the same family.[76] Betitia Thisbe, dedicated a tomb at Ausculum in Apulia for a young freedman named Albano, aged seventeen.[95] Sextus Betutius Trypho, buried at Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis, in a tomb built by his wife, Betutia Polla, for herself and her husband.[90] Betutia Urania, dedicated a sepulchre at Rome for her husband, Publius Betutius Fortunatus, and their family.[84] Notes  September 2. See also List of Roman gentes References  "Betitius", in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. V, part 2 (1897), col. 368.  Cicero, Brutus, 46.  William Smith, "Barrus, Titus Betucius", in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 464.  "Betitius", No. 1, in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. V, part 2 (1897), col. 368.  CIL IX, 3455.  CIL X, 5450.  CIL XII, 4484.  AE 2003, 444.  CIL IX, 6690.  AE 2000, 474.  CIL VI, 27838.  Inscriptiones Aquileiae, ii. 1567.  Inscriptiones Aquileiae, ii. 2266.  AE 1990, 362.  AE 1998, 605.  CIL IX, 1324.  CIL IX, 3524.  CIL V, 4025.  AE CIL V, 5151.  CIL V, 7787.  CIL CIL X, 3786.  AE 1988, 583.  CIL IV, 3340,095.  CIL IV, 7284, CIL IV, 9615, CIL IV, 9616.  Hüttemann, Pompejanische Inschriften, 65a.  CIL IX, 1132.  CIL IX, 1231.  CIL IX, 1901.  CIL II, 539.  CIL IX, 1232.  CIL IX, 1235.  CIL X, 3031.  CIL XI, 385, CIL XI, 386, CIL XI, 387.  AE 1945, 29.  CIL IX, 1150.  CIL VI, 18657.  Rizakis, Patras, 88.  CIL IX, 573, AE 1993, 529.  CIL IX, 1236.  CIL IX, 1260.  AE 1985, 277.  CIL IX, 1233.  CIL VI, 2379.  "Betitius", No. 4, in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. V, part 2 (1897), col. 368.  CIL IX, 1121, CIL IX, 1160, CIL IX, 1161.  CIL IX, 1163.  CIL IX, 1149.  CIL IX, 1013.  CIL IX, 1234.  CIL IX, 1954.  AE 2021, 393.  CIL IX, 1071.  CIL V, 5323.  CIL XI, 1107.  CIL VI, 22988.  Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander, pp. 147 ff.  AE 2016, 336.  CIL IX, 6083,141.  AE 2017, 291.  CIL CIL IX, 6083,028.  CIL IX, 1570.  "Perpetuus", No. 1, in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, part 37 (1937), col. 904.  CIL X, 7204.  Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, 1953-227,2.  AE 2019, 106.  "Faltonia Betitia Proba", in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. I, part 1 (1896), col. 2203.  AE 2001, 629.  "Arzygius", in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. II, part 4 (1896), col. 1499.  CIL VI, 1702.  CIL IX, 1362.  CIL VI, 11606.  Duval, Les inscriptions antiques de Paris, appb. 2,6.  CIL V, 4037.  CIL XI, 1241.  CIL XI, 6674,08.  CAG, "Agde et le Bassin de Thau" (2001), p. 325.  CIL X, 5451.  CIL XII, 2339.  CIL VI, 13576.  CIL XII, 2935.  CIL VI, 13577.  CIL XII, 2415.  CIL VI, 26126a.  CIL VI, 13579.  CIL VI, 13578.  CIL CIL XII, 3471.  CIL XII, 3472.  CIL XI, 166.  CIL II-XIV, 1078.  CIL CIL IXBibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Brutus. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). 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). Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana (Journal of Christian Archaeology), Pontificia Commissio de Sacra Archaeologia, Rome (1924–present). La Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Archaeological Map of Gaul, abbreviated CAG), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1931–present). Paul-Marie Duval, Les inscriptions antiques de Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, Paris (1960). Paul M. M. Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander (Consuls and Consulars from the Time of Commodus to Severus Alexander), Verlag Gieben, Amsterdam, (1989). Giovanni Battista Brusin, Inscriptiones Aquileiae (Inscriptions of Aquileia), Udine (1991–1993). Athanasios D. Rizakis, Achaie II. La cité de Patras: Épigraphie et histoire, Centre de Recherche de l'Antiquité grecque et romaine, Athens (1998). Arno Hüttemann, Pompejanische Inschriften, Reclams Universal-Bibliothek, Stuttgart (2010). Category: Roman gentes What would be your choice for a personal B. member of this gens for a Grice-Speranza vignette? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betuzio – Ossia: Grice e Betuzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Betuzio. For the Betutii/Betitii, my choice is actually not the famous orator Barrus—excellent though he is—but:  Lucius Betutius Furianus The primus pilus of the Legio I Italica who later became:  municipal duumvir, curule aedile, patron of the colony, flamen of the cult of Nerva. (As summarized in your passage.)  Why? Because he embodies perhaps the most Roman of all conversational implicatures:  "I was a soldier" +> "I have earned the right to govern civilians."  Nothing in the title primus pilus literally says:  administrator, patron, magistrate, priest.  Yet Roman society continuously drew precisely that inference.  A Grice-Speranza vignette NEPOS: "Avus, miles fuisti an magistratus?" (Grandfather, were you a soldier or a magistrate?) FURIANVS: "Primum pilum gessi." (I held the rank of primus pilus.) NEPOS: "Et postea?" (And afterwards?) FURIANVS: "Postea civitas ipsa mihi credita est." (Afterwards the community itself was entrusted to me.) +> that military excellence implicitly qualified a Roman for civic authority, even though no logical necessity connected the two roles  Why Barrus is still an outstanding alternative Titus Betucius Barrus is the obvious candidate because Cicero praises him as:  the most eloquent orator outside Rome.  What interests me there is not merely eloquence, but geography. Barrus' existence creates a powerful implicature:  "The greatest oratory comes from Rome."  Yet Cicero is forced to acknowledge an exception. A possible vignette: ROMANVS: "Roma sola bonos oratores parit." (Only Rome produces good orators.) BARRVS: "Asculanus sum." (I am from Asculum.) ROMANVS: "Intellego." (I understand.) +> that excellence may arise outside the centre, despite assumptions to the contrary  My ranking  Lucius Betutius Furianus — soldier → civic leader; an implicature-rich Roman career. Titus Betucius Barrus — provincial eloquence overturning Roman cultural assumptions. Gaius Betitius Pietas/Pius — father-son transmission of civic office and moral nomenclature.  In pure Gricean terms, Furianus wins because his whole career rests on an unstated but universally understood Roman inference:  primum pilum gessit; ergo dignus est honoribus.  ("He held the first spear; therefore he is worthy of public honours.")

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betuzio – Ossia: Grice e Betuzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Betuzio. Why Barrus is still an outstanding alternative Titus Betucius Barrus is the obvious candidate because Cicero praises him as:  the most eloquent orator outside Rome.  What interests me there is not merely eloquence, but geography. Barrus' existence creates a powerful implicature:  "The greatest oratory comes from Rome."  Yet Cicero is forced to acknowledge an exception. A possible vignette: ROMANVS: "Roma sola bonos oratores parit." (Only Rome produces good orators.) BARRVS: "Asculanus sum." (I am from Asculum.) ROMANVS: "Intellego." (I understand.) +> that excellence may arise outside the centre, despite assumptions to the contrary.  the above is pretty Griceian: Grice often said that if there was ordinary-language philosophy OUTSIDE OF OXFORD, it was derivative of it -- we can imagine a conversation between TULLIO on B. -- quoting his exact words in Latin. and the co-conversationalist chalenging: But you are from Arpino. How many miles from Arpino to Rome? How many miles from Asculum to Rome? Also you are implicating LATIN orator -- for surely there are orators in other lingos that superse. Finally, there is a rank problem. B. may be the best outside Rome, does that mean that any from ROME is still BETTER than B.? Input? Feedback? Thanks This is actually a very subtle—and very Gricean—reading of Cicero's praise of Titus Betucius Barrus. The key point is that Cicero's reported judgment:  "omnium praeter Romanos disertissimus" ("the most eloquent of all speakers outside Rome")  is not merely a compliment; it is a carefully hedged ranking. The interesting question is:  What does Cicero mean by adding praeter Romanos?   The Gricean problem Suppose Cicero had said simply:  Barrus disertissimus est. ("Barrus is the most eloquent.")  That would place Barrus at the summit. Instead he says, in effect:  "the most eloquent outside Rome."  Under Grice's Maxim of Quantity, the restriction matters. Why add it? A hearer naturally reasons:  if Barrus were the best absolutely, Cicero would have said so.  Therefore:  +> some Roman orators are better.  The compliment already contains a limitation.  The challenge you suggest A friend of Cicero might press him precisely this way. Conversatio CICERO: "Betucius Barrus omnium praeter Romanos disertissimus fuit." (Betucius Barrus was the most eloquent of all speakers outside Rome.) INTERLOCUTOR: "At tu ipse Arpinas es." (But you yourself are from Arpinum.) CICERO: "Romae tamen educatus sum." (Yet I was educated at Rome.) INTERLOCUTOR: "Quot passuum est Arpinum a Roma? Quot Asculum?" (How many miles is Arpinum from Rome? How many Asculum?) CICERO: "Non de passibus sed de foro loquor." (I am speaking not of miles but of the Forum.)  Implicature +> that "Roman" here means participation in the Roman rhetorical world rather than mere place of birth. That, I think, would be Cicero's escape.  A second Gricean complication You raise an even better objection. When Cicero says:  "most eloquent outside Rome"  does he mean:  outside the city? outside Roman civic rhetoric? outside Latin rhetoric?  Those are not the same. A Greek hearer might object:  "What about Demosthenes?"  The compliment only works if the conversational domain is restricted. The hidden qualification is almost certainly:  "among Latin forensic orators known to us."  That restriction is not stated. It is supplied by context.  A third and sharper implicature The ranking itself is unstable. Cicero's remark can be unpacked as:  Barrus is not Roman. Among non-Romans he is first. Therefore some Romans may surpass him.  But it does not logically entail:  every Roman surpasses him.  That would be a fallacy. The implicature is only:  at least one Roman speaker occupies a higher position.  Indeed, Cicero may well mean:  Barrus exceeds most Romans, but not the handful at the summit.  That is a much subtler compliment.  Why Speranza would enjoy it The sentence performs two things simultaneously:  it praises Barrus; it preserves Roman supremacy.  It says:  "The best provincial is excellent."  while quietly adding:  "but Rome remains Rome."  A very Roman piece of conversational diplomacy. In ultra-Speranzian form:  Barrus laudatur; Roma reservatur. ("Barrus is praised; Rome is reserved.").  That reservation—praeter Romanos—is exactly where the Gricean action lies. And is the quotation by Cicero or the utterance in the past: Cicero saying that B. WAS the most dignified, etc. or _IS_? THe implicatures vary -- was B. a contemporary and C. knew that? Thanks Excellent point. Here the tense matters enormously for the implicature. In Brutus Cicero is not speaking about contemporary forensic competition in the present tense. He is surveying the history of Roman oratory and says:  "omnium autem eloquentissimus extra hanc urbem T. Betucius Barrus Asculanus" ("of all men outside this city, Titus Betucius Barrus of Asculum was the most eloquent") [perseus.tufts.edu]  Notice that Cicero immediately continues by referring to Barrus' surviving speeches:  "cuius sunt aliquot orationes Asculi habitae; una Romae contra Caepionem nobilis sane" ("of whom there are several speeches delivered at Asculum, and one famous speech delivered at Rome against Caepio") [perseus.tufts.edu]  So in context Barrus is being treated as a figure of the past, part of Cicero's retrospective catalogue of orators. Cicero is not presenting him as a current rival in 46 BC. [perseus.tufts.edu] That changes the implicature. If Cicero had said (presently)  "Barrus is the most eloquent man outside Rome."  the implication would be: +> among living provincial orators, Barrus currently ranks first. What Cicero is actually doing He is making a historical assessment:  "Barrus was the most eloquent outside Rome."  This yields a different implicature: +> even when Rome was producing its great speakers, one provincial deserved remembrance alongside them. In other words, the compliment becomes less competitive and more commemorative.  Your other observation is even subtler. Cicero does not say:  Barrus was the best orator.  He says:  Barrus was the best outside Rome. [perseus.tufts.edu]  Under a Gricean reading, that restriction invites the inference: +> the absolute summit is still occupied by at least one Roman speaker. But it does not imply: +> every Roman speaker was better than Barrus. Quite the contrary: Cicero may well be placing Barrus above the vast majority of Roman advocates while reserving the very top echelon for a few giants. And your Arpinum objection is devastatingly good. Cicero himself was born at Arpinum, not Rome. A hostile interlocutor could reply:  "If an Arpinate can become Rome's greatest orator, why cannot an Asculan?"  To which Cicero would probably answer exactly what he answers elsewhere in Brutus: the crucial distinction is not geography alone, but participation in the urban rhetorical culture of Rome—forum, courts, Senate, and elite education. The real opposition is less:  Rome vs elsewhere  than:  the Roman forensic centre vs the provinces.  That is where the Gricean action lies: extra hanc urbem sounds geographical, but the relevant contrast is really cultural and rhetorical. [perseus.tufts.edu] So, in Speranza's style:  Barrus laudatur ut eximius; Roma tamen relinquitur ut norma. ("Barrus is praised as exceptional; Rome is nevertheless retained as the standard.").  That, I think, is exactly the implicature Cicero wanted his readers to derive. And is the "was" implicated? Or do we need a larger previous context to understand that Tullio is going to engage in a historical narrative. Lack of verb may imply 'eloquentissimus' in a sort of aeternal historical present, as when we say, "HOmer is so good, his verse brings tears to my eyes." And how far away Asculum is, as per comune, regione, provincia? Thanks -- and from the context does Tullio use 'eloquentissimus' as applies to NON praeter Romanos -- for here the past is also important, since Tullio would think that TULLIO is such, yet would not say it -- "An orator who himself says that he is eloquentissium is, a fortiori, not such" and in the first person becomes an Epemenides-type paradox. Thanks Excellent questions. The Latin here is doing a lot of Gricean work. The key phrase is:  omnium autem eloquentissimus extra hanc urbem T. Betucius Barrus Asculanus ("of all men outside this city, Titus Betucius Barrus of Asculum [was/is] the most eloquent") [douxreviews.com]  Notice that there is no finite verb in the clause. Cicero simply nominates Barrus as eloquentissimus. I. Is the "was" really there? Strictly speaking, no. The Latin does not say:  fuit eloquentissimus  nor  erat eloquentissimus.  It merely predicates:  T. Betucius Barrus Asculanus = omnium eloquentissimus extra hanc urbem.  The translator usually supplies "was" because the surrounding passage is historical, but the Latin itself is more timeless. [douxreviews.com] Your Homer analogy is therefore very apt. When we say:  "Homer is magnificent,"  we do not mean Homer is currently alive. Likewise Cicero can place Barrus into a canon of eloquence without explicitly marking tense. So one could argue that the phrase functions in a kind of:  historical present of evaluation  rather than a straightforward past tense.  II. Does the context push us toward the past? Yes. Immediately around this passage Cicero is listing earlier orators and discussing surviving speeches:  cuius sunt aliquot orationes Asculi habitae; una Romae contra Caepionem nobilis sane ("of whom there are several speeches delivered at Asculum, and one famous speech delivered at Rome against Caepio") [douxreviews.com]  That broader context is historical. Thus the reader naturally understands:  "Barrus belongs among the notable orators of the past."  But it is the context—not the grammar of eloquentissimus itself—that supplies that temporal orientation. A Speranzian point would be:  the pastness is conversationally recovered rather than linguistically encoded.   III. How far is Asculum from Rome? The Barrus in question is:  Asculanus ("from Asculum") [douxreviews.com]  The ancient Asculum Picenum is modern Ascoli Piceno, in the Marche region of Italy. In modern terms:  Comune: Ascoli Piceno Regione: Marche Ancient district: Picenum  I have not found, in the source we opened, a distance figure from Rome, so I should not invent one. What the source explicitly gives is only the ethnic designation Asculanus. [douxreviews.com] But rhetorically the important distinction for Cicero is not mileage. As he immediately goes on to discuss urbanitas ("urbanity"), his contrast is really:  Rome as rhetorical centre versus the municipia and allied towns. [douxreviews.com]   IV. Does "eloquentissimus extra hanc urbem" imply that every Roman is better? No. This is exactly where the Gricean subtlety lies. The statement licenses:  +> at least some Roman speakers rank above Barrus.  It does not license:  +> every Roman speaker ranks above Barrus.  Those are very different. A modern analogy:  "the best chess player outside Russia"  does not imply that every Russian player is superior. Only that the comparison class has been restricted.  V. Would Cicero think Cicero was eloquentissimus? Now we arrive at a delicious Gricean paradox. Cicero certainly believed himself among the greatest Roman orators. That is obvious throughout Brutus and De Oratore. But to say explicitly:  ego sum eloquentissimus  would create a conversational problem. Why? Because a hearer immediately reasons:  If he were truly so great, would he need to say it?  The assertion damages itself. In Speranzian language:  Orator de propria eloquentia glorians partem suae eloquentiae amittit.  ("An orator boasting of his own eloquence loses part of that eloquence.") So Cicero's strategy is typically indirect. Others praise Cicero. Cicero arranges the evidence. The conclusion is left to the audience. A very Gricean manoeuvre: the strongest claim is often one that is implicated rather than asserted. Indeed, one might formulate the paradox exactly as you suggest:  "The most eloquent man is the man who does not need to tell us that he is the most eloquent."  That is not a formal Epimenides paradox, but it is a splendidly Gricean self-undermining speech act. In one line:  Barrus is explicitly called eloquentissimus extra hanc urbem; Cicero leaves the stronger claim about Cicero himself for the reader to infer. [douxreviews.com] And Cicero's catalogue is very restrictive: 'some speeches B. delivered at A., and ONE FAMOUS ONE B. delievered AT ROME against C. -- So the orator may be from Asculum, but at least one of his 'utterances' was Rome-based -- do we know more about his one at Rome, whom against? By Tullio adding 'famous' he meant INFAMOUS for Captio? Which brings back the 'praeter' -- he may have been from Asculum, but he practised at least once at Rome. As when Bermgann was at Oxford and invited to attend a conference at Oxford by Grice and Bergmann replied that he had better things to do with his time at Oxford than give his ear to an English futilitarian. So Bergmann: not Oxonian, praeter Oxonianos -- but practicsed at least once the role of philosopher there. Thanks Yes — and this is precisely where Cicero becomes more interesting than the simple "best provincial orator" label suggests. The passage says:  cuius sunt aliquot orationes Asculi habitae; una Romae contra Caepionem nobilis sane "of his there survive several speeches delivered at Asculum; one delivered at Rome against Caepio is certainly famous."  A few Gricean points follow immediately. 1. Barrus is "extra hanc urbem" — but not extra Romam in practice Cicero calls him:  omnium autem eloquentissimus extra hanc urbem "the most eloquent man outside this city."  Yet in the very next breath Cicero reminds us that Barrus spoke at Rome and that one of those Roman speeches became famous. So "outside Rome" cannot mean:  "never active in Rome."  Rather, it means something closer to:  "not belonging to the Roman rhetorical establishment."  Your Bergmann analogy is very good. One may be:  not Oxonian, yet lecture at Oxford,  just as Barrus may be:  not Roman, yet speak at Rome.  The category concerns identity rather than physical presence.  2. Against whom? The passage explicitly says:  contra Caepionem "against Caepio."  But the passage we have does not specify which Caepio beyond that name, nor the details of the controversy. What Cicero explicitly says is only that a speech against Caepio was famous. So we should be careful not to infer more than the text gives.  3. Does nobilis sane mean "infamous for Caepio"? Not necessarily. What Cicero explicitly says is:  nobilis sane "certainly notable/famous."  That attaches grammatically to the speech. It does not explicitly mean:  "disastrous for Caepio,"  although that is a possible literary inference. The safest reading is simply:  the speech acquired notoriety or renown.   4. Why mention the Roman speech at all? This is where the Gricean action lies. Suppose Cicero had written only:  "Barrus was the most eloquent man outside Rome."  Done. Instead he adds:  "and he delivered a famous speech at Rome."  The implicature is strong: +> Barrus' excellence was tested in the very arena where Roman eloquence was measured. In effect Cicero says:  "Do not think I am praising a merely local celebrity. His reputation survived contact with Rome itself."   5. The delicious paradox Cicero's praise simultaneously:  elevates Barrus; preserves Roman prestige.  Because once Barrus enters Rome, speaks at Rome, and becomes famous at Rome, his excellence has effectively been certified by the centre. In Speranza's style one might put it:  Barrus Asculanus erat; sed Roma eum audivit. ("Barrus was an Asculan; but Rome listened to him.")  The real implication of the famous Roman speech is that Barrus was not merely the best speaker in Asculum. He was one of the very few outsiders whose eloquence became audible within the Roman forum itself. That is probably why Cicero bothers to mention it at all.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betuzio – Ossia: Grice e Betuzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Betuzio. Gaius Betitius Pietas/Pius — father-son transmission of civic office and moral nomenclature. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Betti – Ossia: Grice e Betti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della lupa; ovvero, problemi di storia della costitutzione politica e sociale nell’antica Roma.  Emilio Betti (Camerino, Macerata, Marche): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della lupa; ovvero, problemi di storia della costitutzione politica e sociale nell’antica Roma. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how hearers rationally recover what a speaker means beyond what is said by assuming a cooperative purpose in the talk-exchange and applying maxims (quantity, quality, relation, manner), so that implicatures are typically calculable inferences drawn from an utterance plus context and shared expectations; Betti, by contrast, is not primarily a theorist of everyday conversational inference but a jurist and general hermeneutician, so the closest analogue to “implicature” in his framework is what interpretation must legitimately extract from an objective “meaningful form” (a text, act, norm, historical document) under canons that constrain and justify understanding. In Betti’s mature work Teoria generale dell’interpretazione (2 vols., 1955; later abridged/translated as Allgemeine Auslegungslehre als Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften, 1967), meaning is reason-governed not by conversational cooperation but by methodological norms of interpretation aimed at objectivity, coherence, and the autonomy of the object interpreted; where Grice treats inference as guided by presumptions about speakers’ intentions and conversational rationality, Betti treats inference as guided by disciplined reconstruction of an intended sense embedded in enduring forms, with the interpreter responsible for warranting readings by rule-like principles. Your “lupa/ancient Rome” motif fits as a contrast: Grice’s wolf story would be about whether we can presume cooperation (and thus infer implicatures) among agents whose interests may be adversarial, while Betti’s “wolf” is more naturally the emblem of a juridico-historical world where the relevant rationality is institutional and interpretive—how we read Rome’s norms, constitutional shifts, and legal acts through a method that resists arbitrariness—so that what is “left unsaid” is not mainly a conversational flout to be decoded but a gap to be filled by historically and doctrinally responsible interpretation. Grice: “I like B.!”  Si laurea a Bologna su la crisi della repubblica e la genesi del principato. Insegna a Roma. Artefici del codice civile. Nel corso della sua attività accademica ha coperto tutti i rami del diritto, in particolare il diritto romano, civile, commerciale e processuale. Dei Lincei. Fascista. Il normale del negozio giuridico, obbligazioni e contratti, interpretazione.  L'influenza di B. e determinante nella soluzione, adottata da Grandi. eccezione sull'azione; vindicazione, diritto privato, processo, giudicare, pronunciare e dannare/condennare, litis æstimatio, processo civile, domma del contahere; restaurazione di SULLA: crisi della costituzione repubblicana; struttura dell'obbligazione, obbligazione ed azione, limiti della cosa giudicata, diritto romano, Diritto processuale civile; interpretazione della legge e dell’atto giuridico: ermeneutica. Griffero obbligazione cosa giudicata diritto processuale civile interpretazione genesi del principato lingua latina, base etnica della antica Roma, i latini, l’eta monarchica, rex regere lex, legare l’eta repubblicana, res pubica used during l’eta monarchica, Romolo, il primo re, Tarquino, l’ultimo re, l’eta repubblicana, la stirpe dei patrizi, patrizio, cepo aristocratico, Caesar dittatore, assassinio di Caesar, il principato, Augusto, significante ‘consacrato’, ‘Imperator Augusto Ottaviano’, imperio, imperatore, pater familias, paternalism, diritto consuetudinario, il fuhrer, l’hero, autorita carismatica, civilita, ius civile, romanita, diritto romano ostrogotico, diritto romano longobardi, popolo romano, nazione romana, romano e sabini, diritto per romani e diritto per pellegrini, vocabulario del diritto romano, dizionario di diritto romano, lexicon auctoritas lex legare eddictum decreto suggestione, agere, diritto processuale, contratto, negozio, diritto penale civile Antonio Ottaviano stato autoritario, concetto di stato diritto romano laico senato PSQR Vico circolo dell’implicatura. Grice: Emilio, la lupa romana è stata più convincente di molte leggi. Se avesse avuto un codice civile, forse avrebbe imposto il “latte obbligatorio” a tutti i fondatori di città. Betti: Grice, la vera legge della lupa era quella del patto non scritto: chi si trova nel Foro deve imparare a interpretare i segnali, non solo le norme! E se il negozio giuridico fosse stato una trattativa tra lupi e patrizi? Grice: Forse la giustizia a Roma si sarebbe risolta in una corsa tra la lupa e il senato: chi vince decide la sentenza, chi perde scrive una nuova interpretazione del diritto. Betti: Caro Grice, tra l’obbligazione naturale e quella convenzionale, la lupa resta l’unica che non ha bisogno di commentari. Se Augusto avesse chiesto consiglio a lei, forse il principato sarebbe stato fondato su un brindisi, non su un decreto! Betti, Emilio (1910). Diritto e logica formale. Camerino: Galeotti.