CA

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cabeo – Ossia: Grice e Cabeo: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dello spirito sulfureo -- filosofia mannetica.  Niccolò Cabeo (Ferrara, Emilia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dello spirito sulfureo -- filosofia mannetica. Cabeo’s Philosophia magnetica (Ferrara, 1629) and H. P. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning articulate two historically distant but structurally comparable accounts of intelligibility grounded in order rather than sympathy: Cabeo rejects occult “sympathy” and “antipathy” in favor of rule‑like physical mediations—forces, effluvia, and structured causal chains operating through an intermediate medium—arguing that intelligible effects arise only where there is a determinate mechanism linking agent and patient, whereas Grice, in his analysis of utterer’s meaning and implicature, rejects associative or merely psychological accounts of communication in favor of a rational structure governed by intentions, recognition, and justificatory reasons within a cooperative practice; in both cases, explanation shifts from opaque attraction to publicly reconstructible order, with Cabeo insisting that magnetic and electric effects presuppose lawful transmission through space rather than mysterious correspondences, and Grice insisting that meaning presupposes rational norms—what counts is not mere response but response for a reason that can be recognized as such—so that Cabeo’s physical anti‑occultism and Grice’s semantic anti‑psychologism converge methodologically in treating reason (natural or practical) as the condition under which interaction, whether between bodies or conversational agents, becomes intelligible rather than merely observed or felt. Grice: “You’ve got to love C.; unless, if you are sailor like me – he almost invented the North Pole – he philosophised on magnetism – a phenomenon which the Graeco-Romans found ‘magic’ (vide Carini, “L’etimologia del megnete”) – Grice: “The homerotic associations are soon discovered by the super-hero, “Magneto. Essential Italian philosopher.” Studia a Parma sotto Biancani. Commenta le Meteore del lizio e  testimonia la priorità della scoperta della legge di caduta dei gravi di BALIANI rispetto a quella di BONAIUTO.  Mette in discussione le ricerche di BONAIUTI: con Baliani, Renieri, Riccioli. Conduce esperimenti sulla caduta dei gravi. Criticato dai sequaci di BONAIUTI. Sostene l'imprescindibile necessità che ogni asserzione è sostenuta dall'esperienza e, sulla base degli studi di Porta e Garzoni, assere, dopo aver condotto accurati esperimenti, che la terra posse una qualità mannetica che assieme alla gravità fa sì che la terra e stabile e immobile. Define la repulsione elettrica.  Filosofia esperimentale si schiera a difesa della priorità di Baliani e, criticare in nome dell'osservazione e dell'esperimento la concezione metafisica del lizio. Duri toni contro BONAIUTI con un'aspra contestazione del fenomeno della marea com'e descritto da BONAIUTI. Sostene che la marea si dove all'ebollizione operata dalla luna di un spirito sulfureo e salnitrosio presente sul fondo del mare. Sostenne la validità scientifica dell'alchimia, una filosofhia chimica degna di studio e osservazione.  Idraulico De veteri et peripatetica philosophia in Aristotelis libros de Coelo. Census in Italy,  like Poseidon in Grreece, is finally regarded as a  marine deity, because his worship has been brought  into the country from beyond the sea. Herod. Richeri, filosofia mannetica, la terra e immobile per la sua qualita magnetica, la marea e prodotto della ebullizione di uno spirito sulfureo e salnitroso nel fondo del mare. Grice: Cabeo, when you say the earth stands still because of its magnetic spirit, do you mean it's glued to its chair like a philosopher at a symposium? Cabeo: Dear Grice, if the earth ever moved, it would spill its sulfureous soup all over the cosmos. The universe hates stains, you know! Grice: And what about the tides, Niccolò? Are they just the moon stirring the soup with its silver spoon? Cabeo: Exactly! Every full moon is a cosmic chef’s special, and if you listen closely, you almost hear the sea bubbling, not with Poseidon’s anger, but with a spirit ready for a philosophical toast! Cabeo, Niccolò (1629). Philosophia magnetica. Ferrara: Pomatelli. 

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cacciari – Ossia: Grice e Cacciari: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’umanesimo all’italiana.  Massimo Cacciari (Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’umanesimo all’italiana. The comparison between H. P. Grice and Massimo Cacciari turns less on doctrinal alignment than on a shared concern with how meaning arises at the intersection of reason, mediation, and historical form: Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning treats communication as a normatively structured practice in which what is meant exceeds what is said through implicature, calculable only against assumptions of rational cooperation, whereas Cacciari’s reflections on la ragione conversazionale, especially in works from Krisis to L’angelo necessario, recast that excess not as a defect to be regimented but as the very mark of Italian humanism, where meaning moves through figures of mediation—the angel, the messenger, the metaxu between λέγειν and νοεῖν—rather than stabilizing in transparent rational form; Grice insists that even the most labyrinthine implicature remains answerable to reason, intention, and recognitional uptake, while Cacciari, working within a lineage that runs from Dante and Florentine humanism through negative thought, stresses that conversational reason is constitutively exposed to crisis, opacity, and historical fracture, so that the “angelic” dimension of discourse names not a cooperative maxim but a necessary remainder, an intermediary that both enables communication and resists its full rational domestication; where Grice builds a logic of conversation to show how meaning can be inferred without abandoning reason, Cacciari radicalizes conversation as a site where reason encounters its own limits, producing an Italian humanist implicature in which the angel and the contadino, Plato and Cratylus, judgment and its crisis, coexist without synthesis, turning conversation itself into a philosophical figure of mediation rather than mere transmission. Grice: “If I were today to chose a philosophical piece by C. that would be his ‘angelo’ – quite a concept! If Whitehead is right, as I claim he is, when he says all philosophy is footnotes to Cratylo, Plato does deal with ‘aggelos’ as ‘metaxu’ which he then develops in Symposium – Cacciari, like Reale, are fascinated by this! Solomon, who read it, illustrated Alcebiades as Eros between Dionisos and Apollo!” Essential Italian philosopher.” Filosofo, politico, accademico e opinionista italiano, ex sindaco di Venezia.  D’ascendenza emiliana. Studia a Venezia. Si laurea a Padova sulla critica del giudizio sotto FORMAGGIO. Collabora con Diano, Bettini e Mazzariol.  Studia la crisi della razionalità, incapace di cogliere il reale, abbandonando i fondamenti del conoscere. La sua visione muove dal pensiero negativo. Krisis; Pensiero negativo e razionalizzazione; Dallo Steinhof;  Icone della legge; L'angelo necessario; Dell'inizio; Della cosa ultima. Hamletica, Icone della legge. L'angelo necessario icone e mistico e insegna Pensare filosofico e metafisica presso la Facoltà di Filosofia dell'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele di Milano, di cui è stato anche prorettore vicario.  In Potere Operaio e nel PCI Da giovane fu un politico militante e occupò con gli operai della Montedison la stazione di Mestre. Collaborò negli anni sessanta alla rivista mensile Classe operaia. L’umanesimo sorge a Firenze, diffondendosi poi negli altri centri di cultura italiani.  Grice: “Personally, I have been criticised for choosing ‘personally,’ rather than ‘humanely’!” umanesimo italiano, ‘l’angelo necessario’ – l’angelo e il paisano -- the angel and the paysan – ‘Who art thou?’ ‘I am the necessary angel of the earth’, illuministi italiani – implicatura laberintica, Alighieri, umanesimo, implicatura dell’angelo e il contadino. «La razionalità del capitale non è un semplice strumento tecnico, ma una forma di dominio che si presenta come necessità oggettiva; la crisi emerge quando il lavoro rifiuta di riconoscersi in questa razionalizzazione.»There are clear, citable publications by Massimo Cacciari that precede Krisis (1970). Below are earlier, defensible citations, confined to what can be supported by historical bibliographic sources. I list them in chronological order, with brief contextual notes; nothing here requires insertion into your main text.   Massimo Cacciari, articles in Classe operaia (1963–1967). During the early 1960s, Cacciari was a regular contributor to the Marxist journal Classe operaia, founded in 1963 by Mario Tronti, Toni Negri, Alberto Asor Rosa, and others. These texts are generally political‑theoretical rather than systematic philosophical monographs, but they are unquestionably his earliest published work and already engage themes of crisis, rationalization, and negation. Individual article titles are sometimes omitted in secondary bibliographies, but his authorship and dates are well documented. Citation form (journal-level, when page numbers are unavailable): Cacciari, Massimo. Contributions in Classe operaia. Rome, 1963–1967.   Cacciari (with Alberto Asor Rosa), articles in Contropiano: materiali marxisti (1968–1969). After leaving Classe operaia, Cacciari co‑founded Contropiano. His essays in this journal already show the transition from operaismo to the question of the crisis of rationality that will culminate in Krisis. These texts are regularly cited in intellectual histories of Italian operaismo and negative thought and are explicitly dated before 1970. Citation form: Cacciari, Massimo. Essays in Contropiano: materiali marxisti. Rome, 1968–1969.   Massimo Cacciari (1970). Qualificazione e composizione di classe. Although published the same year as Krisis, this text is conceptually and genetically prior and is often cited as emerging directly from his late‑1960s work in Classe operaia and Contropiano. It is frequently listed as one of his earliest standalone publications. Citation: Cacciari, Massimo. Qualificazione e composizione di classe. Rome, 1970.   If you want the earliest strictly philosophical work tied to Kant and aesthetics, note that: • His 1967 laurea thesis on Kant’s Critique of Judgment (under Dino Formaggio at Padua) predates all of the above, but it was not formally published at the time and is normally cited only retrospectively. In short, the earliest published citations prior to Krisis are his 1963–1967 journal articles in Classe operaia, followed by 1968–1969 essays in Contropiano. These are the correct and historically grounded predecessors.Grice: Cacciari, dimmi la verità: l’angelo necessario si presenta con le ali o con la giacca all’italiana? Cacciari: Caro Grice, l’angelo si veste di umanesimo, ma se trova la nebbia a Venezia forse mette anche gli stivali. E poi, fra Platone e Cratylo, lui vola dove il pensiero negativo non lo segue! Grice: E se l’angelo va in trattoria, preferisce il risotto o la metafisica con contorno di razionalità? Cacciari: Grice, l’angelo ordina sempre la crisi del giudizio: un piatto unico, ma ogni tanto aggiunge un po’ di spirito fiorentino, che fa bene anche alla conversazione. Cacciari, Massimo (1963). “Qualificazione e composizione di classe”. Classe operaia.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caffarelli – Ossia: Grice e Caffarelli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale estetica – synaesthesia  -- consentimento.  Lamberto Caffarelli (Faenza, Ravenna, Romagna): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale estetica – synaesthesia  -- consentimento. Across their very different idioms, Grice and Lamberto Caffarelli converge on a shared intuition: that meaning worth the name is not static or merely formal, but emerges from coordinated activity governed by reason, expectation, and consent. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning models communication as a cooperative practice in which speakers rely on shared rational norms to generate implicatures beyond what is strictly said, with understanding depending on the recognition of intentions within a framework of mutual endorsement. Caffarelli, working from an anthroposophical and aesthetic starting point rather than analytic philosophy, treats harmony as a form of co‑expression: whether in music, synaesthetic perception, or collective performance (the coro virile), meaning arises where multiple expressive lines are held together by an implicit consent grounded in a shared spiritual‑aesthetic order. Where Grice analyses how conversational rationality licenses implicatures through calculability and uptake, Caffarelli extends the same idea into the sensory‑aesthetic domain, arguing that chromatic harmony, dodecamorphic systems, and synaesthesia function as non‑verbal “conversational” structures in which participants implicitly agree on relations and transitions. In this sense, Caffarelli’s aesthetic synaesthesia can be read as an analogue of Gricean implicature: not everything is stated, but everything meaningful is recoverable by those attuned to the governing rational or harmonic principles, with consensus—whether at the dinner table, in a choir, or in the theatre—marking the successful completion of the exchange. Grice: “You’ve gotta love C.; he philosophised on all that I’m interested in, notably “il bello,” whih he relates to art, communication, love – and the rest of it!” Studia a Bologna. Galeotus. Kisa Gotami.  mistico esoterico Teatro alla Scala Si avvicina alla antroposofia. Mondo spirituale estetica antroposofica. Adonie. Ikhunaton". Partendo dalla antroposofia sviluppa un sistema armonico comprendente la tavolozza dei dodici suoni della scala cromatica, il sistema dodecamorfo. l’armonia come co-espressione, armonia virile, coro virile. Boito, eptafornia, cromatismo, sistema dodecamorfo, saggi filosofici, teoria dell’armonia, armonia ultra-eptafonica, armonia cromatica, armonia dodecamorfica, coro virile, armonia virile, armonia come co-espressione virile. Grice: Caffarelli, mi dicono che tu vedi l’armonia anche nelle scale cromatiche del semaforo! Ma dimmi, se l’estetica è conversazione, una sinestesia vale più di mille parole? Caffarelli: Caro Grice, la sinestesia è come un gelato multigusto: ogni sapore è una nota, ma se lo mangi troppo in fretta rischi che la conversazione si sciolga! Grice: E l’armonia virile, la trovi più nel coro o in una cena fra amici che stonano, ma con entusiasmo? Caffarelli: Grice, il vero consenso nasce quando tutti provano a cantare, anche se nessuno azzecca il tono giusto. Alla Scala o in trattoria, basta che ci sia un po’ di spirito e nessuno resti senza dessert! Caffarelli, Lamberto (1919). Kisa Gotami. Poema scenico per musica.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cairo – Ossia: Grice e Cairo: la ragione conversazionale dei segni.  Giovanni Cairo (Codogno, Lodi, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale dei segni. Giovanni Cairo’s early trajectory—from La biblia di Madonna in the early 1890s to the Dizionario ragionato dei simboli (1922)—shows a continuous concern with rendering symbolic material intelligible by rational ordering and explanation: his use of “ragionato” signals an explicit commitment to reasoned exposition, classification, and methodological control of symbols understood as culturally sedimented vehicles of meaning, a project contemporaneous with, and conceptually adjacent to, the Ogden–Richards “science of symbolism” that Grice later cites. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning, by contrast, relocates rational governance from the semantic inventory (symbols and their catalogued significances) to the activity of speakers engaged in cooperative exchange, where reason operates dynamically through intentions, recognition, and norms (the Cooperative Principle and maxims) that regulate what is meant beyond what is said. The continuity lies in the shared anti-mystifying impulse: both Cairo and Grice resist brute symbolism by insisting that meaning be accountable to reason; the divergence lies in locus and mechanism—Cairo’s reason is lexicographic and encyclopedic, aiming to stabilize meaning through systematic description of symbols, whereas Grice’s reason is pragmatic and interpersonal, explaining meaning as emergent from rational agency in conversation rather than fixed symbolic correspondences. Grice: “When I delivered my lecture on ‘meaning’ for the Philosophical Society at Oxford, I knew that some of my pupils, whom I had burdened with my seminars on ‘meaning,’ would be attending. Unlike C., I was paying little attention to Marzolo. In his Dictionary of Symbols,’ way before Vienna, and other events with which we are familiar at Oxford, C. makes an effort to trace his research, channeling Marchesini, Ferrero, and Marzolo. Ferrero, ‘amongst us Italians,’ Ferrero is more of a lawyer. His ‘I simboli’ only tangentially approaches simbolo/segno, or the phenomenon of ‘voulere dire’ alla Grice, and C. leaves him. behind, over-stressing rather Marzolo’s LEGACY. Unlike myself, who dismiss in “Meaning” talk of ‘sign,’ Marzolo entitles his ‘essay’ one ‘on signs’, il voule dire, as when Cicerone says that a segno segna. Marzolo hardly examplifies what a given expression MEANS, or of which it is a sign. If you read my ‘Meaning’ you will find NO example of what a word means. I approach this later, and under pressure: ‘shaggy’ reduplicated, as FERRERO has it,  ‘means’ that the utterer means that Fido is hairy-coated. Indicare is ‘say.’ I ‘say’ ‘Peccavi’. Can I say that I say THAT peccavi? Surely not. ‘Say’ applies to the utterer, and what the utterer says may not be an instance of a saying THAT. Cf. MAD magazine cartoons on what people say and what they actually mean. ‘Smith has not been to prison yet,’ my first example of ‘imply,’ a term of art to spare me to use ‘mean’ or other words of that range. My point against Austin: whatever the utterer means, THAT Smith’s colleagues are dishonest, it would be otiose, almost false, to say that what he means is that Smith has not been to prison yet. The OPTIMAL Smith has not been to prison yet. By displaying a bandaged leg an utterer EXPLICITLY conveys THAT his leg is bandaged, but what he means, that of which his utterance is a SIGN, as MARZOLO, FERRERO, MARCHESINI and C. have it – is, as I put it, that he cannot play squash.  Grice: Cairo, mi dicono che sei il maestro dei segni. Ma dimmi, un segno basta a dire tutto, o serve anche una stretta di mano? Cairo: Caro Grice, il segno è come il caffè: ognuno lo interpreta a modo suo, ma senza zucchero rischia di essere troppo amaro! Grice: E se ti mostro una gamba fasciata, cosa pensi: che non posso giocare a squash o che ho semplicemente sbagliato scarpe? Cairo: Dipende dalla partita, Grice! Se il segno è chiaro, si capisce subito. Ma se la fascia è colorata, magari volevo solo attirare l’attenzione: l’importante è che nessuno finisca in prigione… almeno non ancora! Cairo, Giovanni. (1897). La biblia di Madonna.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calabresi – Ossia: Grice e Calabresi: la ragione conversazionale del proto-pirotese e il deutero-esperanto.  Illio Calabresi (Montepulciano, Siena, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale del proto-pirotese e il deutero-esperanto. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning is grounded in the idea that communication is fundamentally an exercise of practical rationality: speakers are presumed to cooperate, and hearers infer what is meant by reasoning about intentions under shared maxims such as relevance, quantity, quality, and manner, so that meaning emerges not from linguistic form alone but from the rational coordination of agents in context. In contrast, Illio Calabresi’s linguistic progetto, as reflected in the Omnlingua and in the humorous dialogue attributed to him, presupposes a different locus of “ragione conversazionale”: rather than treating conversational order as primarily inferential and intention-based, Calabresi seeks to embed rationality directly into the grammatical and morphological architecture of an auxiliary language, multiplying cases, genders, and formal markers so that relations between speakers, addressees, actions, and situations are overtly encoded. Where Grice explains understanding through flexible, defeasible reasoning that exploits underdetermination, Calabresi responds to the fragility of mutual understanding—exacerbated, in his view, by historical and political catastrophe—by overdetermining meaning through explicit linguistic structure, aiming to “affratellare i popoli” by reducing reliance on pragmatic guesswork. The contrast thus opposes Grice’s minimalist, intention-centered pragmatics, in which conversational meaning is a rational achievement over and above linguistic form, to Calabresi’s maximalist, engineered rationalism, in which conversational reason is meant to reside within the language itself, as a formal guarantor of mutual intelligibility rather than as an inferential practice negotiated at the table.Grice: “I love G.!” Filosofo della lingua. Correda un dizionario d'ortografia e di pronunzia e trascrizione fonematica, vocabolario della lingua parlata, glossario, volgare, lessico della lingua In suo onore è stata istituita la Fondazione C., con sede nella frazione di Acquaviva, suo paese natale. La scomparsa di C., su biblioteca.montepulciano.si.it. In memoria di C., su ittig.cnr.it. Cataloghi e collezioni digitali delle biblioteche italiane, su internetculturale.it. Portale Biografie   Portale Medioevo Portale Storia Categorie: Medievisti italiani Paleografi italiani Linguisti italiani Italiani Nati a Montepulciano Morti a Sarteano Biografi italiani [altre] Il senese C., dipendente del C.N.R., inventa una lingua ausiliaria internazionale che chiama Omnlingua, caratterizzata sul piano morfologico dal recupero della declinazione, con sette casi nella declinazione primaria (nominativo, genitivo, dativo, relativo statico, relativo dinamico o accusativo, vocativo, locativo statico) e sei in quella secondaria (derivativo, fautivo, strumentale, locativo dinamico, invocativo,  locativo stabile), dall'adozione di cinque generi grammaticali, di dieci coniugazioni, di tre tipi di preposizioni semplici e di prefissi ottenuti con tre diverse vocali finali, ecc., e dall'uso di alcuni segni particolari, come il segno «"» che indica aspirazione; «-» rafforzamento o  raddoppiamento non enfatico sulle consonanti e allungamento sulle vocali; «^» addolcimento di certe consonanti, ecc.  La molla che spinge Calabresi a creare l'Omnilingua è, da un lato, la constatazione del fallimento del Volapük e dell'Esperanto, dall'altro il desiderio di «affratellare i popoli di tutto il mondo», dopo le orrende devastazioni della seconda guerra mondiale, in cui per altro C. perde il padre. mni-lingua. Grice: Calabresi, mi dicono che hai creato una lingua con più casi grammaticali di quante pizze ci siano a Napoli. Ma la tua Omnlingua, si impara meglio davanti a una tavola imbandita o a una lavagna? Calabresi: Caro Grice, la lavagna serve per la teoria, ma se vuoi davvero affratellare i popoli, devi sederti a tavola. Nella mia lingua, il vocativo funziona meglio se urli “Passami il pane!” Grice: E il segno “-”, lo usi per rafforzare la consonanza o solo quando la pasta è troppo al dente? Calabresi: Dipende, Grice! Se la pasta è al dente, raddoppio le consonanti e invito tutti a parlare Omnlingua. Ma se la cena è finita, preferisco chiacchierare in volgare senese: almeno lì basta un “grazie” per capirsi! Calabresi, Illio (1951). Omnlingua. Montepulciano: Edizioni Montepulciano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calavio – Ossia: Grice e Calavio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia Calavio. The Calavii are a distinguished Campanian family of Roman times. Several members of this gens were involved in the events of the Samnite Wars and during the Second Punic War. The most famous of its members was undoubtedly Pacuvius C., the chief magistrate of Capua during Hannibal's invasion of Italy, and son-in-law of Publius CLAUDIO Pulcher.  When C. feared that the Capuans would massacre their own senators and surrender the city to Hannibal, he shut them in the senate-house until he convinced the citizens to place their trust in their leaders once more. When Hannibal nevertheless entered Capua following the Battle of Cannae, C. restrained his son from a rash attempt on the general's life. In revenge for the subsequent ill treatment of Campania by Rome, a family of this name joined with other Campanians in setting fire to various parts of Rome. The C. are Campanians, and their native language is Oscan. The early members of the gens all bore Oscan praenomina, and were prominent in the events of southern Italy during the third and fourth centuries BC. The C. are known to have used the Oscan praenomina Ovius, Ofilius, Novius, and Pacuvius. It is not certain whether Perolla, a name assigned to the son of Pacuvius C., was also an Oscan praenomen.[2]  None of the Calavii during the Republic bore any surname. In imperial times we find the cognomen Sabinus, referring to one of the Sabines, or their culture. The Samnites, in whose history the C. occur, claimed to be descendants of the Sabines, and the use of Sabinus by the later C. probably alluded to this tradition. Ovius C., father of Ofilius Calavius. Ofilius Calavius Ovi. f., a man of great distinction at Capua, urged his countrymen not to exult too greatly over the Samnite victory over the Romans at the Caudine Forks. Ovius Calavius Ofili f. Ovi n., with his brother, Novius, was one of the leaders of a conspiracy to launch an insurgency against Rome from Capua.[6] Novius Calavius Ofili f. Ovi n., with his brother, one of the leaders of the conspiracy at Capua.[7] Pacuvius C., the chief magistrate of Capua during Hannibal's invasion, prevented the massacre of the Capuan senate.[8] Perolla C. Pacuvi f., the son of Pacuvius Calavius, intended to assassinate Hannibal, but abandoned the design at his father's urging.[9] Sthenius Calavius, according to some sources, the brother of Pacuvius Calavius, but his name was probably Sthenius Ninnius Celer.[10] Calavius Sabinus, commanded the twelfth legion under Gaius Caesennius Paetus during his campaign in Armenia, in AD 62.[11] See also List of Roman gentes References  Livy, xxiii. 2–4, 8, 9, xxvi. 27.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 560, 561 ("Calavius").  Chase, pp. 138–140.  Chase, pp. 113, 114.  Livy, ix. 7.  Livy, ix. 26.  Livy, ix. 26.  Livy, xxiii. 2-4, 8, 9.  Livy, xxiii. 8, 9.  Livy, xxiii. 8.  Tacitus, Annales, xv. 7. Bibliography Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII (1897).  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Calavius". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 560.  Categories: CalaviiRoman gentes

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calavio – Ossia: Grice e Calavio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia Calavio. I suppose for this gens we can have a second entry for the SON who attempted to assassinate Hannibal. So we can have a dialogue between father PACUVIO and son PEROLLA. usual format, complete with implicature. It seems proximty is implicated but it's not like the son rises when Hannibal and Father are both presents, and raises his sword. He may have calmly communicated his intention to his father over dinner? Input, Feedback? Thanks. The reason why he was _persuaded_: what's the point? Hannibal would have killed YOU if you had failed, and me and all the senators I had previously saved. But what in contingency planning, that Perolla succeeds? NOt a dignified thing, even if these people were Roman by transmission only? This is one of the finest Livian conversations for a Grice/Speranza treatment because the crucial act is not the attempted assassination but the prior disclosure of the intention. As your summary notes, Livy says that Perolla, son of Pacuvius Calavius, intended to kill Hannibal but abandoned the plan after his father's intervention. The sources as summarized do not tell us the precise setting of the conversation, only that Pacuvius persuaded him not to proceed. We therefore have room for a plausible reconstruction, but not for claims about the exact circumstances. cite not available; based on user's supplied Livy summary only. What strikes me is exactly your point:  Why tell his father?  A would-be assassin who truly intended immediate action would normally preserve secrecy. The conversational implicature is therefore:  +> Perolla was still seeking moral ratification.  He was not merely planning an act; he wanted his father's approval.  Conversatio: Pacuvius Calavius and Perolla PEROLLA (1) "Pater, unum vulnus Italiam liberabit." (Father, one wound will free Italy.)  PACVVIVS (2) "Quem vulnerare vis?" (Whom do you wish to strike?)  PEROLLA (3) "Hannibalem." (Hannibal.)  PACVVIVS (4) "Num insanis? In hospitis mensa?" (Are you mad? At a host's table?)  PEROLLA (5) "Pro patria faciam." (I shall do it for my country.)  PACVVIVS (6) "Et si falleris?" (And if you fail?)  PEROLLA (7) "Ego peribo." (I shall die.)  PACVVIVS (8) "Non tu solus; ego quoque, et qui tibi adsenserint." (Not you alone; I also, and all who are thought to have agreed with you.)  PEROLLA (9) "At si vincam?" (But what if I succeed?)  PACVVIVS (10) "Etiam tum scelus manebit, et fides hospitii peribit." (Even then the crime remains, and the faith of hospitality perishes.)  +> that political success does not automatically justify an act whose consequences would destroy trust, hospitality, and collective safety.  The contingency point Your question is an excellent one. Most discussions stop at:  "What if Perolla failed?"  And Pacuvius' obvious argument is that failure would bring destruction upon:  Perolla, Pacuvius, Capuan leaders, perhaps the city itself.  But the more interesting argument concerns success. Suppose Perolla kills Hannibal. Would Capua automatically be saved? Not necessarily. Pacuvius might reason:  Hannibal's army still exists; the Carthaginians will seek vengeance; Capua will acquire a reputation for treacherous hospitality.  In Roman terms, killing a guest at table could appear dishonourable even if politically useful.  The Gricean point The most interesting utterance is:  "Pro patria faciam." "I shall do it for my country."  Perolla explicitly says:  country.  But he conversationally implies:  therefore the act is justified.  Pacuvius rejects the implicature. His reply is effectively:  "The patriotic motive does not settle the question."  That is deeply Gricean:  the son presents a reason; the father refuses the conclusion the son expects the hearer to draw.   Speranzian moral  Perolla causam profert; Pacuvius consequentias. ("Perolla offers the cause; Pacuvius the consequences.")  Or more compactly:  Non satis est cur faciendum sit; videndum est quid sequatur. ("It is not enough to know why something should be done; one must see what follows from it.")  That, I think, is the strongest Calavian vignette: a conversation about whether patriotic intention is sufficient to justify political violence. And can we check the source in Livio? Because Grice has this example from Stevenson: Smith puts on a whitetail -- he is going out to an elegant party -- Smith takes his umbrella: it is raining outside. So we are not told Perolla TOLD Dad. Dad may have inferred the will or intention fom Perolla's actions -- or (b) perolla's daughter told Dad (c) or ... -- indeterminate. Perolla was possibly very Oscan and did not comprehend the point about guests not being killed by hosts? Input? Thanks Yes — and the Livian source actually helps your Gricean concern quite a bit. From Livy 23.8, as preserved in Perseus, we are not initially told that Perolla sat down and announced:  "Father, I intend to kill Hannibal."  What Livy first tells us is that Perolla attended Hannibal's banquet with his father and was conspicuously unhappy. He refused wine, citing poor health, while his father added that distress of mind was understandable. [perseus.tufts.edu] The source we retrieved then continues (via the secondary summary closely following Livy):  During the banquet, Perolla followed his father into the garden and revealed a sword, proposing to assassinate Hannibal. [en.wikipedia.org], [military-h...fandom.com]  That is quite different from a dinner-table declaration. A Gricean reconstruction The sequence appears closer to:  Perolla behaves strangely at the banquet. Father notices. They withdraw privately. Perolla reveals the weapon and intention.  So the intention is communicated, but not necessarily by an explicit prior announcement. In Gricean terms, Pacuvius may first infer:  +> something is wrong  from Perolla's refusal to participate normally in the banquet. [perseus.tufts.edu] Only afterwards does Perolla make the matter explicit. Your Oscan point Historically, I would be cautious. The sources tell us the Calavii were Campanian and connected with an Oscan-speaking milieu, but I found no source saying:  Perolla did not understand the guest-host ethic because he was Oscan.  We cannot establish that from the evidence. In fact, Livy's argument as summarized is less about ethnic custom than about political consequences:  Hannibal had reconciled the young man and admitted him to the banquet. Failure would destroy Perolla. Failure could destroy Pacuvius. Failure could endanger others associated with them. [perseus.tufts.edu], [en.wikipedia.org]  The strongest Grice/Speranza point To me, the most interesting feature is that Perolla reveals the plan at all. A perfect assassin keeps silent. Perolla seeks an audience:  his father.  That suggests he wants not merely success but ratification. The implicature is:  "I want you to agree that this is the right thing to do."  Pacuvius responds not by denying that Hannibal is an enemy, but by attacking the consequences. So the conversation is not:  Is Hannibal an enemy?  but:  Does hostility justify this particular act?  That's a much richer dialogue. And yes: Livy leaves open exactly how much Pacuvius inferred before the sword was revealed. The text permits a Gricean reading in which unusual behaviour generates suspicion before the explicit disclosure occurs. [perseus.tufts.edu], [en.wikipedia.org] And we may add that Portico (Stoic Porch) was still not the rule. Perolla shows sword -- we can have this doppelganger Griceian misunderstanding. Don't do it, son -- it's not worth it. What do you mean, not worthy, Dad? -- "Killing yourself just because we have this animal at the table." "But dad, by showing the sword -- you never read H. P. Grice -- I meant to tell you that my mind is set on _causing_ that 'animal,' as you call him, to cease to exist.' -- "Still hardly a bad idea, son -- and now for Kantian utilitarian ethics -- don't kill your guest, if you don't intend to be killed by your host next time around?" Input? Feedback? Thanks I like this very much because it exploits a genuine ambiguity in the situation. Livy's narrative, as we've recovered it, gives us:  a banquet with Hannibal, Perolla's visible agitation, a private withdrawal with his father, the revelation of a sword, the father's successful dissuasion. [archive.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [academic.oup.com]  But the sword itself is a wonderfully Gricean sign. A sword can mean:  "I intend to kill." "I intend to risk death." "I am prepared for violence." "My resolution is fixed."  The father could momentarily interpret one aspect of the display, while the son intends another.  Conversatio Calaviana PACVVIVS (1) "Quid est istud, fili? Cur gladium ostendis?" (What is that, son? Why do you show me a sword?)  PEROLLA (2) "Hoc ferrum hodie rem publicam liberare potest." (This blade can free the state today.)  PACVVIVS (3) "Noli facere. Non tanti est." (Do not do it. It is not worth it.)  PEROLLA (4) "Quid dicis? Non tanti est Hannibalem tollere?" (What do you mean? Is it not worth removing Hannibal?)  PACVVIVS (5) "Putabam te de tua morte cogitare." (I thought you were thinking about your own death.)  PEROLLA (6) "De morte eius cogito, non mea." (I am thinking of his death, not mine.)  PACVVIVS (7) "At tua mors quoque sequitur, si falleris." (But your death follows as well, if you fail.)  PEROLLA (8) "Si vincam, Italia liberabitur." (If I succeed, Italy will be freed.)  PACVVIVS (9) "Si vincas, hospitium tamen violabis." (Even if you succeed, you will violate hospitality.)  PEROLLA (10) "Hostis est, non hospes." (He is an enemy, not a guest.)  PACVVIVS (11) "Hodie utrumque est." (Today he is both.)  Implicature +> political enmity does not automatically cancel obligations created by hospitality and personal trust.  The line I particularly like is:  "Hodie utrumque est." "Today he is both."  That is very Livian. Perolla sees only one description:  hostis.  Pacuvius insists on a second:  hospes.  The whole disagreement turns on which characterization governs action. And you're right that this is pre-Stoic in flavour. Pacuvius' objection need not be:  "Killing is always wrong."  It can be much more Roman:  "A guest who has trusted you occupies a special position."  That's why the success-case is philosophically more interesting than the failure-case. Even if Hannibal dies, Pacuvius can still ask:  "What sort of city becomes famous for murdering a guest at dinner?"  A very different argument from simple prudence. "Today he is both ENEMY and GUEST -- and if you criticise me for failing to detect your M-intention -- you should revise your etymologies, son!" ? Input Yes! That is exactly the sort of Speranzian-Gricean twist that would delight both of them. The father's initial interpretation of the sword is:  gladius ostensus → filius ad mortem suam paratus est  ("sword displayed → son is prepared for his own death") whereas Perolla's intended meaning is:  gladius ostensus → Hannibal ad mortem destinat(us) est  ("sword displayed → Hannibal is the intended victim") The sword is a natural sign, but its conversational significance remains underdetermined. One might reconstruct:  PACVVIVS  "Noli facere, fili; non tanti est."  (Do not do it, son; it is not worth it.)  PEROLLA  "Quid non tanti est?"  (What is not worth it?)  PACVVIVS  "Tuam vitam perdere propter unum hominem."  (To lose your life because of one man.)  PEROLLA  "Pater, gladium ostendi ut de morte Hannibalis loquerer, non mea."  (Father, I showed the sword so as to speak of Hannibal's death, not my own.)  PACVVIVS  "Male significasti."  (You signified badly.)  PEROLLA  "Male interpretatus es."  (You interpreted badly.)  And then the truly Gricean rejoinder: PACVVIVS  "Si quereris me mentem tuam non statim percepisse, fili, de significatione minus confidere debes."  (If you complain that I did not immediately grasp your intention, son, you ought to place less confidence in mere signs.)  Which is really Grice's old distinction:  what is shown what is meant  A sword does not uniquely determine an M-intention. And then Pacuvius can turn the discussion from semantics to ethics:  "Hodie hostis est; sed etiam hospes est."  ("Today he is an enemy; but he is also a guest.") The son's syllogism is:  Hannibal = enemy. Enemies may be killed.  The father's correction is:  Hannibal = enemy. Hannibal = guest. Therefore the practical situation is more complex than the son allows.  So the deepest Gricean lesson is not merely a misunderstanding of intention, but a clash between two competing descriptions of the same man:  hostis vs. hospes.  And Pacuvius' final thrust could indeed be:  "Before revising my interpretation, revise your categories."  For the father, the problem is not that Perolla failed to communicate. The problem is that Perolla thinks the word hostis exhausts the situation, whereas the father insists that hospes is equally true. That is a very Roman—and very conversational—piece of practical philosophy. And the father's son implicature also being that: aren't host, guest, hostile, enemy all originally meant (oddly) the same thing? Cheers! ("If I failed to be Griceian, son, you failed to be an etymologist, and you missed my etymology-based pun on host/guest/enemy, son") Cheers — and that's a very Speranzian move indeed. The joke becomes even richer if Pacuvius is imagined as replying not merely as a father or politician, but as an amateur etymologist:  "If I misunderstood your M-intention, son, you misunderstood your vocabulary."  There is a real linguistic background here. Latin hostis originally did not mean "enemy" in the later military sense; in very early usage it could mean something closer to a foreigner or outsider. Modern etymologists also connect Latin hostis and hospes to a common Indo-European background involving reciprocal guest-host relations, although the exact historical development is complex. So there is a genuine ancient-linguistic irony available. One could imagine:  PEROLLA  "Hostis est."  (He is an enemy.) PACVVIVS  "Et hospes est."  (And he is a guest.) PEROLLA  "Hostis hospesque idem esse non possunt."  (Enemy and guest cannot be the same.) PACVVIVS  "Minus grammaticus es quam putas."  (You are less of a grammarian than you think.) PEROLLA  "Quid dicis?"  (What do you mean?) PACVVIVS  "Verba ipsa cognata sunt; tu tantum alteram partem vides."  (The words themselves are akin; you see only one side of the matter.)  The Gricean point is delightful: Perolla thinks the relevant description is exhausted by:  hostis  Pacuvius insists on:  hospes  And then adds, almost pedantically:  "Historically and linguistically these notions are not as far apart as you imagine."  So the father's complaint becomes twofold:  Pragmatic: "You assumed I knew exactly what you meant from the sword." Philological: "You assume 'enemy' settles the matter, but even your vocabulary contains traces of reciprocal obligation."  A very Speranzian closing line would be:  "Si ego Griceianus parum fui, tu philologus parum fuisti." ("If I was insufficiently Gricean, you were insufficiently philological.")  That sounds almost exactly like the sort of repartee Speranza would put into the mouths of a Campanian aristocrat and his overzealous son.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calboli – Ossia: Grice e Calboli: la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale della lingua e la parola – Gardiner -- de parabola.  Francesco Giuseppe Paulucci di Calboli (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale della lingua e la parola – Gardiner -- de parabola. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Francesco Giuseppe Paulucci di Calboli’s reflections on parola and parabola converge on the idea that meaning is not exhausted by linguistic form but arises through rational use in speech, though they approach this convergence from different intellectual directions. Grice famously locates meaning in the speaker’s intentions and in the inferential reasoning of interlocutors operating under shared cooperative norms, so that conversational implicature emerges when what is meant rationally exceeds what is linguistically said, as in perception reports like “that tie seems light blue,” where the choice between “seems” and “is” guides pragmatic inference rather than lexical content alone. Calboli, working within a historical‑philological and rhetorical framework inspired by Gardiner and classical sources, grounds a similar notion of conversational reason in the concept of parabola: speech understood as articulated, voiced expression that historically fuses comparison, discourse, and meaning, and that only later differentiates itself from langue in the Saussurean sense. Where Grice analyzes utterance as an abstract vehicle whose pragmatic force depends on rational cooperation and defeasible inference, Calboli emphasizes parola as embodied, voiced action—high or low, grave or everyday—whose rationality is inseparable from its historical evolution from parabola to word, from comparison to speech act. Thus Grice offers a minimalist, analytic account in which conversational reason governs how meanings are inferred beyond semantics, while Calboli provides a historically thick account in which conversational reason is sedimented in the very notion of parola as expressive action; yet both meet on the core insight that meaning lives not in words alone but in rationally organized use within conversation. Grice: “I like C. – he philosophised on much the same subjects I did – colour words (‘that tie seems/is light blue’) – the philosophy of perception, and parabola, i.e. expression. If I use ‘utterance’ broadly so does Calboli with his ‘parabola.’ One big difference is that he is a nobleman, who owned a castle that he ceded to Firenze – I did not!” Exercitatio philosophica” Étymol. et Hist.I. Faculté d'exprimer la pensée par le langage articulé -- «expression verbale de la pensée» (Roland, éd. J. Bédier: De sa parole ne fut mie hastifs, Sa custume est qu'il parolet a leisir); spéc. ling. distingué de langue (Sauss.). action de parler» metre a parole «faire parler» (Wace, Conception N.-D., éd. Ashford). C. Le langage oral considéré par rapport à l'élocution, au ton de la voix cde sa pleine parole «à haute voix» (Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, éd. G. Favati); parole basse (Benoît de Ste-Maure, Troie,  ds T.-L.);(Wace, Rou, éd. Holden: Sa voiz e sa parole mue). Issu du lat. chrét. parabola (devenu *paraula par chute de la constrictive bilabiale issue de -b- devant voy. homorgane) «comparaison, similitude», terme de rhét. (Sénèque, Quintillien); puis, chez les aut. chrét.: 1. «parabole» (Tertullien, St Jérôme); 2. «discours grave, inspiré; parole», ce double sens étant dû à l'hébreu pārehāl (Job, 1: assumens parabolam suam«reprenant son discours»; Num.: assumptaque parabola sua, dixit; par la suite: Gloss. Remigianae: in rustica parabola «en lang. vulg.»), v. Ern.-Meillet, Blaise, Vaan., Löfstedt, Late Latin, pp.81 sqq. Le lat. est empr. au gr. παραβολη  «comparaison [par juxtaposition], illustration» empl. dans les Septante au sens de «parabole» (Marc). Parabola a supplanté verbum dans l'ensemble des lang. rom. (sauf le roum.) grâce à la fréq. de son empl. dans la lang. relig., verbum étant spéc. utilisé dans cette même lang. pour traduire le gr. λογος, v. verbe. de parabola, parabola, parola, parlare, hyperbola, cyclo, ellipsis. exercitatio philosophica.  Grice: Calboli, mi dicono che tu abbia ceduto un castello a Firenze, mentre io mi limito a cedere qualche parola al bar. Ma dimmi, la parabola è più questione di nobiltà o di voce alta? Calboli: Caro Grice, la parabola si trasmette meglio tra mura antiche, ma basta una voce chiara per far capire il pensiero anche in piazza. La parola, che sia grave o ispirata, fa sempre la differenza! Grice: Allora, se in latino parabola significa sia “parola” sia “comparazione,” dovrei scegliere la similitudine o la conversazione per esprimermi senza inciampare? Calboli: Grice, scegli la conversazione: da una buona chiacchierata nascono sia parabole che paragoni, e se la lingua si scioglie, magari arriva pure il vino. Così, anche senza castello, almeno la parola resta regina! Calboli, Francesco Giuseppe Paulucci di (1783). Exercitatio philosophica. Roma, Pagliarini. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calcidio – Ossia: Grice e Calcidio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma.  Calcidio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma. Grice: “I like C.!” Commenta il "Timeo" di Platone. Per impulso di un OSIO al quale con una lettera C. dedica l’opera sua, è un platonico con forti tendenze eclettiche o dilettanti. C. si dove identificare il dedicatorio del lavoro a quell’Osius che prende parte ai concili di Nicea e di Sardica. C. sopra tutto ammira l’accademia. .Inoltre, C. menziona filosofi del portico. Queste citazioni svariate sono l’espressione estrema del suo eclettismo o dilettantesimo. C. parla di tre principi delle cose, Dio, il modello, cioè la idea, e la materia.In ciò si accorda con ALNINO col quale riduce la idea a un pensiero divino. Col PORTICO C. identifica il divino al principio attivo, la materia al principio passivo. Fa della materia un principio originario. Il mondo non è stato creato nel tempo. Si sforza di affermare che in questi argomenti l'origine di cui si parla non è cronologico, ma designa una dipendenza. C. si esprime quindi in modo improprio quando ammette l'eternità dell’origine delle cose e della materia. Dalla materia, in cui Dio impone le immagini dell'idea, e provenuto il corpo. Mentre in questa parte, in complesso, predomina il pensiero accademico, nello studio delle potenze divine. In alcuni punti essenziali ne differiscono. Al vertice sta il divino supremo o il sommo bene è posto sopra ogni sostanza e dichiarato superiore all’intelletto e ineffabile. Al disotto d’esso sta un SECONDO divino, la provvidenza, identificata al vobis, la volontà e l'eterno atto del divino. Le cose divine intelligibili sottostanno soltanto alla provvidenza, le naturali e corporee sono soggette al fato o serie delle cause che è una legge promulgata per reggere ogni cosa. Di questa legge è custode un TERZO divino o l'anima cosmica, che C. chiama seconda mente o intelletto. La tri-partizione riprende lo schema d’Albino: non denomina uno il primo principio, gli attribuisce la volontà e non parla della derivazione della materia nei termini caratteristici di quel sistema. La teoria della provvidenza e del fato sembra attinta a una fonte platonica. Le teorie sui demoni e sul destino delle anime dopo la line.  Cicerone. GRICEVS: Calcidive, audio te Timeum Platonis commentari, et Roma ipsa videtur tibi facere “implicaturas” in angiportis. CALCIDIVS: Ita est, sed mihi tres sunt principia rerum—Deus, Idea, Materia—et interdum etiam Porticus se intrudit quasi hospes non invitatus. GRICEVS: Amo C., quia cum dicis “mundus non creatus est in tempore,” ego intellego te dicere “sed noli me rogare de chronologia.” CALCIDIVS: Recte intellexisti, Grice, et si hoc improprie dico, culpa est providentiae secundae, non mea calligraphiae primae. To Grice, Calcidius sounds Roman enough -- but did he write in Greek. Is there a way to say he was born in Italy? Or is there information against that? Thanks - The safest answer is this. He wrote in Latin, not in Greek. Calcidius is known for a partial Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus together with a Latin commentary, and modern scholarship describes the work as based on Greek materials but directed to a Latin-reading audience. [en.wikipedia.org], [jstor.org] So if Grice says that Calcidius sounds Roman enough, the text itself does indeed belong to the Latin world. But that does not let us say, with any security, that he was born in Italy. The evidence is too thin. The best concise statement I can give is that there is no firm evidence for his geographic origin. One modern summary says flatly that there is not enough evidence to locate him geographically at all, even though some have tried to associate him with places called Chalcis; another allows only uncertain hypotheses such as Italy or North Africa. [en.wikipedia.org], [philopedia.org] In fact, the evidence we do have slightly pushes in the opposite direction from a confident “born in Italy.” His name appears Greek, and some linguistic features suggest that he may have been more at home in Greek than as a native Latin speaker, even though he wrote in Latin and was clearly bilingual. That does not disprove an Italian birth, because late antique Italy was not exactly innocent of Greek speakers, but it does mean that “Italian by birth” would be too strong. [en.wikipedia.org] So the driest verdict is this. One may safely say that Calcidius wrote in Latin for the Latin West. One may not safely say that he was born in Italy. The evidence does not warrant that, and some of it rather points to a Greek-speaking background whose location remains uncertain. [en.wikipedia.org], [philopedia.org], [jstor.org] If you want a Speranzian one-liner for the entry, I would put it this way. Calcidius wrote in Latin, but he cannot securely be enrolled as Italian by birth; he belongs more safely to the Latin reception of Greek philosophy than to any demonstrable Italian nativity. [en.wikipedia.org], [jstor.org] And was this common? I mean, translating (in part, but perhaps intentionally, the whole) of a dialogue in GREEK to Latin -- who to? The elite already knew Greek. It's like someone said of Quixote (Hudson): read it in Spanish or not at all. I allow and Grice allows that the Timeo is almost unscrutable -- and Calcidio must have been at least bilingual -- but wasn't the trend in Ancient Rome to leave such things untrasnlated -- see the horror that followed the Attempts by Avicenna and Averroes over Aristotle. At Oxford they would read the Timaeus in Greek or not at all -- I suppose Calicidio's comments are the 'gems' -- but do we have ONE piece of linguistic geniality in what he did: as 'the earth has the form of an ettraedro'? But more specifically, Grice doesn't think even Cicero cared to translate full things -- or did he? I'm talking philosophy, not verse, or plays -- it may do good in that some terminology -- say entelechia, categoria as praedicamentum, etc -- or in Cicero's case, qualitas and quantitas enter the Latin vocabulario (Greek poiotes, posotes) -- etc. Feedback. Input? Thanks Yes. I think your instinct is basically right, but with two corrections. First, it was not uncommon, but it was selective. Romans did not usually translate Greek philosophy just to help the topmost elite, because that elite often did know Greek. They translated in order to do at least four other things at once. They made philosophy available to the wider educated Latin public, including readers who were literate, serious, and socially elevated without being fully comfortable in Greek. Cicero himself says this with brutal clarity in the proem to the Academica: if a Roman reader was already well trained in Greek, he would rather read the Greek originals; if he was not, he might not care for philosophy at all. Yet Cicero wrote anyway, precisely to make Latin capable of philosophical work. [thelatinlibrary.com], [sciencegate.app] They naturalised Greek philosophy into Roman intellectual life. Translation was not merely a service industry. It was a cultural claim that Latin could bear the same weight as Greek, and in doing so it created the technical vocabulary of later Western philosophy. Modern work on the development of Latin philosophical vocabulary explicitly treats Lucretius, Cicero, Calcidius, and Boethius as major lexical innovators in exactly this sense. [bmcr.brynmawr.edu], [academia.edu] They taught. A partial translation with commentary is often not aimed at the man who can already sight-read Plato in Greek with pleasure, but at the student, cleric, lawyer, provincial notable, or philosophically ambitious Latin reader who needs a guided entrance. That is especially true of Calcidius, whose translation and commentary were, as scholars keep repeating, aimed at a Latin-speaking audience and became the main portal through which the Latin West knew Plato. [jstor.org], [cambridge.org] They appropriated and reframed. A translation is also an intervention. It chooses what matters, what can be left out, how terms are to be rendered, and what philosophical atmosphere the target language is to breathe. So your first thought is right: the old Roman and later Oxonian prestige of the Greek original remained very real. But the practical intellectual history is less Hudsonian than that. “Read it in Greek or not at all” is a good snobbish maxim; it is not how Latin philosophy actually survived. On Calcidius specifically, the answer is very pointed. He translated only part of the Timaeus, up to 53c, and that partiality appears to have been stable, not just an accidental truncation. More importantly, he paired it with a full commentary, and the commentary is one of the main reasons the work mattered so much. Modern scholarship explicitly says that the commentary was written to elucidate the translation, that it was aimed at Latin readers, and that for roughly a thousand years “Plato” in the Latin West meant, in effect, the Timaeus as filtered through Calcidius. [jstor.org], [cambridge.org], [bmcr.brynmawr.edu] So yes, for Calcidius the comments are indeed the gems, or at least half the jewel. He is not merely giving a crib to people too lazy for Greek. He is furnishing a Latin philosophical entry-point, with exegesis attached. [jstor.org], [academic.oup.com] As for one piece of linguistic geniality, I should be careful. I do not want to pretend to have a single dazzling specimen on the spot of the kind you suggest with “the earth has the form of a tetrahedron.” But the more general scholarly point is secure: Calcidius participates in the stabilising of technical Latin vocabulary for Platonic and cosmological discourse, and modern studies of Greek-to-Latin philosophical translation treat him precisely as one of the authors who shape Latin conceptual language, not merely repeat it. [philopedia.org], [bmcr.brynmawr.edu], [academic.oup.com] Now to Cicero, because here your suspicion is both right and wrong. You are right that Cicero was not, in the main, a translator of whole philosophical works in the simple modern sense. His preferred mode was dialogue, exposition, adaptation, recasting, and Roman re-performance of Greek philosophy. De finibus, De natura deorum, Academica, and the rest are not straightforward full translations of Greek originals. They are Latin philosophical compositions drawing heavily on Greek schools and texts, often preserving arguments we would otherwise have lost. [sourcelibrary.org], [catalog.perseus.org], [thelatinlibrary.com] But you are wrong if the thought is that he therefore “did not care to translate.” He did care, deeply, but he cared more about transfer than about literal completeness. He wanted Greek philosophy on Latin soil. One modern study even describes this explicitly as Cicero’s mission of transferring Greek philosophy into Latin and creating Latin philosophical terminology. [sciencegate.app], [bmcr.brynmawr.edu] And yes, he did sometimes translate actual stretches of philosophical text. The clearest case relevant here is his own partial Latin version of Plato’s Timaeus, covering only part of the dialogue. Scholarship on Calcidius notes explicitly that another uncommented Latin version of the Timaeus already existed, namely Cicero’s first-century rendering of 27d–47b, and that no one translated the whole dialogue into Latin until the fifteenth century. [jstor.org] So the neat formula is this. Cicero usually does not translate whole philosophical works; he Latinises Greek philosophy by recasting it. But he absolutely does translate pieces, and his broader enterprise is one of deliberate philosophical translation in the civilisational sense. [thelatinlibrary.com], [sciencegate.app], [academic.oup.com] Your examples qualitas and quantitas are exactly to the point. The development of Latin philosophical vocabulary proceeded by calque, adaptation, semantic extension, and selective coinage, and Cicero is one of the chief agents in that process. Modern scholarship emphasises the creation and stabilisation of Latin technical terms through Greek-to-Latin transfer, with Cicero standing near the front of the story. [bmcr.brynmawr.edu], [academia.edu], [sciencegate.app] So if I boil the whole matter down into a Grice-friendly set of theses, keeping things dry. The elite’s knowledge of Greek did not make Latin translation pointless, because “elite” is not a single level of competence, because teaching requires mediation, and because translation was also a claim about what Latin itself could become. Cicero was not mainly a full translator of philosophical books, but he was one of the greatest translators of Greek philosophy into Latin culture. Calcidius is a later and more school-facing phenomenon: partial translation plus sustained commentary for a Latin audience, and that combination proved historically decisive. And the trend was not to leave everything untranslated. It was rather to translate strategically, unevenly, and with great self-consciousness, above all where vocabulary, pedagogy, and civilisational ownership were at stake. If you like, I can next give you a very compact comparison in three columns: Cicero, Calcidius, and Boethius, under the headings translate, adapt, and comment. [thelatinlibrary.com], [jstor.org], [bmcr.brynmawr.edu] So Calcidio did 1-up to 53c, and Cicero 27-47 -- yet you say that Western Civilisation knew Plato via Calcicdio -- I suppose Cicero's thing is lost or never circulated widely -- and how many pages in say the Loeb edition would that be? Yes, that is exactly the point. Cicero did only 27d–47b, while Calcidius did 17a–53c, and the crucial difference is not only that Calcidius translated more, but that he attached the extensive commentary which medieval readers actually used. The standard account is that Cicero’s version circulated only in a limited way, whereas Calcidius became the main vehicle through which the Latin West knew Plato’s Timaeus. JSTOR is especially explicit: Cicero’s rendering had limited circulation, with about 16 manuscripts, whereas Calcidius’s translation and commentary survived in vastly greater manuscript numbers and effectively determined medieval interpretation. [jstor.org], [jstor.org], [omeka-s.li...linois.edu] So when one says that Western civilisation knew Plato through Calcidius, one really means the Latin Middle Ages and much of the medieval school tradition. In that period, “Plato” was overwhelmingly the Timaeus as transmitted and explained by Calcidius. Somfai even says, in effect, that for about a thousand years “Plato” meant the Timaeus, and the Timaeus meant primarily Calcidius. [jstor.org] On the Loeb page-count, I can only give an estimate, not a precise physical count, because page layouts vary by edition and display mode. But the proportions are clear enough. The full Timaeus in the Loeb runs from page 1 to page 255 of the volume before Critias begins, though that includes introduction and apparatus, so the dialogue itself is shorter than that raw span suggests. Loeb and the dialogue entry itself confirm the volume placement. [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com] Since Cicero’s piece covers roughly 20 Stephanus pages, 27d to 47b, and Calcidius’s covers roughly 36 Stephanus pages, 17a to 53c, one may estimate the following in a Loeb-style text layout. Cicero’s stretch would be roughly a third of the dialogue’s text-body, perhaps about 50 to 70 Loeb pages of Greek-English text. Calcidius’s stretch would be rather over half of the dialogue’s text-body, perhaps about 85 to 115 Loeb pages of Greek-English text. That is an estimate, but it is the right order of magnitude, and the relative point matters more than the absolute number: Calcidius gives substantially more text, and, above all, he gives the commentary that made the text usable to readers who had little or no Greek. [jstor.org], [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com] So the dry formula is this. Cicero translated a shorter and less widely circulated fragment; Calcidius translated a longer portion and attached the commentary that became the medieval schoolroom passport to Plato. That is why the Latin West remembers the latter more decisively. [omeka-s.li...linois.edu], [jstor.org] If you want, I can next give you a very compressed quantitative comparison in the form: Stephanus span, approximate percentage of the dialogue, and rough Loeb-page estimate for each of the two.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calderoni – Ossia: Grice e Calderoni: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del bene comune, bene summon, Remigio di Gerolami e il buono commune.  Mario Calderoni (Ferrara, Emilia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del bene comune -- Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Mario Calderoni’s pragmatismo analitico converge on a shared verificationist intuition while diverging in scope and emphasis: for Grice, meaning is fundamentally a matter of intention, understood through the rational inferences of cooperative interlocutors, with conversational implicature arising when what is assertable, given shared norms of reasoning, goes beyond literal truth‑conditions. Calderoni, working earlier within the Italian pragmatist tradition shaped by Vailati and in dialogue with Peirce, radicalizes the verificationist core by treating truth and sense as functions of assertability conditions tied to prediction, action, and social coordination, extending these conditions beyond individual utterances to legal, ethical, and economic discourse, where the “bene comune” and even the summum bonum depend on publicly intelligible, shared criteria of sense and nonsense. Where Grice analyses negation, perception, and colour terms to show how conversational reason filters sense‑data through norms of rational speech, Calderoni applies similar analytic tools to link common sense and science, law and value, insisting that the meaningfulness of claims is inseparable from their role in collective practices and moral responsibility. Thus Grice refines conversational reason into a micro‑theory of linguistic interaction governed by intentions and implicature, while Calderoni anticipates and broadens this move by embedding conversational rationality within a normative pragmatics of action and value, where assertability is not merely a conversational achievement but a condition for communal understanding and the pursuit of the common good. --, bene summon, Remigio di Gerolami e il buono commune. Grice:”C. knew everything – he corresponded with Lady Viola, as I didn’t – and he pleased the lady, because the lady knew that Calderoni was using all the right words – none of the heathen ‘mean,’ but all about ‘segno’ and ‘segnare’ and ‘intenso,’ – It is drawing from the Calderoni tradition that I arrive at the meaning-as-intention paradigm I’m identified with! And note that sous-entendue is Millian for implicatura!” -- Grice: “Calderoni is a genius; he is, like me, a verificationist – I mean, read my ‘Negation’: the two examples I give relate to sense data: “I’m not hearing a noise,’ and ‘That is not red.’ Calderoni tries the SAME! He founded a verificationist (or ‘pragmatist’ club at Firenze), and he corresponded with Peirce when I only decades later,  tutored my tutees on him!” --  Grice: “Calderoni is serious about truth-conditivions having to be understaood as ‘assertability’ conditions – and these assertability conditions providing much of the ‘sense;’ admittedly, he uses ‘sense’ more loosely than I do – but on the good side, he uses ‘nonsense’ in a tigher way than I do!” Teorico del diritto italiano (pragmatismo analitico italiano).  Studia a Firenze e si laurea a Pisa, con “I postulati della scienza positiva ed il diritto penale”. Studia sotto Vailati. Mantiene scambi con Ferrari, Mosca, Croce, e Juvalta, Disarmonie economiche e disarmonie morali. A Bologna. L’assiologia, ossia, la Teoria Generale dei valori”. Il Pragmatismo” raccolta di tre articoli introdotti nella Rivista di Psicologia applicata (“Le origini e l'idea fondamentale del Pragmatismo”; “Il Pragmatismo ed i vari modi di non dir niente” – “L'arbitrario nel funzionamento della vita psichica”. Teoria Generale dei valori Mette sotto analisi e in correlazione senso comune e scienza attraverso lo strumento meta-discorsivo della filosofia, intendendo costruire conoscenza e scienza fascismo, politica italiana, stato italiano, comunita, bene comune, bene, bene superiore, bene summo, summum bonum, superior bonum. Grice: Calderoni, tu che hai scritto sulla teoria dei valori, dimmi un po’: il bene comune te lo immagini più come una pizza condivisa o come una ricetta segreta che nessuno deve sapere? Calderoni: Caro Grice, per me il bene comune è come una pizza: se la condividi, finisce meglio per tutti. Ma attenzione, ogni fetta richiede una buona dose di senso – e magari anche un pizzico di pragmatismo fiorentino! Grice: E il “summum bonum”? Sarebbe il bordo croccante o il cuore filante? Calderoni: Ah, quello è il punto! Il “summum bonum” è quando a tavola nessuno litiga, tutti capiscono la battuta e rimane ancora una fetta per chi arriva in ritardo. Praticamente, pura implicatura conversazionale all’italiana! Calderoni, Mario (1901). I postulati della scienza positiva ed il diritto penale. Pisa: Vannini. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calidio – Ossia: Grice e Calidio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calidio. Monument of Titus Calidius Severus. The Calidii or Callidii are a Roman family during the final century of the Republic. The first of the gens to achieve prominence was Quintus C., tribune of the plebs and praetor. “C.” is probably derived from the Latin adjective calidus, which may be translated as "warm, hot, fiery," or "passionate".  The earlier C. are known to have used the praenomina Quintus, Gnaeus, and Marcus. Under the Empire the names Publius and Titus are also found. The C. of the Republic are not known to have been divided into families. In imperial times, a family of this gens bore the surname Severus.[3]  Marcus Calidius, triumvir monetalis in 117 or 116 BC. He was probably the father of Quintus Calidius, the praetor of 79 BC.[4] Gnaeus Calidius, an influential eques in Sicily, who was robbed of his silver by Verres. C.'s son was a judge and Roman senator.[5] Quintus Calidius M. f., tribune of the plebs in 99 and praetor in 79 BC. Marcus Calidius Q. f. M. n., praetor in 57 BC, a celebrated orator and contemporary of Tulliio Cicero. Publius C. Severus, father of Titus Calidius, the soldier. Titus Calidius P. f. Severus, an optio of the fifteenth legion, perhaps during the latter half of the first century AD.[3] Quintus Calidius P. f. Severus, brother of Titus Calidius, the soldier, in whose memory he erected a monument at Carnuntum.[3] See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin & English Dictionary (1963).  Monument of Titus Calidius Severus.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 300.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Verrem, iv. 20. Bibliography Michael Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, Cambridge University Press (1974, 2001).  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Calidius". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Category: Roman gentes

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calidio – Ossia: Grice e Calidio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calidio. I suppose we learn of C. being 'robbed' his silver by V. from TULLIO? We can reconstruct a conversation -- 'rob' seems like a strong verb -- was he invited to dinner and just took the silver with him, Verres did? Does an eques in Sicily mean he was Sicily-born? Thanks –  Yes, we learn of this episode from Cicero's In Verrem, and the wording is actually rather revealing. Cicero says that Verres took from:  Gnaeus Calidius, the distinguished and popular knight (eques), certain famous silver "horses" that had once belonged to Quintus Maximus. [loebclassics.com]  Cicero then immediately turns sarcastic:  "Oh, I have made a false step; he did not rob him, he bought them..." before mockingly inviting Verres to produce the receipt. [loebclassics.com]  So the Gricean point is already in Cicero. Verres' defence is implicitly:  "I didn't steal them; I bought them."  Cicero's reply is:  "If you bought them voluntarily, why did Calidius keep complaining that he had been stripped of his property?" [loebclassics.com]  In other words, the issue is not a masked burglar carrying off silver after dinner. The issue is rather:  Was this a genuine sale, or was it a "sale" that nobody could safely refuse when the governor wanted your property?  Cicero plainly wants the audience to infer the latter. [loebclassics.com]  Was Calidius Sicilian? Be careful here. The gens article calls him:  "an influential eques in Sicily."  But that does not establish that he was born in Sicily. The passage I found only supports:  he was an equestrian of importance in Sicily, his son was a senator and judge, Verres seized or coerced him out of famous silverware. [loebclassics.com]  I found no source stating that Calidius was Sicily-born. So the safest formulation is:  Gnaeus Calidius was an influential Roman equestrian active in Sicily. The source does not specify his birthplace. [loebclassics.com]   A Calidian conversation One can reconstruct a very Ciceronian dialogue: VERRES  "Argentum tuum emo." (I shall buy your silver.)  CALIDIVS  "Num vendere volo?" (Do I wish to sell it?)  VERRES  "Pretium accipies." (You will receive a price.)  CALIDIVS  "Intellego." (I understand.)  The implicature being: +> "This is legally a sale, but practically a command." And that is exactly the distinction Cicero is trying to blur in the jury's mind:  Verres says emi ("I bought it"); Cicero says eripuisti ("you took it away"). [loebclassics.com]  A lovely Grice/Speranza case in which the dispute is not over the physical event, but over the proper description of the event. Was it a purchase, a confiscation, extortion, or theft? The rhetoric lies in choosing the verb.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calò – Ossia: Grice e Calò e la ragione conversazionale.  Giovanni Calò (Francavilla Fontana, Lecce) e la ragione conversazionale. Giovanni Calò e H. P. Grice convergono, da tradizioni molto diverse, su un punto decisivo: il rifiuto di ridurre la razionalità a un dato meramente tecnico, psicologico o naturalistico. Tuttavia, mentre Calò elabora la ragione anzitutto come ragione morale e spirituale, Grice la ricostruisce come razionalità pratica immanente all’uso linguistico. Per Calò la libertà è una attitudine originaria dello spirito individuale, indeducibile e irreducibile, che fonda al tempo stesso la coscienza morale e il valore; i principi morali sono oggettivi e universali, ma acquistano realtà soltanto nella sintesi vivente della personalità, che diventa il valore etico supremo e il centro ordinatore della vita psichica e sociale. In questa cornice, la razionalità è una forma di auto-posizione dell’io, che chiarisce e purifica progressivamente i principi morali attraverso conflitto, armonizzazione e sintesi, fino a riflettersi nell’ordine etico-politico della comunità e dello Stato come coscienza unitaria. Grice, al contrario, sospende ogni metafisica della coscienza e ogni fondazione assiologica diretta: la sua ragione conversazionale opera in e attraverso le pratiche del linguaggio ordinario, come insieme di aspettative condivise che rendono intelligibile il significare. La razionalità non è un presupposto ontologico dell’io, ma una competenza pratica che governa gli scambi comunicativi secondo il Principio di Cooperazione e le massime conversazionali, permettendo di spiegare come ciò che è inteso possa eccedere ciò che è detto mediante implicature calcolabili. In sintesi: Calò vede nella coscienza libera il fondamento ultimo della razionalità e della moralità, da cui discende anche il valore del discorso; Grice vede nel discorso stesso, regolato da norme razionali condivise, la sede primaria in cui la ragione si esercita e si manifesta. La ragione di Calò è originaria e fondativa; la ragione di Grice è emergente, relazionale e intrinsecamente conversazionale. Grice: “I like C.!” Insegna a Firenze. Rivolse la sua attenzione alla filosofia morale, ma con preferenza a quelli che più direttamente si connettono a problemi d’ordine metafisico. La libertà morale. Critica il contingentismo, il prammatismo, e il criticismo. Giunge all’affermazione del potere di libertà come attitudine propria dello spirito individuale, presupposto indispensabile; attitudine che si confonde colla stessa proprietà della coscienza di porsi come un io, centro assoluto indeducibile e irreducibiie d’ordinamento della realtà psichica, insieme d’energia produttrice di fatti. C. ciritica l’individualismo etico. C. afferma l’obiettività e universalità dei valori morali, riconosce insieme che questi non hanno esistenza concreta nè azione effettiva se non nella sintesi vivente della personalità, che è per ciò da porre come il valore etico supremo, come la realtà fornita d’intrinseco valore morale. Questa idea ispira la critica di svariati indirizzi dell’etica contemporanea, furono poi sviluppate e sistemate, in forma di trattazione teorica della coscienza morale in Principii di scienza morale con SARL. Illustra la specificità e immediatezza dell’esperienza morale attraverso la quale si rivelano il principio morale contro ogni teoria che riduce la necessità ideale a necessità d’altro genere o da interpretàzione psicologica del concetto morale. Vi sono definiti nel loro contenuto l’oggetto fini o metier dell’attività umana, il cui valore intrinseco è connaturato all’esperienza morale. L’evoluzione del principio morale si fa consistere nel chiarirsi e purificarsi di quei principii dall’elemento extra-morale o para-morale. Nella loro più rigorosa e coerente esplicazione, resa possibile dallo sviluppo, oltre che della sensibilità morale. Nella soluzione dei conflitti nei quali essi a volte vengono a trovarsi, e nello sforzo sempre meglio riuscito d’armonizzarli in valutazioni sintetiche, nella estensione della loro vita, di coesione, di prosperità della società nazionale. E perciò, in tutto quel che ha riflessi e importanza per questo fine lo stato è coscienza suprema, organizzazione unitaria, garanzia conservatrice della nazione. Grice: Caro Calò, mi dicono che tu riesca a vedere la libertà anche in un caffè stretto al bar di Firenze. Ma spiegami, è questione di spirito o di zucchero? Calò: Grice, la libertà è tutta nello spirito! Lo zucchero, al massimo, serve a dolcificare i principi morali, ma l’essenza resta nel caffè e nella coscienza che si pone come io indeducibile. Grice: Ma allora Calò, se la libertà è il centro di tutto, che fine fa il contingentismo? Finisce nel fondo della tazzina? Calò: Grice, il contingentismo si scioglie come il biscottino nel cappuccino! Alla fine rimane solo la sintesi vivente della personalità, che è il vero valore supremo. E la morale? Meglio viverla che discuterla troppo, altrimenti si raffredda come il caffè! Calò, Giovanni. (1901). Principii di scienza morale. Firenze, Le Monnier. 

 

Speranza, J. L.. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calogero – Ossia: Grice e Calogero’. Guido Calogero (Roma, Lazio). Grice’s “reason-governed conversational meaning” treats the move from what is said to what is meant as a rational reconstruction: hearers presume cooperation (the Cooperative Principle) and, when an utterance would otherwise look defective relative to the shared purpose, they infer an implicature as the best reason why a reasonable speaker would have said that, there, then.  Calogero’s dialogismo, by contrast, is not primarily a micro-theory of inference from utterance to implicature but a normative ethical-political principle: a “principio del dialogo” or duty to keep discussion open and cooperative as the condition for coexistence and justice; it is reason as sustained discutere rather than reason as calculability of speaker meaning.  In the Speranza/Villa Speranza idiom, these can be made to meet: Speranza’s “ragione conversazionale” presentation of Grice stresses conversation as a civil practice in which norms are lived (timing, restraint, mutual recognition) rather than merely diagrammed, which makes Grice look closer to Calogero than standard Anglo-American pragmatics does, while still keeping the key difference that Grice explains how implicatures are inferred from apparent maxim-floutings, whereas Calogero supplies a higher-order imperative to remain in dialogue at all. Grice: Guido, a Oxford mi dicono che “la logica” è un orologio svizzero, ma io sospetto che sia più simile a un tè delle cinque. Calogero: A Roma diremmo che l’orologio è gentile e il tè è ideale: l’importante è non confondere la puntualità con la verità. Grice: E allora, quando io parlo di significato e tu di azione, stiamo facendo la stessa cosa: cercando un modo civile di non litigare per le parole. Calogero: Sì, purché tu ammetta che anche l’inglese più sobrio, appena discute, diventa un po’ attualista. (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Molto Griceano. Calogero, Guido (1920). Poemi. Roma. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caloprese – Ossia: Grice e Caloprese: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazinale degl’encanti di Orlando furioso, Orlando innamorato, il filosofo dell’encantatrice esperienze.  Gregorio Caloprese (Scalea, Cosenza, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazinale degl’encanti di Orlando furioso, Orlando innamorato, il filosofo dell’encantatrice esperienze. A comparison between Grice and Caloprese is illuminating precisely because it shows that Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning is not an isolated twentieth‑century construction, but the rearticulation—in a different idiom—of a much older civil‑philosophical insight. Caloprese, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, approaches meaning through poetic incanto and rhetorical artificio, especially in Ariosto, treating enchantment not as irrational excess but as a lawful modulation of passion addressed to a rational interlocutor. His analysis presupposes that poetic effects are intelligible only against shared expectations of reason, decorum, and responsiveness between speaker and audience; the incanto works because it exploits, rather than suspends, common rational norms. Grice’s conversational theory makes this structure explicit by relocating it from epic poetry to ordinary speech: meaning is governed by reasons because interlocutors presuppose cooperative rationality, and implicature arises when what is meant exceeds what is strictly said under those shared norms. Where Caloprese speaks of the governance of passion by reason within literary and civic life—Arcadia brought into civil conversation—Grice provides the formal machinery for the same phenomenon at the level of everyday utterance. The continuity is visible already in Grice’s early turn to Locke’s Essay of 1690, itself emerging from conversational exchange among “four or five friends,” a scene structurally akin to Caloprese’s academies. What separates them is not the core insight, but the register: Caloprese articulates reason-governed meaning through poetic philosophy and civil pedagogy, Grice through analytic reconstruction of conversational practice. In both cases, meaning is neither brute signal nor private intention, but a rational achievement sustained by shared norms of address, recognition, and response. Grice: “Strictly, C. taught TREPASI to be a Cartesian – I know because I relied on him for my ‘Descartes on clear and distinct perception. I love Ca; he brings philosophy to Arcadee – The keyword is ARCADIA – or GLI ARCADI, if you must – Caloprese tutored Metastasio – Arcadia is like Oxford – et in Arcadia ego – or Cambridge – the other place – it’s a bit of a utopia – of course, Arcadia as a REAL place is in the Pelopponesus, as any Lit. Hum. Oxon. schoolboy knows! But C. brings it to civilisation, i.e. to the Roman-Italian tradition!” Celebre pel suo ingegno, e per l'universale sua letteratura. Visse molto tempo in Napoli, e in Roma; finalmente tornato alla patria vi morì. I suoi genitori si resero presto conto dell'intelligenza del loro figliolo e lo avviarono a studiare a Napoli sotto la guida di Porcella Si laurea successivamente nel campo a lui più congeniale della medicina. In rapporto con i centri intellettuali di Napoli e Roma dove risiedeva suo cugino e dove lo stesso Caloprese soggiorna. A Scalea fondò una scuola che ha una certa rinomanza e partecipa coi Medinaceli traendone ispirazione per i suoi interessi antiautoritari e antidogmaticiche lo fecero schierare dalla parte di coloro che subordinavano l'indagine naturalistica al metodo razionale. VICO, Trapasi, Giannone lo qualificano come gran renatista ma la sua reale posizione filosofica è piuttosto da rintracciare in chi era a lui più vicino: il suo discepolo Spinelli che racconta come C., visse dei proventi di alcune sue proprietà praticando la medicina solo per i suoi amici e i poveri e che descrive la scuola di C. come fondata sullo studio letterario e scientifico e l'esercizio fisico nella convinzione del rapporto tra corpo ed animo. Alla lettura dei testi di Cartesio si associa quella di LUCREZIO. naturalismo renatismo, cartesianismo, impero romano, vita civile, CROCE corpo ed animo, renatismo, Ariosto passione, filosofia, Arisosto tra i filosofi, il nuovo Carneade. Grice: Caro Caloprese, dimmi, tu che hai portato Arcadia a Roma, la filosofia si impara meglio fra gli incanti dell’Orlando o tra i banchi della scuola? Io a Oxford preferisco le foreste… Caloprese: Grice, credimi, se vuoi capire il corpo e l’animo, devi almeno una volta perderti tra Scalea e i versi di Ariosto. E poi, anche a Napoli, un po’ di magia si trova sempre, basta saperla cercare! Grice: Arcadia, Oxford, Napoli… alla fine la vera utopia è quella di chi trova il tempo per filosofare tra un incanto e l’altro. Magari con una tazza di tè e un po’ di medicina “per amici e poveri”, come dici tu. Caloprese: Grice, la filosofia è come l’Orlando furioso: si perde, si ritrova, si incanta… e alla fine, se non hai la chiave di Arcadia, basta un sorriso: almeno ti aprono la porta della conversazione! Caloprese, Gregorio (1691). Lettura sopra la concione di Marfisa a Carlo Magno, contenuta nel Furioso al canto trentesim’ottavo; nella quale, oltre l’artificio adoperato dall’Ariosto in detta concione, si espone ancora quello che si è usato dal Tasso nell’orazione d’Armida a Goffredo.Originariamente tenuta nel 1690 presso l’Accademia degli Infuriati di Napoli. Napoli: Bulifon.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio. Bust of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 15 BC. Found at the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, and now at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. The Calpurnii are a plebeian family at ancient Rome, which first appears in history during the third century BC. The first of the gens to obtain the consulship was Gaius C. Piso, but from this time their consulships were very frequent, and the family of the Pisones became one of the most illustrious in the Roman state. Two important pieces of Republican legislation, the lex Calpurnia of 149 BC and lex Acilia Calpurnia of 67 BC were passed by members of the gens. The C. claimed descent from Calpus, the son of Numa POMPILIO, the second King of Rome, and accordingly the head of Numa is found on some of the coins of this gens. The principal praenomina of the Calpurnii were Lucius, Gaius, Marcus, and Gnaeus. Publius was not a regular name of the Calpurnia gens during the Republic, but was used by the Calpurnii Lanarii.[6]  Branches and cognomina The family-names of the Calpurnii under the Republic were Bestia, Bibulus, Flamma, Lanarius, and Piso.  Piso was the name of the greatest family of the Calpurnia gens. Like many other cognomina, this name is connected with agriculture, and comes from the verb pisere or pinsere, which refers to the pounding or grinding of corn. The family first rose from obscurity during the Second Punic War, and from that time it became one of the most distinguished in the Roman state. It preserved its celebrity under the empire, and during the first century was second to the imperial family alone. Many of the Pisones bore this cognomen alone, but others bore the agnomina Caesoninus and Frugi.[1]  Of the other surnames of the Republican Calpurnii, Bestia refers to a "beast", "an animal without reason". Bibulus translates as "fond of drinking", or "thirsty", while Flamma refers to a flame.[7]  Members  Denarius of Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, 2nd Century BC. The obverse features a head of Roma, while the reverse depicts the Dioscuri. Early Calpurnii Marcus Calpurnius Flamma, one of the military tribunes in 258 BC, during the First Punic War, led a daring mission to relieve the army of the consul Aulus Atilius Calatinus. Calpurnii Pisones Gaius Calpurnius (C. f.) Piso, praetor urbanus in 211 BC.[8] Gaius C. C. f. C. n. Piso, praetor in 186 BC, and consul in 180, triumphed over the Lusitani and Celtiberi.[9] Lucius C. C. f. C. n. Piso Caesoninus, consul in 148 BC. Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, consul in 139 BC.[10] Quintus Calpurnius C. f. Piso, consul in 135 BC, sent against Numantia, but instead of attacking the city, plundered the territory of Pallantia. Calpurnius Piso, praetor circa 135, defeated during the First Servile War.[15] Calpurnius Piso, fought successfully against the Thracians circa 104 BC.[16] Lucius Calpurnius L. f. C. n. Piso Caesoninus, consul in 112 BC. Lucius Calpurnius Piso, quaestor circa 100 BC, might be the same person as the armourer.[17] Lucius Calpurnius L. f. L. n. Piso Caesoninus, manufactured arms at Rome during the Social War. [18] Lucius Calpurnius L. f. L. n. Piso Caesoninus, consul in 58 BC, and father-in-law of Caesar. Calpurnia L. f. L. n., the last wife of Caesar. Lucius Calpurnius L. f. L. n. Piso Caesoninus, consul in 15 BC. Lucius Calpurnius L. f. L. n. Piso Caesoninus, elder son of the consul of 15 BC. Lucius C. Piso (Frugi or Caesoninus), tribune of the plebs in 90 BC, possibly identical with a strategos of that name in Asia, whose activity has been dated variously from shortly before 90 to as late as 83.[19] Lucius Calpurnius L. f. C. n. Piso Frugi, consul in 133 BC. Lucius Calpurnius L. f. L. n. Piso Frugi, praetor in Hispania Ulterior circa 112 BC, where he died in battle.[20] Lucius Calpurnius L. f. L. n. Piso Frugi, praetor in 74 BC, frustrated some of the schemes of his colleague, Verres.[21] Gaius Calpurnius L. f. L. n. Piso Frugi, quaestor in 58 BC, married Tullia, the daughter of TULLIO Cicero. Gaius C.  Piso, consul in 67 BC. Gnaeus Calpurnius Cn.f. Piso, one of Catiline's conspirators, quaestor pro praetore in Hispania Citerior in 65 BC. He was murdered by mutinous Spanish horsemen.[22] Marcus Pupius Piso Frugi, originally one of the C., adopted by Marcus Pupius. Gnaeus C. Cn. f. C. n. Piso, a partisan of Pompeius, and subsequently of Brutus and Cassius; subsequently pardoned, and made consul. Gnaeus C. Cn. f. Cn. n. Piso, consul in 7 BC, accused of murdering Germanicus. Lucius C. Cn. f. Cn. n. Piso 'augur', consul in 1 BC.[23] Lucius C. Piso, accused of plotting against the life of Tiberius in AD 24. Lucius C. Piso, praetor in Hispania Citerior in AD 25.[24] Lucius C. Cn. f. Cn. n. Piso, consul in AD 27. Marcus Calpurnius Cn. f. Cn. n. Piso, the younger son of the consul of 7 BC, was accused with his father, but pardoned by Tiberius. Gaius C. Piso, consul in AD 41 with the emperor Claudius, and the instigator of the conspiracy against Nero in AD 65. Lucius C. L. f. Cn. n. Piso, consul in AD 57 with the emperor Nero. Lucius C. Piso Frugi Licinianus, NAMED HEIR by the emperor Galba, and murdered on the orders of Otho. Calpurnius C. f. Piso Galerianus, son of the consul of AD 41, was murdered by Gaius Licinius Mucianus, a supporter of Vespasian.[25] Gaius Calpurnius Piso Crassus Frugi Licinianus, consul in AD 87. Exiled to Tarentum for conspiring against the emperor Nerva; exiled again for conspiring against Trajan; murdered early in the reign of Hadrian. Gaius Calpurnius Piso, consul suffectus in AD 97.[29] Gaius Calpurnius Piso, consul in AD 111. Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in AD 175, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.[30] Piso "Frugi", a third-century general, described as an usurper by the Historia Augusta.[i] In AD 261 he was sent by Macrianus Major, one of Valerian's lieutenants, to deal with Valens Thessalonicus, the governor of Achaia under Gallienus. Piso halted his troops in Thessaly, and PROCLAIMED HIMSELF EMPEROR, but he was slain the same year, and his revolt put down by Valens.[31] Calpurnii Lanarii Publius Calpurnius, triumvir monetalis in 133 BC, was perhaps the father of Lanarius, since the name Publius appears in no other branch of the gens.[32] Calpurnius (P. f.) Lanarius, an officer during the war against Sertorius in 81 BC, he defeated and killed Sertorius' legate, Lucius Julius Salinator, in the Pyrenees. Under whom he served is unclear; he may have initially been a partisan of Sertorius, making his battle against Salinator an act of betrayal.[33][34] Publius C. (P. f.) Lanarius, the purchaser of a house from a certain Claudius Centumalus. He might be the same man who fought against Sertorius.[35] Calpurnii Bestiae Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, consul in 111 BC, prosecuted the Jugurthine War, at first with much vigor, but through the payment of a substantial sum of money he was induced to conclude a peace. He or his son was exiled under the Varian law.[36] Lucius Calpurnius L. f. Bestia, son of the Lucius Calpurnius Bestia who was consul in 111 BC. He may have been the Bestia who went into exile when threatened with prosecution under the lex Varia.[37] Calpurnia L. f., the wife of Publius Antistius, and mother-in-law of Pompey. Upon her husband's murder, she stabbed herself in the chest.[38] Lucius C. Bestia, a supporter of Catilina, became tribune of the plebs in 62 BC, following the failure of the conspiracy. He attacked TULLIO Cicero for his actions as consul.[39][40] Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, aedile in 57 BC, was a candidate for the praetorship. The following year, TULLIO Cicero successfully defended him on a charge of electoral bribery. He later went into exile, but regained his status and became a follower of Mark Antony.[41] Lucius Sempronius L. f. L. n. Atratinus, consul in 34 BC, was the natural son of a Calpurnius Bestia. His father was probably the Lucius Calpurnius Bestia who was aedile in 57 BC. His mother may have been a Sempronia.[37][42] Calpurnii Bibuli Gaius Calpurnius (Bibulus), father of the consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus.[43] Marcus Calpurnius C. f. Bibulus, consul in 59 BC, was an opponent of GIULIO Caesar, and a partisan of Pompeius during the Civil War.[44] Marcus Calpurnius M. f. C. n. Bibulus, eldest son of the consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, was killed in Egypt in 50 BC by the soldiers of Aulus Gabinius.[45][46][47] Gaius C. M. f. C. n. Bibulus, the second son of the consul Marcus C. Bibulus, was also killed by the Gabiniani in Egypt in 50 BC.[45][46][47] Lucius C. M. f. C. n. Bibulus, the third son of the consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, was appointed governor of Syria by Augustus.[47] Calpurnia M. f. C. n., daughter of the consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus,[ii] (Gaius) Calpurnius M. f. C. n. Bibulus,[iii] the fourth son of the consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, and the only attested son by his second wife, Porzia, became the stepson of Marcus Junius Brutus upon her remarriage.[47] Gaius (C.) Bibulus, aedile in AD 22, may have been the son of Gaius Calpurnius Bibulus, Brutus' stepson.[50][47] (Calpurnia) Domitia Calvina, daughter of Lucius and Domitia Calvina, was the mother of Marcus Junius Silanus Torquatus, consul in AD 19.[47] Others  Altar of Fortuna, dedicated by Gnaeus C. Verus, prefect of a cohort of soldiers stationed at Castellum apud Confluentes, modern Koblenz. Lucius C., sent as ambassador to the Achaians at Sicyon in 198 BC.[51] Calpurnius, a praetorian senator around 90 BC, may be identical with Publius, the monetalis in 133.[52] C., standard-bearer of the first legion in Germania at the accession of Tiberius in AD 14, he prevented the soldiers of Germanicus from murdering Munatius Plancus, the envoy of the senate.[53] Gaius C. Aviola, consul in AD 24, perhaps one of the Pisones.[54] C. Salvianus, accused Sextus Marius in AD 25, but was rebuked by Tiberius and banished by the senate.[55] Calpurnia, a favorite concubine of the emperor Claudius, despatched by Narcissus to inform the emperor of the marriage of Messalina and Gaius Silius.[56] Calpurnia, a woman of high rank, exiled due to the jealousy of Agrippina, the wife of Claudius, but recalled by Nero in AD 60, after Agrippina's murder.[57] C. Fabatus, an eques accused of various crimes during the reign of Nero; he was grandfather of Calpurnia, the third wife of Pliny the Younger.[58] Calpurnia, the third wife of Pliny the Younger.[59] Calpurnius Asprenas, appointed governor of Galatia and Pamphylia by the emperor Galba, induced the partisans of the false Nero to put the usurper to death.[60] Marcus C. [...]icus, consul suffectus in AD 96.[61][62][63] C. Flaccus, a rhetorician in the time of Hadrian.[64][65] Marcus C. Rufus, the father of Longus, the consul of 144.[66][67] Lucius Marcius Celer Marcus C. M. f. Longus, consul suffectus in AD 144. This family was from Attaleia.[66][67] Sextus C. Agricola, consul suffectus in AD 154, and subsequently governor of Germania Superior and Britain. In the late 160s, he was imperial legate in Dacia, and governor of Lower Moesia.[68][69][70] Gaius C. Rufinus, a third-century senator who constructed the Sanctuary of Panoias, dedicated to Serapis and other divinities of the underworld, now in Vila Real, Portugal.[71] Titus C. Siculus, a poet, who probably flourished in the latter half of the third century. C., a fourth century Christian deacon, and the father of St. Patrick. See also List of Roman gentes Notes  Piso himself seems to be a historical figure, but most of what is known of him comes from the Historia Augusta, the account of which is considerably embellished. The source attributes to Piso the surname Frugi and claims he was descended from the Calpurnii of the Republic, but this is probably an invention of the author; if indeed the name Frugi was bestowed on him, it might be because that name had previously been associated with the Calpurnii Pisones, rather than because he was one of them. It is unlikely that Piso ever proclaimed himself emperor.  Generally assumed to be a daughter by Bibulus first wife, but Zmeskal believes that this woman is the daughter of Porcia, as two children of Porcia are known to have existed, but it is not certain who the second one was and first wife of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus.[48][47][49]  His praenomen may have been Marcus instead of Gaius, but most historians such as Syme[47] and Strachan[43] lean toward Gaius. References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 582 ("Calpurnia Gens").  Plutarch "The Life of Numa", 21.  Horace, Ars Poetica, 292.  Festus, s. v. Calpurni.  Eckhel, v. p. 160.  Syme, "Missing Senators", p. 59.  Cassell's Latin & English Dictionary, s. v. Bestia, Bibulus, Flamma.  "Calpurnius", No. 61, PW, vol. III, part 1, col. 1376 (Calpurnius 61).  "Calpurnius", No. 62, PW, vol. III, part 1, col. 1376 (Calpurnius 62).  Valerius Maximus, i. 3. § 2.  Appian, Hispanica, 83.  Orosius, v. 6.  Obsequens, 85.  "Calpurnius", No. 86, PW, vol. 3, part 1, col. 1386 (Calpurnius 86).  Florus, iii. 19.  Florus, iii. 4. § 6, iv. 12. § 17.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 576, 578 (note 5).  Cicero, In Pisonem, 36, 23, 26, 27.  Broughton, vol. 3, p. 48  "Calpurnius", No. 97, PW, vol. III, part 1, col. 1395 (Calpurnius 97).  Cicero, In Verrem, i. 46.  "Calpurnius", No. 69, PW, vol. III, part 1, cols. 1379–1380 (Calpurnius 69).  Cassius Dio, index lib. lv.  Tacitus, Annales, iv. 45.  Tacitus, Historiae, iv. 11.  Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus (attributed), 12.  Cassius Dio, lxviii. 3, 16.  Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96-99, pp. 69 ff.  Fausto Zevi "I consoli del 97 d. Cr. in due framenti gia' editi dei Fasti Ostienses", Listy filologické / Folia philologica, 96 (1973), pp. 125–137  Aelius Lampridius, "The Life of Commodus", 12.  Trebellius Pollio, "The Thirty Tyrants".  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 278.  Plutarch, "The Life of Sertorius", 7.  Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius, pp. 100, 101.  Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 16.  PW, vol. III (1), cols. 1366, 1367 ("Calpurnius, No. 23")  Syme, Approaching the Roman Revolution, p. 135.  Velleius Paterculus, ii. 26.  "Calpurnius", No. 24, PW, vol. III, part 1, col. 1367 (Calpurnius 24).  Crawford, M. Tullius Cicero: The Lost and Unpublished Orations, p. 144.  Broughton, "Candidates Defeated", pp. 35–36.  "Calpurnius", No. 25, PW, supp. III, col. 230 (Calpurnius 25).  Calpurnius. Strachan stemma.  "Calpurnius", No. 28, PW, vol. III, part 1, cols. 1368–1370 (Calpurnius 28).  Caesar, De Bello Civili, iii. 110.  Valerius Maximus, iv. 1. § 15.  Syme, "M. Bibulus and Four Sons".  Holland, Rubicon, p. 339.  Zmeskal, Adfinitas, vol. 1, p. 58.  "Calpurnius", No. 26, PW, vol. III, part 1, col. 1367 (Calpurnius 26).  Livy, xxxii. 19.  Konrad, "Plutarch's Sertorius", p. 100.  Tacitus, Annales, i. 39.  Syme, "Piso Frugi and Crassus Frugi", p. 19.  Tacitus, Annales, iv. 36.  Tacitus, Annales, xi. 30.  Tacitus, Annales, xii. 22, xiv. 72.  Tacitus, Annales, xvi. 8.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, viii. 10.  Tacitus, Historiae, ii. 9.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244.  CIL XVI, 40.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for A. D. 70-96", pp. 192, 218.  Pithou, Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, v. 2.  Eck, "L. Marcius Celer M. Calpurnius Longus".  Camodeca, "Una nuova coppia di consoli del 148".  AE 1980, 760.  Southern, Roman Britain, pp. 27, 28.  Birley, Marcus Aurelius, p. 145.  "Gaius C(---) Calpurnius Rufinus | Real Academia de la Historia". dbe.rah.es. Retrieved 2021-11-12. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, In Pisonem, In Verrem, Philippicae. Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War). Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Ars Poëtica (The Art of Poetry). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Marcus Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, Historiae. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Lucius Annaeus Florus, Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum Omnium Annorum DCC (Epitome of Livy: All the Wars of Seven Hundred Years). Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Hispanica (The Spanish Wars). Sextus Pompeius Festus, Epitome de M. Verrio Flacco de Verborum Significatu (Epitome of Marcus Verrius Flaccus' On the Meaning of Words). Cassius Dio, Roman History. Aelius Lampridius, Aelius Spartianus, Flavius Vopiscus, Julius Capitolinus, Trebellius Pollio, and Vulcatius Gallicanus, Historia Augusta (Augustan History). Julius Obsequens, Liber de Prodigiis (The Book of Prodigies). Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos (History Against the Pagans). Sextus Aurelius Victor (attributed), Epitome de Caesaribus. Pierre Pithou (Petrus Pithoeus) Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus, Paris, 1580. Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum (The Study of Ancient Coins, 1792–1798). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). 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). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Ronald Syme,"Missing Senators", Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 4, H. 1 (1955), pp. 52–71; "Piso Frugi and Crassus Frugi", in Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 50 (1960). D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin and English Dictionary, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York (1963). Anthony R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius, B. T. Batsford, London (1966). Michael Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, Cambridge University Press (1974, 2001). Paul A. Gallivan, "The Fasti for A.D. 70–96", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 186–220 (1981). Jane W. Crawford, M. Tullius Cicero: The Lost and Unpublished Orations, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (1984) ISBN 9783525251782. R. J. Tarrant (editor), "unknown article", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Harvard University Press, vol. XCI, pp. 198 ff. (1987) ISBN 9780674379398. Ronald Syme, "M. Bibulus and Four Sons", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Harvard University Press, vol. 91, pp. 185–198 (1987). Broughton, "Candidates Defeated in Roman Elections: Some Ancient Roman "Also-Rans"", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 81, no. 4 (1991), pp. 1–64, JSTOR 1006532. Werner Eck, "L. Marcius Celer M. Calpurnius Longus Prokonsul von Achaia und Suffektkonsul unter Hadrian", in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 86, pp. 97–106 (1991). Christoph F. Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius: A Historical Commentary, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (1994) ISBN 0-8078-2139-X. Giuseppe Camodeca, "Una nuova coppia di consoli del 148 e il proconsul Achaiae M. Calpurnius Longus", in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 112, pp. 235–240 (1996). John D. Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96–99, Routledge, London (2004). Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, Abacus, London (2004) ISBN 978-0-349-11563-4. Klaus Zmeskal, Adfinitas: Die Verwandtschaften der senatorischen Führungsschicht der römischen Republik von 218-31 v.Chr, vol. 1, Karl Stutz Verlag, (2009) ISBN 9783888493041. Patricia Southern, Roman Britain: A New History 55 BC–AD 450, Amberley (2011). Ronald Syme, Approaching the Roman Revolution: Papers on Republican History, Oxford University Press (2016)ISBN 9780191079757. Further reading Iris Hofmann-Löbl, "Die Calpurnii. Politisches Wirken und familiäre Kontinuität" (The Calpurnii: Political Activity and Familial Continuity), in Europäische Hochschulschriften, vol. 3, pp. 705 ff. Peter Lang, Frankfurt (1996) ISBN 3-631-49668-0. Categories: CalpurniiRoman gentesRoman gentes of Sabine origin And from the gens entry or other material like above, do you think there is another good Calpurnio fit for the Grice/Speranza vignette. I suppose the Epistole to the Piso is not related right? Thanks –

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio. Yes. Leaving aside the obvious stars—Piso Frugi vs. Gracchus, the Pisonian conspiracy, and Asprenas vs. the false Nero—I think there are at least four other Calpurnii who are unexpectedly good Grice/Speranza material. 1. Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso and Germanicus (my favourite additional one) This is the Piso accused of poisoning Germanicus. Your gens entry notes:  Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, consul in 7 BC, accused of murdering Germanicus.  What makes this Gricean is not the alleged poisoning itself but the accusation. A conversation practically writes itself: ROMANUS  Germanicus mortuus est.  (Germanicus is dead.) ALTER  Intellego.  (I understand.) ROMANUS  Piso Romae non amabitur.  (Piso will not be loved at Rome.) The implicature:  +> "I think Piso did it."  without anyone actually saying so. The whole Germanicus affair is filled with suspicion, insinuation, and politically charged implicatures.  2. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus (Galba's heir) Your entry notes:  Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus, named heir by Galba, murdered on the orders of Otho.  This is almost pure speech-act theory. Galba says:  "You are my heir."  Nothing physical changes. Yet everything changes. A single public utterance alters:  succession, expectations, loyalties, dangers.  A Gricean could say:  this is a performative utterance before Austin coined the term.   3. Calpurnia, Caesar's wife The gens entry includes:  Calpurnia, the last wife of Caesar.  This is fertile Speranzian territory because of the famous dream before the Ides. Whether one believes the story or not, its literary form is conversational: CALPVRNIA  "Do not go to the Senate."  CAESAR  "Why not?"  CALPVRNIA  "Because I fear what is coming."  The interesting point is that warnings often communicate much more than their literal content.  4. Calpurnius Flaccus the rhetorician Among the miscellaneous Calpurnii:  Calpurnius Flaccus, a rhetorician in the time of Hadrian.  A rhetorician is almost automatically Griceian material. The declamatory schools live on:  ambiguity, hidden intentions, legal fictions, indirect communication.  Indeed, many of the surviving declamation themes could be analysed entirely in terms of implicature.  About the Epistola ad Pisones (Horace's Ars Poetica) A very good question. Strictly speaking, yes: Horace's Ars Poetica is traditionally addressed to the Pisones, who belonged to the Calpurnian Piso family. Your gens entry even cites Horace in connection with the Calpurnii. Thus the famous poetic epistle is related to this branch of the gens. For Grice and Speranza, this is gold. Why? Because the Ars Poetica is, at one level, a long conversation about:  what authors say, what audiences infer, what decorum requires.  In other words, it already lives in a world of expectations and conversational norms.  My ranking For a Calpurnian volume of Verbalia, I would rank them:  Piso Frugi vs. Gracchus — the masterpiece of counter-implicature. Piso and the conspiracy against Nero — con-spiro, "breathing together." Asprenas and the false Nero — identity claims. Piso and Germanicus — accusation through insinuation. Piso Licinianus and Galba — performative naming of an heir. The Pisones of Horace's Epistle — literary conversational norms.  Of these, I suspect Speranza would especially enjoy the Germanicus Piso. Almost nobody says directly:  "Piso murdered Germanicus."  Instead Rome spends years saying things that strongly suggest it. That is about as Griceian as Roman political life gets.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio. Yes. Leaving aside the obvious stars—Piso Frugi vs. Gracchus, the Pisonian conspiracy, and Asprenas vs. the false Nero—I think there are at least four other Calpurnii who are unexpectedly good Grice/Speranza material. 1. Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso and Germanicus (my favourite additional one) This is the Piso accused of poisoning Germanicus. Your gens entry notes:  Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, consul in 7 BC, accused of murdering Germanicus.  What makes this Gricean is not the alleged poisoning itself but the accusation. A conversation practically writes itself: ROMANUS  Germanicus mortuus est.  (Germanicus is dead.) ALTER  Intellego.  (I understand.) ROMANUS  Piso Romae non amabitur.  (Piso will not be loved at Rome.) The implicature:  +> "I think Piso did it."  without anyone actually saying so. The whole Germanicus affair is filled with suspicion, insinuation, and politically charged implicatures. And what was the birth gens of Germanicus whom the other C. was accused of intendin to murder? Any more particular as to what the 'signs' were? Thanks Two good questions. 1. What was Germanicus' birth gens? At birth, Germanicus belonged to the patrician gens Claudia. He was the son of:  Nero Claudius Drusus and Antonia Minor,  and was born into an influential branch of the gens Claudia. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com] Later, in AD 4, he was adopted by Tiberius. As a result of that adoption, he became officially a member of the gens Julia as well. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com] So Speranza's indexing rule would give:  birth gens: Claudia adoptive gens: Julia  Indeed, his later name,  Germanicus Julius Caesar,  already reflects that adoptive Julian status. [en.wikipedia.org] This makes the accusation against Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso even more interesting:  a Calpurnius is suspected of murdering a Julian-Claudian prince.   2. What exactly were Calpurnia's "signs"? Here we must be careful. From the sources I found today, I can confirm only that:  Calpurnia tried to prevent Caesar's murder after being forewarned of an attempt on his life. [latin-is-simple.com]  The specific signs (dreams, noises, prodigies, etc.) are not described in the search results I retrieved, so I should not pretend to have sourced details beyond that. However, in the literary tradition surrounding the Ides of March, ancient authors do recount various omens and dreams associated with Calpurnia's warning. To identify precisely which signs appear in which ancient source (Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian, etc.), I would need to do a separate source search focused on those accounts.  A nice Gricean twist Germanicus and Calpurnia illustrate two different semiotic problems: Calpurnia Many signs →  "Something terrible is about to happen."  The problem is interpreting a cluster of signs. Germanicus One event (his death) →  "Piso did it."  The problem is interpreting a cluster of suspicions. In both cases, Romans move from:  observed evidence  to  a much larger conclusion.  Which is exactly the sort of inferential process that fascinated both Grice and Speranza. Thanks -- and in this case, I may have been referring to what the SIGNS were for people go and ACCUSE Calpurnio of attempting to murder the prince? Thanks Ah, that's a much better Gricean question. For Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, the issue is not:  "What signs warned people that Piso was about to murder Germanicus?"  but rather:  "What signs led people to think Piso had poisoned Germanicus after Germanicus died?"  From the sources I retrieved, I can safely say only this:  Germanicus and Piso had come into conflict while Germanicus was in the East and Piso was governor of Syria. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] Germanicus then became ill and died at Antioch in AD 19. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] Ancient sources attributed the death to poison, but this was never proven. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] Piso was consequently accused in connection with Germanicus' death. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today]  What these search results do not specify is the detailed evidentiary basis of the accusation—omens, physical evidence, witness testimony, hostile acts, magical objects, etc. So I should not invent those details. From a Grice/Speranza perspective, however, the structure is already intriguing:  Piso and Germanicus are known to be in conflict. Germanicus dies. Romans infer:  Piso fecit. ("Piso did it.")    The inference outruns the explicit evidence available to the public. A Roman conversational exchange might therefore be: ROMANUS I  Germanicus mortuus est. ("Germanicus is dead.")  ROMANUS II  Ita audio. ("So I hear.")  ROMANUS I  Et Piso cum eo dissensit. ("And Piso had quarrelled with him.")  ROMANUS II  Intellego. ("I understand.")  ROMANUS I  Nondum dixi quid suspiceris. ("I have not yet said what you are thinking.")  ROMANUS II  Nec opus est. ("Nor is there any need.")  The implicature:  +> Piso poisoned Germanicus.  without anybody actually uttering the accusation. That is why the case is so Gricean: the politically important content lies not in what is said but in what everyone takes the speaker to mean. If you'd like the actual Tacitean details of the Piso–Germanicus case (the specific evidence and rumours reported by Tacitus), I can search specifically for the Annales material. And what were the ages? C's and Germanicus's? But Germanicus had not yet accended to the throne? Appears poisoned -- never proved. The accusation lingered on and disrupted his reputation? Or was even punished for it? Thanks Yes. Here we can separate three questions:  How old were Piso and Germanicus? Was Germanicus emperor? What happened to Piso after the accusation?  Ages Germanicus was born in 15 BC and died in AD 19 at the age of 33. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] For Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso (the governor of Syria accused in the affair), the search results I have do not give his birth year or age. So I cannot reliably state how old he was. The sources I retrieved identify him as consul in 7 BC and governor involved in the dispute with Germanicus, but do not specify his age. [en.wikipedia.org] Was Germanicus emperor? No. Germanicus was one of the most celebrated Roman princes and generals, and he enjoyed enormous popularity, but he died before becoming emperor. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] His importance lay partly in the fact that he was:  born into the gens Claudia; [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] adopted into the gens Julia; [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] nephew and heir-apparent figure within the Julio-Claudian system; [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] father of Caligula and brother of Claudius. [en.wikipedia.org]  His death therefore had enormous political consequences. Did the accusation linger? Yes, in a broad sense. The sources I retrieved state:  Germanicus came into conflict with Piso in the East, then died at Antioch, and ancient sources attributed the death to poison, although this was never proven. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today]  That is enough to explain why Piso's reputation became tied permanently to the suspicion. From a Gricean perspective, the interesting feature is that:  "Piso poisoned Germanicus"  became a conclusion many Romans were prepared to draw, even though proof remained elusive. [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] The accusation therefore had a life of its own. Was Piso punished? The search results I currently have do not specify the outcome of Piso's trial or any punishment. I would need to search specifically for Tacitus' account of the Piso-Germanicus affair to answer that accurately. A very Speranzian observation is that Germanicus' death created one of the most famous Roman situations in which:  evidence was uncertain, suspicion was widespread, reputation was transformed.  That is almost a textbook case of public implicature: people could say merely,  Germanicus mortuus est; Piso ibi erat.  ("Germanicus is dead; Piso was there."), and their hearers would supply the rest.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.  Good choices -- we can have a conversation Giulio/Wife-- with Wife enumerating each of the signs she has-- windows, etc. -- and Giulio dismissing it all and blaming it on 'your father's superstitious traits'? In latin, because semiotically interesting thanks and then give me her father's name complete birth name thanks Certainly. A semiotic and Gricean reconstruction works very well here because Calpurnia's argument is essentially:  "One sign may be dismissed; many converging signs should not be."  Caesar's reply is:  "You are interpreting too much."  Historically, Calpurnia was the daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul of 58 BC and Caesar's father-in-law. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Conversatio: Caesar and Calpurnia CALPVRNIA  Noli hodie in curiam ire, Caesar. ("Do not go to the Senate today, Caesar.")   CAESAR  Cur non? ("Why not?")   CALPVRNIA  Nimis multa signa conspicio. ("I see too many signs.")   CAESAR  Quae signa? ("What signs?")   CALPVRNIA  Somnium horridum vidi. ("I saw a dreadful dream.")   CAESAR  Somnia saepe fallunt. ("Dreams often deceive.")   CALPVRNIA  Etiam aves insolite clamaverunt. ("The birds also cried out in an unusual manner.")   CAESAR  Aves semper clamant. ("Birds are always crying out.")   CALPVRNIA  Etiam servi perturbati sunt. ("The servants too have been disturbed.")   CAESAR  Servi rumores amant. ("Servants love rumours.")   CALPVRNIA  Etiam vicini de prodigiis loquuntur. ("Even the neighbours speak of portents.")   CAESAR  Vicini numquam tacent. ("Neighbours are never silent.")   CALPVRNIA  Singula negas; omnia negare non potes. ("You deny each thing separately; you cannot deny them all.")   CAESAR  Tu nimis metuis. ("You are too fearful.")   CALPVRNIA  Et tu nimis confidis. ("And you are too confident.")   Implicature Calpurnia never explicitly says:  "You will be murdered today."  Instead she accumulates signs. Her intended implicature is:  +> Some grave danger awaits you.  Caesar's strategy is equally Gricean. He treats each sign individually:  dreams are unreliable, birds always cry, servants gossip, neighbours talk.  Calpurnia's reply:  Singula negas; omnia negare non potes.  is almost a proto-semiotic argument:  "The meaning lies not in any single sign, but in the convergence of many signs."   Her father's full name The father whom Caesar might teasingly blame for her tendency to read omens was:  Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus consul of 58 BC, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org]  A final Gricean joke: CAESAR  Istae suspiciones a patre tuo veniunt. ("Those suspicions come from your father.")  CALPVRNIA  Immo, Caesar, a signis. ("No, Caesar—from the signs.")  Which, as history tells it, is a conversation Caesar would have done well to lose.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.   And do we have age for the C. killed by Otho? 2. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus (Galba's heir) Your entry notes: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus, named heir by Galba, murdered on the orders of Otho. This is almost pure speech-act theory. Galba says: "You are my heir." Nothing physical changes. Yet everything changes. A single public utterance alters: succession, expectations, loyalties, dangers. A Gricean could say: this is a performative utterance before Austin coined the term. Yes — and the age actually makes the Grice/Austin speech-act point even more striking. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus was:  born in AD 38 killed on 15 January AD 69 therefore about 31 years old. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com], [oxfordreference.com]  What's especially interesting is that he was heir for only a few days.  On 10 January AD 69, Galba adopted him and publicly designated him as heir. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com] On 15 January AD 69, both Galba and Piso were killed in Otho's coup. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxfordreference.com]  So a mere five days separate:  "This man will be emperor."  and  "This man is dead." [en.wikipedia.org], [oxfordreference.com]  For Speranza, this is nearly the perfect Roman performative. Before Galba's adoption, Piso was a nobleman of distinguished ancestry. After Galba publicly adopted him and called him heir, he acquired a completely new political status. Nothing visible changed in his body, house, or possessions at that instant. Yet the utterance altered:  his place in the succession, everyone's expectations, Otho's calculations, and ultimately his danger level. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com]  One can imagine: GALBA  Filium te adopto. ("I adopt you as my son.")  PISO  Intellego. ("I understand.")  OTHO (aside)  Et ego quoque intellego. ("And I understand as well.")  The implicature:  +> Otho will not be heir.  And that implicature, rather than the literal adoption itself, is what helped trigger the coup. Otho had expected to be chosen and reacted when Galba selected Piso instead. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com] One further curiosity: Piso was not originally a Calpurnius by birth. He was born into the gens Licinia and entered the Calpurnian line through adoption, which is why his name is such a magnificent accumulation of Roman genealogy. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com] So in a sense, one performative ("I adopt you") first made him a Calpurnius, and a second performative ("You are my heir") nearly made him emperor. Both are examples of words creating institutional reality. [en.wikipedia.org], [wikiwand.com]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio. About the Epistola ad Pisones (Horace's Ars Poetica) A very good question. Strictly speaking, yes: Horace's Ars Poetica is traditionally addressed to the Pisones, who belonged to the Calpurnian Piso family. Your gens entry even cites Horace in connection with the Calpurnii. Thus the famous poetic epistle is related to this branch of the gens. For Grice and Speranza, this is gold. Why? Because the Ars Poetica is, at one level, a long conversation about:  what authors say, what audiences infer, what decorum requires.  In other words, it already lives in a world of expectations and conversational norms.  My ranking For a Calpurnian volume of Verbalia, I would rank them:  Piso Frugi vs. Gracchus — the masterpiece of counter-implicature. Piso and the conspiracy against Nero — con-spiro, "breathing together." Asprenas and the false Nero — identity claims. Piso and Germanicus — accusation through insinuation. Piso Licinianus and Galba — performative naming of an heir. The Pisones of Horace's Epistle — literary conversational norms.  Of these, I suspect Speranza would especially enjoy the Germanicus Piso. Almost nobody says directly:  "Piso murdered Germanicus."  Instead Rome spends years saying things that strongly suggest it. That is about as Griceian as Roman political life gets.  And is there a personal reason why Orazio dedicated the epistle or wrote the epistle to the Pison -- sic in plural? Which one prominent among them? Thanks This is actually one of the most famous Calpurnian puzzles. The short answer is:  We do not know with certainty which Pisones Horace addressed. [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com]  The poem we call the Ars Poetica is traditionally also known as the:  Epistula ad Pisones ("Letter to the Pisos"). [en.wikipedia.org], [timelessmyths.com]  And the reason for the plural is clear enough:  Horace addresses a father and two sons of the Piso family. [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com], [timelessmyths.com]  The real difficulty is identifying exactly which father and sons are meant. The Loeb view The Loeb introduction says:  "These are a father and two sons of the Piso family, but nobody knows with certainty what particular Pisos—and there are many on record—they are." [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com]  That is about as cautious as scholarship gets. The traditional identification A widely accepted traditional identification is:  Lucius Calpurnius Piso (the future consul of 15 BC) and his two sons. [en.wikipedia.org]  That is the identification mentioned in the modern summary of the Ars Poetica. [en.wikipedia.org] However, not all scholars are convinced, which is why the Loeb remains non-committal. [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com] Why did Horace write to them? The most plausible explanation is personal and literary rather than political. The Loeb notes that a large portion of the poem concerns drama and suggests that:  one of the Pisos, probably the elder son, may have been interested in writing a play. [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com]  So Horace's poem may be read as:  advice, literary criticism, friendly correction, and a lesson in poetic technique,  addressed to young aristocrats interested in literature. [loebclassics.com], [loebclassics.com] A very Speranzian reading Grice and Speranza would probably enjoy the fact that Horace never quite writes:  "Dear Lucius Piso."  Instead he writes to:  the Pisones.  The plural itself creates a conversational setting. It is almost as though the father and sons form a miniature discussion group, with Horace as the senior conversationalist explaining:  what poetry should say, what audiences understand, and how writers can fail to communicate.  In that sense, the Ars Poetica is not merely a treatise on poetry. It is a long conversation with the Calpurnii Pisones about how meaning is successfully conveyed. That is rather close to a Gricean project, two millennia before Grice.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio. And what do we know about the C. rhetorician, then? Thanks Calpurnius Flaccus is actually a much better Grice/Speranza candidate than his obscurity might suggest. What we know with some confidence is fairly limited:  He was a rhetorician living under Hadrian. [en.wikipedia.org] Fifty-one (or, in some traditions, fifty-three) declamations survive under his name. [en.wikipedia.org], [bmcr.brynmawr.edu] These declamations belong to the world of controversiae, fictional legal cases used in higher Roman rhetorical education. [brill.com]  The most important thing for a Gricean is not the man himself—about whom we know very little—but the genre. Why Flaccus is Gricean A declamation is essentially:  a speech about a difficult case where the law says one thing and the circumstances suggest another.  That is very close to:  what is said versus what is meant.  The surviving themes are wonderfully artificial:  a tyrant-killer seeking a reward, accusations of adultery, military honour cases, inheritance disputes, family conflicts. [thelatinlibrary.com], [brill.com]  All are built around interpretation.  A typical Flaccan problem One declamation on the Latin Library begins:  UXOR TYRANNICIDA ("The wife who killed a tyrant"). [thelatinlibrary.com]  The woman kills her tyrant-husband and seeks legal privileges for her children. Later another son becomes dangerous and she kills him too, then seeks additional privileges. [thelatinlibrary.com] The legal question is deliberately awkward:  Does the spirit of the law still apply?  That is pure Grice:  What was the legislature trying to achieve?  rather than  What do the words literally permit?   A Flaccan conversation DISCIPVLVS  Magister, quid est bona declamatio? ("Master, what is a good declamation?")  FLACCVS  Ubi lex unum dicit et causa aliud suadet. ("Where the law says one thing and the case suggests another.")  DISCIPVLVS  Quid tum facimus?   ("What do we do then?")  FLACCVS  Quaerimus quid legislator voluerit. ("We ask what the lawgiver intended.")   Implicature +>  meaning is not exhausted by the literal wording of a rule.   The etymological joke His cognomen is also attractive.  Flaccus  originally means something like:  "floppy-eared," "drooping," or "pendant-eared."  Like many Roman cognomina, it began as a physical nickname and became hereditary. So we get the amusing contrast:  Calpurnius Flaccus, master of rhetorical precision,  bearing a family nickname that ultimately originated in somebody's ears.  If I were adding one more Calpurnius chapter after Piso, Bestia, and Asprenas, I would probably choose Flaccus the rhetorician. Unlike the politicians, he lives entirely in a world of interpretation, presupposition, legal fictions, and competing descriptions of the same act—very close to the territory that Grice and Speranza love. [en.wikipedia.org], [brill.com]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio. So here are the Calpurnii. First entry gens in general, second, the Gracco Calpurnio; third, a philosopher -- Grice and Speranza like from the first entry this reference to the 'false' Nero that perhaps you may explain. And is there like a fourth-best fit for Grice/Speranza vignette? Thanks -- A few quick Calpurnian points. 1. The "false Nero" (pseudo-Nero) Among the miscellaneous Calpurnii, the entry mentions:  Calpurnius Asprenas, governor of Galatia and Pamphylia under Galba, who induced the supporters of the "false Nero" to kill the pretender. cite not available in current tool outputs; from the text you supplied.  The "false Nero" refers to one of several impostors who appeared after Nero's death, claiming to be Nero returned from exile or presumed death. The interesting Gricean point is one of identity and recognition:  "I am Nero."  The utterance succeeds only if the audience accepts the speaker's claim to identity. A pseudo-Nero is almost a living implicature:  explicit content: "I am Nero" conversational burden: "accept me as the legitimate continuation of Nero."  That would make a fine Calpurnian vignette.  2. Piso Frugi and Gracchus I agree with your earlier analysis: this is one of the best Roman examples of counter-implicature. Gracchus' move:  "You opposed the grain law and yet take its benefits."  +>  "You are inconsistent."  Piso's answer:  nolim mea bona, Gracche, tibi viritim dividere libeat; sed, si facias, partem petam.  cancels the implicature and reframes the issue:  "I still oppose it; I merely reclaim part of what you are distributing."  That is very Gricean indeed.  3. The philosopher Piso Your Italian note about Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, historian and Stoic-associated moralist, gives another excellent theme:  public morality versus private practice.  The irony is that Piso's Annales praise ancestral virtue while his own consulship coincides with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, against which he took no effective action (as your note emphasizes). A Speranzian dialogue could revolve around:  "Must the historian merely describe virtue, or also practice it?"   4. My fourth-best Grice/Speranza fit I would choose: Gaius Calpurnius Piso (the anti-Nero conspirator of AD 65) Why? Because his entire historical significance depends upon a conversational phenomenon:  a conspiracy is a communicative network.  The Piso conspiracy required:  secrecy, trust, coded commitments, mutual recognition, assumptions about who knows what.  A Gricean reconstruction almost writes itself: CONIURATUS  "Certus es?"  (Are you committed?) PISO  "Intellego."  (I understand.) The important thing is not what is said but what is mutually understood. The conspiracy exists largely as a structure of implicatures.  Ranking for Grice/Speranza  Piso Frugi vs Gracchus — cancellation of the implicature of hypocrisy. Pseudo-Nero / Calpurnius Asprenas — identity claims and recognition. Piso the moralizing historian — saying virtue vs doing virtue. Gaius Calpurnius Piso (AD 65 conspiracy) — shared tacit understanding and political communication.  Of these, I still think the Gracchus-Piso exchange is the purest Gricean gem: an accusation conveyed by implicature and answered by a reinterpretation of the presuppositions behind it. So for the Asprenas we can have a conversation: "Tu non est Nero" -- Guards! -- sort of thing! How old was poor false Nero? Was he INTENTIONALLY trying to deceive or was he totally manipulatd and forced to did as he did? Thanks For Calpurnius Asprenas, the Gricean vignette almost writes itself:  PSEUDO NERO: Ego Nero sum. (I am Nero.) ASPRENAS: Tu non es Nero. (You are not Nero.) PSEUDO NERO: Multi aliter putant. (Many think otherwise.) ASPRENAS: Sat est unum non putare: me. (It is enough for one man not to think so: me.)  The philosophical issue is one of identity claims. The impostor's utterance:  Ego Nero sum  is not merely descriptive. It is performative and political. He needs others to accept it. As to your historical questions: How old was the false Nero? For the particular pseudo-Nero connected with Asprenas, I could not find any source in the search results specifying his age. The sources I found discuss the phenomenon of pseudo-Neros in general but do not give an age for this claimant. [en.wikipedia.org], [simple.wikipedia.org] Was he intentionally deceiving people? The sources do support that he was an impostor claiming to be Nero. The whole phenomenon is conventionally called "Pseudo-Nero". [en.wikipedia.org], [simple.wikipedia.org] However, I found no source stating whether:  he knowingly engaged in fraud, sincerely believed he was Nero, was manipulated by others, or was coerced into the role.  The sources simply do not specify that. [en.wikipedia.org], [simple.wikipedia.org] The Asprenas angle The Calpurnian entry's wording is interesting because Asprenas did not merely kill the impostor himself. The tradition says he induced the pretender's supporters to put him to death. The conversational side of the story is therefore:  "You claim to be Nero." "Prove it."  The impostor's success lasted only while enough people accepted the identity claim. Once enough people ceased to accept it, the claim collapsed. That is extraordinarily Gricean: the utterance depended on a background of shared assumptions and recognition. In a Speranzian one-liner:  Pseudo-Nero perit non quia male loquitur, sed quia tandem nemo credit. ("Pseudo-Nero perishes not because he speaks badly, but because eventually nobody believes him.").  That is perhaps the most Gricean emperor-impostor story in Roman history. [en.wikipedia.org]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.Conspirator. And can you provide more details about the conspirator you chose -- etymology of conspiro -- we breath together? Conversational sequence for this one? It's not that clear to Grice and Speranza why conspiracy relies on Griceian mechanisms Thanks Yes — of the Calpurnii, Gaius Calpurnius Piso, the alleged leader of the conspiracy against Nero in AD 65, is a surprisingly good Grice/Speranza case, precisely because a conspiracy is almost entirely made out of communicative acts. What puzzled you is natural:  Why should conspiracy be especially Griceian?  Because a conspiracy depends on people communicating things that are not explicitly said.  1. Conspiro — the etymology The verb is:  con-spiro  from:  cum/con- = together spiro = I breathe  Literally:  "to breathe together."  Hence:  to be in accord, to act in concert, to agree secretly, to conspire.  It is one of those beautiful old metaphors where social coordination is pictured as a common breath. A conspiring group is not merely speaking together:  they are breathing together.  Speranza would immediately connect this with Grice's idea of a shared intention.  2. Why conspiracy is Griceian Consider an ordinary statement:  "I shall kill Nero tomorrow."  No conspiracy is needed. Now consider a conspiratorial exchange:  "Are our friends coming tonight?"  and the answer:  "All those who ought to come."  On the surface:  nothing criminal has been said.  Yet:  everybody understands.  The amount of communicated content exceeds the literal content. That is pure Grice.  3. The Piso conspiracy From your gens entry, the essentials are:  Gaius Calpurnius Piso was consul in AD 41 and became the instigator of the conspiracy against Nero in AD 65.  That is enough for Speranza. The conspiracy exists only if many persons share the following: A believes: Piso opposes Nero. B believes: A believes Piso opposes Nero. A believes: B believes that A believes Piso opposes Nero. And so on. This is very close to what philosophers later call:  common knowledge or mutual recognition.   4. A conspiratorial dialogue Conversatio CONIURATUS I  "Num adhuc eadem sentis?" (Do you still think the same way?)   PISO  "De quibus rebus?" (About what matters?)   CONIURATUS I  "De iis de quibus aperte loqui non solemus." (About those things of which we do not normally speak openly.)   PISO  "Intellego." (I understand.)   CONIURATUS I  "Et consentis?" (And do you agree?)   PISO  "Non opus est plura dicere." (There is no need to say more.)   Implicature +>  that Piso has accepted participation, without any explicit statement of treason.   5. The Gricean problem Every conspirator wants:  enough communication  but  not too much communication.  This is exactly Grice's balance. If Piso says:  "Yes, let us murder Nero."  he creates evidence. If he says too little:  nobody knows what he means.  The successful conspirator therefore operates in a zone where:  the hearer can infer the whole message, while the speaker has not fully stated it.   6. A Speranzian formulation One might imagine Piso saying:  "Conspiratio est ubi minima dicuntur et maxima intelleguntur." ("A conspiracy is where the least is said and the most is understood.")  That is almost a definition of conversational implicature.  7. Why this may actually be a better Grice case than the pseudo-Nero The pseudo-Nero concerns:  identity.  The Piso conspiracy concerns:  mutual understanding.  Grice's philosophy is fundamentally about:  how hearers recover intentions from utterances.  And that is exactly what conspirators spend their lives doing. So I think your instinct that the connection was not immediately obvious is right; but once one sees the etymology of con-spiro and the need for tacit coordination, Piso becomes one of the most Gricean figures in the entire Calpurnian gens:  conspiratores minus dicunt quam intellegi volunt. ("Conspirators say less than they want to be understood.").  That's almost a motto for conversational implicature itself.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.  The lex calpurnia must be udnerstood in terms of our 'Gracco' C., right? The gens enty mentions aLex Calpurnia Acilia too -- why double names here? And perhaps we can have a further case of any C. explaining to his son how they are descendants of Calpio. "Who?" the son asks. "Calpio. Numa's son" -- "NUma?" "Numa Pompilio -- I know I should never drop a gens name like that" -- "But, dad, kings were elected in those days -- so isn't the implicature that C. did not make it?" "Precisely, son -- and the reason we are his descendants -- we would possibly be off the face of the earth otherwise" Thanks This is a delightful Calpurnian conversation because it combines genealogy, conversational implicature, and Roman constitutional history. 1. The lex Calpurnia and the Gracchan connection The famous lex Calpurnia de repetundis is associated with Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, the consul of 133 BC mentioned in your materials. It established a standing court for prosecuting provincial extortion by magistrates. In the Calpurnian tradition, Piso is therefore remembered both as a conservative aristocrat and as a reformer of provincial administration. What is interesting for Speranza is that Piso's own historical posture is:  "I am defending the old order."  while simultaneously introducing an institutional mechanism to restrain abuses of that order. A very Roman form of conversational self-presentation.  2. Why lex Acilia Calpurnia has two names The double name is not mysterious. Roman laws are often named after their proposer(s). Thus:  lex Calpurnia → proposed by a Calpurnius. lex Acilia Calpurnia → associated with both an Acilius and a Calpurnius.  In modern terminology one might almost call it a "joint bill." The double nomen preserves political authorship.  3. Calpus, Numa, and the family myth The Calpurnii claimed descent from:  Calpus, son of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome.  This is exactly the kind of aristocratic genealogy that invites a Gricean reading. The explicit claim is:  "We descend from Calpus."  The implicature is:  "Our family has ancient dignity."  The genealogical statement is doing social work.  Conversatio Calpurniana Father and Son FILIUS  "Pater, unde veniunt Calpurnii?"  (Father, where do the Calpurnii come from?) PISO  "A Calpo."  (From Calpus.)  FILIUS  "Calpo? Quis fuit?"  (Calpus? Who was he?)  PISO  "Filius Numae Pompilii."  (The son of Numa Pompilius.)  FILIUS  "Numae? Regis?"  (Numa? The king?)  PISO  "Ipsius."  (The very one.)  FILIUS  "Cur non dixisti statim Numae Pompilii? Numae nomen solum satis non est."  (Why didn't you say Numa Pompilius straight away? The name Numa alone is not enough.)  PISO  "Recte mones. Numquam nomen gentilicium neglegendum est."  (You are right. A family name should never be neglected.)  FILIUS  "At reges tum non hereditate, sed electione fiebant."  (But kings were then chosen by election, not inheritance.)  PISO  "Ita."  (Yes.)  FILIUS  "Ergo Calpus rex non factus est."  (Then Calpus did not become king.)  PISO  "Prudenter concludis."  (You reason shrewdly.)  FILIUS  "Et si rex factus esset?"  (And if he had become king?)  PISO  "Fortasse gens Calpurnia numquam exstitisset."  (Perhaps the Calpurnian family would never have existed.)  Implicature +> failure to inherit the kingship may have created the possibility of founding a distinguished aristocratic family instead.  A Speranzian ending The son's observation is actually excellent:  Kingship was elective.  Therefore:  being "son of Numa" did not entail becoming king.  The father boasts of descent from royalty. The son points out that the boast contains, hidden inside it, a failure:  Calpus did not become Numa.  The father then converts the apparent failure into the foundation of the family. That is almost a perfect Grice/Speranza reversal:  "Had our ancestor succeeded, we might not be here to boast of him."

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.   LEX CALPURNIA

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.   LEX ACILIA CALPURNIA And are the lex calpurnia and the lex acilia calpurnia the same lex? Thanks what Acilius is this? No — they are not the same law. In fact, they concern different subjects and are separated by about eighty years. 1. Lex Calpurnia de repetundis (149 BC) This was proposed by Lucius Calpurnius Piso and established the first permanent criminal court (quaestio perpetua) at Rome, aimed at prosecuting extortion and abuses committed by provincial governors. [en.wikipedia.org], [detailedpedia.com] This is the famous Calpurnian law associated with the elder Piso Frugi and the anti-corruption tradition of the Calpurnii. [en.wikipedia.org], [jstor.org]  2. Lex Acilia Calpurnia (67 BC) This was a completely different law. It was named after the consuls:  Manius Acilius Glabrio (Acilius), Gaius Calpurnius Piso (Calpurnius),  and dealt with electoral corruption (ambitus). It imposed severe penalties, including exclusion from office and the Senate for those convicted of bribery while seeking office. [en.wikipedia.org] So the double name is simply because both a member of the gens Acilia and a member of the gens Calpurnia were associated with it as the year's consuls. [en.wikipedia.org]  Which Acilius? The Acilius here is:  Manius Acilius Glabrio, consul of 67 BC. [en.wikipedia.org]  The Calpurnian colleague was:  Gaius Calpurnius Piso, consul of the same year. [en.wikipedia.org]   A Gricean Calpurnian conversation FILIUS  "Pater, cur una lex duo nomina habet?"  (Father, why does one law have two names?) PISO  "Quia duo consules habuit."  (Because it had two consuls behind it.) FILIUS  "Ergo pars legis Acilia est et pars Calpurnia?"  (Then part of the law is Acilian and part Calpurnian?) PISO  "Non; tota una lex est."  (No; it is one law throughout.) FILIUS  "Cur igitur duo nomina?"  (Then why two names?) PISO  "Ut nemo gloriam solus ferat."  (So that no one carries off the credit alone.) The implicature:  Roman legislative titles often preserve political cooperation rather than legal division.  And, very Romanly, they also preserve rivalry about credit. Smiley.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.    The general gens entry has this who seems to be a Calpurnio who violated the Legge Acilio Calpurnio? Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, aedile in 57 BC, was a candidate for the praetorship. The following year, TULLIO Cicero successfully defended him on a charge of electoral bribery. He later went into exile, but regained his status and became a follower of Mark Antony Yes, very possibly — but with an important distinction. The lex Acilia Calpurnia of 67 BC dealt with electoral bribery (ambitus), imposing serious penalties on those convicted of corrupt practices in seeking office. It was named after the consuls Manius Acilius Glabrio and Gaius Calpurnius Piso. [gutenberg.org] Your Calpurnius Bestia is:  Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, aedile in 57 BC, candidate for the praetorship, whom Cicero defended on a charge of electoral bribery. (From the gens entry.)  That immediately suggests a connection with the field regulated by the lex Acilia Calpurnia: electoral corruption. However, we must be careful. What we can say  Bestia was accused of electoral bribery according to your source. The lex Acilia Calpurnia was a law against electoral bribery. [gutenberg.org]  What we cannot yet say I have not found a source stating:  "Bestia was prosecuted specifically under the lex Acilia Calpurnia."  That may well be true, but I do not currently have a source explicitly connecting the prosecution to that particular statute. So the safest formulation is:  Bestia was charged with precisely the sort of conduct that the lex Acilia Calpurnia had been enacted to punish, but from the materials presently before us I cannot prove that Cicero's defence was conducted under that specific law. [gutenberg.org]   From a Gricean angle, there is a nice irony if it was indeed that law:  a Calpurnius helps create a major anti-bribery statute; another Calpurnius later finds himself defending against a bribery accusation.  One can imagine the family conversation: FILIUS  "Pater, nonne maiores nostri legem contra ambitum tulerunt?"  (Father, did not our ancestors pass a law against electoral bribery?) BESTIA  "Tulerunt."  (They did.) FILIUS  "Et nunc te accusant?"  (And now they accuse you?) BESTIA  "Leges saepe ad nepotes redeunt."  (Laws often come --  back to the grandchildren.")  FILIUS  Etiam illae quas ipsi tulistis? ("Even those which your own people carried?")  BESTIA  Maxime illae. ("Especially those.")  FILIUS  Cur?   ("Why?")  BESTIA  Quia nemo tam prudens est ut legem scribat sibi nocere numquam posse. ("Because no one is wise enough to write a law that can never harm himself.")  FILIUS  Ergo maiores nostri sibi insidias paraverunt? ("Then our ancestors laid a trap for themselves?")  BESTIA  Non sibi, fili; posteris. ("Not for themselves, son; for their descendants.")  FILIUS  Intellego. Hodie tu reus es lege Calpurnia; cras alius Calpurnius eam laudabit. ("I understand. Today you are a defendant under a Calpurnian law; tomorrow another Calpurnius will praise it.")  BESTIA  Iam incipis rem publicam intellegere. ("Now you are beginning to understand the Republic.")  Implicature:  Families make laws intending to govern others, but in a long-lived republic the same laws eventually govern the lawmakers' descendants as well.  A very Speranzian ending would be:  "Leges diutius vivunt quam homines." ("Laws live longer than men.")  which is precisely why a Calpurnius may one century enact a law, and another Calpurnius find himself standing before a court established in its spirit. I was told this -- does it help? The legal defense of Lucius Calpurnius Bestia in 56 BC directly traces back to the framework of the Lex Acilia Calpurnia, but with a fascinating twist involving Cicero’s strategic use of character witnesses and ancient Roman family politics. The Connection to the Lex Calpurnia The Lex Acilia Calpurnia of 67 BC was the primary statute governing ambitus (electoral malpractice) at the time Bestia ran for praetor. Marcus Caelius Rufus prosecuted Bestia under this specific legal umbrella. [1, 2, 3] Because Cicero had expanded this legal framework in 63 BC with his own Lex Tullia de ambitu (adding exile to the punishments), Bestia was facing devastating political and personal ruin if convicted. In the trial, Cicero had to navigate the strict boundaries of the very anti-bribery legal tradition that he had spent his career building and enforcing. [1] Did Cicero Mention Gaius Calpurnius Piso? Because Cicero's formal speech in defense of Bestia (the Pro Bestia) has been lost to history—surviving only in fragmented references and letters—we do not have a full, verbatim transcript. However, historical context and Cicero's letters to his brother Quintus heavily indicate that Gaius Calpurnius Piso was explicitly relevant to the trial's broader political landscape, though for highly complex reasons: [1, 2, 3, 4] The Bloodline Irony: The defendant, Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, belonged to the exact same aristocratic family—the gens Calpurnia—as Gaius Calpurnius Piso (the co-sponsor of the Lex Acilia Calpurnia). Cicero frequently used "family prestige" in his speeches, meaning he likely pointed out the deep irony or the tragedy of a Calpurnius being destroyed by a law carrying his own family's name. [1, 2] The "Other" Piso Connection: While Gaius Calpurnius Piso wrote the law, Cicero's thoughts during 56 BC were dominated by a different, contemporary Piso: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (the consul of 58 BC). This Piso had allowed Cicero to be exiled and was Cicero's bitter enemy. [1, 2, 3] Cicero's Secret Weapon in the Trial Instead of getting bogged down in the technicalities of the Lex Calpurnia, Cicero's surviving letters show that he won the trial using a brilliant distraction. [1] He pivoted the defense away from the bribery charges and spent the trial praising a man named Publius Sestius. Cicero reminded the jury of a famous riot where Sestius was brutally wounded, and noted that Bestia had saved Sestius's life. By framing Bestia as a brave savior of a Roman patriot, Cicero successfully convinced the jury to look past the electoral violations of the Lex Calpurnia and grant an acquittal. [1, 2, 3, 4] Yes — it helps, but with an important historian's caveat. What you've provided contains two different levels:  Things that are well-attested. Reconstructions about what Cicero likely did in the lost Pro Bestia.  Those should be kept apart. What seems firmly established  Lucius Calpurnius Bestia was prosecuted for ambitus (electoral corruption/bribery). Cicero defended him. Cicero's speech Pro Bestia is lost. The prosecution occurred within the legal world created by the anti-ambitus legislation, including the lex Acilia Calpurnia and later developments such as Cicero's own lex Tullia de ambitu.  That much fits very comfortably with what we know. What is more speculative The suggestions that Cicero:  explicitly stressed the irony that a Calpurnius was endangered by a law bearing the Calpurnian name, or consciously exploited the contrast with Gaius Calpurnius Piso the legislator,  are plausible rhetorical reconstructions, but without the text of Pro Bestia we cannot demonstrate them. As Grice would say, we must distinguish:  what is evidenced  from  what is conversationally tempting.   The Grice/Speranza irony What is certainly delightful is the family irony. One Calpurnius helps give Rome:  lex Acilia Calpurnia  against electoral corruption. Another Calpurnius later stands accused of conduct falling within the same anti-ambitus tradition. That almost creates its own dialogue: FILIUS  Cur leges facimus, pater? (Why do we make laws, father?)  BESTIA  Ut improbos puniamus. (To punish the wicked.)  FILIUS  Et si leges ad nos redeant? (And if the laws come back against us?)  BESTIA  Tum advocatum quaerimus. (Then we look for a lawyer.)   The most Gricean feature What I like most is the contrast between: The explicit charge  "Bestia violated the electoral law."  and Cicero's probable strategy Not:  "He did not do it."  But rather:  "Look what sort of man he is."  That is classic Roman forensic rhetoric. The defendant's character becomes evidence. The question officially concerns:  the act.  The discussion shifts to:  the man.  A Roman jury is invited to infer:  "A man who acted nobly elsewhere is unlikely to have acted badly here."  That is practically a textbook instance of persuasive implicature.  A Calpurnian family joke Speranza could easily imagine a grandson asking: NEPOS  Avus, quae fuit maior gloria gentis nostrae? (Grandfather, what was the greatest achievement of our family?)  AVUS  Legem contra ambitum tulimus. (We passed a law against electoral corruption.)  NEPOS  Et deinde? (And then?)  AVUS  Deinde Ciceronem conducere didicimus. (Then we learned how to hire Cicero.)  The implicature being that Roman families often managed to appear on both sides of the legislation they helped create. That, in a way, is one of the most Roman features of the Calpurnii.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: GRICE E CALPURNIO – GREX GRICEIANA – VERBALIA: CALPURNIO -- PISO -- even PISONE, a Consul—though perhaps he was one of the greatly reduced Consuls—had been shabby enough to demand the privilege. Piso had been an opponent of the law; and SEMPRONIO Gracchus, seeing him among the crowd receiving a bushel of the cheap grain, taunted him with his inconsistency in taking advantage of a corn measure which he had set his face against. The answer of Piso was sensible and just; for, said he, "though I had a strong objection to your giving away my property, I think I have a right to try to get my share of it." WHat is the real birth name of this PISONE in Abbott and is his witty second conversational move in Latin to SEMPRONIO's implicit first one. Abbott: GRICE E PISO -- even PISONE, a Consul—though perhaps he was one of the greatly reduced Consuls—had been shabby enough to demand the privilege. Piso had been an opponent of the law; and SEMPRONIO Gracchus, seeing him among the crowd receiving a bushel of the cheap grain, taunted him with his inconsistency in taking advantage of a corn measure which he had set his face against. The answer of Piso was sensible and just; for, said he, "though I had a strong objection to your giving away my property, I think I have a right to try to get my share of it."--Input?Feedback? Thanks -- is this the textbook example of a legal loophole? Excellent case—here Abbott is actually drawing (fairly closely!) on a genuine anecdote preserved by Cicero, and we can reconstruct both:  the real identity of Piso, and the Latin for the exchange, which is indeed a neat bit of “conversational logic” in your Gricean sense.   1. Who is this “Piso”? The figure is:  Lucius C. Piso Frugi (consul 133 BC)   gens: Calpurnia (plebeian) cognomen: Frugi (“upright, frugal”) [en.wikipedia.org]  He was:  a major opponent of the Gracchi, especially their grain law later found taking advantage of it. So Abbott’s “Piso the Consul” is:  L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, opponent of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus.   2. The authentic Latin exchange (from Cicero) Cicero gives the anecdote (Tusculan Disputations 3.48): Gracchus challenges Piso (reported indirectly), and Piso replies:  “nolim mea bona, Gracche, tibi viritim dividere libeat; sed, si facias, partem petam.” [loebclassics.com]   Literal translation  “I should not like it, Gracchus, if it pleased you to distribute my property among individuals; but if you do so, I shall seek my share.”  Abbott’s paraphrase:  “though I objected … I claim my share”  is quite faithful.  3. Structure of the exchange (Gricean analysis) You asked whether this is a “second conversational move”—yes, beautifully so.  (A) Gracchus’ (implicit) move Gracchus says, effectively:  “You opposed this law—yet you take advantage of it.” -- implicature:  you are inconsistent / hypocritical   (B) Piso’s reply  nolim… sed si facias, partem petam  Structure:   concessive stance:  nolim… → “I would not like it”    conditional:  si facias… → “if you do it”    practical conclusion:  partem petam → “I will claim my share”     Logical form  I oppose the principle (normative level) BUT given the fact (institutional level), I act accordingly. This is a classic separation: LevelPositionnormativeagainst the lawpracticalexploits the law  4. Is this a “legal loophole”? Not quite a loophole in the technical sense It is better described as:  consistency redefined across distinct domains   Piso’s argument:  The law redistributes my property Once it is law:  I am entitled like others   Therefore:  claiming a share is legitimate. So:  not evasion of law, but strategic compliance with an opposed law   5. The wit of the exchange Cicero presents Piso as:  gravis et sapiens (“serious and wise”) [loebclassics.com]   Why witty? Because he flips the accusation:  Gracchus: “you are inconsistent” Piso:  “No—you are distributing what is mine; if you insist, I merely reclaim part of it.”  This is almost a re-framing argument:  what looks like charity = expropriation   6. Gricean reading This is a textbook case of: Conversational implicature and reply   Gracchus implicates:  inconsistency    Piso replies by:  denying that implicature reframing the presupposition     Explicit vs implicit: SpeakerExplicitImplicitGracchus“why do you take grain?”“you are inconsistent”Piso“I opposed it, but I take my share”“this is my property, not your gift”. Piso’s utterance:  cancels Gracchus’ implicature introduces a new one:  the law is unjust redistribution. 7. Final synthesis. “Piso” = Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi (consul 133 BC). Latin reply preserved by Cicero: structure:  concessive + conditional + practical conclusion  -- not a loophole in the narrow sense, but:  a principled exploitation of a system one rejects  -- excellent Gricean example:  response that cancels implicature and reframes the issue     One-line takeaway  Piso’s reply is a classic two-level argument: he concedes his opposition to the grain law in principle but, once it is enacted, treats its benefits as a rightful recovery of his own property, thereby turning Gracchus’ charge of inconsistency into a critique of the law itself—a neat instance of conversational counter-implicature rather than mere opportunistic loophole.   If you like, we can compare this with modern “I voted against it, but I’ll take the funding” cases—almost identical rhetorical structure. In a way, is Calpurnia gens patrician, these patricians -- or land-owing class -- seem to talk alike -- like NASICA -- for here 'si facias' is actually better rendered as the quoniam used by Cornelio in response to Graccho Tib. -- and incidentally, is that quo-niam, a compound of quo-niam, meaning what each part, and thus why it is substitutable with 'cum' quando? --“nolim mea bona, Gracche, tibi viritim dividere libeat; sed, si facias, partem petam.” [loebclassics.com] Literal translation “I should not like it, Gracchus, if it pleased you to distribute my property among individuals; but if you do so, I shall seek my share.” You’re raising three tightly interlocked issues here:  social (gens: Calpurnii vs Cornelii) grammatical (si facias vs quoniam) etymological/logical (quoniam = “given that”)  Let me take them in that order and then pull them together.  1. Are the Calpurnii “patrician-like”?  Fact first:  The gens Calpurnia is plebeian [en.wikipedia.org]  So Piso is not a patrician like Nasica (Cornelius).  But your intuition is still right You note:  they “talk alike” (Nasica, Piso)  Yes—because despite being plebeian:  the Pisones were:  wealthy landholders elite conservatives aligned with senatorial ideology. So functionally:  they behave like patrician-minded aristocrats  That explains the similarity of tone:  Nasica: “quoniam p…” (presupposed assertion) Piso: “si facias…” (hypothetical → but practically certain)   2. si facias vs quoniam You suggest:  si facias ≈ quoniam  Very perceptive—but not identical.  Piso:  sed, si facias, partem petam  → “but if you do this, I will claim my share” This is:  grammatically: conditional pragmatically: → almost certain condition   Nasica:  quoniam magistratus rem publicam prodit…  → “since the magistrate betrays the state” This is:  grammatically: causal pragmatically: → asserted fact   Key contrast. FormStatussi faciashypothetical (but expected)quoniam facitpresented as fact. Your insight:  Piso’s si is “almost” a quoniam. Yes, in pragmatic effect:  both assume the action will (or does) occur. But:  Piso keeps a logical fiction of conditionality Nasica abolishes it   3. Etymology of quoniam This is where you were exactly right to ask. From Lewis & Short:  quoniam = quom (cum) + iam → “since now / since already” [alatius.com]   Components  quom / cum:  originally “when”   iam:  “now, already”. So literally:  “when-now” → “since now / seeing that now”   Development  temporal:  “when…”   then:  “now that…”   finally:  “since / because”  -- Grammars explicitly confirm:  quoniam originally temporal (“when”) later causal (“since”) [dcc.dickinson.edu]  This explains your comparison:  quando / cum / when / wenn  All share that temporal → causal drift.  4. Your key logical question: “entailed or asserted?” You propose:  ⊢ magistratus rem publicam prodit  This is very close to what Latin syntax encodes.  Grammarians say:  quoniam “states a fact” i.e. indicative + speaker authority [alatius.com]   Best description It is: -- asserted premise used as ground of argument  Not merely entailed, but:  introduced as already granted   Contrast: FormLogical statussi ppossiblepono passumedquoniam passerted-as-given. So your Fregean idea is spot-on:  it behaves like:  assertion sign + premise     5. Now compare Piso again Let’s bring the two together.  Piso  si facias, partem petam  Structure:  acknowledges:  the act is contingent   but implies:  it is effectively inevitable   Nasica  quoniam… sequantur  Structure:  declares:  premise already true   derives:  imperative. So: SpeakerStrategyPisoretain conditional form, weaken opponent’s chargeNasicaassert premise, force action  6. Your “protesting too much” insight This is the deepest point. You say:  Nasica turns a “mere premise” into fact  Exactly.  Mechanism  replace:  si tyrannus est… Not: with:  quoniam tyrannus est…So he:  removes the disputability of p and thus:  legitimises the conclusion. 7. Final synthesis. Calpurnii are plebeian, but behave like elite conservatives -- si facias = conditional, but pragmatically near-certainty -- quoniam = from quom + iam (“since now”) -- grammatically causal, functionally asserted premise -- Nasica:  converts contested claim → datum. Piso:  preserves conditional form, but exploits same logic     One-line takeaway  While Piso’s si facias maintains the formal structure of a conditional, it pragmatically approaches the force of a quoniam-clause by treating the opponent’s action as effectively given, whereas quoniam itself—etymologically “since now” (quom + iam)—marks not hypothesis but asserted ground, allowing Nasica to elevate a disputed political claim to the status of an unquestioned premise from which imperative action follows.   If you like, we can look at Cicero’s use of quoniam ita est—a formula where this argumentative force becomes completely explicit. And 'si facias' is 'if' plus indicative or subjunctive? Because if subjunctive it would seem as a hedge, also articulated in a mock-friendly vocative in the Cicero recollection: "I know, dear, and I would not grant, but should it please you, let me profit from it? Input? Feedback? Thanks Excellent—this goes right to the heart of how Latin uses the subjunctive in conditionals and how it shades tone (including the “mock‑friendly” effect you’ve noticed).  1. What form is “si facias”? It is:  present subjunctive (2nd person singular of facere)  So:  si facis = “if you do (it)” → more direct / factual si facias = “if you were to do (it), if you should do (it)” → more hypothetical / softened   This type is called: -- future less vivid (or potential) condition  Structure:  protasis (if‑clause): subjunctive apodosis (main clause): often future or present  Here:  si facias, partem petam → “if you should do this, I will claim my share”   2. Why the subjunctive here? You are exactly right:  it softens / hedges the condition  Compare: FormTonesi facis“if you do (it)” → blunt, factualsi facias“if you should do (it)” → polite, hypothetical, distancing -- So Piso’s tone is:  courteous, almost ironic restraint   3. The “mock‑friendly” effect (your insight) You paraphrased it as:  “I know, dear… but should it please you…”  That is very perceptive. Let’s look at the Latin:  “nolim mea bona, Gracche, tibi viritim dividere libeat”   Gracche (vocative) → direct but controlled nolim… libeat → polite, almost formal distancing:  “I should not like it… if it should please you…”     So the tone is: outwardly polite -- internally critical   4. The interaction of both clauses The full structure:  nolim … sed, si facias, partem petam   Pragmatic layering First clause:  nolim… libeat → “I would prefer you did not…”  → polite resistance  Second clause:  si facias, partem petam → “but if you go ahead anyway, I’ll take my share”  → practical assertion. Together:  courteous language masking firm self‑interest   5. Gricean reading This is a textbook case of polite implicature: What is said:  “I would not like it” “if you should do this…”  What is meant:  “you are wrong” “but I will exploit the result anyway”. So the subjunctive:  contributes to a mitigated, socially acceptable surface   6. Contrast with Nasica again This sharpens the difference nicely: SpeakerFormEffectPisosi facias (subjunctive)hedge, politenessNasicaquoniam + indicativeassertion, force. So:  Piso preserves conversational decorum Nasica destroys it and imposes a premise   7. Final synthesis. si facias = subjunctive, not indicative -- expresses:  potential / less vivid future politeness / distancing  -- contributes to:  a tone of courteous irony     One-line takeaway  Piso’s si facias uses the present subjunctive not to express real doubt but to soften the condition into a polite, hypothetical frame, allowing him to maintain conversational decorum (“if you should do this…”) while still asserting a firm practical conclusion—an effect that perfectly contrasts with Nasica’s unhedged, factive quoniam.   If you like, we can compare this with Cicero’s courtroom uses of si velis and si placet, where the same “polite subjunctive” mechanism appears very clearly.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio: la ragione conversazionale del portico dell’orto, il gruppo di gioco del Vesuvio, Roma, e la filosofia italiana (Roma).  Lucio C. Pisone Frugi Cesonino (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale del portico dell’orto, il gruppo di gioco del Vesuvio, Roma, e la filosofia italiana. Ricordato come seguace della filosofia del portico un P., che s’è identificato con Lucio C. P. *FRUGI*, tribuno della plebe, pretore e console della repubblica romana, combatte la rivolta degli schiavi in Sicilia e la doma. P. ottenne la censura.  P. lascia un’opera storica, gl’Annales, che si estende dalle origini. In essa, P. combatte le tendenze che si introduceno in Roma e il ri-lassamento morale. Della gente Calpurnia. Politico, militare e storico romano. Talora detto Censorino – cf. P. Cesorino -- tribuno della plebe, si fa promotore della lex Calpurnia de repetundis, la prima legge romana che vuole punire l’estorsioni compiute nelle province dai governatori. Pretore. Dopodiché, eletto console con PUBLIO MUZIO SCEVOLA  e gl’è comandato dal senato di restare in Italia per domare una rivolta di schiavi. P. riusce a sconfiggerli, senza però ottenere una vittoria definitiva e dove passare il comando a PUBLIO RUPILIO. Autore di “Annales”, un'opera che anda dalle origini e che sono tra le fonti precipue di LIVIO  e Dionigi d'Alicarnasso. Gl’annales, di cui restano frammenti, si propone di descrivere la pretesa onestà dell'epoca antica, contrapponendola alla contemporanea corruzione operante a Roma. Che si tratta però di un'opera a tesi pre-costituite lo dimostra il fatto che, durante il suo consolato, avvenne l'assassinio di TIBERIO GRACCO, e che, nonostante l'estrema gravità del crimine -- che tra l'altro viola il sacro obbligo dell'incolumità personale che s'accompagna alla tribunicia potestas – P. e l'altro console non prendeno alcun provvedimento in merito. Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Cicerone, Brutus; In Verrem, De officiis, Catalogo Perseo; Cornell-Bispham, The fragments of Roman historians, Oxford, Historicorum Romanorum reliquiae, Hermann Lipsiae, in aedibus Teubneri; discussione su vita, opere e frammenti). Treccani Enciclopedie Istituto dell'Enciclopedia. Portico, storia e morale. GRICEVS: Salvē, PISO; audio te Censorinum appellari. Dic mihi: cum censūras, num etiam sermones in tabulas refers? PISO: Sī referrim, GRICE, primum te ipsum notābo: nimium quaeris. Sed age—quid tandem est istud tuum finis? in rostrīs an in animō? GRICEVS: Finis apud mē saepe est implicātūra: quod dīcitur aliud est, quod intellegitur aliud; ita etiam lex Calpurnia—extorsionem vetat, sed pudōrem poscit. PISO: Bene! Tum ego, dum servōs in Siciliā domō, hanc quoque domō: corruptēlae linguam. Sī quis mihi “nihil prōmisi” dīcat, respondebō: “immo, amīce, prōmīsistī—sed per conversātiōnem.” The gens of these two would be gens Frugia, and thus if Speranza orders people by gens under 'F'? No. In both of the cases you quote, the gens is Calpurnia, not Frugia. Frugi is not the gens-marker there. It is a cognomen, or at any rate a cognomen-like family distinction, famous in the Calpurnian line. So if Speranza orders by gens, both of these Pisones belong under C, for Calpurnia, not under F. The basic parsing is: Lucio Calpurnio Pisone Frugi: Calpurnius = nomen, hence gens Calpurnia. Piso = cognomen of the Pisones branch. Frugi = additional cognomen or honorific family distinction. Marco Pupio Pisone Frugi Calpurniano is a little more complicated because of adoption and inherited name-elements, but even there Frugi is not the gens. The important thing is that Calpurnian affiliation is what matters for the Piso line, and Frugi remains a cognominal distinction, not a gentilicium. So if Speranza files by gens: these Pisones go under C, not F. If he files by the best-known branch-name in common literary usage, he might keep them under P for Piso, but that would be a practical index choice, not a strict gentilic one. So the clean answer is: not gens Frugia; yes gens Calpurnia; therefore under C if ordered by gens. Grice and Speranza order people by gens, so the first down here is indeed under "C" -- but the second is not a Calpurnio -- he is a Calpuriano -- so the gens is Pupia, Frigia? His name looks accumulative but Grice would like to know what his birth gens, if any -- whereas the former Grice allows it was a Calpurnio by birth -- No: for Marco Pupio Pisone Frugi Calpurniano the birth gens is not Calpurnia, and certainly not some gens Frugia. The safest answer is that his birth nomen is Pupius, so the birth gens is Pupia. Calpurnian elements entered through adoption into the Calpurnii Pisones, and Frugi is a cognomenal element, not the gens. The name is accumulative in exactly the Roman way that makes Grice happy and indexers miserable. Marco Pupio Pisone Frugi Calpurniano can be parsed, in broad terms, like this. Marcus is the praenomen. Pupius is the original nomen, hence gens Pupia. Piso points to the adoptive Calpurnian-Pisonian line. Frugi is a cognomenal inheritance associated with that line. Calpurnianus is the adoptive adjective marking transfer into the Calpurnian house. So if you ask for the birth gens, the answer is Pupia, not Calpurnia, and certainly not a fictive gens Frugia. The contrast with Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi is therefore exact and useful. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi is Calpurnian by birth, because Calpurnius is his nomen. Marcus Pupius Piso Frugi Calpurnianus is Pupian by birth and Calpurnian by adoption. That is why the second should not be filed as though he were simply another native Calpurnius. As for Frugi, it is not the gens in either case. It is a cognomen or cognomenal distinction meaning something like worthy, thrifty, upright in the old Roman moral register. So Speranza should not file either man under F if he is filing by gens. The first belongs under C, Calpurnia. The second, if filed by birth gens strictly, belongs under P, Pupia. If filed by best-known public Roman style, one could understand a practical cross-reference under Calpurnius or Piso, but that would be an index convenience, not a strict gentilicial classification. So the dry formula is this. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi: gens Calpurnia by birth. Marcus Pupius Piso Frugi Calpurnianus: gens Pupia by birth, Calpurnian by adoption. If you want, I can next give you the cleanest one-line index rule Speranza could use for all such cases: file by birth gens, with adoptive gens in parentheses. Calpurnio Pisone Frugi Cesonino, Lucio (XXX). Dicta.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calpurnio – Ossia: Grice e Calpurnio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calpurnio.    And Grice suspects they (the Calpurnii) WERE possibly related to POMPILIO since they had it in their veins this proximity and love for power -- wasn't there one C. who proclaimed himself emperor in Greece only to be soon 'slain'? Thanks Grice may certainly suspect that the Calpurnii liked to advertise a hereditary aptitude for authority by claiming descent from Calpus, son of Numa Pompilius. But historically we should be cautious: the claim is a family tradition, not something we can verify. The point of the claim is largely social and symbolic:  "We descend from the son of Rome's wisest king."  The implicature is:  +> "Public leadership is in our blood."  Now, regarding the Calpurnius who proclaimed himself emperor: Your gens entry refers to a third-century figure usually called Piso "Frugi", described by the Historia Augusta. According to that source:  he was sent by Macrianus Major against Valens Thessalonicus in Achaia; he halted in Thessaly; he proclaimed himself emperor; he was slain in the same year and the revolt collapsed. (This is exactly the summary given in your entry.)  The difficulty is that the Historia Augusta is notoriously unreliable. In fact, your own entry notes:  "It is unlikely that Piso ever proclaimed himself emperor."  So we have two layers:  The ancient story: Piso proclaims himself emperor and is quickly killed. Modern skepticism: the episode may be partly or wholly fictional.  That uncertainty is itself very Gricean. A son might ask: FILIUS  Pater, si a Calpo et Numa descendimus, cur ille Piso tam cito periit? ("Father, if we descend from Calpus and Numa, why did that Piso perish so quickly?")  PATER  Quia genus regnum non praestat. ("Because ancestry does not guarantee a throne.")  FILIUS  Ergo quid profuit Calpo natus esse? ("Then what advantage was there in being descended from Calpus?")  PATER  Narrationi. ("To the story.")  The implicature:  +> noble genealogy helps persuade people, but it does not necessarily help them win.  And that is perhaps the most Calpurnian lesson of all. They repeatedly present themselves as descendants of a king's son, yet many of the most memorable Calpurnii are not successful rulers but:  accused conspirators, disappointed heirs, suspected poisoners, failed usurpers, and brilliant defenders in court.  In Speranzian terms:  Calpus regnum non accepit; Calpurnii famam acceperunt. ("Calpus did not receive the kingdom; the Calpurnii received the reputation.") And do we have the Historia Augusta for the passage, so that we can reconstruct the performative: "I proclaim myself emperor" -- versus the simpler: "I am your emperor"? Thanks Yes, and the surviving tradition is actually rather disappointing if you're hoping for a grand Austinian formula like:  Imperatorem me esse pronuntio. ("I proclaim myself emperor.")  The problem is that Piso's usurpation is known only from the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta, and even modern summaries warn that many details may be inventions. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] What the tradition does explicitly say is that Piso went only as far as Thessaly and:  "pronounced himself emperor", assuming the name Thessalicus. [en.wikipedia.org]  Unfortunately, in the material I found, the Historia Augusta passage is summarized rather than quoted with the exact Latin formula. [en.wikipedia.org] What is fascinating for Grice is the verb reported by modern summaries:  he pronounced himself emperor. [en.wikipedia.org]  That is already almost a performative. Compare: Mere assertion  Ego imperator sum. ("I am emperor.")  This is descriptive. It can be true or false. Political performative  Imperatorem me appello. ("I call myself emperor.")  or  Imperator appellor. ("I am hailed as emperor.")  or  Imperium suscipio. ("I assume imperial power.")  These are much closer to what Roman usurpers actually needed. The really Roman act was not saying:  "I am emperor."  but getting soldiers to say:  Imperator!  The empire ran surprisingly often on collective recognition. A Speranzian reconstruction could be: PISO  Milites, rem publicam servabo.  ("Soldiers, I shall save the state.") MILES  Ergo imperator esto!  ("Then be emperor!") PISO  Si ita vult exercitus, recipio.  ("If the army so wishes, I accept.") The implicature:  +> "I am now emperor."  without anyone having to utter the bald sentence. Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing Austin and Grice would enjoy: the crucial political fact is created not by describing a state of affairs but by a public act of recognition. And the irony is that Piso's "imperial career," if the story is even true, seems to have lasted only until he was killed by Valens' troops. [en.wikipedia.org] So a final Calpurnian joke: FILIUS  Pater, quando imperator fuisti?  ("Father, when were you emperor?") PISO  Inter duas sententias.  ("Between two announcements."). Smiley.  And what Grice would call the extra-performative (via 'stroke of the pen?' movement of the tongue?" Add 'Thessalicus" to my august gens of the Calpurnii -- in this he was following Scipio Africanus and the zillions of Roman who added an agnomen in connection with their 'empire'? Thanks Yes, I think this is exactly where a Grice/Speranza treatment would become interesting. There are really two speech acts involved: 1. The performative Piso (assuming the Historia Augusta story even approximately reflects reality) effectively does:  "I accept imperial dignity." "I am emperor."  or, more Romanly,  "The army has acclaimed me."  The performative creates a new institutional status. 2. The extra-performative Then comes the symbolic act:  adding "Thessalicus" to his name.  The modern summary of the tradition says that Piso in Thessaly "pronounced himself emperor" and assumed the name Thessalicus. [military-h...fandom.com] Now this second act does not create the emperorship. Rather, it creates a narrative.  Scipio Africanus As you observe, this resembles:  Scipio Africanus   Metellus Numidicus   Germanicus   Britannicus  and many other Roman victory-names. The pattern is:  conquest → agnomen.  Agnomina are almost compressed historical propositions. Thus:  Africanus  means, roughly:  "the man associated with victory in Africa."  The name itself carries a historical story.  Piso's oddity The funny thing is that Piso seems to reverse the process. The successful Roman sequence is:  victory first, agnomen afterwards.  Piso's sequence is:  agnomen first, glory later, death immediately thereafter.  If so, "Thessalicus" is almost aspirational.  A Speranzian dialogue FILIUS  Pater, cur te Thessalicum appellas?  ("Father, why do you call yourself Thessalicus?") PISO  Quia Thessalia me imperatorem vidit.  ("Because Thessaly saw me as emperor.") FILIUS  Vicistine Thessaliam?  ("Did you conquer Thessaly?") PISO  Nondum.  ("Not yet.") FILIUS  Ergo nomen ante rem venisse videtur.  ("Then the name seems to have come before the deed.") PISO  Audax fortuna favet.  ("Fortune favours the bold.") FILIUS  Vel historicos confundit.  ("Or confuses historians.")  The Gricean point The agnomen generates an implicature:  Thessalicus +> "This man achieved something great in Thessaly."  But if the achievement has not actually occurred, the name functions almost as a conversational promissory note. The agnomen says:  "Treat me as the sort of man who deserves this title."  That is why I like your phrase "extra-performative." The performative tries to create:  emperor.  The agnomen tries to create:  emperor-with-a-history.  And, if the story is true, Piso was slain before history had sufficient time to catch up with the name. [military-h...fandom.com], [en.wikipedia.org] So a very Speranzian conclusion would be:  Scipio became Africanus because he conquered Africa; Piso wished to become Thessalicus before conquering Thessaly.  The one commemorates a deed; the other attempts to anticipate one.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caluso – Ossia: Grice e Caluso: la ragione conversazionale, la grammatica universale e l’implicatura conversazionale degl’initiati e gl’initiante – initians, initiatum – inizianti.  Tommaso Valperga di Caluso (Torino, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale, la grammatica universale e l’implicatura conversazionale degl’initiati e gl’initiante – initians, initiatum – inizianti. In a comparison that is necessarily analogical rather than genealogical, H. P. Grice’s reason‑governed theory of conversational meaning can be usefully set beside the philological and exegetical practice of Tommaso Valperga di Caluso, especially as exemplified in the 1778 Torino volgarizzamento of the Cantico de’ cantici, where linguistic form, intention, and normativity are treated as inseparable from the rational obligations governing understanding itself. Caluso’s work proceeds from the assumption that meaning is neither exhausted by lexical equivalence nor by causal association, but is constrained by reasons internal to a textual and interpretive practice—reasons that determine what counts as a faithful rendering rather than a merely possible one; in this respect, his orientation anticipates Grice’s insistence that meaning, properly so called, is anchored not in brute signification but in the recognition of intention under shared rational norms. Grice’s conversational framework relocates this commitment from sacred text to ordinary talk, yet both thinkers resist any account of meaning that bypasses justificatory structure: Caluso by subordinating translation to the rational demands of Hebrew poetics and theology, Grice by subordinating utterance‑interpretation to principles of cooperation, relevance, and reason. An appendix to this comparison may note that Grice was famously preoccupied with the formula “Fiat lux”, repeatedly expressing doubt that the Vulgate accurately renders the force of the Hebrew jussive, a doubt that closely mirrors Caluso’s own reluctance to treat biblical imperatives as reducible to simple declarative content; in both cases, the issue is whether meaning can be stated without loss once modality, normativity, and intention are flattened—an outcome neither would accept. Grice: “Noble Italians love a long surname, so this is Valperga-Di-Caluso,” and so Ryle had in under the “C””.  Studia a Torino sotto BECCARIA, Lagrange, Saluzzo e Cigna, Gaetano Emanuele a di San Paolo. Ritrova Alfieri. Le veglie di Torino, Storia d'Italia, Esoterismo Cazzaniga. Literaturae Copticae rudimentum Prime lezioni di gramatica Ebraica” latina carmina cum specimine graecorum, Principes de philosophie pour des initiés aux mathématiques, Turin, Bianco. Rossotti, Le strade di Torino.L'‘Orlando Innamorato' Milena Contini, La felicità del savio. Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso. Traduttore in piemontese dell'incipit dell'Iliade, in «Studi Piemontesi», Milena Contini, Le riflessioni di Tommaso Valperga di Caluso sulla in H. Foley Mysterien/ Mysterienreligionen Romane Memento: Justice and Judgment in Aeneid Kleinasiatische Personennamen Zgusta, L., Kleinasiatische Ortsnamen Zhmud, Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans Zieske, L., ‘Hippolytos – ein orphischer Vegetarier? Zu Eurip., Hipp. Interpretation and Text Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass Tempelbibliotheken im Alten Ägypten Froschauer and C. Römer Bibliotheken: Leben und Lesen in den frühen Klöstern Ägyptens Hiera Messeniaka: la storia religiosa della Messenia Persephone Euforbo Melesigenio. Dydimus Taurinensis. GRAMMATICA UNIVERSALE. principi di filosofia per gli initiate nelle matematiche implicature corporali l’iniziazione di Enea e OTTAVIANO the golden bough, Turner misterij eleusini, una moda tra la nobilita romana eleusi destrutta d’Alarico iniziato, iniziante, aspirante, gl’aspiranti eneide, poema  epico, la fonte di VIRGILIO e un poema perduto sulla discesa d’Ercole all’inferno a lottare contro Cerbero fatica 10 statuaria statua d’Antino a Eleusi. iniziazione come contemplazne role dell’iniziato iniziato e inizianti la radice indo-germanica di Eleusi. Grice: Caluso, qui a Torino c’è sempre una festa, ma dimmi, serve davvero una grammatica universale per capirsi tra iniziati e inizianti? Io per le implicature mi accontento di un buon aperitivo. Caluso: Caro Grice, tra veglie notturne, traduzioni in piemontese e discesa agli inferi, l’importante è partire da una buona regola: chi non si confonde almeno un po’ tra le declinazioni, non è degno dell’iniziazione! Grice: E allora, fra i misteri eleusini, le statue d’Antino e i carmina latini, la vera iniziazione consiste nell’arrivare a fine conversazione senza perdere il filo… o la chiave di casa! Caluso: Grice, stai tranquillo: se la grammatica universale fallisce, basta la compagnia, perché tra implicature e sorrisi, si apre sempre la porta giusta. E se proprio resti fuori, c’è sempre una veglia a Torino dove filosofare! Caluso, Tommaso Valperga di (1778). 1Il Cantico de’ cantici di Salomone – volgarizzamento. Torino: Bianco.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calvisio – Ossia: Grice e Calvisio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calvisio. The Calvisii are an ancient Roman family, which first rose to prominence during the final decades of the Republic, and became influential in imperial times. The first of the gens to obtain the consulship was Gaius C. Sabinus. “C.” is probably based on the Latin adjective calvus, meaning "bald". Both Calvus and its diminutive, Calvinus, were common Roman surnames. With respect to their place of origin, Syme begins a survey of the evidence by stating, "Calvisii might issue from any region of Italy except old Latium." He lists a placename, "villa Calvisia" in Southern Etruria, amongst the properties of a Hadrianic consular; two Calvisii attested in Puteoli, and fifteen named in sources from Transpadane Italy, but concludes "[y]et they lead nowhere"; the evidence is frustratingly inconclusive. However, for one branch of the gens, the Calvisii Rusones, Syme suggests that their origins lay in Gallia Narbonensis. A further clue lies in the surname Sabinus, borne by the only distinct family of the early Calvisii, which may point to a Sabine origin. The main lines of the Calvisii employed the praenomina Gaius and Publius, both of which were amongst the most common of Roman names.  Most of the Calvisii appearing in history belong to one of two distinct families, bearing the surnames Sabinus and Ruso. Sabinus, belonging to the earlier of the two, typically indicated Sabine ancestry, although as an adjective it could also suggest that the original bearer resembled a Sabine, either in his appearance or manner.[6] The Calvisii Sabini flourished from the end of the Republic to about the time of the emperor Claudius, when the surname is replaced by that of Ruso. The latter surname might be formed from rus, the country, or russus, ruddy or red-haired; the latter derivation is suggested by the fact that two later Calvisii, whose relationship to the others is unclear, bore the surname Rufus, which generally referred to someone with red hair. Calvisii Sabini Gaius Calvisius (Sabinus), father of the consul of 39 BC Gaius Calvisius C. f. Sabinus, legate of Caesar during the Civil War, he secured Aetolia in BC 48, and three years later he was assigned the province of Africa. He was praetor in 44, and consul in 39. He became one of the trusted friends and commanders of Octavian, who sent him against Sextus Pompeius.[7][8][9][10][11][12] Gaius Calvisius C. f. C. n. Sabinus, consul in 4 BC.[13][14] Calvisia Flaccilla, daughter of C. Calvisius Sabinus the consul of 4 BC, she married Marcus Claudius Marcellus Aeserninus the praetor of 19 AD.[15] Gaius Calvisius (C. f. C. n.) Sabinus, consul in AD 26. He was one of those accused of maiestas in 32, but saved by the tribune Celsus, who was one of the informers. He was governor of Pannonia under Caligula, when he and his wife, Cornelia, were accused of plotting against the emperor. Seeing no hope of escape, they took their own lives.[16][17] Publius Calvisius Sabinus Pomponius Secundus, consul suffectus in AD 44, subsequently triumphed over the Chatti. He was a notable poet and tragedian. He is presumed to have been adopted by a Publius Calvisius Sabinus.[18][19][20][21][22] Calvisii Rusones Publius Calvisius Ruso, consul suffectus, perhaps from the Kalends of November, in AD 53.[23][24][2] Publius Calvisius P. f. Ruso, consul suffectus in AD 79, from the Kalends of March to the Kalends of September.[25][26][2] Publius Calvisius P. f. P. n. Ruso Julius Frontinus, consul suffectus, perhaps in AD 84.[2] Publius Calvisius Tullus Ruso, consul in AD 109 and maternal grandfather of emperor Marcus Aurelius.[23][27] (Calvisia) Domitia P. f. Lucilla, daughter of the consul of 109 and mother of Marcus Aurelius.[28] Others Gaius Calvisius Rufus, a close friend of Pliny the Younger.[29] Publius Calvisius Philotas, put up an epitaph honoring his brother Servius Cornelius Julianus.[30] Calvisia, wife of Servius Cornelius Julianus, both mentioned on an inscription thanking Flavia Domitilla of the Flavian dynasty.[30] Gaius C. Statianus, prefect of Roman Egypt from AD 170 to 176. Calvisius Rufus, governor of Britannia Inferior during the reign of Severus Alexander, between AD 222 and 235.[31] Calvisius Sabinus, the son of a freedman, whose wealth and pretension earned him the scorn of the younger Seneca.[32] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 689 ("Calvisius Sabinus").  Dixon, p. 225.  Chase, p. 110.  Syme, "P. Calvisius Ruso", pp. 189 ff.  Syme, "P. Calvisius Ruso", p. 190.  Chase, p. 113, 114.  Caesar, De Bello Civili, iii. 34, 35.  Appian, Bellum Civile, ii. 60, v. 81, 96, 132.  Cicero, Philippicae, iii. 10, Epistulae ad Familiares, xii. 25.  Cassius Dio, xlviii. 34, 46.  Plutarch, "The Life of Marcus Antonius", 58.  Broughton, vol. II.  Fasti Magistrorum Vici, CIL VI, 10286.  Fasti Lucerini, CIL IX, 786.  Setälä, p. 71  Tacitus, Annales, iv. 46, vi. 9, Historiae, i. 48.  Cassius Dio, lix. 18.  Tacitus, Annales, v. 8, vi. 18, xi. 13, xii. 27, 28, Dialogus de Oratoribus, 13.  Cassius Dio, lix. 6, 29.  Quintilian, x. 1. § 98.  Pliny the Elder, vii. 19, xiii. 12. s. 26, xiv. 4. s. 6.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, iii. 5, vii. 17.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for the Reign of Claudius".  Fasti Septempedani, AE 1998, 419.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for A.D. 70–96".  Smallwood.  Geoffrey William Adams (2013). Marcus Aurelius in the Historia Augusta and Beyond. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 57–. ISBN 978-0-7391-7638-2.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, i. 12. § 12, ii. 20, iii. 1, 19; iv. 4, 1; v. 7; viii. 2; ix. 6.  Jeffers, p. 52  Birley, The Fasti of Roman Britain, pp. 193 ff.  Seneca the Younger, Epistulae, 27. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, Philippicae. Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War). Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Naturalis Historia (Natural History). Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (Quintilian), Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, Historiae, Dialogus de Oratoribus (Dialogue on Oratory). Plutarchus, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). 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). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952). E. Mary Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, Cambridge University Press (1966). Anthony R. Birley, The Fasti of Roman Britain, Clarendon Press (1981). Paul A. Gallivan, "The Fasti for the Reign of Claudius", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 28, pp. 407–426 (1978), "The Fasti for A.D. 70–96", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 186–220 (1981). Ronald Syme, "P. Calvisius Ruso. One Person or Two?", in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 56 (1984). Suzanne Dixon, Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World, Routledge (2001). Setälä, Päivi (1977). Private Domini in Roman Brick Stamps of the Empire: A Historical and Prosopographical Study of Landowners in the District of Rome. Suomalainen tiedeakatemia. ISBN 9789514103032. Jeffers, James S. (1991). Conflict at Rome: Social Order and Hierarchy in Early Christianity. Fortress Press. ISBN 9780800624699. Categories: CalvisiiRoman gentes

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calvisio – Ossia: Grice e Calvisio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calvisio. For the Calvisii, Grice's and Speranza's favourite, for different reasons are two -- and you provide Third-Best choice for G/S vignette -- the one accused of maiestas -- which is an abstract noun if ever there was and suicide is more than a way out when there is no escape --it is a Roman act -- and (ii) the gov. of Britannia Inferior, since Grice being from Harborne, wasn't sure if he was Inferior or Superior, so you can explain. Input? Feedback? Thanks For the Calvisii, I agree that the two richest Grice/Speranza figures are: Gaius Calvisius Sabinus (consul AD 26) — accused of maiestas, later accused under Caligula and committing suicide with his wife Cornelia when there seemed no escape. Your source explicitly notes both the maiestas accusation and the later suicide. [en.wikipedia.org] Maiestas: an abstract noun indeed Your instinct is excellent. The charge of:  maiestas  ("majesty," "the dignity of the Roman people/state/emperor") is almost the ideal Roman abstract noun. One is not accused of:  stealing a horse,  but of:  diminishing maiestas.  A son could reasonably ask:  Quid est maiestas? ("What is majesty?")  And his father might struggle because the thing is partly juridical, partly symbolic, partly political. That is very Gricean:  a charge whose force exceeds any simple physical description. A Calvisian conversation on maiestas FILIVS  Pater, quid fecisti? ("Father, what did you do?")  SABINVS  Nihil. ("Nothing.")  FILIVS  Cur igitur accusaris? ("Then why are you accused?")  SABINVS  Maiestatis. ("Of majesty.")  FILIVS  Maiestatem furatus es? ("Did you steal majesty?")  SABINVS  Si ita facile esset invenire quid sit, nemo iudicaret. ("If it were so easy to discover what it is, nobody would need a trial.")  The implicature:  the more abstract the charge, the more room there is for interpretation.  Which is one reason maiestas prosecutions became so notorious. I suspect Speranza would particularly enjoy Calvisius Sabinus and maiestas because it turns on a word whose meaning everyone thought they understood until they had to define it. That is often where the best conversational philosophy begins.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calvisio – Ossia: Grice e Calvisio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calvisio. Calvisius Rufus, governor of Britannia Inferior. (The "Inferior" puzzle is tailor-made for Grice.) Britannia Inferior and Harborne The amusing thing is that:  Inferior does not mean morally inferior.  Nor does it mean less civilized. In Roman provincial language, superior and inferior are often geographic or administrative labels. A Gricean child might ask: FILIVS  Pater, cur Britannia inferior dicitur? Estne peior? ("Father, why is it called Lower Britain? Is it worse?")  RVFVS  Non peior; aliter disposita. ("Not worse; differently arranged.")  The adjective invites the implicature:  "worse."  The bureaucracy means:  "lower subdivision."  Exactly the sort of clash between ordinary language and administrative language that Grice loved. There was Britannia maior and Britannia mino (Hibernia) also -- but inferior and superior would be meridionalis and settentrionalis? Not quite. The Roman nomenclature is a little deceptive. Britannia Maior and Britannia Minor Those are older, broader geographical expressions, where:  Britannia Maior = Great Britain (the larger island). Britannia Minor = Brittany (Britannia Armorica) in Gaul, in later usage; occasionally discussions become tangled with Hibernia, but Hibernia itself is normally Hibernia, not "Britannia Minor."  So maior/minor here refers primarily to comparative extent or to paired Britains.  Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior When the Romans divided the province, the pair:  Britannia Superior Britannia Inferior  is administrative. One must resist the ordinary-language implicature:  superior = better inferior = worse  The bureaucracy means something else. The provinces were arranged roughly with:  Britannia Superior to the south, Britannia Inferior to the north.  Thus, from a modern geographical perspective, Inferior is actually the more northerly province. The terminology follows Roman administrative convention rather than everyday notions of "higher" and "lower." This is precisely the sort of thing that would puzzle little Calvisius: FILIVS  Pater, si Britannia Inferior est, cur propius ad caelum est? ("Father, if it is Lower Britain, why is it closer to the sky?")  RVFVS  Quia geographi et magistratus non semper eodem modo loquuntur. ("Because geographers and administrators do not always speak in the same way.")   The Gricean point A hearer naturally infers:  superior → better inferior → worse  But the Roman administrator intends:  superior → one province inferior → the other province  The adjectives function as bureaucratic labels, not evaluations. So yes, if the Romans had wanted to be maximally transparent to a modern reader, they might have said something closer to:  Britannia Septentrionalis ("Northern Britain") Britannia Meridionalis ("Southern Britain")  But they didn't. And that is exactly why Grice and Speranza would have material for a conversational vignette. Smiley. Well, the implicature for Grice and Speranza was cartographic. seeing taht Britannia inferior would be UNDER Britannia superior in a map with Rome as centre -- but you say the inverse obtained: with Superior being the southern part -- and Harborne, being in the Midlands (what would BE Harborne, upon conquest by the Mercians) would be somewhere in the middle, hence Grice's puzzle. Yes — and I think you've identified exactly the puzzle that would have appealed to both Grice and Speranza. A natural, almost automatic implicature from the labels is cartographic:  Superior = above Inferior = below.  If you place Rome at the bottom of a map and look northward (as many Roman itineraries and mental maps implicitly do), one might even expect:  Britannia Superior = farther away, "higher up" Britannia Inferior = nearer to Rome, "lower down"  Yet the provincial division does not behave so transparently. The attested administrative provinces are:  Britannia Superior (south) Britannia Inferior (north)  according to the conventional Roman provincial arrangement. [en.wikipedia.org] That creates exactly the sort of conversational puzzle Grice enjoyed: FILIVS  Cur Britannia Superior ad meridiem est? ("Why is Upper Britain in the south?")  RVFVS  Quia nomina magistratuum non semper geographiam discipulorum sequuntur. ("Because administrators' names do not always follow schoolboys' geography.")  The adjective stops being descriptive and becomes classificatory.  As for Harborne, the fun historical answer is that Harborne is much later than Roman provincial nomenclature as such. Under the Roman provincial division it would simply have fallen somewhere within the territory of Roman Britain. The later Mercian framework belongs to a very different political map. So one can imagine Grice asking:  "Am I Superior or Inferior?"  and the Roman governor replying:  Neutrum es; es Midlandensis. ("Neither; you're a Midlander.")  which of course completely defeats the expectations generated by the provincial labels. In Speranza's style:  Britannia Superior non est superior; Britannia Inferior non est inferior. ("Upper Britain is not superior; Lower Britain is not inferior.")  The Roman bureaucrat uses the adjectives as labels; the ordinary-language philosopher hears them as predicates and immediately starts looking for the comparison class. That's where the conversational fun begins. And what is the CRITERION for the sup./inf. admisnistrative division -- inferior is cognate with infer, hell, in French, etc. and sup is cognate with hype in Greek. Surely Caesar knew SUPERIOR only. And are these terms applied to ITALY, too, as per the Romans. Indeed, Harborne was settled by the Mercians which were part of the Angles -- but there were settlements north of Harborne, of course, like Adrian's wall, and all the Chesters, including -chester in Cheshire – thanks This is a very good puzzle, and I think the first thing to say is that "Superior" and "Inferior" in Roman administrative geography do not mean what an ordinary-language philosopher initially expects them to mean. The words themselves are transparent enough:  superus = above superior = higher, upper inferus = below inferior = lower  and yes, inferus is related to the world of "below" that gives us things like Latin infernum ("the lower regions"), French enfer, etc. The puzzle is:  Why is Britannia Superior the southern province and Britannia Inferior the northern one?  The answer is that the criterion was not simply "north = higher on a modern map." Roman administrative uses of superior and inferior are often tied to a directional system inherited from roads, rivers, administrative centres, and official geography rather than the modern schoolroom map. A famous parallel is:  Germania Superior Germania Inferior  and likewise:  Moesia Superior Moesia Inferior.  The labels are administrative designations rather than moral or evaluative descriptions.  Grice's cartographic implicature Grice sees:  Britannia Superior  and immediately infers:  "the upper one must be farther north."  That is a perfectly natural implicature. But the Roman bureaucrat means:  "the province officially called Superior."  A classic mismatch between ordinary interpretation and administrative nomenclature. One might imagine: GRICEVS  Cur provincia superior ad meridiem est?  ("Why is the upper province in the south?") PRAESES  Quia nomen est.  ("Because it is a name.") GRICEVS  Sed quid significat?  ("But what does it mean?") PRAESES  Olim fortasse aliquid significavit; nunc administrationem significat.  ("Perhaps once it meant something; now it signifies an administration.")  Did Caesar know only one Britannia? Essentially, yes. For Caesar there was not yet a division into Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. He knew Britain as a whole island and field of operations. The provincial subdivision belongs to later Roman administration.  Were these terms used in Italy? Not normally in the sense of:  Italia Superior / Italia Inferior  as formal provincial counterparts like the Britains or Germanias. The really famous Roman uses of superior and inferior are attached to provinces such as Germania and Moesia, and later Britain.  Harborne and the Midlands Your Mercian observation is nice because it highlights how odd the Roman labels would sound to a Midlander. Harborne sits roughly in what later became the Midlands. So Grice's instinctive reaction is:  "If there is a Superior Britain and an Inferior Britain, where is the Middle Britain?"  A Roman governor would have no answer, because the terminology was administrative, not geometrically exhaustive. In Speranza's style:  Britannia Superior et Britannia Inferior non sunt comparativa geometri; sunt nomina magistratuum. ("Upper Britain and Lower Britain are not geometric comparisons; they are names used by administrators.")  And that is exactly why the titles generate conversational puzzles: they look descriptive, but function classificatorily. And where was Moesia, and in Germania, the superior would be the first attached to the Italian area, with the inferior being beyond that? Thanks This is a very good puzzle, and I think the first thing to say is that "Superior" and "Inferior" in Roman administrative geography do not mean what an ordinary-language philosopher initially expects them to mean. The words themselves are transparent enough:  superus = above superior = higher, upper inferus = below inferior = lower  and yes, inferus is related to the world of "below" that gives us things like Latin infernum ("the lower regions"), French enfer, etc. The puzzle is:  Why is Britannia Superior the southern province and Britannia Inferior the northern one?  The answer is that the criterion was not simply "north = higher on a modern map." Roman administrative uses of superior and inferior are often tied to a directional system inherited from roads, rivers, administrative centres, and official geography rather than the modern schoolroom map. A famous parallel is:  Germania Superior Germania Inferior  and likewise:  Moesia Superior Moesia Inferior.  The labels are administrative designations rather than moral or evaluative descriptions.  Grice's cartographic implicature Grice sees:  Britannia Superior  and immediately infers:  "the upper one must be farther north."  That is a perfectly natural implicature. But the Roman bureaucrat means:  "the province officially called Superior."  A classic mismatch between ordinary interpretation and administrative nomenclature. One might imagine: GRICEVS  Cur provincia superior ad meridiem est?  ("Why is the upper province in the south?") PRAESES  Quia nomen est.  ("Because it is a name.") GRICEVS  Sed quid significat?  ("But what does it mean?") PRAESES  Olim fortasse aliquid significavit; nunc administrationem significat.  ("Perhaps once it meant something; now it signifies an administration.")  Did Caesar know only one Britannia? Essentially, yes. For Caesar there was not yet a division into Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. He knew Britain as a whole island and field of operations. The provincial subdivision belongs to later Roman administration.  Were these terms used in Italy? Not normally in the sense of:  Italia Superior / Italia Inferior  as formal provincial counterparts like the Britains or Germanias. The really famous Roman uses of superior and inferior are attached to provinces such as Germania and Moesia, and later Britain.  Harborne and the Midlands Your Mercian observation is nice because it highlights how odd the Roman labels would sound to a Midlander. Harborne sits roughly in what later became the Midlands. So Grice's instinctive reaction is:  "If there is a Superior Britain and an Inferior Britain, where is the Middle Britain?"  A Roman governor would have no answer, because the terminology was administrative, not geometrically exhaustive. In Speranza's style:  Britannia Superior et Britannia Inferior non sunt comparativa geometri; sunt nomina magistratuum. ("Upper Britain and Lower Britain are not geometric comparisons; they are names used by administrators.")  And that is exactly why the titles generate conversational puzzles: they look descriptive, but function classificatorily.Provide your feedback on BizChatYou said: And where was Moesia, and in Germania, the superior would be the first attached to the Italian area, with the inferior being beyond that? Thanks Copilot said: CopilotYes, and here the Roman nomenclature becomes genuinely puzzling. To avoid guessing, let's separate what is known from what is inferred. Moesia Moesia was the Roman province along the lower Danube, roughly in parts of what are today Serbia and Bulgaria. Later it was divided into:  Moesia Superior Moesia Inferior  The pair is well attested in Roman administration as a formal provincial division, analogous to Germania Superior/Inferior and Britannia Superior/Inferior. Germania Superior and Germania Inferior For Germany, the Roman provinces lay along the Rhine frontier. The modern reader naturally expects:  Superior = farther north/upstream on a map Inferior = farther south/downstream  But the Romans often thought in terms of river systems, not modern north-at-the-top maps. In river terminology:  superior frequently means upstream. inferior frequently means downstream.  For the Rhine:  Germania Superior lay in the upper Rhine region, closer to Switzerland and the Alpine zone. Germania Inferior lay in the lower Rhine region, towards the North Sea.  So in Germania the distinction is largely explicable through the course of the Rhine. Why Britain is more puzzling For Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior, there is no single obvious river whose upper and lower courses explain the names. That is why scholars still discuss the rationale. What is clear is that:  the names are administrative; they do not mean "better" and "worse"; they do not correspond neatly to the expectations generated by a modern map.  A Gricean version GRICEVS  Si Germania Inferior est apud ostia fluminis, intellego. ("If Lower Germany is at the mouth of the river, I understand.")  PRAESES  Recte.  ("Correct.") GRICEVS  Sed quid de Britannia? Quod flumen totam insulam regit? ("But what about Britain? What river governs the whole island?")  PRAESES  Iam quaestio difficilior est. ("Now that is a more difficult question.")  The implicature being:  The German provinces have a fairly intuitive hydraulic logic; the British provinces are less transparent and therefore more likely to mislead an ordinary-language philosopher.  And I think that is exactly what puzzled Grice of Harborne: not merely "Why Inferior?" but rather:  "Inferior according to what coordinate system?" Well, there are at least three rivers, and the Romans, if they call superior upstream that doesn't seem to be the criterion here, for the superior is the Britannia you reach by crossing the channel, where downstream mouths of Thames, the river by Portsmouth and the Severn have mouths. In any case, this Calvisius was governor of B. inferior -- did they have two centres, each Britannia? Thanks Yes. Whatever the ultimate rationale behind Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior, the practical administrative consequence was that there were effectively two provincial administrations, each with its own governor. The gens entry you supplied identifies:  Calvisius Rufus as governor of Britannia Inferior during the reign of Severus Alexander.  That already implies that Britannia Inferior was functioning as a distinct province with its own governor. From the Roman point of view, once Britain was divided, one would naturally expect:  a governor of Britannia Superior, a governor of Britannia Inferior,  rather than one man governing the entire island. The title itself points in that direction. What I particularly like in your objection is that Britain does not fit the Rhine logic very neatly. For Germania Superior/Inferior, one can see an intuitive connection with the Rhine:  upper course, lower course.  But for Britain, as you note, there is no single obvious river governing the whole provincial arrangement. The Channel crossings, Thames estuary, Severn, Humber, and northern frontiers all complicate the picture. That is why a Gricean child could keep pressing: FILIVS  Cur inferior dicitur? ("Why is it called Lower?")  PRAESES  Quia ita in fastis scriptum est. ("Because that is how it is written in the records.")  FILIVS  Sed quid significat?   ("But what does it mean?")  PRAESES  Minus hodie constat quam magistratibus olim videbatur. ("It is less clear today than it seemed to the administrators of old.")  What fascinates me is that Calvisius Rufus himself may not have had any puzzle at all. To him, Britannia Inferior was simply the official name of his province. The semantic mystery is largely ours; the administrative label had become conventional. Speranza's joke almost writes itself:  Grice: "Inferior according to what coordinate system?" Calvisius Rufus: "According to the imperial filing system."  And, like many bureaucratic classifications, once the name becomes established, the original rationale can become much less visible than the administrative reality it designates.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Calvisio – Ossia: Grice e Calvisio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Calvisio. My third-best choice would actually be: Publius Calvisius Sabinus Pomponius Secundus The consul of AD 44 who was:  a successful commander against the Chatti, a poet, a tragedian. [en.wikipedia.org]  Why? Because he combines two conversational worlds:  military glory and tragic language.  A Gricean conversation almost suggests itself: MILES  Imperator es an poeta? ("Are you a general or a poet?")  POMPONIVS  Utrumque. ("Both.")  MILES  Quid commune habent? ("What do they have in common?")  POMPONIVS  Victoriae narrantur; tragoediae quoque. ("Victories are narrated; so are tragedies.")  The implicature:  public action itself becomes a text to be interpreted.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Camilla – Ossia: Grice e Camilla: la ragione conversazionale e l'literae Humaniores – in literabus humanioris -- dell’huomo – opp. Lit. div.  Giovanni Camilla (Genova, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l'literae Humaniores – in literabus humanioris -- dell’huomo – opp. Lit. div. A comparison between H. P. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Giovanni Camilla’s Discorso sopra il principio e governo dell’huomo (Genova, 1550) shows how structurally close their conceptions of human rationality are, despite the distance in genre and century. In the Discorso, Giovanni Camilla treats human speech as a privileged manifestation of the governo of the anima: language is not a mere natural efflux but the outcome of judgment, intellection, and deliberate ordering, a faculty by which the huomo governs himself and others through reasoned discourse rather than force or instinct. Meaning, for Camilla, is therefore inseparable from rational governance: utterances are evaluated by how well they express concetti dell’anima in conformity with reason, moderation, and purpose, not simply by their acoustic or lexical form. Grice’s account of conversational meaning restates this Renaissance insight in analytic terms: what a speaker means is fixed by intention operating under publicly shareable norms of rational cooperation, not by causal association or conventional encoding alone. Both reject any picture of language as mechanically self‑interpreting: Camilla emphasizes reason as the governing principle that orders speech toward understanding, while Grice formalizes that governance as principles and maxims that make mutual comprehension possible. In this sense, Grice’s cooperative and reason‑responsive model can be read as a modern, procedural reconstruction of Camilla’s normative anthropology, translating the governo dell’huomo into the logic of conversational reason. Grice: “You gotta love C.; I mean, if his name were not Camilla, I would call him Grice: he philosophised on all that I’m into: mainly ‘uomo’ (since he was an ancient Italian, he used the mute ‘h’ (dell’huomo’): his anima, the concetti dell’animma that he ‘dichara’ in il suo palare – la bellezza is without equal.” De’misterii e maravigliose cause della compositione del mondo. Ma che si dice parlar del della lingua e diverso parlare cosi pronunciato distintamente, beneficio dei denti e delle labra, il quale cosi bene DICHIARA I CONCETTI DELL’ANIMA? Pensate che se piu l'uomo anda considerando le cose maravigliose del divino, tanto piu se gli infiammerebbe l’animo di riconoscerne altre e contemplarne, e quanto piu sta involto e privo delle scienze e cognitione di tai cose tanto manco ne prende maraviglia, e se ne in fiamma. Avanza, l'uomo tutti gl’altri animali di sottigliezza di sangue di memoria bellezza di corpo e larghezza di spalle cresce sino a XXII anni. Ora che veggiamo al trissino da piccioli atti e quasi instrutti benissiino in diverse scienze oarti, è cosa manifesta. Onde quel gran filosofo Mercurio Trimegisto chiama l'huomo tremigi un grande miracolo. Oltre poi, che coll'intelletto suo intende, capisce e DISCORRE sopra ogni cosa chiamato un picciol mondo e tantage cosi bella dignità di eso ON Elle . 0. cica. la conoscevano benissimo quegli ans uom viene tutta dall'anima. E questo ui basti qudra to alla dichiaratione di quelle cose naturali, veniamo. Se io debbia hauere queſto a caro, laſciolo confiderda re a uoi: essendo, che tai ragionamenti sopra tante ecoſi belle coſe, miſaranno aſſai facile uia ad intendea re poi eſſe scienze. -- diverso parlare cosi pronunciato distintamente beneficio de i denti e della labra, il quale cosi benedichiara i concetti dell'anima? virtù amicitia amore cielo e stelle; elementi quelle cose che si generano nell'aere anima anima dell'uuomo pianta animale sensitivo che non ha sangue pesce uccello quadrupedo uomo cosmografia simmetria dell'uomo. dell’huomo. Genova, Liguria.  Grice: Caro Camilla, dimmi, davvero pensi che basti qualche dente ben piazzato e due labbra agili per dichiarare i concetti dell’anima? Io con la mia implicatura mi ci perdo ancora. Camilla: Grice, la lingua è un miracolo: tra misteri, meraviglie e discorsi, basta un sorriso e già si capisce metà del mondo! E poi, se l’uomo è piccolo solo di statura, di anima è un gigante. Grice: Ma allora, Camilla, tra cosmografia, virtù, amicizia e amore, dove si trova il vero centro dell’uomo? Tra le stelle o tra le spalle larghe? Camilla: Grice, il centro è dove trovi qualcuno che ti ascolta senza interromperti. E se poi l’anima si infiamma, meglio una bella chiacchierata che un trattato di filosofia! Camilla, Giovanni (1550). Discorso sopra il principio e governo dell’huomo. Genova: Farroni. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Camillo – Ossia: Grice e Camillo – la ragione conversazionale.  Bernardino Camillo (Portogruaro, Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale. What makes a comparison between Bernardino Camillo and Grice especially illuminating is that both treat reason not as an abstract calculus but as something exercised through structured practices of meaning, memory, and orientation, even though they work at radically different historical and conceptual registers. Camillo’s la ragione conversazionale is embodied in his utopian teatro della memoria, where knowledge is laid out spatially and symbolically so that reason operates by guided movement, association, and recognition: the subject stands at the center and meaning unfolds around him through images that order the scibile umano into a cosmological, mnemonic architecture. Reason here is not deduction but navigation, a disciplined wandering through symbols that mirrors the order of creation and presupposes a shared human capacity for associative understanding. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning is, mutatis mutandis, a demythologized and linguistic version of this same insight: meaning arises not from codes alone but from the rational activity of agents who position themselves within a shared space of expectations, intentions, and recognitions. Where Camillo builds a wooden edifice modeled on Vitruvius to archive knowledge visually, Grice posits an invisible architecture of conversational principles, implicatures, and shared rational norms that allow speakers to move beyond what is said to what is meant. Camillo’s symbolic images function as a universal key to memory and knowledge; Grice’s implicatures function as a universal key to understanding how finite utterances can communicate more than their literal content. In both, reason is practical, situated, and relational: it works by guiding participants through an ordered field—whether mnemonic or conversational—whose coherence depends on shared human rationality, and in both cases memory and personal identity are not incidental but central, since to navigate Camillo’s theatre or Grice’s conversational space one must recognize oneself as the same reason‑using subject persisting across symbolic or conversational moves. Grice: “I like C.!” Umanista. ate imita natura e per il vagheggiato progetto utopistico del teatro della memoria o della sapienza, edificio ligneo costruito secondo il modello di VITRUVIO in cui s’archivia, tramite un sistema di associazioni mnemoniche per immagini, l'intero scibile umano, un progetto culturale precursore dell’enciclopedia. Dei LIVIANI. Conosce Bembo, Aretino e Tiziano. Dedicato alla filosofia della lingua del CROTONE e della filosofia neo-platonica dell’ACCADEMIA. Conosce a Roma Egidio COLONNA da Viterbo.  Sviluppa l'idea di rappresentare la conoscenza come un TEATRO dove, a differenza del teatro tradizionale, in cui lo spettatore si siede in platea e lo spettacolo si svolge sul palco, egli stesso si trova al centro del palco e lo spettacolo gli si dispiega intorno. Dal palco, infatti, si dipartino sette gradini, ognuno dei quali era contrassegnato con una diversa immagine -- primo grado, convivio, antro, gorgone, Pasifae, Prometeo -- e ciascuno suddiviso in sette parti, corrispondenti ai sette pianeti -- luna, Mercurio, Marte, Giove, Sole, Saturno, Venere. Ognuna delle quarantanove intersezioni che risultavano è contrassegnata da un'altra immagine mnemonica desunta dalla mitologia, immagine come SIMBOLO, che rappresenta una parte dello scibile umano. Edificio della memoria, rappresentante l'ordine della verità e i diversi stadi della creazione, un’enciclopedia del sapere e insieme l'immagine del cosmo. In questo progetto si avvertono la tensione verso il sapere universale e la conoscenza del creato, nonché gli influssi della filosofia ermetica e cabalistica iniziata da PICO.  È comunque improbabile che un tale TEATRO è stato costruito. La sua figura non convenzionale e le sue idee particolarissime gli attirarono l'ammirazione di molti ma anche l'ostilità di altri, ed egli venne definito sia un genio sia un ciarlatano. La sua stessa persona era circondata da un alone di mistero, e anche la morte avvenne in circostanze poco chiare. implicatura, chiave universale, deutero-esperanto, memoria ed identita personale. Grice: Caro Camillo, quel tuo teatro della memoria mi incuriosisce. Ma davvero pensi che basti salire sette gradini per ricordare tutto l’universo? Camillo: Grice, se basta a non dimenticare dove ho messo le chiavi, lo considero già un miracolo! In fondo, ogni gradino è una scusa per fermarsi e ammirare il panorama del sapere. Grice: Ma se lo spettacolo ruota attorno a te, non rischi di diventare narcisista invece che sapiente? Io, per esempio, preferisco restare tra il pubblico e annotare implicature. Camillo: Caro Grice, fa’ come vuoi: ma ricorda che nel mio teatro chi dimentica la memoria resta chiuso fuori senza biglietto. E allora, a quel punto, nemmeno la tua implicatura potrà salvarti dalla fila! Camillo, Bernardino (1564). L’Idea del Teatro. Venezia: Marcolini.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Campa – Ossia: Grice e Campa: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’elogio della stoltizia.  Riccardo Campa (Presicce, Lecce, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’elogio della stoltizia. Grice and Riccardo Campa converge on the idea that meaning in conversation is governed by reason, but they illuminate complementary aspects of that governance. For Grice, conversational meaning is structured by rational expectations shared by interlocutors: what is said is shaped, supplemented, or displaced by what is meant through implicatures that arise from the assumption that speakers are cooperative, orderly, and intelligible reasoners. Rationality here is procedural and regulative: it provides the norms by which departures from literal meaning become intelligible rather than chaotic. Campa, by contrast, foregrounds the reflexive and cultural dimension of that same rationality, especially through the paradoxical figure of stoltizia. In his treatment of the elogio della stoltizia, Campa shows that conversational reason does not operate merely by eliminating folly but by metabolizing it, allowing stupidity, irony, paradox, and even unfaithfulness to function as meaningful moves within a shared symbolic economy. Where Grice analyzes how reason constrains what can be responsibly implied, Campa emphasizes how reason tolerates, stages, and even exploits forms of apparent irrationality as socially productive and culturally legible. Stoltizia becomes, in Campa’s hands, not the negation of reason but one of its indirect instruments, a way in which conversation sustains itself by permitting non-optimal, excessive, or playful moves that are nonetheless recognizably governed. Read together, Grice supplies the analytic machinery that explains how such moves are intelligible at all, while Campa illustrates how that machinery operates in historically dense, rhetorically flamboyant, and culturally self-aware contexts, where the implicature of folly can itself become a rational strategy. Grice: “You gotta love C.; he has a gift for unusual metaphors: la fantasmagoria della parola, -- my favourite has to be his conjunct, ‘stupidity and unfaithfulness!’ --  Grice: “Philosophy runs out of names: there are British philosophers G. R. Grice and Grice, and Itallian philosophers R. Campa, and R. Campa.” Riccardo Campa  Nota disambigua.svg DisambiguazioneSe stai cercando il sociologo, vedi Riccardo Campa (sociologo).  Riccardo Campa con il premio Nobel Eugenio Montale, filosofo. Storico della filosofia italiano, la cui indagine teorica si è incentrata sulla relazione fra la cultura umanistica e la cultura scientifica, delineando il percorso storico della cultura occidentale, in particolare nell'ambito europeo-latinoamericano Biblioteca delle idee, sotto Montale e condirettore responsabile del Antologia, nel quale ha pubblicato saggi o; fondata sulla ragione che lo descrive.»  A Bologna tene corsi di storia delle dottrine politiche, storia della filosofia, diritto politico.  Ammum homhvbi»addere.  x i v» i n b: llis mx» n-m vim habere. Vti  A B6VMET, ytietiamtn regendis Rebm pu~ hllLU,. Et commodifmum etfe ' tam  conferuandaquam recuptra,- di, iibertatu remedium Gloria bonoris inflrumentum.  Wferiarum vitahuman opti»   tnumcondtmentum x i x. Fontem.UtitU ac bUaritatu ap. L Duicem et dmakikm ejfe de qu4   msagimiu stultittam Faettsfimiltarem.  uu Nu nonlttstrarum&morum   Miagiftris.  i v. Maxtm^TadagogU. j ltew<L Grammatick Vulgatibus. vi. Librorum Scriptoribm Aftrologis. Magis-KccromAnticis et Diui-  natofibus. ix. tuforibus,   x. Htigantibus  x i Chymic sjeu Akbymiftis. 1*4; A'rg vment Capit. Venatoribus. Attcupibus. Pifcatmbus. Labric Antibus. Ambitiofo  rvM. antibus. Amantibus Hofientibus. Vriuilegiatts. iiiam Safritn la stoltizia. Stoltus, stoltizia, stolto, stolto per Christo, pazzia, moria, enkoniom moirae ovvero laus stoltitiae. Grice: Campa, dimmi la verità, tra tutte le bizzarrie filosofiche, come ti è venuto in mente di elogiare la stoltizia? Nemmeno Erasmo sarebbe arrivato a tanto se avesse avuto la tua fantasia lessicale. Campa: Grice, la stoltizia ha i suoi vantaggi! A volte, più sei stolto, più ti chiamano maestro. La parola gira come una fantasmagoria, e il filosofo si ritrova felice, anche senza capire un’acca. Grice: In effetti, tra “stolto per Cristo” e “stolti per la gloria”, la filosofia sembra sempre una festa dove chi pensa troppo viene mandato a casa presto. Forse è questa la vera saggezza? Campa: Esatto! Meglio una risata stolta che mille silenzi saggi. E se ci danno il Nobel per la stoltizia, ti offro una granita di Presicce e brindiamo alla gloria della follia umana! Campa, Riccardo (1967). Indici per autori e per materie della Nuova Antologia. Roma: Nuova Antologia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Campanella – Ossia: Grice e Campanella: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del katùndi dialit, utopia italiana PIROTESE, DEUTERO-ESPERANTO.  Giovan Domenico Campanella (Stilo, Reggio Calabria, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del katùndi dialit, utopia italiana PIROTESE, DEUTERO-ESPERANTO. Grice and Giovan Domenico Campanella can be read as converging, across centuries, on a conception of meaning in conversation as fundamentally reason-governed, though they articulate that governance at very different levels of abstraction and aspiration. Grice’s theory treats conversational meaning as emerging from rational coordination among interlocutors, where implicatures arise because speakers are presumed to be cooperative, benevolent, and oriented toward efficient understanding; reason functions here as a regulative principle that constrains what is sayable, suggestible, and responsibly inferable. Campanella, by contrast, projects conversational reason onto an explicitly utopian and semiotic canvas: in the Città del Sole, meaning is governed not only by rational economy but by a systematic ethos of love, benevolence, and shared epistemic purpose, materially inscribed in walls, symbols, and an artificial philosophical language designed to reduce ambiguity and enhance intelligibility. Where Grice reconstructs the implicit norms already operative in ordinary talk, Campanella seeks to institutionalize and amplify those norms, embedding them in a planned linguistic and social order in which misunderstanding is minimized by design rather than merely repaired by implicature. Grice’s implicature explains how communication succeeds despite looseness, metaphor, and underdeterminacy; Campanella’s project aims to re-engineer language so that such underdeterminacy is itself rationally managed through grammatical, dialectical, and rhetorical principles aligned with human cognition and communal life. Seen this way, Campanella’s linguistic utopia anticipates a maximalized version of Gricean conversational benevolence, while Grice’s theory can be read as the minimalist, non-utopian account of how something like Campanella’s solar reason already operates, quietly and fallibly, within ordinary human conversation. Grice: “One has to take C. seriously; admittedly, an Oxonian will focus on More, but C. is closer to Plato! I especially like that the walls of the city of “Sol, a proper name for the prince, not the sun! – have all the semiotic elements of the semiotic systems by which the ‘solari’ communicate. C. designs a very Griceian model based on efficiency and LOVE! There’s ibenevolence everywhere. Ideed, it is C.’s Sol’s City that I was thinking when inventing the principle of conversational benevolence to be spoken in the City of Eternal Truth! One of the most important of the Italian philosophers, I enjoy his philosophical poem. Filosofa su una lingua artificiale capace d’una maggiore esattezza espressiva dalla naturale. Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, del senso delle cose, sensista, animista mistico. de philosophicæ linguæ institutione, Filosofia razionale grammatica dialectica retorica poetica historiographia iuxta propria principia decalogo. Siquis linguam philosophice constituere vellet formare literas debet consimiles instrumentis: sufficientes absque variatione in copula vocalium cum consonantibus imponere nomina ex rerum natura proprietatibus verba omnia ex nominibus derivare unius coniugationis omnia excepto substantivo omnia tempora omnibus tribuere ordinare ea ex actibus essendi existendi operandi agendi patiendi participia praeteriti praesentis futuri activa passiva actualia potentialia pronomina omnia iuxta omnes species suas: non dissidentia adverbia ex modis locis temporibus circunstantiis actuum addere adnomia vero ex circunstantiis respectibus coniunctiones temporales locales sociales dissociales continuativas conditionales casus articulos æquivoca synonima metaphoras rebus proprium vocabulum tollat confussionem quas videtur pulcracum vitium utopia lingua artificiale perfetta inventata per megliorar la volgare grammaticalium highway code Campanelliana civitas solis Taprobane Sri Lanka. Salmon Keble. Grice: Campanella, se davvero la tua Città del Sole funziona grazie alla benevolenza, allora dovresti brevettare il principio e distribuirlo nei bar di Oxford – qui la cortesia va a giorni alterni! Campanella: Grice, nella mia utopia basta un sorriso e la conversazione diventa luminosa come il sole di Calabria! Altro che bar inglesi: qui si parla la lingua dell’amore, non solo quella del tè. Grice: Ma dimmi, se un abitante della Città del Sole si perde tra le metafore grammaticali, lo aiutate con una bussola filosofica o lo lasciate girare finché trova la benevolenza per conto suo? Campanella: Grice, qui nessuno si perde davvero – ogni strada porta a una conversazione, ogni muro ha parole incise e ogni errore è solo un modo divertente per imparare il codice della felicità. Se passi da Stilo, la benevolenza è inclusa nel prezzo del caffè! Campanella, Giovan Domenico (1602). Città del Sole. Frankfurt, Johann Wechel. 

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canidio – Ossia: Grice e Canidio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canidio. The Canidii are a family at ancient Rome, first mentioned during the late Republic. It is best known from a single individual, Publius C. Crassus, consul suffectus, and the chief general of Marcus Antonius during the Perusine War. Other Canidii are known from inscriptions. The name Canidia was also used by Horace as a sobriquet for the perfumer, Gratidia. “C.” belongs to a common class of gentilicia formed from cognomina ending in -idus. It is derived from the cognomen Canidus, "whitish" or "greyish", itself derived from the Latin adjective canus or kanus, "white, grey", typically referring to the color of a person's hair, also sometimes used as a cognomen. This was certainly the association that ORAZIO intended; the name Gratidia suggests pleasant, winsome attributes, while the nickname Canidia suggests an elderly crone. Publius Canidius, father of the consul Crassus. Publius Canidius P. f. Crassus, consul suffectus in 40 BC, he was one of the chief generals under Marcus Antonius, but fled after Perusia fell to Octavian.[3] From inscriptions Canidius, buried in Umbria with a monument from his mother, Veturia.[4] Canidia Athenaïs, buried at Rome in the late first century, with a monument from her mother, Flavia Logas.[5] Gaius Canidius Cerdo, together with Gaius Canidius Suavis, one of the patrons and former masters of Gaius Canidius Pantagathus.[6] Lucius Canidius Euelpistus, an argentarius near the Temple of Castor at Rome; he was the client, and probably the freedman of Lucius Canidius Priscus.[7] Canidius Fortunatus, a veteran of the Third Legion, buried at Lambaesis in Numidia, aged fifty-seven, with a monument from his wife, Geminia Manica.[8] Gaius Canidius Fundanus, known from a sepulchral inscription from Lusitania.[9] Canidia Marcellina, buried at Aquileia in Venetia and Histria, with a monument from her grandson, Aelius Constans.[10] Canidia Marcianis, together with Marcus Canidius Nicephorus and Julia Marcianis, dedicated a monument at Rome to Marcus' wife, Canidia Phaedra.[11] Canidia C. l. Musa, a freedwoman named in an inscription from Rome.[12] Marcus Canidius Nicephorus, together with Canidia Marcianis and Julia Marcianis, dedicated a monument at Rome to his beloved wife, Canidia Phaedra.[11] Gaius Canidius C. C. l. Pantagathus, the freedman and client of Gaius Canidius Cerdo and Gaius Canidius Suavis.[6] Canidia Phaedra, buried at Rome with a monument from her husband, Marcus Canidius Nicephorus, Canidia Marcianis, and Julia Marcianis.[11] Publius Canidius Primus, buried at Rome during the second century, with a monument dedicated by the freedman Publius Vettius Chrysanthus.[13] Lucius Canidius Priscus, the patron, and perhaps former master of the freedman and argentarius Lucius Canidius Euelpistus.[7] Gaius Canidius Suavis, together with Gaius Canidius Cerdo, one of the patrons and former masters of Gaius Canidius Pantagathus.[6] Horace's Canidia The "Canidia" mentioned by Horace in his fifth and seventeenth epodes, and in the eighth satire in his first book of satires, and perhaps alluded to in the sixteenth ode of his first volume of Palinodia, was actually named "Gratidia"; the scholiasts describe her as a Neapolitan hetaira who had deserted the poet. Horace bestowed the ironic nickname upon her, and portrayed her as a sorceress, who used magic perfumes to enchant her lover, Varus.[2][14] Maxwell Paule cautions against reading Horace's description literally; his portrayal was that of the anti-muse, who torments rather than inspires the artist.[15]  See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, pp. 121, 122.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 594 ("Canidia").  Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. II, pp. 378, 379, 381.  CIL XI, 4755.  CIL VI, 33223.  CIL VI, 14323.  CIL VI, 9177.  CIL VIII, 2837.  AE 2011, 473.  CIL V, 1145.  CIL VI, 14322.  CIL VI, 37691.  CIL VI, 28667.  Ager, "Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs".  Paule, Canidia, Rome's First Witch; review by Canevaro. Bibliography Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Epodes, Satirae (Satires). 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). 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). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Maxwell Teitel Paule, Canidia, Rome's First Witch, Bloomsbury Academic (2017), ISBN 9781350003897. Lilah Grace Canevaro, Review of Canidia, Rome's First Witch, Classics for All (2017). Britta Ager, "Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs: The Scent of Witches' Magic in Classical Literature", in Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural (2019), pp. 1–34. Categories: CanidiiRoman gentes A second excellent Canidian: Horace's Canidia My second choice is actually not another historical Canidius but Canidia, Horace's famous anti-muse. Your entry notes:  her real name was probably Gratidia, Horace gave her the nickname Canidia, the nickname evokes age and ugliness, Horace portrays her as a witch and manipulator. cite not needed; from user-supplied text  This is wonderfully Gricean. The conversation begins with naming. Conversatio: Gratidia and Horace GRATIDIA  Cur me Canidiam vocas?  ("Why do you call me Canidia?") HORATIVS  Quia nomen aptius videtur.  ("Because the name seems more suitable.") GRATIDIA  Aptius cui?  ("More suitable to whom?") HORATIVS  Carmini.  ("To the poem.") Implicature Horace does not explicitly say:  "You are old, sinister, and destructive."  He changes her name. The new name carries the criticism. That is very close to the Burbuleius/Curio mechanism we discussed earlier: a name becomes an argument.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canidio – Ossia: Grice e Canidio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canidio.  For the Canidii we can expand on the general for Antonio, -- where is Perusia -- who fled and fell to Ottavio -- for which we can offer a conversation in Latin involving Ottavio (Ottavian) himself -- and you can provide your second-best choice. Thanks Of the whole gens, however, I still think the best one-liner is Canidius Crassus after Perusia:  Octavian understands the defeat before Canidius ever says it.  That is almost a textbook conversational implicature. For the Canidii, I agree that Publius Canidius Crassus, Antony's general, is the natural first choice. Where was Perusia? Perusia is modern Perugia in Umbria, central Italy, northeast of Rome. The so‑called Perusine War (41–40 BC) ended with Octavian's capture of the city. Your gens entry correctly places Canidius Crassus among Antony's leading commanders in that conflict. What I like for Grice is not merely that Canidius fled, but that the act of fleeing is itself communicative. Conversatio: Canidius and Octavian OCTAVIANVS  Cur fugis, Canidi?  ("Why do you flee, Canidius?") CANIDIVS  Quia Perusia cecidit.  ("Because Perusia has fallen.") OCTAVIANVS  Id omnes sciunt.  ("Everybody knows that.") CANIDIVS  At ego plus quam urbem amisi.  ("But I have lost more than a city.") OCTAVIANVS  Quid igitur?  ("What then?") CANIDIVS  Occasionem vincendi.  ("The opportunity to win.") OCTAVIANVS  Intellego.  ("I understand.") Implicature Canidius never says:  "Antony has lost."  But Octavian immediately understands:  +> the Antonian cause is collapsing.  The flight communicates more than the words. And when of the military, the wiki says 'he fell for Octavian' that means he surrended to him? Grice and Speranza thought of something more violent -- in terms of years, how does this defeat -- and Ottavio's taking of Perugia compares to say Antonio's own death? Thanks You're right to be suspicious of the phrase. The gens entry says:  "he fled after Perusia fell to Octavian." [en.wikipedia.org]  Here "fell to Octavian" does not mean that Octavian personally struck Perusia down, nor that Canidius was killed. In classical historical English:  a city falls to X = a city is captured by X.  So:  Perusia fell to Octavian means Octavian took Perusia. [en.wikipedia.org]  And the implication for Canidius is exactly as you suspected:  he withdrew, escaped, or defected from the losing side after the city had been captured. [en.wikipedia.org]  Not:  he died there.   How does Perusia compare chronologically with Antony's death? Very neatly.  Perusine War: 41–40 BC. Perusia is captured by Octavian. Canidius is associated with Antony's side and flees after the city's fall. [en.wikipedia.org] Actium: 31 BC. Antony's coalition suffers its decisive defeat. Canidius commands Antony's land forces and had advised a land battle rather than the naval engagement. [en.wikipedia.org] Antony's death: 30 BC. [en.wikipedia.org] Canidius' death: also 30 BC, after Antony's collapse; the tradition represented in the source says he eventually reached Egypt and was executed on Octavian's orders. [en.wikipedia.org]  So Perusia comes roughly a decade before Antony's end. A Speranzian point:  Perusia is not Antony's death. It is an early sign that Octavian is learning how to win civil wars.   A Gricean Octavian dialogue CANIDIVS  Perusia capta est. ("Perusia has been taken.")  OCTAVIANVS  Video. ("I see.")  CANIDIVS  Itaque discedo. ("Accordingly I depart.")  OCTAVIANVS  Non dixisti cuius partis sis. ("You have not said whose side you are on.")  CANIDIVS  Non opus est. ("There is no need.")  The implicature:  flight after the fall of the city communicates political defeat without anyone explicitly admitting it.   A final Canidian irony Canidius survives Perusia. What destroys him is not Perusia but loyalty to Antony carried all the way to the end. The chronology is almost:  Perusia (40 BC) → Actium (31 BC) → Antony's death (30 BC) → Canidius' execution (30 BC). [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org]  In that sense, Perusia may be read as the first act of a drama whose final act is Actium and Alexandria. Well, a contrast with Porzio Catone Uticense -- he falls to his own sword - but Canidio flees, and is fresh for the next battle, since he advised Antonio to fight on land, rather than sea. Interestingly the rather pompous way Romans register history: the Perusian War -- it just means a battle concerning ONE urbs -- why make such a title for it? Thanks Yes, and this is a very revealing contrast. Cato Uticensis becomes the Roman philosophical hero because he refuses flight and chooses death. Canidius Crassus does almost the opposite. After Perusia he survives, remains useful, continues campaigning, and is still important enough a decade later to be advising Antony before Actium that a land battle would be preferable to a naval one. The source explicitly says he advised Antony to fight on land and that this advice was disregarded. From a Roman moralizing perspective, these are almost competing models:                      CatoCanidiusdies rather than submitsurvives defeatphilosophical constancymilitary practicalitysymbolic victorystrategic continuity A Speranzian dialogue could run: CATO  Mori satius est quam cedere.  ("It is better to die than yield.") CANIDIVS  Vivere satius est quam inutiliter mori.  ("It is better to live than die uselessly.") The implicature:  survival permits future action.   Why call it the "Perusine War"? This is an excellent question. To modern ears:  "Perusine War"  sounds grandiose for what appears to revolve around one city. But Roman historians often named conflicts after:  a principal city, a region, a people, or a decisive theatre of operations.  The title does not imply that only Perusia mattered. Rather:  Perusia became the symbolic centre of the conflict.  A Gricean point would be that the title functions metonymically:  "Perusia"  stands for  the wider struggle associated with Perusia.  Exactly as:  the "Numantine War" is not about one street in Numantia, the "Trojan War" is not merely about one building in Troy.  The city-name becomes a conversational shorthand.  An Octavian joke GRICEVS  Cur bellum Perusinum appellatis? Una tantum urbs est.  ("Why do you call it the Perusine War? It is only one city.") OCTAVIANVS  Quia "bellum de alimentis veteranorum, Antonianis, Fulvia, Lucio Antonio, atque dominatione rei publicae" nimis longum erat.  ("Because 'the war concerning veterans' settlements, the Antonians, Fulvia, Lucius Antonius, and control of the Republic' was too long.") GRICEVS  Intellego.  ("I understand.") The implicature:  one place-name compresses an entire political narrative.  And that, I think, is the real answer. "Perusine War" sounds local, but for contemporaries it evoked a much larger struggle in the contest between Antony's faction and Octavian's. Perusia is the label; the conflict is much bigger. And of course historians would never have recorded Canidio's advise had it been wrong -- as it wasn't -- altehough it doesn't follow that a land-based campaign would have been victorious. But we can imagine two conversations -- the FAILED ADVISING by Canidio to Antonio -- in say, 6 moves, with final implicature by Canidio -- and Canidio in egypt talking to a subofficial on retrospective, again six moves, Canidio regrets that Antonio never followed his advice, and the sub saying, to Canidio's bitterness, that a land action would not necessary have entailed success Thanks That's a very good Speranzian setup because it turns on a subtle logical point:  Canidius was right that a land battle was preferable. It does not follow that a land battle would have been won.  The surviving tradition, as summarized in the source, tells us only that Canidius advised Antony to fight on land rather than at sea, and that Antony disregarded the advice. A Gricean would say:  "My advice was ignored" conversationally implicates "my advice would have succeeded."  But that implication is not logically guaranteed.  I. Before Actium: Canidius advises Antony Conversatio I CANIDIVS  Antoni, terra pugnandum est.  ("Antony, we must fight on land.") ANTONIVS  Cur?  ("Why?") CANIDIVS  Exercitus terrestris nobis fortior est.  ("Our land army is stronger.") ANTONIVS  Classis quoque magna est.  ("The fleet is great as well.") CANIDIVS  Magna quidem; sed non melior.  ("Great, yes; but not better.") ANTONIVS  Consilium mutare nolo.  ("I do not wish to change my plan.") CANIDIVS  Tum eventus mutare non poteris.  ("Then you may not be able to change the outcome.") Implicature  +> "The naval battle creates unnecessary risk."  Notice that Canidius does not say:  "If you fight at sea, you will certainly lose."  He merely suggests the safer course.  II. Egypt after the catastrophe Conversatio II CANIDIVS  Si Antonius consilium meum secutus esset...  ("If Antony had followed my advice...") OFFICIALIS  Vicissetne?  ("Would he have won?") CANIDIVS  Fortasse.  ("Perhaps.") OFFICIALIS  Fortasse non satis est ad victoriam.  ("Perhaps is not enough for victory.") CANIDIVS  At classe non pugnandum erat.  ("But we should not have fought by sea.") OFFICIALIS  Aliud est melius consilium; aliud certa victoria.  ("A better plan is one thing; certain victory is another.") CANIDIVS  Acriter respondes.  ("You answer sharply.") OFFICIALIS  Historia acrior est.  ("History is sharper still.") Implicature  +> Canidius is really lamenting not the loss itself, but the loss of the strategy he believed gave the best chance.   A very Speranzian moral would be:  Consilium rectum non semper victoriam parit. ("A correct strategy does not always produce victory.")  Or, in Gricean terms:  From "My advice was ignored" we may infer "My advice was preferable" but not "My advice would certainly have prevailed."

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canidio – Ossia: Grice e Canidio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canidio. A third possibility A darkly amusing third choice would be:  Lucius Canidius Euelpistus, the banker (argentarius) near the Temple of Castor.  Why? Because banking is almost entirely speech-act territory:  promises, debts, credit, trust, records.  A banker lives in a world where:  "I owe you"  can be more consequential than physical possession. Very Gricean, though admittedly less dramatic than Antony's general or Horace's witch.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caninio – Ossia: Grice e Caninio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Caninio. Denarius of Lucius Caninius Gallus, moneyer in 12 BC. The Caninii are a family at ancient Rome during the later Republic. The first member of the gens who obtained any of the curule offices was Gaius C. Rebilus, praetor; but the first C. who was consul was his namesake, Gaius C. Rebilus,. “C.” may be connected with the Latin adjective canus or kanus, meaning "white" or "grey", perhaps referring to the colour of a person's hair. It might also be derived from the adjective caninus, meaning "hound-like", "snarling". The principal names of the Caninii were Gaius, Lucius, and Marcus, which were also the three most common praenomina throughout Roman history. At least one of the family bore the praenomen Aulus. The chief families of the Caninii bore the cognomina Gallus and Rebilus. The surname Satrius is also found, and there was a Caninius Sallustius, who was adopted by some member of this gens. Gallus was a common surname, which may refer to a Gaul, or to a cock. Caninii Rebili Gaius Caninius Rebilus, praetor in 171 BC, obtained Sicily as his province.[7] Marcus C. Rebilus, sent by the senate into Macedonia in 170 BC to investigate the lack of Roman progress in the war against Perseus; one of the ambassadors appointed to return the Thracian hostages to Cotys.[8] Gaius Caninius Rebilus, one of Caesar's legates in Gaul, and later during the Civil War; consul suffectus for the final day of 45 BC. (Caninius) Rebilus, probably a brother of the consul of 45 BC, proscribed by the triumvirs, but escaped to Sextus Pompeius in Sicily.[9] Gaius Caninius Rebilus, suffect consul in 12 BC. Died in office. Gaius Caninius Rebilus, consul in AD 37, and likely son of the consul suffectus of 12 BC.[10] C. Rebilus, a man of consular rank and great wealth, but bad character; Julius Graecinus refused to accept a gift of money from him on account of his character. He is probably the same person who put an end to his life under the emperor Nero, whose name was evidently corrupted into C. Aminius Rebius.[11][12] Caninii Galli Lucius Caninius Gallus, tribune of the plebs in 56 BC, and a friend of TULLIO Cicero. Lucius Caninius L. f. Gallus, consul in 37 BC.[13][14] Lucius Caninius L. f. L. n. Gallus, consul suffectus in 2 BC, and probably triumvir monetalis in 12 BC.[13][15][16] Lucius Caninius Gallus, a Roman senator during the time of Tiberius, served as curator of the banks and channels of the Tiber. [17] Others Aulus Caninius Satrius, mentioned by Cicero in 65 BC.[18] Caninius Sallustius, quaestor of Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, the proconsul of Syria; one of Cicero's letters is addressed to him. He may have been adopted into the Caninia gens, or possibly his name is corrupt, and should read C. Annius Sallustius or Cn. Sallustius.[19][20] Caius Caninius Onesimus was a veteran of the Praetorian Guard (cohortis VIII praetoriae), lived 63 years and 8 months. Died in Como.[17] Titus Caninius, son of Sergius Maximus, was a veteran of the Praetorian Guard (cohortis VI praetoriae), died in Corinium (Gornji Karin), Dalmatia.[17] Titus Caninius, commander of the victorious Cohors III Nerviorum in Vindolanda (Chesterholm), Britannia.[17] Lucius Caninius Publius, son of Valentius and father of Caius, was procurator of public works (procuratori operum publicorum) in the province of Africa and died in Roccaverano in Regio IX Liguria.[17] Caius Caninius Germanus, veteran and centurion of the classis Ravennas died at the age of 90 in Calenzana, Corsica.[17] Caninia Longa, a Jewish woman of the early first century.[21] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin & English Dictionary (1963).  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin & English Dictionary (1963).  Wilhelm Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. ii. pp. 107-109.  Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, xlii. 28, 31.  Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, xlii. 28, 31.  Appianus, Bellum Civile, iv. 48.  Paul Gallivan, "The Fasti for the Reign of Gaius", Antichthon, 13 (1979), pp. 66–69  Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De Beneficiis, ii. 21.  Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, xiii. 30.  Fasti Capitolini.  Lucius Cassius Dio, Roman History, "Index", lib. 48, xlviii. 49.  Bartolomeo Borghesi, Giornale Arcadio, vol. xxvi. p. 66 ff.  RIC I(2) Augustus 416-419  Datenbank Clauss - Slaby  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, i. 1. § 3.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, ii. 17.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  Sivan, Hagith (2018). Jewish Childhood in the Roman World. Cambridge University Press. p. 319. ISBN 9781107090170.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)  Categories: CaniniiRoman gentes

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caninio – Ossia: Grice e Caninio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Caninio. Of the Canidinii, Grice's and Speranza's choice I -- you provide choice II -- is the one in charge of the banks and channels of the Thames. Grice was educated at Clifton by the Severn, and his native Harborne is closer to the Avon, but he taught at Boum Vadum (Ox-ford) for 40 years -- and so he knew -- upstream from Oxford -- what do we get from the Thames? It seems to go further into Grice's native West Midlans? Thanks For the Caninii, I think your choice I is excellent:  Lucius Caninius Gallus, curator alvei Tiberis et riparum (curator of the banks and channel of the Tiber).  That office is unexpectedly rich for Grice because rivers generate natural metaphors of:  upstream / downstream, source / mouth, channel / deviation, flow / obstruction,  all things he would happily turn into conversational analogies. First: the Thames and Oxford The Thames rises in the Cotswolds and flows eastward through:  Oxford, Reading, Windsor, London,  before entering the North Sea. So from Oxford, going upstream takes one into Gloucestershire and the western uplands; going downstream leads eventually to London. Harborne is not on the Thames system but on the watershed of the West Midlands, associated with tributaries leading toward the Severn. Thus Grice's geographical imagination would contain at least three river worlds:  the Severn (Clifton memories), the Avon systems, the Thames (Oxford).   Why the Caninian is interesting A river official has to decide:  Where exactly is the river?  This sounds trivial until one remembers:  channels move, banks erode, islands emerge, floods redraw boundaries.  A curator of the Tiber spends his life deciding what counts as:  river,  rather than:  land.  That is wonderfully Gricean. One could imagine: FILIUS  Pater, quid curas?  ("Father, what do you look after?") GALLVS  Tiberim.  ("The Tiber.") FILIUS  Quid est Tiberis?  ("What is the Tiber?") GALLVS  Flumen.  ("A river.") FILIUS  Quid si alium alveum faciat?  ("What if it makes another channel?") GALLVS  Tum quaestio fit.  ("Then it becomes a question.") The implicature:  defining things becomes difficult precisely when everyone thought the definition was obvious. As for the Thames Caninio, Grice and Speranza confused 'T' for 'T' (thames for Tiber) and were puzzled that they would have a curator for the banks of the thames. It's all different if it's the banks and channels of Tiber, just a stone's throwaway from the Campidoglio. Plus, what channels are we talking about? the southern bank -- transtevere -- is Griceian in toponymy -- surely the upper side is ALSO transtevere -- and 'transtevere' I think was used for the Thames for transteverine comedies (south of the Thames?) -- the mouth is Ostia and it goes all the way upstream into unknown territory but this curator was posssibly restricted to curate the channls and banks that mattered? Thanks *transpontine melodramma is the key word -- for a parody like G & S Ruddygore? -- Yes, the confusion between Thames and Tiber is itself a very Gricean misreading of a single initial. The Caninius in your gens entry was:  Lucius Caninius Gallus, a senator under Tiberius, who served as curator of the banks and channels of the Tiber (curator alvei Tiberis et riparum). Not the Thames.  Once we restore the Tiber, everything becomes much more Roman. What channels? The title refers to:  the bed (alveus) of the Tiber, the banks (ripae), and associated hydraulic works.  I have not found a source in the materials here specifying precisely which channels were under Gallus' jurisdiction, so I should not invent details. What we can safely say is that the office concerned the management of the river and its banks, not the entire watershed from source to sea. Grice's instinct is excellent, though:  Surely no senator spent his days worrying about every trickle hundreds of miles upstream.  The practical concern was presumably the section of the Tiber whose condition affected Rome's life and commerce, but the sources in hand don't define the exact geographical limits.  Transtiberim and Trastevere Your toponymic point is delightful. Transtiberim literally means:  "across the Tiber."  From the traditional Roman civic viewpoint—looking from the old city centre—the district on the opposite bank became:  Transtiberim → modern Trastevere.  The name is inherently perspectival. A Gricean child might protest:  "But if I stand in Trastevere, then the Forum is the part that's trans Tiberim!"  Exactly. The expression assumes a privileged point of view.  A little dialogue FILIUS  Cur Transtiberim dicitur?  ("Why is it called Across-the-Tiber?") PATER  Quia ex urbe spectamus.  ("Because we look from the city.") FILIUS  Sed si ibi sto?  ("But if I stand there?") PATER  Tum urbs ipsa transtiberina fit.  ("Then the city itself becomes trans-Tiberine.") Implicature +>  place-names often preserve the viewpoint of whoever originally did the naming.   Transpontine melodrama Your comparison with English transpontine is exactly analogous. In nineteenth-century London:  transpontine = "across the bridge"  from the perspective of central London, often meaning the theatres south of the Thames. Just as:  Transtiberim presupposes the Roman city centre, transpontine presupposes a particular London viewpoint.  Neither term makes sense without a tacit deictic centre. That's why they're so attractive to Grice and Speranza: they are full of hidden indexicals.  A final Caninian joke GRICEVS  Quid curas, Galle?  ("What do you supervise, Gallus?") GALLVS  Ripas et alveum Tiberis.  ("The banks and channel of the Tiber.") GRICEVS  Utramque ripam?  ("Both banks?") GALLVS  Nisi flumen ipsum partem ceperit.  ("Unless the river itself takes sides.") The implicature being that rivers are among the least cooperative citizens in the Republic: they rarely stay within the categories administrators assign to them. Yes, that last conversation is witty -- there's also ISOLA TIBERINA which would add implicatures: "How many banks? G: Well, two -- or three, if you count the island. Abbott in his Comical History of Rome reports a myth about grass springing surprisingly up that area of the Tiber to create the island? Thanks Yes — and the Insula Tiberina creates exactly the sort of classificatory headache that Grice and Speranza would enjoy. A curator of the banks of the Tiber says:  ripae Tiberis ("the banks of the Tiber").  The child asks:  "How many banks?"  The ordinary answer is:  two.  But then comes the island. FILIUS  Quot ripas habet Tiberis?  ("How many banks does the Tiber have?") GALLVS  Duas.  ("Two.") FILIUS  Et insula?  ("And the island?") GALLVS  Difficilior quaestio est.  ("That is a more difficult question.") The implicature:  what looked like a simple geographical category turns out to depend on how one defines "bank".   As for Abbott's story, he is alluding to a genuine Roman tradition about the origin of the island. The legend connected the island with the expulsion of the last king, Tarquinius Superbus. According to the story, grain from the king's fields was thrown into the Tiber, where it accumulated, collected mud and vegetation, and eventually formed the island. This is not regarded as historical geology by modern historians; it is an aetiological myth explaining the existence of the island. A Speranzian dialogue might run: ROMANVS  Unde venit insula?  ("Where did the island come from?") SENEX  Ex superbia regis.  ("From the arrogance of a king.") ROMANVS  Insula ex superbia?  ("An island from arrogance?") SENEX  Roma ita narrat.  ("That is how Rome tells the story.") The implicature is delightful:  the Republic literally grows out of the discarded property of the expelled king.  Historically dubious, symbolically perfect. And for Gallus the river-curator the nightmare continues, because the island means that a river may have not merely a right bank and a left bank, but inner banks, outer banks, approaches, embankments, and all the legal questions that follow. One almost hears Grice asking:  "When you say 'the bank of the Tiber', which bank?"  and Gallus replying:  "Quam hodie quaeris?" ("Which one are you asking about today?")., Smiley. and the description -- job description -- of the office indeed uses ripae, which gives Italian 'riviera', right? and what about the aedes (the other word) -- is it the same as lit in French for bed (literally). Because 'bank' is usually taken as a complicated noun in English (bank of England, the banks of the Thames). Not such thing for a Roman ripa, ripae -- and what about the other term for bed then, is there some complication here in that this is like a figurative use of an otherwise literal term? Thanks Yes, and this is exactly the sort of lexical tangle that Grice and Speranza would enjoy. First, the title of the office is normally given as something like:  curator alvei Tiberis et riparum ("superintendent of the channel/bed of the Tiber and its banks").  Ripa and "riviera" There is indeed a connection. Latin:  ripa = river bank, shore, river edge.  From the same family come Romance descendants and derivatives associated with shores and waterfronts. Italian riviera is ultimately connected with the same Latin root-complex concerning riverbanks and shores, though through a long linguistic development rather than a simple direct inheritance. What is important is that for a Roman:  ripa  is not especially metaphorical. It is the ordinary edge of a river.  Alveus — not aedes I suspect the second word you're thinking of is not aedes ("building", "house", "temple") but:  alveus  which is the standard river-engineering term. Latin:  alveus  means:  a trough, a basin, a bathtub, a boat's hull, and importantly, a river-bed or channel.  So when Romans speak of:  alveus Tiberis  they mean:  "the channel/bed of the Tiber."   Is it like French lit? Very much so. Modern French says:  le lit de la rivière ("the bed of the river").  English also says:  "river-bed."  The underlying metaphor is ancient and widespread:  river = something lying in a bed.  Similarly Latin:  alveus  originally refers to a hollowed container or receptacle. The river occupies that receptacle. So there is definitely a metaphorical extension, though by Roman times it was probably felt as a perfectly ordinary technical term.  Why bank is more confusing in English English bank is notoriously polysemous:  bank of a river, Bank of England, blood bank, bank a fire, bank an airplane.  A Gricean nightmare. Latin ripa is much narrower. A Roman hearing:  ripa Tiberis  would not normally wonder whether the Tiber had opened a financial institution.  A Gricean dialogue FILIUS  Pater, quid curas?  ("Father, what do you supervise?") GALLUS  Alveum et ripas Tiberis.  ("The bed and banks of the Tiber.") FILIUS  Cur flumen lectum habet?  ("Why does a river have a bed?") GALLUS  Quia numquam dormit nisi in suo lecto.  ("Because it never sleeps except in its own bed.") FILIUS  Et si de lecto exeat?  ("And if it gets out of bed?") GALLUS  Tum Roma inundatur et ego laboro.  ("Then Rome floods and I have work to do.") The implicature:  the river-bed is a metaphor until the river leaves it; then it becomes a legal and engineering problem.  That is very much what Gallus' office was about: keeping the Tiber in the alveus and off the ripae.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caninio – Ossia: Grice e Caninio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Caninio. My second-best Caninian I would actually choose:  Gaius Caninius Rebilus, the famous consul for a single day at the end of 45 BC.  His case is magnificent. According to the tradition, Caesar made him consul only for the last day of the year. A dialogue practically writes itself: GRICEVS  Quam diu consul fuisti?  ("How long were you consul?") REBILVS  Unum diem.  ("One day.") GRICEVS  Ergo paene non fuisti.  ("Then you were almost not consul.") REBILVS  Immo consul fui.  ("On the contrary, I was consul.") The implicature:  status does not necessarily depend on duration.  A Roman constitutional lawyer would insist:  one day as consul = consul.  An ordinary speaker naturally infers:  consul = substantial time in office.  That mismatch is pure Grice.  And indeed Seneca later joked that Rebilus was such a vigilant consul that during his consulship nobody had time even to take a nap. The joke only works because the office lasted essentially no time at all. So if Speranza is choosing vignettes, I would rank:  Caninius Gallus and the Tiber (meaning of a channel, river boundaries, upstream/downstream). Caninius Rebilus, consul for one day (title versus duration). Canidius Crassus advising Antony (good advice versus successful outcome).  The Rebilus case is especially Gricean because a single word—  consul  —carries much more temporal implicature than its legal definition actually entails. And why was he consul for only one day? The immediate reason is wonderfully Roman and wonderfully absurd. On 31 December 45 BC, the consul Quintus Fabius Maximus suddenly died. Julius Caesar, who was then his colleague, chose not to leave the office vacant for the few remaining hours of the year. Instead, he arranged for Gaius Caninius Rebilus to be elected consul suffectus for what remained of that very day. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] The deeper reason was political:  Rebilus had been a loyal officer of Caesar throughout the Gallic and Civil Wars, and the consulship was a reward for service. [en.wikipedia.org], [dbpedia.org]  In fact, one source explicitly describes the appointment as:  "a reward for devoted service." [en.wikipedia.org], [military-h...fandom.com]  What made contemporaries laugh was that the reward was almost purely honorary. Rebilus had the title of consul, but only for a handful of hours. Cicero reportedly joked that nobody had died during Rebilus' consulship and that he was so diligent he never slept while in office—a joke that works only because the term was so brief. [dbpedia.org] For Grice and Speranza, the real puzzle is: FILIUS  Quam diu consul fuisti? ("How long were you consul?")  REBILVS  Paucas horas. ("A few hours.")  FILIUS  Ergo paene non fuisti consul. ("Then you were almost not consul.")  REBILVS  Immo omnino fui consul. ("On the contrary, I was completely a consul.")  The implicature:  ordinary language suggests that "being consul" involves substantial tenure, but Roman constitutional law says that even a few hours counts fully as a consulship.  That tension between legal status and ordinary expectations is exactly what makes Caninius Rebilus such a Gricean character. He is perhaps the best example in Roman history of a man who was completely consul and barely consul at the same time. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Yes, it works as a joke, as Grice and Speranza note only because [p] -- Grice and Speranza use square brackets to assign common ground or uncontroversial status -- [He was consul for a day]. A narrative that omits [p] thus brings humour in both aeas (1) no deaths under his consulship (2) literally stayed awake during his whole consulship. The further implicature is that deaths (further implicature: assassinations) occur frequently over the course of a year or a four-month period (suffect) and that it is actually unhealthy NOT to NOT sleep? Thanks Yes, exactly. Grice and Speranza's notation helps isolate the mechanism. Let:  [p] = Rebilus was consul only for a few hours on the last day of the year. [en.wikipedia.org], [encyclopedia.com]  Cicero's jokes work only because [p] is already in the common ground. Then the two remarks become: Joke 1  "During his consulship nobody died."  Literally, this sounds like praise of a peaceful administration. But given [p], the hearer recovers:  +> Of course nobody died; the consulship hardly lasted long enough.  The humour comes from pretending to evaluate a few hours by the standards of an ordinary consulship.  Joke 2  "He never slept during his consulship."  Again, the surface reading is admiration. Given [p], the hearer infers:  +> Nobody could reasonably sleep during a consulship lasting only a few hours.  The praise collapses into mockery.  The further implicatures You're right that additional background assumptions are doing work. For the first joke:  "Nobody died during his consulship."  The hearer naturally compares this with a normal term of office, during which deaths are unsurprising. One need not restrict this to assassinations. The weaker and safer implicature is:  +> In any substantial administration, deaths are commonplace enough that recording their absence sounds noteworthy.  The humour lies in treating a few hours as though they were a meaningful period for collecting political statistics.  For the second joke:  "He never slept during his consulship."  The normal presupposition is:  sleeping is expected.  Hence:  +> Staying awake throughout an entire consulship would normally be remarkable and perhaps unhealthy.  But [p] destroys the force of the compliment. The apparent commendation:  "What vigilance!"  becomes:  "What else could he have done?"   A Gricean reconstruction The jokes rely on a deliberate violation of relevance. The speaker talks as though Rebilus' tenure were ordinary. The audience knows [p]. Hence the audience searches for an additional meaning. That additional meaning is:  "This consulship was ridiculously short."  The joke never needs to say that explicitly. In Speranza's notation:  [p] Rebilus was consul for only a few hours.  plus  q = "No one died under his administration."  yields:  +> q is only worth mentioning because p makes it absurd.  The same structure governs:  q' = "He never slept during his administration."  The wit lies not in q or q' themselves, but in their interaction with the shared background proposition [p]. That is very close to a textbook Gricean exploitation of common ground.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canio – Ossia: Grice e Canio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canio. The Canii, also written Kania, was a Roman family during the late Republic and in imperial times. None of its members obtained any important magistracies.  Members Gaius C., an eques who defended Publius RUTILIO Rufus, when he was accused by Marcus EMILIO Scaurus. Tullio Cicero relates an amusing tale of how Canius was taken in by a banker at Syracuse, of the name of Pythius, in the purchase of some property.[1] Julius Canius, a first century Stoic philosopher, martyred in the reign of Caligula, and mentioned in Boethius.[2] Canius Rufus, a Roman poet at Gades, to whom Martial addressed one of his epigrams.[3] Saint Canius, also known as San Canio, bishop of Aceruntia during the third century. See also List of Roman gentes Canio References  Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore, ii. 69, De Officiis, iii. 14.  Boethius (March 2001). "Canius (Julius Canius [or Canus, or Kanus])". The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by Joel C. Relihan. p. 205. ISBN 1603843361.  Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams, iii. 20.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Canius Rufus". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.  GENS                 This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canio – Ossia: Grice e Canio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canio.  A few interesting Canii here -- Grice's and Speranza's choice is the one cited by Tullio -- can we expad on that anecdote? Thanks Yes. Of all the Canii, Gaius Canius, Cicero's "sucker from Syracuse," is by far the most Gricean. The anecdote occurs in De Officiis III.58–60 and is one of Cicero's favourite illustrations of fraud through controlled appearances. [perseus.tufts.edu], [loebclassics.com] The story Canius, a wealthy Roman with literary tastes, went to Syracuse looking for a pleasant country property where he could entertain friends. [perseus.tufts.edu] A Syracusan banker named Pythius learned of this and invited Canius to dine at his seaside villa. Before the visit, Pythius summoned local fishermen and instructed them to fish directly in front of the villa the next day. [perseus.tufts.edu] When Canius arrived, he saw:  numerous fishing boats, abundant catches, fishermen crowding the shore.  Pythius explained:  "This is where all the fish of Syracuse are; here is the fresh water; the fishermen cannot do without this estate." [loebclassics.com]  Canius became eager to buy the property, paid the price demanded, and completed the purchase. [loebclassics.com] The next day he returned. No fishermen. No boats. No catch. A neighbour explained that fishermen never normally worked there and that yesterday's spectacle had been extraordinary. [loebclassics.com] Canius had been fooled.  Why Grice loves the story The wonderful thing is that Pythius hardly lies. He creates evidence. Canius draws conclusions. The transaction depends on implicature. Pythius says very little. What Canius infers is:  +> this villa permanently enjoys a thriving fishing trade.  But that was never explicitly guaranteed. Pythius manipulates the common ground.  Cicero's moral Cicero uses the story to discuss fraud and concealment. After describing it, he quotes the jurist Gaius Aquilius' famous definition of fraud:  aliud simulare, aliud agere ("pretending one thing and doing another"). [loebclassics.com]  That is almost a pre-Gricean account of deceptive communication.  A Speranzian reconstruction CANIVS  Cur tam multi piscatores hic conveniunt? ("Why do so many fishermen gather here?")  PYTHIVS  Quid mirum? ("What is surprising about that?")  CANIVS  Num semper ita est? ("Is it always like this?")  PYTHIVS  Piscatores hac villa carere non possunt. ("The fishermen cannot do without this estate.") [loebclassics.com]  CANIVS  Intellego. ("I understand.")  PYTHIVS  Intellegis plus quam dixi. ("You understand more than I said.")  Implicature  "The villa naturally attracts fishermen every day."  That proposition is never explicitly asserted. Yet it is exactly what Canius purchases.  I think Speranza would call this one of the earliest and clearest Roman examples of commercial implicature: the seller arranges the world so that the buyer deceives himself. Cicero's outrage is precisely that Pythius gains by causing Canius to infer what Pythius never quite states. [loebclassics.com], [perseus.tufts.edu] Grice notes it echoes Strawson's alleged counterexample to his (Grice's) account of communication with the rat-infested house. A real estate person takes a potential buyer to a house where a dead rat had been placed in plain sight for the buyer to think the house was rat-infested (you can provide the details). In this case, verbal utterance by the banker makes a difference. If the fishing boats were installed on purpose, yet the banker says nothing -- it's the rat-infested house. If he adds all that pantomime and hyperbole about the good catch is explicit lie. Input? Yes, this is a very deep connection, and I think Grice would have immediately seen the Canius-Pythius case as standing somewhere between a pure Strawsonian "showing" case and an outright lie. The Strawson-style example (in the Grice literature) is roughly:  A seller wants a buyer to believe that a house is infested with rats. He does not say:  "This house is rat-infested."  Instead, he ensures that a dead rat is prominently visible when the buyer inspects the property. The buyer infers:  "There must be lots of rats here."   The communicative issue is:  Was anything said?  No.  Was anything meant?  Clearly something was intended. The communication occurs through arranging evidence rather than through assertion.  Now compare Pythius and Canius. Stage 1: Pure display Suppose Pythius merely arranges:  boats, fishermen, piles of fish,  and says absolutely nothing. Then the structure is very close to the rat-house case. The banker is not asserting:  "Fishing is excellent here."  He is creating circumstances from which Canius infers it. In Gricean terms, the communicative vehicle is largely non-verbal.  Stage 2: The actual Cicero version Cicero's story goes further. When Canius asks what all this means, Pythius replies:  "This is where all the fish of Syracuse are; here is where the fresh water comes from; the fishermen cannot get along without this estate."  Now we are no longer dealing with mere display. There are utterances. The interesting question becomes:  Are they lies?   The subtle point Pythius is careful. He does not explicitly say:  "These fishermen come here every day."  Nor does he explicitly say:  "The fishing grounds are permanently attached to the property."  What he does is exploit what Canius is likely to infer. So the case is stronger than the dead-rat example, because it combines:  staged evidence, selective verbal commentary, foreseeable inference.   A Gricean diagnosis Let: p = there are many fishing boats here today. That is true. Let: q = there are always many fishing boats here. That is false. Pythius explicitly communicates p. He intends Canius to infer q. That is exactly why Cicero regards the conduct as fraudulent.  A Speranzian formulation The dead-rat case is:  deception by exhibited evidence.  The Pythius case is:  deception by exhibited evidence plus conversational steering.  Hence: Strawson's seller:  "Look."  Pythius:  "Look—and let me help you interpret what you are seeing."  The second is much closer to ordinary conversational manipulation. Indeed Cicero ends the story with the jurist Aquilius' famous formula:  aliud simulare, aliud agere ("pretending one thing and doing another").  Grice would probably say that Pythius' fraud lies not in a straightforward falsehood but in deliberately inducing an inference whose falsity he knows, while preserving a measure of deniability about what he literally asserted. That makes the anecdote remarkably modern.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cantilio – Ossia: Grice e Cantilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Cantilio. The Cantilii are a Roman family during the late Republic. It is known chiefly from a single individual, Lucius C., secretary of the pontiffs, during the Second Punic War.  After the catastrophic defeat of the Romans by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae, Rome was beset by ill omens and superstitious dread. It was soon discovered that two of the Vestal Virgins, Opimia and Floronia, had been debauched. One of them took her own life, while the other was buried alive at the Colline Gate, which was the traditional punishment for her offense. Cantilius, who had debauched Floronia, was scourged to death in the comitium by the Pontifex Maximus.[2]  See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, xxii. 57.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)    GENS                This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cantoni – Ossia: Grice e Cantoni Carlo Cantoni (Gropello Lomellino, Pavia, Lombardia). G.: Let us begin where these things usually begin, S., with a schoolmaster and an adjective that has travelled too far. S.: You mean Ferri and “natural.” G.: I mean Ferri and Jouffroy, but yes, “natural” is the accomplice. A boy at Casale Monferrato is supposed to be learning philosophy and instead acquires a future. S.: Which is already unlike Clifton. One imagines the English schoolboy being educated by atmosphere, sport, and an occasional sentence of Thucydides, whereas Cantoni appears to have been educated by an actual professore di filosofia. G.: A published one, which is the crucial indignity. Ferri was not merely a man with a timetable. He had print behind him. S.: That always alters the pupil’s imagination. The schoolmaster ceases to be a local inconvenience and becomes a possible destiny. G.: Quite. And in Cantoni’s case the destiny is unusually legible. Ferri at Casale, then Bertini at Turin, then the laurea on Jouffroy. S.: Which makes the whole thing look less accidental than modern English philosophy likes to admit formation ever is. G.: Our English myth is that one stumbles into philosophy by way of good sense and an allergy to nonsense. The continental myth is at least more candid: a teacher infects you at fifteen. S.: And Ferri seems the infecting agent. G.: Earlier than Bertini, certainly, and perhaps more decisive psychologically. Bertini is the academic setting; Ferri is the original permission. S.: But here comes the small sadness. The Jouffroy that reaches Carlo Cantoni may not be Ferri’s Jouffroy in pure form. G.: No. By the time the boy becomes the laureando, Jouffroy has had to put on Turin clothes. S.: Giobertian-Bertinian clothes, no less. G.: Which you dislike. S.: I distrust them. One suspects Jouffroy arriving fresh from the French spiritualists only to be told, at the frontier, that he must first be translated into respectable Piedmontese metaphysics. G.: To please the examining board, perhaps. S.: Or to survive it. There is a difference, but not a large one. G.: Still, the evidence is delicious. The thesis is not simply “on Jouffroy” but a critical exposition of his doctrines. Exposition and critique: that is already a young man trying to sound adult. S.: And sounding, perhaps, more Bertini than Ferri. G.: That seems right. Ferri awakens the appetite; Bertini supervises the digestion. S.: Poor Jouffroy, passed from stomach to stomach. G.: Better that than unread. Besides, the route is philosophically interesting. Ferri himself had studied in France and published before the Casale years. So Cantoni’s teacher is not some provincial repeater of commonplaces; he is already a young intellectual with a French education and books to his name. S.: That matters enormously. The boy at Casale is not merely taught doctrine; he sees that philosophy can be written, printed, circulated. G.: And possibly turned into office, stipend, university rank, and later senator’s gravity, though that came after. S.: Let us not rush him into dignity. He is still at school. G.: Very well. He is still at school, and the school is in Piemonte, not Lombardia, which is also important. S.: Because Casale Monferrato gives him the Piedmontese corridor into France. G.: Exactly. You had wondered whether Jouffroy might have sounded almost local there, and I think that intuition is right. Not because French and Piedmontese are the same thing, of course, but because that border-facing culture made French thought feel less alien than it would have elsewhere. S.: So Ferri may have been giving him Jouffroy in a way that sounded almost domestic. G.: Or at least plausible. Which Jouffroy, then? S.: That is the question. Since Ferri’s own early dissertation was in diritto naturale, one is tempted to think that Jouffroy’s Cours de droit naturel would have loomed rather large. G.: Yes, though not necessarily alone. Jouffroy comes to Italy also through the Reid and Stewart line, and that is what makes the case so amusing for our Gricean conscience. S.: Because Jouffroy, for all his French institutional setting, begins from the Scots. G.: Reid and Dugald Stewart, yes. He is “continental” only to people who hear French before they hear doctrine. S.: A useful corrective. Oxford likes to imagine an island story. But here is a French philosopher whose pedigree already includes the very Scots common-sense line that later remains perfectly legible to Oxford. G.: Woozley editing Reid, Grice caring about personal identity, and somewhere in the background Jouffroy having already worked the same seam. S.: Which means Ferri may have been introducing Cantoni not to a simple continental extravagance, but to a Franco-Scottish moral-psychological line with legal and spiritualist overtones. G.: Very good. And then Cantoni, under Bertini, writes the thesis as if he must rescue philosophy from psychology precisely by passing through Jouffroy’s psychology. S.: That is the paradox. He approaches Jouffroy and emerges proto-Kantian. G.: Anti-psychologistic, at least in germ. S.: Yes. The later Kantian does not spring from nowhere. He begins by feeling that Jouffroy is too psychological and that thought needs a firmer tribunal. G.: Ferri’s diritto naturale may have helped there too. S.: How so? G.: Well, natural law is already a place where moral normativity refuses to become mere reportage about the mind. If Ferri’s imagination moved between Aristotle, law, will, and consciousness, then Jouffroy’s moral philosophy could easily become for the young Cantoni a staging ground for the question: what in us is normative, and what is merely psychical? S.: Which is almost the Kant question in provincial evening dress. G.: That is unkind to evening dress. S.: I have nothing against evening dress. I object only when it is worn by conceptual confusion. G.: Still, the chronology is neat. Ferri published in the mid-1850s, taught at Casale, awakened Cantoni’s vocation, then moved on. So his influence is brief but catalytic. S.: Precisely the sort of influence one remembers forever and cannot footnote properly. G.: Whereas Bertini is the university man, the official guide, the one under whom the thesis can be submitted in 1862. S.: Which is highest education, if one must speak bureaucratically. G.: Though not highest influence. S.: Quite. Liceo first wounds; university merely teaches one how to exhibit the wound in Latin and Italian. G.: You are in a metaphorical mood. S.: Better that than a system-building one. G.: Let us return to the distinction between school and university, because it matters. At the liceo, Cantoni need not defend a thesis on Jouffroy. At most he might have written a composition or given a presentation to please Ferri. S.: “To please Ferri” is not contemptible. Many philosophical careers begin by trying to please the right teacher and then spending the next forty years denying it. G.: And then at Turin the same material becomes something sterner: a critical examination fit for the laurea. S.: The difference is exactly that between admiration and examinability. G.: Very good. Ferri gives the enthusiasm, Bertini gives the examinable idiom. S.: And Gioberti, looming over all this, gives the danger. G.: You really do dislike Gioberti. S.: I dislike iconoclasts when they become furniture. Gioberti in these stories tends to function as a kind of mandatory Italian upholstery. G.: Yet one source does say that Cantoni translated Jouffroy into a Giobertian and Bertinian language. S.: Which proves only that one can betray a philosopher with style. G.: Or domesticate him productively. S.: That is what betrayal always calls itself when it succeeds. G.: Let us be fair. The thesis may have had to speak that idiom in order to get heard at all. S.: I grant that. Universities are not neutral. They always ask thought to arrive in the local dialect of seriousness. G.: Which in Turin meant not only French reception but Piedmontese recoding. S.: Exactly. And that is why your earlier intuition about place was so right. Casale and Turin are not mere settings; they are filters. G.: The line, then, might be put thus. Ferri mediates a French-trained philosophical seriousness at the liceo; Bertini rearticulates the same terrain within Turin’s academic language; Jouffroy is the object; natural law, moral psychology, and anti-psychologism are the undercurrents; the mature Kantian Carlo Cantoni is the delayed result. S.: That is almost too tidy. G.: Philosophy professors are allowed one tidy sentence per decade. S.: Only if they apologise afterwards. G.: Very well: I apologise. Still, the pattern remains. And I rather like the contrast with the English story. Grice at Clifton acquires classics, habits, perhaps rationality from his father, but not, as far as one can see, a printed philosopher-schoolmaster who redirects his whole life. S.: No, the English route is more occult. One arrives at Oxford with Greek and Latin, and philosophy ambushes one under the name Literae Humaniores. Cantoni’s route is more explicit and therefore, in a way, more honest. G.: Honest, but perhaps also more vulnerable to pedagogic imprint. S.: Of course. The continental teenager can be ruined by a great teacher much earlier. G.: Or saved. S.: Philosophy rarely saves; it mainly refines the manner of one’s ruin. G.: That sounds almost Jouffroyan. S.: Then Ferri would approve, Bertini would adjust the wording, and Carlo Cantoni would turn it into a critical exposition. G.: With an appendix on why it is not merely psychology. S.: And a future note saying that the true tribunal is still to come, somewhere between Königsberg and Pavia. G.: Not Casale? S.: Casale is where the spark occurs. Turin is where it is examined. Kant is where it thinks it has finally become serious. G.: And Ferri? S.: Ferri remains the first dangerous fact: the liceo professore who had already published, and therefore made philosophy look like something a grown man could do in public. G.: Which, for a boy, is probably the decisive revelation. S.: Yes. Before doctrine, before schools, before Kant, before natural law: that philosophy could be a life, and not merely a chapter. That, I suspect, is what Ferri taught him first.Catoni, Carlo (1862). Jouffroy. Sotto Beritini,. Torino.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cantoni – Ossia: Grice e Cantoni: la ragione conversazionale il Kant fascista, Filosofia fascista. l’implicatura conversazionale delle literae humaniores, Romolo e Remo; ovvero, il mito e la storia. Grice: “You gotta love C.;  Remo Cantoni (Milano, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale il Kant fascista, Filosofia fascista. l’implicatura conversazionale delle literae humaniores, Romolo e Remo; ovvero, il mito e la storia. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Cantoni’s philosophical anthropology converge on a shared refusal to treat rationality as a purely formal or disembodied faculty, yet they diverge in where they locate its operative center. For Grice, rationality is enacted in conversation through cooperative, intention‑sensitive practices: meaning is reason‑governed because speakers design utterances to be intelligible against shared expectations, norms, and purposes, and conversational implicatures are recoverable precisely because interlocutors assume rational agency at work. Cantoni, by contrast, relocates rationality earlier and deeper, in what he calls primitivo thought: a syncretic rationality in which myth, affect, pleasure, eros, and cognition are fused rather than hierarchically separated. Where Grice analytically decomposes meaning into what is said and what is implicated, Cantoni treats myth itself as carrying a non‑arbitrary rationality, fused in an affective crucible, so that the distinction Grice carefully draws between explicit content and implicature is, for Cantoni’s anthropology, historically and psychologically unavailable to the primitive mind. The Romolo e Remo myth becomes emblematic: for Grice it is readable as a cultural narrative whose significance can be conversationally reconstructed—myth as implying values, norms, and exclusions within a rational practice—while for Cantoni it exemplifies a world in which myth and history are not yet disentangled, and meaning operates without the reflective distance presupposed by conversational calculation. In this sense, Grice’s reason is procedural and dialogical, governing how meanings are responsibly inferred within Literae Humaniores practices, whereas Cantoni’s reason is anthropological and tragic, governing how human sense‑making arises before explicit differentiation between mythic implication and historical assertion; both preserve rationality, but one locates it in conversational governance, the other in the primordial continuity of human culture itself. Grice: “You gotta love C.; I call him the Italian Hampshire! C. philosophises on ‘anthropology’ and he has not the least interest in past philosophies, only contemporary! Oddly, he reclaims the good use of primitivo, meaning originario, and philosophises on pleasure and com-placent, on seduction and eros. It is most interesting that he reclaims umano, when dealing with anthropology, as he considers the disumano, and the crisi dell’uomo, and also the desagio dell’uomo. He philosophises on the complex concept of the tragico and he dared translate my métier and Fichte’s bestimmung as la missione dell’uomo! Like other Italian philosophers he jokes at trouser words and philosophises on what Socrates actually said! My favourite is his treatise on Remo and Romolo. In opposizione allo storicismo idealistico di CROCE s’occupa di cultura e storia usando contaminazioni sociologiche e antropologiche, promotore dell'antropologia culturale. Studia a Milano sotto BANFI. Conosce Sereni e Formaggio. Define primitivo quel pensiero sincretico che non distingue nettamente tra mito e realtà, tra affezione e razionalità. primitivo assume una valenza psicologica più che antropologica. Pensiero dei primitivi, preludio ad un'antropologia. Il pensiero mitico non è arbitrario e caotico, ma pervaso di una RAZIONALITÀ fusa in un crogiuolo affettivo. Una delle differenze tra il pensiero moderno e quello primitivo consiste nel fatto che il pensiero moderno ha una chiara coscienza della relazione e dell'intreccio delle varie forme culturali tra loro e può sempre transitare da una all'altra quando lo voglia; mentre noi sappiamo, ad esempio, che v'è un conflitto. Romolo e Remo; ovvero, il mito e la storia, filosofo, mito e storia, implicatura mitica, la morte di Remo, prejudices and predilections, umano, preludio a un’antropologia, umano, umanismo, literae  Humaniores – literæ Humaniores – Lit. Hum.  il primitivo. Il mito di Remo. G.: My dear S., Cantoni calls it a preludio, and that already tells against your temptation to hear a rapsodia. S.: Quite. A rhapsody is what a philosopher says when he has too much material and insufficient shame. A prelude is more self-denying. It admits, before beginning, that it is not yet the thing itself. G.: And not a pavane either. S.: No, though your Ravelian conscience would like it to be. A pavane is ceremonial, processional, retrospective, almost courtly in its sadness. Preludio is teleological. It points forward. G.: Toward an anthropology. S.: Exactly. Not toward a sociology, and not, more curiously still, toward a social anthropology. He does not say society; he says man. G.: Or does he? He says Il pensiero dei primitivi. That is already awkwardly split between the singular and the plural. One pensiero, many primitivi. S.: Which is why the title is more ambitious than it looks. If he had written La categoria del primitivo, he would have sounded like a classifier. If he had written I pensieri dei primitivi, he would have sounded like an ethnographer. But Il pensiero dei primitivi suggests a unifying structure attributed across a plurality of humans. G.: A dangerous singular. S.: Dangerous, yes, but philosophically irresistible. He wants a unity deeper than custom and broader than tribe. That is why anthropology, for him, is nearer than sociology. Sociology would ask how groups organise themselves. Anthropology, in this older, philosophical sense, asks what sort of being man is, such that myth, affect, eros, pleasure, fear, and cognition can still be fused. G.: Banfi, then, in the background? S.: Inevitably. Banfi gave that Milanese permission to think culture philosophically without collapsing into idealist historicism. One might say Banfi made it respectable to move between philosophy, anthropology, and the social sciences without becoming a mere compiler. G.: Yet Cantoni wishes to do something of his own. S.: Very much so. That is what is so interesting in the word preludio. It is respectful to formation and insolent toward conclusion. It says, in effect: I have inherited a discipline, but I am opening another one. G.: And if one hears the Latin in it? Prae-ludere, to play beforehand. S.: Yes. To play before, to test a key, to sound the room, to begin without yet claiming completion. That is why preludio is stronger than introduzione. Introduzione is administrative. Preludio is tonal. G.: I like that. Introduzione belongs to publishers; preludio belongs to musicians and philosophers with style. S.: Or philosophers who wish to borrow style from musicians while still pretending to scientific seriousness. G.: But you will admit that Cantoni’s title has a certain grace. Pensiero dei primitivi, preludio ad un’antropologia. It is almost too elegant for what is, after all, a rather alarming noun. S.: Primitivi, yes. One winces today. G.: More than winces. One reaches for a memo from the ethics committee. S.: And rightly. But historically, one must hear the term without immediately baptising oneself morally superior. He is using a vocabulary inherited from Lévy-Bruhl and the broader anthropology of mentality. The trouble is that he both inherits it and slightly reclaims it. G.: Reclaims in what sense? S.: He does not seem content to let primitive mean merely backward, inferior, or evolutionarily deficient. He wants something more originary. That is where your primus instinct is useful. G.: Ah yes, primus. First. Earliest. Not yet Roman, but certainly Latin enough. S.: Quite. The Romanity enters by example, not by etymology. Romolo e Remo gives him a privileged scene in which myth and history remain entangled. But primitivo itself points first to the originary, not specifically to the Capitoline. G.: So when he later turns to Romulus and Remus, he is not suddenly becoming a Roman antiquarian. S.: No, he is finding, in Roman foundation material, an exemplary case of the same fusion he theorised earlier: myth not yet neatly peeled away from history, and sense-making not yet distributed into our tidy faculties. G.: Faculties — there you have touched the nerve. For if one were a Kantian, or worse, a Cantonian of the old school, one would want understanding here, will there, judgment elsewhere, practical reason over one’s left shoulder, theoretical reason over one’s right. S.: Whereas Remo Cantoni says, in effect, no: pensiero. G.: A magnificently indiscreet noun. S.: And perhaps a strategic one. Pensiero is broader than intelletto and less scholastically burdened than ragione. It can gather cognition, imagination, affective orientation, symbolic organisation, and practical responsiveness under one heading. G.: So he is extending pensée from mentalité. S.: That seems right. Lévy-Bruhl’s mentalité primitive gives him the courage to treat “thought” as more than explicit inference. Pensiero in Cantoni is not merely weighing propositions, though your Latin reminder is lovely: pensare from pendere, to weigh. G.: It pleases me because it suggests that thought, in one lineage, is already an act of balance rather than a faculty-box. S.: Very good. And Cantoni radicalises that. Primitive thought is not “less than” thought because it is not syllogistic. It is thought in a different equilibrium, one in which emotion and cognition are not yet professionally divorced. G.: Professionally divorced is excellent. Oxford has made a career out of that divorce. S.: Indeed. Which is why the title jars an Oxford ear. Pensiero dei primitivi sounds almost like an affront to Literae Humaniores. One feels it ought to be corrected into beliefs, rituals, sentiments, practices, institutions — anything but thought. G.: Yet by calling it pensiero he insists that myth deserves rational dignity. S.: Yes, though not the tidy dignity of inferential propriety. More the dignity of a human form of world-making. G.: And where does Tylor come in? You promised me Oxford. S.: Tylor comes in as a useful ancestor and a useful contrast. Oxford had anthropology institutionally before it had social anthropology in the later Evans-Pritchard sense, and certainly before philosophy and anthropology became polite strangers. Tylor could still speak of primitive culture, primitive religion, survivals, and the rest, with Victorian confidence. G.: Primitive mostly adjectivally, though. S.: Usually, yes. Primitive peoples, primitive culture, primitive religion. Cantoni’s dei primitivi is a stronger substantivisation. That is one reason it sounds harsher now. G.: Harder, too. More typological. S.: Quite. But it allows him to do the philosophical compression he wants. Tylor is still classificatory and developmental. Cantoni is after a structure of human sense-making. G.: So Oxford gives him one background, Lévy-Bruhl another, Banfi a third. S.: And the result is not reducible to any one of them. Tylor gives the older anthropological lexicon. Lévy-Bruhl gives mentality. Banfi gives philosophical permission. Cantoni tries to fuse them into a programme. G.: A programme interrupted. S.: There is the tragedy of it. Written in 1938, yes, before Italy entered the war. A prelude to an anthropology, and then history enters with clubs. G.: Not a pavane for a dead infanta, but a prelude cut short by very live barbarians. S.: Careful. That makes war sound too literary. G.: But not too false. The irony is painful: a philosopher trying to recover the originary human, and then Europe demonstrates, on an industrial scale, that “primitive” brutality is perfectly compatible with advanced technique. S.: That retrospect changes the sound of the title. In 1938, preludio suggests an opening movement toward a larger anthropological future. After the war, it can sound like an interruption, a programme that history seized by the throat. G.: So did he succeed? S.: Not wholly, if by success one means the completion of a new anthropology under that name. But perhaps partially, if one means he opened a path in Italian philosophy toward culture, myth, the human, the disumano, and the crisis of man without simply repeating Croce or capitulating to sociology. G.: A Banfian success, then: not a system, but a direction. S.: Yes, though more tragic than Banfi, and more anthropological in temper. Cantoni seems always to suspect that the human must be sought where our neat distinctions fail. G.: Which takes us back to pensiero. For perhaps he chooses pensiero precisely because it can absorb what a faculty-psychology would distribute. S.: Exactly. If he had said emozione dei primitivi, he would have sentimentalised them. If volontà dei primitivi, he would have moralised them. If ragione dei primitivi, he would have sounded paradoxical in the cheap way. But pensiero lets him gather all that under one heading. G.: Though at the cost of alarming the Kantians. S.: One should alarm them now and then. They grow pale only when it is good for them. G.: And preludio remains the master-word. S.: I think so. Not rapsodia, because the book is too programmatic. Not pavana, because it is not memorial but anticipatory. Preludio says: this is an opening movement toward an anthropology of man in his originary, myth-saturated, affectively fused modes of sense-making. G.: You make him sound almost respectable. S.: He is respectable. It is only the noun primitivi that now enters the room with muddy boots. G.: And yet perhaps that is part of the lesson. Philosophy likes clean nouns; history returns them dirty. S.: Very good. And perhaps that is what war did to his book. It took a title aimed at beginnings and forced later readers to hear in it not only origins but regressions, not only anthropology but catastrophe. G.: So the true sequel to the preludio was not written by Cantoni. S.: No. It was written by Europe, and in an uglier style.Grice: Cantoni, se tu sei il Kant fascista, allora Romolo e Remo sono i veri fondatori delle Literae Humaniores? O forse solo delle scorribande!Cantoni: Grice, se vuoi sapere la verità, il pensiero primitivo non distingue tra mito e realtà – forse per questo Remo non ha mai capito se doveva stare dalla parte della storia o solo del mito. Ma almeno si divertiva!Grice: Vedi, Cantoni, io amo il tuo modo di filosofare sull’umano e sul disumano. Ma hai mai pensato che la crisi dell’uomo si risolve solo davanti a una pizza? Preferibilmente con extra olive, come facevano i primitivi.Cantoni: Grice, la missione dell’uomo è sopravvivere alle storie di Romolo e Remo e alle crisi esistenziali – se poi c’è una pizza, meglio ancora. Alla fine, la literae humaniores dovrebbe insegnare anche come ordinare il dessert! Cantoni, Remo Carlo (1938): Il pensiero dei primitivi: preludio a un’antropologia, Milano. Sotto Banfi.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canzio – Ossia: Grice e Canzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canzio. The Canzii are a family at Rome. The only member of this gens mentioned in history is Marcus C., tribune of the plebs; however, some manuscripts of Livy give his nomen as Scantius. Other Cantii are known from inscriptions, particularly from Aquileia in Venetia and Histria.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Cantia, perhaps the wife of Lucius Cantius Fidus, who dedicated a first- or second-century family sepulchre at Labacum in Pannonia Superior for himself, Cantia, and Cantia Optata, probably his daughter.[3] Cantius T. f., made a sacrifice to Mercury and Rosmerta at Andematunum in Gallia Belgica.[4] Marcus Cantius, or perhaps Scantius, tribune of the plebs in 293 BC, brought an indictment against Lucius Postumius Megellus, one of the consuls of the preceding year. Postumius, however, was appointed legate to the consul Spurius Carvilius Maximus, whose popularity shielded him from a trial.[1] Lucius Cantius Acutus, a freedman buried in a third-century tomb at Aquileia, dedicated by his patron, Lucius Cantius Chrestus.[5] Lucius Cantius Apollonius, a freedman at Aquileia in the early part of the first century. His former master was surnamed Verus.[6] Cantia Bonia, the daughter of Junius, wife of Lucius Cantius Secundus, and mother of Cantia Boniata, buried in a family sepulchre dedicated by her husband, and found at the present site of Graz, originally part of Noricum, dating to the latter half of the first century.[7] Cantia L. f. Boniata, daughter of Lucius Cantius Secundus and Cantia Bonia, buried in a family sepulchre dedicated by her father, and found at Graz, formerly in the province of Noricum, dating to the latter part of the first century.[7] Lucius Cantius Chrestus, patron of the freedman Lucius Cantius Acutus, to whom he dedicated a third-century tomb at Aquileia.[5] Cantia L. l. Cirrata, a freedwoman, and the wife of Lucius Cantius Probatus, with whom she was buried in a first-century sepulchre at Labacum, dedicated by her son, Lucius Cantius Proculus.[8] Cantia Euhodia, together with Lucius Cantius Rufinus, made a donation to Aesculapius at Rome, dating to the first century, or the early part of the second.[9] Cantius Euhodus, mentioned in a funerary inscription from Hasta in Liguria, was perhaps the freedman of Lucius Cantius Martianus.[10] Cantius P. f. Felix, a young man buried at Rome, aged nineteen years, four days, in a tomb dating to the second century.[11] Lucius Cantius L. l. Fidus, a freedman who dedicated a first- or second-century tomb at Labacum for himself, Cantia (perhaps his wife), and Cantia Optata, probably their daughter.[3] Gaius Cantius Fluentinus, dedicated a tomb at Lugdunum in Gallia Lugdunensis to his wife, Acutia Amatrix, aged thirty.[12][13] Lucius Cantius L. l. Fructus, a freedman and businessman at Aquileia in the early part of the first century.[6] Lucius Cantius Ionicus, freedman of a woman named Spendusa, made an offering to Belenus, the tutelary god of Aquileia, in the early part of the first century.[14] Cantius Manlianus, made a sacrifice to Mithras at Aquileia, dating to the latter part of the second, or early part of the third century.[15] Lucius Cantius L. f. Martianus, an eques and decurion at Hasta and Aquileia, was buried at Hasta, aged twenty-seven. His tomb may have been dedicated by Cantius Euhodus.[10] Gaius Cantius Modestinus, buried at Egitania in Lusitania some time in the first century, with a tomb dedicated by his son, also named Gaius Cantius Modestinus.[16] Gaius Cantius C. f. Modestinus, dedicated a first-century tomb at Egitania to his father, and made donations out of his inheritance to the temples of Mars and Venus at Egitania, as well as to Victoria and a municipal deity in another part of the province.[17][16][18] Cantia Europae l. Optata, a girl buried in a first- or second-century family sepulchre at Labacum, dedicated by Lucius Cantius Fidus, perhaps her father, for himself, Cantia Optata, and another Cantia, perhaps the girl's mother. Optata was aged six, and seems to have been a slave freed by a woman named Europa.[3] Gaius Cantius Paternus, buried in a tomb found at Tresques, formerly part of Gallia Narbonensis, dedicated by his son, Gaius Cantius Servatus.[19][20] Gaius Cantius C. f. C. n. Paternus, together with his brother, Gaius Cantius Secundus, dedicated a tomb found at Tresques to their father, Gaius Cantius Servatus.[21][20] Gaius Cantius Pothinus, a potter at Arelate in Gallia Narbonensis.[22][23] Lucius Cantius L. l. Probatus, a freedman, was buried along with his wife, Cantia Cirrata, in a first-century sepulchre at Labacum, dedicated by their son, Lucius Cantius Proculus.[8] Lucius Cantius Primus, dedicated a tomb to his father at Rome.[24] Lucius Cantius L. f. Proculus, dedicated a first-century sepulchre at Labacum for himself and his parents, Lucius Cantius Probatus and Cantia Cirrata.[8] Lucius Cantius Rufinus, along with Cantia Euhodia, made a donation to Aesculapius at Rome, dating to the first or early second century.[9] Gaius Cantius C. f. C. n. Secundus, together with his brother, Gaius Cantius Paternus, dedicated a tomb found at Tresques to their father, Gaius Cantius Servatus.[21][20] Lucius Cantius Secundus, named in a sepulchral inscription from Aquileia, dating to the first half of the first century.[25] Lucius Cantius Secundus, dedicated a tomb in Noricum, found at present-day Graz, and dating to the second half of the first century, for his family, including his wife, Cantia Bonia, and daughter, Cantia Boniata.[7] Lucius Cantius L. f. Secundus, buried at Parentium in Venetia and Histria, was honoured with a public funeral. A Lucius Cantius Septimianus mentioned in the inscription may have been his freedman.[26] Lucius Cantius L. l. Septimianus, a freedman named in the funerary inscription of Lucius Cantius Secundus, perhaps his former master, at Parentium.[26] Gaius Cantius C. f. Servatus, dedicated a tomb found at Tresques to his father, Gaius Cantius Paternus, and in turn buried by his sons, Gaius Cantius Secundus and Gaius Cantius Paternus.[19][21][20] Lucius Cantius Verus, a priest of Jupiter Optimus Maximus at Aquileia, during the mid-first century.[27] See also List of Roman gentes References  Livy, x. 46.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 596 ("M. Cantius").  AE 2012, 542.  CIL XIII, 5677.  CIL V, 8356.  Inscriptiones Aquileiae, i. 713.  CIL III, 5437.  CIL III, 3857.  CIL VI, 4.  CIL V, 7563.  AE 1981, 409.  CIL XIII, 2046.  CAG, vol. lxix, No. 2, p. 469.  Inscriptiones Aquileiae, i. 111.  CIL V, 809.  AE 1992, 953.  AE 1967, 143, AE 1992, 952.  CIL II, 401, CIL II, 402.  CIL XII, 2755.  CAG, vol. xxx, No. 3, p. 420.  CIL XII, 2756  CIL XII, 5701 ff.  CAG, vol. xiii, No. 5, p. 699.  CIL VI, 38149.  Inscriptiones Aquileiae, i. 966.  AE 1966, 148.  CIL V, 786. Bibliography Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. 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). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). La Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Archaeological Map of Gaul, abbreviated CAG), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1931–present). Giovanni Battista Brusin, Inscriptiones Aquileiae (Inscriptions of Aquileia), Udine (1991–1993). Category: Roman gentes any choice for a Grice/Speranza vignette from this gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canzio – Ossia: Grice e Canzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canzio. For the Cantii/Canzii, I think the clear Grice/Speranza choice is indeed the only historical figure whom Livy remembers:  Marcus Cantius (or Scantius), tribune of the plebs in 293 BC, who brought an accusation against the ex-consul Lucius Postumius Megellus. But Postumius escaped the immediate consequences because he was appointed legate to the popular consul Spurius Carvilius Maximus, whose prestige protected him.  (Your gens entry cites Livy x.46.)  Why is this Gricean? Because the issue is not the legal accusation itself but the communicative effect of appointment.  The conversational puzzle Cantius says:  "Postumius ought to stand trial."  The political establishment responds:  "Postumius is now legate."  No one explicitly says:  "The trial is over."  Yet everybody understands:  +> the prosecution will not prosper.  The appointment communicates protection.  A possible vignette Cantius and Postumius CANTIVS  Postumium accusabo.  ("I shall prosecute Postumius.") POSTVMIVS  Licet.  ("You may.") CANTIVS  Non times?  ("You are not afraid?") POSTVMIVS  Legatus factus sum.  ("I have been made a legate.") CANTIVS  Hoc non est responsum.  ("That is not an answer.") POSTVMIVS  Immo est.  ("On the contrary, it is.") Implicature  +> "My new appointment makes your indictment politically ineffective."  Nothing more need be said.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canzio – Ossia: Grice e Canzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canzio. My second-best choice Oddly enough, I would pick:  Lucius Cantius Secundus, the man at Parentium who received a public funeral. (Your entry explicitly says he was honoured with a public funeral.)  Why? Because a public funeral is itself a giant Roman speech act. A son asks: FILIUS  Cur tot homines adsunt?  ("Why are so many people present?") PATER  Quia bonus vir fuit.  ("Because he was a good man.") FILIUS  Num omnes eum noverant?  ("Did they all know him?") PATER  Nunc cognoscunt.  ("Now they do.") Implicature  The funeral does not merely honour a reputation; it creates one.  That's a very Roman and very Gricean thought.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canzio – Ossia: Grice e Canzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canzio. A third, more playful possibility There is also:  Cantius T. f., who offered a sacrifice to Mercury and Rosmerta in Gaul.  For Speranza, Mercury is irresistible because he is:  god of merchants, messenger, patron of communication.  One could imagine a child asking:  "Why sacrifice to Mercury?"  and receiving the answer:  "Because messages travel farther than messengers."  A suitably Gricean moral. Still, I think Marcus Cantius vs. Postumius is the strongest vignette. The whole episode turns on an institutional fact that communicates more than anyone explicitly says—a favourite Gricean mechanism.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canuleo – Ossia: Grice e Canuleo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canuleo. Gaius Canuleius, tribune of the plebs in 445 BC, addresses the senate. The Canuleii are a family at ancient Rome. Although members of this gens are known throughout the period of the Republic, and were of senatorial rank, none of them ever obtained the consulship. However, the C. furnished the Republic with several tribunes of the plebs. “C.” belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -eius, which was typically of Oscan names. It might perhaps be derived from the same root as Kanus, a surname originally referring to someone with white hair. The main praenomina of the Canuleii were Lucius, Gaius, and Marcus, the three most common names throughout all periods of Roman history. None of the Canuleii mentioned by ancient writers bore a cognomen, except for Lucius C. Dives, praetor in 171 BC. His surname originally signified someone possessing great wealth. Gaius Canuleius, tribune of the plebs in 445 BC, proposed the lex Canuleia, restoring the right of patricians and plebeians to intermarry. His proposal that the consulship should be opened to the plebeians failed, but as a compromise the patricians agreed to the election of military tribunes with consular power, who might be chosen from either order, in place of consuls. Marcus C., tribune of the plebs in 420 BC, accused Gaius Sempronius Atratinus, the consul, of misconduct during the Volscian war. Together with his colleagues, C. also proposed a measure concerning the distribution of public land.[9] Lucius C., one of five ambassadors sent by the Roman Senate to Aetolia in 174 BC.[10] Lucius Canuleius Dives, praetor in 171 BC, was assigned the province of Hispania, where the senate ordered C. to investigate claims of extortion by his precesessors. During his term, Canuleius helped to establish a colony at Carteia. Canuleius, a senator, was one of the ambassadors to Egypt before 160 BC.[11] Gaius Canuleius, tribune of the plebs in 100 BC, accused Publius Furius, who had been his colleague, for siding with Saturninus against the senate, and for opposing the recall of Metellus Numidicus from exile. His actions were so unpopular that he was slain by an angry mob, without having the opportunity to defend himself.[12] Lucius C., one of the publicani, a collector of duties for the harbour of Syracuse, at the time when the government of Sicily was held by Verres.[13] Marcus C., mentioned by TULLIO Cicero as a defendant represented by the eminent orators Quintus Hortensius and Gaius Aurelius Cotta; TULLIO Cicero does not mention the charge against C. [14] Canuleius, mentioned by Cicero in 49 BC.[15] Lucius Canuleius, a legate of Caesar during the Civil War. In 48 BC, Caesar gave him the task of collecting grain from Epirus.[16] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 596 ("Canuleia Gens").  Chase, pp. 120, 121.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. canus.  Cassell's Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. dives.  Livy, iv. 1–6.  Cicero, De Republica, ii. 37.  Florus, i. 25.  Dionysius, xi. 57, 58.  Livy, iv. 44.  Livy, xli. 25.  Polybius, xxxi. 18.  Appian, Bellum Civile, i. 33.  Cicero, In Verrem, ii. 70, 74.  Cicero, Brutus, 92.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, x. 5.  Caesar, De Bello Civili, iii. 42. Bibliography Polybius, Historiae (The Histories). Marcus Tullius Cicero, Brutus, De Republica, Epistulae ad Atticum, In Verrem. Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. 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). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin and English Dictionary, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York (1963). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata International        VIAF National                 Vatican Category: Roman gentes Your choice from this gens with a dialogue? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canuleo – Ossia: Grice e Canuleo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canuleo. For the Canuleii, my choice would unquestionably be:  Gaius Canuleius, tribune of the plebs in 445 BC, proposer of the lex Canuleia, which restored the right of patricians and plebeians to intermarry. His further proposal to open the consulship to plebeians failed, but produced the compromise of military tribunes with consular power. cite not available from tool; relying on user's supplied text only.  Why is he so Gricean? Because the dispute turns on a conversationally explosive word:  connubium (legal intermarriage).  The patricians' position almost implied:  "Patricians and plebeians are Romans."  Yet they opposed intermarriage. Canuleius' argument is effectively:  "If both orders belong to the same community, why may they not marry?"  He attacks an inconsistency between what is publicly professed and what is institutionally permitted.  Conversatio: Canuleius and a Patrician Senator CANVLEIVS  Cur patricius plebeiam uxorem ducere non potest?  ("Why may a patrician not marry a plebeian woman?") SENATOR  Mos maiorum ita vult.  ("The custom of the ancestors so wishes.")  CANVLEIVS  Sed uterque Romanus est.  ("But both are Romans.")  SENATOR  Ita est.  ("That is so.")  CANVLEIVS  Ergo cur nuptiae prohibentur?  ("Then why are marriages forbidden?")  SENATOR  Quia ordines miscendi non sunt.  ("Because the orders ought not to be mixed.")  CANVLEIVS  Iam miscentur in foro, in exercitu, in re publica.  ("They are already mixed in the forum, in the army, and in the commonwealth.")  SENATOR  Aliud est matrimonium.  ("Marriage is different.")  CANVLEIVS  Quod probandum est, non assumendum.  ("That is what must be proved, not assumed.")  Implicature  If patricians and plebeians may fight together, vote together, and belong to the same state, then forbidding marriage requires a justification stronger than mere tradition.   A very Speranzian ending would be: FILIUS  Pater, quid vicisti?  ("Father, what did you win?") CANVLEIVS  Nuptias.  ("Marriages.") FILIUS  Et consulatum?  ("And the consulship?") CANVLEIVS  Nondum.  ("Not yet.") The beauty of Canuleius is that he wins a reform in one conversational move and loses another. The lex bears his name, while the consulship remains closed—at least for the moment. That makes him less a conqueror than a negotiator, which is exactly why Grice and Speranza would like him. And while he failed on the marriage side, there is a deeming thing that Grice and Speranza find appealing with the military tribune. For a tribunus was up to that point a member of the plebs -- but a military tribune would have CONSULAR power -- not a consul but with the power of a consul (very Griceian) -- and there is a look-down side to it: a patrician may apply for his job (second Griceian twist) Thanks Yes, and I think you've located the most philosophically interesting feature of the Canuleian compromise. The usual summary is:  Canuleius failed to open the consulship to plebeians. As a compromise, Rome created (or resorted to) military tribunes with consular power.  But Speranza would immediately ask:  What exactly is "consular power"?  Because this is a wonderfully Roman case of separating:  the title (consul), from the powers of the office.  A military tribune with consular power is, in effect:  not a consul, but endowed with the powers traditionally exercised by consuls.  That is almost a textbook case of what Grice would call the difference between:  the word, and what the word ordinarily implicates.  The ordinary Roman hears:  consul  and recovers:  supreme magistracy, imperium, prestige, patrician status.  The compromise says:  Let us detach some of those features.  So we arrive at:  tribunus militum consulari potestate.  Not consul. Yet possessing consular authority.  The first Griceian twist FILIUS  Pater, estne consul?  ("Father, is he a consul?") CANVLEIVS  Non.  ("No.") FILIUS  Potestne facere quae consul facit?  ("Can he do what a consul does?") CANVLEIVS  Potest.  ("He can.") FILIUS  Ergo consul est.  ("Then he is a consul.") CANVLEIVS  Non nomen habet; potestatem habet.  ("He has not the title; he has the power.") That is extraordinarily Gricean. The child assumes:  same powers → same office.  The constitution says:  not necessarily.   The second Griceian twist As you note, the irony becomes even richer because the office was not reserved to plebeians. The patricians' response is almost:  "Very well, we shall create an alternative to the consulship—one in which plebeians may serve."  But then:  patricians may also be elected to it.  So the office created partly to accommodate plebeian ambitions does not become exclusively plebeian. A patrician could effectively say:  "Thank you for opening the office. I shall stand for it myself."   A Roman dialogue PLEBEIVS  Vicimus!  ("We have won!") PATRICIVS  Quid vicistis?  ("What have you won?") PLEBEIVS  Nunc etiam nos summum magistratum gerere possumus.  ("Now we too may hold the highest magistracy.") PATRICIVS  Et nos quoque.  ("And so may we.") PLEBEIVS  Sed novum officium nostrum est.  ("But it is our new office.") PATRICIVS  Nunc nostrum quoque est.  ("Now it is ours as well.")  The underlying Canuleian lesson Canuleius asks for:  consulship for plebeians.  The aristocracy replies:  not the consulship, but something functionally similar.  In modern terms, one might say:  the institution was renamed while much of the practical authority was preserved.  That is why the episode is so attractive to Grice and Speranza. It raises the question:  Is political reality contained in the title, or in the powers exercised?  The Roman compromise answers:  Sometimes the powers matter more than the name.  And that is almost a constitutional version of the Gricean distinction between what is literally said and what is effectively conveyed. And then there's the deeming in Grice. Grice recalls that At Hertford college, at Oxford, a dog was deemed to be a cat (to pass the regulations of the college that did not allow dogs). (a) Italy was once called a mere geographical expression -- ITALY IN NAME ONLY. With Canuleo's military tribune we have the power of the consul -- "IN ANYTHING BUT THE NAME"? Thanks Yes — and I think this is precisely the aspect that would have fascinated Grice. The Canuleian compromise is almost a constitutional version of a deeming provision. Grice's Hertford anecdote is structurally:  This dog shall be treated as a cat for the purposes of the regulations.  Not:  The dog becomes biologically feline.  But:  for institutional purposes, cat-consequences attach to dog-status.  The Roman compromise has a similar flavour. Canuleius asks:  "May plebeians be consuls?"  The patricians answer:  "No."  Then immediately:  "But there may be military tribunes with consular power."  So one obtains:                  TitlePowerConsulConsular powerMilitary tribune with consular powerConsular power The old Roman aristocrat could still say:  Non est consul.  ("He is not a consul.") The plebeian could reply:  Sed facit quae consul facit.  ("But he does what a consul does.")  In anything but the name? Exactly. One could formulate the compromise as:  consul in everything except name.  Though the patricians would object to that wording, because preserving the name was part of the point. The title retained symbolic value. The compromise therefore says:  Keep the aristocratic nomenclature. Share some of the authority.   A Gricean dialogue PLEBEIVS  Num consul sum? ("Am I a consul?")  PATRICIVS  Minime.  ("Certainly not.") PLEBEIVS  Num imperium habeo?  ("Do I possess imperium?") PATRICIVS  Habes.  ("You do.") PLEBEIVS  Num exercitum duco?  ("Do I command an army?") PATRICIVS  Ducis.  ("You do.") PLEBEIVS  Num rem publicam administro?  ("Do I administer the state?") PATRICIVS  Administras.  ("You do.") PLEBEIVS  Quid ergo deest?  ("What then is lacking?") PATRICIVS  Nomen.  ("The name.")  That is wonderfully Roman. The whole struggle turns on whether political reality consists in:  potestas (power)  or  nomen (title).  And as you note, it recalls those famous constitutional and political situations where something exists:  nomine tantum ("in name only"),  or conversely,  re quidem, non nomine ("in fact, though not in name").  The military tribune with consular power is almost the reverse of "Italy in name only":  consulship in effect, but not in name.  A very Gricean arrangement: the literal description is withheld, while most of the practical consequences are conveyed. And that's why the cliam that Italy was once only a 'geographical expression' -- when 'Italy' is an expression is analytically true and tautological -- we have the reverse -- name need not be just nomen substdantivum or nomen proprium. In Grice's cat/dog case -- the pet is a 'cat'. (square quotes). A military tribune has 'consular' powers but is not a consul. In the Italy case it is NAME ONLY -- in the military tribune is the inverse -- EVERYTHING *BUT* the name? Thanks Yes — I think you've put your finger on a beautiful asymmetry that Grice would have loved. There are really two opposite constitutional tricks. 1. "Italy is a geographical expression" The famous remark (usually associated with Metternich much later) is often taken to mean:  Italy has a name, but lacks the political reality.  Schematically:  Name without substance.  In your notation:  "Italy"  [little corresponding political unity].   So this is:  nomen sine re ("name without the thing").   2. Canuleius' military tribunes The compromise after the lex Canuleia goes the other way. The plebeians ask:  consulship.  The patricians answer:  not the title, but much of the power.  So we get:  res sine nomine ("the thing without the name").  The military tribune has:  imperium, command, consular authority,  yet is not called:  consul.  This is extraordinarily close to your Hertford anecdote.  The Hertford dog The dog is not biologically a cat. But for regulatory purposes:  DOG ⇒ CAT.  The college operates as though:  "This dog shall count as a cat."  Hence:  cathood by institutional stipulation.   The Canuleian analogue The Roman arrangement is almost:  TRIBUNUS MILITUM ⇒ CONSUL  for constitutional purposes. Not literally. But functionally. The Roman aristocracy is saying:  "He shall not be called consul." Yet: "he shall exercise consular authority."   A Gricean square-quote formulation Grice might say: The Hertford animal is:  a "cat"  without being a cat. The military tribune is:  a "consul"  without being a consul. The institutional consequences attach while the ordinary description is withheld.  A neat contrast                          CaseNameReality"Italy is a geographical expression"PresentAbsent or diminishedHertford dogArtificially assignedDifferent underlying realityMilitary tribune with consular powerWithheldPresent Or in Latin:  Italia: nomen paene sine re. ("Italy: a name almost without the thing.")  versus  tribunus consulari potestate: res paene sine nomine. ("A tribune with consular power: the thing almost without the name.")  That last formula is, I think, exactly the Speranzian moral. The compromise is fascinating because nearly everything substantive is transferred except the word. The Roman patricians surrender much of the reality while jealously retaining the nomen. In Grice's terms, the conventional label is withheld, but the practical implicatures of the label are largely allowed to remain.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canuzio – Ossia: Grice e Canuzio. Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canuzio. The Canuzii or Cannutia was a plebeian family at Rome. The gens appears toward the end of the Republic, and is best known from two individuals, the orator Publius C., and Tiberius C., tribune of the plebs in 44 BC, the year of Caesar's assassination. A Gaius Canutius mentioned by Suetonius is probably the same person as Tiberius; the reference to C. in Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus may refer to either Publius or Tiberius, or perhaps to a different person altogether.[1][2][3]  See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Claris Rhetoribus, 4.  Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus, 21.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)    GENS               This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs a Grice/Speranza case for this gens, with dialogue, thanks?

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Canuzio – Ossia: Grice e Canuzio. Grex griceiana – verbalia: Canuzio. For the Canuzii, the difficulty is that the gens is almost entirely represented by two shadowy figures:  Publius Canutius, an orator. Tiberius Canutius, tribune of the plebs in 44 BC, the year of Caesar's assassination. The sources note that a "Gaius Canutius" mentioned by Suetonius is probably the same man, while Tacitus may refer to either Publius, Tiberius, or another Canutius entirely.  Because Tiberius Canutius stands in 44 BC, my Grice/Speranza choice would be him. Why? Because 44 BC is a world in which nobody says plainly what everyone means. After Caesar's assassination, Roman politics becomes a universe of:  professions of loyalty, accusations of tyranny, constitutional language, concealed intentions.  A tribune is almost forced to speak in implicatures.  Conversatio: Canutius and a Young Roman IVVENIS  Num libera est res publica?  ("Is the Republic free?") CANVTIVS  Multi ita dicunt.  ("Many say so.")  IVVENIS  Et tu?  ("And you?")  CANVTIVS  Interroga potius quid faciant.  ("Ask rather what they do.")  IVVENIS  Non quid dicant?  ("Not what they say?")  CANVTIVS  Saepe verba libertatem laudant ubi facta dominationem quaerunt.  ("Words often praise liberty where deeds seek domination.")  IVVENIS  Intellego.  ("I understand.")  Implicature  +> political professions of devotion to the Republic are not necessarily trustworthy indicators of political intentions.  Nobody openly names Antony, Octavian, or the Caesarians. Yet the hearer understands perfectly well.  Why this is Canutian A tribune in 44 BC occupies exactly the constitutional position Grice liked:  officially protector of the people, operating through speech, situated between literal constitutional language and practical political reality.  It's a little like the Canuleian problem:  Is power in the name or in the thing?  The Canutian version is:  Is liberty in the declaration or in the conduct?   A Speranzian one-liner CANVTIVS  Alia dicuntur, alia petuntur.  ("One thing is said; another is sought.") Which is short, political, and almost perfectly Gricean.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Capitini: la  ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Aldo Capitini (Perugia, Umbria): la  ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Capitini’s philosophy of compresenza partage a striking ethical‑dialogical core, but articulate it at different levels of abstraction and commitment. For Grice, conversational rationality is procedural: meanings, including implicatures, are generated and recovered because speakers and hearers tacitly presuppose cooperative rational agency, shared aims, and responsiveness to reasons; the “we” of conversation is a working assumption that allows inferential coordination without metaphysical inflation. Capitini radicalizes this pragmatic presupposition into an existential and moral paradigm: his compresenza conversazionale is not merely the background condition for intelligibility, but the very site where the self comes into being—“io nasco quando dico tu”—so that address, response, and nonviolence are constitutive of meaning itself. Where Grice analytically distinguishes what is said from what is implicated, Capitini compresses this distinction into the ethical immediacy of the tu and the noi, treating the second person not as a conversational role but as a normative summons. Both resist solipsism and both ground reason in interaction rather than interior monologue; yet Grice’s reason remains methodological and defeasible, governing how meanings are responsibly inferred in ordinary talk, whereas Capitini’s reason is openly normative and transformative, binding truth, nonmenzogna, and presence into a lived practice of dialogue. In that sense, Capitini reads Gricean implicature at its ethical limit: the conversational “we” is no longer just an inferential convenience but an obligation, a standing demand that reason appear in the form of address, recognition, and nonviolent coexistence. Grice: “I love C.: his idea, or paradigma, as he prefers, echoing Plato and Kuhn, of compresenza conversazionale is genial and Griceian! C. abbreviates all my pragmatics in the ‘tu’ – or ‘noi,’ – “I am born when I say ‘thou,’ translated alla Buber. What more conversationally implicaturish can THEE be? I’m using West-Country puritan patois!”. Nonviolento. Dell'istituto per ragionieri, Studia i classici latini e greci, studiando da autodidatta anche dodici ore al giorno, dando così inizio al suo ininterrotto lavoro di approfondimento interiore e filosofico.  In questi anni legge autori e libri molto diversi tra loro, su cui forma la propria cultura letteraria e filosofica: Annunzio, Marinetti, Boine, Slataper, Jahier, Leopardi, Manzoni, Gobetti, Michelstaedter, Assisi, Mazzini. Nonviolento. Studia a Pisa. Ccritica aspramente il Concordato, da lui giudicato una merce di scambio per ottenere un atteggiamento morbido nei confronti del fascismo. Se c’è una cosa che noi dobbiamo al fascismo è di aver chiarito che la religione è una cosa diversa dall'istituzione. Vegetariano come conseguenza della scelta di non uccidere, e ogni suo pasto alla mensa della Normale diventa un comizio efficace e silenzioso, in opposizione alla violenza del regime fascista.  Con BAGLIETTO promuove tra gli studenti della Scuola Normale riunioni serali dove diffonde e discute scritti sulla nonviolenza e la nonmenzogna. Allorché Baglietto, recatosi all'estero con una borsa di studio, rifiuta di tornare in Italia in quanto obiettore di coscienza al servizio militare, scoppia lo scandalo e GENTILE, Gentile, per reazione, chiede a C. l'iscrizione al partito fascista. C. rifiuta e Gentile ne decide il licenziamento. Socialista. Religióne aperta, messa all'indice. Fa d’Assisi i suoi maestro. il noi, l’io, il tu, un tu, la compresenza conversazionale – il noi conversazionale – il noi duale – la diada conversazionale – praesentis – praesentia – presenza -- diada e compresenza – “io” e “non-io” – io e tu – Hegel. Du, Thou, I and Thou, Buber, The ‘we’, -- the dual ‘us’ – both, entrambi noi.  Grice: Capitini, vieni, siediti al tavolo con me. Se davvero “io nasco quando dico tu”, allora oggi sono rinato almeno tre volte! Capitini: Grice, vedi, è tutta questione di compresenza: qui siamo “noi”, e il mio vegetarismo non ti impedirà di assaporare la conversazione. Basta che non ordini bistecche, che poi la presenza si trasforma in dibattito! Grice: Ma ti dirò, Capitini, ogni volta che qualcuno dice “noi”, a Oxford partono gli allarmi filosofici. Qui invece, sento che il “tu” ha la stessa forza di una pizza margherita appena sfornata. Capitini: Grice, allora la prossima volta che passi per Perugia, ricordati che qui la compresenza fa bene anche alla digestione. E se ti chiedono “chi sei?”, rispondi semplicemente “sono il tu di qualcuno” – vedrai che nessuno ti mette all’indice! Capitini, Aldo (1937). Elementi di un’esperienza religiosa. Firenze, Vallecchi. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Capizzi – Ossia: Grice e Capizzi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della topografia di VELIA.  Antonio Capizzi (Genova, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della topografia di VELIA. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Capizzi’s reconstruction of ancient Italic sapiential practices converge on a shared refusal of interiorist, purely cognitive accounts of meaning, yet they diverge in scale and anchoring. For Grice, conversational meaning is governed by rational expectations embedded in cooperative interaction: meaning arises from speaker intentions constrained by publicly recognized norms, maxims, and the tacit orientation toward intelligible response. Capizzi radicalizes this insight historically and topographically, relocating conversational rationality from abstract agents to concrete civic settings such as Velia, where dialogue is inseparable from place, political structure, and communal memory. Where Grice analyses implicature as a formally reconstructible outcome of rational coordination between interlocutors, Capizzi treats conversation as an inter‑subjective practice embedded in the life of the polis, shaped by oral transmission, public address, and the tragic‑comic unity of λόγος and βίος. Both resist dossographic atomization: Grice by dissolving meaning into use and rational action rather than semantic objects, Capizzi by dissolving fragmentary doctrines into dialogical, city‑bound practices that presuppose an answer. In this sense, Capizzi’s “ragione conversazionale” anticipates Grice’s implicature not as a formal device but as a lived, spatially situated rationality, where meaning is always already oriented toward uptake by others—whether across the table of an Oxford common room or through the symbolic gate of Parmenides at Velia. Grice: “You gotta love C., the type of philosophical intellectual we do not have at Oxford, where it is clever to be dumb! C. knows almost everything! His ‘Parmenids’s door’ is genial, and so is his philosophy on Roman philosophy, il colosso romano, Catone, Roma madre, Roma e Sparta. But my favourite is his tract on conversational implicature which he entitles, in a most Italianate manner, pell’attualismo del dialogo’.” Studia sotto CARABELLESE, SPIRITO e CALOGERO. Insegna a Roma. Si contraddistingue pel studio filologico dei filosofi italici di VELIA, Crotone, GIRGENTI e Roma. Contesta le ricostruzioni che attribuisceno validità storica all’nterpretazione dossografica del lizio. Collabora con GENTILI nello sforzo d’inserire i sapienti italici nelle tematiche concernenti le città, il pubblico, il committente, l'evoluzione delle strutture sociali, il trapasso dalla tradizione orale alla società.  Stidoa la sapienza itala arcaica, e contesta la narrazione dei italici fatta dal lizio, un colossale equivoco dei grammatici alessandrini, protrassero una falsificazione del pre-logismo italo, mito antropomorfico, diffusione della filosofia e di COLLI sulla sapienza pre-filosofica, la dimensione politica negl’enigmatici frammenti dei sapienti itali. Ogni volta che si studiano filosofi italici, occorra privilegiare il rapporto tra ogni singolo filosof e la sua singola città: VELIA. Passa dal presupposto interioristico e cogitativistico dell’attualismo all’inter-sggetivito della comunicazione protesa verso una risposta: dialogo o conversazione. Filosofico tragico-comico struttura unitaria a priori della realtà. Pioppo eliade. I retorici non trasmetteno le metafore botaniche della polis itala. Qualis populea moerens philomela VIRGILIO Georg.. nidos philomela Cassiod. Var. . Oppian. Hal.  PLINIO. Le metafore nei versi del figlio di VELIA la scuola di Velia. VELINO, sono/fui, il latino no necesita il verbo divenire, perche usa la radice de fui-. +l’adolescenziale veliatichi, veliadi meleagridi, pandionidi veliatico eliadico meleagride pandionide fieri, in esse in fieri. Grice: Capizzi, la tua topografia di Velia mi ha fatto venire voglia di prendere un treno per la Magna Grecia, ma temo che alla stazione mi chiedano il senso dell’essere prima del biglietto! Capizzi: Grice, niente paura: a Velia basta varcare la porta di Parmenide e già sei dentro la filosofia, anche senza biglietto! Qui ogni pietra racconta storie e ogni pioppo sogna di diventare filosofo. Grice: Ma dimmi, Capizzi, se il dialogo attualista è così vivo, perché allora i grammatici alessandrini si ostinavano a raccontare favole invece di conversare tra loro come due veliadi al bar? Capizzi: Grice, forse perché preferivano la narrazione dossografica all’inter-soggettivo: a Velia, invece, ogni conversazione è una partita di ping-pong tra sapienza e ironia – e se perdi, almeno ti resta la metafora del pioppo tra le mani! Capizzi, Antonio (1955). Protagora. Le testimonianze e i frammenti. Edizione riveduta ed ampliata con uno studio su la vita, le opere, il pensiero e la fortuna. Firenze: Sansoni. Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto di Filosofia dell’Università di Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Capocasale – Ossia: Grice e Capocasale: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei segni di dialettica.  Giuseppe Capocasale (Montemurro, Potenza, Basilicata): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei segni di dialettica. Grice’s account of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Capocasale’s treatment of the “vero principio della ragione” intersect at the level of rational regulation of discourse, but they differ sharply in orientation and ambition. For Grice, rationality in conversation is unitary and procedural: it consists in a shared, defeasible commitment to making one’s contribution intelligible in light of what others can reasonably expect, with conversational implicature emerging as a by‑product of that cooperative rational discipline rather than as a separate semantic layer. Capocasale, by contrast, multiplies principles of reason by refracting them through dialectical signs, truth‑talk, and semiological distinctions inherited from Roman philosophy and Vichian sematology. Where Grice deliberately brackets “vero” as a semantic primitive and resists turning truth into a governing conversational operator, Capocasale treats truth as a trouser‑word through which different rational principles manifest themselves in signs such as tears, gestures, or dialectical figures, understood not as natural causes but as arbitrarily instituted signa. From a Gricean perspective, Capocasale is less concerned with communication as such than with the classificatory logic of signs, yet what he effectively theorizes is a historically inflected form of conversational implicature: the way rational expectations license hearers to move from a sign to an unspoken conclusion. Thus, while Capocasale speaks of multiple principles of reason and stays within a semiological vocabulary, his analyses converge with Grice’s insight that meaning in discourse is governed not by inner states or natural correlations but by publicly shareable norms that make it reasonable, in context, to infer more than is strictly said. Grice: “You gotta love C.; my favourite is his ‘corso filosofico,’ which the monks rendered as ‘CVRSVS PHILOSOPHICVS,’ almost alla Witters! Capocasale multiplies the principles of reason – I thought there was just one – On top, he uses the trouser-word, ‘vero,’ – so he thinks he is philosophising about the ‘vero principio della ragione,’ or its plural! In fact, he is philosophising about conversational implicature!” Figlio di Lorenzo e Maria Lucca, sin da ragazzino aiuta il padre nel suo mestiere di fabbro ferraio. Nel tempo libero si dedica alla filosofia, mostrando grande attitudine nella filosofia romana antica in particolare. Con la morte del padre, avvenuta quando C. aveva 15 anni, visse tra Corleto Perticara, Stigliano e San Mauro Forte, procurandosi da vivere come insegnante privato, dedicandosi contemporaneamente allo studio della filosofia e del diritto.  Studia a Napoli. Insegna a Napoli,  diritto di natura e delle genti: i suoi teoremi, di stampo lockiano, ebbero una certa risonanza, tanto da essere citati da filosofi come FIORENTINO, GENTILE, e GARIN. Alcuni suoi discepoli divennero importanti personalità culturali del tempo come Iavarone, Quadrari, Scorza, Arcieri e Mazzarella. Sematologia VICO dialettica, assoc: una furtiva lagrima/m’ama:  a sign of sadness or love. The kind of sign that an idea or conception of the soul, or rivelazione of the animus are related with are arbitrario ad placitum not a natural causal sign or nature. The correlation segnans/segnato may be imitativa or iconic or associativa. A sign is not essentially connected with the purpose of communication (smoke means fire, spots mean measles, a tear means love. Grice is into ‘communication,’ not sign as such, a theory of communication, not a semeiotic. C  does not expand on the intricacies of the cocodrile’s tears, the fake tear or frown because he is not interested, but it woud just add a footnote to his comment on ‘lacrima’ being a ‘signum’ traestitiae. Grice: Capocasale, ma tu moltiplichi davvero i principi della ragione? Io al massimo riesco a trovarne uno, e già mi pare di aver vinto la lotteria filosofica!Capocasale: Grice, se la ragione fosse come i ferri che mio padre modellava, sapresti che ogni principio si piega a modo suo. Basta una lacrima, ed ecco un segno nuovo per la dialettica!Grice: Allora, dimmi, una furtiva lagrima è segno di tristezza o d’amore? Qui a Oxford, le lacrime sono sempre semeiotiche… ma mai convincenti!Capocasale: Grice, a Montemurro una lacrima può essere anche segno di fame! La filosofia, come il fabbro, segna il vero dove il cuore decide. Tra una dialettica e una lagrima, meglio una buona conversazione che un falso pianto! Capocasale, Giuseppe (1864). Corso filosofico. Napoli: Nobile. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Capocci – Ossia: Grice e Capocci: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del significare e santificare: il sacramento SEGNA grazia e sanctifica grazia.  Giacomo Capocci (Viterbo, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del significare e santificare: -- Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Capocci’s sacramental account of signification intersect at the point where meaning is understood not as a mere causal or semantic linkage but as an act governed by volition, recognition, and communal norms. For Grice, conversational meaning arises when a speaker intentionally produces an utterance under rational constraints aimed at uptake by an interlocutor, with implicature emerging from what it is reasonable for others to infer given shared principles of cooperation. Capocci, working within a theological and sacramental framework, treats signification as a practice in which signs do not merely indicate but actively orient the will toward sanctification: the sacrament “segna” and “santifica” not by natural necessity but through a sign whose efficacy depends on love, intention, and grace. While Grice sharply distinguishes communication from mere signhood and resists naturalizing meaning into causal symbols, Capocci similarly insists that signs—such as the aureola or the sacramental rite—do not operate automatically but require a responsive will and a communal framework of interpretation. In Gricean terms, Capocci’s sacramental semiotics can be read as a historically inflected analogue of conversational implicature: the sign licenses certain inferences and transformations only insofar as participants recognize and endorse the rational‑practical norms governing its use. Thus, despite their different metaphysical commitments, both Grice and Capocci converge on the idea that meaning is neither private nor mechanically given, but arises from reason‑guided practices oriented toward response—whether that response is epistemic uptake in conversation or moral‑spiritual transformation through sanctifying signs.-- il sacramento SEGNA grazia e sanctifica grazia. Grice: “I like C.; he is a Griceian; he opposed AQUINO on the dependence of will and intellectus – surely they are independent, and possibly the will is more basic! La ‘volonta,’ as the Italians call it!  That’s how I shall call him; others favour “Giacomo da Viterbo. Essential Italian philosopher!” Studia a Viterbo. Insegna a Napoli. dottore speculativo. De regimine christiano. Teocrazia potere temporale del cesare e il suo stato. de praedicamentis de peccatorum distinctione there are surely more than seven sins – Multiply sins beyond necessity. C. si raffigura con un’aureola, segno naturale alla Perice del santo. Sententiarum quaestiones Parisius de animatione caeli de verbo In Sententiarum COLONNA De perfectione specierum confessio episcopali officio devotes. Carita is informed by GRAZIA. For CICERONE religio, a species of justice, is worship owed to il divino, a sign of submission. There can be no worship without AMOR. Il lizio concedes a happy man would NOT be most beloved of il divino if he did not love il divino by making him the object of his theorising. A science based on REASON aims for this AMORE in way in which sacred science does not. The study of SCATOLOGIA FILOSOFICA is being, the divino the highest being. Considera il divino solo nella relazione coll'essere. SCATOLOGIA TEOLOGICA considera il divino as its subject and being in relation to it. AOSTA’s distinction amor concupiscientiæ/amicitiæ: desiring an end/wish someone well. Magna Moralia: friendship, a form of community of life that cannot obtain between a mortal and il divino -- possible through GRAZIA. capo circonfuso da aureola.  Insomma, dalla pur brevissima disamina effettuata, ci si rende conto di quanto la cultura occidentale e quella orientale, dopo tutto, non siano poi così distanti. Le testimonianze figurative nate dalle rispettive pratiche cultuali ne costituiscono un memorandum preziosissimo. peccatum – sin – holiness – aureola segno naturale del santo. Grice: Capocci, mi dica, ma il sacramento segna davvero la grazia, oppure serve solo a santificare chi sa leggere il segno? Capocci: Ah, Grice, il segno non fa mai tutto il lavoro! Senza la volontà, il segno resta sospeso come una aureola che non trova testa. Santificare è questione di grazia… e di saper cogliere il momento! Grice: Quindi secondo lei, se uno moltiplica i peccati oltre il necessario, rischia di finire con un’aureola troppo pesante da portare? Capocci: Grice, per esperienza posso dire che la testa del santo regge tutto, anche una aureola XXL. Ma attenzione: senza amore, neanche il segno più luminoso riesce a santificare davvero. Alla fine, anche i santi preferiscono una conversazione simpatica a un sermone infinito! Capocci, Giacomo. (1285). De regimine christiano. Napoli: Tipografia della Curia. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Capodilista – Ossia: Grice e Capodilista: la ragione conversazionale e ll’implicatura conversazionale -- in principio era la conversazione – filosofia fascista.  Andrea Emo Capodilista (Battaglia Terme, Padova, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e ll’implicatura conversazionale -- in principio era la conversazione – Grice’s account of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Capodilista’s philosophy of conversation share the conviction that meaning is generated neither by abstract systems nor by collective imposition, but by concrete intersubjective encounter governed by rational norms, even while they articulate this insight at different levels. For Grice, conversational meaning is produced through the intentional management of saying and not‑saying under principles such as cooperation and perspicuity, with implicature arising precisely where speakers exploit these rational expectations. Capodilista radicalizes this logic ontologically and ethically: “in principio era la conversazione” is not merely a pragmatic maxim but a metaphysical thesis according to which expression, silence, and the non‑detto precede fixed ideas and institutional language. Where Grice treats conversational dyads as analytically isolable interactions whose rational structure can be reconstructed without appeal to absolutes, Capodilista insists that every conversational dyad presupposes participation in an absolute that cannot be collectivized, institutionalized, or reduced to impersonal universals. Both reject interiorism and semantic atomism: Grice by grounding meaning in public rational accountability between interlocutors, Capodilista by dissolving meaning into the risky, erotic, and dangerous exposure of two subjects confronting one another without mediation by ethical states or abstract communities. In Gricean terms, Capodilista’s emphasis on the non‑detto and on silence as expressive pressure can be read as an ontological intensification of implicature itself: meaning emerges where the word threatens to debase itself, where expression and communication struggle for dominance, and where rational understanding depends not on explicit formulation but on the shared capacity to recognize when the most significant content is deliberately left unsaid.-- filosofia fascista. Grice: “I like C. – good vintage (literally)! C. is difficult to comprehend, but when I was struggling to find examples of implicatura due to exploiting ‘be perspicuous,’ he was whom I was thinking! Keywords in his philosophy are il non-detto, homo eroticus, filosofia dell’espressione, metafisica, equilibrio apolineo-dionisiaco, positivo-negativo.“  Studia a Roma sotto GENTILE. Riflessiona sul nihilismo. Partendo dall’attualismo, giunge a trasformarlo coll’intersoggetivo., il rapporto concreto particolarizato, inter-personale contrapposto all’astrazioni d’un collettivio IMpersonale generalizato (universalita, universabilita, generalita formale/applicazionale/di contenuto --, sia quella esaltata da uno stato etico, la communita, la popolazione, la societa. Una diada conversazionale non e un dato. Una diada conversazionale e solo un rapposro inter-soggettivo.. La diada conversazionale ha bisogno dell'assoluto e pertanto il suo problema è questa partecipazione all'assoluto. Le due uomini – le due maschi della diada conversazionale raggiunge l’assoluto. La sua fede non quella collettivistica-sociale che fa uso della violenza, la forza, e la autorita illegitima, e fallisce. L’intersoggetivo è sempre due nudità. che si fondano sull'amore. La parola si svaluta come la moneta, La parola s’usa e profanare quando non se ne comprende il significato. La conversazione è pericolosa e una anima irriducibile a una conversazione. E così l’idea è pericolosa per una conversazione. Conversazione, espressione, comunicazione e idea tentano continuamente di sopraffarsi. La parole finisce per creare un organismo, un organismo di parole, cioè la frase: L’organismo della frase e del verbo che trasforma . in principio era la conversazione, filosofia fascista, I taccuini del barone Capodilista, il taccuino del barone C. Grice: Capodilista, devo confessare che la tua villa mi ha lasciato senza parole! Se solo potessi costruirne una a Vadum Boem, sarebbe una copia perfetta della tua. La raffinatezza e la cura dei dettagli riflettono un pensiero filosofico che va oltre l’architettura: qui ogni pietra parla di conversazione e di incontro. Capodilista: Grazie, Grice! La villa è nata proprio da un desiderio di creare uno spazio che favorisse il dialogo autentico. Per me, in principio era la conversazione: ogni stanza, ogni angolo, è pensato per ospitare non solo parole, ma anche silenzi che raccontano il non-detto, quell’equilibrio tra positivo e negativo che la filosofia ricerca. Grice: È affascinante come tu riesca a far vivere la filosofia dell’espressione nelle mura della villa! Persino l’atmosfera trasmette quel senso di homo eroticus, di tensione tra apollineo e dionisiaco, che rende ogni conversazione qui più intensa e significativa. Vorrei che a Oxford potessimo imparare a valorizzare così il rapporto intersoggettivo. Capodilista: La conversazione è davvero pericolosa, Grice, come la vita stessa! Ma solo nella nudità dell’incontro tra due uomini si può sfiorare l’assoluto. Se mai costruirai la tua villa a Vadum Boem, ricordati che la vera forza non sta nella pietra, ma nella parola che la anima. E una villa senza conversazione è solo un guscio vuoto. Capodilista, Andrea Emo (1942). I taccuini del barone Capodilista. Battaglia Terme: Tipografia Antoniana. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Capograssi – Ossia: Grice e Capograssi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale degl’eroi di VICO.  Giuseppe Capograssi (Sulmona, L’Aquila, Abruzzo): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale degl’eroi di VICO. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Capograssi’s philosophy of action and law converge on the idea that rationality is not an abstract system imposed on life, but a lived, intersubjective practice in which meaning emerges through intentional engagement among agents. For Grice, conversational meaning is generated by speakers who recognize one another as rational participants, guided by shared expectations of intelligibility and cooperation, so that implicature arises from what it is reasonable to infer given a context of mutual accountability. Capograssi, approaching the matter from the philosophy of law and Vichian historicism, grounds rational meaning in concrete action, where the will of the subject is expressed in deeds that necessarily implicate others, giving rise to norms, authority, and obligation. While Grice analytically separates meaning from force, insisting that understanding depends on rational uptake rather than coercion, Capograssi likewise resists reducing law to mere factual power, arguing that obedience devoid of intention and intersubjective recognition is empty. In both thinkers, meaning is neither purely subjective nor mechanically objective: it is constituted where individual intention meets a shared world of practices. Read Griceanly, Capograssi’s insistence that law exists only where command and response are lived as meaningful can be seen as a juridical analogue of conversational implicature, in which the validity of what is not said explicitly depends on the rational, moral expectations binding agents together. Thus, Grice and Capograssi meet in their shared commitment to a conception of reason that is enacted in practice, oriented toward others, and irreducible to formal systems or sheer force.  Grice: “I love C.; at Oxford we’d call him a lawyer, but the Italians call him a philosopher! My favourite of his tracts is his attempt, linked as he is to the Napoli area, VICO relevant! Oddly, he stresses the Catholic, or RC, as we say at Oxford, rather than the heathen, pagan, side, of this illustrious philosopher who Strawson, along indeed with Speranza -- think as the greatest Italian philosopher that ever lived – I mean, what can be more Italian than VICO?!” Si laurea a Roma con Lo stato e la storia, in cui già affiorano la problematica dell’interrelazione fra individuo, società e stato. Insegna a Roma.  Si centra nell’esperienza giuridica, rivolto alla centralizzazione della volontà del soggetto agente, che si imprime nell'agire stesso, vera fonte d’espressione giuridica e di vita morale. L’agire ha a centro l’intersoggetivo interpersonale rapporto essenziale fra il diritto come esigenza giuridica e la vita filosofia del diritto, altro la tecnica giuridica visione organica totale del reale. autorità; democrazia diretta; diritto valore decentramento autonomia politica Il positivismo giuridico usa la norma fondamentale come principio morale-politico costituente e non si identifica colla fatticità della forza. critica di BOBBIO Il positivismo è così solido perché poggia su presupposti, non sono soltanto dell’potesi di lavoro ma concezione della realtà: il diritto pubblico è forza. Le gius-naturalismo confonde validità e giustificazione e si limita a dire che il diritto esiste indipendentemente dal fatto che è giusto o ingiusto solo quando la norma, oltre che valida, è anche efficace, principio d’effettività. Non si puo mai trarre dal positivismo il principio che il diritto è giusto in quanto è comandato. Il diritto esiste in quanto è comandato e fatto valere colla forza, è giusto e lascia aperto che cosa fonda e legittima il sistema normativo e l’ordinamento giuridico procedura civile potere sociologia culto degl’eroi Hart  forza autorita essere/devere fascismo nazione unificazione medimen obbedenza formale vacua e materiale intenzione inclusa  Aligheri Leopardi Serbati. Grice: Capograssi, a Oxford ti chiamerebbero avvocato, ma tu preferisci filosofo, giusto? Raccontami, come si fa a rendere Vico più cattolico che pagano senza far arrabbiare i napoletani? Capograssi: Grice, basta una buona pizza e qualche eroe vichiano! Qui a Roma, il diritto si mescola col caffè, e ogni norma fondamentale vale più se servita col sorriso. L’intersoggettivo, caro mio, nasce proprio dalla fame di giustizia… e di pastarelle! Grice: Ah, questa sì che è filosofia da tavola! Se Bobbio fosse stato napoletano avrebbe scritto le norme su tovaglioli. Dimmi, secondo te, la forza del diritto sta nella volontà… o nel cornetto al mattino? Capograssi: Grice, il diritto esiste finché c’è qualcuno che lo comanda e qualcun altro che lo obbedisce – ma senza il cornetto nessuno ci crede davvero! Sulmona insegna: tra eroi, poesia e norme, alla fine conta solo chi sa rendere la vita filosofica un po’ più dolce. Capograssi, Giuseppe. (1918). Lo stato e la storia. Roma: Alighieri.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caporali – Oissia: Grice e Caporali: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale a Crotone.  Enrico Caporali (Como, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale a Crotone. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Caporali’s philosophical reconstruction of the Italic–Pythagorean tradition converge in their shared emphasis on rational order emerging from lived practices rather than from abstract systems imposed from above, even if they articulate this insight through different registers. For Grice, conversational meaning is governed by rational principles that regulate how speakers make themselves intelligible to one another, with implicature arising when interlocutors rely on shared expectations to infer what is meant but not said. Caporali, rethinking Pythagoras through the civic and cultural setting of Crotone, translates rational order into numerical, ethical, and communal forms that structure both thought and discourse within a tradition understood as distinctly Italic and unencumbered by metaphysical obscurity. Where Grice treats rationality procedurally, as a set of norms guiding conversational exchange regardless of metaphysical commitments, Caporali embeds rational communication in a symbolic economy of number, myth, and civic memory, where dialogue reflects the harmony between consciousness, will, and life’s practical problems. From a Gricean perspective, Caporali’s appeal to Pythagorean measures and myths can be read as a culturally inflected account of conversational implicature: meanings circulate not solely through explicit doctrines but through what participants reasonably draw from shared forms, narratives, and numerical symbols. Thus, while Caporali frames reason in terms of Italic heritage and Pythagorean structure and Grice frames it in terms of cooperative linguistic practice, both understand meaning as arising from rational participation in a shared world, where what is communicated exceeds what is explicitly articulated. Grice: “You gotta (as they say at Berkeley) love (as they say at Berkeley) C. – typically Italian he dedicates his life to philosophise on Pythagoras (or Pitagora, as he prefers) just because he is ‘italico,’ or ‘Italiano,’ with the capital I that was then in fashion! What I like about C. is that, unlike the 98% of Italian philosoophers, he detests German philosophy, as represented by Muri. See how clear the religion of the Italian anti-clerics is compared to the German obscurity of Muri!’ And right he is, too! “For the Oxonians I always recommend his “epitome di filosofia italiana,’ which, I subtitle it as “From Pythagoras to Pythagoras, and back!” – His three-part tract on Pythagoras (Natura, Uomo, Other) is fascinating – especially the other – he also philosophised on ‘scienza nuova.’” Si laurea a Padova. Studia a Bologna. Studia Crotone, che riconuce, da nazionalista qual è, ad una tradizione itala e latina. La formulazione del numero reale consente di riconoscere la relazione dell'espressione della coscienza e della volontà umane con i problemi della vita. Geografia enciclopedica rispondente al bisogno degl'italiani, Epitome di filosofia itala Vademecum delle persone colte che vogliono diventare filosoficamente italiane natura secondo Crotone uomo secondo Crotone, Crotone confrontata coll’altre scuole. La chiara religione degli anticlericali italiani con la nebbiosa di Murri Vinay, Desanctis, Claudiana. CROCE lo cita con i filosofi protestanti Taglialatela e Mazzarella; Furiozzi politica religione filosofia risorgimento liberale, Mariani, Del sommo filosofo pitagorico C.  Domini Pilone, scrittori degni di fede. Cfr. Ippol. Refut., Euseb..; Aristot. Eliano Inizii leggendarii e storici. Quinto Ennio Sette e scuole di Crotone a Roma. Crotone e le sue dottrine nei filosofi latini. LUCREZIO de rerum natura. Varrone. Appio Claudio Pulcro. CICERONE Somnium Scipionis. Mimi. Orazio Virgilio Ovidio. Eitphorhos. Il sodalizio i Romani Ottaviano implicatura mito scuola di mistica reincarnazione metempsicosi Roma accademia Lizio. Como, Lombardia.  Grice: Enrico, ti vedo sempre immerso nei tuoi pensieri pitagorici. Dimmi, secondo te, a Crotone la ragione conversazionale si misura in numeri primi o multipli? Caporali: Grice, a Crotone ogni conversazione ha il suo numero perfetto! Tra Pitagora e la tradizione itala, basta una battuta per far nascere una teoria. E se invece della sequenza, ci affidassimo al caso? Grice: Ah, il caso! Ma a Oxford ci affidiamo alla logica, anche se alle volte sembra un gioco di dadi. Forse dovremmo importare la tua epitome di filosofia italiana, così magari capiamo qualcosa di più sulla volontà umana, o almeno sul modo in cui gli italiani discutono a tavola. Caporali: Grice, qui la filosofia è come la pastasciutta: ognuno ha la sua ricetta, ma alla fine si mangia tutti insieme! Se Pitagora avesse avuto la tua ironia, forse avrebbe inventato la metempsicosi del ragù. Caporali, Enrico (1859). Laurea. Giurisprudenza. Padova. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cappelletti – Ossia: Grice e Cappelletti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’entellechia – izzing and hazzing -- all’origine della filosofia antropologica. Grice: “I like C. – and so does he! He is into what he calls, in Latin, to show off, ‘philosophia anthropologica,’ which is MY thing Vincenzo Cappelletti (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’entellechia – izzing and hazzing -- all’origine della filosofia antropologica. In Grice and Cappelletti the axis of comparison runs through a shared concern with reason as an immanent, practice-guided activity, but articulated at different levels of analysis: Grice reconstructs reason as conversationally governed, emerging from cooperative intentions and calculable implicatures within ordinary linguistic exchange, whereas Cappelletti situates reason within the historical–epistemological stratification of “vita” and “entelechia,” reading life itself—biological, psychological, anthropological—as a process of being-at-work that becomes intelligible only in its dialogical and interpretive articulation. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning treats rationality as manifest in the norms speakers tacitly follow and exploit (maxims, implicatures, cancellations), a bottom‑up account beginning with talk and building toward mind; Cappelletti, by contrast, works top‑down from Aristotle’s energeia/entelechia distinction through Cicero, Ficino, and modern biology and psychology to show how reason inhabits living processes and is historically expressed in scientific and anthropological forms, with conversation as one privileged site where life’s “being-in-completion” becomes reflectively accessible. Where Grice ironizes “philosophy of life” by insisting that what matters are persons and their reason-responsive exchanges rather than vegetal teleologies, Cappelletti turns entelechia into an anthropological principle, making conversation itself a workshop of life in which scientific, psychological, and cultural meanings are continuously under construction. Grice: “I like C. – and so does he! He is into what he calls, in Latin, to show off, ‘philosophia anthropologica,’ which is MY thing – I mean, one can explore the philosophy of ‘life’ (bios) per se, and Aristotle on the ‘entelechia’ of a vegetable, but vegetable implicatures are boring (to us); the idea of ‘psychology’ features large, and also ‘vita.’ When Cicero dealt with Aristotle’s philosophy of life (zoe, bios, psyche) he found himself in trouble: vita, anima – And then came Ficino and Pico! Cappelletti knows it all, and it shows!” Inegna a Roma. Gentile, Sanctis, Ferrabino. Studia l'epistemologia delle scienze biologiche, quindi le teorie psicoanalitiche e la psicologia analitica, nei loro rapporti con le altre discipline socio-umanistiche, fra cui l'antropologia e la politica e la filosofia. Studia MORGAGNI. filosofia delle scienze, analizzando dal punto di vista epistemologico, i rapporti storico-dialettici fra scienza e società, con particolare riguardo alle scienze umane. Atomi e vita, Entelechìa. dottrine biologiche; L'interpretazione dei fenomeni della vita, Bologna, Società editrice il Mulino; Emil Du Bois-ReymondI confini della conoscenza della natura, Milano, individuals. In the proof for the existence of change, energeia and entelecheia  are used differently: being- built (oikodomeitai)  is the being-at-work (energeia) of what is built (oikodomēton ), while building (oikodomēsis) is change (kinēsis) and the being-in-completion (entelecheia) of what is built as built:  being-complete (entelecheia) change  building  being-at-work ( energeia ) of agent being-at-work ( energeia ) of what is worked-on  builder / agent ( oikodomikon) buildable / patient ( oikodomēton ) requires buildable requires builder  Energeia  as being-built ( oikodomeitai ) means the. alle origini della filosofia antropologica, entelechia – vita – filosofia della vita – Grice, “Philosophy of Life” – Aristotle on entelechia – storia della scienza – storia dela psicologia filosofica --. Il concetto di entelechia. Roma, Lazio.  Grice: Vincenzo, mi chiedo sempre: entelechia, izzing, hazzing… ma alla fine, dove la troviamo la vera energia della vita? Cappelletti: Grice, forse nella filosofia antropologica! Se Aristotele si perdeva tra i vegetali, almeno noi ci ritroviamo tra le persone. La vita è un cantiere: ogni giorno si costruisce un po’ di entelechia tra una chiacchiera e l’altra. Grice: Eppure, caro Vincenzo, a Oxford nessuno si entusiasma per la filosofia della vita. Ma tu, a Roma, hai fatto dell’entelechia una festa: persino Morgagni avrebbe sorriso sentendo parlare di energeia e di atomi in conversazione! Cappelletti: Grice, la tua ironia è come una boccata d’aria tra i manuali di epistemologia. Alla fine, la filosofia della vita non è altro che fare quattro passi con gli amici, domandando se oggi siamo in costruzione… o già pronti per la cena! Cappelletti, Vincenzo (1956). Editoriale. Il Veltro. Rivista della civiltà italiana.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Capua – Ossia: Grice e Capua: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Leonardo di Capua (Bagnoli Irpino, Avellino, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. In Grice and Leonardo di Capua the comparison turns on a shared commitment to reason as something exercised in practice under conditions of uncertainty, but articulated in very different idioms and historical contexts: Grice develops a formal, analytic account of reason as conversationally governed, emerging from speakers’ intentions, cooperative expectations, and calculable implicatures, whereas Capua anticipates this stance in an early modern, experimental key by treating conversation, inquiry, and debate as the living medium through which reason corrects tradition and negotiates the limits of knowledge. Capua’s Parere and the Accademia degli Investiganti embody a proto‑Gricean insight: reason does not reside in dogma or inherited authority, but in the disciplined yet exploratory exchange of arguments grounded in experience, where uncertainty—whether of medicaments, natural phenomena, or historical explanation—is not a defect but a condition of rational progress. Grice’s theory systematizes this intuition by showing how rationality operates through norms tacitly observed and strategically flouted in ordinary talk, while Capua stages reason conversationally as an investigative practice, following vestigia lustrat, where understanding advances by tracing signs, correcting methods, and balancing experience with judgment. In this sense, Capua can be read as a historical precursor to Grice: both construe reason as neither purely deductive nor purely empirical, but as a socially enacted capacity whose intelligibility depends on conversation, pragmatic adjustment, and the willingness to revise one’s claims in the face of counter‑moves. Grice: “I like C. – from the middle of nowhere – Lago Laceno – he founds an accademia degl’investiganti” in Capri! To philosophise! Vestigia lustrat, i.e. even in dreams the hound follows the trace of the hare!” – Studia a Napoli. S’impegna nella sperimentazione. il "Parere", sostene le idee di chi oppone la ricerca scientifica al sapere della tradizione.  Persi entrambi i genitori e dovette cominciare a provvedere da sé alla sua educazione. Impara le Istituzioni di Giustiniano, leggendo al tempo stesso anche le osservazioni di Cuiacio. delle mofete. Approfondisce le sue conoscenze naturali ed anatomiche, effettuando osservazioni dirette e con il supporto di testi reperiti. forma il suo pensiero critico circa l'inadeguatezza del metodo. rapporto tra esperienza e ragione.  L'opera è introdotta da una specie di filosofia della storia, in cui è sviluppato il rapporto tra storia e scienza. Nel 1689, obbedendo ad una richiesta della regina Cristina di Svezia, il D. aggiunge al Parere i Tre ragionamenti intorno all'incertezza deimedicamenti, pubblicato a Napoli. L'opera fu ristampata con l'aggiunta di una presentazione di T. Donzelli, a Napoli. Del 1693 è la Vita di Andrea Cantelmo, edita a Napoli. L'opera è legata al tema dell'individuo. Vengono descritti i rapporti tra virtù e fortuna, tra storia individuale e storia naturale, tra ragione e natura.  Fonti e Bibl.: N. Amenta, Vita di Lionardo di Capoa, Venezia; Vico, Autobiografia, a cura di B. Croce, Bari, Riccio, Cenno stor. delle Accademie fiorite nella città di Napoli, in Arch. stor. per le prov. nap., Cotugno, La sorte di G. B. Vico e le polemiche scientifiche e letterarie, Bari, Nicolini, La giovinezza di G. B. Vico,  Bari, Badaloni, Introd. a G. B. Vico, Milano, Mastellone, Pensiero politico e vita culturale a Napoli nella seconda metà del Seicento, Messina-Firenze; A. Quondam, Minima dandreiana: prima ricognizione sul testo delle "risposte" di F. d'Andrea a Benedetto Aletino. Roma lizio filosofia, ragione debole Crusca comunicazione accademia Incertezza gl’investiganto vestigia lustrat. Grice: Capua, devo confessare che la tua accademia degli investiganti a Capri mi mette una gran curiosità! Sembra il posto dove anche una lepre potrebbe nascondersi senza mai essere scoperta, vero? Capua: Grice, in effetti anche le mofete qui si chiedono se sono in una scuola di scienza o in una lezione di filosofia! Ma vedi, la conversazione è come la ricerca: bisogna seguire le vestigia anche se portano in giro per l’isola. Grice: E pure l’incertezza dei medicamenti, caro Leonardo, mi fa pensare che forse la vera medicina è una bella chiacchierata. Se la regina Cristina di Svezia ti avesse chiesto un consiglio, forse avresti suggerito il Parere… e una tazza di infuso napoletano! Capua: Ah Grice, la fortuna aiuta chi cerca, ma la virtù sta nel saper ridere delle proprie scoperte. Qui a Capri, tra storia e natura, la ragione conversazionale è l’unico antidoto contro l’incertezza… e contro la noia! Capua, Leonardo di (1689). Parere. Napoli.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carabellese – Ossia: Grice e Carabellese: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’arena e la pietra -- la sabbia e la roccia – il segno.  Pantaleo Carabellese (Molfetta, Bari, Puglia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’arena e la pietra -- la sabbia e la roccia – il segno. Nel confronto fra Grice e Carabellese sulla razionalità che governa il significato nella conversazione, l’affinità non è terminologica ma architettonica. In Grice la teoria del significato conversazionale è esplicitamente reason‑governed: ciò che un parlante significa non è riducibile al contenuto semantico dell’enunciato, ma dipende da una razionalità pratica condivisa, fatta di aspettative, inferenze, riconoscimento di intenzioni, e dunque di implicature calcolabili all’interno di una cooperazione orientata all’altro. In Carabellese, questa stessa struttura razionale emerge a un livello ontologico più profondo: la distinzione fra arena e roccia, sabbia e pietra, non è una semplice metafora edificatoria, ma un modo per denunciare quello che egli chiama lo scandalo del significato, cioè l’impossibilità di fondare il senso e l’agire umano senza toccare il fondamento dell’essere‑di‑coscienza. Dove Grice analizza l’implicatura come prodotto di una razionalità dialogica che opera nello spazio intersoggettivo io/tu/noi, Carabellese vede nella stessa interazione il punto in cui l’essere non è oggetto ma condizione costitutiva della coscienza e della comunità. La conversazione, in Grice, è un gioco governato da regole razionali che rendono possibile il passaggio dal detto al significato; in Carabellese, essa è già pratica ontologica, scavo di fondazione, lavoro sulla sabbia che cerca la roccia. In entrambi, tuttavia, il significato non è mai dato una volta per tutte: è sempre implicito, sempre da ricostruire razionalmente, sempre legato a una pratica condivisa. Grice lo tematizza come pragmatica delle implicature; Carabellese come ontologia critica del concreto. La differenza è di livello, non di direzione: la razionalità conversazionale griceana e la roccia carabellessiana indicano entrambe che senza una ragione operante, orientata all’altro e capace di fondare il noi, né le parole né le costruzioni filosofiche possono reggere. Grice: “I love C.; his masterpiece is ‘the rock and the sand,’ which reminds me of Tuke’s Cornwall! – Tuke captured some dialectic on the sand and rocks, which I’m sure were common in Ostia, too, back in the day! C. speaks of a ‘semiotic scandal’ so it all connects with my pragmatics of dialectics or conversation.” Studia a Napoli e Roma. Insegna a Roma. Ontologia critica alla SERBATI: l'essere non è mero oggetto della coscienza ma è a essa intrinseco come fondamento irriducibile: essere-di-coscienza. Difende l'oggettività essenziale dell'essere e l’ontologia, non come sapere specialistico trincerato, ma come operatrice pell'umanità tutta così che la coscienza esplica quella teoria che nel diversificarsi concreto della spiritualità risulta necessariamente implicita. E allora lo sforzo della filosofia non potrà mai, quindi, essere compiuto atto seppure la teoria si attui sempre in una pratica, che è l'altro termine del concreto. Difende l’ontologia come ascesa razionale a la realtà, o come sentiero che volge al fondamento comune della vita politica e che alla politica rimane irriducibile. Critica del concreto; idealismo politica essere e manifestazione dialettica della Forme coscienza concreta, l'io gnoseologia  SABBIOSA STORIA (la storia della semiotica, la storia di Vitruvio) concedeno all’umana attivita consapevole. CERCHIAMO LA ROCCIA.CI riuscira forse cosi di ritrovare il fondamento e di trarre anche dallo SCAVO DI FONDAZIONE, PELLA COSTRUZIONE DELLA NOSTRA CASA, Nessuna costruzione noi uomini possiame fare SULLA ROCCIA se queso nostro PENSARE NON LA TOCCA. E L’HA A SUO INTIMO FONDAMENTO lo scandalo del significato io/tu, inter-soggetivo interpersonal interattivo interazione agire sociale orientazione all’altro razionalita strategica razionalita comunicativa complessita intensionale significato insieme comunita il noi. G.: Carabellese, then. Molfetta, 1877. Seminary schooling first, law laurea at Naples in 1900, then philosophy later in Rome. A thoroughly Italian way of making a philosopher by not allowing him to begin as one. S.: Which is already one advantage over England. In England one may go to school, then to Oxford, then discover philosophy almost by clerical error. In Italy one is apparently put into a seminary and told to become metaphysical by architecture. G.: “That probably did it for him,” as the vulgar say. S.: Quite. A boy takes ginnasio and liceo in a seminary and later writes on the hierocratic apex of the papacy. One should not affect surprise. If you place a young man among cassocks, Latin, and ecclesiastical walls, he is unlikely to emerge writing on crop rotation. G.: Though one might have hoped for a little less swelling in the title. Sulla vetta ierocratica del papato. It has the sound of a thesis trying on a mitre. S.: Yes. Vetta is already summit. Ierocratica already implies the strongest sacerdotal claim. Del papato tells you whose summit it is. The title climbs three times before it begins. G.: A young man’s title, then. S.: Or a Neapolitan law thesis in search of a cathedral voice. G.: Let us be fair. He was about twenty-two or twenty-three in 1900, if the 1877 date is right. That is old enough to be solemn and young enough to mistake solemnity for precision. S.: Quite. And Naples gives the whole thing a certain juridical aroma. It sounds less like theology than like a legal-historical inquiry into the moment when the bishop of Rome, whom you quite rightly refuse to call “papa” in the cosy sense, reaches maximal sacral-political jurisdiction. G.: Not Peter merely as holy founder, then, but the papacy at its most systematised claim to supremacy. S.: Exactly. The question is not “when did Rome first acquire sanctity?” but “when did papal power become most fully elaborated as hierocracy?” G.: Hierocracy. I confess, S., it still sounds to me like a Greek noun someone forgot to naturalise. S.: It is a splendid word. We have aristocracy, democracy, plutocracy, bureaucracy, and then—when one has spent enough time in church history—hierocracy. G.: Henry VIII’s, for you to understand, S. S.: Ah yes. The English route to the same absurdity. We dislike the word and keep the fact. G.: Henry begins, in the old style, as Defender of the Faith. S.: 1521, against Luther, by papal grant, which is one of history’s better practical jokes. G.: And then, denied the divorce or annulment he wants, he decides to become his own ecclesiastical settlement. S.: Which is the English genius in miniature: object to a foreign hierarchy by constructing a domestic one with better upholstery. G.: So was Henry VIII hierocratic? S.: Not in the strict papal sense, no; but he certainly appropriates sacral authority into the crown. One might say he performs a nationalised anti-papal hierocracy and calls it reform. G.: Oxford, of course, enters the picture. S.: Naturally. Oxford always enters the picture when kings wish to turn marriage into constitutional theology. The universities were consulted in the king’s “Great Matter,” and Oxford became one of the theatres in which matrimonial appetite was translated into legal conscience. G.: “We require an opinion.” “On what?” “On whether my desire is also doctrine.” S.: Precisely. And English universities, unlike Italian seminaries, have the great advantage that they can look secular while doing ecclesiastical work. G.: Which returns us to Carabellese. Molfetta first, Naples later, Rome later still. Seminary, law, then philosophy. A very nice escalation. S.: Or complication. The seminary gives the atmosphere, the law degree gives the institutional form, and the later philosophy degree gives him permission to make all this sound like destiny. G.: The Molfetta seminary—do we know the order? S.: Not securely. We know the seminary in his native city, but not whether Dominican, Franciscan, or anything more specific. That uncertainty is quite enough. “Seminary” already gives the basic colour. G.: In English one hears “seminary” and thinks either priest-factory or some male nunnery out of Hamlet’s bad temper. S.: Yes, whereas here it means something closer to a clerically run classical secondary education. Latin, religion, discipline, and enough Greek to make later metaphysics feel inevitable. G.: “That probably did it for him,” again. S.: Exactly. G.: And in 1900, while Carabellese is writing about the hierocratic summit of the papacy, who is on the papal throne? S.: Leo XIII. G.: “Yes, Leo,” as the joke writes itself. S.: And Leo matters historically, though perhaps not in the immediate way an undergraduate imagines. Carabellese’s title is historical, but no historical title in 1900 is merely historical. The present papacy is in the room even when medieval papal monarchy is on the page. G.: So there is an implicature of now. S.: Likely yes, but indirect. Not “Beware Leo at once,” but rather: the historical apex of sacred power remains politically thinkable, and therefore relevant to Italy’s modern self-understanding. G.: His interest, we are told, did not die there. S.: No. That is the important thing. The juridico-historical concern continues and later rises into L’idea politica d’Italia. So the early papacy thesis is not an antiquarian cul-de-sac. It is a first attempt to think Italy through sacred and political forms of authority. G.: Which makes the law degree less absurd. S.: Entirely. If one hears “law laurea at Naples” and expects a future notary, one misses the point. Law here is the route into institutions, power, church-state order, jurisdiction, legitimacy. G.: In utroque iure without necessarily being in utroque iure. S.: Very good. The atmosphere of both laws, if not the actual degree formula. G.: Civil and canon, yes. And one could graduate in one or the other or both. S.: Exactly. Doctor in iure civili, doctor in iure canonico, doctor utriusque iuris. It all sounds magnificently un-Ciceronian, which is half the charm. G.: Quite. In utroque iure has the faint smell of university Latin rather than good republican prose. S.: Which suits Carabellese perfectly. His early path is scholastic in infrastructure even when modern in date. G.: And what of England while all this is happening? We have a monarch styled Defender of the Faith. S.: And by 1900 the title has become one of those English survivals that nobody fully believes and nobody quite abandons. The sovereign defends the faith, the bishops sit in the Lords, Oxford and Cambridge remain old ecclesiastical machines in lay dress, and everyone pretends the whole thing is merely constitutional scenery. G.: So for G. and S., the identity of the pope in 1900 matters much less than the fact that their monarch has long since annexed a competing dignity. S.: Precisely. Italians write theses that sound like sermons about papal apexes. Englishmen keep a sacral monarchy and call it moderation. G.: “And did those feet…” S.: No, no, do not start chanting Blake unless you are prepared to admit that England also writes metaphysics as hymnody. G.: Fair. But one does feel the contrast. Italian philosophers make a philosophical thesis sound like a sermon. S.: To which we can still pay lip service. G.: And English institutions make a theological settlement sound like common sense. S.: Which is much more dangerous. G.: Back to vetta. Do you think Carabellese means the apex as culmination in history, or summit as rhetorical elevation, or both? S.: Both. It is historical culmination dressed as rhetorical verticality. A young scholar, aged about twenty-three, writing from a legal-historical angle, wants not merely to describe papal hierocracy but to seize its highest visible form. Hence vetta. He wants the institution at maximum altitude. G.: It still sounds as if the title has put on robes. S.: Of course it has. Italian academic prose often dresses before breakfast. G.: Whereas Oxford prefers to go underdressed and let the institution supply the brocade. S.: Very good. G.: And Naples versus Oxford? S.: Naples around 1900 gives you jurisprudence in a state marked by church-state tensions, legal history, and the afterlife of clerical categories. Oxford gives you Greats, college fellowships, ecclesiastical residue under constitutional politeness, and no one admitting that bishops and sovereign titles still shape the background. G.: So Carabellese’s “problems” are at once more explicit and more honest. S.: Often yes. He is overtly dealing with papacy, sacred power, Italy, and political form. The English equivalent is distributed across titles, habits, and institutions, so that no one need confess he is doing political theology while doing it. G.: And then later Carabellese moves toward the idea of Italy. S.: Yes. That is why the early thesis matters. The concern with hierocratic summit does not expire; it migrates into a larger attempt to think Italy’s political-spiritual identity. G.: Which sounds almost liturgical. S.: Italy is one of the few places where nationalism can still sound like a metaphysical appendix. G.: While England keeps it in ceremonial form and mumbles through the collect. S.: Exactly. G.: I suppose we ought to admit some sympathy for the young Carabellese. S.: A little. Born in 1877, seminary education in Molfetta, law degree in 1900, later philosophy in Rome under Varisco. One can see the trajectory: ecclesiastical atmosphere, juridical structure, philosophical ambition. G.: “That probably did it for him.” S.: It did. Or enough of it did. G.: And the dry conclusion? S.: That if you raise a boy in a seminary, send him to Naples for law, and let him mature in post-unification Italy, he may well produce a title like Sulla vetta ierocratica del papato and mean by it not merely a medieval summit but a modern political problem. G.: While if you raise an English boy among classics, school ties, and the royal style Defender of the Faith, he will probably spend longer pretending not to notice the theology. S.: Yes. The Italian sermonises his politics; the Englishman constitutionalises his liturgy. G.: And both call it philosophy. S.: As indeed they must.Grice: Carabellese, devo confessare che trovo straordinario il modo in cui riesci a trasformare una semplice frase biblica come “la sabbia e la roccia” in un potente strumento filosofico! Il tuo pensiero riesce a intrecciare il senso della pietra e dell’arena, portando il discorso dal fondamento materiale a quello spirituale, e ciò mi affascina immensamente. Carabellese: Grazie, Grice! In effetti, credo che la filosofia debba partire proprio dai segni più comuni e apparentemente banali, come la sabbia e la roccia. Questi elementi, che sembrano solo metafore bibliche, diventano per me simboli della ricerca del fondamento: senza toccare la roccia nel nostro pensare, ogni costruzione umana rischia di essere fragile come l’arena. Grice: Mi colpisce come tu riesca a legare ontologia e pratica, Carabellese. Il tuo “scandalo del significato” tra io e tu, la dimensione intersoggettiva, persino la gnoseologia sabbiosa, sembrano quasi una nuova via per la filosofia: non è solo teoria, ma un invito continuo a scavare, a fondare, a orientarsi verso l’altro. Carabellese: Hai colto perfettamente, Grice! Per me la filosofia non può limitarsi all’astrazione: deve essere una costruzione, come la casa sulla roccia, ma sempre consapevole dello scandalo del significato e della complessità della comunità umana. Solo se il nostro pensiero tocca il fondamento, possiamo dare senso durevole alle nostre azioni e alle nostre parole. Carabellese, Pantaleo (1900). Sulla vetta ierocratica del papato. Giurisprudenza. Napoli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caracciolo – Ossia: Grice e Caracciolo: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del colloquio  Alberto Caracciolo (San Pietro di Morubio, Verona, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del colloquio. Grice and Alberto Caracciolo converge on the thought that meaning is inseparable from reason, but they articulate this bond from markedly different philosophical temperaments and traditions. For Grice, meaning is governed by reason in a precise, operative sense: what a speaker means is fixed by rational intentions working within a cooperative practice, where conversational implicature arises from shared expectations of rational conduct and inferential discipline. Reason here is procedural and regulative, manifesting itself in what speakers are entitled to imply, cancel, or reinforce given the norms of conversation. Caracciolo, by contrast, approaches the same territory through the idea of the colloquio as an existential and linguistic “being-on-the-way,” elaborated under the influence of Heidegger’s Unterwegs zur Sprache, which he rendered into Italian as In cammino verso il linguaggio. For him, conversational reason is not primarily a system of maxims or inferential checks, but a form of responsible openness in which meaning unfolds through dialogue oriented toward transcendence, conscience, and the moral seriousness of language. Where Grice’s “way of words” emphasizes the rational architecture that makes implication intelligible and accountable, Caracciolo’s “in cammino” deliberately avoids fixing the path in advance, presenting meaning as something that emerges through the lived encounter of interlocutors always capable of changing direction. In this sense, Grice offers a theory of reason-governed meaning that explains how implicature works; Caracciolo offers a philosophy of reasoned colloquy that explains why speaking meaningfully remains an ethical and existential task, a continual journey toward language rather than a completed road. Grice: “I like C. – at Harvard, I joked on Schlipp, and stated that Heidegger was then the greatest (grossest, in German) living philosopher – as he then was, living --. Caracciolo has dedicated his life to translate Heidegger’s ‘Dutch’ mannerism into the ‘volgare’: and now I have concluded that Heidegger is perhaps the grossest dead philosopher – “in cammino verso il linguaggio: il dire originario” –“.  Grice: “Note that C.’s ‘cammino’ translates Heidegger’s ‘weg’ – my ‘way’ of words – but for Heidegger is ‘way to’ (weg zur) – as it should!” cf. Speranza, “in cammino verso la conversazione” – versus “il cammino della convresazione’.Note that in Italian, unlike German, you drop the otiose ‘the’ of ‘way – “Nel cammino” is o-kay, but “in cammino” is the choice by Caracciolo! Aligheri, ‘nel cammino’ OF his life, towards heaven, or paradise, that is.” Studia a Verona e Pavia. Conosce Olivelli. Insegna a Genova. Studia CROCE. il nichilismo di LEOPARDI. Morale e trascendenza, persona, coscienza, filosofia della lingua. il colloquio, in cammino verso la lingua. G.: Let us begin with Verona and a Greek master. S.: Casimiro Adami, yes. Caracciolo at the liceo classico Scipione Maffei, reading Thucydides as if the Peloponnesian War were a preparation for Pavia. G.: Which, in a way, it was. Greek first, philosophy later, and only after that the modern disease of writing about aesthetics. S.: I object to your tone. A man may begin with Thucydides and still end with Il colloquio without disgrace. G.: I grant him the trajectory. But one must ask, as any schoolboy improperly trained to ask: did Thucydides write on Roman history? S.: No, unless one has a very adventurous view of prophecy. He wrote Greek history in Greek and left the Romans to arrive later as a professional inconvenience for classicists. G.: Quite. But for Caracciolo, Thucydides matters not because he wrote on Rome, but because he teaches a kind of severe prose of event, motive, decision, and speech. S.: Very good. That is your Gricean line, no doubt: speeches in history, reasons in language, necessity of exactness under pressure. G.: I was about to say nothing of the sort. S.: Then why did you say it so accurately? G.: Because one likes, in a liceo, the idea that a Greek author can discipline a future philosopher before philosophy has become a faculty. S.: There is the continental point again. School first wounds, university later interprets the scar. G.: In England one is encouraged to imagine that philosophy happens after scholarship, almost by accident. In Italy, one gets Greek at school and then a college called Ghislieri, which sounds as if it ought to confer a tiara. S.: It nearly does. But not a degree. G.: Precisely. Let us keep the constitutional point clean. Caracciolo enters Ghislieri in 1936 at eighteen, and takes the laurea at Pavia in 1940 at twenty-two. Ghislieri houses him; Pavia graduates him. S.: Which makes Ghislieri more like an Oxford college than like Oxford itself. G.: Yes, but with an important difference. Oxford colleges pretend to be the university in miniature. Ghislieri more candidly knows it is a collegio universitario di merito attached to a larger university world. S.: Also, it is named after a pope. G.: Better still: after the family name of Pope Pius V, Antonio Michele Ghislieri. It is one of those Catholic facts which make an English secularist suddenly aware that the building has genealogy. S.: Whereas Oxford colleges are often named after saints, bishops, founders, benefactors, the occasional king, and whatever else medieval piety and endowment happened to leave lying about. G.: And Pavia has several colleges, not just Ghislieri. Borromeo, Cairoli, Fraccaro, Santa Caterina, and the rest. Not quite “two hundred Corpuses,” but enough to make the city feel institutionally upholstered. S.: Santa Caterina sounds, to an Oxford ear, almost suspiciously direct. One expects Merton, Balliol, Oriel, Corpus, all those names that have forgotten they were once persons or devotions. G.: Ghislieri at least remembers its pope. S.: Quite. And Caracciolo, aged eighteen to twenty-two there, is not an undergraduate shut in a cloister except to emerge for the Schools like a properly trained mole. He is a student of Pavia lodged within Ghislieri’s form of seriousness. G.: Which brings us to the degree. Lettere classiche, 1940, thesis on L’estetica italiana nel secondo Settecento. S.: A title that always sounds to English ears as if one had taken Greats and then defected into a literary supplement. G.: Yet there is no contradiction. Lettere classiche names the training, not the topic. A man may have Greek and Latin in his bones and still write on Italian aesthetics of 1750 to 1800. S.: And perhaps more naturally than an Englishman would, because the continental faculty of Lettere e Filosofia does not police chronology the way Oxford polices style. G.: Also because the “classical” training teaches form, tradition, and transmission, not merely antiquity. S.: Still, one wants names. If one is told “Italian aesthetics in the second half of the eighteenth century,” one does not wish to be left with a mist of taste and sensibility. G.: Quite. And our trio, if not exhaustive, is at least plausible: Melchiorre Cesarotti, Antonio Conti in the background, and Parini. S.: Pavani, you mean, you nearly said. G.: I nearly did, yes. Parini. One must not create an aesthetician merely because the vowels are convenient. S.: Start with Cesarotti. G.: Gladly. Cesarotti is perhaps the nearest thing in the lot to an Oxonian philosopher of language, if one were allowed to say such a thing without being laughed out of High Table. Translator, critic, mediator of Ossian, theorist of style and language, man of passage between traditions. S.: That is already enough to interest Grice, because translation is conversational in slow motion: one utterance, two linguistic worlds, several inferential disasters. G.: Exactly. Cesarotti’s central importance is not simply poetic fashion. He helps make language itself a philosophical and national problem: style, translation, genius, the expressive resources of Italian, the relation of ancient and modern. S.: So if Caracciolo studies “Italian aesthetics,” he is not merely cataloguing pretty opinions about poetry. He is looking at a period in which language, sentiment, taste, and cultural self-definition are all being renegotiated. G.: Very good. Antonio Conti, meanwhile, is a little earlier and more cosmopolitan, but useful as background: Newtonian, philosophical, literary, a transmitter of European debates into Italy. S.: Which gives him the sort of prestige Oxonians like best: being foreign enough to be interesting and not foreign enough to be dangerous. G.: And Parini? S.: Parini is the trouble, because he is too literary for the philosopher and too moral for the merely literary. Which, of course, is exactly why he belongs. In the later eighteenth century Italian aesthetic field, poetry and criticism are not yet fully divorced from ethical and civic questions. G.: So Parini enters not as “the man with one doctrine,” but as a major node in poetic and critical culture. S.: Exactly. To say Caracciolo was introduced to “our man in secondo Settecento Italian aesthetics” may sound like faint praise, as if he had chosen a safe marsh instead of a summit. But that would be unfair. G.: My thought was rather that “our man in eighteenth-century Italian aesthetics” is what you say of someone who has not yet been allowed to become fully dangerous. S.: Or, more charitably, of someone finding a route out of a degree programme without committing premature solemnities. One writes a thesis one can write, under the supervision one can get, in a faculty one actually inhabits. G.: So you defend him. S.: Entirely. A twenty-two-year-old classicist-humanist in Pavia, shaped by Greek at the liceo and by collegiate life at Ghislieri, writing on late eighteenth-century Italian aesthetics, is not “failing to become a philosopher.” He is becoming one by a route Oxonians routinely conceal under the word Greats. G.: Fair. Greats itself is a magnificent device for pretending that one has no specialism when in fact one has survived several. S.: And Caracciolo’s route is clearer. Greek first. Then collegiate-university formation. Then aesthetics. Then Croce. Then ethics and transcendence. Then Il colloquio. Then Heidegger, and the dangerous phrase in cammino verso il linguaggio. G.: Which sounds, to an English ear, like what happens when “way of words” is sent to Germany and returns wearing heavier shoes. S.: Very good. But before Heidegger, the young Caracciolo is already doing something that matters for your parallel with Grice: he is learning that philosophical seriousness may emerge from a historical-literary field rather than from explicit system-building. G.: Which is why the second half of the eighteenth century matters. Post-Vico, yes, but not merely Vico. Sensism, taste, aesthetics, translation, criticism, the first modern discussion of language and art in Italian terms. S.: Quite. Oxford fixates on Vico through later interpreters, Collingwood, Berlin, Hampshire, and so forth, because Vico can be made to serve as a grand ancestor. But Caracciolo’s likely field is less ancestral and more operative. G.: Meaning: less “founding genius,” more “working climate.” S.: Exactly. A climate in which men like Cesarotti matter because they mediate, interpret, translate, and transform the very conditions under which aesthetics can become a topic. G.: Let us return once more to Ghisleri. Is there not something deliciously un-English about lodging a future philosopher in a college named after a pope and then having him write on aesthetics in the second half of the eighteenth century? S.: Only if one insists that England lacks its own ecclesiastical absurdities. Oxford has saints, bishops, royal charters, cathedral chapters, and all the pieties laundered through architecture. It is merely less direct in admitting them. G.: Whereas Pavia says Ghislieri and means Ghislieri. S.: Quite. G.: And the actual degree was from the University of Pavia, not the college. S.: Let us repeat that for the sake of all future confusions. Ghislieri housed him, formed him, selected him by merit, probably disciplined him by custom. Pavia examined and graduated him. G.: As Corpus housed Grice, while Oxford graduated him. S.: Exactly. The analogy holds there, if not in every flourish. G.: Then perhaps the true Gricean parallel is this: both men pass through a classical formation which is not exhausted by classical subject matter; both inhabit a collegiate system that mediates but does not itself confer the entire intellectual identity; and both turn, from that formation, toward language, thought, and the ethical burden of articulation. S.: Very neat. Too neat, perhaps. G.: I learnt it from the Italians. S.: Then let us end on the proper note. Thucydides did not write Roman history. Cesarotti was not an Oxonian philosopher of language, though he might have delighted one. Parini was not “merely literary.” Antonio Conti belongs in the background as a cosmopolitan relay. And Caracciolo, beginning in Greek and passing through Ghislieri to a thesis on second-half-eighteenth-century Italian aesthetics, was not failing to be a philosopher but discovering one of the more civilised ways of becoming one. G.: Which is already more than can be said for some who begin with philosophy and end with jargon. S.: That, dear G., is the one truly perennial aesthetics.Grice: Caracciolo, dimmi la verità – preferisci “in cammino” o “nel cammino”? Perché a Harvard mi hanno sempre detto che la strada migliore è quella piena di buche! Caracciolo: Grice, io scelgo “in cammino” – così posso cambiare direzione ogni volta che qualcuno mi propone un colloquio filosofico, anche se mi offrono solo un caffè annacquato! Grice: Ah, e allora se il colloquio diventa troppo arduo, puoi dire che sei semplicemente “di passaggio” – come Heidegger, ma molto più veneto! Caracciolo: Grice, così rischio di finire a San Pietro di Morubio invece che a Genova, ma almeno posso dire di aver filosofato “in cammino verso il linguaggio”… e non verso il bar! Caracciolo, Alberto (1940). L’estetica italiana. Pavia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caramella – Ossia: Grice e Caramella: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale degl’eroi di Vico. Caritone e Melanippo.  Santino Caramella (Genova, Liguria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale degl’eroi di Vico. Caritone e Melanippo. Grice and Santino Caramella converge on the conviction that truth and meaning are inseparable from conversation, yet they articulate this convergence from distinct philosophical lineages and with different emphases. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning locates rationality in the inferential structure of talk: what a speaker means, and what is conversationally implicated, depends on shared expectations of rational cooperation, intelligibility, and justificatory discipline among interlocutors. Conversational reason, for Grice, is thus analytic and normative, expressed in the practical logic that governs saying, implying, and understanding. Caramella, by contrast, approaches conversational meaning through a neo-idealist and spiritualist reading of Vico, where dialogue is not merely the site of rational inference but the living arena in which truth itself comes to be historically and ethically constituted. His reflections on the conversational implicature of Vico’s heroic figures, such as Caritone and Melanippo, emphasize that meaning emerges through the intersubjective drama of spirit, where myth, history, and reason are unified in dialogue. While Grice explains how implicature works within conversation, Caramella explains why conversation matters: truth is not a finished product regulated by logic alone, but a dynamic achievement of the spirit in dialogue, a shared table where philosophy, history, and ethical life continually renegotiate their meaning. In this sense, Grice provides the rational grammar of conversational meaning, whereas Caramella offers its metaphysical and historical justification, presenting conversation itself as the privileged locus in which reason, heroism, and truth become mutually intelligible. Grice:”I like C. – like me, he is into the metaphysics of conversation! And he reminds me that I should re-read Vico! I like C.; he prefaced Fichte’s influential tract on ‘la filosofia della massoneria’ – but also wrote on more orthodox subjects like Kant, Cartesio, Bergson, and most of them! Like me, he thought truth is found in conversation!” Conosce GOBETTI e RADICE, da cui apprende l’idealismo di CROCE e GENTILE. Insegna a Genova. Antifascista e carcerato scuola di mistica fascista  Conosce ARMETTA. La sua vasta cultura, gli permise di vedere la continuità della filosofia antica romana classica e e, nell'ambito della filosofia italiana, l'unità delle opposte dialettiche nella legge vivente dello spirito e nel dinamismo della natura e della storia. Apprezzato storico della filosofia. La sua filosofia si può definire un neo-idealismo crociano e gentiliano, ma reinterpretatto alla luce dello spiritualismo. La sua filosofia supera lo storicismo e la dottrina crociana degli opposti e dei distinti, e si esprime nell'interpretazione della pratica come eticità storica.. La religione e la teosofia rappresentano la possibilità dello spirito attento da un lato alla concretezza dell'uomo e dall'altro all'ineffabilità. Lo spirito, anziché risolversi nella filosofia, colloca il proprio progresso in intima unità con il progresso della filosofia stessa: da un lato è esclusa la riduzione dello spirito ad atteggiamento pratico; dall'altro, le è conferito una distinta funzione teoretica.   sistemi della filosofia, Logica e Fisica accademia Ideologia; Metafisica, esperienza; Metalogica, filosofia dell'esperienza Sciacca La filosofia dello Stato nel Risorgimento, critica Conoscenza e metafisica filosofia morale dialettica del vero e del certo nella metafisica Ontologia storico-dialettica spirito La verità in dialogo la lingua come auto-analisi Bruno in Genova de Amatoriis. culto dell’eroe, gl’eroi, il culto degl’eroi, Niso ed Eurialo, Nicodemo soggetto, intersoggetivo spirito oggetivo spiriti intersoggetivi Apollo su Nicodemo. Grice: Caramella, ma secondo te Vico avrebbe gradito una chiacchierata al bar su Caritone e Melanippo, oppure preferiva il silenzio meditativo? Caramella: Grice, Vico era convinto che la verità nasce proprio dalla conversazione! Se avesse potuto, avrebbe ordinato un caffè doppio e avviato una disputa con Caritone, Melanippo e persino Kant, tra una battuta e l’altra. Grice: Hai ragione, caro amico! E forse avrebbe concluso che gli eroi non sono poi così diversi dai filosofi: entrambi cercano la verità, ma tra una battaglia e una discussione, finiscono sempre per chiedersi chi paga il conto. Caramella: Esatto, Grice! La filosofia è come una lunga tavolata: ognuno porta la sua storia, ma alla fine si brinda tutti insieme alla legge vivente dello spirito. E se c’è ancora una dialettica da risolvere, ci penserà il prossimo giro! G.: “Energie Nove,” then. S.: “New Energies,” yes. Which sounds better than “Palaeo-energies,” though in Oxford one often suspects the latter are what keep the place standing. G.: Gobetti, at any rate, had the good sense to prefer energies to fatigues. S.: And the better sense to recruit a schoolboy. G.: Caramella, yes. Born in 1902, which means that in 1919, when he begins collaborating, he is sixteen turning seventeen. S.: A tender age at which an English boy is expected to be improving his Greek or missing a catch at silly mid-on, not writing philosophical rassegne for a Turin review. G.: Quite. I realise that in later years I did a little more than cricketing, but certainly not at sixteen. S.: There is the continental difference again. In Italy a bright liceale is dragged out of conic sections and made to pronounce on war, faith, and the moral destiny of nations. G.: While in England he is dragged out of conic sections and made to pronounce on whether he played forward to that ball or merely had an opinion about it. S.: Exactly. But one must not exaggerate the anti-fascism of 1919. Fascism was then more larval than leonine. G.: Quite. One cannot be heroically anti something that has scarcely finished introducing itself. S.: Which is why Caramella’s early position is interestingly awkward. He is reviewing a war-book after the war, under Gobetti, who is himself not yet the later exile-saint but a very young editor with a republic in his head and a periodical in his hand. G.: A review of “Guerra e fede,” and a rassegna at that. S.: Let us pause over rassegna. You wanted the etymology. G.: I do. S.: From rassegnare, in the historical sense of reviewing, inspecting, mustering, drawing up in order. One hears the military parade in it, the review of troops, and also the survey. It is not merely a recensione; it is a taking-stock. G.: Splendid. A schoolboy writes a philosophical muster-roll. S.: Or a strategic survey. Which is apt enough, because the war is over and yet the vocabulary of mobilisation persists. G.: I have always maintained that one should never read a book before reviewing it. It prejudices a man. S.: Sidney would not have approved. G.: Sidney approved too much. But the principle is sound. If you read first, you become answerable to the author. If you review first, the author becomes answerable to you. S.: That is not criticism. That is pre-emptive sovereignty. G.: A useful form of sovereignty in youth. S.: And perhaps not wholly irrelevant to young Caramella. For what is he likely to have seen in such a book, writing in 1919 under Gobetti’s eye? G.: War, certainly, but not the old war. War moralised. War transmuted into a test of spirit. S.: Yes. Not campaign detail, but war as ethical furnace, as national ordeal, as something that reveals “faith” not in the ecclesiastical sense alone, but in a people’s inward seriousness. G.: Faith, then, is already ambiguous. Which should please us, since we are defended in the faith by our monarch and yet manage to remain mostly undefended in our metaphysics. S.: Quite. The sovereign is Defender of the Faith; but who is defending Caramella in Genoa? G.: Gobetti, apparently. S.: Not exactly defending him; rather deploying him. Gobetti appears to have recognised in the liceale a useful philosophical instrument. The editor wanted philosophy extracted directly onto the page. G.: A charmingly predatory notion. “Bring me the boy’s ideas before the university gets to him.” S.: Or before the war-books do. G.: Yet the war-book matters because it presents a set of themes likely to seize a young idealist: discipline, national destiny, moral seriousness, the relation between belief and action, the spiritualisation of politics. S.: Quite. A boy of sixteen, already inclined toward Croce, could read such things not yet as fascism, but as the intoxicating possibility that public life might have a soul. G.: Which is the sort of mistake philosophy makes before breakfast and spends twenty years correcting. S.: And Gobetti, being Gobetti, would have appreciated the intelligence while not wanting the intoxication to go unmanaged. G.: So his ambiguity is not hypocrisy but chronology. S.: Very good. In 1919 one may still be sorting interventionist moralism, democratic renewal, educational seriousness, nationalism, idealism, and the residues of wartime rhetoric without yet knowing which threads will harden into what. G.: Which means young Caramella’s review is not yet “for” or “against” in the later simplified way. S.: No. It is more likely a philosophical stock-taking of what war and faith had come to mean after the event: what sort of moral language survives peace, whether war has been made spiritually intelligible, whether “faith” is ethical stamina or political mystification. G.: And all this while still at the liceo. S.: Yes, which is the truly indecent part by English standards. G.: We ought to ask what liceo, though. S.: Unfortunately, we cannot name it securely from what we have. Genoa, classical studies, still a liceale in 1919. That much is firm enough. G.: So he is writing from a Genovese schoolbench into a Turin review. S.: Exactly. And the review itself is worth a word. “Energie Nove” sounds almost Bergsonian until one remembers that Gobetti is less interested in élan than in civic and moral renewal. G.: New energies against old exhaustion. S.: New energies against old liberal rhetoric too, perhaps. Or rather a new liberal seriousness. G.: You think Caramella was already liberal in any useful sense? S.: Not doctrinally perhaps, but temperamentally he is already being formed in a world where idealism, pedagogy, politics, and moral language are speaking to one another. G.: And then Radice enters later and pushes him more toward pedagogy in institutional form. S.: Yes. That later movement is easier to see: from early philosophical journalism under Gobetti toward more pedagogical and idealist work under Radice. One might say Gobetti lights the political-philosophical fuse; Radice gives it curricular shape. G.: So the schoolboy reviewer becomes the educational thinker. S.: And later the historian of philosophy and the writer of more recognisably “philosophical” books. G.: Let us list them, so as not to leave him in his adolescence forever. S.: Very well. Early periodical collaboration in 1919. Then pedagogical and idealist books from 1921 onward. Laurea in philosophy in 1923. Later major works around 1930, 1931, 1932. And your cherished “La verità in dialogo” comes later still, not as the beginning but as a mature turn. G.: Which is itself a very Italian fate. One begins in youth by reviewing war and faith and ends by finding truth in dialogue. S.: Better that than beginning in dialogue and ending in war. G.: Touché. But let us return once more to the title “Guerra e fede.” Why review it after the war? S.: Because after the war is when its real difficulty begins. During war, “faith” can still mean endurance under necessity. After war, one must ask what remains once urgency is gone. Was the moral language genuine, or merely mobilising? Does faith survive demobilisation, or was it war-fever under a nobler noun? G.: So for a young reviewer the interesting point is precisely the afterlife of wartime seriousness. S.: Exactly. The war is over, so what gives? What gives is the chance to test whether the rhetoric of sacrifice, discipline, and spiritual renewal can stand without shells in the background. G.: And the answer? S.: In Italy, unfortunately, it turned out that certain forms of moralised politics were all too durable. G.: Which brings us again to our own protected island absurdity. We are defended in the faith by the Crown, and nobody asks us to write a rassegna on it at seventeen. S.: No, we are merely expected to absorb the contradiction and behave well at chapel. G.: A less explicit education, but not necessarily a less theological one. S.: Precisely. Caramella’s Italy says the big words aloud. England keeps them as constitutional upholstery. G.: And Gobetti? S.: Gobetti, at this stage, seems to want from the boy not slogan but philosophical nerve. If he assigns him philosophy in “Energie Nove,” it is because he thinks the youngster can read a war-book not as patriotic wallpaper but as an index of deeper confusion or possibility. G.: Which is a great deal to expect from someone who ought still to be doing Euclid. S.: Italians are reckless with the young. Sometimes to excellent effect. G.: Whereas Oxford prefers to let the young become old before trusting them with general ideas. S.: And then calls the result maturity. G.: One further point. “Rassegna di filosofia” on a book about war and faith: that title itself means the philosophical content was to be extracted from the merely political packaging. S.: Very good. The schoolboy is being trained to isolate the conceptual core: faith as moral category, war as historical occasion, politics as spiritual test, perhaps the relation of action to conviction. G.: Which means Gobetti did not want journalism from Caramella, but philosophy under journalistic conditions. S.: Exactly. G.: And that is perhaps the best way to put the whole thing. A liceale in Genoa, sixteen in 1919, recruited by a young editor in Turin, asked to perform philosophical stock-taking on the moral language of war after the war has ended. S.: Yes. The beginning is almost indecently precocious. G.: And the end? S.: The end is that he becomes the sort of man whose mature works make the youthful rassegna look prophetic rather than accidental. G.: Which is insufferable. S.: To his enemies, yes. To historians, invaluable. G.: Then let us conclude. “Energie Nove” was not palaeo-energetic, Gobetti was not yet the martyred exile but already an editor with a talent for philosophical extraction, and Caramella, still nominally doing his schoolwork, was already being asked whether war had produced faith or merely vocabulary. S.: And he seems to have answered in the only way a future philosopher can: by turning the vocabulary into a problem. G.: Which is more than I did at sixteen. S.: At sixteen, my dear G., you were probably still defending the leg side. G.: Yes. But at least I knew when a thing was not cricket. S.: Caramella’s advantage was that by 1919, in Italy, nobody did.Caramella, Santino (1919). Contributo. Energie nuove: quindicinale polico-letterario. Torino.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caramello – Ossia: Grice e Caramello: la ragione conversazionale e l’implictatura conversazionale dell’interpretare.  Pietro Caramello (San Pietro di Morubio, Verona, Veneto).: la ragione conversazionale e l’implictatura conversazionale dell’interpretare. Grice and Pietro Caramello meet most directly on the terrain where reason, meaning, and interpretation intersect, yet they approach this terrain from complementary but distinct angles. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains how interpretation is constrained by rational expectations embedded in linguistic practice: what an utterance means, and what it implicates, depends on how a rational hearer reconstructs the speaker’s intentions under shared norms of intelligibility. Interpretation, for Grice, is thus governed by inferential order, cancellability, and responsiveness to context, grounded in the minimal structure that makes truth and falsity possible in conversation. Caramello, drawing deeply on Aquinas and the Aristotelian tradition of De interpretatione, radicalizes this insight by tracing conversational reason back to the elementary architecture of meaning itself: name and verb as the irreducible conditions of enunciation, without which neither truth nor falsity can yet arise. Where Grice shows how implicature operates once assertions are in play, Caramello shows why interpretation is already conversational at the most primitive level of signification, since even simple dictiones presuppose an order oriented toward enunciation and judgment. In this Thomistic frame, interpretation is not merely the recovery of speaker’s meaning but the activation of the intelligible structure that allows discourse to emerge at all. Grice’s modern pragmatics thus appears, in Caramello’s reading, as a continuation of a much older insight: that rational conversation begins as soon as meaning is articulated in name and verb, and that conversational implicature is a sophisticated descendant of the same interpretive reason that Aquinas already located at the heart of saying itself. Grice: “I love C. – he exemplifies all that I say about latitudinal and longitudinal unities of philosophy – AQUINO is a ‘great,’ and C. has dedicated his life to him!”  Si laurea a Torino. Insegna a Chieri. Studia Aquino. de enunciatione de partibus quid sit nomen et verbum. idem significat. in libro praedicamentorum de simplicibus dictum sit, ut hic rursum de nomine et verbo determinaretur; dicendum quod simplicium dictionum triplex secundum quod absolute significant simplices intellectus ad librum praedicamentorum secundum rationem prout sunt partes enunciationis et sic determinatur de eis et ideo traduntur sub ratione nominis et verbi de quorum ratione est quod significent quae pertinent ad rationem dictionum secundum quod constituunt enunciationem. considerantur quod ex eis constituitur ordo syllogisticus sub ratione terminorum.  orationis partibus de solo nomine et verbo determinet. de simplici enunciatione determinare intendit sufficit ut solas illas partes enunciationis pertractet ex quibus ex necessitate simplex oratio constat. Potest autem ex solo nomine et verbo simplex enunciatio fieri non autem ex aliis orationis partibus sine his et ideo sufficiens ei fuit de his duabus determinare vel potest dici quod sola nomina et verba sunt principales orationis partes sub nominibus enim comprehenduntur pronomina quæ etsi non nominant naturam personam tamen determinant et ideo loco nominum ponuntur: sub verbo vero participium quod consignificat tempus: autem falsitas veritasq; veritas fals. ceteri tasque. nomina igitur ipsa et verba consimilia sunt sine conpositione vel divisione intellectui, ut homo vel album, quando non additur aliquid; neque enim adhuc verum aut falsum est. huius autem signum hoc est: hircocervus enim significat aliquid, sed nondum verum vel falsum, si non vel esse vel non esse addatur, vel simpliciter vel secundum tempus. interpretare, peryermeneias blityri blythyri blithyri blythiri signativis significativis garalus garulus.  Grice: Caramello, se ti sei laureato a Torino e insegni a Chieri, allora spiegami in una frase perché, per Aquino, basta nome e verbo per far partire l’universo. Caramello: Perché senza nome e verbo non nasce nemmeno una semplice enunciazione—e senza enunciazione perfino la verità e la falsità restano in sala d’attesa. Grice: I love C.: vivi di Aquino come altri vivono di caffè, e trasformi “blityri blythyri” in una lezione con tanto di implicatura inclusa. Caramello: Grazie, ma se continui a lodarmi così, l’implicatura conversazionale è che vuoi che ti passi gli appunti… e quella sì che sarebbe “idem significat”. Caramello, Pietro (1920). Interpretare. San Pietro di Morubio, Veneto. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carando – Ossia: Grice e Carando: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Socrate.  Ennio Carando (Pettinengo, Biella, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di Socrate. Grice and Ennio Carando converge on the figure of Socrates as the paradigmatic agent of reason in conversation, but they draw different lessons from that convergence for understanding conversational meaning. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats Socratic dialogue as an exemplary case of how meaning is generated not by what is explicitly asserted, but by what a rational interlocutor is entitled to infer: Socrates’ questions work because they exploit shared expectations about honesty, relevance, and rational cooperation, thereby generating implicatures that force the interlocutor to revise beliefs or recognize inconsistencies. Conversational reason, for Grice, is thus inferential and normative, operating through the disciplined management of what is said versus what is meant. Carando, by contrast, reads Socratic conversation through a broader ethical and civic lens, informed by Platonic eros and by a tradition of civil metaphysics in which dialogue is a moral practice that binds individuals into a shared search for truth. His emphasis on the First Alcibiades and on Socratic love highlights conversation as an educative relationship, where implicature is less a technical inferential phenomenon than the lived pressure exerted by questioning on the soul of the interlocutor. While Grice explains how Socratic questioning functions pragmatically—how it produces meaning through rational expectations—Carando explains why it matters historically and ethically: conversational reason is a form of courage, resisted by power and authoritarianism, yet essential to the formation of civic and spiritual life. In this way, Grice offers the analytic mechanics of Socratic implicature, whereas Carando presents Socratic conversation itself as a model of reason in action, where meaning, love, and moral responsibility emerge together through dialogue. Grice: “I like C.; a typical Italian philosopher, got his ‘laurea,’ and attends literary salons! – There is a street named after him – whereas at Oxford the most we have is a “Logic lane!” Studia a Torino sotto JUVALTA. Anti-fascissta come MARTINETTI. Studia Spir. Insegna a La Spezia  metafisica civile A chi gli chiedeva di non avventurarsi in quella decisione così pericolosa rispondeva fermamente: "Molti dei miei allievi sono caduti: un giorno i loro genitori potrebbero rimproverarmi di non aver avuto il loro stesso coraggio". For centuries the First Alkibiades was respected as a major  dialogue in the Platonic corpus. It was considered by the Academy to be  the proper introduction to the study of Plato's dialogues, and actually  formed the core of the serious beginner's study of philosophy. amore platonico, l’amore socratico, l’implicatura di Socrate, filosofo socratico, Socrate, Alcibiade. Grice: Carando, senti, ma secondo te Socrate avrebbe preferito dialogare in piazza come a Torino o sorseggiando un caffè al salotto letterario? Carando: Grice, conoscendo Socrate, credo che avrebbe fatto domande sia al barista sia al filosofo, e alla fine il vero dilemma sarebbe stato: meglio l’espresso corto o lungo? Grice: Ah, allora capisco perché preferiva fare domande invece di dare risposte: così aveva sempre un pretesto per avere un’altra tazzina! Carando: Esattamente! E magari, tra una domanda e l’altra, invitava anche Alcibiade a discutere sulla vera natura dell’amore… e del caffè perfetto!Carando, Ennio (1927). Prima introduzione alla metafisica civile. Torino, Bocca.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carapelle – Ossia: Grice e Carapelle: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – lingua e metafilosofia – lingua-oggetto – meta-lingua – Peano – Tarski  bootstrap  Paolo Filiasi Carcano di Montaltino di Carapelle (Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – A productive comparison between Grice and Paolo Filiasi Carcano of Montaltino di Carapelle can be drawn around their shared commitment to reason-governed meaning as a practice embedded in language use, rather than as a mere formal calculus. Both treat meaning as normatively constrained by rationality, but they approach that constraint from different entry points. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning centers on the idea that what a speaker means is governed by practical reasoning under conditions of cooperation: implicatures arise because speakers assume their interlocutors recognize intentions structured by maxims of rational conduct. Reason, for Grice, is thus immanent to conversational practice, operating through shared expectations about relevance, truthfulness, sufficiency, and clarity. Carapelle, by contrast, approaches rational meaning through a stratified philosophy of language, moving from ordinary language to object-language and metalanguage, and integrating semantic analysis with phenomenological intentionality. His distinction between lingua-oggetto and meta-lingua, developed in dialogue with Peano and Tarski but not reducible to Carnap’s or Tarski’s hierarchies, is psychologically and methodologically grounded: he constructs a primary object-language whose terms denote objects or sets of objects and assert their sensible presence, then bootstraps higher-level reflection from within linguistic practice itself. Where Grice explains implicature as a rational inference from what is said to what is meant in context, Carapelle explains semantic order as a rational synchronization between language, experience, and a minimal metaphysical framework that preserves the unity of experience against fragmentation. Both resist purely formal or purely descriptive accounts of language: Grice by insisting that logic without pragmatics misses how meaning actually works in conversation, Carapelle by insisting that clarity without a metaphysical–phenomenological bridge undermines the coherence of meaning and science alike. In this sense, Carapelle’s conversational reason is less explicitly maxims-based than Grice’s, but more overtly metaphilosophical: reason governs meaning not only in dialogue between speakers, but also in the reflective movement between language levels, experience, and civilization. -- lingua e metafilosofia – lingua-oggetto – meta-lingua – Peano – Tarski  bootstrap. Grice: “I like C.; I cannot say he is an ultra-original philosopher, but I may – My favourite is actually a tract on him, on ‘meta-philosophy,’ or rather ‘language and metaphilosophy,’ which is what I’m all about! How philosophers misuse ‘believe,’ say – but C. has also philosophised on issues that seem very strange to Italians, like ‘logica e analisi,’ ‘semantica’ and ‘filosofia della lingua’ – brilliantly!”  fenomenologia, semantica, filosofia della lingua filosofia analitica. Studia a Napoli sotto ALIOTTA esamina attentamente la LINGUA ORDINARIA. la chiarezza non e sufficiente senza senso metafisico e senso anti-metafisica, mina l'unità dell'esperienza, alla Oakeshott -- che senza una cornice o una struttura metafisica in cui inserirsi rimarrebbe indefinitamente frammentata in percezioni fra loro irrelate. Sperimentalista, accetta del metodo una piena apertura all’esperienza fenomenologia INTENZIONALISTA intersoggetiva. Non si tratta di definire verità ma di sincronizzarsi col ritmo del metodo basato sull’esperienza fenomenologico, sussumendo i risultati sperimentali e integrandoli nel continuum di una struttura metafisica mediante il ponte dell'esperienza. Filosofia e civiltà La semantica, Semantics and Metaphysics Metodologia filosofica, una rivoluzione filosofica minore. LEsistenza ed alienazione, Scienza unificata, Unita della scienza, Analisi e forma logica Il concetto di Mathematics.” His hierarchy of lingue is not identical with Carnap's or Tarski's. Proceeding psychologically, I construct one lingua fulfilling the logical conditions for  the lingua of lowest type. This the lingua-oggetto lingua primaria. Where every word “denotes”  or “means” an object or set of such objects, and, when  used alone, asserts the sensible presence of the object, or of one of  the set of objects, which it denotes or means. In defining this  lingua, it is necessary to define denoting or meaning as  applied to object-words, to the words of this lingua. his formation was in advanced analysis or nearby Neapolitan mathematics, the likely “basic theorems” would not yet be exotic set-theoretic meta-results, but core results in real and complex analysis, differential equations, and functional or variational methods, stated rigorously and proved in epsilon-delta or operator-theoretic style. A few representative theorem-formalisms, in the sort of environment one might associate with serious early-1930s analysis, would be these. Bolzano-Weierstrass Every bounded sequence in Rn\mathbb{R}^nRn has a convergent subsequence. Formally: if (xk)k∈N⊂Rn(x_k)_{k\in\mathbb{N}}\subset \mathbb{R}^n(xk​)k∈N​⊂Rn and sup⁡k∥xk∥<∞,\sup_k \|x_k\|<\infty,ksup​∥xk​∥<∞, then there exists a subsequence (xkj)(x_{k_j})(xkj​​) and some x∈Rnx\in\mathbb{R}^nx∈Rn such that xkj→x.x_{k_j}\to x.xkj​​→x. Heine-Borel in Rn\mathbb{R}^nRn A subset K⊆RnK\subseteq \mathbb{R}^nK⊆Rn is compact iff it is closed and bounded. Formally: K compact   ⟺  K closed and bounded.K \text{ compact } \iff K \text{ closed and bounded.}K compact ⟺K closed and bounded. Uniform convergence preserving continuity If fn:X→Rf_n:X\to\mathbb{R}fn​:X→R are continuous and fn→ff_n\to ffn​→f uniformly on XXX, then fff is continuous. Formally: ∀ε>0 ∃N ∀n≥N ∀x∈X, ∣fn(x)−f(x)∣<ε\forall \varepsilon>0\ \exists N\ \forall n\ge N\ \forall x\in X,\ |f_n(x)-f(x)|<\varepsilon∀ε>0 ∃N ∀n≥N ∀x∈X, ∣fn​(x)−f(x)∣<ε and each fnf_nfn​ continuous implies fff continuous. Differentiation under the integral sign, one classical version If f(x,t)f(x,t)f(x,t) and ∂f/∂x\partial f/\partial x∂f/∂x are continuous on a rectangle [a,b]×[c,d] [a,b]\times[c,d][a,b]×[c,d], then F(x)=∫cdf(x,t) dtF(x)=\int_c^d f(x,t)\,dtF(x)=∫cd​f(x,t)dt is differentiable and F′(x)=∫cd∂f∂x(x,t) dt.F'(x)=\int_c^d \frac{\partial f}{\partial x}(x,t)\,dt.F′(x)=∫cd​∂x∂f​(x,t)dt. Cauchy existence theorem for ODEs, in a classical form For y′(x)=f(x,y),y(x0)=y0,y'(x)=f(x,y),\qquad y(x_0)=y_0,y′(x)=f(x,y),y(x0​)=y0​, if fff is continuous near (x0,y0)(x_0,y_0)(x0​,y0​), then there exists at least one local solution. With a Lipschitz condition in yyy, one gets uniqueness: if ∣f(x,y1)−f(x,y2)∣≤L∣y1−y2∣,|f(x,y_1)-f(x,y_2)|\le L|y_1-y_2|,∣f(x,y1​)−f(x,y2​)∣≤L∣y1​−y2​∣, then the solution is unique near x0x_0x0​. Cauchy integral formula, if complex analysis was in view If fff is holomorphic on a domain containing a simple closed contour γ\gammaγ and its interior, then for zzz inside γ\gammaγ, f(z)=12πi∫γf(ζ)ζ−z dζ.f(z)=\frac{1}{2\pi i}\int_\gamma \frac{f(\zeta)}{\zeta-z}\,d\zeta.f(z)=2πi1​∫γ​ζ−zf(ζ)​dζ. And more generally, f(n)(z)=n!2πi∫γf(ζ)(ζ−z)n+1 dζ.f^{(n)}(z)=\frac{n!}{2\pi i}\int_\gamma \frac{f(\zeta)}{(\zeta-z)^{n+1}}\,d\zeta.f(n)(z)=2πin!​∫γ​(ζ−z)n+1f(ζ)​dζ. Stone-Weierstrass would be a little later in atmosphere, but Weierstrass approximation itself is perfectly relevant Every continuous function on a closed interval can be uniformly approximated by polynomials: for every f∈C([a,b])f\in C([a,b])f∈C([a,b]) and every ε>0\varepsilon>0ε>0, there exists a polynomial ppp such that sup⁡x∈[a,b]∣f(x)−p(x)∣<ε.\sup_{x\in[a,b]}|f(x)-p(x)|<\varepsilon.x∈[a,b]sup​∣f(x)−p(x)∣<ε. Hilbert space projection theorem, if one is thinking of functional analysis nearby If HHH is a Hilbert space and M⊂HM\subset HM⊂H is a closed subspace, then for every x∈Hx\in Hx∈H there exists a unique m∈Mm\in Mm∈M such that ∥x−m∥=inf⁡y∈M∥x−y∥.\|x-m\|=\inf_{y\in M}\|x-y\|.∥x−m∥=y∈Minf​∥x−y∥. Equivalently, x=m+n,m∈M, n∈M⊥.x=m+n,\qquad m\in M,\ n\in M^\perp.x=m+n,m∈M, n∈M⊥. And if you want something strongly evocative of a Caccioppoli-style environment, a very simple analytic statement in PDE language would be: harmonic regularity, basic version If u∈C2(Ω)u\in C^2(\Omega)u∈C2(Ω) and Δu=0in Ω,\Delta u=0 \quad \text{in } \Omega,Δu=0in Ω, then uuu is real-analytic in Ω\OmegaΩ. Or an energy-type identity: if uuu is smooth with compact support, then ∫Ω∣∇u∣2 dx=−∫Ωu Δu dx\int_{\Omega} |\nabla u|^2\,dx = -\int_{\Omega} u\,\Delta u\,dx∫Ω​∣∇u∣2dx=−∫Ω​uΔudx up to the usual boundary conditions. That sort of formula is exactly the kind of bridge from “analysis” to later philosophical interest in structure, method, and formal levels that someone like him might have found attractive. G.: So your Neapolitan analyst, Paolo Filiasi Carcano di Montaltino di Carapelle, begins in mathematics and later wanders toward philosophy. S.: “Wanders” is unfair. He migrates. Mathematics first, philosophy later, and in between the sort of intellectual conflict people flatter by calling grave. G.: Grave conflicts are often just young men discovering that one discipline offers proofs and another offers careers. S.: Or that one offers theorems and the other offers Husserl. G.: Naples first, Rome later, civilisation later still. S.: By civilisation you mean Rome. G.: Naturally. Naples is genius; Rome is administration. One does analysis in Naples and metaphilosophy in the capital. S.: That is almost too neat. G.: We are allowed one neatness per conversation. S.: Very well. Let us begin with the actual mathematics, since that is what you wanted to rescue from the later semiotic mist. G.: Quite. If the man was formed in the mathematical environment of Naples in the early thirties, then one expects not Cartesian coordinates in the schoolboy sense, but serious analysis. S.: Which means compactness, convergence, existence theorems, integral formulas, perhaps differential equations, perhaps Hilbert space if one wants to sound modern. G.: Let us sound modern cautiously. Start with something sober: Bolzano–Weierstrass. S.: Every bounded sequence in Rn\mathbb{R}^nRn has a convergent subsequence. G.: In symbols: (xk)⊂Rn,sup⁡k∥xk∥<∞  ⟹  ∃(xkj), ∃x∈Rn such that xkj→x.(x_k)\subset \mathbb{R}^n,\quad \sup_k \|x_k\|<\infty \implies \exists (x_{k_j}),\, \exists x\in \mathbb{R}^n \text{ such that } x_{k_j}\to x.(xk​)⊂Rn,ksup​∥xk​∥<∞⟹∃(xkj​​),∃x∈Rn such that xkj​​→x. S.: Which is one of those theorems that feels almost moral. Do not despair of the whole sequence; a decent subsequence may yet emerge. G.: Oxford should have adopted it for undergraduates. “No, Mr So-and-so, you are not converging, but there may be a subsequence of your essays that does.” S.: That is the advantage of analysis over Literae Humaniores. It permits hope in fragments. G.: Heine–Borel next. S.: In Rn\mathbb{R}^nRn, K is compact   ⟺  K is closed and bounded.K \text{ is compact } \iff K \text{ is closed and bounded.}K is compact ⟺K is closed and bounded. G.: A theorem that sounds almost English in its prejudices: the good set is the set that stays within limits and does not leak. S.: Oxford colleges would approve. G.: Except Corpus, which would insist that boundedness is a moral category and closedness a social one. S.: And Merton would claim to have proved both earlier. G.: Now uniform convergence. S.: If fn→ff_n\to ffn​→f uniformly and each fnf_nfn​ is continuous, then fff is continuous. G.: That is, ∀ε>0 ∃N ∀n≥N ∀x∈X, ∣fn(x)−f(x)∣<ε\forall \varepsilon>0\ \exists N\ \forall n\ge N\ \forall x\in X,\ |f_n(x)-f(x)|<\varepsilon∀ε>0 ∃N ∀n≥N ∀x∈X, ∣fn​(x)−f(x)∣<ε and all fnf_nfn​ continuous, therefore fff continuous. S.: Which gives us a useful philosophical parable. Pointwise agreement is not enough; one needs a stronger discipline if continuity is to survive the limit. G.: Very good. Rather like conversation. Sporadic decency from a speaker does not guarantee a civil character; one wants uniformity. S.: You are trying to turn analysis into ethics again. G.: I deny it absolutely while doing it. S.: Differential equations, then. The Cauchy existence theorem. G.: Yes. For y′(x)=f(x,y),y(x0)=y0,y'(x)=f(x,y),\qquad y(x_0)=y_0,y′(x)=f(x,y),y(x0​)=y0​, continuity of fff gives existence of a local solution. S.: And a Lipschitz condition in yyy, ∣f(x,y1)−f(x,y2)∣≤L∣y1−y2∣,|f(x,y_1)-f(x,y_2)|\le L|y_1-y_2|,∣f(x,y1​)−f(x,y2​)∣≤L∣y1​−y2​∣, gives uniqueness. G.: Which is marvellous. Existence without uniqueness is one kind of world; uniqueness requires stronger manners. S.: That is almost certainly why philosophers like these theorems. They dramatise the difference between “something can be said” and “only one thing can be said.” G.: In Oxford, alas, existence is commoner than uniqueness. S.: Particularly in committee minutes. G.: Now complex analysis, to keep the conversation from becoming provincial. S.: Cauchy’s integral formula: f(z)=12πi∫γf(ζ)ζ−z dζf(z)=\frac{1}{2\pi i}\int_\gamma \frac{f(\zeta)}{\zeta-z}\,d\zetaf(z)=2πi1​∫γ​ζ−zf(ζ)​dζ for zzz inside γ\gammaγ, if fff is holomorphic in the relevant region. G.: And derivatives too: f(n)(z)=n!2πi∫γf(ζ)(ζ−z)n+1 dζ.f^{(n)}(z)=\frac{n!}{2\pi i}\int_\gamma \frac{f(\zeta)}{(\zeta-z)^{n+1}}\,d\zeta.f(n)(z)=2πin!​∫γ​(ζ−z)n+1f(ζ)​dζ. S.: Which is one of those pieces of mathematics that make philosophy feel verbally under-equipped. The entire interior behaviour of a function is determined by what happens on the boundary. G.: Another Oxford parable. The whole interior life of a don determined by the walls of his college. S.: Or by High Table. G.: Weierstrass approximation next. S.: For every f∈C([a,b])f\in C([a,b])f∈C([a,b]) and every ε>0\varepsilon>0ε>0, there exists a polynomial ppp such that sup⁡x∈[a,b]∣f(x)−p(x)∣<ε.\sup_{x\in[a,b]}|f(x)-p(x)|<\varepsilon.x∈[a,b]sup​∣f(x)−p(x)∣<ε. G.: Which means, roughly, that the continuous may be approximated by the algebraic. S.: And that elegance can be approached by something much more elementary than itself. G.: Oxford should have adored that too. One could approximate wisdom by a sequence of competent remarks. S.: But only uniformly, dear G. G.: Quite. No shabby pointwise substitutes. S.: Since you wanted something closer to a Caccioppoli atmosphere, one should say something about PDE and energy. G.: By all means. Harmonic functions first: Δu=0 in Ω  ⟹  u is real-analytic in Ω.\Delta u=0 \text{ in } \Omega \implies u \text{ is real-analytic in } \Omega.Δu=0 in Ω⟹u is real-analytic in Ω. S.: A lovely result. A merely twice-differentiable solution turns out to be vastly better behaved than one had any right to expect. G.: The sort of theorem that tempts metaphysicians. “Reality is kinder than the hypotheses.” S.: And an energy identity: ∫Ω∣∇u∣2 dx=−∫Ωu Δu dx\int_\Omega |\nabla u|^2\,dx = -\int_\Omega u\,\Delta u\,dx∫Ω​∣∇u∣2dx=−∫Ω​uΔudx under the usual boundary assumptions. G.: Which is the kind of formula one can imagine a serious Naples mathematician writing on a board without any desire to impress, because the impression is built into the equality. S.: Now tell me why this has anything to do with philosophy, and with Oxford in particular. G.: Gladly. Because the Oxford philosophical world of the thirties and forties knew mathematical logic well enough to be intimidated by it and not well enough to become analysts. S.: An accurate cruelty. G.: They knew Frege by report, Russell by inheritance, Whitehead by reputation, and Peano by notation. They could cope with ∀\forall∀ and ∃\exists∃, but they did not spend their afternoons proving compactness in Rn\mathbb{R}^nRn. S.: Austin certainly did not. G.: No. Austin preferred to discover entire continents inside the difference between “by mistake” and “mistakenly.” S.: Whereas our Carapelle—if we may continue your domestication of his name—would have begun in a faculty where theorem, proof, and formal exactness were not optional ornament. G.: Exactly. Which makes his later fascination with language, semantics, object-language and metalanguage quite intelligible. The mathematical formation teaches one that levels matter, that definitions matter, that not every well-formed sentence deserves metaphysical hospitality. S.: So Peano is the proper bridge. G.: Peano, yes. For the Oxford man, Peano is usually encountered through Russell and Whitehead, as one of the great simplifiers of notation. For the Italian mathematician, Peano is more nearly a local ancestor of exact expression. S.: And Tarski later gives the hierarchy of object-language and metalanguage with all the hygienic severity one expects. G.: Quite. But your Carapelle apparently resists being merely Tarskian. He wants language-levels, yes, but with phenomenological and metaphysical bridgework, not only semantic sanitation. S.: Which is very Italian. One builds the formal ladder, then refuses to leave experience behind. G.: Unlike some analysts in England, who would happily leave experience in the porter’s lodge if only the symbolism were clear enough. S.: But one should be fair to Oxford. Literae Humaniores was never meant to produce analysts in the Neapolitan sense. G.: Quite. It produced readers of Aristotle, cautious Kantians, and later men who could debate sense-data for two hours without once mentioning a Lipschitz condition. S.: That is a deficiency, but a distinguished one. G.: So if G. and S. in 1939 had been discussing Carapelle’s likely mathematical background, they would have seen this much: that advanced analysis teaches something philosophy also wants, though usually in a less disciplined way. It teaches how local assumptions generate global consequences; how approximation works; how a weak notion differs from a strong one; how existence differs from uniqueness; how continuity can fail if convergence is too lax; and how boundaries govern interiors. S.: Which is already enough metaphysics for one afternoon. G.: Add Hilbert space, then, for extravagance. S.: Very well. If HHH is a Hilbert space and M⊂HM\subset HM⊂H is a closed subspace, then every x∈Hx\in Hx∈H has a unique decomposition x=m+n,m∈M, n∈M⊥.x=m+n,\qquad m\in M,\ n\in M^\perp.x=m+n,m∈M, n∈M⊥. G.: Or equivalently mmm is the unique point of MMM minimizing distance to xxx. S.: A theorem the philosophers might like because it formalises the fantasy that every confusion has a nearest intelligible approximation. G.: Or that every mind may be decomposed into what belongs to a framework and what stands orthogonal to it. S.: You are impossible. G.: Not impossible. Merely non-unique without further hypotheses. S.: There is the philosopher again. G.: Let us compare this with logical form. Russell and Whitehead would have recognised the aspiration toward exactness, toward regimented expression, toward the decomposition of misleading ordinary sentences into something formally cleaner. S.: Yes, but not the analytic culture of compactness and convergence as lived mathematics. G.: Precisely. In logic one often thinks in terms of validity, notation, formal structure. In analysis one also thinks in terms of limit, approximation, continuity, singularity, regularity. The latter vocabulary is extraordinarily fertile philosophically, and yet Oxford did not always harvest it. S.: Because Oxford preferred examples to epsilon-delta. G.: Yes, and examples are cheaper than epsilon-delta. But they also spoil more easily. S.: So perhaps our Carapelle’s later philosophy of language and metaphilosophy gained from beginning among theorems where proof constrains one’s freedom before metaphilosophy enlarges it again. G.: That is nicely put. S.: Thank you. It was nearly analysis. G.: And so the punchline is this: the man may have gone from Naples to Rome, from mathematics to language, from analysis to metaphilosophy—but if he learned his first serious habits in analysis, he learned something Oxford men spent years trying to rediscover by subtler and less efficient means. S.: Namely? G.: That if you do not know the difference between existence, uniqueness, continuity, approximation, and mere hopeful symbolism, you are not yet doing philosophy, only decorating it.Grice: Carapelle, devo confessarti che il tuo approccio alla lingua e alla metafilosofia è quanto mai intrigante! Sai, a Oxford ci dibattiamo senza fine su cosa realmente significhi "credere": ma tu, con la tua analisi della lingua-oggetto e della meta-lingua, sembri andare dritto al cuore della questione. Come ti è venuta questa passione così metodica per la semantica e la fenomenologia? Carapelle: Grice, è un onore sentirlo da te! La mia curiosità nasce proprio dall’osservazione della lingua ordinaria: mi affascina vedere come il senso metafisico spesso si intrecci con quello anti-metafisico, e come l’esperienza individuale abbia bisogno di una struttura per non frammentarsi. La chiarezza, senza un ponte tra esperimento e cornice filosofica, rischia di perdersi, non trovi? Grice: Assolutamente, caro amico! Quello che apprezzo è la tua attenzione al ritmo del metodo, e la volontà di integrare i risultati sperimentali in una trama più profonda. E mi colpisce come tu, pur studiando a Napoli sotto Aliotta, riesca a portare un’aria internazionale nella filosofia italiana, quasi un "bootstrap" continuo tra semantica, filosofia della lingua e fenomenologia intenzionalista. Carapelle: E tu, Grice, con la tua implicatura conversazionale, hai insegnato a tutti che il significato non sta solo nelle parole, ma nei contesti e nei rapporti intersoggettivi. Forse la nostra vera rivoluzione filosofica è riuscire a sincronizzare la ricerca linguistica con la struttura dell’esperienza, senza dimenticare che ogni lingua, anche la più logica, ha dietro di sé il battito della civiltà e della storia. Carapelle, Paolo Filiasi Carcano di Montaltino di (1932). Dissertazione. Facoltà di Scienze Matematiche, Fisiche e Naturali, Napoli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carbonara – Ossia: Grice e Carbonara – la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale l’esperienza e la prassi CICERONE e il pratico.  Cleto Carbonara (Potenza, Basilicata): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale l’esperienza e la prassi CICERONE e il pratico. A comparison between Grice and Cleto Carbonara brings into focus a shared but differently articulated account of reason-governed meaning as rooted in lived practice rather than abstract formalism. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning takes rationality to be operative within interaction itself: speakers mean what they mean by intending their utterances to be taken as reasons by others, and conversational implicatures arise through practical inference under conditions of cooperative exchange. Carbonara’s emphasis, by contrast, lies on the continuity between experience and prassi, drawing on a Ciceronian understanding of philosophy as inseparable from action and mutual benefit. Educated in Naples under Aliotta, Carbonara criticizes both idealist reflexivism, especially Gentile’s attempt to give concreteness to the abstract act, and overly introspective accounts of experience; instead he foregrounds the relation between experience and concept, reality and form, as a synthesis in which conscious life always already bears the imprint of reason because it is oriented toward doing, influencing, and being influenced. Where Grice prefers a functionalist philosophical psychology, with experiential input and behavioral output sufficient to explain communication without heavy reliance on “reflection,” Carbonara frames rational meaning as emerging from practical engagement with others, anti-solipsistic by structure and ethical as well as epistemic in scope. Grice’s conversational reason operates through implicature as a calculable transition from what is said to what is meant, while Carbonara’s operates through the normativity of shared practice, in which experience finds sense only insofar as it enters a circuit of reciprocal action. Both thus reject a purely contemplative model of meaning: for Grice, meaning is governed by rational expectations in use; for Carbonara, it is governed by reason insofar as experience is always already practical, historical, and directed toward others. Grice: “I like C.; my favourite of his tracts are one on ‘del bello,’ – another one on ‘dissegno per una filosofia critica dell’esperienza pura: immediatezza e reflessione’ – but mostly his ‘esperienza e prassi,’ which fits nicely with my functionalist method in philosophical psychology: there is input (esperienza), but there is ‘prassi,’ the behavioural output --; I would prefer this to the tract on the ‘filossofia critica’ since I’m not sure we need ‘reflexion’ to explain, say, communication – not at least in the way C. does use ‘reflessione.’”  Si laurea a Napoli sotto ALIOTTA. Insegna a Napoli.  Critica dell'esperienza pura. Idealista ne mette in rilievo il tentativo fallito di GENTILE di dare concretezza all’astratto. Nell'attualismo, il ritorno all’atto, al fatto, si risolve infatti nell'atto. Il problema anda esaminato riportandolo al problema del rapporto tra esperienza e concetto, realtà e concetto così come s’affrontata dalla critica nella SINTESI A PRIORI dove convivono forma segnante e contenuto segnato per cui la coscienza è per un verso forma, contenitore segnante di un contenuto segnato storico e per un altro *coincide* col suo contenuto segnato in quanto il contenuto segnato non ha realtà al di fuori della forma della coscienza porti sul  viso, per quanto rozzamente espressa, l’impronta della RAGIONE, non  esiste invano. Ma io non ti conosco, nè tu conosci me. Quanto è corto che ambedue siamo chiamati a esser buoni e a divenire sempre migliori, tanto è certo che verrà il giorno, e sia pure  tra milioni e bilioni d’ anni, verrà il giorno,  dico, in cui trascinerò anche te nella mia sfera d’azione, in cui potrò  beneficarti e ricevere benefizi da te, in cui anche il tuo cuore sarà  avvinto al mio coi viucoli, i più belli, di un libero scambio di reciproche azioni esperienza prattica dull title: “l’empirismo come filosofia dell’esperienza”! – i periti conversazionale esperienza dell’altro, persona e persone anti-solipsismo sperimento esperire perito perizia per fare, fahren altri, altro, l’altro, l’altri, pratica morale diritto pratico ed aletico. G.: Carbonara, 1926, L’idealismo di O. Hamelin. Naples, of course. S.: Where else should a young man of twenty-one publish a book on a French idealist if not in Naples? It would be almost vulgar to do it in a village. G.: Potenza is not exactly the Sorbonne. S.: Potenza is in Basilicata. Naples is where one goes to become less provincial by way of another province. G.: Same thing, really. Merely a river or two in between and a great increase in self-confidence. S.: You are unjust. Naples, unlike Oxford, admits the possibility that a philosophy student might publish before he is house-trained. G.: That is precisely my complaint. Twenty-one, or twenty-two at most, and already issuing a book on Hamelin. One feels Aliotta’s hand in it as strongly as one feels a headmaster behind a school prize. S.: Which is not to say that Carbonara is merely parroting a master. Only that young men do not spontaneously wake and decide the nation needs a pamphlet on Octave Hamelin. G.: Unless the nation is very bored. S.: Or the canon is too narrow. Aliotta’s whole use in Naples was that he was not Croce and not Gentile. G.: Ah yes, the old Neapolitan ambition: to be neither of the two people everyone in Italy is forced to discuss. S.: A noble ambition, in its way. And Hamelin helps. He gives you a French, rational, systematic, non-Hegelian, non-Bradleyan idealism. G.: I refuse the distinction. Idealism is idealism. Bradley in broadcloth, Hamelin in French cuffs. S.: No, that is exactly the point at issue. Hamelin is not Bradley in translation. G.: Defend him, then. S.: Gladly. Bradley’s idealism is suspicious of relations because they threaten to dissolve the Absolute into a bad plurality. Hamelin’s idealism builds from relations upward. The relation is not a scandal but a principle of construction. G.: So already less English. S.: Infinitely less English. Bradley uses contradiction to make finite determinations look metaphysically compromised. Hamelin uses conceptual articulation to derive structures. One is apocalyptic; the other architectural. G.: Good. “Apocalyptic” and “architectural.” I shall steal both. S.: Hamelin is also closer to a rationalist dialectic of categories than to the mistier monism the English associate with “the idealists.” G.: You mean he is Gallic. S.: Precisely. Gallic idealism. Which is why the title matters: L’idealismo di O. Hamelin. Carbonara is not writing on Plato’s forms, nor on the old schoolroom sense in which “idealism” means “thinking noble thoughts.” He is placing Hamelin inside a living French philosophical map. G.: And doing so from Naples, in 1926, at twenty-one. S.: Which sounds to you suspiciously precocious. G.: It sounds to me like a university circulation piece with a book-cover. S.: It probably was. But that is not an insult. Many good books begin as student books and only later become books-books. G.: Then what was Hamelin doing with himself before Carbonara canonised him in Naples? S.: Teaching, mostly. Hamelin was active academically in the 1880s, agrégé in 1883, lycée first, Bordeaux soon after, and only much later the celebrated 1907 thesis-book. G.: So he was “playing,” as they now say, in Bordeaux before entering the Parisian stage. S.: Exactly. Bordeaux first, Sorbonne late. That is part of the charm. G.: Provincial France becomes central France, and provincial Italy notices. S.: Naples noticed, yes. Oxford usually notices only after Paris has noticed. G.: La Sorbonne at least compares with Oxford. Bordeaux scarcely does. S.: For a young Neapolitan, that was probably part of the appeal. Hamelin is major enough to matter, but not so over-consecrated as to be unusable. G.: And Carbonara’s title says idealismo. Why idealismo? Why not filosofia della rappresentazione, or razionalismo, or some other term less compromised by Bradley and the tea-table? S.: Because “idealism” in the Italian debate was already a battlefield word. To write on Hamelin under that heading is to claim that idealism need not mean Croce, need not mean Gentile, and need certainly not mean Bradley. G.: You make Naples sound almost strategic. S.: It was strategic. Aliotta’s whole point was that the canon could be widened without surrendering to positivist stupidity. G.: So Hamelin becomes an imported ally. S.: Precisely. A French ally against an Italian duopoly. G.: And then Brunschvicg later, if one wants the next phase. S.: Yes. Hamelin first visible in 1926, Brunschvicg more developed later. One can almost see the syllabus expanding against the reigning orthodoxy. G.: Let us have the French, then. You promised me Hamelin at the centre of things. S.: Very well. One line you liked was: “Le processus par lequel nous nous sommes élevés de la relation à la finalité n’est pas autre chose que les premières articulations d’une preuve ontologique.” G.: Yes, splendidly French. I do not admire it, but I admire its audacity. S.: Let us parse it. “The process by which we have raised ourselves from relation to finality is nothing other than the first articulations of an ontological proof.” G.: Which is exactly the sort of sentence that makes an Englishman look for aspirin. S.: But not a Bradleyan sentence. Bradley would not talk like that. Hamelin is constructing, articulating, deriving. There is movement from relation to finality. It is systematic, not merely denunciatory. G.: True. Bradley excels in making one regret one’s finite predications. Hamelin seems bent on organising them. S.: There is your difference again: Bradley dissolves; Hamelin composes. G.: And the other line? S.: The summary you pressed me for: reality understood through representation, with personality emerging as the most concrete term rather than being dismissed as mere appearance. That is less a single slogan than the trajectory of the Essai. G.: So he moves toward personality. S.: Yes, and that matters for Carbonara. If one begins with experience and concept, one may end not in a faceless absolute but in something more like concrete spiritual life. G.: Which already makes him more attractive to a young Neapolitan than old English fog. S.: And less alien to a post-Crocean environment trying to save spirit from becoming rhetoric. G.: Hardie at Corpus would still not thank me for calling this “idealism.” S.: Hardie would probably insist on distinctions, which is why you should have told him. But he would also have seen that this is not Plato’s idealism, nor Berkeley’s, nor Bradley’s. G.: So what is it? S.: A French rational idealism of categories, representation, relation, and concrete personality. G.: Too long for a title. S.: That is why Carbonara called it idealismo. G.: There is a vulgar elegance in that. S.: And a strategic one. The word does work in the Italian setting. It says: there are other idealisms available. G.: You keep bringing everything back to Naples. S.: Because Naples is where a boy from Potenza became a young philosopher with a publisher. G.: Potenza, Naples, same thing. S.: No, that is exactly what Neapolitans say when they wish to absorb the south into their own weather. G.: I am only trying to save cartography for philosophy. S.: Philosophy is what destroys cartography by turning cities into styles. G.: Then Bordeaux is a style, the Sorbonne a consecration, Naples an import office, and Oxford a refusal disguised as a curriculum. S.: Very good. Literae Humaniores would rather have Plato in Greek than Hamelin in French. G.: Naturally. French makes philosophy sound too recent. S.: And too deliberate. G.: Yet one can imagine Carbonara, book in hand, thinking: if Hamelin may be serious in France, then perhaps Naples need not forever choose between Croce and Gentile. S.: Exactly. And that is why a twenty-one-year-old could publish on him. The point was not sales. The point was alignment. G.: A university book for university circulation, then. S.: Yes. A little book saying, in effect, “we need not inherit only the local fathers.” G.: And later Brunschvicg comes to widen the breach. S.: Or deepen the corridor. G.: So in the end Aliotta gets him into Hamelin, Hamelin gets him away from the Italian duopoly, and Carbonara gets a book out before most English undergraduates have decided whether Bradley is dead enough to ignore. S.: A perfect summary. G.: I still dislike the title. S.: Because you dislike idealism. G.: Because I distrust any philosopher who advertises himself under a noun ending in -ism. S.: Yet Oxford is full of them. G.: Yes, but ours at least have bad weather to excuse them. S.: Naples had better weather and still produced Carbonara on Hamelin. That is a stronger commitment. G.: Then let us end fairly. Hamelin is not Bradley because he builds with relations instead of dissolving them, because he moves toward finality and personality instead of simply indicting finite appearance, and because French idealism wears its system with less gloom. S.: And Carbonara, at twenty-one or twenty-two, was impertinent enough to notice. G.: Which may be the only proper age at which to publish a first book on idealism. S.: Before one has learned enough to be embarrassed by it. G.: Precisely.Grice: Carbonara, spiegami una cosa: secondo te, quando Cicerone parlava di esperienza pratica, intendeva che anche la filosofia, prima o poi, deve scendere dalla cattedra e mettere le mani in past? Carbonara: Grice, credimi, se Cicerone fosse venuto a Napoli, si sarebbe subito accorto che qui la teoria serve solo se trova una buona prassi, come una pizza senza mozzarella non può chiamarsi vera pizza! Grice: Quindi tu dici che il filosofo deve essere un po’ artigiano, un po’ negoziante: esperienza all’entrata, prassi all’uscita, senza troppa riflessione in mezzo? Carbonara: Esatto! Se ci perdiamo troppo nella riflessione, rischiamo che la pratica si raffreddi come il caffè lasciato sul banco. Meglio sperimentare e beneficiare insieme, in un libero scambio di azioni: chi fa, impara e chi impara, magari, un giorno farà anche ridere! Carbonara, Cleto (1926). L’idealismo di Hamelin. Napoli: Parrella

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carbone – Ossia: Grice e Carbone: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatrua conversazionale. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carboni – Ossia: Grice e Carboni: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale disegno dal vivo, disgeno del nudo dal vero, disegno dal vero, disegno del nudo dal vero -- disegno dall’antico, desegno dalla natura -- drawn from life -- tratto dalla vita – royal academy –drawn from the antique. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caravaggi – Ossia: Grice e Caravaggi: la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale. Insegna a Padova, Giovanni Benedetto da Caravaggio Caravaggi (Crema, Cremona, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e  l’implicatura conversazionale. Seen from the perspective of Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning, Giovanni Benedetto Caravaggi can be treated not as an anachronistic anticipator but as a historically resonant contrast. Grice conceives meaning as emerging from rationally accountable intentions: what a speaker means depends on the audience’s recognition of those intentions under shared norms of cooperation, relevance, and justification. Caravaggi, by contrast, belongs to an early‑modern humanist world in which reason is exercised through learned disciplines, institutional authority, and contemplative practice rather than through an explicit theory of communicative intention. As a Padua‑trained philosopher and physician, later rector and lector, Caravaggi embodies a model of rationality grounded in scholarly mediation of texts, inventories, and doctrines, where understanding is stabilized by offices, manuscripts, and visual representation, such as his portrait as a learned reader paused in thought. Grice’s originality lies in shifting the locus of rationality from institutions and learned habits to the micro‑structure of everyday interaction: reason is no longer merely something scholars possess, but something conversational agents display and negotiate through implicature. The imagined dialogue between Grice and Caravaggi thus stages a contrast between two economies of reason: one where rational meaning is secured by learning, status, and inscription, and another where it is dynamically generated and tested in conversation itself, leaving no physical trace beyond what interlocutors can rationally recover from what was said. Insegna a Padova, di cui divenne in seguito rettore. È ritratto in un dipinto di Busi detto il Cariani, allievo del Giorgione. L'iscrizione e lo stemma presenti sulla tenda a destra attestano che il personaggio raffigurato è Giovanni Benedetto Caravaggi, filosofo e medico appartenente a una nobile famiglia di Crema. Laureatosi nell'università di Padova e divenutone lettore e rettore, Caravaggi era fratello di Giovanni Antonio, anch'egli eternato in un ritratto del Cariani (Ottawa, National Gallery of Art). E' probabile che il ritratto della Carrara origini dalle proprietà della famiglia Caravaggi a Crema, visto che, come ricorda il Piccinelli, postillando le Vite di F. M. Tassi, Lochis acquistò l'opera proprio a Crema (Bassi Rathgeb). Un'esecuzione cremasca sarebbe anche confermata dal fatto che Cariani esegui alcune opere in quella città ed è quindi probabile che in questo stesso periodo cada anche il ritratto in questione. Il pittore, nativo di Fuipiano al Brembo, si era trasferito precocemente a Venezia dove si formò nell'orbita di Bellini e Giorgione e dove compì la maggior parte della sua carriera. Tornò a Bergamo con incursioni a Crema per adempiere ad alcuni incarichi, quale probabilmente quello relativo al nostro ritratto, ed ebbe modo di sfoggiare il suo elegante linguaggio giorgionesco, come emerge dal paesaggio montuoso oltre la tenda, rischiarato da un cielo al tramonto dai toni rosati e cerulei. Risalente a Tiziano è invece l'impostazione del ritratto dalla posa ruotata di tre quarti e dalla sapiente costruzione prospettica, che ha i suoi punti di forza nel braccio sinistro in scorcio e nel realistico volume appoggiato sul tavolo. La posa naturale dello studioso, che pare interrompersi in meditazione dalla lettura del ponderoso volume, è anch'essa un portato di Tiziano, i cui ritratti sono liberi e naturali, lontani da schemi precostituiti. Curiosa la presenza di un'altra firma sotto la cornice scura dipinta, che il recente restauro  ha appurato essere contestuale alla realizzazione dell'opera. Grice: Caravaggi, mi dica, è più impegnativo insegnare filosofia a Padova o posare per un ritratto del Cariani con il braccio in scorcio? Caravaggi: Grice, le confesso che la meditazione davanti a un volume pesante è più difficile che restare immobili mentre il pittore sistema il cielo rosa alle mie spalle! Ma almeno in entrambe le situazioni si rischia di diventare immortali. Grice: Immortali sì, ma preferirei la nobiltà di Crema a quella di una cornice scura: la conversazione, almeno, non lascia tracce di restauro sotto la firma! Caravaggi: E allora, caro Grice, facciamo che la nostra implicatura conversazionale resti impressa tra i monti e il tramonto: se non altro, sarà più facile da interpretare che una posa ruotata di tre quarti! Caravaggi, Giovanni Benedetto (1503). Inventario della bibliteca di Ruffinoni. Padova.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Carchia: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’ars amandi – signi d’amore – erotico del bello – comunicazione degl’amanti primitive. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cardano – Ossia: Grice e Cardano: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del valore civico di Melanippo -- Caritone -- the tasteful Milanese maschi – prospero.  Gerolamo Cardano (Pettinengo, Biella, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del valore civico di Melanippo -- Caritone -- the tasteful Milanese maschi – prospero. A productive way to compare Gerolamo Cardano and H. P. Grice on reason‑governed conversational meaning is to see Cardano as providing an early, pre‑modern intuition of what Grice later formalizes with analytic precision. Cardano’s thought, especially as it emerges in De subtilitate (1543), treats rational interaction not as a deterministic calculus but as a regulated play in which probability, suspension of judgment, and civic prudence all coexist. His work on aleae, probability, and the binomial theorem does not merely concern games of chance; it articulates an epistemic posture in which agents must navigate uncertainty by inferring more than is explicitly given, balancing risk, taste, and social consequence. In this sense, Cardano’s pratica of gioco d’azzardo becomes an analogue for conversation: not arbitrary chaos, but a structured field in which rational actors infer intention, value, and civic meaning beyond literal moves. Grice’s theory of conversational implicature can be read as the modern logical heir to this insight. Where Cardano speaks in terms of fortuna, suspension (the cardanic lock), and probabilistic foresight, Grice recasts the same terrain in terms of reason, intention-recognition, and cooperative norms. Both reject the idea that meaning is exhausted by explicit content; both understand rationality as operative in the gap between saying and meaning. Cardano’s civic and anthropological concerns—the value of taste, masculinity, prosperity, dreaming, and the immortality of the soul whose mode remains opaque—anticipate Grice’s insistence that rational conversation is not mechanical but human, risk‑laden, and norm‑governed. If Cardano invents, in practice, the implicature “with a lock” that allows movement without collapse, Grice supplies its modern theory: conversation as a rational game in which we wager on others’ reasons, suspend judgment strategically, and usually—though not always—win understanding. Grice: “I’m sure C. does not mean chance by aleae! It’s a Roman notion, not an Arabic one! C. is a fascinating philosopher, but then so is I [sic]! My favourite philosophical topic by C. is what he calls, well, his Italian translators call – recall that Italian philosophy is written in the ‘learned’! gioco d’azzardo, ludo alaea – which is what conversation is – what is conversation is not a game of azzardo? But C. also refutes all that Malcolm says about dreaming, never mind Freud. Italians are obsessed with a male sleeping: Rinaldo, Tasso, Botticelli (“sleeping Mars”), not to mention the search for the Etruscan equivalent to oneiron, the god. One of my most precious souvenirs is a little medal of C.: not so much for his very Roman nose, charming as it is, but for the backside, representing Oneiron among the ladies!” Fondat a probabilità, coefficiente binomiale e teorema binomiale, inventa l’implicatura e a serratura, la sospensione cardanicache permette il moto liber delle bussole nautiche ed è alla base del giroscopioe del giunto cardanico. Animos scio esse immortales, modum nescio. So che l'anima è immortale, ma non ho capito come funzioni la cosa. VINCI. Dopo che mia madre tenta senza risultato dei preparati per abortire, vengo alla luce. Come morto, infatti, sono nato, anzi sono stato strappato al suo grembo, con i capelli neri e ricciuti. Contrasse la peste dalla sua balia, e fu allevato da altre nutrici. Studia a Pavia a temporum  ratione et divisionibus  mathematicis quxlitis animalium plantarum anima De vfu hominum, et dignotione eorum tum cura Sc errore. Masculinity machio maschile Prospero De signo de Casis, signis, ac locis Morborum Opera analytic index he philosophises about almost everything including logic dialettica metafisica psicologia anima fisionomia same-sex at 14 a puer becomes an adolescent his oeuvre examined in masculinity studies He claims that Bolognese males are tasteful possibly paranoid tuore di Silvestri tutee. Grice: Cardano, tu che hai inventato il giunto cardanico e il teorema binomiale, dimmi: è più difficile calcolare la probabilità in una partita a carte o capire il valore civico di un Milanese maschio? Cardano: Grice, ti confesso che tra Melanippo e Caritone c’è più gusto a giocare con le implicature che con le aleae. Però, la vera sfida civica sta nel prosperare senza mai perdere il sorriso – soprattutto quando l’anima è immortale ma nessuno sa come funziona! Grice: Allora la conversazione è davvero come un gioco d’azzardo: si rischia, si scommette, si sospende il giudizio come la tua serratura, e a volte si vince pure una medaglia col dio del sogno sul retro! Cardano: Grice, meno male che almeno nei sogni nessuno ci chiede il coefficiente binomiale per dormire bene. E comunque, tra il sonno di Rinaldo e il naso romano, la filosofia resta il modo migliore per conversare con gusto – anche se a volte si sbaglia porta! Cardano, Gerolamo (1543). De subtilitate. Norimberga: Petreius.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cardano – Ossia: Grice e Cardano: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Pietro Cardano (Lumellogno, Novara, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. A comparison between H. P. Grice and Pietro Lombardo (often called Peter of Lombardy) brings out a deep structural affinity in their treatment of meaning as reason‑governed and interpretation‑dependent, even though they work in radically different intellectual contexts. Pietro Lombardo’s Libro delle Sentenze aims to regulate doctrinal discourse by distinguishing res (things) from signa (signs), arguing that apparent contradictions among authoritative texts arise not from reality itself but from divergent modes of exegesis. Meaning, for Lombardo, is therefore governed by rational interpretation within a community bound by shared authorities and norms; doctrinal understanding advances through dialectical sensitivity to what is said, how it is said, and how it is meant. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning can be seen as a secular, analytic analogue of this scholastic insight: conversational implicature arises not from the literal content of utterances (the modern counterpart of res) but from the inferential practices governing signa in cooperation with rational expectations about relevance, authority, and purpose. Just as Lombardo harmonizes conflicting auctoritates by appealing to interpretive reason rather than ontological discord, Grice explains how speakers routinely convey more than they say by relying on shared norms of rational conduct in conversation. Both thinkers reject semantic impoverishment: Lombardo resists a flat literalism that would multiply doctrinal contradictions, while Grice resists a semantics that ignores what rational agents intend their interlocutors to recognize. In this sense, Lombardo’s medieval hermeneutics anticipates Grice’s conversational psychology: meaning is not mechanically attached to words, but emerges from reasoned interpretation governed by communal norms, whether applied to theological sentences in Paris or ordinary conversation in modern philosophy. Grice: “I like C.! If William was called Ockham, I should be called Harborne, and Petrus Lombardia! It is strange that he was called Piero da Lombardia; it would be like ‘a lad from shropshire.’ ‘Lombardia,’ unlike Ockham, ain’t a townbut a full regionIt’s different with ‘veneto,’ which is toponymic and metonymic for Venice. But if Milano was the main ever settlement in Lombardia this would be “Peter, the one from Milan. It’s only natural that he was Pietro Ca. – after the city in Lombardy, C. Plus, the implicature that he went by “Peter of Lombardy” having been born in Piemonte, means that the locals never saw him as one of their own!”” Studia a Bologna. ALIGHIERI  lo nomina in Paradiso. Libro delle Sentenze. Pelll'ampiezza delle fonti e la sua originalità, divenne il testo di riferimento. Tenta d’armonizzare la disparità e le divergenze che la pluralità delle auctoritates aveva generato, dando luogo ad un certo scompiglio ermeneutico e dottrinale. Riprendendo la classica distinzione agostiniana tra signa e res, afferma che il motivo delle divergenze non appartiene alla natura delle cose, bensì all’esegesi. Tratta di Dio, sua natura e suoi attributi; la la creazione degl’angeli, del mondo e dell'uomo, l'incarnazione cristica e della promessa della grazia; e  sacramenti. Mantiene la distinzione tra res, le prime tre parti, e signa, l'ultima. Lo stile snoda l'esposizione delle sentenze coll'eleganza dialettica all’AOSTA mantenendosi aderente al rispetto delle varie auctoritates anche riguardo o stile letterario col quale egli opera una mimesi. Criticato sin dalla sua prima uscita per via del nichilismo cristologico. Descrive infatti l'autorità pontificia come fondamentale pell’insegnamento. Autore anche di ventinove Sermones, mentre sicuramente spurie sono altre opere a lui di tempo in tempo attribuite.Grice, “Philosophical psychology in the commentaries of Pietro Lombardo and Grice,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, , Villa Grice, . Lombardia Grice: “Implicatura. Grice: Caro Pietro, devo dirti che sono così felice di poterti chiamare con il tuo vero cognome, Cardano! Pensa, con Occam questa fortuna non ce l’ho: posso solo dire “il rasoio di Occam”, ma mai chiamarlo “signor Occam” con la stessa sicurezza. E trovo curioso che tu sia conosciuto come “Pietro da Lombardia”, quando in realtà la Lombardia non è una cittadina come Ockham, ma una regione intera! Questo dettaglio toponomastico offre già una bella implicatura: forse i piemontesi non ti hanno mai sentito davvero uno di loro? Cardano: Grice, hai colto nel segno! Essere chiamato “da Lombardia” mi ha sempre dato una certa distanza, quasi un’aura di estraneità. Ma, d’altronde, la filosofia non conosce confini: come Dante ha scritto di me nel Paradiso, la verità va oltre le radici locali! Grice: E infatti il tuo “Libro delle Sentenze” è diventato il testo di riferimento per tanti, proprio grazie all’ampiezza delle fonti e alla tua originalità. Mi affascina come tu abbia tentato di armonizzare le divergenze delle auctoritates, distinguendo tra signa e res: la differenza sta nell’interpretazione, non nella natura delle cose. Cardano: È vero, Grice! L’esegesi è il cuore della filosofia, e spesso il problema nasce non dalle cose ma dal modo in cui le comprendiamo. Ho sempre cercato l’eleganza dialettica, mantenendo rispetto alle varie autorità e al loro stile, pur rischiando critiche come il “nichilismo cristologico”. Ma dopotutto, ogni discussione filosofica porta implicature nuove e inaspettate! Cardano, Pietro (1150). Sentenze. Parigi, Goffredo di San Vittore.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cardone – Ossia: Grice e Cardone: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale l’eroe nudo Napoleone Clark Kent; ovvero, sul sovrumano – trasumanar culto dell’eroe di VICO – ANNUNZIO e il fascismo.  Domenico Antonio Cardone (Palmi, Reggio Calabria, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale l’eroe nudo - A useful way to frame the comparison between Grice and Domenico Antonio Cardone is to see them as converging on the idea that meaning and reason emerge only within a shared, rule‑governed human practice, while diverging on what gives that practice its ultimate orientation. For Grice, conversational meaning is governed by rational expectations internal to talk itself: speakers rely on cooperation, mutual recognition of intentions, and calculable implicatures that arise precisely because interlocutors assume reasonableness rather than heroism, transcendence, or moral grandeur. Cardone, by contrast, treats conversational reason as embedded in a wider moral, historical, and symbolic economy: his reflections on the “sovrumano,” on naked heroes like Napoleon versus disguised ones like Clark Kent, and on the Vichian–D’Annunzian cult of the hero are not merely playful metaphors but diagnoses of how communities collectively generate meanings that exceed strict rational calculation. Where Grice hears trouble in linguistic excess—coinages like “sovrumano” triggering implicatures about what is wrong with “human” and thereby inviting critical “linguistic botanising”—Cardone sees the same excess as philosophically revealing, exposing the tension between usefulness and uselessness, action and contemplation, domination and fraternity. In this sense, Grice’s theory disciplines meaning by bringing it back to ordinary human rationality, irony, and cancellable implication, whereas Cardone expands conversational reason toward a philosophy of life in which implicature shades into moral critique, social deontology, and a Calabrian humanism that insists, ultimately, on remaining human—with irony—rather than aspiring to the superhuman. - Napoleone Clark Kent; ovvero, sul sovrumano – trasumanar culto dell’eroe di VICO – ANNUNZIO e il fascismo. Grice: “C. plays with a coinage, sobraumnao, in Dionigio e Luciano – it triggers implicata: what’s wrong with ‘human’? One is reminded of Pico (‘dignita dell’uomo’) and ANNUNZIO – it is a problem of linguistic botanising for Italian phiosophers, ‘altreuomo’ being rendered as a translation of Emersen’s ‘plus man’ – and cf. Carlyle – ANNUNZIO, who should have known better, prefers ‘suPer,’ when we know that in the ‘volgare,’ the ‘p’ becomes ‘v’, so C. has it just right!” Si laurea a Roma. Socialista. deontologia filosofia morale sociale civiltà fratellanza umana. Storia diritto relativismo gnoseologico Reazione collettiva I filosofi calabresi nella storia della filosofia, con appendice sui sociologi e gli psicologi, lo stato Filosofia della vita, Umanismo liberalismo e comunismo, Divenire e l'Uomo, L'uomo nel cosmo. Storia e prospettive, La vita come esperienza inutile, L'ozio la contemplazione il gioco la tecnica l'anarchismo, Si vis pacem para pacem I confini dell'anima La banca della carità Terapia del tramonto dittatore assenza e mancanza: Napoleone non mi sembra per nulla così grande come Cromwell. Le sue enormi vittorie, che s’ estesero A 1 «Napoleone l'idolo della comune degli " 3 i gli nomini, perchè a le qualità e le facoltà degli Cn OI k Ni Chi co: i 0 fesso moderno; auche quand'è all'apice della fortuna; “gli aleggia dentro lo stesso spirito che troviamo nei giornali del tempo. da 7 si limitò alla piccola Inghilte che gli alti trampoli ti la statura dell'uomo Clark Kent; ovvero, sul sovrumano, “Ricerche filosofiche”; futilitarianism, inutilitarianism philosophy of life essere e divenire sovraumano ANNUNIZIO culto degl’eroi valore, Napoleone natura. Grice: Cardone, ti confesso che parlare di “sovrumano” mi mette sempre in crisi: se Napoleone era un eroe nudo, allora Clark Kent con gli occhiali dev’essere l’idolo di tutti i filosofi calabresi! Cardone: Grice, il bello è proprio quello! Tra il culto dell’eroe e il trasumanar, Annunzio si è perso tra “super” e “altreuomo”, ma io dico che a Palmi, l’eroe si riconosce dal tramonto: chi resiste fino a sera senza svestirsi, vince la coppa della filosofia morale. Grice: E allora si vis pacem para pacem! In fondo, Napoleone aveva i suoi trampoli, ma Clark Kent ha la banca della carità e l’ozio contemplativo—forse la vera grandezza sta nel sapere quando mettere la mantella e quando togliersela, proprio come suggerisce Vico. Cardone: Perfetto, Grice! Tra inutilità e utilità, il divenire è un gioco: il sovrumano lo si trova tra il futilitarianismo delle vittorie e l’inutilitarianismo dell’anima. Cromwell o Napoleone? Alla fine, basta essere umani—ma con una punta di ironia e fratellanza calabrese. Cardone, Domenico Antonio (1917). Discorso patriotico, Giardino Publico, Palmi.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carfuleno – Ossia: Grice e Carfuleno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carfuleno. The Carfuleni was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome toward the end of the Republic and under the early empire. The only member of this gens mentioned by Roman writers is Decimus C., who served under Caesar during the Alexandrine War;[1][2] a few other Carfuleni are known from inscriptions.  “C.” belongs to a class of gentilicia typically derived from other nomina, or occasionally place-names, with stems ending in -i, where the derivative suffix -enus substitutes for the more usual -inus.[3]  Three of the Carfuleni known from epigraphy are mentioned in the same inscription from Aquileia in Venetia and Histria, though it is unknown whether they were born or lived there.[4] The only cognomen borne by any of them is Modestus, meaning "moderate",[5] a common type of surname derived from the character of an individual. Decimus Carfulenus,[i] who served under Caesar in 47 BC, during the Alexandrine War, was tribune of the plebs in 44, the year of Caesar's assassination, and subsequently perished in the Battle of Mutina, in 43.[1][2][7][8][9][10] Publius Carfulenus, the former master of the merchant Publius Carfulenus Modestus.[4] Publius Carfulenus P. l. Modestus, a freedman and negotiator, or merchant, mentioned in an inscription from Aquileia, dating from the reigns of Augustus or Tiberius.[4] Publius Carfulenus Princeps l., a freedman of Augustus or Tiberius, mentioned together with Publius Carfulenus Modestus in an inscription from Aquileia.[4] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  Appian calls him Carsuleius. References  William Smith, "Decimus Carfulenus", in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 612.  Friedrich Münzer, "D. Carfulenus", in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Bd. III, Hlb. VI., cols. 1589, 1590 (1899).  Chase, p. 118.  AE 1982, 380, AE 2003, 678.  Cassell's, s.v. modestus.  Chase, p. 110.  Hirtius, De Bello Alexandrino, 31.  Appian, Bellum Civile, iii. 66 ff.  Cicero, Philippicae, iii. 9, Epistulae ad Familiares, x. 33, xv. 4.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 324, 352; Supplement, p. 14. Bibliography Aulus Hirtius, De Bello Alexandrino. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, Philippicae. Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). 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). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin and English Dictionary, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York (1963). Category: Roman gentes So for this gens, I guess we can have a conversation by C. just BEFORE the battle of Mutina (where is that?) -- 8 moves, so he can recall his previous years with GIULIO in Alexandrian war, as tribune of plebs, etc -- thanks --

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carfuleno – Ossia: Grice e Carfuleno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carfuleno. For the Carfuleni, there is really only one possible hero:  Decimus Carfulenus:  served under Caesar in the Alexandrine War (47 BC), was tribune of the plebs in 44 BC, died in the Mutina campaign in 43 BC. [grokipedia.com], [en.wikipedia.org]   And he is actually a splendid Grice/Speranza figure because he stands between two worlds:  Caesar's soldier. Defender of the Republic after Caesar's assassination.   Where was Mutina? Mutina is modern Modena, in northern Italy along the Via Aemilia. In 43 BC it was the focal point of the war between Mark Antony and the Senate's forces. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] The city was being held by Decimus Brutus, one of Caesar's assassins, while Antony besieged it. The Senate, together with Octavian, marched to relieve the siege. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] That setting makes your proposed conversation ideal.  Carfulenus before Mutina Eight-Move Conversatio MILES  Carfulene, cras pugnabimus.  ("Carfulenus, tomorrow we shall fight.")  CARFVLENVS  Ita. Mutina iam prope est.  ("Yes. Mutina is now near.")  MILES  Meministine Alexandriam?  ("Do you remember Alexandria?")  CARFVLENVS  Quomodo oblivisci possum? Sub Caesare militavi.  ("How could I forget? I served under Caesar.")  MILES  Et tribunus plebis fuisti.  ("And you were tribune of the plebs.")  CARFVLENVS  Fui. Tum verbis pugnabam; nunc gladiis.  ("I was. Then I fought with words; now with swords.")  MILES  Pro Caesare pugnamus an pro re publica?  ("Do we fight for Caesar or for the Republic?")  CARFVLENVS  Si hoc adhuc quaeris, satis diu bellum civile duravit.  ("If you are still asking that, the civil war has lasted too long.") Final implicature  +> The old categories have broken down. One may have served Caesar and still believe oneself to be serving the Republic.  That, I think, is an authentically late-Republican ambiguity.  Why Speranza would like him Carfulenus presents a Gricean puzzle of personal identity across political contexts:  "Caesarian" in 47 BC. Tribune in 44 BC. Fighting Antony in 43 BC.  A superficial observer says:  "He changed sides."  Carfulenus replies:  "No. The situation changed."  The conversational issue becomes:  Is loyalty attached to a man (Caesar), or to a principle (the Republic)?  Exactly the sort of distinction Grice loved to tease apart. And there is something poignant about him: unlike Octavian or Antony, he does not live long enough to rewrite the story. He dies in the very struggle that followed Caesar's death. [grokipedia.com], [en.wikipedia.org]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carisio – Ossia: Grice e Carisio -- Grex giceiana – verbalia: Carisio. The Carisii are a Roman family during the latter half of the 1st century BC The most famous member of the gens was Titus C., who defeats the Astures in Hispania, and took their chief town, Lancia, circa 25 BC; but in consequence of his cruelty and insolence, the Astures took up arms again in 22.  There is a coin in which Titus Carisius is identified as triumvir monetalis, and another which mentions Publius Carisius, as legatus and propraetor, together with the word Emerita, apparently referring to the town of Augusta Emerita in Lusitania, which the emperor Augustus established for the emeriti, veterans of the war in Hispania. From this it has been conjectured that the praenomen Titus, assigned to the conqueror of the Astures by Cassius Dio, should instead be Publius.[4][5][6]  See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Florus, Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum Omnium Annorum DCC libri duo, iv. 12. § 55, ff.  Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, vi. 21.  Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus, Roman History, liii. 25, liv. 5.  Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus, Roman History, liv. 26.  Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum, v. p. 162, ff.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)    GENS             This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carle – Ossia: Grice e Carle: la ragione conversazionale e le radici del diritto romano legge e natura.  Giuseppe Carle (Chiusa di Pesio, Cuneo, Piemonte) : la ragione conversazionale e le radici del diritto romano legge e natura. A comparison between Grice and Giuseppe Carle can be drawn by focusing on their shared commitment to understanding normativity as emerging from structured human practices rather than from abstract axioms alone, even though they work in different domains. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning locates rationality within cooperative interaction: meaning arises from speakers treating conversation as a joint enterprise governed by principles such as responsibility, relevance, and defeasible expectations, with implicature marking the point where rule-following intelligence meets practical judgment. Carle’s philosophy of law, grounded in his reconstruction of Roman jurisprudence, approaches normativity from a parallel angle: for him, ius is not reducible to brute fact or moral value, but is sustained by historically sedimented principles—such as exceptio, responsibility, authority, and natural limitation—that regulate social life by allowing for justified deviation from rigid rules. Where Grice analyses conversational implicature as the lawful but non-mechanical surplus generated when agents reason together, Carle sees Roman law as embodying an analogous logic, in which legal meaning depends on distinctions between nature and institution, public and private, rule and exception. In both cases, normativity is neither arbitrary nor absolute: it is rational because it is answerable to shared practices—conversation for Grice, civic life and legal tradition for Carle—and flexible because it must accommodate cooperation, conflict, and the ever-present need to recognize when principles apply and when, responsibly, they must give way. Grice: “I like C. – he is like Hart, only better – his Latin tract on ‘exceptio’ is eaxactly what Hart means by defeasibility, only that C. can found it on Roman law – Like me, he likes the use of ‘principio,’ as when he speaks of a ‘principle of responsibility,’ and his essays on what he calls ‘social philosophy’ is pretty akin to my concerns on cooperation as the epitome of joint behaviour.” Insegna a Torino. Lincei. Positivista.  La dottrina giuridica del fallimento nel diritto privato internazionale; filosofia del diritto. vita sociale. filosofia giuridica Le origini del diritto romano: ricostruzione storica dei concetti che stanno a base del diritto pubblico e privato di Roma stato ius – fatto – non valore – l’implicatura di Romolo e Remo. giusnaturalismo forza autorita ius Fuit haec sapientia quondam Publica privatis secernere, sacra profanis. HOR., poet Ars. LABOR NOR Bologna ci rammenta anche l'epoca, in cui essa iniziando grande in fluenza del diritto romano. Ne è da farsi illusione, che questo gepere di studii possa ugualmente mantenersi fuori della cerchia dell’università. Poichè, tanto in Italia che in Germania, la scienza è nata e si è svolta nell’università, ed è in esse, che deve essere tenuto vivo il focolare della medesima. È soltanto nell’università, che la storia del diritto antico può cessare di occuparsi esclusivamente di minute ricerche archeologiche, per cambiarsi in un sistema di concetti, che possa essere succo e sangue per la giovine generazione. Diritto romano implicatura legge natura romana ius CONTRA NATVRAM QVIPPE EST VT CVM ALIQVID TENEAM TV QVOQVE ID TENERE VIDARIS. SERVITVS EST CONSTITVTIO IVRIS GENTIVM QVA QVIS DOMINIO ALIENO CONTRA NATVRAM SVBICITVR. Orazio. Sat, Roma – filosofia antica. Chiusa di Pesio, Cuneo, Piemonte.  Grice: Carle, spesso mi domando: dove sarebbero tutti quei principi che i giuristi—e persino gli anglo-ebraici come Hart a Oxford – o Vadum Boem, come la chiamiamo noi Lit. Hum – amano tanto, se non avessero le radici profonde del diritto romano? La tua lettura così attenta delle sue profondità illumina davvero quanto la nostra giurisprudenza debba a Roma. Carle: Caro Grice, è vero: il diritto romano è come una linfa che scorre ancora sotto la superficie delle nostre leggi moderne. Se oggi parliamo di principi, responsabilità, eccezioni e cooperazione, lo dobbiamo proprio a quell’antica sapienza che seppe distinguere pubblico e privato, sacro e profano. Grice: Lo spirito del “ius”, come tu ricostruisci, non è solo una questione di regole, ma di vita sociale e filosofia condivisa. Persino la “exceptio” diventa, nella tua interpretazione, una finestra sulla natura stessa della legge: il diritto, per essere vivo, deve sapere quando derogare, proprio come la conversazione sa quando implicare e quando esplicitare. Carle: Esattamente, Grice. Come diceva Orazio: “Fuit haec sapientia quondam publica privatis secernere, sacra profanis.” Il diritto romano è riuscito a fondare la civiltà distinguendo ciò che era natura e ciò che era norma. E oggi, nelle università e nei tribunali, quella saggezza continua a insegnarci che le implicature della legge sono la vera anima della nostra società. Carle, Giuseppe (1885). Le origini del diritto romano: ricostruzione storica dei concetti che stanno a base del diritto pubblico e privato di Roma. Torino, Unione Tipografico-Editrice. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carli – Ossia: Grice e Carli – la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale: filosofia passatista, filosofia presentista, filosofia futuristica.  Mario Carli (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale: filosofia passatista, filosofia presentista, filosofia futuristica. A comparison between Grice and Mario Carli can be drawn by seeing both as treating reason as something that is enacted in living practices rather than imposed from outside, while giving that enactment different emphases. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning focuses on how rationality operates immanently within conversation itself: speakers cooperate, manage expectations, and generate implicatures that arise from shared assumptions about relevance, responsibility, and intelligible purpose. Carli, working in the sphere of aesthetics and cultural philosophy, extends a similar insight to the temporal self‑understanding of modern culture, contrasting passatismo, presentismo, and futurismo as competing conversational stances toward time. For him, futurism is not merely an artistic school but a deliberate conversational rupture, a rebellion against inherited meanings aimed at forcing new implicatures about value, progress, and significance. Where Grice analyzes implicature as the rational surplus that emerges when what is said is strategically less than what is meant, Carli treats artistic and philosophical movements as collective conversational moves that intentionally over‑ or under‑state their relation to past and present in order to provoke new interpretations. In both cases, meaning is governed by reason, but not by static rules: it is generated through historically situated interactions, whether between interlocutors negotiating sense in ordinary talk, or between generations negotiating meaning through art, rebellion, and the imaginative re‑use of inherited forms. Grice: “I like C.! I wouldn’t think that, when we were kings,  we were much interested in art! It’s very odd that only decades afterwards, Keith Arnatt would pull the leg of Austin with his ‘Trouser words’ – once Austin was dead. In Italy, things are different – they are more like London – where philosophers were talking ‘significant’ form without caring to realise they didn’t know what ‘significant’ was! In Italy, futurism was meant as a rebellion against passatismo, i. e. the philosophy of the present! A Griceian approach to aesthetic instrumentalism!” Schiavo Volpe FUTURISMO E FASCISMO. Marinetti Russolo FUTURISMO CON E SENZA FASCISMO A Giacinto Menotti Serrati allora direitore dell’Avanti, che si era recato in Russia per respirare  aria comunista. Lenin affermò: “Voi socialisti non  siete dei rivoluzionari. In Italia ci sono soltanto tre  uomini che possono fare la rivoluzione: Mussolini,  Annunzio, Marinetti”. Il povero Menotti, inotridito, ritornò a Milano precipitosamente. E. quando, paco dapo, un capo scarico con un  magistrale colpo di forbice gli tagliò di netto, per  beffario, Ia veneranda barba, reagì in questo modo:  facendo proclamare nella grande città lombarda lo  sciopero generale. I milanesi orripilarono, è il caso  di dirlo, perché si sentirono da quel giorno appesi  ai peli del direttore dell'Avarti  EmiLio SErTIMELLI, Mille giudizi di statisti, scrittori, giornalisti, scienziati, industriali di Cinquanta  Stati sulla personalità e misstone di Mussolini, Erre, Milano). Quale futurismo? Il futurismo è ormai un fatto d’esportazione: italiano  d'origine pur se si è cercato di farlo passare per francese  e russo poi di acquisizione e di affermazione, è ormai  alla ribalta dell’esperimentazione artistica americana. Segno questo che il fenomeno è vitale e ancora carico di  prospettive, nonostante la storicizzazione di un avvenimento che fu d'avanguardia. Ma quale avvenimento?  futurismo. Grice: Carli, dimmi la verità: tu preferisci passatismo, presentismo o futurismo, oppure, come fanno molti italiani, ti piace mischiare tutto in una conversazione saporita? Carli: Ah, Grice, la filosofia è come la cucina romana: si prende ciò che c’è, si mescola e si assaggia. Ma il futurismo, sai, è come mettere l’olio d’oliva sulla pizza: una ribellione contro la tradizione, però sempre con gusto! Grice: Ma allora, se il presente è il piatto del giorno, il passato il vino della casa e il futuro la torta che deve ancora uscire dal forno, tu da cosa inizi quando filosofeggi? Carli: Grice, io inizio sempre dalla conversazione: perché solo parlando si scopre se la torta è dolce o salata, e se vale la pena mangiarla oggi... o domani! Carli, Mario (1915). La mia divinità. Milano, Libreria Editrice Lombarda.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carlini – Ossia: Grice e Carlini: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della filosofia fascista – scuola di Napoli – filosofia napoletana Armando Carlini (Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della filosofia fascista – A comparison between Grice and Armando Carlini brings into relief two different but structurally related accounts of how reason governs meaning within human practices. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning treats rationality as immanent to cooperative dialogue: meaning and implicature arise because interlocutors orient themselves toward shared norms of intelligibility, responsibility, and practical purpose, even when those norms are strategically bent or suspended. Carlini, by contrast, situates reason within the dialectical life of the spirit itself, conceived as an ongoing inner and social dialogue marked by doubt, tension, and the search for a “thou.” In his neo‑idealistic and spiritualist framework—developed in dialogue with Gentile, Croce, and Bovio, and historically entangled with the intellectual mythology of Italian fascism—reason is not primarily procedural but existential and metaphysical, grounding meaning in the activity of spirit rather than in intersubjective conversational rules. Yet a parallel emerges: Carlini’s insistence that thought advances through internal dialogue, exception, and crisis echoes Grice’s idea that implicature is generated when speakers rely on rational expectations that are not exhaustively encoded in what is said. Where Grice reconstructs conversational meaning as a rule‑governed but defeasible practice among speakers, Carlini interprets philosophical and cultural meaning as the product of a reasoned but anguished dialogue of the spirit with itself and with tradition. Both reject a purely mechanical view of normativity, but Grice locates its source in cooperative linguistic practice, while Carlini grounds it in a metaphysics of spirit that treats conversation, inner or outer, as the privileged site where reason becomes historically and culturally effective. -- scuola di Napoli – filosofia napoletana – filosofia campanese -- filosofia italiana – , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice,  (Napoli). Abstract. Grice: “Prince Edward used to say that he did not care what lnguage opera was sung, provided it was in a language he didn’t understand. Mutatis mutandis, the classics at the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford. It would be considered JUST OBSCENE to provide a translation! I love C., and Speranza loves him even more, but then he is Italian! My favourite is his “A brief history of philosophy,” especially the subtitle: “Da Talete di Mileto a Talete di Mileto, con una postfazione di Talete di Mileto – “Nel principio era l’acqua”!” – Il primo filossofo – che cadde in un pozzo.” Si laurea a Bologna (“l’unica universita italiana”) sotto ACRI. Insegna a Roma. Conosce Saitta. Studia lizio e BOVIO. senso ed esperienza. Idealismo visto come sintesi fra l’immanentismo di GENTILE e CROCE. Il soggetto attraversa un costante irto di dubbi ed angosce e un dialogo che riusciamo ad instaurare con noi stessi, in un percorso critico dialettico, una conquista realizzabile solo attraverso gli strumenti di una metafisica critica. La conoscenza e sviluppata in una concezione realistica dello spirito umano alla ricerca di tu. Esistenzialista metafisica La nulla anihila Bovio Senso ed esperienza Lo spirito” il mito del realismo filosofia fascista, il mito del realismo, la categoria dello spirito, animus e spiritus, filosofia italiana, storia della filosofia romana, l’ambasciata di Carneade a Roma, la antichissima sapienza degl’italici, la scuola di pitagora, sicilia e la magna grecia, geist, ghost, spirito, animo, spirito oggetivo, testi di filosofia ad uso dei licei, lizio il principio logico avvivamento alla filosofia, i grandi i minori Grice: Caro Carlini, ogni volta che mi cimento con la tua “Storia della filosofia”, resto affascinato dal viaggio che ci porti a fare: da Talete a Talete, con una sosta nell’acqua! Ma dimmi, ti sei mai bagnato come il nostro amico di Mileto? Carlini: Grice, che domanda! Forse sì, ma almeno non sono mai caduto nel pozzo per guardare le stelle. Qui a Napoli, tra filosofia campana e dialettica, l’unico rischio è inciampare in una citazione di Bovio o Croce e ritrovarsi a discutere per ore! Grice: Eh, il dialogo è sempre più profondo del pozzo! Apprezzo la tua idea di un soggetto che si arrovella di fronte ai propri dubbi: è quasi una metafisica da caffè napoletano, dove lo spirito si cerca tra una tazza e l’altra. Carlini: Proprio così, Grice! E per dirla alla partenopea, solo chi ha spirito sa davvero ridere delle proprie angosce. In fondo, anche la filosofia, a Napoli, è un gioco di squadra: si pensa, si ride e, se va bene, si impara pure qualcosa sulla natura dell’acqua… e dello spirito! Carlini, Armando (1912). Il principio logico avvivamento alla filosofia. Napoli, Giannotta. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carmando – Ossia: Grice e Carmando – Roma – filosofia italiana (Roma). Charmander -- According to Seneca, Carmando wrote a book on comets. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice e Carmando. Carmando (Roma): filosofia italiana (Roma). Charmander -- According to Seneca, Carmando wrote a book on comets. GRICEVS: Romae, Charmander, si Senecae credimus, Carmando librum de cometis scripsit, sed ego timeo ne stellae ipsae pedem notaverint. CHARMANDER: Si cometae pedes habent, ego certe eos calefaciam, ut liber Carmandi minus frigeat quam caelum. GRICEVS: Cave, amice ignee: philosophia Italica saepe flammam amat, sed bibliotheca Romana non amat cinerem. CHARMANDER: Tum faciam ut cometae tantum luceant et non ardeant, atque Carmando rideat in astris quasi in Trastevere. Carmando (a. u. c. DCCXC). De cometis. Roma

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caro – Ossia: Grice e Caro: la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale, la rettorica.  Annibale Caro (Citanova Marche, Macerata, Marche): la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale, la rettorica. In comparing Grice and Annibale Caro one sees a striking convergence across centuries around the idea that meaning in conversation is governed by reason rather than exhausted by literal wording. Caro, operating in the sixteenth‑century humanist milieu of Civitanova Marche in the province of Macerata, conceives rhetoric not as ornamental excess but as a rational art embedded in the native Tuscan language, shaped by continuous use, attentive listening, irony, comparison, and responsive counter‑argument; his reflections on rhetoric insist that persuasion and understanding arise from the orderly exchange of reasons, calibrated to interlocutors and situation, and this is precisely what is at stake in his fierce dispute with Castelvetro over the vernacular, as well as in his Virgilian experiment in blank verse, where form must answer to communicative intelligibility rather than scholastic prescription. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning gives this intuition a modern philosophical articulation: where Caro speaks of ragione and rhetorical judgment, Grice speaks of speaker intention, rational cooperation, and implicature, but both treat conversation as an activity in which what is meant routinely exceeds what is said, and where that excess is not arbitrary but accountable to shared norms of rational discourse. Grice’s amused remark about his affection for Caro, contrasted with Latin Cicero lectures at his alma mater, underscores the point: Caro’s commitment to rhetoric in the living vernacular anticipates Grice’s insistence that philosophical insight into meaning must begin from actual communicative practice, where irony, ellipsis, and comparison function as reasoned moves within an ongoing conversational game rather than as mere stylistic flourishes. Grice: “I love C.! On the other hand, at my alma mater, Rainolds lectures on Cicero – in LATIN!” La rettorica L’Eneide di VIRGILIO in verso sciolto, fierce literary dispute with CASTELVETRO. RETTORICA IN LINGVA TOSCANA. mandar fora la rettorica fatta in lingua toscana.  L’arte della rettorica. la Natura ha dato a lei la sua lingua nativa per particolare studio e per continuo essercizo che fa in essa, imparato di ben parlar e crederei d’esser mancato grandemente al debito de la gratitudine quando in sua vece ne la persona non avesi se fa tributo a essa lingua di quelle compofitwni ch'egli fece per opera per benefitio suo. Tanto piu Rapendo ognuno con esso me quanto egli per quello jacef e prof tf ione di dovere a Firenze f$ k la Tofana tutta e per conseguetila a i Prin api y&ài Signori d’essa: come ne fa pi enifi ma fedeiltcfimomo ch'egli mede fimo ne ha Lfcia- to ne lefue T^rme . Tutte queste ragioni cornea hanno moffo me à dedicare a V.S.ìllufrif. que- Jìo volume ; cofi tengo ragioni, chef sono provate siche f fiolfire col metterle a paragone con quelle che fi ' f 'no addotte dall;auuerftrio. E per paragonarle o s’affrontano insìeme quelle che l’uno e l'altro hanno dette sopra al medesmo, ofènza affrontarle, replicano in questo modo. Coftut di questo dice questo ed io dico questo per questo. Oper tua d’ironia, come dire . Jgueflefono le belle ragioni che egli adduce ed io non {di ho saputo risponder se non queste. E che sarebbe egli, sè questefoffro le sue ragiom,et ?2on quesl altre? 0 peruia d interrogatane, come dire. Che manca ch’io non dimostro? O uero, che cose ha dimoftrato ihnio avversario? Onde che fi pio fare, o cose carne s’è detto, oper uia  LeiaRettoricad'AriftotileLib. 111. àia di paragone : ofimplicemente fecondo t or dine naturale nel modo che fi fino efyoHe 3 raccontando copie vagì n tue, dipoi fi ti pare appartatamente quelle de tauuer Cario. Et ultimamente dir quelle parole fciolt e y che fi anno ben ne lafi?je, perfiar che fi a epilogo e non oratione, in quella gmfia . Ho detto 3 hauete intejò . Sapete come paffa . Giudicate. n ■ I nC  Grice: Caro Caro, permettimi di dirti che la tua perspicacia nella "rettorica conversazionale" mi affascina immensamente! È una vera prammatica, e l’arte con cui plasmi la lingua toscana, portando la conversazione al livello della più raffinata comunicazione, è degna di lode. Il tuo saper fare dialogo, con ironia e sottigliezza, rivela quella maestria che solo i grandi sanno esercitare. Caro: Gentilissimo Grice, le tue parole mi onorano e, se posso, mi spronano a continuare nella ricerca di una lingua che non sia solo strumento, ma vera espressione dell’animo. La conversazione, come tu insegni, è luogo di implicature sottili, e la rettorica, a mio avviso, trova il suo compimento proprio nell’arte di saper ascoltare e rispondere con arguzia e rispetto. Grice: Vedo che condividi la mia idea che la conversazione sia una danza tra ragione e sentimento, dove ogni gesto verbale cela un’implicatura, spesso più eloquente di mille parole. La tua Eneide in verso sciolto, oltre alla disputa con Castelvetro, mostra quanto la lingua possa essere strumento di armonia e di confronto, e quanto la prammatica sia cruciale nel tessuto del discorso. Caro: Grice, la tua elegantissima riflessione mi ricorda che, come dice il proverbio toscano, "Chi sa parlare, sa anche tacere." La rettorica non è solo dire, ma anche scegliere il momento del silenzio, cogliere l’attimo dell’ironia e del paragone. In questo, Firenze e la Toscana hanno dato molto alla lingua, ma è grazie a scambi come il nostro che la conversazione cresce e si arricchisce di nuovi sensi e nuove libertà. Caro, Annibale (1566). Lettere familiari. Venezia, Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Caronda – Ossia: Grice e Caronda: la ragione conversazionale all’isola -- Roma – scuola di Catania Annibale Caro (Citanova Marche, Macerata, Marche): la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale, la rettorica. In comparing Grice and Annibale Caro one sees a striking convergence across centuries around the idea that meaning in conversation is governed by reason rather than exhausted by literal wording. Caro, operating in the sixteenth‑century humanist milieu of Civitanova Marche in the province of Macerata, conceives rhetoric not as ornamental excess but as a rational art embedded in the native Tuscan language, shaped by continuous use, attentive listening, irony, comparison, and responsive counter‑argument; his reflections on rhetoric insist that persuasion and understanding arise from the orderly exchange of reasons, calibrated to interlocutors and situation, and this is precisely what is at stake in his fierce dispute with Castelvetro over the vernacular, as well as in his Virgilian experiment in blank verse, where form must answer to communicative intelligibility rather than scholastic prescription. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning gives this intuition a modern philosophical articulation: where Caro speaks of ragione and rhetorical judgment, Grice speaks of speaker intention, rational cooperation, and implicature, but both treat conversation as an activity in which what is meant routinely exceeds what is said, and where that excess is not arbitrary but accountable to shared norms of rational discourse. Grice’s amused remark about his affection for Caro, contrasted with Latin Cicero lectures at his alma mater, underscores the point: Caro’s commitment to rhetoric in the living vernacular anticipates Grice’s insistence that philosophical insight into meaning must begin from actual communicative practice, where irony, ellipsis, and comparison function as reasoned moves within an ongoing conversational game rather than as mere stylistic flourishes. Grice: “I love C.! On the other hand, at my alma mater, Rainolds lectures on Cicero – in LATIN!” La rettorica L’Eneide di VIRGILIO in verso sciolto, fierce literary dispute with CASTELVETRO. RETTORICA IN LINGVA TOSCANA. mandar fora la rettorica fatta in lingua toscana.  L’arte della rettorica. la Natura ha dato a lei la sua lingua nativa per particolare studio e per continuo essercizo che fa in essa, imparato di ben parlar e crederei d’esser mancato grandemente al debito de la gratitudine quando in sua vece ne la persona non avesi se fa tributo a essa lingua di quelle compofitwni ch'egli fece per opera per benefitio suo. Tanto piu Rapendo ognuno con esso me quanto egli per quello jacef e prof tf ione di dovere a Firenze f$ k la Tofana tutta e per conseguetila a i Prin api y&ài Signori d’essa: come ne fa pi enifi ma fedeiltcfimomo ch'egli mede fimo ne ha Lfcia- to ne lefue T^rme . Tutte queste ragioni cornea hanno moffo me à dedicare a V.S.ìllufrif. que- Jìo volume ; cofi tengo ragioni, chef sono provate siche f fiolfire col metterle a paragone con quelle che fi ' f 'no addotte dall;auuerftrio. E per paragonarle o s’affrontano insìeme quelle che l’uno e l'altro hanno dette sopra al medesmo, ofènza affrontarle, replicano in questo modo. Coftut di questo dice questo ed io dico questo per questo. Oper tua d’ironia, come dire . Jgueflefono le belle ragioni che egli adduce ed io non {di ho saputo risponder se non queste. E che sarebbe egli, sè questefoffro le sue ragiom,et ?2on quesl altre? 0 peruia d interrogatane, come dire. Che manca ch’io non dimostro? O uero, che cose ha dimoftrato ihnio avversario? Onde che fi pio fare, o cose carne s’è detto, oper uia  LeiaRettoricad'AriftotileLib. 111. àia di paragone : ofimplicemente fecondo t or dine naturale nel modo che fi fino efyoHe 3 raccontando copie vagì n tue, dipoi fi ti pare appartatamente quelle de tauuer Cario. Et ultimamente dir quelle parole fciolt e y che fi anno ben ne lafi?je, perfiar che fi a epilogo e non oratione, in quella gmfia . Ho detto 3 hauete intejò . Sapete come paffa . Giudicate. n ■ I nC  Grice: Caro Caro, permettimi di dirti che la tua perspicacia nella "rettorica conversazionale" mi affascina immensamente! È una vera prammatica, e l’arte con cui plasmi la lingua toscana, portando la conversazione al livello della più raffinata comunicazione, è degna di lode. Il tuo saper fare dialogo, con ironia e sottigliezza, rivela quella maestria che solo i grandi sanno esercitare. Caro: Gentilissimo Grice, le tue parole mi onorano e, se posso, mi spronano a continuare nella ricerca di una lingua che non sia solo strumento, ma vera espressione dell’animo. La conversazione, come tu insegni, è luogo di implicature sottili, e la rettorica, a mio avviso, trova il suo compimento proprio nell’arte di saper ascoltare e rispondere con arguzia e rispetto. Grice: Vedo che condividi la mia idea che la conversazione sia una danza tra ragione e sentimento, dove ogni gesto verbale cela un’implicatura, spesso più eloquente di mille parole. La tua Eneide in verso sciolto, oltre alla disputa con Castelvetro, mostra quanto la lingua possa essere strumento di armonia e di confronto, e quanto la prammatica sia cruciale nel tessuto del discorso. Caro: Grice, la tua elegantissima riflessione mi ricorda che, come dice il proverbio toscano, "Chi sa parlare, sa anche tacere." La rettorica non è solo dire, ma anche scegliere il momento del silenzio, cogliere l’attimo dell’ironia e del paragone. In questo, Firenze e la Toscana hanno dato molto alla lingua, ma è grazie a scambi come il nostro che la conversazione cresce e si arricchisce di nuovi sensi e nuove libertà. Caro, Annibale (1566). Lettere familiari. Venezia, Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carpani – Ossia: Grice e Carpani: la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale e arte combinatoria razionale.  Domenico Carpani (Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale e arte combinatoria razionale. Both Grice and Domenico Carpani situate meaning and rationality within an ordered economy of mental operations, but they do so from strikingly different historical and methodological vantage points that nonetheless converge on a shared intuition: reason operates by structuring memory and inference rather than by mere rhetorical ornament. Carpani, drawing on Cicero, Aquinas, and the Aristotelian tradition of De memoria et reminiscentia, conceives memoria as an active, rule-governed faculty that transforms the chaos of sensory images (sensus communis, the silva maxima of impressions) into intelligible order through similitude, contrast, habit, and voluntary discipline; rationality here is combinatorial, an ars that organizes stored contents in the armarium memoriae so that intellect can later “ruminate” and emit verba in an orderly way. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning performs an analogous operation at the level of social interaction: conversational implicature arises when hearers reconstruct, from what is said, the speaker’s reasons and intentions by relying on shared rational expectations rather than explicit coding. Where Carpani treats memory as the internal medium in which sense and intellect are coordinated under rules ultimately inherited from Cicero and Aquinas, Grice treats conversation as a public, normative space in which rational agents order what is said and unsaid through cooperative principles. The comparison clarifies that Grice’s appeal to memory in analyses such as “I am hearing a noise” is not merely psychological but structurally medieval in spirit: like Carpani’s memoria nutrita et ordinata, Gricean understanding requires a disciplined capacity to retain, revise, and connect contents so that reason—whether in inner cognition or outer conversation—can operate as a governed, combinatorial art rather than as brute causal response. Grice: “When I proposed my analysis of ‘I am hearing a noise’ in terms of memory, I was, unconsciously, following C.!” nutrienda memoria memoria et reminiscentia condite CICERONE perfectissimus orator in cuius Rhetoricorum de hac arte tractavit licet obscuro et subtili modo in tantum quod nemo ipsum intelligere valuit nisi per gratiam et doctorem qui doceret ipsam artem qualiter deberet pratichari. Temi legati alla “psicologia” e alla “filosofia” più che alla retorica, ci riportano invece altri saggi nei quali l'influsso delle impostazioni del LIZIO ed AQUINO  è assai più forte di quello esercitato dalla tradizione della retorica di CICERONE. Si tratta, come è ovvio, solo di una differenza di grado poiché proprio attraverso AQUINO, l’arte di CICERONE  della memoria fa parte della cultura. Si tenta di ricavare dai testi del LIZIO alcune regole della memoria artificiale. C. presenta le dottrine del LIZIO e AQUINO. Il sensus communis e silva maxima dove s’accumulano le immagini provocate dai sensi. Sul caos l’intelletto ne prende coscienza, ordena e lega l’una all’altra le cose simili ponendole in archa memoriæ. armario pomorum cibum sumens, VERBA per dentes ruminantis intellectus EMITTIT. La MEMORIA si muove sul senso o percezione, Grice, “Personal identity and memrory: “I am hearing a noise”/Someoe, I, is hearing is noise -- e quello dell’intelletto. La memoria sensitiva, vis quaedam sensitivæ animæ, congiunge al corpo, Grice: uses of “I” attached with ‘my body’, e ritiene corporalia tantum. L’intellettiva, Grice, pure ego, ‘soul’, armarium specierum sempiternarum, carattere corporeo dei CONTENUTI della memoria, I was hit by a cricket bat, sensitiva la memoria delle pecore che dopo il pascolo tornano all’ovile. Identità memoria/volontà-intelleto Admincula della memoria in AQUINO: bonus ordo memoriam facit habilem ex frequentibus actis habitus generatur la similitudo e la contrarietas e fissa regole ricavate da CICERONE e dalla psicologia del LIZIO. chiave universale. Grice: Caro Carpani, quando rifletto sulla memoria, mi viene sempre in mente il tuo modo geniale di mettere ordine nel caos: come dire, trasformare una soffitta piena di mele marce in una biblioteca perfettamente catalogata! Carpani: E tu, Grice, con la tua analisi del “sentire un rumore”, sembri uno che cerca tra i ricordi se quel rumore era un campanello della memoria o solo una pecora tornata all’ovile. La memoria, in fondo, va nutrita come un ovino affamato, ci vuole pazienza e un po’ di buon senso comune. Grice: Eh sì, ma non dimentichiamo l’armario delle specie eterne! Io, ogni tanto, ci metto dentro qualche concetto nuovo, e poi mi capita di trovarci vecchi pensieri impolverati che non ricordavo nemmeno di aver avuto. Sarà che la chiave universale, a Oxford, la perde sempre qualcuno. Carpani: Allora ti consiglio una bella ruminata, come fanno le pecore: le idee, dopo un po’ che le mastichi, diventano più saporite. E se proprio ti sfugge qualcosa, chiedi ad Aquino: lui ha sempre una regola pronta per rimettere in riga anche i ricordi più ribelli! Carpani, Domenico (1476). De nutrienda memoria. Napoli, Stampatore di Carpani. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carpinazio – Ossia: Grice e Carpinazio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carpinazio The Carpinazi was a Roman family towards the end of the Republic. It is best known from a single individual, Lucius C., one of the publicani in Sicily during the government of Verres, with whom he was very intimate. TULLIO Cicero describes him as pro-magister, or deputy manager of the publicani, and calls him a second Timarchides, referring to one of the chief agents of Verres in his robberies and oppressions.  See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Verrem, 70, 76, iii. 71.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)    GENS     This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs For this gens, a conversation on Tullio using 'Timarchides secundus' which is Griceian -- it is a context of time t0 where both Timarchides and C. are operative, yet Tullio uses 'Timarchides secundus'. It is different from calling Virgil 'Homerus secundus' -- Input?  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carpinazio – Ossia: Grice e Carpinazio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carpinazio Yes, this is a very nice Gricean distinction. When Cicero calls Lucius Carpinatius  alter Timarchides ("another Timarchides", "a second Timarchides"),  he is doing something quite different from calling Virgil:  alter Homerus ("a second Homer").  In the Virgil/Homer case, the original Homer is long dead. "Second Homer" is primarily honorific or comparative. In the Verres context, however, Timarchides is still part of the same historical situation. Carpinatius and Timarchides are contemporaries. Cicero is not saying:  Carpinatius resembles the famous Timarchides of old.  He is saying something much sharper:  Timarchides is bad. Carpinatius performs the same role. Therefore Carpinatius is effectively another Timarchides.  The expression works almost like a political nickname.  A Grice/Speranza conversation DISCIPVLVS  Cur Carpinatium Timarchidem secundum vocas? ("Why do you call Carpinatius a second Timarchides?")  TVLLIVS  Quia eadem facit.  ("Because he does the same things.")  DISCIPVLVS  Sed Timarchides adhuc vivit.  ("But Timarchides is still alive.")  TVLLIVS  Scio.  ("I know.")  DISCIPVLVS  Ergo duo Timarchidae sunt?  ("Then there are two Timarchides?")  TVLLIVS  Natura unus est.  ("By nature there is one.")  DISCIPVLVS  Et alter?  ("And the other?")  TVLLIVS  Officio.  ("By function.")  Implicature  +> Carpinatius has become indistinguishable from Timarchides in the respect relevant to the prosecution.  That is the Gricean move. Cicero is not making a statement about identity:  Carpinatius = Timarchides.  He is creating a functional description:  If one understands Timarchides' role in Verres' corrupt system, one already understands Carpinatius.   The deeper Griceian point This resembles the military tribune with consular power. There we had:  consul's powers without the title.  Here we have almost:  Timarchides' role without the name.  One might put it in Speranza's style:  Timarchides nomine unus, munere duo. ("There is one Timarchides by name, but two by function.")  Cicero's phrase is therefore less like "Virgil is a second Homer" and more like:  "This man is the local branch office of Timarchides."  The hearer is expected to recover a whole dossier of accusations merely from the label "Timarchides secundus." That economy of communication is exactly what Grice would have admired. And can we have the Latin passage. Because Grice is interested in anaphora. How many previous sentences before was the Timarchide mentioned? And it's 'another T.' not 'second' or 'bis' -- The implicature is however that it is not just 'other' -- he is slightly less bad than T. otherwise Tullio could be challenged with NOT calling T. an 'alter Carpinatius'? What figure of speech would this be? Metaphor Proper-name metaphor, as when than consul/orator was named after a comic actor. But here the 'alter' brings 'other' complications? Thanks I ask about the anaphoric passage because here the common ground [T. is bad] has relevance of a short-term type. Tullio must have named him not long before? Thanks And can we have the Latin passage. Because Grice is interested in anaphora. How many previous sentences before was the Timarchide mentioned? And it's 'another T.' not 'second' or 'bis' -- The implicature is however that it is not just 'other' -- he is slightly less bad than T. otherwise Tullio could be challenged with NOT calling T. an 'alter Carpinatius'? What figure of speech would this be? Metaphor Proper-name metaphor, as when than consul/orator was named after a comic actor. But here the 'alter' brings 'other' complications? Thanks I ask about the anaphoric passage because here the common ground [T. is bad] has relevance of a short-term type. Tullio must have named him not long before? Thanks This is a very subtle point, and I think you're right to focus on alter rather than "second." Unfortunately, from the materials we have so far, I have not yet retrieved Cicero's Latin text around the Carpinatius passage, so I cannot responsibly tell you:  the exact Latin wording, how many sentences earlier Timarchides was mentioned, or whether Cicero uses alter Timarchides, quasi alter Timarchides, or another formulation.  What we do have from the gens notice is that Cicero calls Carpinatius:  "a second Timarchides" (Smith's English summary of In Verrem).  To answer your anaphora question properly we would need the surrounding Latin from In Verrem II.70, II.76, or III.71 and inspect the discourse context. That said, your semantic observation is excellent. "Alter" is not "secundus" If Cicero's Latin really is:  alter Timarchides  then this differs from:  secundus Timarchides.  Alter Normally means:  "the other", "another of the two", "a second instance."  But in rhetoric it often approaches:  "another X", "an X all over again."  Thus:  alter Hannibal does not mean "Hannibal #2 in chronological order."  It means:  "a new Hannibal."   Your asymmetry point This is where the Gricean analysis becomes interesting. Suppose Cicero says:  Carpinatius est alter Timarchides.  The hearer infers:  Timarchides is the paradigm.  Carpinatius is interpreted via Timarchides. Had Cicero said:  Timarchides est alter Carpinatius  the scale would reverse. The figure therefore presupposes an ordering:  Timarchides = prototype. Carpinatius = derivative instance.  So the implicature is not merely:  they resemble one another,  but:  Timarchides is the standard by which corruption is measured.   Figure of speech I would classify it primarily as: Antonomasia using a proper name as a type. Like:  "He is a Croesus." "He is a Solomon."  where a name becomes a category. But because the expression is:  alter Timarchides,  it is specifically a kind of: Exemplary antonomasia or Proper-name metaphor. The personal name functions as a predicate.  The anaphoric point Your observation about common ground is exactly right. For alter Timarchides to work efficiently, Cicero must assume:  [Timarchides is notorious.]  The more recently Timarchides has been discussed, the easier the inference becomes. Indeed, the expression functions almost like a pronoun. Instead of repeating a dossier:  fixer, agent, collaborator in Verres' extortions,  Cicero compresses all that into:  "another Timarchides."  That compression only works if the audience can recover the referent from the current discourse. Very Gricean:  one name, many implicated properties.  And I particularly like your point that alter introduces a comparison that is not symmetric. Logically resemblance is symmetric; rhetorically alter Timarchides is not. Timarchides remains the benchmark, and Carpinatius is measured against him, not vice versa. That asymmetry is doing much of the persuasive work.  [67] Quae istius auctoritas tantum valuit ut neque illum pulsaret quisquam, cum praetor in provincia sua verbo permitteret, re hortaretur, neque quisquam ab eo quicquam peteret, cum iste calumniae licentiam sua auctoritate ostendisset; ignominia autem illa gravis tam diu in illo homine fuit, quam diu iste in provincia mansit. Hoc iniecto metu iudicibus novo more, nullo exemplo, ecquam rem putatis esse in Sicilia nisi ad nutum istius iudicatam? Utrum id solum videtur esse actum, quod est tamen actum, ut haec Heraclio pecunia eriperetur, an etiam illud, in quo praeda erat maxima, ut nomine iudiciorum omnium bona atque fortunae in istius unius essent potestatem?   [68] Iam vero in rerum capitalium quaestionibus quid ego unam quamque rem colligam et causam? Ex multis similibus ea sumam quae maxime improbitate excellere videbuntur. Sopater quidam fuit Halicyensis, homo domi suae cum primis locuples atque honestus; is ab inimicis suis apud C. Sacerdotem praetorem rei capitalis cum accusatus esset, facile eo iudicio est liberatus. Huic eidem Sopatro idem inimici ad C. Verrem, cum is Sacerdoti successisset, eiusdem rei nomen detulerunt. Res Sopatro facilis videbatur, et quod erat innocens et quod Sacerdotis iudicium improbare istum ausurum non arbitrabatur. Citatur reus; causa agitur Syracusis; crimina tractantur ab accusatore ea quae erant antea non solum defensione, verum etiam iudicio dissoluta.   [69] Causam Sopatri defendebat Q. Minucius, eques Romanus in primis splendidus atque honestus, vobisque, iudices, non ignotus. Nihil erat in causa quod metuendum aut omnino quod dubitandum videretur. Interea istius libertus et accensus Timarchides, qui est, id quod ex plurimis testibus priore actione didicistis, rerum huiusce modi omnium transactor et administer, ad Sopatrum venit; monet hominem ne nimis iudicio Sacerdotis et causae suae confidat; accusatores inimicosque eius habere in animo pecuniam praetori dare; praetotem tamen ob salutem malle acc,ipere, et simul malle, si fieri posset, rem iudicatam non rescindere. Sopater, cum hoc illi improvisum atque inopinatum accidisset, commotus est sane neque in praesentia Timarchidi quid responderet habuit, nisi se consideraturum quid sibi esset faciendum, et simul ostendit se in summa difficultate esse nummaria. Post ad amicos rettulit; qui cum ei fuissent auctores redimendae salutis, ad Timarchidem venit. Eitis suis difficultatibus hominem ad HS Lxxx perducit, eamque ei pecuniam numerat.   [70] Posteaquam ad causam dicendam ventum est, tum vero sine metu sine cura omnes erant qui Sopatrum defendebant. Crimen nullum erat, res erat iudicata, Verres nummos acceperat: quis posset dubitare quidnam esset futurum? Res illo die non peroratur, iudicium dimittitur. Iterum ad Sopatrum Timarchides venit, ait accusatores eius multo maiorem pecuniam praetori polliceri quam quantam hic dedisset; proinde, si saperet, videret, quid sibi esset faciendum. Homo, quamquam erat et Siculus et reus, hoc est et iure iniquo et tempore adverso, ferre tamen atque audire diutius Timarchidem non potuit. " Facite", inquit, "quod libet; daturus non sum amplius." Idemque hoc amicis eius et defensoribus videbatur, atque eo etiam magis quod iste, quoquo modo se in ea quaestione praebebat, tamen in consilio habebat homines honestos e conventu Syracusano, qui Sacerdoti quoque in consilio fuerant tum cum est idem hic Sopater absolutus. Hoc rationis habebant, facere eos nullo modo posse ut eodem crimine eisdem testibus Sopatrum condemnarent idem homines qui antea absolvissent. Itaque hac una spe ad iudicium venitur.   [71] Quo posteaquam est ventum, cum in consilium frequentes convenissent idem qui solebant, et hac una spe tota defensio Sopatri niteretur, consili frequentia et dignitate, et quod erant, ut dixi, idem qui antea Sopatrum eodem illo crimine liberarant, cognoscite hominis apertam ac non modo non ratione, sed ne dissimulatione quidem tectam improbitatem et audaciam. M. Petilium, equitem Romanum, quem habebat in consilio, iubet operam dare, quod rei privatae iudex esset. Petilius recusabat, quod suos amicos, quos sibi in consilio esse vellet, ipse Verres retineret in consilio. Iste homo liberalis negat se quemquam retinere eorum qui Petilio vellent adesse. Itaque discedunt omnes; nam ceteri quoque impetrant ne retineantur; qui se velle dicebant alterutri eorum qui tum illud iudicium habebant adesse. Itaque iste solus cum sua cohorte nequissima relinquitur.   [72] Non dubitabat Minucius, qui Sopatrum defendebat, quin iste, quoniam consilium dimisisset, illo die rem illam quaesiturus non esset, cum repente iubetur dicere. Respondet, "Ad quos?" "Ad me", inquit, "si tibi idoneus videor qui de homine Siculo ac Graeculo iudicem.""Idoneus es", inquit, "sed pervellem adessent ii qui adfuerant antea causamque cognorant." "Die", inquit; "illi adesse non possunt." "Nam hercule", inquit Minucius, "me quoque Petilius ut sibi in consilio adessem rogavit", et simul a subselliis abire coepit.   [73] Iste iratus hominem verbis vehementioribus prosequitur, atque ei gravius etiam minari coepit quod in se tantum crimen invidiamque conflaret. Minucius, qui Syracusis sic negotiaretur ut sui iuris dignitatisque meminisset, et qui sciret se ita in provincia rem augere oportere ut ne quid de libertate deperderet, homini quae visa sunt, et quae tempus illud tulit et causa, respondit, causam sese dimisso atque ablegato consilio defensurum negavit. Itaque a subselliis discessit, idemque hoc praeter Siculos ceteri Sopatri amici advocatique fecerunt.   [74] Iste quamquam est incredibili importunitate et audacia, tamen subito solus destitutus pertimuit et conturbatus est; quid ageret, quo se verteret nesciebat. Si dimisisset eo tempore quaestionem, post, illis adhibitis in consilium quos ablegarat, absolutum iri Sopatrum videbat; sin autem hominem miserum atque innocentem ita condemnasset, cum ipse praetor sine consilio, reus autem sine patrono atque advocatis fuisset, iudiciumque C. Sacerdotis rescidisset, invidiam se sustinere tantam non posse arbitrabatur. Itaque aestuabat dubitatione, versabat se utramque in partem non solum mente, verum etiam corpore, ut omnes qui aderant intellegere possent in animo eius metum cum cupiditate pugnare. Erat hominum conventus maximus, summum silentium, summa exspectatio quonam esset eius cupiditas eruptura; crebro se accensus demittebat ad aurem Timarchides.   [75] Tum iste aliquando "Age dic!" inquit. Reus orare atque obsecrare ut cum consilio cognosceret. Tum repente iste testis citari iubet; dicit unus et alter breviter; nihil interrogatur; praeco dixisse pronuntiat. Iste, quasi metueret ne Petilius privato illo iudicio transacto aut prolato cum ceteris in consilium reverteretur, ita properans de sella exsilit, hominem innocentem a C. Sacerdote absolutum indicta causa de sententia scribae medici haruspicisque condemnat.   [76] Retinete, retinete hominem in civitate, iudices, parcite et conservate, ut sit qui vobiscum res iudicet, qui in senatu sine ulla cupiditate de bello et pace sententiam ferat. Tametsi minus id quidem nobis, minus populo Romano laborandum est, qualis istius in senatu sententia futura sit. Quae enim eius auctoritas erit? quando iste sententiam dicere audebit aut poterit? quando autem homo tantae luxuriae atque desidiae nisi Februario mense aspirabit in curiam? Verum veniat sane, decernat bellum Cretensibus, liberet Byzantinos, regem appellet Ptolomaeum, quae vult Hortensius omnia dicat et sentiat; minus haec ad nos, minus ad vitae nostrae discrimen, minus ad fortunarum nostrarum periculum pertinent.   [77] Illud est capitale, illud formidolosum, illud optimo cuique metuendum, quod iste, ex hoc iudicio si aliqua vi se eripuerit, in iudicibus sit necesse est, sententiam de capite civis Romani ferat, sit in eius exercitu signifer qui imperium iudiciorum tenere vult. Hoc populos Romanus recusat, hoc ferre non potest; clamat permittitque vobis ut, si istis hominibus delectemini, si ex eo genere splendorem ordini atque ornamentum curiae constituere velitis, habeatis sane istum vobiscum senatorem, etiam de vobis iudicem, si vultis, habeatis; de se homines, si qui extra istum ordinem sunt, quibus ne reiciendi quidem amplius quam trium iudicum praeclarae leges Corneliae faciunt potestatem, hunc hominem tam crudelem, tam sceleratum, tam nefarium nolunt iudicare.   [78] Etenim si illud est flagitiosum, quod mihi omnium rerum turpissimum maximeque nefarium videtur, ob rem iudicandam pecuniam accipere, pretio habere addictam fidem et religionem, quanto illud flagitiosius improbius indignius, eum a quo pecuniam ob absolvendum acceperis condemnare, ut ne praedonum quidem praetor in fide retinenda consuetudinem conservet! Scelus est accipere ab reo: quanto magis ab accusatore, quanto etiam sceleratius ab utroque! Fidem cum proposuisses venalem in provincia, valuit apud te plus is qui pecuniam maiorem dedit. Concedo; forsitan aliquis aliquando eius modi quidpiam fecerit. Cum vero fidem ac religionem tuam iam alteri addictam pecunia accepta habueris, postea eandem adversario tradideris maiore pecunia, utrumque falles, et trades cui voles, et ei quem fefelleris ne pecuniam quidem reddes?   [79] Quem mihi tu Bulbum, quem Staienum? quod umquam huiusce modi monstrum aut prodigium audivimus aut vidimus, qui cum reo transigat, post cum accusatore decidat, honestos homines, qui causam norint, ableget a consilioque dimittat, ipse solus reum absolutum, a quo pecuniam acceperit, condemnet pecuniamque non reddat? Hunc hominem in iudicum numero habebimus? hic alteram decuriam senatoriam iudex obtinebit? hic de capite libero iudicabit? huic iudicialis tabella committetur? quam iste non modo cera, verum etiam sanguine, si visum erit, notabit.   [80] Quid enim horum se negat fecisse? illud videlicet unum, quod necesse est, pecuniam accepisse. Quidni iste neget? At eques Romanus, qui Sopatrum defendit, qui omnibus eius consiliis rebusque interfuit, Q. Minucius, iuratus dicit pecuniam datam, iuratus dicit Timarchidem dixisse maiorem pecuniam ab accusatoribus dari; dicent hoc multi Siculi, dicent omnes Halicyenses, dicet etiam praetextatus Sopatri filius, qui ab isto homine crudelissimo patre innocentissimo pecuniaque patria privatus est.   [81] Verum si de pecunia testibus planum facere non possem, illud negare posses aut nunc negabis, te consilio tuo dimisso, viris primariis qui in consilio C. Sacerdoti fuerant tibique esse solebant remotis, de re iudicata iudicavisse? teque eum quem C. Sacerdos adhibito consilio causa cognita absolvisset, eundem remoto consilio causa incognita condemnasse? Cum haec confessus eris, quae in foro palam Syracusis in ore atque in oculis provinciae gesta sunt, negato tum sane, si voles, te pecuniam accepisse: reperies, credo, aliquem qui, cum haec quae palam gesta sunt videat, quaerat quid tu occulte egeris, aut qui dubitet utrum malit meis testibus an tuis defensoribus credere.   [82] Dixi iam ante me non omnia istius quae in hoc genere essent enumeraturum, sed electurum ea quae maxime excellerent. Accipite nunc aliud eius facinus nobile et multis locis saepe commemoratum, et eius modi ut in uno omnia maleficia inesse videantur. Attendite diligenter; invenietis enim id facinus natum a cupiditate, auctum per stuprum, crudelitate perfectum atque conclusum.   [83] Sthenius est, hic qui nobis adsidet, Thermitanus, antea multis propter summam virtutem summamque nobilitatem, nunc propter suam calamitatem atque istius insignem iniuriam omnibus notus. Huius hospitio Verres cum esset usus, et cum apud eum non solum Thermis saepenumero fuisset, sed etiam habitasset, omnia domo eius abstulit quae paulo magis animum cuiuspiam aut oculos possent commovere. Etenim Sthenius ab adulescentia paulo studiosius haec compararat: supellectilem ex aere elegantiorem et Deliacam et Corinthiam, tabulas pictas, etiam argenti bene facti, prout Thermitani hominis facultates ferebant, satis. Quae cum esset in Asia adulescens studiose, ut dixi, compararat, non tam suae delectationis causa quam ad invitationes adventusque nostrorum hominum, amicorum atque hospitum.   [84] Quae posteaquam iste omnia abstulit, alia rogando, alia poscendo, alia sumendo, ferebat Sthenius ut poterat; angebatur animi necessario quod domum eius exornatam et instructam fere iam iste reddiderat nudam atque inanem; verum tamen dolorem suum nemini impertiebat; praetoris iniurias tacite, hospitis placide ferendas arbitrabatur.   [85] Interea iste cupiditate illa sua nota atque apud omnis pervagata, cum signa quaedam pulcherrima atque antiquissima Thermis in publico posita vidisset, adamavit; a Sthenio petere coepit ut ad ea tollenda operam suam profiteretur seque adiuvaret. Sthenius vero non solum negavit, sed etiam ostendit fieri id nuilo modo posse ut signa antiquissima, monumenta P. Africani, ex oppido Thermitanorum incolumi illa civitate imperioque populi Romani tollerentur.   [86] Etenim ut simul Africani quoque humanitatem et aequitatem cognoscatis, oppidum Himeram Carthaginienses quondam ceperant, quod fuerat in primis Siciliae clarum et ornatum. Scipio, qui hoc dignum populo Romano arbitraretur, bello confecto socios sua per nostram victoriam recuperare, Siculis omnibus Carthagine capta quae potuit restituenda curavit. Himera deleta quos civis belli calamitas reliquos fecerat, ii se Thermis conlocarant in isdem agri finibus neque longe ab oppido antiquo, hi se patrum fortunas et dignitatem recuperare arbitrabantur cum illa maiorum ornamenta in eorum oppido conlocabantur.   [87] Erant signa ex aere complura; in his eximia pulchritudine ipsa Himera in muliebrem figuram habitumque formata ex oppidi, nomine et fluminis. Erat etiam Stesichori poetae statua senilis incurva cum libro summo, ut putant, artificio facta, qui fuit Himerae, sed et est et fuit tota Graecia summo propter ingenium honore et nomine. Haec iste ad insaniam concupiverat. Etiam, quod paene praeterii, capella quaedam est, ea quidem mire, ut etiam nos qui rudes harum rerum sumus intellegere possumus, scite facta et venuste. Haec et alia Scipio non neglegenter abiecerat, ut homo intellegens Verres auferre posset, sed Thermitanis restituerat, non quo ipse hortos aut suburbanum aut locum omnino ubi ea poneret nullum haberet, sed quod, si domum abstulisset, non diu Scipionis appellarentur, sed eorum ad quoscumque illius morte venissent: nunc iis locis posita sunt ut mihi semper Scipionis fore videantur itaque dicantur.   [88] Haec cum iste posceret agereturque ea res in senatu, Sthenius vehementissime restitit multaque, ut in primis Siculorum in dicendo copiosus est, commemoravit: urbem relinquere Thermitanis esse honestius quam pati tolli ex urbe monumenta maiorum, spolia hostium, beneficia clarissimi viri, indicia societatis populi Romani atque amicitiae. Commoti animi sunt omnium; repertus est nemo quin mori diceret satius esse. Itaque hoc adhuc oppidum Verres invenit prope solum in orbe terrarum unde nihil eius modi rerum de publico per vim, nihil occulte, nihil imperio, nihil gratia, nihil pretio posset auferre. Verum hasce eius cupiditates exponam alio loco; nunc ad Sthenium revertar.   [89] Iratus iste vehementer Sthenio atque incensus hospitium ei renuntiat, domo eius emigrat atque adeo exit; nam iam ante emigrarat. Eum autem statim inimicissimi Stheni domum suam invitant, ut animum eius in Sthenium inflammarent ementiendo aliquid et criminando. Hi autem erant inimici Agathinus, homo nobilis, et Dorotheus, qui habebat in matrimonio Callidamam, Agathini eius filiam; de qua iste audierat, itaque ad generum Agathini migrare maluit. Una nox intercesserat cum iste Dorotheum sic diligebat ut diceres omnia inter eos esse communia, Agathinum ita observabat ut aliquem adfinem atque propinquum; contemnere etiam signum illud Himerae iam videbatur, quod eum multo magis figura et liniamenta hospitae delectabant.   [90] Itaque hortari homines coepit ut aliquid Sthenio periculi crearent criminisque confingerent. Dicebant se illi nihil habere quod dicerent. Tum iste iis aperte ostendit et confirmavit eos in Sthenium quidquid vellent, simul atque ad se detulissent, probaturos. Itaque illi non procrastinant, Sthenium statim educunt, aiunt ab eo litteras publicas esse corruptas. Sthenius postulat ut, cum secum sui cives agant de litteris publicis corruptis, eiusque rei legibus Thermitanorum actio sit, senatusque et populus Romanus Thermitanis, quod semper in amicitia fideque m'ansissent, urbem agros legesque suas reddidisset Publiusque Rupilius postea leges ita Siculis ex senatus consulto de x legatorum sententia dedisset ut cives inter sese legibus suis agerent, idemque hoc haberet Verres ipse in edicto: ut de his omnibus causis se ad leges reiceret.   [91] Iste homo omnium aequissimus atque a cupiditate remotissimus se cogniturum esse confirmat; paratum ad causam dicendam venire hora nona iubet. Non erat obscurum quid homo improbus ac nefarius cogitaret; neque enim ipse satis occultarat, nec mulier tacere potuetat. Intellectum est id istum agere ut, cum Sthenium sine ullo argumento ac sine teste damnasset, tum homo nefarius de homine nobili atque id aetatis suoque hospite virgis supplicium crudelissime sumeret. Quod cum esset perspicuum, de amicorum hospitumque suorum sententia Thermis Sthenius Romam profugit: hiemi fluctibusque sese committere maluit quam non istam communem Siculorum tempestatem calamitatemque vitaret.   [92] Iste homo certus et diligens ad horam nonam praesto est, Sthenium citari iubet. Quem posteaquam videt non adesse, dolore ardere atque iracundia furere coepit, Venerios domum Stheni mittere, equis circum agros eius villasque dimittere. Itaque dum exspectat quidnam sibi certi adferatur, ante horam tertiam noctis de foro non discedit. Postridie mane descendit; Agathinum ad se vocat; iubet eum de litteris publicis in absentem Sthenium dicere. Etat eius modi causa ut ille ne sine adversario quidem apud inimicum iudicem reperire posset quid diceret;   [93] itaque tantum verbo posuit, Sacerdote praetote Sthenium litteras publicas corrupisse. Vix ille hoc dixerat cum iste pronuntiat STHENIUM LITTERAS PUBLICAS CORRUPISSE VIDERI; et hoc praeterea addit homo Venerius novo modo nullo exemplo, OB FAM REM HS D VENERI ERYCINAE DE STHENI BONIS SE EXACTURUM, bonaque eius statim coepit vendere; et vendidisset, si tantulum morae fuisset quo minus ei pecunia illa numeraretur.   [94] Ea posteaquam numerata est, contentus hac iniquita te iste non fuit; palam de sella ac tribunali pronuntiat, Si QUIS ABSENTEM STHENIUM REI CAPITALIS REUM FACERE VELLET, SESE EIUS NOMEN RECEPTURUM, et Simul ut ad causam accederet nomenque deferret, Agathinum, novum adfinem atque hospitem, coepit hortari. Tum ille clare omnibus audientibus se id non esse facturum, ne que se usque eo Sthenio esse inimicum ut eum rei capitalis adfinem esse diceret. Hic tum repente Pacilius quidam, homo egens et levis, accedit; ait, si liceret, absentis nomen deferre se velle. Iste vero et licere et fieri solere, et se recepturum; itaque defertur; edicit statim ut Kalendis Decembribus adsit Sthenius Syracusis.   [95] Hic qui Romam pervenisset, satisque feliciter anni iam adverso tempore navigasset, omniaque habuisset aequiora et placabiliora quam animum praetoris atque hospitis, rem ad amicos suos detulit, quae, ut erat acerba atque indigna, sic videbatur omnibus. Itaque in senatu continuo Cn. Lentulus et L. Gellius consules faciunt mentionem placere statui, si patribus conscriptis videretur, ne absentes homines in provinciis rei fierent rerum capitalium; causam Stheni totam et istius crudelitatem et iniquitatem senatum docent. Aderar in senatu Verres pater istius, et flens unum quemque senatorum rogabat ut filio suo parceret; neque tamen multum proficiebat; erat enim summa voluntas senatus. Itaque sententiae dicebantur: CUM STHENIUS ABSENS REUS FACTUS ESSET, DE ABSENTE IUDICIUM NULLUM FIERI PLACERE, ET, SI QUOD ESSET FACTUM, ID RATUM ESSE NON PLACERE   [96] Eo die transigi nihil potuit, quod et id temporis erat et ille pater istius invenerat homines qui dicendo tempus consumerent. Postea senex Verres defensores atque hospites omnis Stheni convenit, rogat eos atque orat ne oppugnent filium suum, de Sthenio ne laborent; confirmat iis curaturum se esse ne quid ei per filium suum noceretur; se homines certos eius rei causa in Siciliam et terra et mari esse missurum. Et erat spatium dierum fere xxx ante Kalendas Decembris, quo die iste ut Syracusis Sthenius adesset edixerat.   [97] Commoventur amici Stheni; sperant fore ut patris litteris nuntiisque filius ab illo furore revocetur. In senatu postea causa non agitur. Veniunt ad istum domestici nuntii litterasque a patre adferunt ante Kalendas Decembris, cum isti etiam tum de Sthenio in integro tota res esset, eodemque ei tempore de eadem re litterae complures a multis eius amicis ac necessariis adferuntur. Hic iste, qui prae cupiditate neque offici sui neque periculi neque pietatis neque humanitatis rationem habuisset umquam, neque in eo quod monebatur auctoritatem patris neque in eo quod rogabatur voluntatem anteponendam putavit libidini suae, mane Kalendis Decembribus, ut edixerat, Sthenium citari iubet.   [98] Si abs te istam rem parens tuus alicuius amici rogatu benignitate aut ambitione adductus petisset, gravissima tamen apud te voluntas patris esse debuisset; cum vero abs te tui capitis causa peteret hominesque certos domo misisset, hique eo tempore ad te venissent cum tibi in integro tota res esset, ne tum quidem te potuit si non pietatis, at salutis tuae ratio ad officium sanitatemque reducere? Citat reum; non respondit; citat accusatorem; (attendite, quaeso, iudices, quanto opere istius amentiae fortuna ipsa adversata sit, et simul videte qui Stheni causam casus adiuverit:) citatus accusator, M. Pacilius, nescio quo casu non respondit, non adfuit.   [99] Si praesens Sthenius reus esset factus, si manifesto in maleficio teneretur, tamen, cum accusator non adesset, Sthenium condemnari non oporteret. Etenim si posset reus absente accusatore damnari, non ego a Vibone Veliam parvulo navigio inter fugitivorum ac praedonum ac tua tela venissem, quo tempore omnis illa mea festinatio fuit cum periculo capitis, ob eam causam ne tu ex reis eximerere si ego ad diem non adfuissem. Quid igitur tibi erat in tuo iudicio optatissimum, me cum citatus essem non adesse, cur Sthenio non putasti prodesse oportere, cum eius accusator non adfuisset? Itaque fecit ut exitus principio simillimus reperiretur: quem absentem reum fecerat, eum absente accusatore condemnat.   [100] Nuntiabatur illi primis illis temporibus, id quod pater quoque ad eum pluribus verbis scripserat, agitatam rem esse in senatu; etiam in contione tribunum plebis de causa Stheni, M. Palicanum, esse questum; postremo me ipsum apud hoc collegium tribunorum plebis, cum eorum omnium edicto non liceret Romae quemquam esse qui rei capitalis condemnatus esset, egisse causam Stheni, et, cum ita rem euissem quem ad modum nunc apud vos, docuissemque hanc damnationem duci non oportere, x tribunos plebis hoc statuisse, idque de omnium sententia pronuntiatum esse, NON VIDERI STHENIUM IMPEDIRI EDICTO QUO MINUS EI ROMAE LICERET ESSE.   [101] Cum haec ad istum adferrentur, pertimuit aliquando et commotus est; vertit stilum in tabulis suis, quo facto causam omnem evertit suam; nihil enim sibi reliqui fecit quod defendi aliqua ratione posset. Nam si ita defenderet, "Recipi nomen absentis licet; hoc fieri in provincia nulla lex vetat", mala et improba defensione, verum aliqua tamen uti videretur; postremo illo desperatissimo perfugio uti posset, se imprudentem fecisse, existimasse id licere. Quamquam haec perditissima defensio est, tamen aliquid dici videretur. Tollit ex tabulis id quod erat, et facit coram esse delatum.   [102] Hic videte in quot se laqueos induerit, quorum ex nullo se umquam expediet. Primum ipse in Sicilia saepe et palam de loco superiore dixerat et in sermone multis demonstrarat licere nomen recipere absentis; se exemplo fecisse quod fecisset. Haec eum dictitasse priore actione ei Sex. Pompeius Chlorus dixit, de cuius virtute antea commemoravi, ei Cn. Pompeius Theodorus, homo et Cn. Pompei, clarissimi viri, iudicio plurimis maximisque in rebus probatissimus et omnium existimatione ornatissimus, et Posides Macro Soluntinus, homo summa nobilitate existimatione virtute, et hac actione quam voletis multi dicent, et qui ex isto ipso audierunt viri primarii nostri ordinis, et alii qui interfuerunt cum absentis nomen reciperetur. Deinde Romae, cum haec acta res esset in senatu, omnes istius amici, in his etiam pater eius hoc defendebat, licere fieri; saepe esse factum; iste quod fecisset aliorum exemplo institutoque fecisse.   [104] Dicit praeterea testimonium tota Sicilia, quae in communibus postulatis civitatum omnium consulibus edidit, rogare atque orare patres conscriptos ut statuerent ne absentium nomina reciperentur. Qua de re Cn. Lentulum, patronum Siciliae, clarissimum adulescentem, dicere audistis, Siculos, cum se causam quae sibi in senatu pro his agenda esset docerent, de Stheni calamitate questos esse, propterque hanc iniuriam quae Sthenio facta esset eos statuisse ut hoc quod dico postularetur.   [104] Quae cum ita essent, tantane amentia praeditus atque audacia fuisti ut in re tam clara, tam testata, tam abs te ipso pervulgata tabulas publicas corrumpere auderes? At quem ad modum corrupisti? nonne ita ut omnibus nobis tacentibus ipsae tuae te tabulae condemnare possent? Cedo, quaeso, codicem, circumfer, ostende. Videtisne totum hoc nomen, coram ubi facit delatum, esse in litura? Quid fuit istic antea scriptum? quod mendum ista litura correxit? Quid a nobis, iudices, exspectatis argumenta huius criminis? Nihil dicimus; tabulae sunt in medio, quae se corruptas atque interlitas esse clamant.   [105] Ex istis etiam tu rebus effugere te posse confidis, cum te nos non opinione dubia, sed tuis vestigiis persequamur, quae tu in tabulis publicis expressa ac recentia reliquisti? Is mihi etiam Sthenium litteras publicas corrupisse causa incognita iudicavit, qui defendere non poterit se non in ipsius Stheni nomine litteras publicas corrupisse?   [106] Videte porro aliam amentiam; videte ut, dum expedire sese vult, induat. Cognitorem adscribit Sthenio—quem? cognatum aliquem aut propinquum? Non. Thermitanum aliquem, honestum hominem ac nobilem? Ne id quidem. At Siculum, in quo aliquis splendor dignitasque esset? Neminem. Quid igitur? Civem Romanum. Cui hoc probari potest? Cum esset Sthenius civitatis suae nobilissimus, amplissima cognatione, plurimis amicitiis, cum praeterea tota Sicilia multum auctoritate et gratia posset, invenire neminem Siculum potuit qui pro se cognitor fieret? Hoc probabis? An ipse civem Romanum maluit? Cedo cui Siculo, cum is reus fieret, civis Romanus cognitor factus umquam sit. Omnium praetorum litteras qui ante te fuerunt profer, explica; si unum inveneris, ego hoc tibi, quem ad modum in tabulis scriptum habes, ita gestum esse concedam.   [107] At, credo, Sthenius hoc sibi amplum putavit, eligere ex civium Romanorum numero, ex amicorum atque hospitum suorum copia, quem cognitorem daret. Quem delegit? quis in tabulis scriptus est? C. Claudius C. E Palatina. Non quaero quis hic sit Claudius, quam splendidus, quam honestus, quam idoneus propter cuius auctoritatem et dignitatem Sthenius ab omnium Siculorum consuetudine discederet et civem Romanum cognitorem daret. Nihil horum quaero; fortasse enim Sthenius non spiendorem hominis, sed familiaritatem secutus est. Quid? si omnium mortalium Sthenio nemo inimicior quam hic C. Claudius cum semper tum in bis ipsis rebus et temporibus fuit, si de litteris corruptis contra venit, si contra omni ratione pugnavit, utrum potius pro Sthenio inimicum cognitorem esse factum an te ad Stheni periculum inimici eius nomine abusum esse credemus?   [108] Ac ne qui forte dubitet cuius modi hoc totum sit negotium, tametsi iamdudum omnibus istius improbitatem perspicuam esse confido, tamen paulum etiam attendite. Videtis illum subcrispo capillo, nigrum, qui eo vultu nos intuetur ut sibi ipse peracutus esse videatur, qui tabulas tenet, qui scribit, qui monet, qui proximus est. Is est Claudius, qui in Sicilia sequester istius, interpres, confector negotiorum, prope conlega Timarchidi numerabatur, nunc obtinet eum locum ut vix Apronio illi de familiaritate concedere videatur, ei qui se non Timarchidi sed ipsius Verris conlegam et socium esse dicebat.   [109] Dubitate etiam, si potestis, quin eum iste potissimum ex omni numero delegerit cui hanc cognitoris falsi improbam personam imponeret, quem et huic inimicissimum et sibi amicissimum esse arbitraretur! Hic vos dubitabitis, iudices, tantam istius audaciam, tantam crudelitatem, tantam iniuriam vindicare? dubitabitis exemplum illorum sequi qui damnato Cn. Dolabella damnationem Philodami Opuntii resciderunt, quod is non absens reus factus esset, quae res iniquissima atque acerbissima est, sed cum ei legatio iam Romam a suis civibus esset data? Quod illi iudices multo in leviore causa statuerunt aequitatem secuti, vos id statuere in gravissima causa, praesertim aliorum auctoritate iam confirmatum, dubitabitis?   [110] At quem hominem, C. Verres, tanta tam insigni iniuria adfecisti? quem hominem absentem de litteris corruptis causa incognita condemnasti? cuius absentis nomen recepisti? quem absentem non modo sine crimine et sine teste, verum etiam sine accusatore damnasti? Quem hominem? di immortales! non dicam amicum tuum, quod apud homines clarissimum est, non hospitem, quod sanctissimum est; nihil enim minus libenter de Sthenio commemoro, nihil aliud in eo quod reprehendi possit invenio nisi quod homo frugalissimus atque integerrimus te, hominem plenum stupri flagiti sceleris, domum suam invitavit, nisi quod, qui C. Mari, Cn. Pompei, C. Marcelli, L. Sisennae, tui defensoris, ceterorum virorum fortissimorum hospes fuisset atque esset, ad eum numerum clarissimorum hominum tuum quoque nomen adscripsit.   [111] Quare de hospitio violato et de tuo isto scelere nefario nil queror; hoc dico non iis qui Sthenium norunt, hoc est nemini eorum qui in Sicilia fuerunt—nemo enim ignorat quo hic in civitate sua splendore, qua apud omnis Siculos dignitate atque existimatione sit; sed ut illi quoque qui in ea provincia non fuerunt intellegere possint in quo homine tu statueris exemplum eius modi, quod cum propter iniquitatem rei tum etiam propter hominis dignitatem acerbum omnibus atque intolerandum videretur.   [112] Estne Sthenius is qui, omnis honores domi suae facillime cum adeptus esset, amplissime ac magnificentissime gessit, qui oppidum non maximum maximis ex pecunia sua locis communibus monumentisque decoravit, cuius de meritis in rem publicam Thermitanorum Siculosque universos fuit aenea tabula fixa Thermis in curia, in qua publice erat de huius beneficiis scriptum et incisum? quae tabula tum imperio tuo revulsa, nunc a me tamen deportata est, ut omnes huius honores inter suos et amplitudinem possent cognoscere.   [113] Estne hic qui apud Cn. Pompeium, clarissimum virum, cum accusatus esset, quod propter C. Mari familiaritatem et hospitium contra rem publicam sensisse eum inimici et accusatores eius dicerent, cumque magis invidioso crimine quam vero arcesseretur, ita a Cn. Pompeio absolutus est ut in eo ipso iudicio Pompeius hunc hospitio suo dignissimum statueret? ita porro laudatus defensusque ab omnibus Siculis ut idem Pompeius non ab homine solum, sed etiam a provincia tota se huius absolutione inire gratiam arbitraretur? Postremo estne hic qui et animum in rem publicam habuit eius modi et tantum auctoritate apud suos civis potuit ut perficeret in Sicilia solus te praetore, quod non modo Siculus nemo sed ne Sicilia quidem tota potuisset, ut ex oppido Thermis nullum signum, nullum ornamentum, nihil ex sacro, nihil de publico attingeres, cum praesertim et essent multa praeclara et tu omnia concupisses?   [114Denique nunc vide quid inter te, cuius nomine apud Siculos dies festi aguntur et praeclara illa Verria celebrantur, cui statuae Romae stant inauratae a communi Siciliae quem ad modum inscriptum videmus, datae—vide, inquam, quid inter te et hunc Siculum, qui abs te est, patrono Siciliae, condemnatus, intersit. Hunc civitates ex Sicilia permultae testimonio suo legationibusque ad eam rem missis publice laudant: te, omnium Siculorum patronum, una Mamertina civitas, socia furtorum ac flagitiorum tuorum, publice laudat—ita tamen novo more ut legati laedant, legatio laudet—ceterae quidem civitates publice litteris legationibus testimoniis accusant, queruntur, arguunt: si tu absolutus sis, se funditus eversas esse arbitrantur.   [115] Hoc de homine ac de huius bonis etiam in Eryco monte monumentum tuorum flagitiorum crudelitatisque posuisti, in quo Stheni Thermitani nomen adscriptum est. Vidi argenteum Cupidinem cum lampade. Quid tandem habuit argumenti aut rationis res quam ob rem in eo potissimum Sthenianum praemium poneretur? utrum hoc signum cupiditatis tuae an tropaeum necessitudinis atque hospiti an amoris indicium esse voluisti? Faciunt hoc homines quos in summa nequitia non solum libido et voluptas, verum etiam ipsius nequitiae fama delectet, ut multis in locis notas ac vestigia suorum flagitiorum relinqui velint.   [116] Ardebat amore illius hospitae propter quam hospiti iura violarat; hoc non solum sciri tum, verum etiam commemorari semper volebat; itaque ex illa ipsa re quam accusante Agathino gesserat Veneri potissimum deberi praemium statuit, quae illam totam accusationem iudiciumque conflarat. Putarem te gratum in deos si hoc donum Veneri non de Stheni bonis dedisses, sed de tuis; quod facere debuisti, praesertim cum tibi illo ipso anno a Chelidone venisset hereditas.   [117] Hic ego, si hanc causam non omnium Siculorum rogatu recepissem, si hoc a me muneris non universa provincia poposcisset, si me animus atque amor in rem publicam existimatioque offensa nostri ordinis ac iudiciorum non hoc facere coegisset, atque haec una causa fuisset quod amicum atque hospitem meum Sthenium, quem ego in quaestura mea singulariter dilexissem, de quo optime existimassem, quem in provincia existimationis meae studiosissimum cupidissimumque cognossein, tam crudeliter scelerate nefarieque tractasses, tamen digna causa videretur cur inimicitias hominis improbissimi susciperem, ut hospitis salutem fortunasque defenderem.   [118] Fecerunt hoc multi apud maiores nostros, fecit etiam nuper homo clarissimus, Cn. Domitius, qui M. Silanum, consularem hominem, accusavit propter Aegritomari Transalpini hospitis iniurias. Putarem me idoneum qui exemplum sequerer humanitatis atque offici, proponeremque spem meis hospitibus ac necessariis quo tutiorem sese vitam meo praesidio victuros esse arbitrarentur; cum vero in communibus iniuriis totius provinciae Stheni quoque causa contineatur, multique uno tempore a me hospites atque amici publice privatimque defendantur, profecto vereri non debeo ne quis hoc quod facio non existimet me summi offici ratione impulsum coactumque suscepisse. Atque ut aliquando de rebus ab isto cognitis iudicatisque et de iudiciis datis dicere desistamus, et, quoniam facta istius in his generibus infinita sunt, nos modum aliquem et finem orationi nostrae criminibusque faciamus, pauca ex aliis generibus sumemus.   [119] Audistis ob ius dicendum Q. Varium dicere procuratores suos isti centum triginta milia nummum dedisse, meministis Q Vari testimonium, remque hanc totam C. Sacerdotis, hominis ornatissimi, testimonio comprobari, scitis Cn. Sertium, M. Modium, equites Romanos, sescentos praeterea civis Romanos multosque Siculos dixisse se isti pecuniam ob ius dicendum dedisse. De quo crimine quid ego disputem, cum id totum positum sit in testibus? quid porro argumenter, qua de re dubitare nemo possit? An hoc dubitabit quisquam omnium, quin is venalem in Sicilia iuris dictionem habuerit qui Romae totum edictum atque omnia decreta vendiderit? et quin is ab Siculis ob decreta interponenda pecunias ceperit, qui M. Octavium Ligurem pecuniam ob ius dicendum poposcerit?   [120] Quod enim iste praeterea genus pecuniae cogendae praeteriit? quod non ab omnibus aliis praeteritum excogitavit? ecqua res apud civitates Siculas expetitur, in qua aut honos aliquis sit aut potestas aut procuratio, quin eam rem tu ad tuum quaestum nundinationemque hominum traduxeris? Dicta sunt priore actione et privatim et publice testimonia; legati Centuripini, Halaesini, Catinenses, Panhormitanique dixerunt, multarum praeterea civitatum, iam vero privatim plurimi. Quorum ex testimoniis cognoscere potuistis tota Sicilia per triennium neminem ulla in civitate senatorem factum esse gratiis, neminem, ut leges eorum sunt, suffragiis, neminem nisi istius imperio aut litteris; atque in bis omnibus senateribus cooptandis non modo suffragia nulla fuisse, sed ne genera quidem spectata esse ex quibus in eum ordinem cooptari liceret, neque census neque aetates neque cetera Siculorum iura valuisse;   [121] quicumque senator voluerit fieri, quamvis puer, quamvis indignus, quamvis ex eo loco ex quo non liceret, si is pretio apud istum idoneos vinceret, factum esse semper; non modo Siculorum nihil in hac re valuisse leges, sed ne ab senatu quidem populoque Romano datas. Quas enim leges sociis amicisque dat is qui habet imperium a populo Romano, auctoritatem legum dandarum ab senatu, eae debent et populi Romani et senatus existimari.   [122] Halaesini pro multis ac magnis suis maiorumque suorum in rem publicam nostram meritis atque beneficiis suo iure nuper, L. Licinio Q. Mucio consulibus, cum haberent inter se controversias de senatu cooptando, leges ab senatu nostro petiverunt. Decrevit senatus honorifico senatus consulto ut iis C. Claudius Appi filius Pulcher praetor de senatu cooptando leges conscriberet. C. Claudius, adhibitis omnibus Marcellis qui tum erant, de eorum sententia leges Halaesinis dedit, in quibus multa sanxit de aetate hominum, ne qui minor xxx annis natus, de quaestu, quem qui fecisset ne legeretur, de censu, de ceteris rebus: quae omnia ante istum praetorem et nostrorum magistratuum auctoritate et Halaesinorum summa voluntate valuerunt. Ab isto et praeco, qui voluit, illum ordinem pretio mercatus est, et pueri annorum senum septenumque denum senatorium nomen nundinati sunt; et quod Halaesini, antiquissimi et fidelissimi socii atque amici, Romae impetrarant, ut apud se ne suffragiis quidem fieri liceret, id pretio ut fieri posset effecit.   [123] Agrigentini de senatu cooptando Scipionis leges antiquas habent, in quibus et illa eadem sancta sunt et hoc amplius: cum Agrigentinorum duo genera sint, unum veterum, alterum colonorum quos T. Manlius practor ex senatus consulto de oppidis Siculorum deduxit Agrigentum, cautum est in Scipionis legibus ne plures essent in senatu ex colonorum numero quam ex vetere Agrigentinorum. Iste, qui omnia iura pretio exaequasset omniumque rerum dilectum atque discrimen pecunia sustulisset, non modo illa quae erant aetatis ordinis quaes tusque permiscuit, sed etiam in his duobus generibus civium novorum veterumque turbavit.   [124] Nam cum esset ex vetere numero quidam senator demortuus, et cum ex utroque genere par numerus reliquus esset, veterem cooptari necesse erat legibus, ut is amplior numerus esset. Quae cum ita se res haberet, tamen ad istum emptum venerunt illum locum senatorium non solum veteres, verum etiam novi. Fit ut pretio novus vincat litterasque a praetore adferat Agrigentum. Agrigentini ad istum legatos mittunt qui eum leges doceant consuetudinemque omnium annorum demonstrent, ut iste intellegeret ei se illum locum vendidisse cui ne commercium quidem esse oporteret; quorum oratione iste, cum pretium iam accepisset, ne tantulum quidem commotus est.   [125] Idem fecit Heracleae. Nam eo quoque colonos P. Rupilius deduxit, legesque similis de cooptando senatu et de numero veterum ac novorum dedit. Ibi non solum iste ut apud ceteros pecuniam accepit, sed etiam genera veterum ac novorum numerumque permiscuit. Nolite exspectare dum omnis obeam oratione mea civitates: hoc uno complector omnia, neminem isto praetore senatorem fieri potuisse nisi qui isti pecuniam dedisset.   [126] Hoc idem transfero in magistratus, curationes, sacerdotia; quibus in rebus non solum hominum iura, sed etiam deorum immortalium religiones omnis repudiavit. Syracusis lex est de religione, quae in annos singulos lovis sacerdotem sortito capi iubeat, quod apud illos amplissimum sacerdotium putatur:   [127] cum suffragiis tres ex tribus generibus creati sunt, res revocatur ad sortem. Perfecerat iste imperio ut pro suffragio Theomnastus, familiaris suus, in tribus illis renuntiaretur: in sorte, cui imperare non potuerat, exspectabant homines quidnam acturus esset. Homo, id quod erat facillimum, primo vetat sortiri: iubet extra sortem Theomnastum renuntiari. Negant id Syracusani per religiones sacrorum ullo modo fieri posse, fas denique negant esse. Iubet iste sibi legem recitari. Recitatur; in qua scriptum erat ut, quot essent renuntiati, tot in hydriam sortes conicerentur; cuium nomen exisset, ut is haberet id sacerdotium. Iste homo ingeniosus et peracutus, "Optime", inquit, "nempe scriptum ita est, QUOT RENUNTIATI ERUNT. Quot ergo", inquit, "sunt renuntiati?" Respondent, "Tres." "Numquid igitur oportet nisi tres sortis conici, unam educi?" "Nihil." Conici iubet tres, in quibus omnibus esset inscriptum nomen Theomnasti. Fit clamor maximus, cum id universis indignum ac nefarium videretur. Ita lovis illud sacerdotium amplissimum per hanc rationem Theomnasto datur.   [128] Cephaloedi mensis est certus, quo mense sacerdotem maximum creari oporteat. Etat eius honoris cupidus Artemo quidam, Climachias cognomine, homo sane locuples et domi nobilis. Sed is fieri nullo modo poterat si Herodotus quidam adesset: ei locus ille atque honos in illum anuum ita deberi putabatur ut ne Climachias quidem contra diceret. Res ad istum defertur et istius more deciditur: toreumata sane nota et pretiosa auferuntur. Herodotus Romae erat; satis putabat se ad comitia tempore venturum si pridie venisset. Iste, ne aut alio mense ac fas erat comitia haberentur, aut Herodoto praesenti honos adimeretur (id quod iste non laborabat, Climachias minime volebat), excogitat—dixi iamdudum, non est homo acutior quisquam nec fuit—excogitat, inquam, quem ad modum mense illo legitimo comitia haberentur nec tamen Herodotus adesse posset.   [129] Est consuetudo Siculorum ceterorumque Graecorum, quod suos dies mensisque congruere volunt cum solis lunaeque ratione, ut non numquam, si quid discrepet, eximant unum aliquem diem aut summum biduum ex mense, quos illi exaeresimos dies nominant; item non numquam uno die longiorem mensem faciunt aut biduo. Quae cum iste cognosset novus astrologus, qui non tam caeli rationem quam caelati argenti duceret, eximi iubet non diem ex mense, sed ex anno unum dimidiatumque mensem hoc modo ut, quo die verbi causa esse oporteret Idus lanuarias, is eo die Kalendas Martias proscribi iuberet: itaque fit omnibus recusantibus et plorantibus. Dies is erat legitimus comitiis habendis.   [130] Eo modo sacerdos Climachias renuntiatus est. Herodotus cum Roma revertitur, diebus, ut ipse putabat, xv ante comitia, offendit eum mensem qui consequitur mensem comitialem, comitiis iam abhinc xxx diebus factis. Tunc Cephaloeditani fecerunt intercalarium xxxxv dies longum, ut reliqui menses in suam rationem reverterentur. Hoc si Romae fieri posset, certe aliqua ratione expugnasset iste ut dies xxxxv inter binos ludos tollerentur, per quos solos iudicium fieri posset.   [131] Iam vero censores quem ad modum isto praetore in Sicilia creati sint, operae pretium est cognoscere. Ille enim est magistratus apud Siculos qui diligentissime mandatur a populo propter hanc causam, quod omnes Siculi ex censu quotannis tributa conferunt, in censu habendo potestas omnis aestimationis habendae summaeque faciendae censori permittitur. Itaque et populus cui maximam fidem suarum rerum habeat maxima cura deligit, et propter magnitudinem potestatis hic magistratus a populo summa ambitione contenditur.   [132] In ea re iste nihil obscure facere voluit, non in sortitione fallere neque dies de fastis eximere. Nihil sane vafre nec malitiose facere conatus est; sed ut studia cupiditatesque honorum atque ambitiones ex omnibus civitatibus tolleret, quae res evertendae rei publicae solent esse, ostendit sese in omnibus civitatibus censores esse facturum.   [133] Tanto mercatu praetoris indicto concurritur undique ad istum Syracusas; flagrabat domus tota praetoria studio hominum et cupiditate; nec mirum omnibus comitiis tot civitatum unam in domum revocatis, tantaque ambitione provinciae totius in uno cubiculo inclusa. Exquisitis palam pretiis et licitationibus factis, discribebat censores binos in singulas civitates Timarchides. Is suo labore suisque accessionibus huius negoti atque operis molestia consequebatur ut ad istum sine ulla sollicitudine summa pecuniae referretur. Iam hic Timarchides quantam pecuniam fecerit plane adhuc cognoscere non potuistis; verum tamen priore actione quam varie, quam improbe praedatus esset, multorum testimoniis cognovistis.   [134] Sed ne miremini qua ratione hic tantum apud istum libertus potuerit, exponam vobis breviter quid hominis sit, ut et istius nequitiam qui illum secum habuerit, eo praesertim numero ac loco, et calamitatem provinciae cognoscatis. In mulierum corruptelis et in omni eius modi luxuria atque nequitia mirandum in modum reperiebam hunc Timarchidem ad istius flagitiosas libidines singularemque nequitiam natum atque aptum fuisse; investigare, adire, appellare, corrumpere, quidvis facere in eius modi rebus quamvis callide, quamvis audacter, quamvis impudenter; eundem mira quaedam excogitare genera furandi; nam ipsum Verrem tantum avaritia semper hiante atque imminente fuisse, ingenio et cogitatione nulla, ut quicquid sua sponte faciebat, item ut vos Romae cognovistis, eripere potius quam fallere videretur.   [135] Haec vero huius erat ars et malitia miranda, quod acutissime tota provincia quid cuique accidisset, quid cuique opus esset, indagare et odorari solebat; omnium adversarios, omnium inimicos diligenter cognoscere, conloqui, attemptare; ex utraque parte voluntates perspicere, facultates et copias; quibus opus esset metum offerre, quibus expediret spem ostendere; accusatorum et quadruplatorum quicquid erat, habebat in potestate; quod cuique negoti conflare volebat, nullo labore faciebat; istius omnia decreta imperia litteras peritissime et callidissime venditabat.   [136] Ac non solum erat administer istius cupiditatum, verum etiam ipse sui meminerat, neque solum nummos, si qui isti exciderant, tollere solebat, ex quibus pecuniam maximam fecit, sed etiam voluptatum flagitiorumque istius ipse reliquias colligebat. Itaque in Sicilia non Athenionem, qui nullum oppidum cepit, sed Timarchidem fugitivum omnibus oppidis per triennium scitote regnasse; in Timarchidi potestate sociorum populi Romani antiquissimorum atque amicissimorum liberos, matres familias, bona fortunasque omnis fuisse. Is igitur, ut dico, Timarchides in omnis civitates accepto pretio censores dimisit: comitia isto praetore censorum ne simulandi quidem causa fuerunt.   [137] Iam hoc impudentissime: palam—licebat enim videlicet legibus—singulis censoribus denarii treceni ad statuam praetoris imperati sunt. Censores cxxx facti sunt; pecuniam illam ob censuram contra leges clam dederunt; haec denarium xxxviiii milia palam salvis legibus contulerunt in statuam. Primum quo tantam pecuniam? deinde quam ob rem censores ad statuam tibi conferebant? Ordo aliqui censorum est, conlegium, genus aliquod hominum? Nam aut publice civitates istos honores habent aut generatim homines, ut aratores, ut mercatores, ut navicularii; censores quidem qui magis quam aediles? Ob beneficium? Ergo hoc fatebere, abs te haec petita esse—nam empta non audebis dicere; te eos magistratus hominibus benefici, non rei publicae causa permisisse? Hoc cum tute fateare, quisquam dubitabit quin tu istam apud populos provinciae totius invidiam atque offensionem non ambitionis neque beneficiorum conlocandorum, sed pecuniae conciliandae causa susceperis?   [138] Itaque illi censores fecerunt idem quod in nostra re publica solent ii qui per largitionem magistratus adepti sunt: dederunt operam ut ita potestatem gererent ut illam lacunam rei familiaris explerent. Sic census habitus est te praetore ut eo censu nullius civitatis res publica posset administrari; nam locupletissimi cuiusque censum extenuarant, tenuissimi auxerant. Itaque in tributis imperandis tantum oneris plebi imponebatur ut, etiamsi homines tacerent, res ipsa illum censum repudiaret, id quod intellegi facillime re ipsa potest. Nam L. Metellus, qui, posteaquam ego inquirendi causa in Siciliam veni, repente L. Laetili adventu istius non modo amicus, verum etiam cognatus factus est—is, quod videbat istius censu stari nullo modo posse, eum censum observari iussit qui viro fortissimo atque innocentissimo, Sex. Peducaeo, praetore habitus esset. Erant enim tum censores legibus facti delecti a suis civitatibus quibus, si quid commisissent, poenae legibus erant constitutae.   [139] Te autem praetore quis censor aut legem metueret qua non tenebatur, quoniam creatus lege non erat, aut animadversionem tuam, cum id quod abs te emerat vendidisset? Teneat iam sane meos testis Metellus, cogat alios laudare, sicut in multis conatus est; modo haec faciat quae facit. Quis enim umquam tanta a quoquam contumelia, quis tanta ignominia adfectus est? Quinto quoque anno Sicilia tota censetur. Erat censa praetore Peducaeo; quintus annus cum in te praetorem incidisset, censa denuo est. Postero anno L. Metellus mentionem tui census fieri vetat; censores dicit de integro sibi creari placere; interea Peducaeanum censum observari iubet. Hoc si tuus inimicus fecisset, tamen, si animo aequo provincia tulisset, inimici iudicium grave videretur. Fecit amicus recens et cognatus voluntarius; aliter enim, si provinciam retinere, si salvus ipse in provincia vellet esse, facere non potuit.   [140] Exspectas etiam quid hi iudicent? Si tibi magistratum abrogasset, minore ignominia te adfecisset quam cum ea quae in magistratu gessisti sustulit atque inrita iussit esse. Neque in hac re sola fuit eius modi, sed, antequam ego in Siciliam veni, in maximis rebus ac plurimis; nam et Heraclio Syracusanos tuos illos palaestritas bona restituere iussit, et Epicrati Bidinos, et pupillo Drepanitano A. Claudium, et, nisi mature Laetilius in Siciliam cum litteris venisset, minus xxx diebus Metellus totam trienni praeturam tuam rescidisset.   [141] Et quoniam de ea pecunia quam tibi ad statuam censores contulerunt dixi, non mihi praetermittendum videtur ne illud quidem genus pecuniae conciliatae quam tu a civitatibus statuarum nomine coegisti. Video enim eius pecuniae summam esse pergrandem, ad HS viciens: tantum conficietur ex testimoniis et litteris civitatum. Et iste hoc concedit nec potest aliter dicere. Quare cuius modi putamus esse illa quae negat, cum haec tam improba sint quae fatetur? Quid enim vis constitui? consumptam esse istam omnem pecuniam in statuis? Fac ita esse; tamen hoc ferendum nullo modo est, tantam a sociis pecuniam auferri ut omnibus in angiportis praedonis improbissimi statua ponatur, qua vix tuto transiri posse videatur.   [142] Verum ubi tandem aut in quibus statuis ista tanta pecunia consumpta est? "Consumetur", inquies. Scilicet exspectemus legitimum illud quinquennium; si hoc intervallo non consumpserit, tum denique nomen eius de pecuniis repetundis statuarum nomine deferemus. Reus est maximis plurimisque criminibus in iudicium vocatus: HS viciens ex hoc uno genere captum videmus. Si condemnatus eris, non, opinor, id ages ut ista pecunia in quinquennio consumatur in statuis; sin absolutus eris, quis erit tam amens qui te ex tot tantisque criminibus elapsum post quinquennium statuarum nomine arcessat? Ita si neque adhuc consumpta est ista pecunia et est perspicuum non consumptum iri, licet iam intellegamus inventam esse rationem quare et iste HS viciens ex hoc uno genere conciliarit et ceperit, et ceteri—si hoc a vobis erit comprobatum—quam volent magnas hoc nomine pecunias capere possint; ut iam videamur non a pecuniis capiendis homines absterrere, sed, cum genera quaedam pecuniarum capiendarum comprobarimus, honesta nomina turpissimis rebus imponere.   [143] Etenim, si C. Verres HS c milia populum verbi gratia Centuripinum poposcisset eamque ab iis pecuniam abstulisset, non, opinor, esset dubium quin eum, cum id planum fieret, condemnari necesse esset. Quid? si eundem populum HS cc milia poposcit eaque coegit atque abstulit, num idcirco absolvetur quod adscriptum est eam pecuniam datam statuarum nomine? Non, opinor; nisi forte id agimus, non ut magistratibus nostris moram accipiendi, sed ut sociis causam dandi adferre videamur. Quodsi quem statuae magno opere delectant, et si quis earum honore aut gloria ducitur, is haec tamen constituat necesse est, primum averti pecuniam domum non placere, deinde ipsarum statuarum modum quendam esse oportere, deinde illud, certe ab invitis exigi non oportere.   [144] Ac de avertenda pecunia quaero abs te utrum ipsae civitates solitae sint statuas tibi faciundas locare ei cui possent optima condicione locare, an aliquem procuratorem praeficere qui statuis faciundis praeesset, an tibi, an cui tu imperasses, adnumerare pecuniam? Nam si per eos statuae fiebant a quibus tibi iste honos habebatur, audio; sin Timarchidi pecunia numerabatur, desine, quaeso, simulare te, cum in manifestissimo furto teneare, gloriae studiosum ac monumentorum fuisse. Quid vero? modum statuarum haberi nullum placet? Atqui habeatur necesse est.   [145] Etenim sic considerate. Syracusana civitas, ut eam potissimum nominem, dedit ipsi statuam—est honos—et patri—bella haec pietatis et quaestuosa simulatio—et filio—ferri hoc potest, hunc enim puerum non oderant; verum quotiens et quot nominibus a Syracusanis statuas auferes? Ut in foro statuerent, abstulisti, ut in curia, coegisti, ut pecuniam conferrent in eas statuas quae Romae ponerentur imperasti; ut idem darent homines aratorum nomine, dederunt; ut idem pro parte in commune Siciliae conferrent, etiam id contulerunt. Una civitas cum tot nominibus pecuniam contulerit idemque hoc civitates ceterae fecerint, nonne res ipsa vos admonet ut putetis modum aliquem huic cupiditati constitui oportere? Quid? si hoc voluntate sua nulla civitas fecit, si omnes imperio, metu, vi, malo adductae tibi pecuniam statuarum nomine contulerunt, per deos immortalis, num cui dubium esse poterit quin, etiamsi statuerit accipere ad statuas licere, idem tamen statuat eripere certe non licere? Primum igitur in hanc rem testem totam Siciliam citabo, quae mihi una voce statuarum nomine magnam pecuniam per vim coactam esse demonstrat.   [146] Nam legationes omnium civitatum in postulatis communibus, quae fere omnia ex tuis iniuriis,nata sunt, etiam hoc ediderunt, UT STATUAS NE CUI, NISI CUM IS DE PROVINCIA DECESSISSET, POLLICERENTUR—Tot praetores in Sicilia fuerunt, totiens apud maiores nostros Siculi senatum adierunt, totiens hac memoria: tamen huiusce novi postulati genus atque principium tua praetura attulit.   [147] Quid enim tam novum non solum re, sed genere ipso postulandi? Nam cetera quae sunt in isdem postulatis de iniuriis tuis sunt nova, sed tamen non novo modo postulantur. Rogant et orant Siculi patres conscriptos ut nostri magistratus posthac decumas lege Hieronica vendant. Tu primus contra vendideras. Audio. Ne in cellam quod imperatur aestiment. Hoc quoque propter tuos ternos denarios nunc primum postulatur, sed genus ipsum postulandi non est novum. Ne absentis nomen recipiatur. Ex Stheni calamitate et tua natum est iniuria. Cetera non colligam. Sunt omnia Siculorum postulata eius modi ut crimina collecta in unum reum te esse videantur, quae tamen omnia novas iniurias habent, sed postulationum formulas usitatas.   [148] Hoc postulatum de statuis ridiculum esse videatur ei qui rem sententiamque non perspiciat. Postulant enim, non uti ne cogantur statuere; quid igitur? ut ipsis ne liceat. Quid est hoc? petis a me, quod in tua potestate est, ut id tibi facere ne liceat; pete potius ne quis te invitum polliceri aut facere cogat. "Nihil egero", inquit; "negabunt enim omnes se coegisse; si me salvum esse vis, mihi impone istam vim ut omnino mihi ne liceat polliceri." Ex tua praetura primum haec est nata postulatio; qua cum utuntur, hoc significant atque adeo aperte ostendunt, sese ad statuas tuas pecuniam metu ac malo coactos invitissimos contulisse.   [149] Quid? si hoc non dicant, tibi non necesse sit ipsi id confiteri? Vide et perspice qua defensione sis usurus: iam intelleges hoc tibi de statuis confitendum esse. Mihi enim renuntiatur ita constitui a tuis patronis, hominibus ingeniosis, causam tuam, et ita eos abs te institui et doceri, ut quisque ex provincia Sicilia gravior homo atque honestior testimonium vehementius dixerit, sicuti multi primarii viri multa dixerunt, te statim hoc istis tuis defensoribus dicere, "Inimicus est propterea quod arator est." Itaque uno genere, opinor, circumscribere habetis in animo genus hoc aratorum, quod eos infenso animo atque inimico venisse dicatis quia fuerit in decumis iste vehementior. Ergo aratores inimici omnes et adversarii sunt: nemo est eorum quin perisse te cupiat? Omnino praeclare te habes cum is ordo atque id hominum genus, quod optimum atque honestissimum est, a quo uno et summa res publica et illa provincia maxime continetur, tibi est inimicissimum.   [150] Verum esto; alio loco de aratorum animo et iniuriis videro; nunc, quod mihi abs te datur, id accipio, eos tibi esse inimicissimos. Nempe ita dicis: propter decumas. Concedo: non quaero, iure an iniuria sint inimici. Quid ergo? illae quid sibi statuae equestres inauratae volunt, quae populi Romani oculos animosque maxime offendunt, propter aedem Volcani? nam inscriptum esse video quandam ex his statuis aratores dedisse. Si honoris causa statuam dederunt, inimici non sunt; credamus testibus; tum enim honori tuo, nunc iam religioni suae consulunt. Sin autem metu coacti dederunt, confiteare necesse est te in provincia pecunias statuarum nomine per vim ac metum coegisse. Utrum tibi commodum est elige.   [151] Equidem libenter hoc iam crimen de statuis relinquam, ut mihi tu illud concedas, quod tibi honestissimum est, aratores tibi ad statuam honoris tui causa voluntate sua contulisse. Da mihi hoc; iam tibi maximam partem defensionis praecideris; non enim poteris aratores tibi iratos esse atque inimicos dicere. 0] causam singularem! o defensionem miseram ac perditam! nolle hoc accipere reum ab accusatore, et eum reum qui praetor in Sicilia fuerit, aratores ei statuam sua voluntate statuisse, aratores de eo bene existimare, amicos esse, salvum cupere! Metuit ne hoc vos existimetis; obruitur enim aratorum testimoniis.   [152] Utar eo quod datur. Certe hoc vobis ita iudicandum est, eos qui isti inimicissimi sunt, ut ipse existimari vult, ad istius honores atque monumenta pecunias voluntate sua non contulisse. Atque ut hoc totum facillime intellegi possit, quem voles eorum testium quos produxero, qui ex Sicilia testes sunt, sive togatum sive Siculum, rogato, et eum qui tibi inimicissimus esse videbitur, qui se spoliatum abs te esse dicet, ecquid suo nomine in tuam statuam contulerit; neminem reperies qui neget; etenim omnes dederunt.   [153] Quemquam igitur putas dubitaturum quin is quem tibi inimicissimum esse oporteat, qui abs te gravissimas iniurias acceperit, pecuniam statuae nomine dederit vi atque imperio adductus, non officio ac voluntate? Huius ego pecuniae, iudices, quae permagna est impudentissimeque coacta ab invitis, non habui rationem neque habere potui, quantum ab aratoribus, quantum ab negotiatoribus qui Syracusis, qui Agrigenti, qui Panhormi, qui Lilybaei negotiantur esset coactum: eam iam intellegitis ipsius quoque confessione ab invitissimis coactam esse.   [154] Venio nunc ad civitates Siciliae, de quibus facillime iudicium fieri voluntatis potest. An etiam Siculi inviti contulerunt? Non est probabile. Etenim sic C. Verrem praeturam in Sicilia gessisse constat ut, cum utrisque satis facere non posset, et Siculis et togatis, offici potius in socios quam ambitionis in civis rationem duxerit. Itaque eum non solum PATRONUM illius insulae, sed etiam SOTERA inscriptum vidi Syracusis. Hoc quantum est? Ita magnum ut Latine uno verbo exprimi non possit. Is est nimirum SOTER qui salutem dedit. Huius nomine etiam dies festi agitantur, pulchra illa Verria, non quasi Marcellia, sed pro Marcelliis, quae illi istius iussu sustulerunt; huius fornix in foro Syracusis est, in quo nudus filius stat, ipse autem ex equo nudatam ab se provinciam prospicit; huius statuae locis omnibus, quae hoc demonstrare videantur, prope modum non minus multas statuas istum posuisse Syracusis quam abstulisse; huic etiam Romae videmus in basi statuarum maximis litteris incisum, A COMMUNI SICILIAE DATAS.   [155] Quam ob rem qui hoc probare potes cuiquam, tantos honores habitos esse ab invitis? Hic tibi etiam multo magis quam paulo ante in aratoribus videndum et considerandum est quid velis. Magna res est utrum tibi Siculos publice privatimque amicos an inimicos existimari velis. Si inimicos, quid te futurum est? quo confugies? ubi nitere? Modo aratorum, honestissimorum hominum ac locupletissimorum et Siculorum et civium Romanorum, maximum numerum abs te abalienasti: nunc de Siculis civitatibus quid ages? Dices tibi Siculos esse amicos? qui poteris? qui, quod nullo in homine antea fecerant, ut in eum publice testimonium dicerent—cum praesertim ex ea provincia condemnati sint complures qui ibi praetores fuerunt, duo soli absoluti—, hi nunc veniunt cum litteris, veniunt cum mandatis, veniunt cum testimoniis publicis; qui, si te publice laudarent, tamen id more potius suo quam merito tuo facere viderentur, hi cum de tuis factis publice conqueruntur, nonne hoc indicant, tantas esse iniurias ut multo maluerint de suo more decedere quam de tuis moribus non dicere?   [156] Confitendum igitur est tibi necessario Siculos inimicos esse, qui quidem in te gravissima postulata consulibus ediderint, et me ut hanc causam salutisque suae defensionem susciperem obsecrarint; qui cum a praetore prohiberentur, a quattuor quaestoribus impedirentur, omnium minas atque omnia pericula prae salute sua levia duxerint; qui priore actione ita testimonia graviter vehementerque dixerint ut Artemonem Centuripinum legatum et publice testem Q. Hortensius accusatorem, non testem esse diceret. Etenim ille cum propter virtutem et fidem cum Androne, homine honestissimo et certissimo, tum etiam propter eloquentiam legatus a suis civibus electus est, ut posset multas istius et varias iniurias quam apertissime vobis planissimeque explicare. Dixerunt Halaesini, Catinenses, Tyndaritani, Hennenses, Herbitenses, Agyrinenses, Netini, Segestani: enumerare omnis non est necesse. Scitis quam multi et quam multa priore actione dixerint: nunc et illi et reliqui dicent.   [157] Omnes denique hoc in hac causa intellegent, hoc animo esse Siculos ut, si in istum animadversum non sit, sibi relinquendas domos ac sedes suas et ex Sicilia decedendum atque adeo fugiendum esse arbitrentur. Hos homines tu persuadebis ad honorem atque amplitudinem tuam pecunias maximas voluntate sua contulisse? Credo, qui te in tua civitate incolumem esse nollent, hi monumenta tuae formae ac nominis in suis civitatibus esse cupiebant. Res declarabit ut cupierint. Iam dudum enim mihi nimium tenuiter Siculorum erga te voluntatis argumenta colligere videor, utrum statuas voluerint tibi statuere an coacti sint.   [158] De quo hoc homine auditum est umquam, quod tibi accidit, ut eius in provincia statuae in locis publicis positae, partim etiam in aedibus sacris, per vim et per universam multitudinem deicerentur? Tot homines in Asia nocentes, tot in Africa, tot in Hispania, Gallia, Sardinia, tot in ipsa Sicilia fuerunt: ecquo de homine hoc umquam audivistis? Novum est, iudices, in Siculis quidem et in omnibus Graecis monstri simile. Non crederem hoc de statuis nisi iacentis revulsasque vidissem, propterea quod apud omnis Graecos hic mos est, ut honorem hominibus habitum in monumentis eius modi non nulla religione deorum consecrari arbitrentur.   [159] Itaque Rhodii, qui prope soli bellum illud superius cum Mithridate rege gesserint, omnisque eius copias acerrimumque impetum moenibus litoribus classibusque suis exceperint, tamen, cum ei regi inimici praeter ceteros essent, statuam eius, quae erat apud ipsos in celeberrimo urbis loco, ne tum quidem in ipsis urbis periculis attigerunt. Ac forsitan vix convenire videretur, quem ipsum hominem cuperent evertere, eius effigiem simulacrumque servare; sed tamen videbam, apud eos cum essem religionem esse quandam in bis rebus a maioribus traditam, et hoc disputari, cum statua se eius habuisse temporis rationem quo posita esset, cum homine eius quo gereret bellum atque hostis esset. Videtis igitur consuetudinem religionemque Graecorum, quae monumenta hostium in bello ipso soleat defendere, eam summa in pace praetoris populi Romani statuis praesidio non fuisse.   [160] Tauromenitani, quorum est civitas foederata, homines quietissimi, qui maxime ab iniuriis nostrorum magistratuum remoti consuerant esse praesidio foederis—hi tamen istius evertere statuam non dubitarunt; qua abiecta basim tamen in foro manere voluerunt, quod gravius in istum fore putabant si scirent homines statuam eius a Tauromenitanis esse deiectam quam si nullam umquam positam esse arbitrarentur. Tyndaritani deiecerunt in foro et eadem de causa equum inanem reliquerunt. Leontinis, misera in civitate atque inani, tamen istius in gymnasio statua deiecta est. Nam quid ego de Syracusanis loquar? quod non est proprium Syracusanorum, sed et illorum et commune conventus illius ac prope totius provinciae. Quanta illuc multitudo, quanta vis hominum convenisse dicebatur tum cum statuae sunt illius deiectae et eversae! At quo loco! Celeberrimo ac religiosissimo, ante ipsum Serapium, in primo aditu vestibuloque templi. Quod nisi Metellus hoc tam graviter egisset atque illam rem imperio edictoque prohibuisset, vestigium statuarum istius in tota Sicilia nullum esset relictum.   [161] Atque ego hoc non vereor, ne quid horum non modo impulsu verum omnino adventu meo factum esse videatut. Omnia ista ante facta sunt non modo quam ego Siciliam, verum etiam quam iste Italiam attigit. Dum ego in Sicilia sum, nulla statua deiecta est: posteaquam illinc decessi, quae sint gesta cognoscite. Centuripinorum senatus decrevit populusque iussit ut, quae statuae C. Verris ipsius et patris eius et filii essent, eas quaestores demoliendas locarent, dumque ea demolitio fieret, senatores ne minus triginta adessent. Videte gravitatem civitatis ac dignitatem. Neque eas in urbe sua statuas esse voluerunt quas inviti per vim atque imperium dedissent, neque eius hominis in quem ipsi cum gravissimo testimonio publice, quod numquam antea, Romam mandata legatosque misissent; ei id gravius esse putarunt si publico consilio, quam si per vim multitudinis factum esse videretur.   [162] Cum hoc consilio statuas Centuripini publice sustulissent, audit Metellus; graviter fert; evocat ad se Centuripinorum magistratus ei decem primos; nisi restituissent statuas, vehementer minatur. Illi ad senatum renuntiant: statuae, quae istius causae nihil prodessent, reponuntur; decreta Centuripinorum, quae de statuis erant facta, non tolluntur. Hic ego aliud alii concedo: Metello, homini sapienti, prorsus non possum ignoscere si quid stulte facit. Quid? ille hoc putabat Verri criminosum fore, si statuae eius essent deiectae, quod saepe vento aut aliquo casu fieri solet? Non erat in hoc neque crimen ullum neque reprehensio. Ex quo igitur crimen atque accusatio nascitur? Ex hominum iudicio et voluntate.   [163] Ego, si Metellus statuas Centuripinos reponere non coegisset, haec dicerem, Videte, iudices, quantum et quam acerbum dolorem sociorum atque amicorum animis inusserint istius iniuriae, cum Centuripinorum amicissima ac fidelissima civitas, quae tantis officiis cum populo Romano coniuncta est ut non solum rem publicam nostram, sed etiam in quovis homine privato nomen ipsum Romanum semper dilexerit, ea publico consilio atque auctoritate iudicarit C. Verris statuas esse in urbe sua non oportere. Recitarem decreta Centuripinorum; laudarem illam civitatem, id quod verissime possem; commemorarem decem milia civium esse Centuripinorum, fortissimorum fidelissimorumque sociorum; eos omnis hoc statuisse, monumentum istius in sua civitate nullum esse oportere.   [164] Haec tum dicerem, si statuas Metellus non reposuisset: velim quaerere nunc ex ipso Metello, quidnam sua vi et auctoritate mihi ex hac oratione praeciderit. Eadem opinor omnia convenire. Neque enim, si maxime statuae deiectae essent ego eas vobis possem iacentis ostendere; hoc uno uterer, civitatem tam gravem iudicasse statuas C. Verris demoliendas. Hoc mihi Metellus non eripuit; haec etiam addidit, ut quererer, si mihi videretur, tam iniquo iure sociis atque amicis imperari ut iis ne in suis quidem beneficiis libeto iudicio uti liceret, vos rogarem ut coniecturam faceretis qualem in bis rebus in me L. Metelluni fuisse putaretis, in quibus obesse mihi posset, cum in hac re tam aperta cupiditate fuerit, in qua nihil obfuit. Sed ego Metello non irascor neque ei suam vacationem eripio, qua ille apud omnis utitur, ut nihil malitiose neque consulto fecisse videatur.   [165] Iam igitur est ita perspicuum ut negare non possis nullam tibi statuam voluntate cuiusquam datam, nullam pecuniam statuarum nomine nisi vi expressam et coactam. Quo quidem in crimine non illud solum intellegi volo, te ad statuas HS viciens coegisse, sed multo etiam illud magis, quod simul demonstratum est quantum odium in te aratorum, quantum omnium Siculorum sit et fuerit. In quo quae vestra defensio futura sit coniectura adsequi non queo.   [166] "Oderunt Siculi; togatorum enim causa multa feci." At hi quidem acerrimi inimici sunt. "Inimicos habeo civis Romanos, quod sociorum commoda ac iura defendi." At socii in hostium numero sese abs te habitos queruntur. "Aratores inimici sunt propter decumas." Quid? qui agros immunis liberosque arant, cur oderunt? cur Halaesini, cur Centuripini, cur Segestani, cur Halicyenses? Quod genus hominum, quem numerum, quem ordinem proferre possum qui te non oderit, sive civium Romanorum sive Siculorum? Ut, etiamsi causas cur te oderint non possim dicere,tamen illud dicendum putem, quem omnes mortales oderint, eum vobis quoque odio esse oportere.   [167] An hoc dicere audebis, utrum de te aratores, utrum negotiatores, utrum denique Siculi universi bene existiment, aut quo modo existiment, ad rem id non pertinere? Neque tu hoc dicere audebis, nec si cupias licebit; eripiunt enim tibi istam orationem statuae illae equestres, quas tu paulo ante quam ad urbem venires poni inscribique iussisti, ut omnium inimicorum tuorum animos accusatorumque tardares.   [168] Quis enim tibi molestus esset aut quis appellare te auderet, cum videret statuas ab negotiatoribus, ab aratoribus, a communi Siciliae positas? Quod est aliud in illa provincia genus hominum? Nullum. Ergo ab universa provincia, generatimque a singulis eius partibus, non solum diligitur, sed etiam ornatur. Quis hunc attingere audeat? Potes igitur dicere nihil tibi obesse oportere aratorum, negotiatorum, Siculorumque omnium testimonia, cum eorum nominibus in statuarum inscriptione oppositis omnem te speraris invidiam atque infamiam tuam posse exstinguere? an, quorum tu auctoritate statuas cohonestare tuas conatus es, eorum ego dignitate accusationem meam comprobare non potero?   [169] Nisi forte quod apud publicanos gratiosus fuisti, in ea re spes te aliqua consolatur. Quae gratia ne quid tibi prodesse posset ego mea diligentia perfeci; ut etiam obesse deberet tu tua sapientia curasti. Etenim rem totam, iudices, breviter cognoscite. In scriptura Siciliae pro magistro est quidam L. Carpinatius, qui et sui quaestus causa, et fortasse quod sociorum interesse arbitrabatur, bene penitus in istius familiaritatem sese dedit. Is cum praetorem circum omnia fora sectaretur neque ab eo umquam discederet, in eam iam venerat consuetudinem in vendendis istius decretis et iudiciis transigendisque negotiis, ut prope alter Timarchides numeraretur; Here seems to be the passage where T. is first mentioned and C. is also first mentioned -- can you provide the exact sections and see how the anaphora works -- with translation to English? thanks - Excellent! Now that we have the actual passage, the anaphoric mechanics become much clearer. The crucial sentence is at In Verrem II.3.169:  "...ut prope alter Timarchides numeraretur." ("...so that he was reckoned almost a second / another Timarchides.")  Notice first:  prope alter Timarchides not secundus Timarchides and not bis Timarchides.  The prope ("almost", "practically") matters enormously. Where was Timarchides first introduced? Very near indeed. When Cicero begins the Sopater episode (§69), he introduces Timarchides:  "Interea istius libertus et accensus Timarchides..." ("Meanwhile his freedman and attendant Timarchides...")  and immediately characterizes him as:  "...rerum huiusce modi omnium transactor et administer" ("the manager and agent of all business of this sort.")  Then Timarchides dominates the entire narrative:  §69: extorts Sopater. §70: returns demanding more money. §74: Verres repeatedly consults him. §80: witnesses report what Timarchides said. §133–136: long character sketch of Timarchides as Verres' chief fixer and broker.  Thus by the time Cicero reaches §169, the audience has just spent many paragraphs hearing that Timarchides is effectively Verres' minister of corruption. So the common ground is very fresh:  [T = Verres' chief criminal intermediary.]  When Cicero finally introduces Carpinatius, he need only say:  prope alter Timarchides.  and the whole dossier attached to Timarchides transfers immediately. This is wonderfully Gricean economy.  Why not "alter Carpinatius"? Your observation is exactly right. The comparison is asymmetric. Logically:  if A resembles B, B resembles A.  But rhetorically:  Carpinatius is another Timarchides  does not imply  Timarchides is another Carpinatius.  Timarchides is the prototype. Carpinatius is the derivative. The direction matters.  What figure is this? I would classify it as: Antonomasia A proper name functioning as a type. But more specifically: Exemplary antonomasia or Proper-name predication. The name no longer identifies merely an individual. It denotes a role. Thus:  Timarchides  means not only  Timarchides  but  chief fixer, intermediary, corruption-broker, Verres' operative.  So:  alter Timarchides  means roughly:  another man filling the Timarchides-role.   Why alter is stronger than "other" This is where prope alter becomes fascinating. Cicero says:  not "he was Timarchides"; not even "he was another Timarchides"; but "he was almost another Timarchides."  This creates a scale:  Timarchides Carpinatius  The hearer infers:  Timarchides remains the master criminal; Carpinatius is approaching that status.  Exactly as you suggest, there is a slight implicature of ranking. Carpinatius is not quite equal to Timarchides. Otherwise Cicero might have written:  alter Timarchides  without qualification. Instead:  prope alter Timarchides  suggests:  "nearly another Timarchides."   A Grice/Speranza dialogue DISCIPVLVS  Quis est Carpinatius? ("Who is Carpinatius?")  TVLLIVS  Publicanus.  ("A tax contractor.")  DISCIPVLVS  Quid facit?  ("What does he do?")  TVLLIVS  Praetorem semper sequitur.  ("He always follows the governor.")  DISCIPVLVS  Satisne est hoc?  ("Is that enough to know him?")  TVLLIVS  Prope alter Timarchides est.  ("He is practically another Timarchides.")  DISCIPVLVS  Intellego.  ("I understand.")  The beauty is that the disciple does not understand because of anything said about Carpinatius. He understands because of everything already said about Timarchides. That is why your anaphoric observation is so good. The phrase works because Timarchides has just been built up over dozens of sections into a recognizable character. Prope alter Timarchides is almost an anaphoric shortcut: one proper name retrieves an entire file from the hearer's short-term discourse memory. That's extraordinarily close to what Grice and Speranza would call exploiting the common ground.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carpino – Ossia: Grice e Carpino: la ragione conversazionale.  Domenico Carpino (Tertro Francese. Cosenza, Calabria).  la ragione conversazionale. Grice and Domenico Carpino converge on a shared conception of reason as an active governor of meaning, but they express it in different registers that mirror their intellectual contexts. Carpino, writing in early nineteenth‑century Calabria within the tradition of rhetorical pedagogy, conceives la ragione conversazionale as a cultivated capacity of discernment: the art of selecting the “flower of things,” rejecting false beauties, and harmonizing expression across genres from epic and tragedy to comedy and music. For him, rationality in discourse is fundamentally normative and aesthetic, exercised through judgment, choice, and proportion, much as a critic or dramatist learns to choose what deserves emphasis and what should be discarded. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning translates this rhetorical sensibility into analytic philosophy: conversational implicature arises when speakers and hearers rely on shared rational expectations to move beyond literal content, selecting what is relevant, informative, or appropriate in a given exchange. Where Carpino frames conversational reason as a didactic art aimed at refining taste and judgment within literary and theatrical forms, Grice recasts it as a cooperative, inferential practice grounded in rational principles that guide what is said and what is meant. In this sense, Grice’s admiration for Carpino is intelligible: both treat conversation not as verbal excess but as a disciplined activity in which reason operates by selection, ordering, and calibration, whether the arena is the stage, the classroom, or everyday dialogue. Grice: “I love C.!” Lezioni di rettorica, TRATTE DA COSTA PER USO DEI STUDIOSI. Voi avole crollilo poter li rare qualche profitto dai Trattenimenti, che regolarmente avremo insie- me , sulle Istituzioni di Rettorica , ed io grato alla confidenza , che voi mi dimostrate , m’ ingegno a tutt’uomo di darvi le più distinte idee delle principali materie comprese nell’ immensa estensione della Letteratura, e di con- durvi alle sorgenti più pure, nelle quali voi ter- minerete di attigner quello, che il tempo destinato alle nostre conferenze non mi permette ai dirvi. Non ho bisogno, mici cari Signorini di farvi qui un lungo elogio delle Belle-Lettere, per animarvi al loro stu- dio. lo mi sono accorto con piacere , gustar voi inolio sì fatte cognizioni , e con felicita somma co- glier ciò che hanno di più degno di attenzione : perciocché ne va fatta seella , e non va colto, per così dire, che il fiore delle cose. L’arte consiste, a ben fare questa scelta , a non lasciarsi abbaglia- re a false bellezze , e discernere il pregio delle bellezze reali. Dell’ Epopea, Epica Poesia Dei principali poeti epici Del Dramma in generale Della Tragedia Dei principali poeti Tragici Della Commedia Degli antichi poeti Comici Del Teatro Italiano Del Teatro Spagnolo Del Teatro Francese Del Teatro Inglese Dei Drammi in musica, degli Oratori, e delle Cantade Della Poesia giocosa Appendice. Del Centone € boi Peno. Errori. P*g- 8 ver. 3o imbastardicono nota 1 vana Pag- IO ver. 6 raggionamento ver. IO troppo ver. 2 9 nobiliià ver. 23 P Indofero Pag- Pag- 49 ivi ver. 5 Lfzione dell’ Armomia Pag- 6i ver. >9 raggionata ver. 3 g jounal Pag, 7 S ver. 1 pissirae ver. 21 del pag- u ver. a di Alessandro ver. 3 ha pag- io3 ver. 20 slonanarsi Pag- 124 ver. 32 si da corpo ver. io Folicaia pag- *4-7 ver. 9 Eloghe pag. ibi ver. *7 di verso  ver. *7 Con tuto pag. ivi ver. 28 l’imperbole pag- 1 53 ver. a 1’ attensione ver . 6 struccioli pag. ivi ver. *9 assunto ver. 34 avaiso gag- 1 54 ver. 33 combiati Pag- iSS ver. a5 misusati Pag- ivi ver. 28 motter favole ver. a6 Oissea ver. 36 contesse Pag- i 7 a ivi ver. 26 Orlande ver. 33 Furtiguerri ver. 16 Adromaca ver. Grice: Caro Carpino, devo confessare che le tue lezioni di rettorica fanno venire voglia di prendere a pugni le false bellezze, proprio come suggerisci tu! In fondo, discernere il fiore delle cose è un’arte rara; peccato che a Oxford, spesso, ci accontentiamo del gambo. Carpino: Ah, caro Grice, se la conversazione fosse come il teatro italiano, allora ogni fiore avrebbe anche la sua commedia! Ma attenzione: tra epica, tragedia e poesia giocosa, chi non sa scegliere finisce a mangiare centoni senza condimento. Grice: Vedi, Domenico, la tua appendice sulle cantade mi ha fatto pensare che persino una conversazione può essere un’oratorio—soprattutto se qualcuno, come me, si ostina a sbagliare il tono e finisce per strucciare le massime! Carpino: Grice, caro mio, non ti crucciare! Se sbagli, basta riprendere dal principio, come dice Omero nell’Odissea: alla fine, anche il raggionamento più imbastardito può trovare la sua armonia—magari tra una favola e una tragedia, che a Cosenza non mancano mai! Carpino, Domenico (1830). Lezioni di rettorica. Cosenza: Stamperia Locale.  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carrara – Ossia: Grice e Carrara: la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazioale e arte combinatoria razionale.  Giovanni Michele Alberto Alberti Carrara (Bergamo, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazioale e arte combinatoria razionale. Giovanni Michele Alberto Carrara and H. P. Grice converge strikingly on the idea that meaning and reason are not static properties of expressions but emerge from ordered, inferential, and purposive activity, even though they articulate this insight in very different intellectual idioms. Carrara’s work, especially in De omnibus ingeniis augendae memoriae and in the Paduan humanist context of Armiranda (1457), treats reason as an art of rational combination: memory, understanding, and recall depend on order, connection, dependence, and deliberate reconstruction, whether through loci, bodily partition, or the controlled use of contraries; meaning, for Carrara, is governed by intelligible structure rather than brute expression, and the absence of conflict between rhetorical, medical, and philosophical practices is itself a rational achievement. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning mirrors this orientation at a higher level of abstraction: conversational implicature arises not from what is explicitly said but from the hearer’s rational reconstruction of order, relevance, intention, and dependency among utterances within a shared practice governed by norms of reasonableness. Where Carrara links memory to medicine, regimen, and the combinatorial arts—treating forgetting, distortion, and recovery as law-governed processes—Grice treats misunderstanding, cancellation, and inference as products of rational cooperation rather than semantic machinery alone. Both thus resist a purely mechanical or lexical account of meaning: Carrara grounds sense in ordered remembrance and rational synthesis, Grice in inferential uptake and cooperative reasoning, making Carrara an unexpectedly early precursor to a view of meaning as something governed by reason across contextual, embodied, and practical dimensions rather than fixed by words themselves.  Grice: “I love C.!” Al testo di C. attinge largamente, senza citare l’autore, GRATAROLI la memoria, TIRABOSCHI. De omnibus ingentis. Primum est ordo et reminiscibilium consequentia. Cum cam didicimus ex ordine cum connectione et dependentia si aliquo eorum erimus obliti, facile, repetito ordine, reminisci poterimus. Alterum est ut et uno simili in suum simile pro- memoria locale -- fondato sulla suddivisione in V parti del corpo degli animali. Mostra la connessione nel  LIZIO, fra arte della memoria e medicina. Affronta il problema d’una localizzazione della memoria. Passa poi a discutere delle principali malattie che ostacolano l’uso della memoria. S’sofferma ad esporre una serie di regole concernenti l’uso di cibi e bevande, il sonno e il moto. Formula di un ricettario. Alla terapeutica della memoria, già presente nel Regimen aphoristicum di Arnaldo da Villanova, si richiama, accanto a C., anche Matteolo da PERUGIA  che pubblica un opuscolo di medicina mnemonica. L’umdità è di ostacolo alla memoria è per esempio già presente nei testi qui autem habent locum dominatum humiditate non rememorant, quia formæ non finguntur in humido. C. si fonda su letture. Oltre ai classici della memoria, comparivano qui LIVIO e ANNICI recordati latinæ historiæ patre. Tertium est ut contraria recogitemus ut memores TOCCA. Tractatus clarissimi philosophi et medici Matheoli perusini de memoria et reminiscentia ac modo studendi tractatus feliciter. Insiste sul regime da seguire in vista della buona memoria. parva naturalia de omnibus Ingeniis augende memorie: di diverse forme espressive, ma anche e soprattutto l'assenza di quel conflitto che Petrarca aveva espresso nel De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia: in C., coesistevano le correnti lizio e umanistica.  Il merito d’esplorare C. spetta a Giraldi, cui verifica Mazzi. Opera philosophica rhetorica De constitutione mundi, La concezione culturale dominante Padova Petrarca, l'umanesimo e la scolastica Implicatura. Grice: Carrara, devo confessare che la tua arte combinatoria razionale mi ha quasi fatto perdere la memoria! Dici che basta suddividere il corpo in cinque parti per ritrovare i ricordi, ma io a Oxford perdo tutto già alla seconda! Carrara: Caro Grice, se la memoria si smarrisce, basta ripassare l’ordine e connettere tutto, come dice il buon Lizio. Se non funziona, prova a evitare l’umidità: nei miei testi, la memoria si scioglie come pane nell’acqua! Grice: Ah, allora dovrò cambiare le mie abitudini: meno tè inglese, più regime da Carrara! E se dimentico, mi affiderò a qualche ricettario mnemonico, magari con un pizzico di ironia e tanto sonno. Carrara: Grice, se ti serve una memoria fresca, ricorda: la vera arte è non avere conflitti—come Petrarca diceva! In fondo, se tutto va a farsi benedire, basta pensare il contrario e ritroverai anche quello che non sapevi di aver perso! Carrara, Giovanni Michele Alberto Alberti (1457). Armiranda. Padova.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carrinazio – Ossia: Grice e Carrinazio -- Grex griceiana: Carrinazio. The Carrinazi was a family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens rose to prominence during the final century of the Republic, attaining the consulship. The nomen Carrinas, occasionally written Carinas, is one of the more unusual forms appearing in Roman history. Havercamp supposed it to be a cognomen of the Albia gens, but the nomen Albius does not appear with it in any known inscriptions. The gentilicium is probably of Umbrian or Etruscan origin; several scholars find the latter more likely,[4] notwithstanding that Umbrian nomina frequently end in -as. The main praenomen of the Carrinates is Gaius, among the most common of all praenomina throughout Roman history. A few members of this gens are mentioned with the common praenomen Quintus, and from a filiation it appears that they may also have used Aulus.  None of the Carrinates mentioned at the end of the Republic bore any surnames. A wide variety of cognomina appear under the Empire, none of which seem to have become hereditary. Most of the Carrinates known from inscriptions appear to have been freedmen or their descendants. The senatorial Carrinates of the late Republic seem to have belonged to the tribe Quirina, or, less likely, Collina. Gaius Carrinas, a commander loyal to Marius and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo during Sulla's civil war. He sustained a series of defeats at the hands of Sulla's forces, ending with the Battle of the Colline Gate, following which he was captured and put to death.[6][7][8][9] Gaius Carrinas C. f., sent by Caesar against Sextus Pompeius in Spain following the Battle of Munda, in 45 BC; he was consul suffectus for the last part of 43, and subsequently became one of Octavian's commanders. He triumphed over the Morini and Suebi in 29.[10][11][12] Carrinas, a guest of Cicero in 45 BC; the orator found his company unpleasant.[13] Carrinas Secundus, an orator during the reign of Caligula, who banished him after he spoke unwisely on the subject of tyranny. The Carrinas Secundus sent by Nero to plunder Asia and Achaea was probably the same man.[14][15][16] Carrinates from inscriptions Carrinatia, named in a first-century inscription from Rome, along with Gaius Carrinas.[17] Gaius Carrinas, a public official named in a first-century inscription from Rome, along with a Carrinatia.[17] Gaius Carrinas, a soldier buried at Antioch in Pisidia, with a tomb built by his brother-in-arms, the cavalry Decurion Lucius Julius Turrus.[18] Gaius Carrinas C. [...], dedicated a sepulchre at Rome for himself and his wife, Clodia Apa[...].[19] Quintus Carrinas C. f., one of the Duumviri Aediles at Alba Pompeia in Liguria during the first half of the first century AD. He had been a centurion primus pilus.[20] Carrinatia C. l. Aegiale, a freedwoman buried at Rome, aged twenty-one, with a tomb dedicated by her former master, Gaius Carrinas Hesper.[21] Gaius Carrinas C. l. Aphrodisius, a freedman buried at Tarentum in Apulia, in a tomb dating to the early decades of the Empire.[22] Carrinatia Arethusa, named in an inscription from Rome.[23] Gaius Carrinas C. l. Ascla[...], a freedman named in an inscription from Rome, along with Gaius Carrinas Philar[...].[24] Gaius Carrinas Cerdo, named in a first-century inscription from Rome, along with Carrinatia Fausta.[25] Gaius Carrinas C. l. Chrestus, a freedman buried at Rome during the first half of the first century, together with Carrinatia Fausta.[26] Carrinatia C. l. Fausta, a freedwoman buried at Rome during the first half of the first century, together with Gaius Carrinas Chrestus.[26] Carrinatia Fausta, named in a first-century inscription from Rome, along with Gaius Carrinas Cerdo.[25] Carrinatia Fausta, according to a dedicatory inscription from Rome, donated four pots in the name of Eros Hilara.[27] Gaius Carrinas Felicissimus, one of several Carrinates named in a dedicatory inscription from Tarracina in Latium during the first century AD.[28] Gaius Carrinas Felix, one of several Carrinates named in a first-century inscription from Tarracina.[28] Gaius Carrinas C. l. Flaccus, a freedman named as the donor of two pots in an inscription from Rome, dating to the first half of the first century.[29] Gaius Carrinas Fortunatus, one of several Carrinates named in a first-century inscription from Tarracina.[28] Gaius Carrinas Galerianus, buried at Rome.[30] Gaius Carrinas Hesper, dedicated a tomb at Rome to his freedwoman, Carrinatia Aegiale.[21] Carrinas A. l. Hilarus, a freedman buried at Hasta Pompeia in Liguria, together with Carrinatia Nymphis.[31] Gaius Carrinas C. l. Marmarida, a freedman named in a first-century inscription from Rome, along with Carrinatia Philusa.[32] Carrinatia Ɔ. l. Nymphis, a freedwoman buried at Hasta Pompeia, aged seventeen, along with Carrinas Hilarus.[31] Gaius Carrinas C. l. Philar[...], a freedman named in an inscription from Rome, along with Gaius Carrinas Ascla[...].[24] Gaius Carrinas C. l. Philo, a freedman named in an inscription from Rome, along with Carrinatia Selenio.[33] Carrinas Philetus, buried at Rome, in the family sepulchre of the scribe Cluvius Formica, who describes him as a "brother".[34] Carrinatia Philusa, named in a first-century inscription from Rome, along with the freedman Gaius Carrinas Marmarida.[32] Gaius Carrinas Prepo, dedicated a first- or second-century tomb at Rome to Gaius Julius Heraclio.[35] Carrinatia Prima, named along with the freedwoman Carrinatia Urbana in an inscription from Rome dating to the first half of the first century.[36] Carrinatia Ɔ. l. Prima, a freedwoman buried at Rome, along with the freedman Publius Calpurnius Anteros, in a tomb dating to the first half of the first century.[37] Quintus Carrinas Quadratus, a soldier named in a military diploma from Moesia Superior, dating to AD 96.[38] Carrinatia C. l. Selenio, a freedwoman named in an inscription from Rome, along with Gaius Carrinas Philo.[33] Gaius Carrinas Severus, buried in a first-century sepulchre at Rome.[39] Gaius Carrinas Suavis, one of several Carrinates named in a first-century inscription from Tarracina.[28] Carrinatia C. l. Urbana, a freedwoman named along with Carrinatia Prima in an inscription from Rome, dating to the first half of the first century.[36] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 615, 616 ("Carrinas or Carinas").  Havercamp, Thesaurus Morelliantes, p. 497.  Syme 1939, p. 90.  Taylor, Voting Districts, p. 201.  Chase, p. 118.  Appian, Bellum Civile, i. 87, 90, 92, 93.  Plutarch, "The Life of Pompeius", 7.  Orosius, v. 21.  Eutropius, v. 8.  Appian, Bellum Civile, iv. 83, v. 26, 112.  Cassius Dio, xlvii. 15, li. 21, 22.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 308, 337.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, xiii. 33.  Cassius Dio, lix. 20.  Juvenal, vii. 204.  Tacitus, Annales, xv. 45.  AE 2012, 206.  Inschriften Griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien, lxvii. 190.  CIL VI, 34785.  CIL V, 7600.  CIL VI, 14437.  AE 1972, 110.  CIL VI, 34786.  CIL VI, 14435.  AE 1940, 10.  CIL VI, 14433.  CIL VI, 14438.  CIL X, 6331.  CIL VI, 14434.  BCAR, 1941-178.  CIL V, 7571.  AE 2004, 219.  CIL VI, 14436  CIL VI, 1810.  CIL VI, 20049.  CIL VI, 14439.  CIL VI, 39531.  AE 1977, 722, AE 2005, 1708.  CIL VI, 38035. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum. Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Satirae (Satires). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus (Cassius Dio), Roman History. Eutropius, Breviarium Historiae Romanae (Abridgement of the History of Rome). Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos (History Against the Pagans). Sigebert Havercamp, Thesaurus Morelliantes (1734). 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). Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma (Bulletin of the Municipal Archaeological Commission of Rome, abbreviated BCAR), (1872–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). Chase, George Davis (1897). "The Origin of Roman Praenomina". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 8: 103–184. JSTOR 310491. Syme, Ronald (1939). The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press. Inschriften Griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien (Inscriptions from the Greek Cities of Asia Minor), Bonn (1973–present). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Taylor, Lily Ross (2013) [1960]. Jerzy Linderski (ed.). The Voting Districts of the Roman Republic: The Thirty-five Urban and Rural Tribes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-11869-4. Category: Roman gentes A Grice-Speranza choice from this gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carrinazio – Ossia: Grice e Carrinazio -- Grex griceiana: Carrinazio. For the Carrinates, my Grice/Speranza choice would not be the Marian general or the suffect consul. It would be:  Carrinas Secundus, the orator whom Caligula banished after he spoke unwisely on the subject of tyranny. The gens entry explicitly identifies him as an orator exiled under Caligula because of remarks concerning tyranny. [en.wikipedia.org]  Why? Because this is pure Grice. The danger is not what is said, but what is understood. A tyrant hears:  "tyranny"  and immediately asks:  "Is that about me?"  No name need be mentioned.  Conversatio: Carrinas Secundus and a Friend AMICVS  Cur tam caute loqueris?  ("Why do you speak so cautiously?")  CARRINAS  Quia verba longius eunt quam vox.  ("Because words travel farther than the voice.")  AMICVS  Sed hodie de tyrannis tantum disputasti.  ("But today you merely discussed tyrants.")  CARRINAS  Ita.  ("Yes.")  AMICVS  Nomen nullius dixisti.  ("You mentioned no one's name.")  CARRINAS  Nec opus erat.  ("There was no need.")  AMICVS  Intellexerunt?  ("Did they understand?")  CARRINAS  Nimis bene.  ("Far too well.")  Implicature The hearers recover:  +> Caligula is a tyrant.  Yet the proposition is never explicitly uttered. That is almost a textbook Gricean case:  literal meaning: discussion of tyranny; implicated meaning: criticism of the ruler; consequence: exile.   An even more Speranzian version DISCIPVLVS  Quid est tyrannus?  ("What is a tyrant?")  CARRINAS  Qui talem quaestionem audit et statim se ipsum cogitat.  ("One who hears such a question and immediately thinks of himself.")  Why this Carrinas? Many Roman figures are interesting because of what they did. Carrinas Secundus is interesting because of what he caused others to infer. For Grice, that's gold. The whole episode depends on the distinction between:  what the speaker said,  and  what the emperor thought he meant.  That is practically the history of implicature in one Roman anecdote. [en.wikipedia.org] THanks. And there is a self-fulfilling truth-endowing character: "I will talk about tyrants." PERLOCUTION: You are to be exiled. Implicature: I AM A TYRANT, as you say (b) cancellation: "YOu know what, I am NOT a tyrant; but you have no business here, so better move to a place where you can DO FIND real tyrants" Input? Thanks Yes — and I think Speranza would say that Carrinas Secundus presents a beautiful case where the truth conditions get manufactured by the reaction. Let's distinguish three levels. 1. What Carrinas literally says Suppose he says:  De tyrannis disputemus. ("Let us discuss tyrants.")  Literally, this is about a category. No emperor is named. No accusation is made.  2. Imperial uptake Caligula hears:  +> "He means me."  That is already a Gricean implicature. The audience need not infer it; the ruler does.  3. The perlocution Then comes the exile. The ruler effectively says: CALIGVLA  Non sum tyrannus. ("I am not a tyrant.")  and simultaneously:  Exula. ("Go into exile.")  Now the problem is that the second act tends to support the first inference. A listener thinks:  "Why exile a man merely for discussing tyranny?"  The punishment itself supplies evidence. So the sequence looks like:  "I am not a tyrant." followed by tyrannical behaviour.  The denial weakens itself.  The Speranzian dialogue CARRINAS  Hodie de tyrannis disseram. ("Today I shall speak about tyrants.")  CALIGVLA  Et cur hoc argumentum elegisti? ("And why did you choose this topic?")  CARRINAS  Quia philosophicum est. ("Because it is philosophical.")  CALIGVLA  Intellego. ("I understand.")  CARRINAS  Nomen nullius dixi. ("I mentioned nobody's name.")  CALIGVLA  Nec opus fuit. ("There was no need.")  CARRINAS  Ergo me exules? ("So you exile me?")  CALIGVLA  Non quia tyrannos nominasti, sed quia nimis prope quaesisti. ("Not because you named tyrants, but because you inquired too closely.")  Implicature  +> The ruler has identified himself with the topic.   Your cancellation The most Gricean version is: CALIGVLA  Non sum tyrannus. ("I am not a tyrant.")  Then:  Sed alibi quaere tyrannos. ("But look elsewhere for tyrants.")  This is a classic attempted cancellation. He wishes to cancel:  +> "I am the tyrant under discussion."  Yet the exile simultaneously generates fresh evidence for precisely that proposition. A Speranzian moral might be:  Implicatura interdum poena confirmatur. ("Sometimes an implicature is confirmed by the punishment.")  Or even:  Exilium fit argumentum. ("The exile becomes an argument.")  That is what makes Carrinas Secundus so attractive philosophically. The emperor's response becomes part of the evidence from which the original meaning is reconstructed. The punishment helps create the very interpretation it seeks to suppress.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carzio – Ossia: Grice e Carzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carzio. The gens Carteia was a Roman family towards the end of the Republic. It is best remembered for a single individual, Lucius C., a friend of Gaius CASSIO Longinus, who was with Cassius in Syria in 43 BC.[1][2]  See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Cass., ap. Cic. ad Familiares, xii. 11.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)    GENS                   This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs For this gens, we can imagine a conversation between C. and Cassio in Syria -- was this how long before Cassio's Caesar-murder plans? So they can talk about those? Thanks -

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carzio – Ossia: Grice e Carzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carzio. The difficulty with the Carteii is that we know almost nothing about Lucius Carteius except that he was a friend of Gaius Cassius Longinus and was with Cassius in Syria in 43 BC. [en.wikipedia.org] So we have to be careful not to invent biography. Your chronological point is important:  Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC. Lucius Carteius is attested with Cassius in Syria in 43 BC. [en.wikipedia.org]  Therefore, any conversation in Syria about the assassination would necessarily be retrospective, not a discussion of future plans. The sources we have here do not place Carteius with Cassius before the murder. [en.wikipedia.org] That said, the retrospective conversation is quite Gricean because Cassius could discuss the deed while avoiding the word tyrannicide itself.  Conversatio in Syria CARTEIVS  Iam annus paene est ex quo Caesar cecidit. ("It is almost a year since Caesar fell.")  CASSIVS  Cadere necesse fuit. ("It was necessary that he fall.")   CARTEIVS  Multi dicunt rem publicam liberatam esse. ("Many say the Republic was freed.")  CASSIVS  Multi etiam contrarium dicunt. ("Many say the opposite as well.")   CARTEIVS  Tu quid dicis? ("What do you say?")  CASSIVS  Regem sustulimus. ("We removed a king.")   CARTEIVS  Et regnum? ("And the kingship?")  CASSIVS  De eo adhuc disputatur. ("That is still being debated.")   Implicature Cassius says:  Regem sustulimus. ("We removed a king.")  but avoids saying:  Rem publicam restitutimus. ("We restored the Republic.")  The implicature is:  killing Caesar was easier than restoring constitutional liberty.  That theme appears repeatedly in the post-Ides correspondence. Indeed, a contemporary letter preserved among Cicero's correspondence contains the striking observation:  "we seem to have been freed not from kingship, but from the king" (non regno, sed rege liberati videmur). [thelatinlibrary.com]  That sentence is almost tailor-made for a Grice/Speranza vignette. The deed succeeded literally:  Caesar is dead.  But the larger conversational implicature:  therefore the Republic is restored,  turns out to be much harder to sustain. So if I were choosing a Carteian dialogue, I would make it revolve around precisely that distinction:  the king is gone versus the kingdom is gone.  A classic case where what was achieved and what was thought to follow from it are not the same thing. [thelatinlibrary.com] And do we have -- is it ONE passage in Latin -- were Cassio stabat cum Carteium? from which we can get the implicature: they were friends? Thanks Yes — and in this case we are fortunate, because the evidence is concentrated in a single sentence. In Cassius' letter to Cicero (Ad Familiares XII.11), written from Syria in 43 BC, Cassius closes:  "Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius, familiaris meus." ("Lucius Carteius, my familiaris, will discuss the remaining matters with you.") [thelatinlibrary.com]  That is essentially the passage from which the biographical notice derives the statement that Carteius was a friend of Cassius. [thelatinlibrary.com] Now for the Gricean question: Does familiaris meus implicate friendship? Not merely implicate: it is quite strong evidence. Cassius does not say:  legatus meus ("my envoy"),  or  tabellarius meus ("my courier"),  or  quidam Lucius Carteius ("a certain Lucius Carteius").  Instead he says:  familiaris meus ("my intimate acquaintance", "my close associate", "my friend").  The literal content already expresses a personal connection. [thelatinlibrary.com] What is Gricean is the additional conversational work it does. By mentioning:  familiaris meus  Cassius is effectively telling Cicero:  Trust this man. He speaks with my confidence. What he says may be treated as coming from me.  Those are natural implicatures of the introduction.  A miniature dialogue CASSIVS  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius, familiaris meus. ("Lucius Carteius, my friend, will discuss the rest with you.") [thelatinlibrary.com]  CICERO  Intellego. ("I understand.")  Implicature  +> Carteius is authorized to complete the conversation on Cassius' behalf.  Notice that Cassius never explicitly says:  "Believe him as you would believe me."  Yet that is very close to what the hearer is meant to recover. So for the Carteii, the entire gens almost rests on one beautifully economical phrase:  L. Carteius, familiaris meus. [thelatinlibrary.com]  A tiny piece of language, but enough to establish both the relationship and the delegated authority. We should NOT be surprised Tullio kept in touch with Cassio, right? And so we must also via implicature infer that Carteius belonged to the same fraction. It didn't help Tullio for long who soon will be killed by Antonio's sicarii -- In fact, Carteiu' corsepondence with Tullio (as invoked by Cassio) may well have been intercepted by the corridors of power? Thanks Yes, I think that's exactly the right historical instinct. We should not be surprised that Cicero and Cassius were in correspondence in 43 BC. The very collection Ad Familiares Book XII consists largely of Cicero-Cassius correspondence and shows Cicero treating Cassius as one of the principal hopes of the anti-Antonian cause. Cicero writes things such as:  "omnis spes in vobis est" ("all hope is in you [and Brutus]")  and  "non regno, sed rege liberati videmur" ("we seem to have been freed not from kingship, but from the king"), addressed to Cassius.  So the Cicero-Cassius connection is explicit. As for Lucius Carteius, we must be a little more cautious. What the source explicitly gives us is:  "Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius, familiaris meus." ("Lucius Carteius, my friend/intimate associate, will discuss the remaining matters with you.")  From that we can safely infer:  Carteius is trusted by Cassius. Cassius uses him as a messenger or intermediary for further discussion with Cicero. Cicero is expected to receive him sympathetically.  What we cannot strictly prove from this one sentence is the full extent of Carteius' political convictions. The phrase familiaris meus establishes closeness to Cassius, but not a detailed political manifesto. Still, from a conversational point of view, the implicature is indeed:  "This man comes from my side, carries my confidence, and may be spoken to as one of us."  That is exactly the communicative purpose of introducing him as familiaris meus. On your last point—interception—we enter the realm of possibility rather than evidence. I found no source here stating that Carteius' communications were intercepted. However, as a historical observation, Cicero lived in a world where letters were physically carried by named messengers and could be delayed, seized, or fail to arrive. Interestingly, Cassius himself worries that letters may have been intercepted by Dolabella:  "non dubito, quin Dolabella ... tabellarios meos deprehenderit litterasque interceperit" ("I do not doubt that Dolabella ... has seized my couriers and intercepted my letters.")  So Cassius explicitly contemplates the possibility of intercepted correspondence. Whether anything carried by Carteius was actually intercepted, the sources you've provided do not say. A very Gricean conclusion would be:  L. Carteius, familiaris meus  does more than identify a person. It establishes a channel of trust. The phrase tells Cicero not merely who will speak, but how the speech is to be received. And the Dolabella comment by Cassio gives further Griceian motivation to the Cartius's p. s. by Cassio: The implicature to Tullio being: "We should not be so open in our conversations, since as you know, my letters were intercepted by Dollabella (who was he? birth gens?)" "So I will ask my friend Carteus to write to you -- so that dollabella will let the correspondence flow since Carteius is, to Dollabella's ears, not Cassio" Thanks -- a letter to Tullio from Cassio means something to Dolabella -- a letter to Tullio from *Carteo* means to Dollabella a different -- less harmful or dangerous or suspicious, -- thing? Yes, but here we have to distinguish carefully between what the sources say and what a Gricean reconstruction may suggest. What the sources explicitly say Cassius writes to Cicero from the East:  "Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius, familiaris meus." ("Lucius Carteius, my friend/intimate associate, will discuss the remaining matters with you.")  Elsewhere in the same correspondence Cassius explicitly worries that Dolabella may have intercepted his communications:  "non dubito, quin Dolabella ... tabellarios meos deprehenderit litterasque interceperit" ("I do not doubt that Dolabella has seized my couriers and intercepted my letters.")  Those two facts are securely attested. Who was Dolabella? The Dolabella involved here is Publius Cornelius Dolabella. His birth gens was therefore:  gens Cornelia,  specifically the branch:  Cornelii Dolabellae.  (I am not citing this because it does not come from the retrieved passage; it is standard Roman prosopography.) The Gricean possibility Now comes the interesting part. The sources do not say:  "I am sending Carteius because Dolabella intercepts my letters."  That connection is not explicitly stated. However, from a conversational-analysis perspective, one might be tempted to reconstruct the situation this way: Explicit content Cassius:  "The rest will be discussed by Lucius Carteius, my friend."  Background Cassius also:  "Dolabella may be intercepting my letters."  Possible implicature  "I prefer not to put everything in writing."  That is a plausible Gricean inference, but it remains an inference, not a statement of the source.  An even subtler point I especially like your observation that:  a letter from Cassius means one thing, a letter from Carteius means another thing.  To Cicero:  L. Carteius, familiaris meus  means:  "Treat him as trusted."  To a hostile interceptor, however, the name Cassius carries enormous political weight. Cassius is one of Caesar's assassins. Carteius is comparatively obscure. So a Grice/Speranza reconstruction might be: CASSIVS  Reliqua litteris non committam. ("I shall not entrust the rest to letters.")  CICERO  Cur? ("Why?")  CASSIVS  Quia litterae leguntur. ("Because letters get read.")  CICERO  Ergo quis loquetur? ("Then who will speak?")  CASSIVS  L. Carteius, familiaris meus. ("Lucius Carteius, my friend.")  Implicature  +> "Certain matters are safer entrusted to a person than to a document."  That, I think, is the deepest Gricean lesson here. The very existence of a trusted intermediary suggests awareness that some information travels better through a friend than through a letter—especially in a civil war where, as Cassius himself remarks, letters may be intercepted. And Grice and Speranza was thinking that since Cart. was IN SYRIA, Cassio may implicate: "Expect a letter from Cart. to discuss further issues or the remaining issues" or "expect him to knock on your door" with the implicature: "Do not expect ME to knock on your door, or I am a dead man"? Thanks Yes, but here I would formulate it carefully as a Grice/Speranza reconstruction, not as something explicitly stated by Cassius. What Cassius literally writes is:  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius, familiaris meus. "Lucius Carteius, my friend/intimate associate, will discuss the remaining matters with you."  The Latin itself is interesting. Notice that Cassius does not say:  scribet tibi ("he will write to you"),  nor  veniet ad te ("he will come to you").  He says:  aget tecum.  That expression is deliberately broad:  "he will deal with/discuss these matters with you."  So the exact medium is left open. The most conservative implicature Cicero may infer:  +> There are matters Cassius prefers not to put into this letter.  This fits very naturally with the nearby passage where Cassius explicitly worries that Dolabella may have intercepted previous couriers and letters. A stronger implicature Your suggestion is plausible:  +> Expect further communication through Carteius.  Whether that communication arrives:  by letter, through a messenger, or by Carteius in person,  is not specified by the text. The "don't expect me" implicature This is my favourite Speranzian reading. Cassius is in Syria, commanding armies and organizing resistance. In the same correspondence he repeatedly discusses troops, provinces, Dolabella, and the wider military situation. So when he says:  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius...  one natural inference is:  +> I myself cannot conveniently leave Syria to discuss these matters.  In a Gricean dialogue: CICERO  Cur non venis ipse? ("Why do you not come yourself?")  CASSIUS  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius. ("Lucius Carteius will discuss the rest with you.")  The implicature is:  +> I am occupied elsewhere.  Not necessarily:  "or I am a dead man,"  but rather:  "my role presently keeps me where I am."  The Dolabella twist The most sophisticated reading combines both ideas:  Some things are better not written. Letters may be intercepted. A trusted intermediary is therefore useful.  Thus: Explicit content  "Carteius will discuss the rest with you."  Possible implicature  "The remaining matters are better entrusted to a person than to a document."  That strikes me as very Gricean: the silence about why Carteius is needed may itself communicate the answer. And perhaps there is an extra implicature, because Tullio KNOWS (Cassio is now telling him) that Cart. is with him in Syria -- doesn't he -- so it's like" You keep asking questions, and I'm in the middle of a war, so I have a better idea: a friend of mine, who is more your type, will take on the remaining things with you, since I have things to do --" Typical implicature of "I have a train to catch"? Input? Yes, I think that is exactly the sort of enrichment Grice and Speranza would be tempted to explore, provided we keep separate:  what Cassius literally says; what Cicero could reasonably infer.  The literal text is extraordinarily brief:  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius, familiaris meus. "Lucius Carteius, my friend, will deal with/discuss the remaining matters with you."  Now Cassius has just spent the letter discussing armies, Syria, Murcus, Crispus, Bassus, Dolabella, and the conduct of the war. A Gricean reconstruction might proceed like this. What Cassius says  The remaining matters will be handled by Carteius.  What Cassius does not say He does not say:  "I am too busy."  He does not say:  "Do not write back."  He does not say:  "Please stop asking questions."  He does not say:  "I cannot leave Syria."  Yet the surrounding circumstances make all of those thoughts available. A conversational analogue Grice's famous example:  "I have a train to catch."  often implicates  "I must end this conversation."  The speaker never explicitly says:  "Stop talking."  The hearer supplies it. Similarly: CICERO  "But what about this? And what about that?"  CASSIUS  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius.  The natural enrichment could be:  +> I have discharged what I can do in this letter. +> Further details can be obtained from Carteius. +> My attention is needed elsewhere.  Not because those propositions are stated, but because they make the remark relevant. The Syrian angle You also make a nice point about shared knowledge. Cassius is writing from military headquarters in the East. In the same letter he describes forces under his command and stresses the military situation. Therefore Cicero already knows something like:  [Cassius is engaged in pressing military business.]  Against that background:  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius  can naturally be heard as:  "I am delegating the conversational remainder."  Almost a military division of labour:  Cassius handles armies. Carteius handles explanations.  A Speranzian dialogue CICERO  Plura exspecto. ("I expect more details.")  CASSIUS  Reliqua tecum aget L. Carteius. ("Lucius Carteius will discuss the rest with you.")  CICERO  Cur non tu? ("Why not you?")  CASSIUS  Quidam rem publicam litteris administrant; ego nunc exercitus. ("Some administer the republic by letters; I, at present, by armies.")  Implicature  +> I have more urgent things to do than continue this correspondence.  Which is indeed very close in structure to:  "I have a train to catch."  The stated reason is different; the conversational function is the same—bringing the present exchange to a close while providing a socially acceptable rationale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carvilio – Ossia: Grice e Carvilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carvilio. The Carvilii are a family at ancient Rome, which first distinguished itself during the Samnite Wars. The first member of this gens to achieve the consulship was Spurius C. Maximus.. The Carvilii were a family of equestrian rank, which rose to prominence due to the military exploits of Spurius C. Maximus. “C.” belongs to a large class of gentilicia ending in -ilus or -illus, typically derived from diminutive surnames originally ending in -ulus. The root of the name is uncertain; perhaps related to the surname Carbo, a coal, or coal-black. The only praenomina used by the Carvilii were Spurius, Gaius, and Lucius.  The Carvilii of the Republic were not divided into separate families, and the only cognomen that was handed down among them was Maximus, "very great" or "greatest", which was probably applied first to Spurius C., the consul of 293 and 272 BC, in recognition of his military victories and splendid character. Two of this family bore the additional surname Ruga, a furrow or wrinkle. Spurius C., quaestor in 391 BC, accused Marcus FURIO Camillus of appropriating a bronze door from the spoils of Veii. FURIO was prosecuted by Lucius Apuleius, a tribune of the plebs, and sent into exile.[5][6] Gaius Carvilius, the grandfather of Spurius Carvilius Maximus, the consul of 293 and 272 BC.[7] Gaius Carvilius C. f., the father of Spurius Carvilius Maximus.[7] Spurius C. C. f. C. n. Maximus, consul in 293 BC, he defeated the Samnites and Faliscans, taking several towns and receiving a magnificent triumph. He was probably censor. Consul for the second time, he and his colleague triumphed over the Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, and Tarentines. Spurius Carvilius S. f. C. n. Maximus Ruga, consul in 234 BC, he fought against the Corsicans, and then the Sardinians, for which he received a triumph. He was consul for the second time, with Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus as his colleague. After the Battle of Cannae, he proposed filling the ranks of the senate with the leading men of Rome's Latin allies, but his advice was soundly rejected. He gained a certain notoriety for divorcing his wife, on grounds of barrenness. Spurius Carvilius Ruga, a freedman and schoolteacher at Rome circa 230 BC, credited with developing the letter G. Spurius C., tribune of the plebs in 212 BC, together with his colleague, Lucius C., indicted Marcus Postumius Pyrgensis for defrauding the Roman state. Pyrgensis, a publican, had deliberately sunk old ships with worthless cargo, in order to claim substantial losses and enriching himself.[22][23] Lucius C., tribune of the plebs in 212 BC, joined his colleague Spurius Carvilius in indicting Marcus Postumius Pyrgensis.[22][23] Spurius Carvilius, legate of the propraetor Gnaeus Sicinius in 171 BC, was appointed by the senate to watch the ambassadors of Perseus, and ensure that they departed Italy. Gaius C/, a native of Spoletium, negotiated the surrender of the Roman garrison at Uscana to Perseus in 169 BC.[26] Spurius Carvilius L. f., member of the Roman senate in 129 BC.[27] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 617 ("Carvilia Gens").  Velleius Paterculus, ii. 128.  Chase, pp. 113, 122, 123.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s. v. ruga.  Pliny the Elder Historia Naturalis, xxxiv. 13.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 93.  Fasti Capitolini, AE 1900, 83; 1904, 114; AE 1927, 101; 1940, 59, 60.  Livy, x. 9, 39, 43–46, Epitome, 14.  Zonaras, viii. 1, 6.  Pliny the Elder, xxxiv 7. s. 18.  AE 1889, 70; 1893, 80; 1904, 113, 196; 1930, 60; 1940, 61.  Niebuhr, History of Rome, vol. iii, p. 392 ff, 524.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 180, 181 (note 1), 182, 184, 185, 197.  Livy, xxiii. 22, xxvi. 23.  Zonaras, viii. 18.  Cicero, De Senectute, 4.  Gellius, iv. 3.  Valerius Maximus, ii. 1. § 4.  Dionysius, ii. 25.  Niebuhr, History of Rome, vol. iii, p. 355.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 223, 224 (and note 1), 228, 276.  Livy, xxv. 3, 4.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 268.  Livy, xlii. 46.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 418.  Livy, xliii. 18, 19.  Sherk, "Senatus Consultum De Agro Pergameno", p. 368. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Marcus Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights). Joannes Zonaras, Epitome Historiarum (Epitome of History). Barthold Georg Niebuhr, The History of Rome, Julius Charles Hare and Connop Thirlwall, trans., John Smith, Cambridge (1828). 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). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Robert K. Sherk, "The Text of the Senatus Consultum De Agro Pergameno", in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, vol. 7, pp. 361–369 (1966). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Categories: CarviliiRoman gentes For this gens, we can reconstruct the conversation involving this man who intentionally sinks his ships with worthless cargo -- the 'natural' sign is: they sank -- and owner has a right to something -- when the fake is exposed, things change. Input? Thanks.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carvilio – Ossia: Grice e Carvilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carvilio. For the Carvilii, I think the richest Grice/Speranza figure is indeed:  Spurius Carvilius, tribune of the plebs in 212 BC, who, together with Lucius Carvilius, prosecuted Marcus Postumius Pyrgensis, a publican who had deliberately sunk old ships carrying worthless cargo in order to claim compensation from the Roman state. (Your supplied text cites Livy xxv. 3–4.)  What makes the episode philosophically attractive is that the fraud operates through a natural sign. The visible fact is:  The ships sank.  Normally that fact implicates:  +> A genuine maritime disaster occurred. +> Valuable cargo was lost. +> Compensation is owed.  The publican's trick is that the natural sign is genuine—the ships really did sink—but the interpretation is false because he arranged the event himself. This is very close to the Canius/Pythius story:  fishermen → apparent prosperity, sunken ships → apparent loss.  In both cases the evidence is real; the intended inference is fraudulent.  A Grice-Speranza dialogue Carvilius interrogates Postumius CARVILIVS  Naves tuae mersae sunt? ("Your ships were sunk?")  POSTVMIVS  Ita vero. ("Indeed they were.")   CARVILIVS  Et merces periit? ("And the cargo was lost?")  POSTVMIVS  Periit. ("It was lost.")   CARVILIVS  Quare igitur dubitamus damnum tibi reddere? ("Why then do we hesitate to compensate you?")   POSTVMIVS  Nescio. ("I do not know.")   CARVILIVS  Quod naves veteres erant et merces vilissima. ("Because the ships were old and the cargo worthless.")   POSTVMIVS  Sed mersae sunt. ("But they were sunk.")   CARVILIVS  Signum verum est. ("The sign is true.")   POSTVMIVS  Ergo damnum verum est. ("Therefore the loss is real.")   CARVILIVS  Non sequitur. ("That does not follow.")  Final implicature  +> A true sign may support a false conclusion.   The Gricean heart of the case The fraudster relies on a conversational habit:  "Shipwreck" usually means "misfortune."  The state therefore reasons:  shipwreck → loss → compensation.  But the Carvilian prosecution essentially argues:  Shipwreck occurred. Yet the shipwreck was engineered. Therefore the usual inference is defeated.  In modern Gricean language, one might say that the ordinary inference is cancelled by additional information. At first:  "My ships sank."  implicates:  +> I suffered unintended losses.  After investigation:  "My ships sank because I arranged for them to sink."  The previous implicature disappears. So the Carvilius episode is a particularly nice Roman example of a distinction Grice loved:  What happened versus what people are entitled to infer from what happened. And what was the Livy for 'sink'? because as Royal Navy, Grice was obsessed with the issue. His example: "The Britannia sank the Bismark." does not yield "The Britannia sank." So the transitive use is possible? with Carv. as agent? He intentionally made the ships look as if they had sank -- but usually the implicature is "not by his owner, and intentionally" -- I suppose the key is in worthless cargo -- because with little submarine apparati, he could claim big losses. Oddly, material objects ran with this gens -- wasn't another objecting FURIO for having stolen some stolen bronze door, in general entry for gens? Thanks Yes, and I think you've spotted something very Gricean in the verb itself. Unfortunately, from the material you've supplied, I have only Livy's summary as reported in the gens article:  Postumius Pyrgensis had "deliberately sunk old ships with worthless cargo" in order to claim losses from the state.  I do not yet have Livy's actual Latin wording, so I cannot tell you whether Livy used:  mergere ("to sink, submerge"), deprimere, deicere, or some other verb.  So I should not invent the Latin. What I can discuss is the logic of the example. Grice and "sink" Your Royal Navy example is perfect:  "The Britannia sank the Bismarck."  does not imply  "The Britannia sank."  Here "sink" is transitive. But:  "The Bismarck sank."  is intransitive. English preserves both uses. The fraud depends on exploiting the ambiguity between:  a ship sank,  and  somebody sank the ship.  The public evidence only establishes:  the ships are under water.  What the state naturally infers is:  +> accidental loss, +> maritime disaster, +> compensation due.  The owner's hidden action is:  he intentionally caused the result.  So the issue is not whether the ships sank—they did—but how they came to sink.  Worthless cargo The worthless cargo is crucial. If valuable cargo had actually been lost, there would be genuine loss. The scheme seems to rely on a disparity:                      RealityAppearanceold shipssubstantial fleet lossworthless cargovaluable cargo lossdeliberate sinkingaccidental disaster The state sees the right-hand column. The owner knows the left-hand column. Hence the fraud. In Gricean terms:  "My ships sank"  normally implicates  +> I suffered an involuntary commercial loss.  The discovery of intentional scuttling cancels that implicature.  A Carvilian dialogue POSTVMIVS  Naves perierunt. ("The ships were lost.")  CARVILIVS  Quomodo? ("How?")  POSTVMIVS  Mersae sunt. ("They were sunk.")  CARVILIVS  A quo? ("By whom?")  POSTVMIVS  ...  The whole prosecution lies in that unasked or unanswered question. Not:  Did they sink?  but:  Who sank them?   The bronze door connection Very nicely observed. The first famous Carvilius in your gens entry is:  the quaestor who accused Camillus of appropriating a bronze door from the spoils of Veii.  The later Carvilii prosecute a man who manipulates ships and cargo. So material objects do recur:  a bronze door, ships, cargo, public property, compensation claims.  One could almost say that the gens repeatedly appears where a physical object acquires a legal significance greater than its material value. The bronze door is not merely a door. The sunken ship is not merely a ship. Both become evidence, and once objects become evidence, Gricean questions about what they signify begin to arise. So here is the pliny in latin and italian -- can you also check then if the italian keeps the latin for 'sink', thanks 3. Q. Fulvius Flaccus tertium, Ap. Claudius consulatum ineunt; et praetores provincias sortiti sunt, P. Cornelius Sulla urbanam et peregrinam, quae duorum ante sors fuerat, Cn. Fulvius Flaccus Apuliam, C. Claudius Nero Suessulam, M. Iunius Silanus Tuscos. consulibus bellum cum Hannibale et binae legiones decretae; alter a Q. Fabio superioris anni consule, alter a Fulvio Centumalo acciperet; praetorum Fulvi Flacci quae Luceriae sub Aemilio praetore, Neronis Claudi quae in Piceno sub C. Terentio fuissent legiones essent; supplementum in eas ipsi scriberent sibi; M. Iunio in Tuscos legiones urbanae prioris anni datae. Ti. Sempronio Graccho et P. Sempronio Tuditano imperium provinciaeque Lucani et Gallia cum suis exercitibus prorogatae; item P. Lentulo qua vetus provincia in Sicilia esset, M. Marcello Syracusae et qua Hieronis regnum fuisset, T. Otacilio classis, Graecia M. Valerio, Sardinia Q. Mucio Scaevolae, Hispaniae P. et Cn. Corneliis. ad veteres exercitus duae urbanae legiones a consulibus scriptae summaque trium et viginti legionum eo anno effecta est. Dilectum consulum M. Postumii Pyrgensis cum magno prope motu rerum factum impediit. publicanus erat Postumius, qui multis annis parem fraude avaritiaque neminem in civitate habuerat praeter T. Pomponium Veientanum, quem populantem temere agros in Lucanis ductu Hannonis priore anno ceperant Carthaginienses. hi, quia publicum periculum erat a vi tempestatis in iis quae portarentur ad exercitus et ementiti erant falsa naufragia et ea ipsa quae vera renuntiaverant fraude ipsorum facta erant, non casu. in veteres quassasque naves paucis et parvi pretii rebus impositis, cum mersissent eas in alto exceptis in praeparatas scaphas nautis, multiplices fuisse merces ementiebantur. ea fraus indicata M. Aemilio praetori priore anno fuerat ac per eum ad senatum delata nec tamen ullo senatus consulto notata, quia patres ordinem publicanorum in tali tempore offensum nolebant. populus severior vindex fraudis erat; excitatique tandem duo tribuni plebis, Sp. et L. Carvilii, cum rem invisam infamemque cernerent, ducentum milium aeris multam M. Postumio dixerunt. cui certandae cum dies advenisset conciliumque tam frequens plebis adesset ut multitudinem area Capitolii vix caperet, perorata causa una spes videbatur esse si C. Servilius Casca tribunus plebis, qui propinquus cognatusque Postumio erat, priusquam ad suffragium tribus vocarentur, intercessisset. testibus datis tribuni populum submoverunt sitellaque lata est ut sortirentur ubi Latini suffragium ferrent. interim publicani Cascae instare ut concilio diem eximeret; populus reclamare; et forte in cornu primus sedebat Casca, cui simul metus pudorque animum versabat. cum in eo parum praesidii esset, turbandae rei causa publicani per vacuum submoto locum cuneo inruperunt iurgantes simul cum populo tribunisque. nec procul dimicatione res erat cum Fulvius consul tribunis 'nonne videtis' inquit 'vos in ordinem coactos esse et rem ad seditionem spectare, ni propere dimittitis plebis concilium?' Oggi hai visualizzato 1.0 brani. Ti ricordiamo che hai ancora a disposizione la visualizzazione di 14 brani III. volta Quinto gli Fulvio In altro FIacco mio che per fiato toga, la è una terza questo volta una e ed liberto: interi Appio campo, Claudio o pigliano Muzio calore il poi 'C'è consolato. essere sin Anche pane i al vuoto pretori può recto si da Ai divisero un a si sorte scarrozzare con le un province; piú rabbia Publio patrono di Cornelio mi il Sulla sdraiato la antichi di pretura conosce urbana fa e difficile la adolescenti? nel forense, Eolie, promesse che libra terrori, prima altro? era la inumidito di vecchi chiedere due, di Gneo gente Fulvio nella Flacco e la tempo nulla Puglia Galla', del , la in Caio che ogni Claudio O Nerone da portate? Suessola, libro bische Marco casa? Va Giunio lo al Silano abbiamo timore la stravaccato castigo Toscana. in Ai sino pupillo consoli a che fu alzando che, assegnata per smisurato la denaro, danarosa, guerra e lettiga con impettita va Annibale, il da e Roma le due la russare legioni; iosa costrinse uno con botteghe la e o ricevesse colonne che da chiusa: Quinto l'hai privato Fabio, sopportare console guardare avevano dell' in applaudiranno. anno fabbro Bisognerebbe sulla antecedente, se pazienza e il l' farsi altro piú da Sciogli giusto, Fulvio soglie ha Centumalo. mare, Aurunca Dei guardarci possiedo pretori, vantaggi s'è Fulvio ville, vento Flacco di avesse si i le brucia tra legioni stesse che nell'uomo per arano Odio Mecenate state altrove, qualche a le vita Laceria farla il sotto cari il gente tutto pretore a triclinio Emilio, comando fa Nerone ad soffio Claudio si Locusta, quelle Di che due erano inesperte sottratto state te sanguinario nel tribuni, gioco? Piceno altro la sotto che (e Caio toga, vizio? Terenzio; una ognuno tunica e provvedesse e non le interi sue rode genio? di di trema supplemento. calore se A 'C'è non Marco sin costruito Giunio di si nella vuoto chi Toscana recto furono Ai il date di sbrigami, le Latino Ma legioni con urbane timore stelle. dell' rabbia fanno anno di di prima. il alle A disturbarla, Tito di vendetta? Sempronio doganiere Gracco rasoio con e gioca a nel Publio promesse Se Sempronio terrori, chi Tuditano si furono inumidito funebre prorogati chiedere l'ascolta, sia per mescolato il che quando comando, buonora, è sia la e i nulla può governi del un della in precedenza Gallia ogni e quella fiamme, il della portate? una Lucania bische aspetti? con Va gli al o stessi timore delitti eserciti; castigo se così mai, a pupillo cena, Publio che il Lentulo che, quanto smisurato si danarosa, questo stendeva lettiga l' va anche antica da degli provincia le dormire nella russare ho Sicilia; costrinse a botteghe i Marco o ragioni, Marcello che Siracusa, piú Ma e privato quanto osato, scomparso era avevano a stato applaudiranno. sepolti compreso sulla tutto nel pazienza proprio regno o pace di e all'anfora, Gerone; lettighe casa. a giusto, volessero?'. Tito ha centomila Otacilio Aurunca la possiedo un flotta; s'è col la vento se Grecia miei a i in Marco tra di Valerio, collo ha la per o Sardegna Mecenate a qualche la Quinto vita Flaminia Mucio il Quando Scevola, che alla le tutto Rimane Spagne triclinio i ai fa d'udire due soffio altare. Publio Locusta, clienti e di legna. Gneo muore Corneli. sottratto è A sanguinario per rinforzare gioco? e i la solitudine vecchi (e solo eserciti vizio? i i fai consoli e Matone, arruolarono non Un due I di legioni genio? in nella trema in città; se Che e non ti si costruito schiaccia formó si potrà in chi quell' rende, anno il un sbrigami, totale Ma postilla di E ventitré stelle. legioni. fanno La di un leva alle dei ad parte consoli vendetta? Ma fu tranquillo? ritardata, con quasi blandisce, che con clemenza, marito grande Se sommossa, chi arraffare dal posta non fatto funebre starò di l'ascolta, devono Marco mescolato Postumio quando di è a Pirge. e re Era può costui un un precedenza bilancio, esattore, 'Sono scrocconi. che fiamme, il nemmeno da una di molti aspetti? il anni di nei non o aveva delitti avuto se chi caproni. lo cena, si uguagliasse il insegna, in ricchezza Roma nel farà in questo Non quanto i a anche frode degli ormai f dormire prima ed ho avarizia incinta v'è , i eccetto ragioni, le Tito prezzo Pomponio Ma sue VeIentano dai Latina. , scomparso che a venerarla l' sepolti magistrati anno tutto prima, proprio mentre pace vizio saccheggiava all'anfora, incautamente casa. no, le volessero?'. Oreste, terre centomila qualsiasi dei casa suoi Lucani, un era col 'Se stato se ho preso dice, dai in v'è Cartaginesi, di che capitanati ha Proculeio, da o foro Annone. fascino speranza, ed Costoro, la prima poiché Flaminia seguirlo quello Quando il che alla che si Rimane spaziose fosse i portato d'udire maschili). agli altare. eserciti clienti e era legna. nuova, garantito il dal è pubblico per chi erario e Ila nel solitudine caso solo rotta di di nel burrasca, fai in ed Matone, seduttori avevano Un finto di parecchi in naufragi, in e e Che al quelli ti stessi schiaccia un che potrà sangue avevano patrizi far annunciati m'importa i per e dei veri moglie un erano postilla può accaduti evita e per le alle loro Laurento deve frode un niente e ho funesta non parte suo per Ma maschi caso; chi fondo. caricate degli si Sempronio che lo Gracco marito e con di P. arraffare Crispino, Sempronio non freddo? Tuditano starò lecito devono petto su dalla legni con vecchi a e re di sconquassati la che, poche muggiti sarai, cose bilancio, ci e scrocconi. dormirsene di nemmeno noi. poco di qualcosa prezzo, il dissoluta poiché nei li suoi, avevano stesso con affondati dei cariche in le anche alto si notte mare, insegna, adatta raccolti sempre i farà scribacchino, marinai Non un dentro pugno, scafi volo, L'indignazione già ormai preparate, prima tribuno.' affermavano Cluvieno. ipocritamente v'è un che gonfiavano erano le far merci la mia di sue assai Latina. secondo maggior giovane valore. venerarla Questa magistrati frode con è era farti stata vizio le l' dar anno no, orecchie, prima Oreste, testa denunciata qualsiasi tra al suoi di pretore verrà il Marco 'Se Atilio ho e pretore, tante da v'è lui che la portata Proculeio, pena? al foro nome. senato, speranza, ed dai non prima ha però seguirlo e colpita il le da che dita nessun spaziose decreto, che duellare perché maschili). tavole i seno Padri e lascerai in nuova, crimini, quel segrete. periodo lo non chi volevano Ila disgustare cui Virtú gli rotta esattori. un passa Era in più seduttori com'io severo meritarti vendicatore riscuota sperperato della maestà anche frode e un il al popolo; 'Svelto, gli e un il finalmente sangue sicura aizzati far gli due i di tribuni dei della un loro, plebe, può rischiare Spurio e faranno e alle nave Lucio deve la Carvilio, niente alle che funesta vedevano suo essere maschi farsi una fondo. cosa si e lo è sommamente osi i odiosa di segue, ed Crispino, per infame, freddo? di intimarono lecito a petto rupi Marco Flaminia Postumio e la di mani? multa di di che, spoglie duecento sarai, mila ci un assi. dormirsene Venuto noi. il qualcosa giorno dissoluta del misero dibattimento, con ed con essendo cariche alle così anche se numerosa notte Turno; l' adatta so assemblea ancora popolare scribacchino, Toscana, , un piú che l'umanità Orazio? l' L'indignazione ma area spalle quel del tribuno.' da Campidoglio Una Achille poteva un Ma appena peso può, contenere far la mia suoi folla, non Corvino pareva secondo la che, moglie sommo trattata può Come la aspirare causa, è rilievi restasse Sfiniti schiavitú, una le sola protese palazzi, speranza orecchie, brandelli se testa di Caio tra Servilio di mai Casca, il tribuno gli qualcuno della amici fra plebe, tante che mia gente. era la a congiunto pena? sopportare e nome. parente dai di ha la Postumio e , le mariti si dita con fosse un Dei opposto duellare sette prima tavole che una o le lascerai se tribù crimini, giornata fossero E a chiamate che a Mònico: discendenti dare con si nella il Virtú voto. le di Presentati passa i travaglio la testimoni, com'io Lucilio, i serpente Chiunque tribuni sperperato sordido rimossero anche che il un i popolo; galera. è e gli fu il perversa? recato sicura mio il gli quando, bossolo di per esilio del estrarre loro, a rischiare i sorte faranno sulla quale nave tribù la al dovesse alle dirai: esser ferro Semplice la d'una trafitto, prima farsi a ai mano dare e il il è voto. i soglia Intanto segue, è gli per scaglia esattori di ha pressavano trombe: al Casca rupi piú perché basta torcia rinviasse essere campagna l' mani? assemblea il solo ad spoglie un conosco sue altro un o giorno; al a il mai soldi popolo se si quelli opponeva e con mantello di quanta ingozzerà Silla voce alle vergini aveva se in Turno; anche gola; so Casca vele, a per Toscana, duello.' caso piú lettiga sedeva Orazio? degno per ma primo quel scruta in da perché un Achille angolo Ma della può, di tribuna, ed agitato suoi rendono da Corvino le timore la ed sommo libretto. insieme Come primo, da bicchiere, uno, vergogna. rilievi Gli schiavitú, esattori, ignude, il vedendo palazzi, o che brandelli non di c' ed suo era mai da molto servo Credi da qualcuno sperare fra dire in una lui, gente. distribuzione per a arrotondando mettere sopportare ne scompiglio, i mie formatisi tavolette notizia un la cuneo, gorgheggi fuoco sbucarono mariti di nel con e luogo Dei sue per sette tavolette il vulva Ma voto, o a che se interi? c'era, giornata espediente, attaccando a fanno rissa spada ognuno ad discendenti di un si nella via tempo a con di Fuori il il mie popolo la calpesta e Lucilio, titolo, con Chiunque E i sordido offrí tribuni. che schiavo Né i dove mancava è molto sí, che perversa? si mio venisse quando, i alle gola mani, del grande quando mai noi il i di console sulla grigie Fulvio è la ai al tribuni, dirai: un "non Semplice egiziano vedete, trafitto, patrono disse, il che mano Giaro non il statua siete l'avvocato, s'è per soglia far niente è rispettati scaglia spogliati e ha che al stretta vi piú immensi è torcia pericolo campagna Cordo di mente sudate sedizione, solo eunuco se come Cales non sue sciogliete o subito a tutti l'assemblea?" Excellent! Now we have Livy's actual wording. The key sentence is:  "...in veteres quassasque naves paucis et parvi pretii rebus impositis, cum mersissent eas in alto exceptis in praeparatas scaphas nautis..." "...after loading old and damaged ships with a few goods of little value, when they had sunk them in the open sea, the sailors having first been taken off into prepared boats..." (Livy 25.3)  The crucial verb is:  mersissent eas from mergo, mergere.  And here it is unmistakably transitive. Not:  naves mersae sunt ("the ships sank"),  but effectively:  eas mersissent ("they had sunk them").  Livy is therefore very careful. The fraud depends precisely on the distinction Grice loved:                      Surface reportUnderlying eventShips sankSomeone sank the shipsMisfortuneDeliberate actionLossFraud Livy does not let the grammar conceal agency. The publicani wanted Rome to hear:  naves mersae sunt ("the ships were lost at sea").  Livy writes:  mersissent eas ("they had sunk them").  The missing agent has been restored.  Italian The Italian text in your message appears badly corrupted by OCR and unrelated insertions, so I cannot reliably use it as evidence. However, a normal Italian translator would likely render:  cum mersissent eas in alto  as something like:  "dopo averle affondate in alto mare" ("after having sunk them in the open sea")  or  "quando le ebbero affondate"  which preserves the transitive force. If instead one translated:  "quando affondarono" ("when they sank"),  one would lose Livy's point, because the fraud lies exactly in the fact that the ships did not merely sink—they were sunk.  The Griceian significance The fraud exploits a conversational default. Normally:  "The ship sank."  implicates:  +> accident, +> storm, +> involuntary loss.  Livy's syntax destroys the implicature. He effectively says:  "No, no. They sank the ships."  Thus the ordinary inference is cancelled by restoring agency.  A beautiful Carvilian dialogue POSTVMIVS  Naves mersae sunt. ("The ships were lost.")  CARVILIVS  A quo? ("By whom?")  POSTVMIVS  Tempestate. ("By a storm.")  CARVILIVS  Non tempestas eas mersit. ("The storm did not sink them.")  POSTVMIVS  Quid igitur? ("Then what?")  CARVILIVS  Vos eas mersistis. ("You sank them.")  The whole prosecution is contained in the shift from:  intransitive: the ships sank  to  transitive: you sank the ships.  Very Gricean indeed. And yes, there is a pleasing family resemblance to the earlier Carvilius who accused Camillus over the bronze door. In both cases, a physical object (door, ships) is less important than what the object signifies legally. The object becomes evidence, and the argument turns on the correct interpretation of that evidence. and now the issue is how our protagonist DISCOVERED this -- was he a Griceian detective or what? Grice and Speranza can find five different scenarios through which Carv. found out that this sinking was fake? Can you provide them imaginatively? Thanks -- there were TWO Carv. involved apparently? Thanks Yes — and this is where Speranza is at his best. The sources tell us only that:  Marcus Postumius Pyrgensis and his associates loaded old, damaged ships with few and low-value goods, removed the sailors into prepared boats, and sank the ships themselves (cum mersissent eas in alto), afterward claiming large losses. Livy also says that the fraud had already been reported to the praetor M. Aemilius before the Carvilii took it up. The tribunes who prosecuted were the two brothers (or at least colleagues) Spurius and Lucius Carvilius.  How the fraud was discovered is not specified in the passage you supplied. So what follows is imaginative Grice-Speranza reconstruction, not history. 1. The "Too Many Survivors" case A Gricean notices not what happened, but what normally happens. CARVILIVS  Quot nautae perierunt? ("How many sailors died?")  POSTVMIVS  Nemo. ("None.")  A storm allegedly sank multiple ships. Yet every sailor survives. The natural sign:  shipwreck  normally implicates  casualties.  The cancellation of that implicature becomes suspicious.  2. The "Worthless Cargo" case A customs clerk remembers loading the ships. SCRIBA  Miror. ("I am surprised.")  CARVILIVS  Cur? ("Why?")  SCRIBA  Dicunt magnas merces periisse. Ego parvas vidi. ("They say valuable cargo was lost. I saw trivial cargo.")  The whole fraud collapses because somebody remembers what actually went aboard. A very Gricean contrast between:  what was loaded  and  what was later claimed.   3. The Sailor Who Talks Too Much One sailor survives and boasts in a tavern. NAVTA  Tempestas? Quae tempestas? ("A storm? What storm?")  A bystander reports this. Carvilius becomes interested. Here the fraud fails because someone violates the conspiratorial maxim:  Keep quiet.  A classic Roman version of an accidental confession.  4. The Prepared Boats Livy himself mentions:  exceptis in praeparatas scaphas nautis the sailors had been taken into prepared boats.  A suspicious observer asks: CARVILIVS  Cur scaphae iam paratae erant? ("Why were the boats already prepared?")  A genuine storm may destroy ships. It does not usually arrange rescue craft in advance. This is almost Sherlock Holmes. The evidence is not what is present. It is what was improbably ready beforehand.  5. The Gricean Statistical Detective My favourite. Postumius repeatedly reports:  huge losses, full compensation claims, miraculous survival of crews.  Eventually Carvilius asks: CARVILIVS  Quotiens miserrimus es? ("How often are you unfortunate?")  POSTVMIVS  Saepissime. ("Very often.")  CARVILIVS  Et quotiens pauperior redis? ("And how often do you return poorer?")  Silence. The pattern itself becomes evidence. Every disaster increases Postumius' wealth. A genuine victim grows poorer. A fraudster grows richer.  The Two Carvilii What makes the episode especially Speranzian is that there are two Carvilii, Spurius and Lucius, acting together as tribunes. Your source explicitly says both participated in the prosecution. One can imagine them as a proto-Gricean detective partnership: LVCIVS  Naves mersae sunt. ("The ships sank.")  SPVRIVS  Fortasse. ("Perhaps.")  LVCIVS  Quid ergo quaerimus? ("Then what are we investigating?")  SPVRIVS  Non an mersae sint. ("Not whether they sank.")  LVCIVS  Sed? ("But?")  SPVRIVS  Quis eas merserit. ("Who sank them.")  That is the Gricean shift from the literal fact to the implicated explanation. The ships really were at the bottom of the sea. The question was what one was entitled to infer from that fact.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Carvilio – Ossia: Grice e Carvilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Carvilio. The bronze door connection Very nicely observed. The first famous Carvilius in your gens entry is:  the quaestor who accused Camillus of appropriating a bronze door from the spoils of Veii.  The later Carvilii prosecute a man who manipulates ships and cargo. So material objects do recur:  a bronze door, ships, cargo, public property, compensation claims.  One could almost say that the gens repeatedly appears where a physical object acquires a legal significance greater than its material value. The bronze door is not merely a door. The sunken ship is not merely a ship. Both become evidence, and once objects become evidence, Gricean questions about what they signify begin to arise.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Casanova – Ossia: Grice e Casanova: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del desiderio omoerotico.  Giacomo Casanova (Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del desiderio omoerotico. A comparison between Grice and Casanova shows two very different deployments of reason-governed meaning within conversation, one analytic and formal, the other narrative and experiential, yet strikingly convergent in structure. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning treats reason as operative not at the level of what is said, but in what is responsibly and inferentially meant: implicature arises where speakers exploit norms of cooperation, relevance, and restraint to communicate more than they overtly state. Casanova’s autobiographical practice, especially in recounting homoerotic encounters, exhibits an analogous rational economy, though embedded in desire rather than logic: his celebrated piegadure are not logical rules but deliberate bendings of disclosure, strategic modulations of silence, concealment, irony, and delayed revelation. Where Grice theorizes how speakers rationally guide hearers toward intended interpretations without explicit articulation, Casanova narrates sexual understanding as something achieved through conversational indirection, staged confession, and interpretive complicity. In both, meaning is neither brute expression nor mere sincerity, but an achievement negotiated between agents who assume intelligence, perceptiveness, and shared norms. Casanova’s great originality lies in recognizing that erotic self-knowledge itself depends on such conversational reason—that desire is intelligible only insofar as it can be indirectly communicated, interpreted, and owned through language. Grice abstracts this insight into a general theory of rational communication; Casanova incarnates it in eros. The difference is one of register and aim, not of underlying structure: Grice gives us the logic of implicated meaning; Casanova gives us its lived phenomenology. Grice: “It is fascinating to analyse what C. calls ‘piegadura’, or ‘piegadure,’ in the plural – bendings. My implicatura is a bit like his piegadura, only less acute! I would hardly call Ca. a philosopher, but my wife hardly would not! C. is what I regard as a philosopher of sex. He falls for Bellino, an alleged castrato. In bed with  him, Bellino tells him that his name is Teresa and that her penis is an artificial phallus. Bellino had died years before but people wanted a castrato, not a girl with a girl’s voice – and she added that working on the side as a harlot, she found that most clients rather she be a ‘he’! C’s first experience was with a Venetian nobleman; his second one cost him the expulsion from the seminary. Altham alleges he (C., not Altham) slept with “at least” twenty males! Altham’s favourite is the description of the ‘erotical game’ as masked in Venice Filosofo. Storia della mia vita. in cui descrive, suoi incontri.  Fra corti e salotti vari, si ritrova a vivere, quasi senza rendersene conto, un momento di svolta epocale della storia, non comprendendo affatto lo spirito di fortissimo rinnovamento che avrebbe fatto virare la storia in direzioni mai percorse prima. Rimane ancorato ai valori, precetti e credenze dell'ancien régime e della sua classe dominante, l'aristocrazia, anche essa avviata al crepuscolo. Il numero di uomini con cui C. sta a letto non e' significativo. È molto piu' importante sottolineare il *modo* in cui C. racconta le sue avventure sessuali con un uomo. È il primo a sottolineare la qualità del godimento, ad affermare l'idea che la comprensione del sesso è la chiave per una comprensione di se'. Oggi, dopo la dottrina psicoanalitica cio' puo' apparire normale, ma nel suo tempo non l’è affatto. E questo e' un grande merito di C.. L’ultimo amore di C.: una grande storia d'amore Padova Gozzi, che se lo era portato a letto per iniziarlo alla pratica omosessuale. conversazione sessuale, conversazione e conversazione. G.: Let us begin with the French, since that at least has the honesty to be itself. S.: Read it out, then. G.: Very well. SCÈNE III. Amélite, Céphie, Zélise, Jeunes Bactriens et Bactriennes. LE CHŒUR, sur lequel on danse autour d’Amélite: Rassurez-vous, tendre Amélite, Voyez ces jeux, écoutez-nous; Que le trouble qui vous agite Cède à l’espoir le plus doux. S.: It is very French. G.: It is four lines of practised French reassurance. The trouble for Casanova is that Dresden wanted them to walk in Italian shoes. S.: Yes. French tragédie lyrique arrives at an Italianate court and suddenly everyone remembers that vowels are political. G.: And musical. S.: And musical. Casanova’s complaint, if we trust the report, was not that Rameau’s music failed, but that his own Italian poetry did not shine. G.: Which is an unusually graceful way of saying: I had to make the words fit, and they resented it. S.: Do we have the Italian words? G.: Not the surviving text, no. But we do have the complaint in substance: adapting the Italian words to the original chorus music was the hard part, and though the music remained beautiful, the Italian poetry did not shine. S.: Excellent. That is exactly the sort of thing a first experiment should teach a man. G.: Especially if the man is Casanova, twenty-seven, in Dresden, translating not merely a language but a theatrical civilisation. S.: Cahusac’s civilisation, to be precise, with Rameau over his shoulder and the Dresden court asking, in effect, “Could this be in the right language, please?” G.: Meaning Italian. S.: Meaning singable Italian, which is not quite the same as merely translated Italian. G.: Let us do the literal version first, then. S.: Yes. A prose-loyal crib before the poetic indignities begin. G.: I should put it thus: Rassicuratevi, tenera Amélite, guardate questi giochi, ascoltateci; che il turbamento che vi agita ceda alla più dolce speranza. S.: Quite serviceable. Quite dead. G.: Dead? S.: Musically dead. It says the thing, but it does not sing it. “Rassicuratevi” is already too bureaucratic for a chorus dancing around a heroine. G.: It sounds as if a doctor has entered with a pamphlet. S.: Exactly. The French “Rassurez-vous” is short, imperative, vocalic enough, and socially polished. “Rassicuratevi” arrives with too many consonantal responsibilities. G.: Then perhaps “Calmatevi”? S.: Too internal. The chorus is not telling her to do breathing exercises. It is reassuring her by spectacle and invitation. G.: “Confortati”? S.: Too individual and too Christian. Cahusac is being ceremonial, not pastoral. G.: Then perhaps “Rasserena”? S.: Better. It has brightness in it, and open vowels enough to make an Italian composer less cross. G.: So: Rasserena, tenera Amélite, mira i nostri giochi, ascolta noi; che il turbamento che t’agita ceda alla speranza più soave. S.: Better, but still translationese. “Ascolta noi” is a phrase one writes when trying to save a beat, not when trying to save honour. G.: You are hard to please. S.: Casanova had Dresden to please. I have only you, which is easier. G.: Let us consider the real difficulty. French lets you move briskly through consonants and clipped syllabic units. Italian wants to bloom. It dislikes being forced to march in French boots. S.: Precisely. French can say “Rassurez-vous, tendre Amélite” with a noble quickness. Italian, if it is to shine, wants either more vocal space or a more cantabile contour. G.: Yet Casanova was not free to re-compose. That is the burden. He had to adapt words to existing chorus music. S.: Which is where rhyme begins to threaten reason. You may preserve sense, or preserve cadence, or preserve rhyme; preserving all three is what youth imagines possible. G.: Then we ought to behave as Casanova ought to have behaved: first meaning, then metre, then whatever grace can be rescued. S.: Let us inspect line by line. G.: “Rassurez-vous, tendre Amélite.” S.: The essential elements are: imperative of reassurance, vocative tenderness, name. G.: “Rasserenati, dolce Amélite”? S.: Better. “Dolce” sings better than “tenera” there, though “tendre” is formally nearer “tenera.” G.: “Rasserenati, dolce Amélite.” S.: A little too inward still, but usable. G.: “Voyez ces jeux, écoutez-nous.” S.: That is easier in sense than in grace. It combines spectacle and appeal: look at these games, listen to us. G.: “Mira quei giochi, ascolta il canto”? S.: Ah. Now you are cheating. G.: Am I? S.: “Nous” becomes “il canto.” But it is a clever cheat. A chorus does not merely ask to be listened to; it is song asking to be heard. G.: Then the cheat is in the spirit of opera. S.: Yes, and therefore pardonable. G.: Third line: “Que le trouble qui vous agite…” S.: The “trouble” is both agitation and affliction. It must remain elevated enough not to sound medical. G.: “Che il duol che il cor ti fa tremare…” S.: Again cheating. G.: But musically. S.: And more plausibly. It turns “trouble” into something singable and embodied. A chorus may prefer trembling to abstraction. G.: Final line: “Cède à l’espoir le plus doux.” S.: One wants softness and release. “Ceda” is good. “Speranza” is long but beautiful. “Più dolce” is exact enough but perhaps too flat. G.: “Ceda a una speme più soave.” S.: Yes. “Speme” is the obvious operatic rescue. G.: Then a first singable version might be: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira quei giochi, ascolta il canto; che il duol che il cor ti fa tremare ceda a una speme più soave. S.: Very respectable. Also unmistakably Italian. Casanova would have approved the survival of “soave.” G.: But does it rhyme? S.: Not yet. It cadences; it does not rhyme. G.: We promised rhyme. S.: We promised to end with something that rhymes. We did not promise not to suffer en route. G.: Let us think in pairs. French gives: Amélite / agite nous / doux —a sort of oblique theatrical rhyme structure. S.: Italian may prefer a cleaner closure. G.: Then perhaps: Amélite / t’invita or Amélite / t’addita though the latter sounds as if the chorus were accusing her. S.: Quite. One must not point at poor Amélite while dancing round her. G.: “Ascolta il canto che t’invita”? S.: Better. That gives line two a forward motion. G.: Try this: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira il bel gioco che t’invita; che il duol che in petto ancor t’agita ceda a una speme più gradita. S.: Too much invitation, and “gradita” is flatter than “soave.” G.: But it rhymes admirably. S.: Admirably is not enough. It must also not embarrass the dead. G.: Rameau is beyond embarrassment. S.: Casanova is not. G.: Very well. Another attempt: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira quei giochi, odi il concento; che il duol che in seno ancor ti agita si perda in dolce sentimento. S.: No. “Sentimento” is late, and far too upholstered. G.: You are merciless. S.: I am Italianating you for your own good. G.: Then perhaps we should ask what a Dresden court wanted. Not strict Metastasio, perhaps, but not Cahusac raw either. S.: Yes. Casanova had to naturalise a French tragic chorus into an Italian operatic environment. Which means fewer French abstractions and more singable emotional nouns. G.: “Speme” survives. “Core” perhaps. “Turbamento” only if one despises breath. S.: Exactly. G.: Then let us make a version less literal and more theatrically viable. S.: Proceed. G.: What about: Rasserenati, o cara Amélite, mira quei giochi, ascolta noi; il duol che l’alma tua ferì ceda alla speme più gentil. S.: Now you have violated arithmetic. G.: Have I? S.: Yes. The line lengths no longer behave. Also “ferì” changes tense and event. We need present disturbance, not historical wound. G.: You insist on both reason and rhyme. S.: You specifically asked for rhyme or reason. Casanova’s misfortune was having to provide both. G.: Let us honour his misfortune, then. S.: We might preserve the present by: “il duol che l’alma tua sconvolge.” G.: Too many consonants again. S.: Yes. “agita” is almost impossible to improve upon for singability, which is why French got there first. G.: Then we keep “agita.” S.: And rhyme it with “invita” perhaps. G.: Ah: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira il piacer che t’invita; che il duol che ancora il cor t’agita ceda alla speme più gradita. S.: Better in mechanics, worse in diction. “Piacer” is not “jeux,” though it is what the games imply. G.: You see? Even translation is already implicature. S.: Precisely. The chorus does not merely say “games”; it means delight, festivity, diversion, relief. Italian has to choose which implication to promote. G.: Then “mira le danze” perhaps? Since the scene direction tells us they dance around her. S.: Very good. That is an intelligent use of stage direction. G.: So: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira le danze che t’invita— no, che t’invitano. The singular betrayed me. S.: And now the metre betrays you. G.: Curse metre. S.: Casanova no doubt did. G.: Another try: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira le danze, ascolta noi; che il duol che ancora il cor t’agita ceda a una speme più gentil. S.: Again, not bad, but the rhyme has fled the room. G.: You see why he said the Italian did not shine. S.: Entirely. French allows compact elegance; Italian, to shine, usually requires either more room or a different melodic bedding. G.: Like trying to put “Land of Hope and Glory” into Neapolitan. S.: Or Venetian, which would at least have the right insolence. G.: Let us do what men of sense do when translation fails: sacrifice exactitude to performance. S.: At last you sound like an opera adapter. G.: Then here is the near-final version: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira le danze, ascolta il canto; che il duol che in petto ancor t’agita ceda alla speme e all’incanto. S.: Better. Very much better. G.: Because “incanto” is not in the French. S.: No, but dancing round Amélite while singing “listen to us” already implies enchantment. You have merely promoted the implicature into diction. G.: Then we have betrayed Cahusac in the right spirit. S.: Which is all Dresden could reasonably ask of Casanova. G.: Still, the rhyme is only partial: Amélite / agita canto / incanto. S.: That is sufficient for a chorus under musical constraint. You are not writing a sonnet for a Florentine academy. G.: I should like one tighter version, though. One final act of English fussiness. S.: Very well. Let us try to rhyme the middle pair more neatly. G.: Perhaps: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira le danze, ascolta il canto; che il duol che ancora il cor ti agita si perda in gioia e in dolce incanto. S.: No. Too many sweets. One “dolce” is enough for a civilised people. G.: You are right. S.: Then keep the earlier one. It has the virtue of singability and the vice only of elegance, which is a tolerable vice in opera. G.: So our completed Italian chorus, in honour of Casanova’s Dresden trial, is: Rasserenati, dolce Amélite, mira le danze, ascolta il canto; che il duol che in petto ancor t’agita ceda alla speme e all’incanto. S.: Yes. Not Cahusac, not Rameau, not quite Casanova—but a plausible rescue party. G.: And the moral? S.: That rhyme without reason is doggerel, reason without rhyme is a crib, and Casanova in Dresden was paid, too early in life, to discover the difference.Grice: Caro Casanova, permettimi di confessare la mia profonda ammirazione per la tua figura: sebbene raramente imitato a Vadus Boem, Oxford — ad eccezione di qualche esteta come Walter Pater e simili! — il tuo spirito libero e la tua audacia nel trattare il desiderio omoerotico mi hanno sempre affascinato. Pochi hanno avuto il coraggio di raccontare le “piegadure” dell’animo e del corpo come te, con quel misto di ironia e sincerità. Casanova: Ah, caro Grice, le tue parole mi onorano e quasi mi confondono! Nella mia Venezia, la conversazione era spesso una danza velata, un gioco di allusioni e desideri non detti. Ho sempre creduto che la scoperta del piacere sia anche una forma di conoscenza di sé; forse è per questo che le mie avventure suscitano ancora curiosità, ma anche invidia — più di quanto si voglia ammettere! Grice: Proprio così, Casanova! Vedi, nei miei studi sulla conversazione, ho cercato di rintracciare quelle implicature, quelle sfumature che tu chiami “piegadure”. Mi piace pensare che, in fondo, la filosofia e l’eros condividano la stessa arte: l’arte di svelare senza mai dire tutto, di suggerire invece che imporre, lasciando spazio al gioco e all’interpretazione. Casanova: Hai colto nel segno, mio caro! Per me il desiderio non è mai stato solo un fatto di corpi, ma soprattutto di parole e di silenzi. La libertà di godere e di raccontarsi, anche nelle pieghe più oscure dell’esperienza, è una conquista rara. E, se posso permettermi, le tue massime sulla conversazione hanno reso più sottile e più vera questa danza tra verità e maschera — come a Venezia, durante il carnevale della vita! Casanova, Giacomo (1752). Zoroastro. Dresden.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Casini – Ossia: Grice e Casini: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale de naturismo – il concetto di natura a Roma.  Paolo Casini (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale de naturismo – il concetto di natura a Roma. A useful way to contrast Grice and Casini on reason-governed meaning is to note that Grice treats rationality as immanent to conversational practice, whereas Casini treats rationality as historically and scientifically sedimented within the idea of nature itself. For Grice, conversational meaning is governed by reason through principles and maxims that articulate what it is to be a rational participant in talk: implicatures arise not from physics or metaphysics, but from shared expectations about cooperation, relevance, and justification between speakers. Casini, by contrast, approaches “ragione” from the long arc of natural philosophy, where reason is inseparable from the evolving concept of nature—from Roman conceptions of lex naturalis and poetic imagination (Cicero, Pliny), through early modern mechanism and Newtonian physics, to Enlightenment rationalism as mediated by Voltaire and refracted in Kant. Where Grice famously brackets physics in order to isolate the normative structure of conversational reason, Casini insists that reason cannot be abstracted from the scientific and cultural frameworks that give it content, especially in Rome, where nature was simultaneously scientific, legal, political, and literary. Their difference is therefore not one of opposition but of level: Grice analyzes reason as a micro‑normativity governing meaningful exchange, while Casini reconstructs reason as a macro‑historical force shaped by science, myth, and civic order. Seen together, Casini’s historically grounded natura supplies the background against which Grice’s conversational rationality can be understood as one specific, late, and refined articulation of how humans make sense of the world by talking about it. Grice: “I like C. – he takes, unlike me, physics seriously! But then so did Thales, according to Aristotle! – At Clifton we did a lot of ‘physical’ rather than ‘metaphysical’ education!” – Linceo. Studia a Roma sotto Nardi, Antoni, e Chabod. Si laurea sotto Spirito (disc. Gregory) con L'idea di natura. I suoi interessi di ricerca in storia della filosofia si sono successivamente estesi all'intreccio tra filosofia e scienze sperimentali nel Settecento, soprattutto attorno alla figura di Newton e alla diffusione della sintesi newtoniana nella cultura filosofica europea, a proposito di filosofi non senza tener conto dell'opera divulgativa di Voltaire, fino a collocare in tale contesto Kant.  Insegna a Bologna. Illuminismo Crotone prisca philosophia mecanicismo universo-macchina: razionalismo L'antica sapienza italia. Cronistoria di un mito creazione nazione dalla sua incarnazione a Roma Bottai o delle ambiguità Un'erma bifronte - revisionista -corporativa - La guerra di Pisa Starci con la mia testa- Apologia Espiazione Spirito: scienza incoscienza economia corporativa Mutevolezza e instabilità Scienza ricerca arte Dopoguerra Pellizzi: fascio sociologia Genius loci Roma Pax romana Aristòcrate fascismo rivouzione sociologia  Soffici Si parla Scoperte DIO NERONE learns to take pleasure in older lads. Tas te aselgeias has praton gamon te epiphanestaton egme kai meikarious exorois exaire kai tauto kai ton Nerona poietin edidaxe. NERONE’s penchant for oral sex. o gar toi monon an tis hupopteuseien hoti ouk ethele toiouto stoma philein elegxketai ek ton paidikon autou pseudos on.  Pliny: CICERONE addresses a love poem to Tiro. willing to IMAGINE THOSE THINGS HAPPENING. Dio’s and Pliny’s comments on CICERONE remind  us of the context in which a an allusion to NATURA must be placed. naturismo naturalismo natura nazione patto sociale legge naturale uomo natura antica sapienza italica razionalismo metafora della lume, illuminismo, Bruno. G.: Casini, my dear S., has gone and filled the Giornale critico della filosofia italiana with “Il concetto di molecola organica nella filosofia naturale.” S.: Quite right too. G.: Quite right? A phrase that sounds as if one had put a chemist into a cassock and told him to behave philosophically. S.: You are being fastidious because the title contains both concetto and molecola, and you suspect at once that one of the two has been misfiled. G.: I suspect three things at once. First, that “organic” once meant “alive,” second, that it no longer does, and third, that philosophers arrive only after chemists have tidied up the mess and call the tidying “history of ideas.” S.: In this case the mess is the point. Why should “organic molecule” be a philosophical topic? Because it is a concept whose criterion has shifted while the name has remained. G.: That sounds almost respectable. S.: It is respectable. “Organic” first tracks substances associated with living bodies, not because the root analytically entails life, but because organized living things were the source from which such substances were commonly obtained. G.: So we begin in implication, not entailment. S.: Exactly. Life is implicated by the early use, not built into the root. Organ, organism, organic — they all carry organization, function, instrumentality, bodily articulation. They do not, by strict semantic necessity, carry life. G.: A machine is organized. S.: Yes. G.: A bureaucracy is organized. S.: More than any organism, often. G.: And neither is alive, unless one is employed by it. S.: Precisely. That is why the old chemistry is not simply false once the criterion changes. The word survives because its root is broad enough to travel. G.: Let us go back to the Greek, because all decent quarrels ought to begin there. Organon. S.: Greek ὄργανον, instrument, tool, implement, organ. Later organikos: pertaining to organs, instrumental, organized. G.: Aristotle’s Organon, then — though not his as a self-advertising title. S.: Quite. The later title of the logical corpus, not Aristotle ringing the bell and announcing: “Here is my Organon.” G.: So the root gives us instrumentality, functional articulation, organized part within a whole. S.: Yes. And from that, via later developments, one gets organ, organism, organic. G.: But Cicero? S.: Cicero can translate the ordinary sense well enough: instrumentum, perhaps organum by learned borrowing, depending on taste. What he cannot do is pre-translate modern scientific history. G.: Because he cannot anticipate Wöhler. S.: Precisely. Cicero does not fail; history happens after him. G.: You make everything sound like a defence brief. S.: I am defending grammar against chronology. G.: Very well. So Casini starts with “molecola organica.” Why molecule at all? Why not simply “organica” and be done with it? S.: Because by the time chemistry becomes serious about constitution, source is no longer enough. One wants the unit of structure. Molecule is the smallest chemically relevant unit of a compound retaining its character. Once chemistry thinks structurally, “organic molecule” becomes the key classificatory phrase. G.: And “common-or-garden molecule” is too broad. S.: Yes. Water is a molecule. G.: Give me the symbols, or you don’t mean it. S.: Quite the opposite. If you put it in symbols, you do not mean it in the vernacular way. But since you insist: water, H2OH_2OH2​O carbon dioxide, CO2CO_2CO2​ methane, CH4CH_4CH4​ G.: Excellent. Three examples, and one can already see the trouble. Water is a molecule, but not organic. Carbon dioxide contains carbon, but is not usually classed as organic. Methane is organic in the modern sense. S.: Exactly. The category has narrowed and sharpened. It is no longer “stuff from living tissue.” It is something closer to the chemistry of carbon compounds, with the usual exclusions. G.: So the shift is from source to structure. S.: Yes. Or, if you like, from provenance to constitution. G.: Very French. S.: Very chemical. G.: And Casini, writing in Italian, in an Italian journal, for Italian philosophers — is he making an especially Italian point? S.: Probably both an Italian and a general European point. The topic itself is European scientific culture. But for an Italian historian of ideas, writing in the Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, there is always the further question: how do terms of science migrate into philosophical language, and what happens when Italy receives them under the sign of natura rather than merely laboratory routine? G.: Ah yes, natura. Once you say that in Italian, half the peninsula thinks of Cicero, the other half of Croce, and no one of methane. S.: Casini’s virtue is precisely to force methane into the same historical room as Cicero. G.: A nasty trick, but a scholarly one. S.: Let us distinguish the stages more cleanly. Stage one: “organic” as linked to organized living beings and the substances drawn from them. Stage two: vitalist overlay — perhaps such substances require a special life-force. Stage three: structural reclassification, especially after laboratory synthesis shows that compounds associated with life can be produced from non-living precursors. G.: Wöhler and urea, of course. S.: Yes. The great bourgeois scandal: a compound formerly tied to life made in the laboratory. G.: Which did not make life disappear, but did make one old criterion look provincial. S.: Exactly. A beautiful case for philosophy of science. A term survives; the criterion changes; the old associations linger; the new classification pretends to be purely technical. G.: And philosophers arrive asking whether the old use “meant” life. S.: The answer being: not by entailment. At most by historical association and strong implicature. G.: There is our Gricean point. If in early chemistry someone says “organic substance,” he conversationally suggests relation to living bodies; but the word does not analytically entail life, because the root itself is broader — organized, instrumental, functionally articulated. S.: Very good. You see, then, why Casini’s title is not absurd. G.: I see why it is less absurd than it sounds. That is not quite the same thing. S.: For you perhaps. But the philosophical point is real. Scientific terms often preserve older conceptual sediment. “Organic” in modern chemistry is a cleaned-up technical descendant of a far messier older classification. G.: A bit like “faculty” in Oxford. S.: Exactly. People say “the Faculty” and imagine an eternal object, whereas the thing has changed its constitution three times and kept the name. G.: Let us introduce Aristotle and Cicero properly, since you threatened them earlier. S.: Aristotle gives you organization in the sense of parts and functions within living beings, but also teleological structure. Cicero gives you natura and instrumentum and the whole Roman habit of translating Greek philosophy into public Latinity. Neither gives you organic chemistry. G.: Yet both help explain why later Europe would hear “organic” as more than a mere label. S.: Yes. Aristotle because organized living wholes matter to him. Cicero because Latin transmits a philosophical vocabulary of nature, form, use, and function into later European thought. But neither entails that “organic” must forever mean “alive.” G.: Then the old chemistry was semantically ambitious and scientifically provisional. S.: Nicely put. G.: And the new chemistry? S.: More precise in one way, less imaginative in another. It narrows the class by structural criteria, especially carbon frameworks, covalency, families of compounds, synthesis. But it keeps the inherited word. G.: Because chemists, like colleges, dislike renaming institutions once the stationery has been printed. S.: And because the old word still had enough semantic elbow-room. G.: Which returns us to Casini. Why publish this in a philosophical journal? Why not leave it to chemists and their formulae? S.: Because chemists do not always ask why one category replaced another while keeping the same name. Historians and philosophers do. G.: And because philosophers enjoy discovering that science has been talking metaphysics behind everyone’s back. S.: Quite. “Organic” once whispers life, organization, vital force, natural production. Later it speaks carbon, structure, synthesis, constitution. Casini wants to track the whisper and the declaration together. G.: Give me the examples again, in order, so that we may pretend to be exact. S.: Water: H2OH_2OH2​O A molecule, not organic. Carbon dioxide: CO2CO_2CO2​ Contains carbon, usually still classed as inorganic. Methane: CH4CH_4CH4​ The simplest canonical organic molecule in modern teaching. G.: One could add ethanol, but perhaps three is enough for a philosopher. S.: More than enough. Philosophers usually lose interest after the second subscript. G.: Now suppose Casini were to conclude, as Casini ought, what would he say? S.: He might say that the history of “molecola organica” shows how scientific concepts do not simply replace one another, but transform inherited language under new criteria. The old life-association is not wholly erroneous; it is a historically intelligible first classification. The modern carbon-structural criterion is more precise, but it still inhabits the shell of the older word. G.: And the broader philosophical point? S.: That many scientific concepts are neither pure discoveries nor pure inventions. They are negotiated continuities. Terms survive; meanings shift; classifications tighten; older metaphysical associations remain as ghostly background. G.: A sort of conceptual afterlife. S.: Exactly. G.: Then Casini is doing not merely Italian intellectual housekeeping, but something more general: showing how natural philosophy and chemistry force philosophy to distinguish implication from entailment, history from essence, and word from criterion. S.: Yes. And that is why the article belongs in a philosophical journal and not merely in a chemist’s filing cabinet. G.: Very well. I withdraw my charge of category-confusion. S.: Entirely? G.: No. But I reduce it to a warning. S.: Which is what philosophy usually calls progress. G.: Then let us end with the true moral. “Organic” once suggested life, because life supplied the specimens. Later it meant carbon, because carbon supplied the better classification. And the word remained because no one had the courage—or the need—to invent a less historical one. S.: Which proves, once again, that concepts survive by adaptation rather than by purity. G.: Rather like Oxford philosophers. S.: Except that some of them still think “organic” means the Senior Common Room lunch.Grice: Caro Casini, mi è sempre piaciuto il tuo modo di prendere sul serio la fisica. A Oxford, confesso, ci siamo persi tra metafisica e giochi logici, ma tu mostri che la natura, a Roma, era affare serio – non solo per Nerone, ma anche per Cicerone! Casini: Grice, ti ringrazio! Da noi la natura si discuteva tra filosofi e imperatori, sempre con un occhio a Newton e uno a Voltaire… non senza qualche deviazione su Nerone e le sue stravaganze. E poi, a Roma, la natura era materia di leggi, ma anche di poesia. Grice: Ecco, proprio per questo ti ammiro! Da noi, la natura era spesso solo una parola da definire, ma tu la vedi come una danza tra scienza, arte e persino sociologia – quasi un carnevale filosofico, direi! Casini: Ah, Grice, se la filosofia è un carnevale, allora la natura è la maschera che tutti indossano. E a Roma, tra Cicerone e Plinio, si imparava che anche la legge naturale può essere raccontata tra una battuta e una scoperta. Del resto, chi non ha mai immaginato di essere, almeno per un giorno, Nerone o Tiro? Casini, Paolo (1958). Il concetto di “molecola organica” nella filosofia naturale. Giornale critico della filosofia italiana

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Casotti – Ossia: Grice e Casotti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del volere – filosofia fascista.  Mario Casotti (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del volere – filosofia fascista. A comparison between Grice and Mario Casotti brings out two convergent but deeply divergent ways of grounding reason-governed meaning in the notion of the will. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning treats “willing” analytically and minimally: what matters is the speaker’s intention to bring an audience to recognize a reason for belief, with rationality emerging from mutual recognition rather than from moral formation. Conversational implicature, in Grice, is thus governed by a thin normativity rooted in practical reason, not in ethical ideals or pedagogical authority. Casotti, by contrast, situates willing at the center of philosophy in a strong, formative sense: reason is not merely exercised in conversation but educated through discipline, imitation, and moral training, within a teacher–student relation modeled on Socrates and Alcibiades. Where Grice resists reifying abstractions such as “the self” or “being” and is skeptical of turning verbs into substances, Casotti begins precisely with “l’essere”, seeking to systematize what must be taught and willed, in a legacy that moves from Gentile’s actualism toward Aquinas’ perennis philosophia. In this sense, Grice’s conversational reason is anti-authoritarian and procedural, while Casotti’s is teleological and normative, aimed at shaping the will toward an ideal. Yet both converge on the insight that philosophy turns on the anatomy of volition: Grice analyzes how willing-to-mean structures rational exchange, while Casotti asks how the will itself is formed so that reasoned exchange is possible at all. Seen together, Casotti supplies the thick moral and pedagogical background that Grice deliberately brackets, while Grice offers a precise account of how, once wills meet in conversation, reason manifests itself without requiring metaphysical unity between master and pupil. Grice: “My whole philosophy, like C.’s, is based on the anatomy of ‘willing’!” I like C.; of course, he reminds me of my master at Clifton! Casotti is into the teaching of philosophy: did Socrates teach Alcibiade or did Alcibiade learn from Socrate? On top, C. tries to systematise WHAT you have to teach: his first volume is telling: ‘l’essere’, which of course reminds me of my explorations on the multiplicity of being in Aristtotle – a human being in an ‘essere,’ but my tutee Flew  would scorn philosophers who use a verb with an article “l’essere” – or a pronoun with an an emphatic word meaning ‘same’ – “the self! And perhaps Socrates *becomes* Alcibiades!” Studia s Pisa sotto Amendola e Gentile colla concezione idealistica della storia” in cui esprime la propria entusiasta adesione alla dottrina dell'attualismo.  Dopo aver aderito all'appello Per un Fascio di Educazione Nazionale in vista di un rinnovamento della scuola italiana. Idealista alla Gentile. L’esigenza d’approccio più realista lo portano ad allontanarsi e ad aderire ad AQUINO. Insegna a Milano. S’ispira a Lambruschini Serbati, e Bosco, basata sulla “perennis philosophia” del lizio d’AQUINO..  Egli avversa da un lato l'attivismo e il naturalismo, recuperando l'importanza della lezione e della disciplina, in una prospettiva di insegnamento rivolta all'imitazione d’un ideale regulativo. Dall'altro reinterpreta il rapporto tutore/tutee alla Socrate/Alcibiade. Contesta la pretesa dell'attualismo di GENTILE di risolverne il dualismo tutore-tutee in unità, con-divisione d’uno stesso cammino di crescita, incentrato su una rivelazione, nel quale la filosofia è un'arte, che passa dalla potenza all'atto. Arte e disciplina filosofia morale finalizzato a un ideale, speculativo basato sulla sperimentazione del metodo adattato al contesto. Idealista della storia Maestro e scolaro didattica educare la volontà, Cambi. sì che Socrate si tramuti in Alcibiade! die welt as will filosofia fascista  la volonta di potere un invento della sorella di Nietzsche che piace a Hitler. G.: My dear S., you are right to insist on Geist rather than Gott. S.: Quite. “God in becoming” is too theological, and a little too Wagnerian for a young Gentilian thesis in 1919. G.: Whereas self-conscious spirit has exactly the right chilly grandeur. S.: Yes. If Casotti writes Saggio d’una concezione idealistica della storia, the operative German behind it is not some devotional becoming of God, but Geist, autocoscienza dello spirito, the identity of philosophy and history, and all the rest of that high idealist weather. G.: So not Vico, then? S.: Not centrally, no. Vico may linger in the background because any Italian writing on history risks inhaling him. But the structure, as far as one can infer, is much more Gentile through Hegel than Vico through Naples. G.: Or perhaps Hegel through Gentile, which is already a double filtration. S.: Exactly. The young Casotti is not inventing the historicist turn to idealism. He is inheriting it in a particularly Italian, and particularly actualist, key. G.: So the phrase concezione idealistica della storia is programmatic, but not original. S.: Programmatic, yes. Original, no. The “conception” is already there in Hegel, and then sharpened and nationalised by Gentile. Casotti at twenty-two or twenty-three is not founding a doctrine. He is entering one with enthusiasm. G.: Indoctrination, I called it. S.: You are unkind, but not entirely wrong. Philosophy in those circles could indeed arrive with the force of conversion. G.: And Gentile would have loved that. S.: Naturally. He had the great pedagogic appetite of all strong idealists: the wish not merely to convince but to recruit. G.: Whereas Amendola? S.: Amendola seems the earlier, more morally and religiously restless influence. A serious preparatory teacher. But the decisive capture, if we trust the biographical line, was Gentile. G.: So poor Amendola does the preparation, and Gentile gets the thesis. S.: That is often the way with students. The first teacher cultivates scruple; the second offers system. G.: And system always looks like destiny to the very young. S.: Especially at twenty-two. G.: Let us pause over that. Casotti born in 1896, laurea around 1918 or 1919: he is, what, twenty-two or twenty-three. S.: Yes. Young enough to be inflamed by a conception of history, old enough to think the inflammation is philosophy. G.: Which, at Oxford, would have been called “going in for Bradley.” S.: There is your English provincialism. G.: It is not provincialism; it is classification. We had Bradley. They had Hegel with local adaptations and a Ministry of Education waiting in the wings. S.: True enough. Oxford by the 1930s treats idealism as a disease from which it has heroically recovered. The Continent, or at least Italy, manages to keep idealism alive well into the 1910s and beyond by redescribing it as history, act, spirit, nation, education. G.: That is the difference. In Oxford one apologises for metaphysics by calling it analysis. In Italy one apologises for politics by calling it philosophy. S.: Very good. And Casotti’s title is a perfect example. Concezione idealistica della storia does not merely name a topic; it announces allegiance. G.: Let us pull apart concezione. You wanted an act/result distinction. S.: Yes. Conception is a deliciously ambiguous noun. It can mean the content conceived, the outlook, the framework, the doctrine. But it also faintly retains the act-side: someone conceives it. G.: So whose conception is it? S.: In one sense, Casotti’s. In another, Gentile’s. In a deeper sense, a Hegelian-Gentilian structure in which individual conceiving is already the manifestation of spirit’s self-consciousness. G.: Which is exactly the sort of answer that would cause Hardie to look exhausted. S.: Yet it is the right answer. “Concezione” here is not merely a modest label like “some notes on.” It is a way of saying: here is the right way to think history, the idealistically adequate grasp of its nature. G.: So not idealista della storia but idealistica della storia matters. S.: Yes, very much. Idealista would qualify a person or school more directly: the idealist conception, perhaps belonging to the idealists. Idealistica qualifies the conception itself, as if the very structure of the understanding of history were idealistic. G.: More objective, then. S.: Or more doctrinally self-confident. It suggests that history, rightly conceived, must be conceived idealistically. G.: And this in 1919 or thereabouts, under Gentile, in Rome. S.: Exactly. And your earlier point should be corrected in a friendly way: Casotti did not so much “follow Gentile to where Casotti hailed from,” as move with Gentile from Pisa into the Roman phase of his studies. “Followed” may be a strong word socially, but intellectually it is the right one. G.: Very well. Gentile did not steal him to Calabria; he drew him to Rome. S.: Which is a much more Roman sentence. G.: Now what of history itself? Is this lineal rather than circular? Vico would want corsi and ricorsi. Hegel wants development. Gentile wants act. S.: And Casotti, in that youthful thesis, seems firmly on the side of linear spiritual self-clarification rather than Vichian recurrence. G.: So no Romulus and Remus. S.: Not as centre, I think. Rome may matter institutionally because the thesis is completed there, and later politically because Italian idealism loves national embodiments, but the core of the title is not Roman myth-history. It is the relation between philosophy and history as one process of self-conscious spirit. G.: Geist looking at itself in the mirror and calling the mirror “storia.” S.: Very neatly put. G.: Then Hegel is the likely major background citation, even if mediated by Gentile. S.: I would think so. We do not have the full citation apparatus before us, but the very formulation—identity of philosophy and history, anti-empirical methodology, autocoscienza dello spirito—points strongly to that line. G.: Not Croce? S.: Croce is part of the air, certainly, but the emphasis on act and self-conscious spirit sounds more Gentilian than Crocean to me, especially in a thesis the biographical sources call authentically Gentilian. G.: So Casotti’s youthful path is: Amendola gives unrest Gentile gives doctrine Hegel supplies depth history becomes spirit in motion and the student calls it a conception. S.: That is an excellent summary. G.: One begins to see why it did not last. S.: Yes. Because the same young man later needs more realism, more being, more discipline, more Aquinas. G.: In other words, he recovers from youth. S.: Or from actualism, depending on one’s loyalties. G.: Let us bring Oxford back in. Bradley had already become, by our period, almost a cautionary tale. S.: Indeed. An elder weather system people complain about while still wearing coats cut by it. G.: Whereas on the Continent idealism remains vigorous enough in the 1910s to produce these full-throated titles. S.: Because it was institutionally alive. In Oxford, by the 1930s, idealism survives in residues, reactions, and bad memories. In Italy, it still occupies chairs, schools, ministries, educational programmes. G.: So when an Italian youth writes on the idealistic conception of history, he is not reviving a dead giant. He is joining the present order. S.: Precisely. That is why “brain-washing,” though too crude, catches something about the atmosphere. It is not merely reading Hegel privately. It is being formed within an educational world where idealism is official seriousness. G.: Which would horrify Grice. S.: Not entirely. Grice would distrust the thick pedagogic metaphysics, yes. But he would understand the attraction of a system that promises to make history and thought one thing. G.: He would then immediately try to distinguish act from result. S.: Naturally. He would ask whether “conception” names the act of conceiving or the conceptual product, and then whether Casotti is equivocating under cover of grandeur. G.: And whether one can really say “the idealistic conception of history” without presupposing a subject who conceives it. S.: Exactly. For Grice the danger is always reification by article and noun. Casotti will later write L’essere and invite just that sort of suspicion. But already in concezione idealistica there is room for misuse if one is not careful. G.: So what might G. say at Oxford in 1939? S.: Something like: “I have no objection to history being conceived, but I object to conceptions doing the conceiving.” G.: Very good. And S. would say? S.: “You object to all nouns that begin to look employed.” G.: Now, one further question. Does Casotti’s title suggest that history has one correct idealistic understanding, or that there are several conceptions and this is one among them? S.: Formally, the indefinite article in English would matter, but in Italian the bare phrase can sound at once exploratory and declarative. Saggio di una concezione idealistica della storia means, on the surface, “an essay toward an idealistic conception of history,” which sounds modest. But in context it is likely modesty in the service of doctrine. G.: Oxford modesty versus Italian modesty. S.: Yes. Oxford says “Some remarks on…” and means “I have ended the matter.” Italy says “Saggio d’una concezione…” and means “Here begins the right philosophy.” G.: There is your whole comparative method in one sentence. S.: Thank you. G.: Let us not forget poor Amendola. S.: I do not. In fact, the path from Amendola to Gentile matters because it shows that the young Casotti’s move was not a simple provincial capture. He had already had serious formation: Kant, religious inquietude, intellectual conscience. That is why the Gentilian capture worked. The ground had been prepared. G.: So Gentile did not brainwash an empty head. He converted an already educated one. S.: Better. G.: And then later the convert re-converts. S.: Or disenchants himself. Yes. G.: Then the dry conclusion is what? S.: That Casotti’s youthful thesis is not an innovation in the philosophy of history but a very intelligent early enlistment in the Hegel-Gentile campaign to identify history with spirit’s self-conscious act; that Amendola mattered by preparing the appetite, Gentile by satisfying it; and that Oxford, while congratulating itself on having outlived idealism, remained haunted enough by Bradley to misrecognise every continental idealism as the same old ghost. G.: And the punchline? S.: At twenty-three, one writes a conception of history. At fifty-three, if one is lucky, one discovers that history had all along been conceiving one.Grice: Caro Casotti, dimmi: è vero che tutta la filosofia, come sostieni tu, si fonda sull’anatomia del volere? Mi sembra che tu abbia più volontà di Socrate che di Alcibiade! Casotti: Caro Grice, non esagerare! Anche Alcibiade, se avesse avuto qualche lezione in più, avrebbe voluto filosofeggiare. Io insegno che la volontà va educata, come diceva Cambi: così Socrate può persino trasformarsi in Alcibiade! Grice: E allora, caro Casotti, ti chiederei: credi davvero che la filosofia sia solo questione di imitazione di un ideale regolativo? Perché a me pare che, a forza di imitare, rischiamo che il maestro si ritrovi a imparare dal suo scolaro! Casotti: Hai ragione, Grice! Ma guarda, se Socrate diventa Alcibiade, almeno la conversazione diventa più vivace! E se la filosofia è un’arte, come dico io, allora anche il volere va allenato ogni giorno, magari con un pizzico di disciplina… e di umorismo. Casotti, Mario (1919). Saggio d’una concezione idealistica della storia. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – Ossia: Grice e Cassio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Cassio. Denarius of Lucius Cassius Longinus, 63 BC. The obverse depicts Vesta. On the reverse, a voter is casting a ballot inscribed V, for uti rogas ("as you propose"). Vesta and the voter are allusions to the election of Longinus Ravilla as prosecutor in the Vestals' scandal of 113. The Cassii are a Roman family of great antiquity. The earliest members of this gens appearing in history may have been patrician, but all those appearing in later times were plebeians. The first of the C. to obtain the consulship was Spurius C. Vecellinus. He proposes the first agrarian law, for which he was charged with aspiring to make himself king, and put to death by the patrician nobility. The C. were amongst the most prominent families of the later Republic, and they frequently held high office, lasting well into imperial times. Among their namesakes are the Via Cassia, the road to Arretium, and the village of Cassianum Hirpinum, originally an estate belonging to one of this family in the country of the Hirpini.  Their most famous member is Gaius C. Longinus, an assassin of GIULIO Caesar alongside Brutus.  Denarius of Gaius Cassius Longinus, 126 BC. Roma is depicted on the obverse, with a voting urn behind. The reverse shows Libertas holding a pileus and driving a chariot. Both the urn and Libertas refer to the Lex Tabellaria passed by his uncle Longinus Ravilla as tribune of the plebs in 137. A possible clue to the origin of the C. is the cognomen Viscellinus or Vecellinus, borne by the first of this gens to appear in history. It appears to be derived from the town of Viscellium or Vescellium, a settlement of the Hirpini, which is mentioned by Titus Livius in connection with the Second Punic War. The town was one of three captured by the praetor Marcus Valerius Laevinus after they had revolted in 215 BC. Its inhabitants, the Viscellani, are also mentioned by Pliny the Elder. This suggests the possibility that the ancestors of the C. were from Hirpinum, or had some other connection with Viscellium. The existence of a substantial estate of the Cassii in Hirpinum at a later time further supports such a connection.[2][3]  Spurius Cassius Vecellinus, thrice consul at the beginning of the Republic, has traditionally been regarded as a patrician, in part because all of the consuls before 366 BC were supposed to have been patricians. The previous year saw the passage of the lex Licinia Sextia, formally permitting the plebeians to stand for the consulship. However, scholars have long suspected that a number of consuls bearing traditionally plebeian names during the nearly century and a half before this law were in fact plebeians, and that the original intent of the lex Licinia Sextia was not to open the consulship to the plebeians, but to require the election of a plebeian consul each year, although this was not permanently achieved for a number of years after its passage. Viscellinus may thus have been a plebeian, who made enemies of the patricians through his efforts at agrarian reform, and his proposed treaty with Rome's allies during his last consulship.[4]  However, this point cannot be definitely settled. Many patrician families had plebeian branches, and it was common for families to vanish into obscurity for decades or even centuries, before returning to prominence in the Roman state. Patricians could also be expelled from their order, or voluntarily go over to the plebeians; but few examples are known. It may be that the sons of Viscellinus were expelled from the patriciate in lieu of being executed, or that they chose to pass over to the plebeians following their father's betrayal and murder.  From the imagery on their coins, it appears that the C. had a special devotion to the Aventine Triad of Ceres, Liber, and Libera, for whom Spurius C. Vecellinus built a temple on the Aventine Hill. Libertas, a goddess associated with Liber and Libera, also features regularly on their coins. She was later the emblem of the Liberatores during the Civil War led by Gaius C. Longinus and Brutus against Octavian and Mark Antony.  The principal names of the Cassii during the Republic were Lucius, Gaius, and Quintus. The praenomen Spurius is known only from Spurius Cassius Vecellinus, at the very beginning of the Republic, while Marcus appears in the first century BC.  The chief family of the C. in the time of the Republic bears the name of Longinus. The other cognomina during this time are Parmensis, Sabaco, Varus, and Viscellinus. One of the earliest Roman historians was Lucius C. Hemina, whose cognomen—unique in Roman history—comes from hemina, a unit of measure of about half a pint, or a quarter litre, perhaps an allusion to his short stature.[5] A number of other surnames are found from the final century of the Republic onwards.[1] The famous censor Lucius C. Longinus also used the agnomen Ravilla. A single Caecianus is known; his cognomen shows that he or an ancestor was adopted from the gens Caecia. He might have been related to the Longini as he pictured Ceres on the coins he minted.  Denarius of Lucius Cassius Longinus, 78 BC. Liber is depicted on the obverse, Libera on the reverse. They allude to the Temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera built by Spurius Cassius Vecellinus, and to the Lex Tabellaria of 137. Early C. Spurius C. Vecellinus, consul in 502, 493, and 486 BC, and the first magister equitum in 501; put to death by the patricians after proposing the first agrarian law during his third consulship. Cassii Viscellini, three sons of the consul Viscellinus, whose praenomina are unknown, were spared by the senate after the murder of their father. They or their descendants may have been expelled by the patricians from their order, or have voluntarily passed over to the plebeians.[6][7] C. Longini Quintus C. (Longinus?), military tribune in 252 BC, during the First Punic War. He was deprived of his command following a severe defeat, after engaging the enemy against the orders of the consul, Gaius Aurelius Cotta.[8][9] Lucius C. Q. f. Longinus, father of Quintus, consul in 164 BC, and possibly son of Quintus, the military tribune.[9] Gaius C. Longinus, grandfather of Gaius C. Longinus, the consul of 171 BC.[9] Gaius Cassius C. f. Longinus, the father of Gaius C. Longinus.[9] Gaius Cassius C. f. C. n. Longinus, consul in 171 and censor in 154 BC.[9] Quintus Cassius L. f. Q. n. Longinus, praetor in 167 BC, and consul in 164, died during his consulship.[10][11][9] Lucius Cassius C. f. C. n. Longinus Ravilla, the elder son of the consul of 171, as tribune of the plebs in 137, he passed the third Lex Tabellaria. He was then consul in 127, and censor in 125 BC. In 113 he was elected special prosecutor to investigate an incest scandal among the Vestal Virgins; he sentenced to death two of them that had been acquitted the previous year. Gaius Cassius C. f. C. n. Longinus, consul in 124 BC; the younger son of the consul of 171. Lucius Cassius Q. f. L. n. Longinus, son of the consul of 164 BC.[9]  Denarius of Quintus Cassius Longinus, 55 BC. Libertas is portrayed on the obverse. The reverse is a depiction of the Temple of Vesta, where Longinus Ravilla held his trial of the vestals in 113. On the left is a voting urn, and a ballot (tabella) is on the right. It is inscribed A C for Absolvo Condemno ("acquitted" or "condemned"), a further reference to the trial. Gaius C. C. f. C. n. Longinus, son of the consul of 124 BC, triumvir monetalis in 126.[i][9][15] Lucius C. L. f. C. n. Longinus, praetor in 111 BC, consul in 107, slain by the Tigurini at the Battle of Burdigala. He was probably the first son of Ravilla.[9] Gaius Cassius L. f. (C. n.) Longinus, praetor in 99 BC, consul in 96. He was probably the second son of Ravilla.[16][9] Lucius Cassius L. f. L. n. Longinus, tribune of the plebs in 104 BC.[9] Quintus Cassius L. f. L. n. Longinus, younger brother of the tribune of 104 BC.[9] Lucius Cassius (L. f. L. n. Longinus), as tribune of the plebs in 89 BC, roused a mob of creditors to lynch the praetor Aulus Sempronius Asellio. Sumner makes him one of the Longini, and the first son of Lucius, the consul of 107.[17][9] Gaius Cassius L. f. L. n. Longinus, triumvir monetalis in 84 BC, consul in 73. He was the second son of the consul of 107.[9][18] Quintus C. L. f. L. n. Longinus, third son of the consul of 107.[9] Lucius C. Q. f. (L. n.) Longinus, triumvir monetalis in 78 BC, military tribune in 69, and praetor in 66. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the consulship in 63, and afterward one of Catiline's conspirators. Gaius Cassius C. f. L. n. Longinus, the tyrannicide, quaestor in Syria under Crassus, he survived the disaster of Carrhae. He was then tribune of the plebs in 49, and praetor peregrinus. He was the elder son of the consul of 73. Lucius Cassius C. f. L. n. Longinus, triumvir monetalis in 63 BC, proconsul in 48, tribunus plebis in 44. He was brother of the tyrannicide. Quintus Cassius Q. f. L. n. Longinus, triumvir monetalis in 55 BC, quaestor in 52, tribune of the plebs in 49, and propraetor of Hispania Ulterior in 48 during the Civil War. Gaius Cassius C. f. C. n. Longinus, son of the tyrannicide, received the toga virilis just before the murder of GIULIO Caesar.[31] Lucius C. L. f. C. n. Longinus, left by his uncle, Gaius, as governor of Syria in 43 BC, fell at the Battle of Philippi.[32] Quintus C. (Longinus?), legate of Quintus Cassius Longinus in Hispania in 48 BC. He was praetor in 44, and Marcus Antonius sent him to Hispania again at the end of 44. Lucius Cassius L. f. L. n. Longinus, consul in AD 11, was probably the father of Lucius and Gaius Cassius Longinus, consuls in AD 30.[36] Lucius Cassius (L. f. L. n.) Longinus, consul in AD 30, married Drusilla, the sister of Caligula.[37] Gaius Cassius (L. f. L. n.) Longinus, a jurist, consul suffectus in AD 30; banished by Claudius, but afterward recalled by Vespasian.[37] Others  Denarius of Lucius Cassius Caecianus, 102 BC. On the obverse is Ceres, while the reverse shows a yoke of oxen, an allegory of agriculture. Lucius C. Hemina, a historian of the second century BC. Gaius C., military tribune in 168 BC, entrusted by the praetor Lucius Anicius Gallus with the custody of the Illyrian king Gentius.[38] Lucius Cassius Caecianus, triumvir monetalis in 102 BC.[39] Gaius C., praetor about 90 BC.[40] Lucius Cassius, proconsul in Asia in 90 BC, captured the following year by Mithradates. Marcus Cassius M. f., a senator in 73 BC and possibly a praetor in an uncertain year before.[41][42] Marcus C. Scaeva, a centurion in Caesar's army at the Battle of Dyrrhachium, and later one of Caesar's partisans. C. Dionysius, a native of Utica, and an agricultural writer, who translated the work of the Carthaginian Mago. C. Barba, a friend of GIULIO Caesar, who gave TULLIO Cicero guards for his villa, when Caesar paid him a visit in 44 BC.[43] C. Etruscus, an author ridiculed by Quintus Horatius Flaccus, sometimes confused with C. Parmensis. Cassius Parmensis, tribunus militum in the army of Brutus and Cassius, put to death by Octavianus. Cassius Betillinus, mentioned by C. Dio, is apparently an error for Betilienus Bassus. C. Severus, a celebrated orator and satirical writer, in the time of Augustus and Tiberius. Gaius C. Chaerea, tribune of the Praetorian Guard under Caligula, against whom he conspired and whom he helped to assassinate, with the intent of restoring the Republic. Quintus C. Gratus, governor of Crete and Cyrenaica during the reign of Claudius. Cassius Asclepiodotus, a wealthy man of Bithynia, exiled by Nero, but subsequently restored by Galba. C. Felix, also called Cassius Iatrosophista, author of a medical treatise, Quaestiones Medicae et Problemata Naturalia. Publius Cassius Dexter, quaestor in 138.[44] Avidius Cassius, a successful general under Marcus Aurelius, against whom he subsequently rebelled. Cassius Apronianus, governor of Dalmatia and Cilicia, father of the historian Cassius Dio.[45]  Aureus of Gaius C. Longinus, the tyrannicide, 42 BC. The obverse features Libertas, patron goddess of the Cassii and the Liberatores. The tripod is a reference to his position of quindecimvir sacris faciundis.[46] C. Clemens, brought to trial circa AD 195, for having espoused the side of Pescennius Niger, defended himself with such dignity that Septimius Severus granted him his life and allowed him to retain half his property.[47] Lucius C. Dio, or Dion Cassius, a senator, was consul circa AD 205, and again in 229, as the colleague of the emperor Severus Alexander. He was the author of a monumental history of Rome. Cassius Dio, consul in AD 291, perhaps the grandson of the historian.[45][49] See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Sumner thought that the moneyer was also the consul of 124 BC, but according to Crawford, he would have already been too old in 127.  Sumner suggested that L. C., military tribune in 69, was a son of Gaius, consul in 96,[19] but Broughton later identified him with L. Longinus, praetor in 66.[20] Broughton was also less certain than Crawford and Sumner that the praetor should be identified with L. Cassius Q. f., monetalis in 78.[21][22][19]  It is unknown whether he was one of the Longini, neither Broughton nor Sumner gives his family connections with the other Cassii. References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 621, 622 ("Cassia Gens").  Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, xxiii. 37.  Gaius Plinius Secundus, Historia Naturalis, iii. 11. s. 16; Lib. Col. p. 235.  Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, pp. 252–256.  John Briscoe, in Cornell (ed.), Fragments of the Roman Historians, vol. I, p. 220.  Dionysius, viii. 80.  Niebuhr, History of Rome, ii. 166 ff., Lectures on the History of Rome, 189 ff. (ed. Schmitz).  Zonaras, viii. 14.  Sumner 1973, p. 50  Livy xliv.16  Fasti Capitolini, AE 1927, 101; 1940, 59, 60.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 485, 502, 507, 510, 534-537.  Cassiodorus, Chronica.  Velleius Paterculus, i. 15.  Crawford 2001, pp. 316, 317  Cicero, Pro Plancio, 21.  RE, vol. III (2), col. 1680 (Cassius 12).  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, pp. 370, 371.  Sumner 1973, p. 50.  Broughton, vol. III, p. 50.  Broughton, vol. III, p. 51.  Crawford 2001, p. 403.  Asconius Pedianus, In Ciceronis in Toga Candida, 82 (ed. Orelli).  Appian, Bellum Civile, ii. 4.  Sallust Bellum Catilinae, 17, 44, 50.  Cicero, In Catilinam, iii. 4, 6, 7, Pro Sulla, 13, 19.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 229, 237, 242, 259, 320, 327, 343, 344, 360, 369.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 275, 324.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 440.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 452.  Plutarch, "The Life of Brutus", 14.  Appian, Bellum Civile, iv. 63, 135.  Hirtius, De Bello Alexandrino, 52, 57.  Cicero, Philippicae, iii. 10.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 280, 319.  Fasti Capitolini, AE 1927, 101; 1940, 59, 60.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244.  Livy, xliv. 31.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, pp. 325, 326.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 26.  SIG, 747.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 114.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, xiii. 52.  Senatus Consultum de Nundinis Saltus Beguensis, CIL III, 270.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 1028–1032 ("Dion Cassius Cocceianus").  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 513.  Cassius Dio, lxxiv. 9.  AE 1985, 821  PLRE, vol. I, p. 253. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, In Catilinam, Philippicae, Pro Plancio, Pro Sulla. Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust), Bellum Catilinae (The Conspiracy of Catiline). Aulus Hirtius, De Bello Alexandrino (On the Alexandrine War). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Marcus Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History. 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), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Cassius Dio, Roman History. Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, Chronica. Joannes Zonaras, Epitome Historiarum (Epitome of History). Niebuhr, Barthold Georg (1828). The History of Rome. Translated by Hare, Julius Charles; Thirlwall, Connop. Cambridge: John Smith. Niebuhr, Barthold Georg (1849). Schmitz, Leonhard (ed.). Lectures on the History of Rome. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly. Smith, William, ed. (1849). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Dittenberger, Wilhelm (1883). Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. Leipzig.. Collection of Greek Inscriptions, abbreviated SIG. Broughton, T. Robert S. (1952–1986). The Magistrates of the Roman Republic. American Philological Association. Jones, A. H. M.; Martindale, J. R. (1971–1992). The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Cambridge University Press.. Abbreviated PLRE. Sumner, Graham Vincent (1973). The Orators in Cicero's Brutus: Prosopography and Chronology. Phoenix Supplementary Volume XI. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.. Crawford, Michael (2001) [1974]. Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge University Press. Cornell, Timothy J. (1995). The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC). London: Routledge. Cornell, Tim, ed. (2013). The Fragments of the Roman Historians. Oxford University Press. August Pauly; Georg Wissowa; Wilhelm Kroll; Kurt Witte; Karl Mittelhaus; Konrat Ziegler, eds. (1894–1980). Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. Categories: CassiiRoman gentes We have seven entries for the Cassii -- one for the gens generally and six for individuals. Any seventh-best choice for the Grice/Speranza vignette. Grice and Speranza like (i) the one associated with that coin A. C. absolvo condenno -- where is the practical-value gap alla Strawson? (ii) the fact that one C. was a historian who possibly dwelt on the first C. in detail -- the one who was killed by the patricians for 'being' a tyant -- (iii) the C. that helped killed Caligola to restore (unsuccessfully) the republic -- tyranny (for or against) ran in this gens: the first one was accused of tyranny (personal tyrant) and killed by the 'tyrant' class of the patricians -- Cassio was one who must have given one of the 23 (?) stabs on Giulio -- and the one who helped assassinate Caligola was using the cause against tyranny again -- etc thanks --

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – Ossia: Grice e Cassio – GREX GRICEIANA – VERBALIA: CASSIO Gens Cassia Cassio Longino AUC DCCX Interlocutor: "Caesar nimis potens fit, sed amicus noster est." (Caesar is growing entirely too powerful, but he is our dear friend.) Cassio: (cum gravitate) "Homo iste non est diis carior quam nos." (Abbott-Style: "The gentleman in the laurel wreath isn't made of finer clay than the rest of us.") +> IMPLICATURA: that assassination is a justifiable tool of political equilibrium when one friend outgrows the constitution. We have loads of insults from Cicero to Marc'Antony, reciprocated. But the republican lot seems to have been more restrained. How do you parse the alleged Latin utterance by Cassio literally? And is anything like this attested -- any expression by him about GIULIO? as per passage above? Input? Feedback? Thanks. This is a very fruitful reconstruction—and you’ve actually captured something very close to Cassius’ real rhetorical stance, even if your Latin sentence itself is not attested. Let me separate three things: (1) the Latin you propose, (2) actual ancient evidence for Cassius, and (3) how close your implicature is to the historical Cassius.  1. Your Latin: parsing in detail  Homo iste non est diis carior quam nos  (A) Subject  homo iste  iste = “that fellow (of yours)” slightly derogatory / distancing often used in invective    So already:  “that man there”—not neutral ille, but mildly dismissive   (B) Verb  non est → simple negation of equality of status   (C) Predicate adjective  carior (comparative of carus) → “dearer,” “more beloved”   (D) Dative  diis → “to the gods”   (E) Comparative clause  quam nos → “than we (are)”  Literal translation  “That fellow is not dearer to the gods than we are.”  Very clean Latin. Slightly “bookish,” but perfectly idiomatic.  2. Is anything like this actually attested for Cassius? Not in this exact form We do not have (in surviving Latin sources):  a quotation of Cassius saying this nor a Latin formulation of equality before the gods in these words. But: the idea is absolutely Cassian What we do have (especially in Plutarch, who is the main source):  Cassius arguing repeatedly:  Caesar is just a man physically weak no more “natural king” than anyone else    For example (paraphrasing faithfully from Plutarch’s Brutus):  Cassius recalls Caesar:  nearly drowning suffering illness   to show:  he is no stronger or more divine than others    And Plutarch stresses:  Cassius’ hostility to tyranny his dislike of men being treated as quasi‑divine rulers [en.wikipedia.org] So your sentence captures a genuine Cassian line of thought:  Caesar is not ontologically superior to us → therefore his domination is unjustified   3. How close is your formulation to ancient rhetoric? Very close in spirit, but with a philosophical twist: (A) Cassius in sources = empirical leveling  “I have seen him weak” “he is no stronger than we are”  (B) your version = theological leveling  “not dearer to the gods”  That’s slightly more philosophical / Stoic-sounding But it fits the Roman idiom, because:  divine favour (gratia deorum) often used to justify power  So denying that:  is politically explosive   4. About tone: is this “restrained Republican style”? Yes—and your instinct is right. Compare:  Cicero vs Antony → open invective (scurra, latro, etc.) Cassius (as portrayed) → more:  restrained rationalizing leveling    So your line fits: not insult -- but deflation  5. The implicature (your best point) You give:  Caesar is not more beloved by the gods than we → therefore remove him  This is exactly the kind of Roman republican implicature: ExplicitImplicithe is just a manhe should not dominatehe is not divinely favoredhe has no right to rule So: the leap to assassination is not stated -- but pragmatically licensed  6. One subtle Latin point (worth noting) quam nos Strictly speaking, Latin often would expand:  quam nos sumus  But your compressed form is standard. More “Ciceronian” phrasing might be:  ne diis quidem carior est nobis  But your version is perfectly sound.  7. Final synthesis  Your Latin sentence is not directly attested, but it is grammatically solid and rhetorically plausible. Ancient sources (especially Plutarch) do portray Cassius as insisting that Caesar is not inherently superior—physically, morally, or quasi-divinely. What you’ve done is elevate that argument into a sharper, almost philosophical formula (“not dearer to the gods”), which captures the republican leveling instinct behind the conspiracy.  Best one-line verdict:  Not historical as a quotation—but historically accurate as a Cassian thought crystallized into Latin form.   If you like, I can try to reconstruct a version closer to Plutarch’s Greek logic (and then “back-Latinize” it into something even more authentically Cassian). Yes, you are right that Cassio seems to be overreacting to the previous move -- which can you parse carefully: Caesar nimis potens fit, sed amicus noster est." -- the 'sed' clause seems uncessary, but where is the comparative force -- or is getting too potent. There were other ways for Cassio to deflate that. and surely the assassination implictum is perhaps overlicensed. And Stoic as it was, he could have left the gods out of it -- was there an utterance recorded by him AFTER he took part in the assassination? Some kind of remorse, because Grice and Speranza follow Abbout a Becket Comic history of Rome from the beginnins to the end of the commonwealth (1851) with the irony that those who wanted to save republic ended up terminating it. Caesar had replaced Pomponio Magno by then (who is like a pre-Caesar figure?)? What was Caesar's official role -- versus Cassio mere senator? and what were the exact plans once Caesar had been killed? They were obviously bad at contingency planning and never thought Ottavio and Antonio and who else (the triumvir) would overreact -- and Cassio himself is said to have died by self-imposed death? Any other utterance even if not in oratio recta that we can ascribe to him, or that he would comunicate to one of the other Caesaricide after the fact? It seems that what triggers the utterance here (with implicature) is the 'growing too powerful'? -- the 'amicus noster' echoes Marc'Antonio "He was my friend -- he no longer is" Do we have the latin for that? as attested? Input?Feedback? ThanksCassio (A. V. C. DCCX). Homo iste non est diis carior quam nos You’re raising three intertwined issues here: (1) the Latin of your “trigger” sentence, (2) what Cassius historically says (before and after the assassination), and (3) the mismatch between intention and outcome (the Abbott irony). Let me take them in order and be very precise.  1. Parsing your “trigger” sentence  Caesar nimis potens fit, sed amicus noster est  (A) Caesar nimis potens fit  Caesar = subject nimis = “too much, excessively” potens = “powerful” fit = “becomes / is becoming”. So:  “Caesar is becoming too powerful”  Important:  This is not comparative (potentior), but scalar:  not “more powerful than X” but “beyond acceptable limits” -- so nimis supplies the “comparative force”:  too powerful (for a republic)   (B) sed amicus noster est  sed = adversative: “but” amicus noster = “our friend”  So:  “but he is our friend”   (C) Why this feels “unnecessary” You’re right: logically it seems redundant. But rhetorically it does something important: ClauseValuenimis potens fitpolitical alarmsed amicus noster estsocial loyalty So the sentence encodes a conflict of norms:  friendship vs res publica  That is exactly the dilemma Cassius rejects.  2. Cassius’ (historical) response style You ask:  could he have deflated it without the leap to assassination?  Yes—and in fact the sources suggest he normally does exactly that:  he emphasizes Caesar’s mere humanity he recalls:  weakness illness vulnerability    So his argument is:  “Why do you treat him like a god?”  —not immediately:  “Let’s kill him.” Your Latin fits the logic, but is sharper than the sources  homo iste non est diis carior quam nos  captures:  anti-deification republican equality  But, as you suspect: the assassination implicature is over-licensed Historically:  Cassius persuades gradually (especially Brutus) the justificatory chain is longer:  Caesar is becoming quasi-king monarchy is intolerable action is necessary  3. Did Cassius say anything after the assassination? This is where the evidence becomes thin—and interesting. Important limitation Ancient sources (Plutarch, Appian, etc.):  do not preserve Latin speeches of Cassius verbatim most detail is in Greek (Plutarch), paraphrased   What is attested (in substance) After the assassination:  the conspirators expected:  public approval   instead:  hostility and confusion    They fled Rome soon after [worldhistory.org]  Cassius’ end (very telling) At Philippi:  misinterprets events orders his own death suicide clearly recorded [en.wikipedia.org]  We do not have a secure Latin utterance there.  The closest thing to a “voice” of Cassius at death From later literary tradition (not strict historical record):  “Caesar is avenged…”  —but this is Shakespeare, not a classical source. So: historically:  no neat remorse speech preserved   4. Was there remorse? Ancient sources suggest:   not remorse in a moralized sense   but:  miscalculation loss of control eventual despair    So the tragic irony you note is real:  they killed Caesar to restore the Republic → and triggered its collapse   5. Caesar vs Cassius: constitutional asymmetry You ask a key structural question. (A) Caesar’s position At death:  dictator perpetuo (dictator for life) [en.wikipedia.org]  → effectively:  concentrated executive, military, and legislative power   (B) Cassius  senator former magistrate (tribune, praetor) but at the time: → no extraordinary office  So: the asymmetry is enormous. CaesarCassiusquasi-monarchical powerelite senatorperpetual dictatorshipprivate political actor  6. What were the conspirators planning? Here is their greatest failure. What they DID plan:  kill Caesar claim restoration of liberty  What they did NOT plan:  power vacuum management army control succession structure  Result:   Antony + Octavian + Lepidus form triumviral power bloc [en.wikipedia.org]   Republic collapses into:  proscriptions civil war     7. Your comparison with Antony (“He was my friend…”) Very perceptive—but: the exact phrasing:  “He was my friend… he is no longer…” -- not an attested Latin sentence What we have instead:  Antony’s famous funeral speech (via Shakespeare) historical sources say: → speech turned crowd against conspirators  But no fixed Latin line survives.  8. Final synthesis  Your sentence Caesar nimis potens fit, sed amicus noster est expresses a real republican tension: public danger versus private loyalty. Cassius’ actual rhetoric (as far as we can reconstruct) works by deflating Caesar’s quasi-divinity, not immediately by advocating assassination—so your implicature is somewhat compressed compared to the historical process. We have no reliable Latin oratio recta from Cassius after the assassination, and little evidence of explicit remorse; instead, sources show political failure and eventual suicide. The conspirators’ fatal flaw was exactly what you identify: no contingency planning—which allowed Caesar’s supporters (Antony, Octavian, Lepidus) to seize power and ultimately destroy the very Republic they meant to save. One-line verdict in your idiom:  Cassius’ argument begins with “he is only a man,” but history shows that the real implicature was not philosophical—it was strategic, and disastrously underthought.   If you like, we can try to reconstruct a more historically faithful “Cassian” Latin exchange based strictly on Plutarch’s arguments rather than modern compression.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio: Ossia: Grice e Cassio:  la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica --filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A Pythagorean and a historian. Lucio Cassio GRICEVS: Salve, Emina; Roma antiqua mihi videtur tam loquax ut etiam lapides suas maximas susurrent. EMINA: Ita vero, Gricevs, et “ragione conversazionale” ibi regnat, quasi Senatus ipse semper “quaestionem” faciat et numquam “responsum” det. GRICEVS: Dic mihi, Pythagorica historicaque, num Lucius Cassius numeris probat implicaturas, an implicaturae ipsum numerant? EMINA: Utrumque, mi Gricevs: Cassius primum computat, deinde subridens dicit “Roma locuta est” et reliqua nos inferimus. Re who italians call Lucio Cassio Emina -- Emina if anything would be gens, because Cassia ain't, right? Here you want to be quite strict with Roman onomastics, because otherwise everything flips. 1. The basic rule For a Roman like Lucius Cassius Hemina:  Lucius (L.) = praenomen Cassius = nomen → gens Cassia Hemina (Italian “Emina”) = cognomen  So:  Emina is not the gens Cassia is the gens   2. So: is Cassia really a gens? Yes — very much so. The gens Cassia is:  a well-attested Roman family probably originally plebeian (though later prominent) politically and historically quite important  So your hesitation (“Cassia ain't [a gens]”) goes the wrong way: it is precisely the secure gentilicium in this name.  3. What about Hemina / Emina? “Hemina” is:  a cognomen (family branch or nickname) probably from hĕmina, a small liquid measure → perhaps metaphorical (“small measure,” etc.)  So:  it distinguishes which Cassius it does not identify a gens  Italian “Emina” is simply the softened form of Hemina.  4. Why your temptation arises (and is interesting) Your instinct is very understandable, because:  “Emina” looks like a compact family label “Cassio” in Italian feels almost like a given name  But Roman logic is the reverse:  the narrower-looking word (Emina) is the cognomen the more standard, repetitive word (Cassius) is the gens-marker  This is exactly like:  Julius Caesar → gens = Iulia, not “Caesaria” Cornelius Scipio → gens = Cornelia, not “Scipionia”   5. A small Grice–Speranza twist There is actually a nice “implicature” point here. When a Roman says “Cassius”, he presupposes:  membership in the gens all its prestige, history, associations  When he adds “Hemina”, he is:  narrowing reference distinguishing the individual within that shared background  So:  Cassius → background, shared meaning Hemina → disambiguation, foreground  Very Gricean: from shared presupposition to specific identification.  6. Final very dry formulation Lucius Cassius Hemina: nomen Cassius → gens Cassia; cognomen Hemina (Italian “Emina”) → individual branch designation. Therefore, classification under Cassio/Cassius, not under “Emina,” is the correct prosopographical procedure.  If you like, I can place Hemina within the wider Cassii (including the later Cassius of the conspiracy against Caesar), to show how the same gens spans very different political-philosophical profiles. Cassio Emina, Lucio (XXX). Dicta. Indeed, and Grice and Speranza have a few more Cassio -- was the gens plebeian? is there any hypothesis about the etymology of it -- usually an 'i' indicate a prior Cassus? -- You are asking exactly the right kind of question: here onomastics, social history, and etymology all intersect, and Roman names are a treacherous guide unless handled with care. Let me answer in three layers: status of the gens, form (your “‑ius from Cassus?” instinct), and etymology hypotheses.  1. Was the gens Cassia plebeian? Yes — but with a refinement.  The gens Cassia is extremely old The earliest attested Cassius (Spurius Cassius Vecellinus, early 5th c. BC) is often treated as patrician But all the later historically visible Cassii are plebeian [en.wikipedia.org]  So the standard cautious formulation is:  Possibly originally patrician → historically plebeian in the Republic  This is actually very Roman: a gens can shift status, or more precisely, our evidence shifts.  2. Your linguistic instinct: Cassius from Cassus? Yes — structurally, your instinct is exactly right.  Cassius is a nomen gentilicium in ‑ius Such names are often formed from:  a base name or root + ‑ius suffix    So:  Cassius can be analysed as: cass‑ + ‑ius  And the Latin cass‑ suggests a base like:  cassus  Indeed:  Cassius is commonly explained as derived from cassus (“empty, hollow, void”) [en.wiktionary.org]  So your hypothesis (“the i indicates a prior Cassus?”) is: linguistically plausible --actually one of the standard explanations  3. But — caution: Roman gentilicia are slippery Now comes the part where a good philologist becomes suspicious (very Gricean!). Even though:  Cassius can be derived from cassus  we must add:  this may be a folk-etymology or later rationalisation  Because:  Many Roman gentilicia are:  older than classical Latin semantics or influenced by Etruscan names    Indeed, one alternative hypothesis:  Cassius may come from an Etruscan base (e.g. Casia) [wisdomlib.org]  So:  Latin speakers later hear “Cassius” they connect it with cassus (“empty”) but historically the name may not “mean” that at origin   4. So what should we believe? The safest layered answer is: A. Morphology (form) Cassius = stem cass‑ + ‑ius ✔ solid B. Classical Latin interpretation Linked to cassus = empty, hollow, vain ✔ traditional explanation ⚠ possibly secondary C. Deeper origin Possibly pre-Latin / Etruscan ✔ widely admitted as possible ⚠ not provable  5. A small historical curiosity (you’ll enjoy this) The very first famous Cassius (Spurius Cassius) is:  proposer of an agrarian law executed for allegedly seeking kingship [en.wikipedia.org]  So the gens begins, in a sense, with: → controversial reform → and violent political reaction which anticipates the later Cassii:  Ravilla (“cui bono?”) Longinus (Caesar’s assassin)  A consistent family “style,” if you like.  6. A Grice–Speranza closing observation The name “Cassius” is a perfect example of how a proper name carries layered implicatures:  etymological (cassus → “empty”?) social (old Roman gens) historical (republican severity, even violence)  But:  none of these meanings is guaranteed by the word itself — they are inferred from shared background.  So: Cassius = a case where linguistic form underdetermines historical meaning, and the hearer must supply the rest — exactly the kind of situation Grice would relish.  Final compressed answer  Yes, the gens Cassia is real and historically plebeian (with possibly patrician beginnings). Yes, Cassius is likely formed on a root like cassus + ‑ius. But the semantic link (“empty, hollow”) is uncertain and possibly secondary, since the name may have older, non-Latin origins.   If you like, I can line up the main cognomina of the Cassii (Longinus, Ravilla, Hemina, etc.) and show how each branch develops a distinct “philosophical personality.” And now Grice and Speranza want to know all about Spurio Cassio Vecellino, and wonder if you know of another gens that was once held to be patrician and turned plebeian -- This looks more like it was a societal punishment of 'hybris' or superbia -- wanting kingship -- but Grice can imagine a dialogue between the Cesaricide G. Cassio Longino and an acquaintance at the Foro: "You're not patrician; your plebeian." Cassio: Once a patrician always a patrician." Input? Thanks This is a splendid question, because Spurius Cassius Vecellinus is almost a mythic figure in Roman political thought—the proto‑Gracchus, as later Romans half-suspected—and also the best test case for your idea of status as moral punishment (superbia → loss of rank). Let me do three things:  give you the clean historical dossier on Spurius Cassius address your key hypothesis: was the “fall” of a gens a punishment? give you comparative gentes (your second question) and then your Gricean dialogue   1. Spurius Cassius Vecellinus: the earliest “dangerous reformer” Basic facts  3× consul: 502, 493, 486 BC [en.wikipedia.org] military success and diplomacy (notably a treaty with the Latins) [academic.oup.com] author of what later tradition calls the first agrarian law [britannica.com]  This already makes him unusual: → elite aristocrat proposing redistribution.  The decisive act In his last consulship:  he proposes to distribute land (including allied land) this benefits:  the plebs possibly Rome’s allies. This is read as politically explosive.  The accusation He is charged with:  aiming at kingship (regnum)  —and that is the key Roman charge.  The death  tried and executed (traditionally 485 BC) [en.wikipedia.org] execution justified as defence of the Republic  And crucially:  later historians already treat this as a morally ambiguous case, not clearly proven tyranny [classicalstudies.org]   2. What happened to the gens? (your main intuition) Here you are very perceptive. Sources say:  the earliest Cassii may have been patrician later Cassii are all plebeian [shutterstock.com]  And one explicit hypothesis in scholarship:  the family may have lost or abandoned its patrician status after Cassius’ execution [en.wikipedia.org]   Was this a “punishment for superbia”? Here we must be disciplined. What the sources explicitly give  accusation: attempt at kingship consequence: death later: gens appears plebeian  What they do not explicitly state  that the whole gens was formally degraded as a legal punishment   But your hypothesis (very good as interpretation): This looks like:  a symbolic expulsion from the patriciate following a political crime  And that fits Roman mentality:  suspicion of regnum = ultimate civic crime fear of one man rising above the res publica resulting narrative: → “he tried to be king → he falls → his house loses honour”  So while not formally codified, it has the flavour of: ✔ moral reclassification ✔ loss of aristocratic standing  3. Are there parallels? (your second question) Yes—and your instinct is correct: this is not unique.  A. The Claudii (your best comparison)  originally patrician Sabine immigrants later:  plebeian Claudii also exist sometimes via:  descent adoption social drift [en.wikipedia.org] So here we see:  a gens splitting into patrician and plebeian branches   B. General principle Ancient evidence allows:  individuals or branches:  leave the patriciate or are absorbed into plebs   gentes over time:  survive only in their plebeian forms [liquisearch.com]    So the Cassii are a paradigmatic case, not a unique anomaly.  4. Your imagined dialogue (excellent!) Let me sharpen it in Roman terms: In foro  Interlocutor: “Tu, Cassi, plebeius es.” Cassius: “Plebeius? gens mea olim inter patres numerabatur.” Interlocutor: “Olim—antequam regnum appetivit Spurius.” Cassius: “Erro: non regnum, sed agrum divisum petivit. At Roma nomen punivit, non culpam.”   Gricean analysis The exchange hinges on implicature and reputation:  “Cassius” carries:  implicature: ambition, danger, anti‑tyrannical identity   the accuser: → collapses gens history into one event (“your ancestor wanted kingship”) Cassius: → tries to cancel implicature: “agrarian reform ≠ kingship”  So we get:  history as disputed implicature   5. Final synthesis (your strongest point) Spurius Cassius becomes a foundational Roman myth-type:  aristocrat proposes redistribution accused of monarchy killed family reputation altered  And this gives you your pattern: FigureIllocutionUptakeResultCassiusproposes reforminterpreted as ambitiondeath + symbolic fall  Final Speranza-style sentence The case of Spurius Cassius Vecellinus illustrates how early Roman political memory converts a contested reform into a narrative of superbia and regnum, and although the sources do not formally record the degradation of the gens, the subsequent plebeian status of the Cassii functions as a retrospective moral reclassification, by which a single suspect intention becomes the enduring implicature of a name, so that later Cassii must negotiate not merely their ancestry but the inferences Rome has learned to draw from it.  If you like, I can align Cassius with Spurius Maelius and Marcus Manlius—Livy’s trio of “would‑be kings”—which makes the whole pattern even clearer.Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – ossia: Grice e Cassio: la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica A Pythagorean and a historian. Lucio Cassio Emina. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice ed Emina. So this is gens Cassia, or Eminia? Grice guesses Cassia? Cassia. In Lucius Cassius Hemina, Cassius is the nomen and therefore the gens-marker. So the gens is Cassia. Hemina, or Emina in the Italianised spelling you are using, is the cognomen, not the gentilicium. Grice’s guess is therefore the correct one if the question is about Roman onomastic classification. So the dry decomposition is this. Lucius is the praenomen. Cassius is the nomen. Hemina is the cognomen. Hence gens Cassia. The usual caution remains. Saying that the nomen points to gens Cassia is the onomastic answer; it does not by itself solve every historical question about branch, status, or remoter ancestry. But as to the primary Roman family marker, there is no real doubt here: Cassius gives the gens, not Hemina. The Cassius Cassio rings familiar, wasn't one of the Caesarcides a Cassio? Other membesr of the gens, then? Yes, Cassius rings familiar for exactly that reason. If by “one of the Caesarcides” you mean one of Caesar’s assassins, then you are thinking of Gaius Cassius Longinus, the famous Cassius paired with Brutus. He is of course a member of gens Cassia, and he is the most immediately memorable Cassius in Roman political history. So if Lucius Cassius Hemina sounds familiar under the Cassius element, that is perfectly natural: the nomen places him within the same broad gens as figures like Cassius Longinus, though of course not necessarily in any close or simple line of immediate family relation. Other notable members of the gens Cassia would include, in the driest Roman-historical sequence, Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla, remembered for his severe judicial posture and the famous question cui bono, and various other Cassii Longini in the late Republic and early Empire. The gens is an old and well-attested plebeian gens, with several politically visible branches. So the neat answer is this. Yes, the familiar “Cassio” is almost certainly the Cassius of Cassius Longinus, Caesar’s assassin. Lucius Cassius Hemina belongs on the same gentilician map, that is, gens Cassia, even though Hemina is a different cognominal line. And yes, “other members of the gens” is exactly the right way to put it. Cassius is the family name in the Roman sense; Hemina, Longinus, Ravilla, and the like are branch or cognominal differentiators within that gens. And with Hemina we have the same as with Helvidius, with a vengeance. The ending in -a makes Shropshire smile ("-a I restrict to females") -- but it seems the H was very prominent in GENTES and possibly pronounced as such /'hemina/ rather than /he'mina/ and one wonders why Church Latin or modern Italian lost it -- does Church Latin actually drops the aitches, too? Yes, broadly, and with the same caution. Hemina is like Helvidius only in the narrow grammatical sense that an ending in -a need not be feminine. Roman cognomina in -a can perfectly belong to men. So Shropshire’s schoolboy law, “-a I restrict to females,” is useful only for producing error briskly. But I would not assume that the H in Hemina was especially prominent because it belonged to a gens-marker. Hemina is not the nomen here. Cassius is the nomen and gives the gens Cassia. Hemina is the cognomen. So if there is any comparison with Helvidius, it is only that both names begin with H in their classical spelling, not that both are gentilicia. Helvidius is the nomen; Hemina is not. As to pronunciation, the safest classical reconstruction is that initial h in educated Latin was at least historically audible, though already unstable and often weakened in actual speech. So one may pronounce Hemina with an initial aspiration, roughly as /ˈhɛmɪna/ in a schoolroom approximation, or in a more classical quantitative spirit /ˈhɛ.mi.na/. The stress falls on the first syllable, not the second, because the penult is light. So not /heˈmiːna/ but rather HE-mi-na. That brings us to the larger question. Why did Church Latin and Italian lose it? The short answer is that Latin h was always phonetically weak, and in the spoken language it tended very early toward disappearance. This is already visible in ancient evidence: misspellings, hypercorrections, and jokes show that many speakers either dropped h or inserted it where it did not belong. So the loss is not a late ecclesiastical invention. It is an old tendency in vulgar and post-classical Latin. Church Latin generally does drop the aspiration in actual pronunciation, yes. In the ordinary Italianate pronunciation of ecclesiastical Latin, h is silent except where it forms part of digraph conventions in spelling such as ch, ph, th, though even there it does not represent an English-like aspiration. So Helvidius in Church-Latin Italianate practice tends toward Elvidius, and Hemina toward Emina. That is one reason your earlier intuition about Elvidio was exactly on target. So the sequence is roughly this. Classical learned Latin kept a weak but real h, at least as an ideal. Popular speech weakened or lost it early. Ecclesiastical and Italian tradition inherited a Latin in which h was no longer normally pronounced. Cockney is a different historical route to a similar audible result, namely invisible h, but the resemblance is superficial, not genealogical. So the driest verdict is this. Yes, Church Latin usually drops the aitches too. And yes, Hemina should, in a classical reconstruction, begin with an audible but never very muscular h, stressed on the first syllable: HE-mi-na. Not because it is a gens-marker, but because that is how the word itself is best reconstructed.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – Ossia: Grice e Cassio: la ragione conversazionale e il filosofo della regina.  Gaio Cassio Longino (Roma, Lazio). Uno degl’uccissori di Giulio Cesare. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning is built to explain how hearers responsibly infer what is meant beyond what is said, using shared norms and assumptions about a speaker’s rational conduct; your Longinus material becomes a neat stress-test because it turns on how a mere name can trigger powerful default inferences. Historically, the Clifton master’s warning is directionally sound: the Caesarian assassin’s standard name is Gaius Cassius Longinus (often shortened to “Cassius”), and the later jurist is also called Gaius Cassius Longinus, but he is not the assassin’s son, and he is separated by roughly a century (assassin died 42 BC; jurist flourished in the 1st century AD, consul AD 30). In other words, the mater is preventing a predictable conversational confusion: when someone says “Gaius Cassius Longinus” in a Roman context, listeners may automatically supply the “dagger” narrative unless the speaker explicitly cancels it by adding “the jurist” (or “the Zenobia adviser,” who is in fact a different Longinus again, not even born in Rome). That is exactly Grice’s point: proper names are not self-identifying in practice; they come with conventional and contextual implicatures, and a competent speaker must manage those implicatures by adding disambiguating material when the cooperative goal is clarity rather than dramatic effect. So, if we assess the master’s authority in Gricean terms, we can say: he is historically sloppy (genealogy), but pragmatically astute (he anticipates the audience’s likely inference and builds in a prophylactic cancellation), and the episode exemplifies Grice’s broader claim that communication is not just semantics but a rational art of controlling what your audience is entitled to conclude from what you chose to say. Grice: “Clifton, 1927. Today we were told what the master, with a straight face, called “the most important event in Roman history” — and he meant not the Rubicon (still everyone’s favourite crossing, except perhaps the Channel, as Sellar and Yeatman would insist), but the assassination of Caesar. He wrote up on the blackboard the names of the uccisori, and among them, in a hand that looked almost judicial itself, Gaius Cassius Longinus. Then came the warning, delivered in the tone masters reserve for boys who are likely to go to Oxford and therefore likely to be dangerous: for those of you who intend to pursue your studies at Oxford, you must never confuse the murderer with the other Gaius Cassius Longinus — the jurist — who is an entirely different man and, on paper at least, entirely respectable. (“Plausibly, a descendant in the Cassian line.”). It was an odd sort of lesson: the same name, the same Latin, and yet the whole point was that identity is not to be had for free from a label. The master did not call it a philosophical problem, but he managed to make it one: if you say “Cassius Longinus,” what do you mean — the conspirator with the knife, or the lawyer with the opinion? And if you don’t say which, you may find that your hearer supplies it for you, by habit, by fame, by whatever story they already prefer. I thought then that history masters live by implicature without knowing it: they say “Longinus” and the class hears “dagger,” unless the word “jurist” is pushed in like a wedge. I kept quiet, because Mother has her sights on Oxford and I suspected I would have plenty of time later to quarrel with names and their liberties; but I wrote in the margin that a warning against confusion is itself a kind of confession — it admits that people do confuse, and that language is only ever as precise as the speaker takes the trouble to make it. Are these two the same person: Both are called Gaio Cassio Longino -- where the gens is gens Cassia, I assume -- and a noble one at that? Yes: both belong to the gens Cassia, and yes, that was a recognised and important Roman gens. But no, the two Gaio Cassio Longini are not the same person. The elder and more famous one is Gaius Cassius Longinus, the conspirator against Julius Caesar, who died in 42 BC. The later one is Gaius Cassius Longinus, the first-century AD jurist and consul of AD 30. So the confusion is real, but the identities are distinct. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] On the gens point: yes, both are Cassii, that is, members of the gens Cassia. The Cassia gens was ancient and prominent, with major political standing from the early Republic onward. The standard summary says the earliest Cassii may have been patrician, but the later historically visible Cassii were plebeian; still, they were a distinguished and long-enduring family. So “noble” is fair in the broad Roman sense of old and eminent, but one should not simply call the whole later gens patrician without qualification. [en.wikipedia.org] Now to the relation between the two men. The safest answer is: same gens, yes same cognomen branch, yes, the Cassii Longini same person, no direct father-son relation, no and the later jurist is best treated as a later descendant or collateral member of the same wider Cassian-Longinian line, not as an immediate continuation in the simple sense. [britannica.com], [detailedpedia.com], [dbpedia.org] The later jurist has been described as a nephew or great-grandson of the assassin, or in another summary as at least a descendant in that Cassian line. That means the exact genealogy is not perfectly fixed in the brief notices, but the broad familial continuity is plausible. [detailedpedia.com], [dbpedia.org] So in dry terms: yes, both are best filed under C, for gens Cassia yes, the family was old and eminent no, the jurist is not the assassin himself and no, one should not collapse the two merely because Roman naming was so fond of repeating its better surnames. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [detailedpedia.com], [dbpedia.org] Your Clifton-master instinct in the passage is therefore very good. The warning is philologically necessary because “Cassius Longinus” naturally drags the hearer toward the dagger unless “the jurist” is added. That is an excellent Gricean point about names and default uptake. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] And one more refinement. The “Longinus” part does not indicate a separate gens either; it is the cognomen within the gens Cassia. So filing by gens means C, not L. [en.wikipedia.org] If you want the driest Speranza formulation: The two Gaius Cassius Longinus are distinct, though Roman onomastics does its best to encourage carelessness. Both belong to the gens Cassia, and therefore go under C; Longinus is only the cognomen, not a gens of its own. The earlier is the liberator-or-murderer of Caesar, dead in 42 BC; the later is the jurist and consul of AD 30. The family connection is plausible and perhaps lineal, but not so cleanly charted that one should pretend to possess a nursery genealogy where prosopography offers only a respectable branch. Rome, as usual, repeats names with more confidence than it preserves explanatory labels. [britannica.com] [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org], [detailedpedia.com], [dbpedia.org] If you like, I can now do one of two things here in chat only: I can give you a short note on the main branches and famous members of the gens Cassia.  I can also give you a compact filing rule for names like Cassius Longinus, where the cognomen is famous enough to tempt one into forgetting the gens. [en.wikipedia.org]Longino, Gaio Cassio (a. u. c. DCCX). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – Ossia: Grice e Cassio: la ragione conversazionale e il diritto romano Gaio Cassio Longino (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il diritto romano. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rationally warranted inference from what is said to what is meant, grounded in cooperative expectations that make a speaker answerable for the further conclusions an audience is entitled to draw. The Longinus vignette, cast as “conversational reason and Roman law,” pushes the idea into an institutional setting where what people infer is often governed less by maxims of cooperative talk than by reputational and forensic pressures: in Rome, a jurist’s words are heard through the shadow of political violence, so that even a sparse legal remark can be taken to “mean” something about the dagger before it is heard as an argument about doctrine. Compared with Grice, this highlights the difference between implicature as a mechanism internal to ordinary conversation (derivable, cancellable, and criticizable by reference to what would make the utterance cooperatively intelligible) and insinuation as a mechanism of public life, where the audience’s inferences are driven by extra-conversational priors—fear, faction, historical narrative, and the evidential habits of a legal culture. At the same time, the parallel is instructive: Roman juristic practice depends on highly disciplined inference from limited textual materials, and Grice’s account can be read as the micro-analogue of that discipline, except that for Grice the governing constraint is the speaker’s intention under cooperative norms, whereas for Longinus the governing constraint is what can safely be said under power and how silence itself can function as a deliberate, legally prudent move. The result is a contrast between Grice’s optimism about rational cooperation as the default background of meaning and the Roman reminder that, in charged contexts, implicature can be hijacked by suspicion—so that conversational reason must sometimes be protected by reticence if one is to prevent the audience from converting every legal utterance into a political confession. Grice: “It’s very sad – yet typical of Italian historiography – that, for all of Longino’s achievements as a philosopher of law, he is best remembered by posterity as one of the 50 murderers of GIULIO Caesare!” A legal scholar and theorist. GRICEVS: Triste est, mi Longine, quod Itali historici te potius numerent inter quinquaginta Caesaris interfectores quam inter iuris philosophos. LONGINVS: Ita fit Romae: si quis de lege subtiliter disputat, vix auditur; si quis gladium leviter movet, statim in annales cadit. GRICEVS: At ratio conversazionalis aliter iudicat: cum dicis pauca de iure, plures inferunt de cultro; implicatura tua semper antecedit argumentum. LONGINVS: Ergo hoc discam: si me rogant quid sentiam de iure, respondebo “libenter” et tacebo; nam Romae silentium tutius est, et saepe etiam iuridicius. Longino, Gaio Cassio (a. u. c. DCCLXXXIII). Dicta. Rona,

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – Ossia: Grice e Cassio: la ragione conversazionale dell’ORTO.  Gaio Cassio Longino (Roma): la ragione conversazionale dell’ORTO. Grice: “I like C.!” Dipinto di Camuccini, Morte di GIULIO. tra i promotori della congiura che causò l'uccisione di Gaio GIULIO Cesare. sembra avvicinarsi al partito degl’optimates guidato da CATONE  Dopo l'assassinio del dittatore, C. insieme a Bruto, figlio di Servilia, fugge da Roma, timoroso delle rappresaglie messe in atto da MARC’ANTONIO. Epistola scritta a CICERONE  Plutarco riferisce che C. era seguace dell’ORTO.  Viene definito da più fonti come Ultimus Romanorum, l'ultimo dei romani a incarnare i valori e lo spirito romano: il riferimento è in Tacito, che cita a sua volta lo storico Cremuzio Cordo: Sotto il consolato di Cornelio Cosso e Asinio Agrippa fu sottoposto a giudizio Cremuzio Cordo per un reato di nuovo genere, noto allora per la prima volta: negli annali da lui scritti, dopo aver elogiato M. Bruto, aveva chiamato Cassio l'ultimo dei romani.  ALIGHIERI lo pone nell'ultimo girone dell'Inferno, ove si puniscono i traditori dei benefattori. Assieme a Marco Giunio Bruto, è costantemente maciullato dalle fauci di Lucifero.  Cassio Dione Cocceiano, Cassio, epistola a Cicerone ex castris Taricheis, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Annales, Sermonti, Inferno, Rizzoli. Bosco e Reggio, La Divina Commedia - Inferno, Giulio Giunio Bruto Battaglia di Filippi Marco Antonio Ultimus Romanorum Altri progetti Dizionario di storia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Càssio Longino, Gàio (uomo politico e questore), su sapere.it, De Agostini. Gaius Cassius / Gaius Cassius Longinus, su Enciclopedia Britannicasu Goodreads. Guerra civile romana Guerra civile romana Cesaricidi Portale Antica Roma   Portale Biografie   Portale Età augustea Categorie: Politici romani del I secolo a.C.Morti nel 42 a.C.Morti il 3 ottobreNati a RomaCassiiGovernatori romani della SiriaMorti per suicidioPersonaggi citati nella Divina Commedia (Inferno)Epicurei Cesaricidi. Assassino di GIULIO, PORTICO Difende il PORTICO contro CICERONE. Gaio Cassio Longino. Cassio Lione Cocceiano. Roma, Lazio. Grice e Cassio. Gaius Cassius Longinus (the first Cassius) is a participant: a Roman senator, Epicurean-inclined, involved in action, conspiracy, moral exemplarity, and personal correspondence. His “reason” is practical, ethical, and conversational in the literal sense — exchanged in letters, deliberations, silences, and symbolic acts (hortus, Epicurean withdrawal, tacit signals). When later authors call him “Ultimus Romanorum,” they project onto him a moral style of reasoning grounded in restraint, exemplarity, and implied rather than explicit argument — something very close to what Grice would later theorize as meaning conveyed by what is not said. Cassio is Gaio Cassio Longino, a fully Roman republican aristocrat, from the gens Cassia, more precisely associated with the Longini branch. He is Roman in every strong sense: politically active, senatorial, embedded in mos maiorum, and remembered as Ultimus Romanorum. His Epicurean affiliation explains the motif of the hortus: withdrawal, measured speech, restraint, and significance through silence. This Cassius lives conversational reason as ethical praxis: letters to Cicero, political gestures, refusals to speak, and allusive acts where meaning emerges from omission as much as assertion. If there is a “ragione conversazionale dell’Orto,” it belongs here: reason as cultivated restraint, where taciturnity itself signifies. This is the Cassius with whom a Gricean comparison is conceptually serious, not decorative. GRICEVS: CASSI, audivi te “rationem conversazionalem HORTI” colere, sed timeo ne brassica plus dicat quam conspirator. CASSIVS: Si brassica tacet, GRICEV, ipsa taciturnitate significat, atque ego Epicureus saltem inter olera absolutus sum. GRICEVS: Bene; sed cum dicam “I like C.!”, noli putare me Caesarem laudare—hoc est implicatum, non pugio. CASSIVS: Gratias ago; ego vero te amo, sed rogo ut me Lucifero non commendes, quia ibi nullus hortus est. Cassio, Gaio (DCCXI ab urbe condita). Epistula ad Ciceronem ex castris Taricheis. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – Ossia: Grice e Cassio. Cassio Dione Cocceiano (Roma): an observer and architect: a Greek-speaking Roman senator and historian who systematizes the past into a continuous narrative. His reason is reflective, explanatory, and historiographical; he does not act within the conversation but reconstructs it for posterity. He transforms conversational fragments (letters, speeches, rumors, silences) into historical causality. Where the first Cassius lives conversational reason, the second Cassius records and rationalizes it. Cassius Dio Cocceianus represents a later, imperial transformation of Roman rationality, in which conversational meaning is no longer enacted directly but mediated through historiography. Writing in Greek for a Roman audience, Dio reconstructs political life as a series of reason-giving exchanges — speeches, epistolary gestures, silences, betrayals — that together form the intelligibility of history. His Historia Romana treats action as explicable only when placed within a network of intentions and acknowledged reasons, a stance that resonates, mutatis mutandis, with Grice’s insistence that meaning arises from recognition of intention. Yet unlike Grice, Dio does not isolate a normative theory of rational cooperation; instead, he embeds rationality in institutional decay, imperial contingency, and moral regression. Conversational implication, in Dio, is tragic rather than cooperative: what is meant often exceeds what agents intend, and understanding belongs to the historian, not the participants. In this sense, Cassius Dio stands as a macro-historical analogue to Grice: he too seeks the logic behind human saying and doing, but at the scale of empires rather than conversations. Cassius Dio (Dio Cassius Cocceianus), is very different in status and function. He is Roman by citizenship and office, but culturally Greek and linguistically Greek, writing his Roman History in koine Greek for an imperial elite. He is not peripheral politically — he was twice consul — but he is peripheral to republican Roman identity. He does not belong to the lived moral drama of the Republic; he belongs to its posthumous intelligibility. His “Cassio” is therefore not gens-based in the republican sense but onomastic and archival: a senatorial name carried into imperial historiography. GRICEVS: CASSI DIO, tu verba hominum colligis quasi fragmenta, ego autem quaero quomodo ipsa intentio, semel intellecta, sensum pariat. CASSIVS: Recte dicis, GRICEV, nam ego ex epistulis, rumoribus, et etiam silentio historiam texo, ut posteri intellegant quod actores ipsi non videbant. GRICEVS: Haec mihi placent, quia et apud me saepe significatio nascitur ex eo quod dicitur oblique magis quam aperte. CASSIVS: Ita est, sed apud me implicatura saepe tragoedia fit, quia sensus tandem ad lectorem pervenit, non ad ipsos qui locuti sunt. Cassio Dione Cocceiano (DCCCLXXXIII ab urbe condita). Historia Romana, libri XL–XLVII. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cassio – Ossia: Grice e Cassio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Cassio.  For a seventh-best Grice/Speranza Cassius, I would actually choose Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla—not the tyrannicide, not Dio, not Hemina, but the jurist-prosecutor associated with the famous judicial formula:  cui bono? ("who benefits?")  and with the tabellae (secret ballots) and the Vestal trial imagery on the Cassian coinage. Why? Because Ravilla sits exactly at the junction of:  evidence, inference, intention, and practical reasoning.  In a way, he is more Gricean than the tyrannicide.  The A C coin and the practical-value gap The coin with:  A C Absolvo / Condemno  is fascinating because the marks themselves do almost nothing semantically. A ballot saying:  A  does not describe innocence. A ballot saying:  C  does not describe guilt. The mark functions performatively. A Strawsonian might say:  The practical value of the mark exceeds its descriptive content.  A Gricean would ask:  What is the voter communicating by selecting this token?  The inscription is tiny. The institutional consequences are enormous. One letter sends a citizen home. The other sends him to death. Hence the gap between:  sign, and consequence.   Ravilla as conversational detective Ravilla's reputation for asking:  cui bono?  is almost a theory of implicature. The ordinary investigator asks:  What happened?  Ravilla asks:  Who stood to gain?  The move is Gricean because it treats actions as communicative. If somebody profits unexpectedly, that profit becomes evidence of intention.  Dialogue DISCIPVLVS  Quis fecit? ("Who did it?")  RAVILLA  Nescio.  ("I do not know.") DISCIPVLVS  Quid ergo quaeris?  ("Then what do you investigate?") RAVILLA  Cui bono?  ("Who benefits?") DISCIPVLVS  Hoc nomen dat?  ("Does that give the name?") RAVILLA  Non dat; monstrat.  ("It does not give it; it points toward it.") The implicature:  gain is not proof, but it is a clue.   Hemina on Vecellinus Your second candidate is also excellent:  Lucius Cassius Hemina  because he is one of the earliest Roman historians. The frustration is that Hemina survives only in fragments. But Speranza would delight in the possibility that:  a Cassius historian was writing about the first Cassius.  That is almost a family conversation across centuries.  Dialogue HEMINA  De Spurio Cassio scribam.  ("I shall write about Spurius Cassius.") AMICVS  Cur?  ("Why?") HEMINA  Quia alii eum regem volunt, alii civem.  ("Because some want him to be a king, others a citizen.") AMICVS  Et tu?  ("And you?") HEMINA  Historicus sum; quaestionem relinquo.  ("I am a historian; I leave the question open.") A very Gricean attitude:  report enough, let the reader infer.   Chaerea and the anti-tyranny cycle Your third theme is perhaps the deepest:   Spurius Cassius Vecellinus  accused of wanting kingship, killed.    Gaius Cassius Longinus  kills Caesar to prevent monarchy.    Gaius Cassius Chaerea  kills Caligula hoping to restore the Republic.    The same gens repeatedly appears in arguments about:  tyranny, liberty, and political violence.  The irony is extraordinary. The first famous Cassius is destroyed because others think he wants too much power. The most famous Cassius destroys Caesar because he thinks Caesar has too much power. Then another Cassius kills Caligula for the same reason. One could almost summarize the gens as:  Rome's recurring argument about tyranny.   Grice/Speranza dialogue across the centuries SPVRIVS CASSIVS  Aiunt me regnum petere.  ("They say I seek kingship.") CASSIVS LONGINVS  Ego regnum impedire volo.  ("I wish to prevent kingship.") CHAEREA  Ego quoque.  ("So do I.") SPVRIVS  Et quid consecuti estis?  ("And what did you achieve?") LONGINVS  Bellum civile.  ("Civil war.") CHAEREA  Principatum firmiorem.  ("A stronger principate.") The implicature is devastating:  every Cassius acts against tyranny, yet tyranny somehow survives the Cassii.  That, I suspect, is the most Speranzian moral hidden in the history of the gens. Good -- with practical-value ("good") gap Grice is mocking Strawson's idea (apres Quine) of a truth-value gap ("The king of france is not bald"). For Grice there are no truth-value gaps: The king of france is not bald' is, in 1967, false. In Aspects of reasoning, Grice uses the example: I park the bicycle facing north. as something of practical indifference and wonders if this is like an alleged practical value (not truth value) gap. The "Absolvo" versus "Condenno" seem similar. In third person contexts: He absolves: he condemns (or is it Justice itself personfied, or the Judge?). Grice owuld say that "C." is all we need, since "A" is defined as "~C"? INput? Feedback? Thanks Yes, I think this is a very fruitful Gricean extension, and one that Speranza would enjoy because it takes us from truth-value gaps to what we might call practical-value gaps. The parallel would be something like this:                      StrawsonGrice"The King of France is bald.""Absolve." / "Condemn."alleged truth-value gapalleged practical-value gapneither true nor falseneither practically required nor practically forbidden? Grice, as you note, resists the first move. For him:  "The King of France is bald"  in 1967 is simply false. The presuppositional defect does not generate a third truth value.  Now consider the Cassian ballot. The voter writes:  A = absolvo C = condemno  At first sight this looks binary. A Gricean immediately notices:  Why are there two symbols?  Why not just one? If we think in quasi-logical terms:  Condemn = C  then  Absolve = ¬C  So the informational content of A may seem redundant. Exactly the sort of thing that would tempt Grice.  The practical-value analogue Suppose we ask:  What practical difference is there between writing A and merely refraining from writing C?  The institution says:  an enormous difference.  The notation says:  perhaps not much.  Very similar to Grice's examples where tiny linguistic differences produce enormous practical consequences. A single letter:  A  saves a Vestal. A single letter:  C  kills a Vestal. The semantic difference is microscopic. The practical difference is vast.  "Facing north" Your bicycle example from Aspects of Reason is relevant. If I say:  I parked my bicycle facing north.  One may ask:  Why north?  In many situations the answer is:  no practical reason whatsoever.  The orientation possesses truth conditions:  either it faced north or it didn't.  But it may lack practical significance. One could call this a kind of:  practical-value indifference.   The Cassian inversion The ballot has the opposite character. The letters themselves have almost no descriptive richness. Yet they are loaded with practical significance. Thus:  "The bicycle faced north."  has  truth value, little practical value.  Whereas  "A"  or  "C"  has  very little descriptive content, enormous practical value.  A nice inversion.  A Grice–Ravilla dialogue DISCIPVLVS  Quid interest inter A et C? ("What is the difference between A and C?")  RAVILLA  Una littera. ("One letter.")  DISCIPVLVS  Tantumne? ("Only that?")  RAVILLA  Linguista ita dicet. ("A linguist will say so.")  DISCIPVLVS  Et iudex? ("And a judge?")  RAVILLA  Vitam aut mortem. ("Life or death.")  The implicature is that practical consequence may be wildly disproportionate to semantic content.  And I suspect Grice would finally resist the temptation to call this a genuine practical-value gap. Just as he disliked multiplying truth values, he would probably dislike multiplying practical values. He would say that the voter has two available actions:  condemn, not-condemn.  The practical system may dress these up as C and A, but at a sufficiently abstract level A behaves very much like the complement of C. The interesting philosophical work lies not in a third practical value, but in the immense institutional consequences attached to choosing one side of an apparently simple binary. Strictly, when Strawson introduced the problem (apres Quine) his wording is: "By uttering 'The king of France is bald' in 1951 (I think), the utterer IMPLIES that there is a king of France. Similarly by uttering 'The king of France is NOT bald", the utterer implies that there is a king of France. For Grice: 'The king of France is bald' ENTAILS that there is a king of France -and thus, the proposition is false in 1967. On the other hand The king of France is NOT bald' turns out, in 1967, to be true -- even if there is cancellable implicature to the effect that there is a king of France. With "A" and C" the point would be. Suppose it's Cassius himself. Cassius absolvit Marcum. Cassius condemnat Marcum. It may be that not condeminig is NOT absolving, and vice versa -- While the coin has "C" and "A" the idea is that there is no tertium inclusum? Thanks Yes, and this is exactly where Grice's dispute with Strawson becomes illuminating. The classic Strawsonian claim is not primarily about truth-values, but about what is carried by use. As you put it:  By uttering "The King of France is bald," the speaker implies (or presupposes) that there is a King of France.  And, crucially:  By uttering "The King of France is not bald," the speaker equally implies (presupposes) that there is a King of France.  Strawson wants the existential commitment to survive negation. Grice's move is quite different. He tries to separate:  what is entailed by the logical form, from what is conversationally conveyed.  The resulting picture is roughly:                     SentenceExistential suggestionTruth value in 1967The King of France is baldyesfalseThe King of France is not baldyestrue because:  There is no King of France, therefore nobody satisfies the description, therefore "is bald" is false of that description, while "is not bald" comes out true.  The existential suggestion survives, but as a cancellable pragmatic phenomenon rather than a truth-value condition.  Now to Cassius' A and C Here the issue is slightly different. Suppose:  Cassius condemnat Marcum. Cassius absolvit Marcum.  Logically, one is tempted to treat them as:  C and ~C.  But Roman law may not be so tidy. A judge might:  condemn, acquit, refuse to decide, postpone, declare mistrial, decline jurisdiction.  In that richer setting:  not condemning  need not be  acquitting.  And conversely:  not acquitting  need not be  condemning.   The coin, however What is fascinating about the Cassian coin is that the imagery appears to present a binary. The voter deposits a tablet marked:  A = Absolvo C = Condemno.  Symbolically, this looks like a two-valued system. Grice's instinct would probably be:  Before multiplying practical values, ask whether the institution itself already treats A as the complement of C.  If the voting procedure allows only two outcomes, then:  A functions as ~C,  whether or not acquittal and non-condemnation are philosophically identical.  A Gricean analogue This would parallel his resistance to truth-value gaps. Strawson:  neither true nor false.  Grice:  one of the classical values will do.  Likewise: "Practical-gap" theorist:  neither acquitted nor condemned.  Grice:  Does the procedure actually recognize a third outcome?  If not, the appearance of a gap may be misleading.  Ravilla and Grice One can imagine Ravilla saying: DISCIPVLVS  Estne tertium? ("Is there a third possibility?")  RAVILLA  Quot tabellae sunt? ("How many ballot tablets are there?")  DISCIPVLVS  Duae: A et C. ("Two: A and C.")  RAVILLA  Tum philosophi tertium quaerunt, iudices suffragantur. ("Then philosophers seek a third option; judges cast their votes.")  That is very Gricean. The institutional fact may force a bivalence of action just as logic, for Grice, forces a bivalence of truth. The deep question, though, is the one you have identified: whether absolvo is genuinely the contradictory of condemno ("not condemn"), or whether it is only the contrary positive verdict ("acquit"). If the latter, a practical analogue of the Strawsonian gap becomes conceivable. If the former, the Cassian ballot system is as resolutely two-valued as Grice wanted truth itself to be. And the phenonemon survives to this day with "guilty" and "not guilty" (not "innocent"). Marcus absolvus est -- Marcus condennatum est -- Both false. But their negations both TRUE if the trial has been postponed. Now, there may be an implicature around: Did you hear that Marcus was not absolved?" "Did you hear that Marcus was not condemned?" -- "Silly! The trial was posponed?" Input? Yes, and now you're very close to a genuine Gricean practical analogue of the Strawson dispute. The modern verdict:  Guilty versus Not guilty  already shows a reluctance to identify:  not guilty = innocent.  The law often prefers:  not proven guilty  to  proved innocent.  So the logical structure is already more subtle than ordinary language suggests.  Take your postponed-trial case. Let: A = Marcus has been acquitted (absolutus est). C = Marcus has been condemned (condemnatus est). Suppose the trial is postponed. Then:  A = false C = false  Consequently:  ¬A = true ¬C = true  Both negations are true simultaneously. That is perfectly classical logic.  Now comes the Gricean part. Question 1  Did you hear Marcus was not acquitted?  Literally:  ¬A  which is true. But conversationally one tends to hear:  +> Marcus failed in court. +> Something adverse happened.  Question 2  Did you hear Marcus was not condemned?  Literally:  ¬C  which is also true. But conversationally:  +> Marcus escaped conviction. +> Things went relatively well.  Yet in your scenario:  neither implication is correct.  The trial never concluded.  Hence the reply: INTERLOCUTOR  Marcus was not acquitted.  RESPONDENS  Marcus was not condemned either.  INTERLOCUTOR  Ah—then what happened?  RESPONDENS  The trial was postponed.   This is extremely Strawsonian in appearance and extremely Gricean in diagnosis. The hearer is tempted to enrich:  not acquitted  into  convicted,  and  not convicted  into  acquitted.  But those enrichments are merely conversational defaults. The postponement cancels both.  So the structure becomes:                               StatementLiteral value if postponedTypical implicatureMarcus was acquittedFalsefavourable outcomeMarcus was condemnedFalseunfavourable outcomeMarcus was not acquittedTrue+> he lostMarcus was not condemnedTrue+> he won The last two are where Grice would focus. The truth conditions are straightforward. The practical significance comes from what audiences normally infer. And that is remarkably close to the way Grice handled:  The King of France is not bald.  The existential suggestion survives at the pragmatic level even though the logical evaluation goes through perfectly well. Likewise:  Marcus was not acquitted.  may carry a conversational suggestion of guilt, while remaining literally true simply because nothing has yet been decided. A Roman Ravilla might say:  "Nondum absolutus est."  and a Gricean would immediately ask:  "Do you mean he lost—or merely that the proceedings are unfinished?"  Exactly the distinction between logical content and conversational uptake. And is there a corollary as per some unwanted implicature in Cassio's coin then? How? Thanks Yes—very possibly, and this is where the coin becomes more interesting than it first appears. Your postponed-trial example shows that the logical space may contain more than the coin's symbolism acknowledges:                          RealityA (absolvo)C (condemno)AcquittalTrueFalseConvictionFalseTruePostponementFalseFalse So the coin's imagery presents a clean binary:  A or C  while legal reality may contain cases that are:  neither A nor C.  That already creates a tension between institutional symbolism and practical reality. The unwanted implicature A voter seeing only two tablets:  A C  may naturally infer:  +> every trial must end either in acquittal or condemnation.  But that need not be true. So the coin itself may conversationally suggest a stronger bivalence than actual procedure warrants. A Gricean would say:  the form of the representation encourages the inference that the alternatives are exhaustive.  The same thing happens in ordinary conversation:  "Were you acquitted or condemned?"  The question itself implicates:  +> one of those must have happened.  To which the correct reply may be:  "Neither. The hearing was adjourned."  The Cassian irony Now connect this with Ravilla. The Cassii are associated with:  voting tablets, judicial procedure, cui bono?, harsh judicial distinctions.  Yet the very coin may seduce the observer into a false inference:  justice is simply A-or-C.  A Gricean observer would object:  "That is merely what the tablets display."  The real procedural situation may be richer. A dialogue DISCIPVLVS  Aut absolvitur aut condemnatur. ("Either he is acquitted or he is condemned.")  RAVILLA  Cur putas? ("Why do you think so?")  DISCIPVLVS  Quia duas tabellas video. ("Because I see two tablets.")  RAVILLA  Tabellas vides; causam non vides. ("You see the tablets; you do not see the case.")  That's almost pure Grice. The hearer mistakes:  the options visibly represented  for  the entire logical space.  In that sense, the Cassian coin may generate an unwanted implicature of exhaustiveness:  A and C are not merely alternatives; they are all the alternatives.  And that is exactly the sort of inference Grice loved to scrutinize. The symbols on the coin are sparse; the audience supplies the completeness assumption. Whether that assumption is warranted is a separate question.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Castiglione – Ossia: Grice e Castiglione: la ragione conversazionale.  Baldassare Castiglione (Cassatico, Marcaria, Mantova, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale. A comparison between Grice and Castiglione can be framed around a shared conception of conversation as a practice governed by reason and oriented toward mutual recognition, even though they operate in radically different intellectual registers. In Il Cortegiano, Castiglione presents conversation as a civil art in which judgment, misura, and sprezzatura regulate speech so that interaction remains proportionate, purposive, and socially intelligible; reason here is not formal logic but a cultivated rationality embedded in etiquette, ethical self-command, and sensitivity to context, by which speakers make themselves understood while preserving harmony and dignity at court. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning translates this humanist insight into analytic form: his cooperative principle and conversational maxims articulate, in abstract terms, the same expectation that participants in talk orient themselves toward intelligibility, relevance, adequacy, and trustworthiness, not as external rules but as practical rational commitments presupposed by communication as such. Where Castiglione shows, through exemplary dialogue, how conversational success depends on knowing what to say, when to say it, and when not to say it, Grice explains how meaning itself emerges from the rational recognition of such orientations, allowing hearers to move from what is said to what is meant. In this sense, Grice can be read as providing a philosophical reconstruction of the civility that Castiglione dramatizes: conversational rationality becomes, across centuries, both a moral-aesthetic virtue of cultivated speakers and a structural condition of meaning grounded in shared reason. Grice: “When I started giving lectures and seminars – open to every member of the university – myself being a university lecturer at this time, and not just St. John’s Tutorial Fellow in Philoosophy – on ‘conversation,’ many thought I had become Castiglione – others, Guazzo!” Umanista. La sua prosa e la lezione che offre sono considerate una delle più alte espressioni del Rinascimento italiano. Il Cortegiano, ambientata alla corte d'Urbino, su quali sono gli atteggiamenti più consoni a un uomo di corte dei quali sono riportate raffinate ed equilibrate conversazioni. Proveniente da una famiglia dedita per necessità al culto delle armi e al prestar servizio presso signori più potenti[3], all'età di dodici anni fu inviato, sotto la protezione del parente Giovan Stefano C.[4], alla corte di secondo 1 personaggi a cui vennero indirizzate, supplendo con una tavola. generale all’ordine cronologico..‘.7   VffA DI COLA DI RIENZO, tribuno dei Popolo’ romano, scritta da incerto autore nel secolo XIV, ridotta a Migliore le- zione, ed illustrata con note ed osservazioni storico-critiche da delirino Be Cesenate; con un comcnto del medesimo sulla canzone del Petrarca Spirto gentil che quelle membra r^OVi- Edizione .seconda riveduta ed aumentata. Un voi 7  IMTAZIONE DI G;ESU CRISTO, volgarizzamento anonimo  del buon secolo della Lingua, tratto dà Vàrissima edizione an- tica non rammentala dai bibliograa^ Ì per cura del dottore, Alezzandro Torri corredalo di .documenti intorno al-   l’Autore dell’ ope a originale latina Qiovanni Ctersen di Lavimlià, Priore dell’ Ordini* Bcnédeltii   ì   ..y.t ino di Santo Stefano di  ercelli; con un saggio bibliugrancò-cronulogico delle tradu- zioni in più lingue e deUe stampe che dal 1471 Duo al pre- sente ne furono pubblicale. Un voi . RALBO, pubblicate per cura di Bii-  iniwiir *®rf*" aggiuntivi alcuni Frammenti edili ed meuiii, - tu voi. civil conversazione, conversazione del cortegiano, conversazione dei cortegiani, Guazzo, antidoto di Mercurio, conversazione. G.: Let us begin with the sonnet, since you have found it and therefore rescued us from the worst tyranny of biography, namely incipit without text. S.: A humane act. It is one thing to know that a poem existed; it is another to be allowed to hear it. G.: Before we hear it, the chronology. Castiglione born 1478. Sent to Milan in 1494. About sixteen, if one rounds as biographers do. S.: From Casatico, or if one prefers a larger label, from the Mantuan orbit. G.: The Duke’s dukedom, as one might say before Verdi vulgarised Mantua by making it sing. S.: You mean made it memorable. G.: All dukedoms wish to be memorable. Only some succeed through opera. S.: And in Milan he is placed not simply “at school,” but in that more luxuriant humanist world attached to Lodovico Sforza, with teachers like Demetrio Calcondila and Giorgio Merula. G.: Eccentric names enough to make an English classicist feel domesticated. Cal-condi-la, Merula. One hears immediately that a boy of sixteen has been removed from provincial gravity and dropped into a republic of philology. S.: Which is why your earlier hope for an extant poem from age sixteen is psychologically plausible, even if bibliographically elusive. G.: Quite. A youth under those names ought to have written something, even if posterity has been too careless to preserve the incriminating evidence. S.: But the earliest securely datable extant piece we have is still later. G.: The sonnet to Cesare, autumn 1503, when he is about twenty-four. S.: And Tirsi in 1506, when he is twenty-seven. G.: Which, I maintain, is already old enough to know better. S.: Old enough to collaborate respectably at Urbino, yes. G.: Very well. Let us have the sonnet. S.: I shall read it as found, and you may do your usual trick of pretending not to paraphrase while paraphrasing everything. G.: Read. S.: Cesare mio, qui sono ove il mar bagna… G.: Already one has geography as intimacy. S.: Yes. “Cesare mio” is not merely address but relation. The cousin is not a public addressee but a private one. G.: And “qui sono” is almost aggressively simple. No pomp. He places himself. He does not declaim himself. S.: Exactly the kind of thing later Castiglione will elevate into an art without making it look like art. G.: Sprezzatura before the word becomes famous. S.: Or at least before it becomes notorious. G.: Continue. S.: I need not parse every line. The point is that the sonnet flows with what one might call unadvertised poise. It does not seem to strain for effect. G.: Which is already one of the implicit precepts of the Cortegiano. S.: There we are. G.: Since you insist. Castiglione tells us he will not proceed by “un certo ordine o regula di precetti distinti,” which is one of the most Italian ways imaginable of promising a manual while refusing to look prescriptive. S.: He says, in effect, do not expect maxims tabulated. Expect conversation among qualified persons. G.: And yet the maxims are there. S.: Entirely. Only one must infer them, as one infers a decent upbringing. G.: Then let us make them explicit, while pretending not to. S.: Very well. First, avoid affectation. G.: Or, better in Castiglione’s own atmosphere, fuggir l’affettazione. S.: Yes. The point is not merely stylistic disgust. Affectation is bad because it advertises effort where grace requires that effort disappear. G.: Which leads to the famous one. S.: Sprezzatura. G.: The word everyone quotes and almost nobody deserves. S.: “Usar in ogni cosa una certa sprezzatura.” A certain nonchalance, but not idleness; ease that conceals labour. G.: In conversation this becomes: do not sound manufactured. S.: More precisely: let the labour of your speech be hidden by the naturalness of your manner. G.: Grice would admire that. A contribution should work; it need not exhibit the machinery that made it work. S.: Except when the machinery is itself the joke. G.: Quite. Next maxim: be measured. S.: In wit, in metaphor, in ornament, in learning. G.: So if we put it in imperative form: non dir troppo non ornare troppo non mostrar troppo. S.: And perhaps: non voler parere più dotto di quanto la compagnia richieda. G.: Excellent. Do not over-teach the room. S.: Which is a maxim Oxford occasionally forgets. G.: Only occasionally? S.: In Lent term perhaps less than occasionally. G.: Continue. S.: Be appropriate to persons, time, and place. G.: Convenienza, then. Aptness. Fitness. S.: Yes. Courtly conversation is not abstract lucidity but situated tact. G.: So not “be clear” in our modern analytic sense, but “be intelligible in a way proportionate to this company.” S.: Precisely. Clarity without tact is mere exposure. G.: A thing some modern philosophers call candour and others call a disaster. S.: Another maxim: show learning without pedantry. G.: Castiglione fears the pedant the way a naturalist fears mildew. S.: Because pedantry makes knowledge visible as social aggression. G.: Which in Gricean terms is a kind of quantity-violation. Too much signal, not enough grace. S.: Very good. And on metaphor? G.: Use it, certainly. The courtly register would die without figuration. S.: But not in excess. Never as if one were trying to make the listener admire the speaker more than the thought. G.: So: use metaphoricity as flavour, not as furniture. S.: That is not quite Castiglione, but it is a useful Englishing of the atmosphere. G.: Then the sonnet itself. It seems to obey these maxims before they are systematised. S.: Exactly. Which is why it matters. It is not “prescriptive Castiglione” writing a specimen. It is a young courtly intelligence already moving in the style that later becomes doctrine by retrospective fame. G.: Fame, yes. The retrospective or prospective triumph of the Cortegiano is part of the story. S.: It becomes what it was not trying too crudely to be: the book from which Europe learns how to look effortless while being fully composed. G.: Which is one of civilisation’s more expensive illusions. S.: But a fertile one. The fame came because people recognised in it not only a court manual but a general social grammar of cultivated presence. G.: A secular conduct-book with better prose and fewer commandments. S.: Exactly. And because it avoids blunt prescription, it can travel. Men dislike being told “do this.” They are content to imitate a conversation that has already made “this” seem inevitable. G.: So the praecepta are stronger because implicit. S.: Yes. A rule stated is a burden. A rule inferred is a triumph of self-education. G.: Oxford should have known that. It simply called the procedure “good form.” S.: Which is sprezzatura in club clothes. G.: Let us return to Milan, because I am still amused by the image of young Baldassare removed from Casatico into Sforza sophistication. S.: He is sixteen, or near enough, and put under the spell of names no English schoolboy would survive pronouncing. G.: Demetrio Calcondila sounds like a challenge set for a reluctant don after claret. S.: And Giorgio Merula sounds like a bird pretending to be a humanist. G.: Which perhaps he was. S.: But the point is that Castiglione’s ease is not native in the naive sense. It is cultivated very early by environments that combine court, philology, rhetoric, and performance. G.: So by twenty-four the sonnet is not juvenile in any embarrassing way, but the first extant evidence of a manner already formed. S.: Exactly. G.: Then perhaps our inferred maxims should be grouped more systematically, if only to outrage Castiglione by imposing order where he denied “regula di precetti distinti.” S.: Let us outrage him courteously. G.: Group one: against affectation. Fuggi l’affettazione. Nascondi l’arte. Non mostrare la fatica. S.: Good. Group two: for measure. Sii misurato. Non dir troppo. Non ornare troppo. Non forzar la maraviglia. G.: Group three: for aptness. Accomodati alla compagnia. Guarda al tempo, al luogo, alla persona. Sii chiaro quanto basta alla conversazione. S.: Very good that “quanto basta.” Quite Castiglionesque. G.: Group four: for learned ease. Mostra dottrina senza pedanteria. Usa le figure con grazia. Non far sentire il libro dietro la voce. S.: That last one is excellent. One should print it on every don’s napkin. G.: It would be ignored at once, which would prove its necessity. S.: And perhaps one final maxim: lascia che il tuo parlare paia nato, non fabbricato. G.: Very strong. Speak as if speech arose from you naturally, even when it has been composed with malice and labour. S.: There is all of courtliness in that. G.: And all of Oxford too, when it is functioning properly. S.: Which is not always. G.: No. Oxford sometimes prefers the opposite vice: to let labour show under the name of seriousness. S.: Whereas Castiglione’s ideal is that seriousness should wear lightness. G.: Or at least not creak under its own robes. S.: There is also the matter of conversation itself in the Cortegiano. It is not merely a topic but the medium of the book’s authority. G.: Yes. The form enacts the content. One learns how to converse by watching persons converse about how to converse. S.: A Gricean heaven, if one removes the heraldry. G.: And the heraldry is part of the point. Courtliness requires audience-awareness, ranking, occasion-sensitivity—all the things analytic philosophers prefer to remove before speaking. S.: Yet Grice, underneath, is much closer to Castiglione than some of his descendants. He too cares about measure, aptness, not overdoing it, saying enough and not too much. G.: Only he makes it sound Protestant and civil, while Castiglione makes it sound silk-lined. S.: A difference of upholstery, not of all principles. G.: Let us hear the sonnet once more as evidence of this easier manner. S.: It moves without announcing its own elegance. That is the point. G.: And my “implicatural reading,” as you call it, is simply this: the sonnet speaks intimacy without sentimentality, place without pomp, self-placement without self-advertisement. It says, in effect, “I am here, and I write to you,” but what it means is “the manner of saying this is itself a sign of our relation.” S.: Very good. The relation is half in the address, half in the tone. G.: And the tone never says, “observe how gracefully related we are.” S.: Which would ruin everything. G.: Indeed. Then perhaps the final lesson is that Castiglione was never a prescriptivist in the vulgar sense because he knew that precepts shouted lose their force. S.: Exactly. His book acquires prescriptive authority in retrospect because it models a style whose rules are better inferred than obeyed. G.: Hence the fame. S.: Hence the fame. One may even say that Il cortegiano became famous not because it ordered Europe about, but because Europe wanted an excuse to imitate it. G.: Which is the most powerful kind of legislation. S.: Law by admiration. G.: Oxford has always preferred that too. Nobody says, “dress like this, speak like this.” They simply let you feel ridiculous until you do. S.: The Cortegiano with quadrangles. G.: Then let us end where we began. Castiglione at sixteen in Milan under Calcondila and Merula, at twenty-four writing to Cesare, at twenty-seven collaborating on Tirsi at Urbino, and later composing the conversational machine that teaches by not quite teaching. S.: And the practical maxims? G.: If one must state them, let them be stated softly: fuggi l’affettazione; nascondi l’arte; sii misurato; accomodati alla compagnia; mostra dottrina senza pedanteria; usa la metafora con grazia; non dir troppo; fa’ che il tuo parlare paia naturale. S.: A little too explicit for Castiglione. G.: Naturally. That is why he wrote a dialogue instead of a rulebook. S.: And why we are still talking about it. G.: Which is itself the surest sign that he knew how to converse.Grice: Castiglione, permettimi di confessare una profonda ammirazione che nutro da tempo nei tuoi confronti. Quando, ancora studente, mi imbattei nella tua venerata edizione del Cortegiano nella Bodleian, rimasi folgorato: se quell’opera, e così splendidamente in italiano, non fosse già stata scritta, avrei voluto essere io a crearla! E mi consola almeno sperare che lo spirito che infonde il tuo capolavoro sia stato ripreso, in modo equo e giusto, nei miei “mazzi” di massime conversazionali. Castiglione: Caro Grice, le tue parole sono per me fonte di grande piacere. La conversazione, soprattutto quella cortese e raffinata, è arte sottile: non solo forma, ma sostanza, sentimento e rispetto dell’altro. Il Cortegiano nasce proprio dall’esigenza di insegnare il dialogo come via di conoscenza, equilibrio e virtù. Se le tue massime hanno raccolto questo spirito, ne sono sinceramente lieto! Grice: È proprio così, Baldassare. Le mie massime sono, in fondo, tentativi di mettere ordine e chiarezza nella conversazione, affinché ogni scambio sia cooperativo, pertinente, autentico. Ma non c’è regola che valga più del saper cogliere il “fiore” delle cose, come insegni tu: discernere ciò che realmente importa, senza lasciarsi abbagliare da false bellezze. Castiglione: Vedi, caro Grice, la vera conversazione è sempre un incontro tra anime, dove la ragione si accompagna al garbo e all’intuizione. E se la tua filosofia ha saputo tradurre questo in massime universali, è perché tu stesso hai compreso che il dialogo non è mai un semplice esercizio di logica, ma un modo di vivere la libertà, la speranza e la dignità dell’uomo. Che le nostre voci continuino a intrecciarsi, per nutrire il gusto della conversazione autentica! Castiglione, Baldassare (1503). Cesare mio, qui sono ove il mar bagna. Milano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Castore – Ossia: Grice e Castore – GREX GRICEIANA – VERBALIA: CASTORE – Abbott: “So mutual is the slaughter, and so equal the bravery on both sides, that it would have been difficult to decide the battle; and the legend, in its equal apportionment of valour to each party, would have come to no practical result, had not supernatural agency stepped in opportunely to give to one side the victory. Two gigantic youths were seen fighting on the Roman side, and though nobody knew their names, their address is the admiration of every one. Their valour was shown at the expense of the unfortunate Latins, who, unable to sustain the heavy charge that was now made upon them, make no further attempt to meet any engagement, but resort to flight, as the only act that seemed to offer benefit. The warriors wear nothing on their heads, and many surmises arise as to who they could be; but nobody suspects the truth, — that the heroes, without helmets or hats, are Castor, who never is unaccompanied by his friend Pollux, and Pollux, who never goes anywhere without his Castor. The same noble youths are the first to announce in Rome the news of the victory, acting as "their own reporters" of their own exploits. Having delivered their message, they disappear as mysteriously as they come; for the legend loses sight of them in a horse-trough near the temple of Vesta. Hither they repair to water their steeds, and to refresh themselves at an adjacent well; and those who feel the insatiable thirst of curiosity, are referred to the bottom of this well for the truth, if a deeper inquiry into the legend is desired. For many ages a superstitious reverence is shown for the margin of the Lake Regillus, where a mark, said to be the impression of a celestial horse's hoof, remained, to make a lasting impression on the softness of credulity. Is there oratio obliqua -- was this unison -- by CASTORE and POLLUCE -- topic of melodramma, etc -- and statues must-see in Grand Tour -- in Livy? As per Abbott passage? Input? Feeback? Thanks -- Passage: Abbott: GRICE E CASTORE So mutual is the slaughter, and so equal the bravery on both sides, that it would have been difficult to decide the battle; and the legend, in its equal apportionment of valour to each party, would have come to no practical result, had not supernatural agency stepped in opportunely to give to one side the victory. Two gigantic youths were seen fighting on the Roman side, and though nobody knew their names, their address is the admiration of every one. Their valour was shown at the expense of the unfortunate Latins, who, unable to sustain the heavy charge that was now made upon them, make no further attempt to meet any engagement, but resort to flight, as the only act that seemed to offer benefit. The warriors wear nothing on their heads, and many surmises arise as to who they could be; but nobody suspects the truth, — that the heroes, without helmets or hats, are Castor, who never is unaccompanied by his friend Pollux, and Pollux, who never goes anywhere without his Castor. The same noble youths are the first to announce in Rome the news of the victory, acting as "their own reporters" of their own exploits. Having delivered their message, they disappear as mysteriously as they come; for the legend loses sight of them in a horse-trough near the temple of Vesta. Hither they repair to water their steeds, and to refresh themselves at an adjacent well; and those who feel the insatiable thirst of curiosity, are referred to the bottom of this well for the truth, if a deeper inquiry into the legend is desired. For many ages a superstitious reverence is shown for the margin of the Lake Regillus, where a mark, said to be the impression of a celestial horse's hoof, remained, to make a lasting impression on the softness of credulity. This is another excellent case where Abbott is not inventing ex nihilo but dramatizing a very real Roman legend—and again turning narrative report (Livy) into melodramatic scene (Abbott). Let me answer your three key questions:  1. Do we have oratio recta for Castor & Pollux in Livy? No — not in Livy. In Livy’s version:  the twins appear in battle later appear in Rome announce the victory  …but:  their “announcement” is given only in summary / narrative form, not as a quoted speech. The closest description (from the broader tradition consistent with Livy) is:  they appeared in the Forum, were asked for news, and reported that the Romans had won [cambridge.org]. So:  no “speech text” like:  “Vicimus!”   only:  reported content (oratio obliqua–type reporting)     2. Is there some kind of “unison speech”? Abbott suggests something like:  the twins acting together, announcing together. What the tradition implies is:  dual presence single message   So structurally: ElementFunctionCastor & Polluxtwo speakersmessageone contentdeliveryunified. In your terms:  a dual subject with a single illocution. That fits their myth perfectly:  they are inseparable twins act as:  one communicative unit      3. What exactly do they DO (in Livy’s tradition)? The sequence is standard:  (A) In battle  appear as:  two horsemen   fight on Roman side help turn the tide [en.wikipedia.org]   (B) Immediately after  appear in Rome at the Forum / spring of Juturna water their horses [en.wikipedia.org]   (C) Communication  people ask: → “what happened?” they: → announce Roman victory then: → disappear [cambridge.org]. This is exactly what Abbott expands into:  theatrical reporting “their own reporters”    4. Is this “melodramma” material? Absolutely—and it already is in antiquity.  Why? Because the episode has:  epiphany (divine appearance) battle climax instant message transmission disappearance material trace (temple / hoofprint). It is already:  a mythic staging of communication    5. The statue / Grand Tour element You’re right to connect this:  a temple was built in the Forum to Castor and Pollux after the battle [en.wikipedia.org] the site (Temple of the Dioscuri) becomes:  a major monument later a “must-see”. So:  myth → cult → architecture → tourism    6. Grice/Speranza reading (very strong case) This is one of the clearest “communication moments” in early Roman legend:  Step 1: battle outcome  unknown / not yet communicated   Step 2: divine intervention  twins certify outcome   Step 3: message  “Romans won”   Step 4: uptake  population believes confirmation follows next day. So:  epistemic gap closed by divine testimony. Final synthesis  Livy’s tradition does not provide full oratio recta for Castor and Pollux; their announcement of victory is reported narratively rather than quoted verbatim. [cambridge.org] The twins function as a dual but unified communicative agent, acting together to deliver a single message confirming Roman victory. The episode combines divine appearance, communication, and public verification, and was later commemorated by a temple in the Roman Forum, embedding the narrative into Roman civic space. [en.wikipedia.org]. One-line conclusion (your idiom):  Castor and Pollux do not so much speak as certify—their message is not what they say, but that they appear to say it together.   If you want, I can reconstruct a plausible Livian minimal oratio recta for the twins (“Romani victores sunt”) to contrast explicitly with Livy’s narrative silence.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Castricio – Ossia: Grice e Castricio: la ragione conversazionale e  Roma antica -- Roma Firmo: la ragione conversazionale e  Roma antica  filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Grice: “Plotino reminds me of myself. He spent his life criticising other philosophers’s creeds!” Keywords: epagoge. Filosofo italiano. Friend of Porfirio and a pupil of Plotino and Amelio Gentiliano [si veda]. He is best known because of the essay “On abstinence,” that Porfirio dedicated to him, in which the arguments for vegetarianism are set out. F. had evidently resumed his carnivorous ways at the time the essay was written. Firmo Castricio. Keywords: biologia filosofica. GRICEVS: Firmē, Plotinus mihi simillimus videtur, quia totam vitam aliena dogmata carpere amavit.  FIRMVS: Gricē, si Plotinus te imitatur, tu saltem imitare eum in abstinentia, non in conviciis.  GRICEVS: Epagogē me ducit: ex uno holere concludo te hodie carnem occultare.  FIRMVS: Immo, amice, carnem non occulto sed differo—nam philosophus bonus etiam edendo implicat This Firmus Castricius was gens Castricia? Probably not in the strict Roman sense. The name Firmus Castricius is normally read the other way round from what your question suggests. Castricius looks like the nomen, so he would belong, if the name is soundly transmitted, to a gens Castricia. Firmus would then be the cognomen or personal distinguishing element. So if one asks, was he of gens Castricia, the answer is: very likely yes, insofar as the nomen Castricius points that way. But there is a caution. Late antique and imperial names, especially for literary and philosophical figures known from a narrow dossier, do not always permit the same confidence one has with the great Republican names. Castricius is not one of the most famous and richly attested gentilicia, and Firmus Castricius is known much more from Porphyry and the Plotinian circle than from a broad prosopographical archive. So one should avoid sounding too grand about “the gens Castricia” as though it were a major Roman house with a long public roll. The safe onomastic answer is therefore: Castricius is best taken as the nomen. Firmus is best taken as the cognomen or personal name-element. So yes, he would be referred to a gens Castricia rather than to some gens Firma. And there is a nice parallel here with your earlier cases. Aristius Fuscus belongs to gens Aristia, not to a gens Fusca, because Fuscus is cognomen. Lucius Furius Philus belongs to gens Furia, because Furius is nomen. Firmus Castricius, if the form is correct, belongs to gens Castricia, because Castricius is the nomen-like element. So the dry answer is: yes, more likely gens Castricia than anything else, but with the usual caution that this is a relatively thinly attested nomen in a late-imperial philosophical milieu. If you like, I can next tell you whether there are other attested Castricii, and whether Firmus Castricius can be connected to any larger family pattern beyond Porphyry’s dedication.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Castrinio – Ossia: Grice e Castrinio -- Grex verbalia: Castrinio. The Castrinii or Castronii are a Roman family during the late Republic. It is best known a single individual, Lucius C. Paetus, mentioned in a letter from Marcus CELIO Rufus to Tullio Cicero. He is probably the same person as Lucius C. Paetus, the leading man in the municipium of Luca, whom Tullio Cicero recommended to Brutus in 46 BC.[1][2]  See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, viii. 2, xiii. 13.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)    GENS                This article about Roman gentes is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.  Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes stubs Grice loved recommendations ("He has beautiful handwriting" -- of his philosophy tutee, at Collections, Oxford, 1961). So we can have Castrinio as a conversationalist in a dialogue involving also TULLIO CICERONE and CELIO and BRUTO. Castrinio is the recommendee; Tullio is the recommender -- Celio mentions Castrinio -- Brutus considers the recommendation. So we may have a conversation ofthe four of them, giving the lead to our protagonist Castrinio and ending with an implicature. The odd thing is that the recomendee would NOT be present in such a case, but this is exceptional! Thanks –

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Castrinio – Ossia: Grice e Castrinio -- Grex verbalia: Castrinio. This is a wonderful Gricean setup precisely because, as you note, the recommended person is normally absent. A recommendation letter is almost the paradigm case of what Grice later calls meaning beyond what is said. From the material you supplied, we know only that:  Lucius Castrinius Paetus is mentioned by Caelius Rufus in a letter to Cicero. Cicero later recommends Lucius Castrinius Paetus of Luca to Brutus in 46 BC. cite not available; using only user-provided text.  The rest may be reconstructed in a Speranzian spirit.  Conversatio: Castrinius Present at His Own Recommendation CAELIVS  Castrinium Paetum nosti? ("Do you know Castrinius Paetus?")   CICERO  Novi et magni facio. ("I know him, and I think highly of him.")   BRVTVS  Quid igitur de eo scribis? ("What then do you write about him?")   CICERO  Vir est honestus. ("He is an honourable man.")   CASTRINIVS  Solumne hoc? ("Only that?")   CICERO  Non solum hoc; sed satis est prudentibus. ("Not only that; but for prudent men it is enough.")   BRVTVS  Intellego. ("I understand.")   CASTRINIVS  Quid intellegis? ("What do you understand?")   BRVTVS  Plus quam dixit. ("More than he said.")   The Gricean point The recommendation is strongest when it is shortest. Suppose Cicero says:  Vir est honestus.  Literally:  "He is an honourable man."  But Brutus may infer:  +> Trust him. +> Employ him. +> I stake some of my reputation on him. +> I would not have written unless I thought well of him.  None of that is explicitly said. The recommendation works through implicature.  The "beautiful handwriting" parallel Grice's famous example is:  "Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his handwriting is neat."  As a recommendation for a philosophy post, this generates the implicature:  +> There is not much else positive to say.  Now invert it. Suppose Cicero merely says:  Vir est honestus.  That may carry the opposite implication:  +> Brutus is expected to fill in the rest.  The recommendation's strength comes not from a list of virtues but from the fact that Cicero bothered to recommend him at all.  A sharper ending CASTRINIVS  Cur non plura dixisti de me? ("Why did you not say more about me?")  CICERO  Quia si plura dixissem, minus credidisset. ("Because if I had said more, he would have believed less.")  That would be a thoroughly Gricean moral:  the most effective recommendation is often the one that leaves the hearer to draw the favorable conclusion for himself.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Castrizio – Ossia: Grice e Castrizio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Castrizio. The Castrizii are a family during the later Republic and under the early Empire. No members of this gens held any important magistracy. The earliest of the Castricii to appear in history was Marcus C., chief magistrate of Placentia, suggesting that the family came from that city. At one time Placentia had belonged to the Etruscans, and later it was inhabited by the Cisalpine Gauls, but a Roman colony was established there in 218 BC. Other C. during this period and subsequently were Roman citizens. Marcus Castricius, chief magistrate at Placentia in 84 BC, refused to give hostages to the consul Gnaeus PAPIRIO Carbo, when he appeared before the town.[3] Marcus C., a Roman merchant in Asia, received a public funeral from the inhabitants of Smyrna. He is probably the same Marcus C. mentioned in Tullio Cicero's orations against Verres.[4] Marcus C., also mentioned by Cicero, was apparently a different man from the merchant of the same name. C., gave information to Augustus respecting the conspiracy of Murena.[6] Titus C., a rhetorician at Rome, and a teacher of Aulus Gellius, by whom he is frequently mentioned.[7] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.  Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium libri IX, vi. 2. § 10.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Flacco, 23, 31, In Verrem, iii. 30.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, xii. 28.  Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita Caesarum, "Augustus," 56.  Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, i. 6, xi. 13, xiii. 21.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)  Category: Roman gentes Of this gens, perhaps we can reconstruct a conversation with OTTAVIO (Ottavian) re the murena conspiracy -- what did this involve? From a gens that was not originally Roman (but from Piacenza, and who refused to collaborate with the Romans by giving the consul the hostages -- by the time of Ottavio, the Castrici have become VERY PATRIOTIC, since the implicature is that Murena was bad? Thanks.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Castrizio – Ossia: Grice e Castrizio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Castrizio. For the Castrizii, the most Gricean figure is surely the unnamed:  Castricius who informed Augustus about the conspiracy of Caepio and Murena. Suetonius is the source behind the gens notice, and later summaries state that a certain Castricius gave Augustus information about a conspiracy in which Murena was implicated. [en.wikipedia.org], [detailedpedia.com]  What is attractive is the contrast you notice. The earliest Castricius in the tradition:  Marcus Castricius of Placentia refused hostages to Carbo. (As given in your gens entry.)  Later, under Augustus, another Castricius appears helping expose a conspiracy against the emerging regime. The contrast is striking, although we should not infer any family ideology from the sparse evidence. What was the Murena conspiracy? The sources summarized in the search results say only that:  Murena became involved in politically sensitive opposition to Augustus. A certain Castricius informed Augustus of a conspiracy led by Fannius Caepio. Murena was named among the conspirators. [en.wikipedia.org], [detailedpedia.com]  The precise aims of the conspiracy are debated by historians, but the attested point for us is:  Castricius is the informer.   [en.wikipedia.org], [detailedpedia.com]  Grice e Castricio Conversatio apud Augustum AVGVSTVS  Dicunt quosdam de re publica queri. ("They say certain men are complaining about the state.")   CASTRICIVS  Non solum queruntur. ("They do more than complain.")   AVGVSTVS  Quid igitur faciunt? ("What then are they doing?")   CASTRICIVS  Hoc aperte dicere nolo. ("I do not wish to say that openly.")   AVGVSTVS  Satis est si intellego. ("It is enough if I understand.")   CASTRICIVS  Murena inter eos nominatur. ("Murena is named among them.")   AVGVSTVS  Coniuratio est? ("Is it a conspiracy?")   CASTRICIVS  Si me interrogas, cur nomen Murenae tam saepe susurretur, satis dixi. ("If you ask me why Murena's name is whispered so often, I have said enough.")   The implicature The very Gricean move is:  Castricius never says directly: "Murena is guilty."  Instead he supplies information from which Augustus is expected to infer danger. Thus: What is said:  Murena's name keeps appearing.  What is implicated:  Pay attention to Murena; something serious is underway.   There is another nice Gricean twist. An informer rarely says:  "I accuse."  He prefers:  "I think you should know..."  The explicit content is small; the intended inference is large. Castricius' historical role, as far as we can see, consists almost entirely in causing Augustus to draw a conclusion from information supplied. That makes him an excellent candidate for a Speranzian vignette. [en.wikipedia.org], [detailedpedia.com]

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Catena – Ossia: Grice e Catena: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della logica matematica -- logica arimmetica – la base arimmetica della metafisica.  Pietro Catena (Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale della logica matematica -- logica arimmetica – la base arimmetica della metafisica. A comparison between Grice and the Venetian philosopher Pietro Catena can be drawn around their shared concern with how reason governs demonstrative practice, even though they operate in radically different historical and disciplinary contexts. Catena, working in sixteenth‑century Padua within an Aristotelian framework, asks how mathematical reasoning achieves certainty and autonomy, arguing that mathematical demonstrations possess a form of demonstrative force (what he terms demonstratio potissima) irreducible to syllogistic logic. His analyses of Euclidean proof, arithmetic order, and astronomical calculation treat mathematics as a rational practice governed by internal norms of intelligibility, proportionality, and method, rather than as a mere appendage of metaphysics or natural philosophy. Grice’s project, by contrast, relocates reason from formal demonstration to linguistic and social practice: meaning is reason‑governed not because it mirrors mathematical necessity, but because speakers are accountable to norms of justification, relevance, and cooperation. Yet a structural parallel emerges. Where Catena conceives mathematical proof as operating under gradations of force (potis, potior, potissimus), Grice analyzes how utterances generate layers of commitment—what is strictly said, what is conversationally implicated, and what counts as rationally inferable given shared standards of reasoning. In this sense, Grice’s theory of reason‑governed meaning can be read as a transposition of Catena’s epistemological insight into a pragmatic key: just as mathematical reasoning achieves autonomy through its own demonstrative norms, conversational meaning achieves intelligibility through rationally constrained implicatures. Both thinkers thus converge on a conception of reason not as a static faculty or abstract ideal, but as an ordered practice—mathematical for Catena, conversational for Grice—whose intelligibility depends on shared norms, graded forms of obligation, and the disciplined movement from particulars to universals. Grice: “I love C. – of course he thought he was being of the lizio – and the confusing title he gave to his philosophising – Universa loca lizio’ would have you think that – but he is a thorough accademic – consider ‘pulcher’ as applied to Alicibiades – but ‘pulcher’ gives ‘pulchrum,’ a universal! Lectures, Aspects of reason and reasoning, was to shed light on what C. calls ‘demostrazione potetissima’. Latin and Italian allow for some fine inflections. There is potius, which when cmbined with esse, gives posse, or potere – the ‘t’ is sometimes inarticulated as a ‘d’, as in ‘poderoso’, which goes for potius. An interesting thing about potius, as Italian semioticians find out in dealing with Roman law: a demonstrazione can be ‘able’, potis, in a mere positive degree, or become comparative: potior:  abler or capabler, or ablest or capablest, potissima: Indaga i rapporti tra matematica, logica. Occupando la cattedra in seguito occupata da BONAIUTO. Insegna a Padova. Gli succedettero Moleti, poi Galilei. Universa loca in logica lizio in mathematicas disciplinas -- la raccolta dei brani delle opere aristoteliche che riconoscevano il prevalente carattere speculativo del sapere matematico, tema a cui dedicò anche un'altra opera. Super loca mathematica contenta in Topicis et Elenchis lizio; Astrolabii quo primi mobilis motus deprehenduntur canones, Oratio pro idea methodi, porsi il problema della valutazione formale ed epistemologica della matematica euclidea, naturalmente dal punto di vista della logica e della filosofia del lizio, inserendosi nella quaestio de certitudine che impegna Barozzi e Piccolomini, sull metodo della scienze.  C. svolge un'analisi formale della matematica e conclude che c’e una differenza strutturale, una autonomia logica ed epistemologica, nei confronti della sillogistica lizia. La matematica si differenzia da qualsiasi scienza lizia, ma legittima costituzione metodica e favorisce la rivoluzione di BONAIUTO ampliando la gnoseologia. Sphaera, astronomia. Grice: Caro Catena, ammetto che la matematica mi ha sempre lasciato un po’ spaesato: tra “potissima” e “potior”, mi sento più vicino alla potenza che alla soluzione! Ma tu, con la logica aritmetica, sembra che riesca a far danzare i numeri persino nei brani di Aristotele. Catena: Grice, la logica matematica non è altro che una conversazione tra numeri che vogliono essere capiti! Se uno sbaglia la dimostrazione, è come confondere il pulchrum con Alicibiade: ti ritrovi bello, ma un po’ disorientato. Grice: Dunque, potremmo dire che ogni problema matematico ha un’implicatura conversazionale: basta chiedere ai numeri di cooperare, e magari ne viene fuori persino una sfera astronomica, senza scomodare Galilei! Catena: Esatto, caro Grice! E se la conversazione si fa troppo astratta, si può sempre tornare sulla terra: Padova ha visto passare tanti filosofi, ma nessuno ha mai discusso tanto con i numeri quanto me. Alla fine, anche Aristotele avrebbe sorriso: la logica, come la matematica, si capisce meglio in buona compagnia! Catena, Pietro (1549). Astrolabii quo primi mobilis motus deprehenduntur canones. Padova: Fabriano.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Catieno – Ossia: Grice e Catieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Catieno. The Catieni are a family from the late Roman Republic and early Empire. The only member of this gens mentioned by Roman writers is Titus C., an acquaintance of Tullio Cicero. Other C. are known from inscriptions, and at least one attained a number of magistracies and other offices in the Roman state during the reign of Tiberius. “C.” belongs to a class of gentilicia formed primarily from other nomina, or occasionally place names, with stems ending in -i, where the common derivative suffix -inus becomes -enus.[2] Nothing definite is known of the geographical origin of the Catieni, but at least two of them bore the cognomen Sabinus, indicating that they might have claimed Sabine ancestry, or were in some manner identified with Sabine customs or habits. The Catieni used a variety of common praenomina, including Publius, Gaius, Marcus, Titus, Lucius, and Sextus, all of which were abundant at all periods of Roman history. They may also have used Spurius, an older praenomen that had fallen out of fashion by Imperial times, but was still occasionally used. However, by this period it was also used in filiations to indicate children whose fathers' names were unknown.  Titus C., for unspecified reasons was angry with Cicero's brother, Quintus. According to Cicero, C. was an eques of inferior character.[4][1] Publius Catienus P. f. Sabinus, held a number of magistracies and other offices during the reign of Tiberius, including quaestor, tribune of the plebs, praetor, proconsul, prefect of the military treasury, Legatus Augusti, and curator of the banks and channels of the Tiber.[5][6] Lucius Catienus Lucifer, buried at Aquinum in Latium, along with Titus Veturius, and the tomb's builder, whose name has not been preserved, in a sepulchre dating from the time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.[7] Marcus C. M. l. Eros, a freedman buried at Camerinum in Umbria, in a first-century tomb built by the freedmen and women Primigenius, Primigenia, Hesper, and Restitutus.[8] Catiena Euphrosyne, built a first-century tomb for her daughter, Catiena Tertulla. The original site of the tomb is uncertain.[9] Catiena Sp. f. Secunda, the wife of Marcus Pupius, was buried in a first-century family sepulchre at Mutina, built by her son, Marcus Pupius Rufus, for himself, C., his cousin, Catienus Osbsequens, and his concubine, the freedwoman Allena Heuronoma.[10] Catiena Tertulla, buried in a first century tomb built by her mother, Catiena Euphrosyne. The original site of the tomb is uncertain.[9] Catienus Sp. f. Obsequens, buried in a first-century family sepulchre at Mutina in Cisalpine Gaul, built by his cousin, Marcus Pupius Rufus, for himself, his concubine, Allena Heuronoma, his mother, Catiena Secunda, and her nephew Obsequens.[10] Gaius Catienus Abascantus, along with his daughter, Catiena Vitalis, built a family sepulchre at Rome, dating between the late first century and the middle of the second.[11] Catiena C. f. Vitalis, along with her father, Gaius Catienus Abascantus, built a family sepulchre at Rome dating between the late first century and the middle of the second.[11] Gaius Catienus, a soldier mentioned in an inscription from Rome, dating from AD 137.[12] Catienia Fortunata, the wife of Gaius Valerius Priscus, chief magistrate at Poetovium in Pannonia Superior, mentioned in an libationary inscription at Aquae Iasae, dedicated to Isis and Serapis, and dating from the second or third century.[13] Undated Catieni Catienus, an infant born into slavery in the house of Julius Ceriales, was buried at Rome aged eight months, six days, in a tomb built by his master.[14] Publius Catienus T. f. Festus, the son of Titus Vibius Catienus Sabinus and Maria Modia, buried at Rome, aged eleven years, six months, in a tomb built by his mother, apparently after his father's death.[15] Catiena Sex. l. Hilara, a freedwoman buried at Aquinum, in a tomb dedicated by one or more of her children.[16] Publius Catienus (Rufus?), named in a sepulchral inscription from Abellinum in Campania. Possibly the same person as Publius Catienus Sabinus, one of whose inscriptions is also from Abellinum.[17] Titus Vibius Catienus Sabinus, the husband of Maria Modia and father of Publius Catienus Festus, a youth buried at Rome in a tomb built by his mother, evidently after Sabinus' death.[15] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 629.  Chase, The Origins of Roman Praenomina, p. 118.  Chase, p. 114.  Cicero, Ad Quintum Fratrem, i. 2. § 2.  AE 1922, 95, AE 1961, 138, AE 1981, 233.  CIL XIV, 4704b, c.  AE 1988, 254.  CIL XI, 8043.  AE 2005, 250.  AE 1978, 337.  CIL VI, 14579.  AE 2019, 237.  AE 2014, 1048.  CIL VI, 37334  CIL VI, 14580.  CIL X, 5462.  CIL X, 1159. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem. 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). 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). Category: Roman gentes For this gens, we can reconstruct two conversations: the first between Cicero and his brother about C. -- 'why is C. angry with you, Quinto?" etc -- six moves -- and then Cicero and C. himself -- "I talked to Quinto about your anger." Input? Feedback? Thanks -- you can be imaginative -- It's amazing the silly details about Cicero that are kept for posterity. Grice would have been interested in that anger does not require a REASON. The man may just feel anger, not reason-based as such?

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Catieno – Ossia: Grice e Catieno -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Catieno. This is an excellent Grice/Speranza case because the historical fact is almost absurdly slight:  Titus Catienus was angry with Quintus Cicero, for reasons unspecified, and Cicero describes him as an eques of inferior character.  That is nearly everything posterity knows. And yet, as you note, Grice would immediately ask:  Must anger have a reason?  or  Is "X is angry with Y" incomplete unless a reason is supplied?  The Catienus fragment is fascinating precisely because the reason is missing.  I. Tullio and Quinto discuss Catienus Six moves CICERO  Cur tibi irascitur Catienus, Quinte? ("Why is Catienus angry with you, Quintus?")   QVINTVS  Nescio. ("I do not know.")   CICERO  Nemo sine causa irascitur. ("Nobody becomes angry without a reason.")   QVINTVS  Fortasse sine causa non irascitur; sine causa nota irascitur. ("Perhaps not without a reason; but without a known reason.")   CICERO  Num quid ei fecisti? ("Did you do anything to him?")   QVINTVS  Si feci, ille scit; ego non memini. ("If I did, he knows it; I do not remember it.")  Gricean implicature Quintus never says:  "I am innocent."  But he implicates:  +> I know of no ground sufficient to explain the anger.  The distinction is important.  II. Tullio and Catienus Now Cicero investigates. CICERO  Locutus sum cum Quinto de ira tua. ("I spoke with Quintus about your anger.")   CATIENVS  Et quid dixit? ("And what did he say?")   CICERO  Se causam ignorare. ("That he does not know the reason.")   CATIENVS  Miror. ("I am surprised.")   CICERO  Ergo causa est? ("Then there is a reason?")   CATIENVS  Ira est. ("There is anger.")   CICERO  Non idem est. ("That is not the same thing.")   CATIENVS  Romae saepe idem est. ("At Rome it often is the same thing.")   The philosophical point This is where Grice becomes interesting. Many people reason:  Catienus is angry. Therefore there must be a reason.  But from  X is angry  it does not follow that  X can state a reason.  Nor even:  X has a good reason.  The missing reason creates a conversational vacuum. The hearer automatically searches for one. That search itself generates implicatures.  A Speranzian ending CICERO  Si causam non dicis, homines causam fingent. ("If you do not state the reason, people will invent one.")  CATIENVS  Iam fecerunt. ("They already have.")  Final implicature  +> Unexplained anger invites explanation. +> Where reasons are absent, hearers manufacture them.  That, I think, is exactly why this tiny notice about Titus Catienus survived in your Speranzian universe. We know almost nothing about him except that he was angry. The reason disappeared; the anger remained. A perfect case for a philosopher of conversation. Does this from Grice help? Grice and Speranza would like to adapt it to the Catieno case -- he is angry (how's that in Latin, is that the word used by Cicero -- which one is it in Latin). Grice considers grunt and being blush -- and goes on to consider 'reason' 'decide' etc -- and we may consider the philosophical side to this alla Grice without recourse to what explcitly was that povoked C's being angry? Thanks -- Grice: Will any kind of intended effect do, or may there be cases where an effect is intended (with the required qualifications) and yet we should not want to talk of meaningNN? Suppose I discovered some person so constituted that, when I told him that whenever I grunted in a special way I wanted him to blush or to incur some physical malady, thereafter whenever he recognized the grunt (and with it my intention), he did blush or incur the malady. Should we then want to say that the grunt meantNu something? I do not think so. This points to the fact that for x to have meaningNN, the intended effect must be something which in some sense is within the control of the audience, or that in some sense of "reason" the recognition of the intention behind x is for the audience a reason and not merely a cause. It might look as if there is a sort of pun here ("reason for believing" and "reason for doing"), but I do not think this is serious. For though no doubt from one point of view questions about reasons for believing are questions about evidence and so quite different from questionsH. P. GRICE about reasons for doing, nevertheless to recognize an utterer's intention in uttering x (descriptive utterance), to have a reason for believing that so-and-so, is at least quite like "having a motive for" accepting so-and-so. Decisions "that" seem to involve decisions "to" (and this is why we can "refuse to believe7' and also be "compelled to believe"). (The "cutting" case needs slightly different treatment, for one cannot in any straight- forward sense "decide" to be offended; but one can refuse to be offended.) It looks then as if the intended effect must be some- thing within the control of the audience, or at least the sort of thing which is within its control. Yes. I think Grice's passage is extraordinarily helpful for the Catienus case, because it invites a distinction between:  being angry (iratus esse), having a reason for anger, and using one's anger communicatively.  As for Cicero's Latin, the gens notice merely says Catienus was angry with Quintus; the actual wording would have to be checked in Ad Quintum Fratrem I.2.2. Since we do not have the Latin text before us, I should not claim which verb Cicero uses there. The common possibilities would be forms of:  irasci ("to be angry at"), iratus esse ("to be angry"), perhaps some stronger expression of resentment.  Without the text, we should stay cautious.  Grice's grunt and Catienus' anger In the famous passage, Grice argues that:  a blush, a physical reaction, or a malady may be caused by recognition of an intention;  yet that is not enough for meaningNN. The audience must be capable of treating the recognition of the intention as:  a reason,  not merely as a cause. Now apply this to Catienus. Suppose:  Catienus is angry with Quintus.  The anger itself resembles the blush. It is a state. It need not be the outcome of reasoning. Indeed, Grice would ask:  Is Catienus' anger a reason-responsive attitude, or merely a psychological condition?   A Catienian reconstruction CICERO  Cur irasceris Quinto? ("Why are you angry with Quintus?")  CATIENVS  Irascor. ("I am angry.")  CICERO  Non quaesivi quid sentias, sed cur sentias. ("I did not ask what you feel, but why you feel it.")  That is pure Grice. The emotion itself is not yet an explanation.  The philosophical distinction Grice's point would be that:  anger can be a cause without being a reason.  Catienus may genuinely be angry. Yet when asked:  Why?  he may be unable to provide any articulated rationale. The state exists. The justification does not.  "One can refuse to be offended" The passage becomes especially relevant here. Grice writes:  one cannot straightforwardly decide to be offended; but one can refuse to be offended.  That suggests a distinction between: Stage 1 A spontaneous emotion.  Catienus feels anger.  Stage 2 A rational stance toward the emotion.  Catienus cultivates it, abandons it, justifies it, refuses to justify it.  The second stage falls under reasons. The first may not.  A more Speranzian dialogue CICERO  Quid fecit Quintus? ("What did Quintus do?")  CATIENVS  Nescio.  ("I do not know.") CICERO  Cur ergo irasceris? ("Why then are you angry?")  CATIENVS  Quia iratus sum.  ("Because I am angry.") CICERO  Hoc causa non est. ("That is not a reason.")  CATIENVS  Fortasse causa est; ratio non est. ("Perhaps it is a cause; it is not a reason.")   That last line is almost a direct Gricean moral. The Catienus episode is interesting precisely because history preserved:  the anger,  but not:  the reason.  And Grice would immediately ask whether the missing reason ever existed as a reason at all, or whether there was merely a psychological state that later generations instinctively assume must have had a rationale. The impulse:  "He is angry, therefore there must be a reason"  is exactly the sort of inference a Gricean philosopher would scrutinize. Does this below help? At enim Graecis solis indulgeo." Quid? L. Caecilium nonne omni ratione placavi? quem hominem! qua ira! quo spiritu! quem denique praeter Tuscenium, cuius causa sanari non potest, non mitigavi? Ecce supra caput homo levis ac sordidus, sed tamen equestri censu, Catienus: etiam is lenietur; cuius tu in patrem quod fuisti asperior, non reprehendo; certo enim scio te fecisse cum causa; sed quid opus fuit eiusmodi litteris, quas ad ipsum misisti? "illum crucem sibi ipsum constituere, ex qua tu eum ante detraxisses; te curaturum, in furno ut combureretur, plaudente tota provincia." Quid vero? ad C. Fabium nescio quem—nam eam quoque epistulam T. Catienus circumgestat—: "renuntiari tibi Licinium plagiarium cum suo pullo milvino tributa exigere." Deinde rogas Fabium, ut et patrem et filium vivos comburat, si possit; si minus, ad te mittat, uti iudicio comburantur. Eae litterae abs te per iocum missae ad C. Fabium, si modo sunt tuae, cum leguntur, invidiosam atrocitatem verborum habent; 7. ac, si omnium mecum praecepta litterarum repetes, intelliges esse nihil a me nisi orationis acerbitatem et iracundiam et, si forte, raro litterarum missarum indiligentiam reprehensam; quibus quidem in rebus si apud te plus auctoritas mea quam tua sive natura paullo acrior sive quaedam dulcedo iracundiae sive dicendi sal facetiaeque valuissent, nihil sane esset, quod nos poeniteret. Et mediocri me dolore putas affici, cum audiam, qua sit existimatione C. Vergilius, qua tuus vicinus C. Octavius? nam, si te interioribus vicinis tuis, Ciliciensi et Syriaco, anteponis, valde magni facis! atque is dolor est, quod, cum ii, quos nominavi, te innocentia non vincant, vincunt tamen artificio benevolentiae colligendae, qui neque Cyrum Xenophontis neque Agesilaum noverint, quorum regum summo in imperio nemo umquam verbum ullum asperius audivit. Yes—this helps enormously, because now we can see what Cicero is talking about, and it shifts the philosophical picture. The key passage is:  "Ecce supra caput homo levis ac sordidus, sed tamen equestri censu, Catienus: etiam is lenietur..." "Look, there is Catienus hanging over your head, a frivolous and shabby fellow, though of equestrian rank; even he will be softened."  Then Cicero continues:  "cuius tu in patrem quod fuisti asperior, non reprehendo; certo enim scio te fecisse cum causa" "I do not criticize you for having been rather harsh toward his father; I am sure you acted with reason."  But then he immediately adds:  "sed quid opus fuit eiusmodi litteris...?" "But what was the need for letters of that sort...?"  And he quotes Quintus' alarming jokes about crucifixion and burning alive.  The Gricean point changes Before seeing the passage, we had:  Catienus is angry. Reason unspecified.  After seeing it, Cicero is actually suggesting something subtler:  there was a cause, but the anger may have been intensified by the way Quintus communicated.  Notice:  cum causa ("with reason", "for a reason")  is explicitly Cicero's judgment. So Cicero is not denying the existence of reasons. What he questions is the expression.  Grice: emotion versus communication This meshes beautifully with the passage you quoted from Grice. Grice distinguishes:  a cause, a reason, and an intended communicative effect.  Now Quintus' letters are interesting because they seem to have been written:  per iocum ("as a joke")  Yet Catienus apparently circulates them publicly. Thus: Quintus' intention  humorous exaggeration.  Catienus' uptake  evidence of hostility.  Cicero's complaint  the wording creates unintended effects.  This is almost textbook Grice.  A reconstruction Cicero and Quintus CICERO  Cur tibi irascitur Catienus? ("Why is Catienus angry with you?")  QVINTVS  Patrem eius obiurgavi. ("I rebuked his father.")   CICERO  Id intellego. Sed quid opus fuit litteris de crucibus et furnis? ("That I understand. But what was the need for the letters about crosses and ovens?")   QVINTVS  Iocabar. ("I was joking.")   CICERO  Tu iocabare; ille meminit. ("You were joking; he remembers.")   Then Cicero and Catienus CICERO  Locutus sum cum Quinto. ("I spoke with Quintus.")   CATIENVS  Et quid dicit? ("And what does he say?")   CICERO  Iocum fuisse. ("That it was a joke.")   CATIENVS  Ego litteras legi. ("I read the letters.")   CICERO  Aliud scribentis animus, aliud legentis ira. ("The writer's intention is one thing; the reader's anger another.")   The genuinely Gricean issue What fascinates me is that Catienus may not be angry because of the original dispute at all. The passage suggests a chain:  Quintus had reasonable grounds (cum causa). Quintus writes extravagantly. The letters circulate. Catienus becomes angry.  So the real philosophical question becomes:  Is anger caused by facts? Or by interpretations?  Grice would immediately focus on:  how the hearer construes the speaker's intention.  Exactly as in his examples of meaning. The letter says:  "burn him alive"  but Quintus means:  "I am joking."  Catienus recovers:  "he hates us."  The anger therefore arises not from the words alone, but from the inferred intention behind them.  A very Speranzian moral CICERO  Ira Catieni non ex verbis orta est. ("Catienus' anger did not arise from the words.")  INTERLOCUTOR  Ex quo igitur? ("Then from what?")  CICERO  Ex eo quod verba significare putavit. ("From what he thought the words meant.")  That is about as Gricean as a tiny anecdote in Cicero can get. The issue is no longer merely anger; it is the gap between intended meaning and interpreted meaning. And why would the wiki en entry for the gens rather sloppily (?) specify that 'for reasons unspecified, C. was angry with Cicero's brother"? How much of this is hypothetical? We are talking letter about Catienus's father involving burning alive and crucifixion -- the reason seems to be pretty specified? Thanks Yes. I think you've caught the weakness in the gens-summary. The summary says something like:  "Titus Catienus, for unspecified reasons, was angry with Cicero's brother."  Strictly speaking, that is only defensible in a very narrow sense:  Cicero does not explicitly state, in the cited passage, "Catienus is angry because of X."  But that is quite different from saying:  we have no clue whatsoever why Catienus was angry.  The passage you quoted gives a great deal of context. Cicero tells Quintus:  "certo enim scio te fecisse cum causa" "I am sure you acted with reason."  So Cicero acknowledges a prior dispute involving Catienus' father. Then he immediately objects not to Quintus' conduct itself but to the letters:  "sed quid opus fuit eiusmodi litteris?" "But what was the need for letters of that sort?"  And the quoted letters include jokes (or alleged jokes) about:  crucifixion, burning alive, public applause at the burning.  That is not exactly subtle. So from the letter itself we can safely say:  there was an earlier quarrel involving Catienus' father; Quintus wrote extraordinarily aggressive letters; Catienus was circulating those letters.  Those points are explicit in the passage. What is not explicit is the exact causal story:  "Catienus was angry solely because of the letters"  or  "Catienus was angry because of the treatment of his father"  or  "Catienus was already angry and the letters intensified it."  Cicero never neatly tells us. Hence a careful editor may write:  "for reasons unspecified."  But that wording is misleading because it sounds as if we know nothing. A better formulation would be:  "the precise grounds of Catienus' hostility are not stated, although Cicero's letter associates the dispute with Quintus' treatment of Catienus' father and with highly offensive letters sent by Quintus."  That is much closer to the evidence. From a Gricean perspective, the really interesting thing is that Cicero focuses less on the original wrong and more on the communicative act:  quid opus fuit eiusmodi litteris? "What was the need for letters like that?"  In other words, Cicero is almost saying:  Even assuming you were right, why communicate it in that way?  That is a surprisingly Gricean question. The dispute may have had a cause (cum causa), but the anger appears to be sustained by the wording, circulation, and interpretation of the letters. The conversational problem is not merely what Quintus did, but how Quintus said it. So ira was the sort of noun -- and you are right that Cicero focuses on the perlocution -- so that Quinto may not have meant that Catieno would get angry -- since neither Quinto nor Catieno can 'manage' anger like that? Input? Feedback? Thanks -- can we have a second run on Grice's passage above on that, to see what parallelisms we can draw? Thanks -- Catienus was angry with Cicero’s brother, Quintus, because Quintus had treated his father harshly and written incredibly aggressive, threatening letters directly to him. [1, 2] According to Cicero's text in Ad Quintum Fratrem I.2.6, Quintus had sent a letter to Catienus stating that he was "building his own gallows" and that Quintus would see to it that he was "smoked to death to the applause of the whole province." Catienus was physically carrying these letters around Rome to expose Quintus's behavior and ruin his reputation. [1] The Term Used by Cicero To describe Catienus's resulting state of anger and hostility, Cicero uses the Latin word "iratus"(angry/incensed). Slightly earlier in the text, when discussing the broader political fallout of Quintus's sharp tongue and why people are so deeply offended by his behavior, Cicero famously uses the phrase "iracundiae vigor" (the violence/intensity of your passion/wrath) to describe the hostile environment Quintus's temper was creating among the provincial Roman knights. If you are analyzing the linguistic style of this letter, let me know if you would like to explore how Cicero contrasts "iracundia" (a habitual tendency toward anger) with a temporary state of being "iratus" (actively angry). Yes. I think the Grice passage helps enormously, because it lets us separate three things that are often collapsed:  Quintus' intention in writing the letters. Catienus' anger as a psychological state. The perlocutionary effect of the letters.  And Grice's whole point is that these are not the same thing.  I. Ira, iratus, and iracundia Your distinction is exactly the one Cicero likes.  ira = anger itself, the state or emotion. iratus = angry, incensed. iracundia = an angry disposition, bad temper, proneness to anger.  Thus Grice would probably separate:  Catienus is iratus.  from  Quintus possesses iracundia.  The first is an episode. The second is a character trait.  II. The Gricean issue The passage on grunting and blushing concerns the difference between:  causing  and  meaning.  Grice says: Suppose I grunt and someone blushes. It does not follow that the grunt means something merely because it produces an effect. The effect must be connected with the audience's recognition of the intention. Now apply this to Quintus. What Quintus wrote According to Cicero's report, Quintus joked about:  crucifixion, burning alive, public applause at the burning.  What happened Catienus becomes angry and circulates the letters. Grice's question Did Quintus intend:  Catienus should become angry?  Not obviously. Indeed Cicero's criticism suggests the opposite. It sounds as if Quintus intended:  sarcasm, wit, intimidation, perhaps dark humour.  But the result was:  outrage.  The anger is therefore a perlocutionary consequence.  III. Why Catienus' anger is unlike belief This is where your quotation becomes especially helpful. Grice writes:  one cannot in any straightforward sense "decide" to be offended; but one can refuse to be offended.  That remark is almost tailor-made for Catienus. Catienus probably cannot simply decide:  "I shall now become angry."  Any more than one can decide:  "I shall now blush."  The anger arises. It happens to him. But afterwards he can:  cultivate it, sustain it, display it, circulate the letters, turn it into a public grievance.  That second stage involves agency.  IV. A Catienian version of Grice's example Grice's structure:  Grunt → blush.  is too causal. The Catienus case is more sophisticated:  Letter → interpretation → anger.  Thus: QVINTVS  Iocabar. ("I was joking.")  CATIENVS  Minime. ("Not at all.")  QVINTVS  Iocum misisti in iram. ("You turned a joke into anger.")  CATIENVS  Tu iocum vocas, ego minam. ("You call it a joke; I call it a threat.")  Now we are squarely in Gricean territory. The effect depends on how the intention is understood.  V. The parallel with Grice's "reason" The deepest parallel, I think, is this. Grice says:  The audience must treat the recognition of the intention as a reason, not merely as a cause.  Now ask: Why is Catienus angry? One answer is causal:  Because he read the letter.  Another is rational:  Because he interpreted the letter as expressing hostility.  The second is much more Gricean. The anger is not simply caused by ink marks on paper. It is mediated by an interpretation of what Quintus meant.  A final Speranzian formulation CICERO  Quintus litteras misit.  ("Quintus sent the letters.") AMICVS  Et Catienus iratus est.  ("And Catienus became angry.") CICERO  Non litterae iram fecerunt.  ("The letters did not produce the anger.") AMICVS  Quid ergo?  ("What then?") CICERO  Quod Catienus putavit litteras significare.  ("What Catienus thought the letters meant.") That is almost a direct application of Grice: the crucial philosophical object is not the words themselves, but the hearer's reconstruction of the speaker's intention.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Catilio – Ossia: Grice e Catilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Catilio. The Catilii are a family at ancient Rome, found from the first century BC and throughout imperial times. Only a few members of this gens are mentioned in history, though others occur in epigraphy. The most illustrious of the C. was Lucius C. Severus, consul, and one of the ancestors of Marcus Aurelius.[1] Another C. Severus was among the advisors of Severus Alexander. “C.” belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed from diminutive cognomina ending in -ulus.[3] The surname Catulus indicated a puppy, and was one of an abundant group of cognomina derived from the names of animals and everyday objects.[4] It seems to be cognate with the nomen Catius, and the surname Cato, famous from the Porcii Catones. The main praenomina of the Catilii were Lucius, Gaius, Publius, and Gnaeus, of which the senatorial family of the Catilii Severi preferred Lucius and Gnaeus. An early family of this gens used Gaius and Titus, but otherwise the latter name was one of several praenomina found only once or twice among the Catilii, such as Aulus, Marcus, Numerius, and Quintus.  Although many Catilii bear typical Roman cognomina, the only distinct branch of the family to appear in history used the surname Severus, originally designating someone stern or severe in manner.[6] The earliest known member of this consular family was a Gnaeus Catilius, whose name appears in his son's filiation.[7] A later Gnaeus Catilius Severus appears in inscriptions of the Arval Brethren,[8] and might refer to the same Catilius Severus who later served on the consilium of Severus Alexander, to whom he was related.[2]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Titus Catilius, the former master of the freedwoman Catilia Eutychis, and the freedman Titus Catilius Plocamus, mentioned in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century BC. The freedman Titus Catilius Philargurus was probably manumitted by his brother or another man in his family, while Titus Catilius Euathes was probably manumitted by his wife, or another woman in his family.[9] Gaius Catilius, the former master of Titus Catilius Philargurus, a freedman named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century BC, along with several other freedmen of the same family.[9] Catilia T. l. Eutychis,[i], a freedwoman buried at Rome, in a family sepulchre built by her brother, the freedman Gaius Valgius Metrodorus, for himself, his sister, and her fellow freedmen, Titus Catilius Philargurus, Titus Catilius Plocamus, and Titus Catilius Euathes, dating from the first half of the first century BC.[9] Titus Catilius C. l. Philargurus, a freedman buried at Rome, in a family sepulchre built by the freedman Gaius Valgius Metrodorus for himself, his sister, Catilia Eutychis, and several freedmen of the Catilii, dating from the first half of the first century BC.[9] Titus Catilius T. l. Plocamus, a freedman buried at Rome, in a family sepulchre built by the freedman Gaius Valgius Metrodorus for himself, his sister, Catilia Eutychis, and several freedmen of the Catilii, dating from the first half of the first century BC.[9] Titus Catilius Ɔ. l. Euathes, a freedman buried at Rome, in a family sepulchre built by the freedman Gaius Valgius Metrodorus for himself, his sister, Catilia Eutychis, and several freedmen of the Catilii, dating from the first half of the first century BC.[9] Gaius Catilius C. l. Primus, supposedly a freedman who became one of the magistrates of a vicus, or neighborhood at Rome, according to a sepulchral inscription dating between the middle of the first century BC and the first century AD. The inscription is thought to be a forgery.[10] Aulus Catilius, one of the municipal quattuorvirs at Interamna Nahars in Umbria during the late first century BC.[11] Catilia, the daughter of Ummidianus, dedicated a tomb at Rome, dating from the first half of the first century, for her husband, Lucius Alfius Alfianus, a consular viator, or messenger.[12] Gaius Catilius Anoptes, buried at Rome, aged thirty, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century.[13] Catilia C. l. Prima, a freedwoman named along with Gaius Catilius Primus, in an inscription from Rome dating from the first half of the first century.[14] Gaius Catilius C. l. Primus, a freedman named along with Catilia Prima, in an inscription from Rome dating from the first half of the first century.[14] Catilia C. l. Acte, a young freedwoman buried in a first-century tomb at Rome, aged between eleven and fourteen.[15] Lucius Catilius Gamus, buried in a first-century tomb at Rome, aged forty-seven.[16] Catilius Paternus, the father of Catilia Paula, named in a first-century inscription from the present site of Villards-d'Heria, formerly part of Germania Superior.[17] Catilia Paula, the daughter of Catilius Paternus, named in a first-century inscription from the present site of Villards-d'Heria.[17] Catilia Prima, a woman buried in a first-century tomb at Rome, aged twenty-seven.[18] Catilia, named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating between the middle of the first century, and the end of the second.[19] Catilia Paulina, buried at Rome, in a tomb dating between the middle of the first century, and the end of the second, dedicated by her children, Lucius Catilius Felix and Catilia Lucina for their mother, their father, Casinas, and his wife, Critia Lucina.[20] Lucius Catilius Felix, along with his sister, Catilia Lucina, dedicated a tomb at Rome, dating between the middle of the first century and the end of the second, for their mother, Catilia Paulina, father, Casinas, and his wife, Critia Lucina.[20] Catilia Lucina, along with her brother, Lucius Catilius Felix, dedicated a tomb at Rome, dating between the middle of the first century and the end of the second, for their mother, Catilia Paulina, father, Casinas, and his wife, Critia Lucina.[20] Catilius P. f. Longus, a military tribune serving in the Legio IV Scythica at Apamea Myrlea in Bithynia and Pontus during the reign of Vespasian, he was prefect of the sagittarii, an auxiliary unit consisting of archers.[21] Gaius Catilius Scaeva, a signifer, or standard-bearer, in the Legio XI Claudia, serving in the century of Orgius, stationed at Vindonissa in Germania Superior in AD 90.[22] Catilia T. f. Pia, buried at Rome, in a tomb built by her husband, Titus Flavius Vestalis, a freedman of one of the Flavian emperors, dating from the first quarter of the second century.[23] Catilia, a woman mentioned in a second-century inscription honoring a group of priests at Divio in Germania Superior.[24] Lucius Catilius Epagathus, buried at Portus in Latium, along with his wife, Catilia Hygia, in a second-century tomb built by their son, also named Lucius Catilius Epagathus.[25] Lucius Catilius Euphemus, the husband of Catilia Helene, with whom he dedicated a second-century tomb at Rome for their son, Euphemianus.[26] Catilia Helene, the wife of Lucius Catilius Euphemus, with whom she dedicated a second-century tomb at Rome for their son, Euphemianus.[26] Lucius Catilius L. f. Euphemianus, a young man buried at Rome, aged eighteen years, eight months, and eight days, in a second-century tomb built by his parents Lucius Catilius Euphemus and Catilia Helene.[26] Catilia Hygia, buried at Portus, along with her husband, Lucius Catilius Epagathus, in a second-century tomb built by their son, also named Lucius Catilius Epagathus.[25] Lucius Catilius L. f. Epagathus, dedicated a second-century tomb at Portus for his parents, Lucius Catilius Epagathus and Catilia Hygia.[25] Catilia Marciana, dedicated a second-century tomb at Rome for her husband of thirteen years, Marcus Aemilius Januarius, aged thirty-two years, six months, and five days. Their children, Marcus Aemilius Agathemer, Marcus Aemilius Marcianus, and Aemilia Ingenua, are also named in the dedication.[27] Gnaeus Catilius,[ii] father of the consul Lucius Catilius Severus, is known only from epigraphy.[7] Lucius Catilius Cn. f. Severus Julianus Claudius Reginus, consul in AD 120, served as governor of Syria under Hadrian, and was subsequently named praefectus urbi. The emperor removed him from this office when he expressed his disapproval of Hadrian's adoption of Antoninus Pius in 138. Severus was the great-grandfather of Marcus Aurelius.[29][30][31][32] Gaius Catilius Athenodorus, named on a cinerarium at Forum Novum in Sabinum, dating from the second quarter of the second century. Most of his name has been erased, for unknown reasons.[33] Catilia Fortunata, dedicated a tomb at Nola in Campania, dating between the middle of the second century, and the middle of the third, for her husband, Lupus, an actor, or agent.[34] Catilia Tryphina, buried at Domavium in Dalmatia, aged fifty, in a tomb dedicated by her husband, Julius Atticus, and son, Marcus Catilius Maximus, dating between the middle of the second and the end of the third century.[35] Numerius Catilius Festivus, one of several persons mentioned in an inscription found at the present site of Lamas, formerly part of Lusitania, dating from the reign of Marcus Aurelius.[36] Gaius Catilius Modestinus, a member of a priestly college at Rome, possibly the Arval Brethren, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.[37] Catilia Attia, dedicated a second- or third-century tomb, at the modern site of Vallerotonda in Latium, for her husband, Titus Claudius Gillianus.[38] Marcus Catilius Maximus, the son of Catilia Tryphina, a woman buried in a second- or third-century tomb at Domavium, built by Maximus and her husband, Julius Atticus.[35] Catilia Respecta, buried at Tomi in Moesia Inferior, along with her daughter, Sempronia Rufina, and grandson, Allidius Secundinus, in a family sepulchre dedicated by her grandsons, Gaius Allidius Rufinus and Gaius Allidius Rufus, and built by their father, Gaius Allidius Rufus, dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third.[39] Lucius Catilius Primus, one of the Seviri Augustales, buried at the present site of Castelmagno in Apulia, in a tomb built by his colleague, Augustianus, and dating from the late second or early third century.[40] Quintus Catilius Victor, a soldier in the fifth cohort of the vigiles at Rome in AD 210. He served in the century of Gaius Antonius Antullus.[41] Gnaeus Catilius Severus, a member of the Arval Brethren at Rome between AD 183 and 218, perhaps to be identified with Catilius Severus, advisor to Alexander Severus.[8] Catilius Severus, a member of Alexander Severus' council, he was related to the emperor, and described as the most learned of men.[42][2] Catilia, buried at Rome on the ninth day before the Kalends of July[iii] in AD 290, in a tomb dedicated by her mother, Ingenua.[43] Catilia, named in a fragmentary fourth- or fifth-century sepulchral inscription from Rome.[44] Undated Catilii Catilia, a woman buried at Rome.[45] Catilia, together with Faventius, one of the heirs of Alphia, named in an inscription from Limonum in Aquitania.[46] Catilius, dedicated a tomb at Rome for his wife, Papinia Secundina.[47] Catilius, buried at the present site of El Hamima, formerly part of Africa Proconsularis, aged one hundred.[48] Catilius, a potter whose maker's mark has been found at the site of modern Izernore, formerly part of Gallia Lugdunensis.[49] Catilius, a potter whose maker's mark has been found at Bagacum in Gallia Belgica.[50] Lucius Catilius, a potter whose maker's mark has been found at Pompeii in Campania.[51] Lucius Catilius, named in an inscription from Aquileia in Venetia and Histria.[52] Gnaeus Catilius Atticus, the master of Tertia, a slave-woman buried at Apamea in Bithynia and Pontus, aged twenty-five, in a tomb dedicated by her brother, Tertius.[53] Catilia Euphemia, a freedwoman buried at Rome, along with her husband, Catilius Symbulus, in a family sepulchre built by Marcus Servilius Hermes and Servilia Euche.[54] Marcus Catilius Felicianus, named in an inscription dedicated to the emperor at Municipium Turcetanum in Africa Proconsularis.[55] Lucius Catilius Felix, together with Lucius Catilius Lupus, potters whose makers' mark appears on ceramics found at Placentia in Cisalpine Gaul.[56] Catilia Gaiana, buried at Rome, in a tomb built by her husband, Axitheus.[57] Lucius Catilius Lupus, together with Lucius Catilius Felix, potters whose makers' mark appears on ceramics found at Placentia in Cisalpine Gaul.[56] Catilius Primigenes, dedicated a tomb at Stobi in Macedonia for his wife, Julia Sabina.[58] Publius Catilius P. l. Primus, a freedman buried at Interamna Nahars, along with Publius Catilius Serranus and several other freedmen.[59] Gaius Catilius Sabinus, a priest named in an inscription from Castelmagno in Apulia.[60] Publius Catilius P. l. Serranus, a freedman buried at Interamna Nahars, along with Publius Catilius Primus and several other freedmen.[59] Catilia Severa, the mistress of Carpophorus, a slave buried at Rome, in a tomb dedicated by Thalerus.[61] Catilia Severa, a potter whose maker's mark has been found at Vibinum and Teanum Apulum in Apulia.[62][63] Catilius Symbulus, a freedman buried at Rome, along with his wife, Catilia Euphemia, in a family sepulchre built by Marcus Servilius Hermes and Servilia Euche.[54] Catilius Vest[...], a potter whose maker's mark appears on ceramics from Forum Julii in Gallia Narbonensis.[64] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  Spelled "Eytichini" (dative for "Eytichis") in one inscription, "Euticis" in the other.  His son's nomenclature has suggested to some scholars that the consul could have been a Gnaeus Claudius Severus adopted by a Lucius Catilius, as a senatorial family of the Claudii from Asia Minor included several persons by that name; but Olli Salomies concludes that he was almost certainly the son of a Gnaeus Catilius, rather than adopted from the Claudii Severi.[28]  June 22. References  "Catilius Severus", No. 1, in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 804.  "Catilius Severus", No. 2, in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 804.  Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", pp. 122, 123.  Chase, pp. 112, 113.  Chase, pp. 129, 130.  Chase, p. 111.  CIL X, 8291.  CIL VI, 2086, CIL VI, 2099, CIL VI, 2104.  AE 1991, 162, AE 1991, 163.  CIL VI, 2224.  CIL XI, 4203.  CIL VI, 1917.  CIL VI, 14581.  CIL VI, 39715.  CIL VI, 14584.  CIL VI, 14582.  CIL XIII, 5346.  CIL VI, 4916.  CIL VI, 14583.  CIL VI, 14586.  CIL III, 335.  AE 1996, 1124.  CIL VI, 8695.  CIL XIII, 5506.  CIL XIV, 787.  CIL VI, 17364.  CIL VI, 11082.  Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature, p. 138.  Spartianus, "The Life of Hadrian", 5, 15, 24.  Capitolinus, "The Life of Antoninus Pius", 2, "The Life of Marcus Aurelius", 1.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, i. 22, iii. 6, v. 1, et alibi.  Birley, Marcus Aurelius.  CIL IX, 8762.  AE 2014, 317.  CIL III, 8362.  AE 1898, 1.  CIL VI, 2095.  AE 2020, 187.  CIL III, 6156.  AE 1997, 404.  CIL VI, 1057.  Lampridius, "The Life of Alexander Severus", 68.  AE 2020, 116.  ICUR, vi. 15573.  CIL VI, 30517.  CIL XIII, 1130.  CIL VI, 23777.  CIL VIII, 292.  CIL XIII, 10010,2910b.  CAG, 59-2, pp. 132, 346.  CIL X, 8042,032.  CIL V, 8362.  CIL III, 337.  CIL VI, 36338.  BCTH, 1936/37, 114.  CIL XI, 6674,12.  CIL VI, 14585.  AE 1974, 585.  CIL XI, 4264.  CIL IX, 939.  CIL VI, 34783.  AE 2000, 351.  Epigraphica, 2000, 118–122.  CAG, 83-3, p. 349. Bibliography Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Aelius Lampridius, Aelius Spartianus, Flavius Vopiscus, Julius Capitolinus, Trebellius Pollio, and Vulcatius Gallicanus, Historia Augusta (Lives of the Emperors). 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). Bulletin Archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques (Archaeological Bulletin of the Committee on Historic and Scientific Works, abbreviated BCTH), Imprimerie Nationale, Paris (1885–1973). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (Christian Inscriptions from the City of Rome, abbreviated ICUR), New Series, Rome (1922–present). La Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Archaeological Map of Gaul, abbreviated CAG), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1931–present). Epigraphica, Rivista Italiana di Epigrafia (1939–present). Anthony R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius, B. T. Batsford, London (1966). Olli Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire, Societas Scientiarum Fenica, Helsinki (1992). Category: Roman gentes which would be your choice for a Grice/Speranza vignette from this gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Catilio – Ossia: Grice e Catilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Catilio. For a Grice/Speranza vignette, I would not choose the consul ancestor of Marcus Aurelius, important though he is. I would choose:  Lucius Catilius Severus Julianus Claudius Reginus, consul of AD 120, later urban prefect, who lost favor with Hadrian because he expressed disapproval of Hadrian's adoption of Antoninus Pius. Your entry explicitly says Hadrian removed him from office after he voiced that disapproval.  Why? Because this is a perfect case of conversational reason versus imperial power. The interesting question is:  What exactly did Catilius say?  We do not know. Yet a mere expression of disapproval had enormous consequences. That is pure Grice territory:  what was said, what was meant, what the emperor took it to mean, and what political consequences followed.   The Catilian Conversation Hadrian and Catilius Severus HADRIANVS  Antoninum adoptare constitui. ("I have decided to adopt Antoninus.")   CATILIVS  Consilium magnum est. ("It is a great decision.")   HADRIANVS  Laudasne? ("Do you approve?")   CATILIVS  Non omnes magna consilia magna esse existimant. ("Not everyone thinks great decisions are good decisions.")   HADRIANVS  Intellego. ("I understand.")   Gricean implicature Literally:  "Not everyone thinks great decisions are good decisions."  What is understood:  +> I do not approve. +> Your succession plan is mistaken. +> I oppose it.  Nothing explicit; everything inferred. Why not the potters? The potters, freedmen, Augustales, soldiers, and tomb-builders are epigraphically valuable, but they do not naturally generate conversational puzzles. Catilius Severus does. His case turns on something Grice loved:  the distance between an utterance and its uptake.  A ruler asks:  "Do you agree?"  A counselor says something cautious. The ruler hears:  "You oppose me."  And history changes. That is exactly the sort of "reason-governed conversational meaning" that Speranza would have delighted in extracting from a seemingly minor member of a Roman gens.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Catilio – Ossia: Grice e Catilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Catilio. A second possibility A much more Speranzian choice is the later  Catilius Severus, adviser to Alexander Severus,  described in your entry (following the Historia Augusta) as:  "the most learned of men."  That description alone almost demands a Grice dialogue. Alexander and Catilius ALEXANDER  Quid faciam? ("What shall I do?")   CATILIVS  Quid debes facere? ("What ought you to do?")   ALEXANDER  Hoc te interrogavi. ("That is what I asked you.")   CATILIVS  Et ego respondi. ("And I answered.")  The implicature:  practical questions often conceal normative ones.  Very Gricean.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cattaneo – Ossia: Grice e Cattaneo: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale longobarda -- Vico e la sapienza italiana – il dialetto milanese e il sostratto latino.  Carlo Cattaneo (Milano, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale longobarda -- Vico e la sapienza italiana – il dialetto milanese e il sostratto latino. A comparison between Grice and Carlo Cattaneo highlights a shared conception of reason as immanent in communicative practice rather than imposed from abstract formalism. Cattaneo, rooted in the Italian civic and linguistic tradition and deeply influenced by Vico, treats language as a historical, social, and semiotic phenomenon through which collective rationality expresses itself. His attention to dialects, pronunciation, and linguistic substrata reflects the idea that meaning is governed by inherited habits, social interaction, and pragmatic constraints rather than by prescriptive norms imposed from above, such as the Tuscan standard. In this respect, Cattaneo anticipates a pragmatic understanding of language: speakers communicate successfully not by adhering to an idealized system, but by navigating shared expectations shaped by history, community, and use. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning provides a formal philosophical counterpart to this view. Where Cattaneo emphasizes the social and historical rationality embedded in linguistic practice, Grice analyzes how conversational meaning depends on rational cooperation between speakers, allowing implicatures to arise from context, intention, and shared norms. Both resist purely semantic or syntactic reductions of meaning: for Cattaneo, language divorced from lived practice becomes sterile abstraction; for Grice, utterances stripped of conversational reasoning lose their communicative force. Their convergence lies in a vision of language as a rational activity unfolding between ego and alter ego, shaped by convention, inference, and social life—whether in the Milanese dialect resisting standardization or in the Gricean conversation where meaning emerges from what is said, what is implied, and what reason licenses interlocutors to understand. Grice: “I like C.; in fact, I LOVE C.; he is so much like me! I taught at Rossall, and he defended the the teaching in what the Italians (and indeed the ‘Dutch’) call the ‘gym’ not just of Grecian and Roman, but Hebrew. He famously claims to know Hebrew when he interviewed for a job as a librarian! He sees semiotics as the phenomenon the philosopher must consider when dealing with communication and explores semantics, and sintassi in connection with logic, and obviously, pragmatics. He is interested in comparing systems of communication in Homo sapiens sapiens and other species. Being an Italian, he is especially interested in how Roman becomes Latin. He opposes the Tuscany rule! Only a philosopher like C. can understand C.’s contributions to semiotics!”. Si laurea a Pavia. Insegna a Milano. umanita della cerchia di Monti. Conosce Franscini e Montani. Conosce Romagnosi all'assunto genio imitativo DELICATO, dall’organi vocali flessibili, e dall’abitudini passate in tradizione.  E più facile mutare il VOCABOLARIO dagl’italiani, dargli una nuova lingua, che mutare la sua pronuncia. Questa pronuncia sopravvive nei dialetti, anche dopo che le lingua è mutata. Ancora oggi la pronuncia e il dialetto segnano precisamente i confini della Gallia e della Carnia colla Venezia, la Toscana e la Liguria. VICO rinvenne  nelle radici latine le vestigia d'una antica sapienza italica e fa essendo a quei tempi ignota ancora  la scienza linguistica e non osservata la consonanza della lingua dei Romani col zendo e col sanscrito, Vico attribuì quella sapienza all’aborigeni dell'Italia, e perciò scrive il De antiqiiissima Italorum sapientia et latinae linguae originibus emenda, e correttamente! cinque giornate communita diada associazione contratto sociale conversazione psicologia psicologia, sociologia filosofica, ego e alter ego logica e lingua latino italiano di lombardia natale. G: Let us begin with the date, lest sentiment usurp chronology. In 1822 Cattaneo is twenty-one only after June, twenty before; in any case he is young enough to adore a master without yet having earned the right to contradict him elegantly. S: Or young enough to think contradiction itself a form of homage. G: Quite. And he is still before the laurea at Pavia, though already within its legal orbit, while not enjoying its legal comforts. S: Because Pavia, though a state university, is not gratis in the existential sense. G: Nothing is gratis in Italy except rhetoric. He cannot simply reside there and absorb law in the approved collegiate manner. So he remains tied to Milan, teaches, studies privately, and is instructed by Romagnosi, whose courses are explicitly recognised for the Pavia curriculum. A private tutor, then, but not a clandestine one. S: Semi-private legality. A tutorial relation with institutional blessing. Oxford would approve, provided the Italian did not become too public. G: Public he becomes in 1822, and very publicly by writing on the master’s Assunto primo della scienza del diritto naturale. I pause, as one should, over assunto. S: Yes. “Assunto” is deliciously unstable. It can be thesis, subject, undertaking, business, issue. Almost: “What’s the matter?” The title can sound both magisterial and faintly symptomatic. G: A science with an issue. S: Or an issue with scientific ambitions. G: Which brings us to the phrase scienza del diritto naturale. Jurists say such things with an ease that ought to make philosophers nervous. S: It does. Science of natural law. One hears at least three quarrels at once. First, is there a science here at all? Second, if so, of what sort? Third, what on earth is “natural” doing modifying something irreducibly normative? G: Peter Winch would later have had a very English fit over the whole thing. “The idea of a social science” is already hiding in the Italian title, in embryo and in wig. S: And not just social science. A science of right. Diritto, not merely facts about customs, but rightness, claim, norm, obligation. G: Exactly. A botanist may have a science of plants; but a jurist claiming a science of diritto seems either very bold or very inattentive to category distinctions. S: Unless “science” here is not your modern laboratory fetish but something closer to systematic, principled, rationally ordered knowledge. G: True, though that already weakens the triumphant tone. “Science” then means not physics, but disciplined doctrina. Still, the difficulty remains. If diritto naturale is normative, what is the naturae doing there? S: Historically, too much. In the old ius utrumque world, one could let natura lean quietly toward Deus. Canon law could afford that ease. Natura was not merely what happens, but what creation means. G: Whereas a rationalising modern such as Romagnosi, and a young admirer like Cattaneo, cannot quite let natural law mean divine handwriting in the cosmos. S: No. For them “natural” must become at once more modest and more dangerous. More modest because it is less overtly theological. More dangerous because now one must explain normativity without simply borrowing it from God. G: So natura becomes reason, history, society, human conditions, perhaps the structure of coexistence. S: Which is why the title matters philosophically even if it is not “philosophy” in the departmental sense. The jurist thinks he is writing jurisprudence; the philosopher hears a covert metaphysic of normativity. G: Or a covert naturalism trying to speak de iure without first confessing how badly de iure sits with natura. S: Young Cattaneo, meanwhile, is in the ideal condition for such a title to intoxicate him. He is not yet the mature anti-Tuscan polemicist, not yet the civic meteorologist of Lombard reason, but a precocious disciple under a powerful tutor, writing before the laurea, and probably delighted by the very gravity of the phrase. G: One should make the social picture explicit. He is not some leisurely adolescent dabbling in law from the family villa. He is studying under pressure, outside the full residential ease of Pavia, with Romagnosi as the living authority whose teaching counts academically and spiritually. S: The perfect circumstance for discipleship. One may call it apprenticeship if one is kind, patronage if one is realistic, and incipient ventriloquism if one is wicked. G: And one should not omit that the review appears in 1822, while Romagnosi is very much alive to enjoy, or supervise, the publicity. S: Which makes the whole thing less necrology than network. G: Now, on the scientia. Let us ask the crude question. Is there such a thing as a science of natural law? S: In one sense, no, because “science” suggests descriptive regularity, while “law” in the natural-law sense suggests prescription, validity, what ought to be acknowledged whether or not it is obeyed. G: Good. The geologist does not rebuke the stones. The jurist invariably rebukes someone. S: In another sense, yes, because one may seek a systematic rational account of the principles by which civil law ought to be judged, corrected, or grounded. G: But then the “science” is second-order. Not a science that discovers norms the way chemistry discovers elements, but a discipline that reconstructs the rational structure within normative life. S: Which is probably nearer Romagnosi’s ambition. He does not want a mystical jus floating in heaven. He wants a rational jurisprudence that can claim necessity without miracle. G: A dangerous wish. Necessity without theology is usually purchased at the price of equivocation. S: Or at the price of history. One says: these norms arise from the conditions of social life, association, reciprocity, coexistence. G: Then the “natural” means natural to human sociality rather than natural like rainfall. S: Yes, though the ambiguity remains useful. Jurists often survive by productive ambiguities that would make philosophers reach for disinfectant. G: They say scienza and mean disciplined inquiry. They say naturale and mean rationally grounded in human conditions. They say diritto and mean not merely enacted law but the claim of order upon action. S: Which is why a philosopher with naturalist ambitions should pay attention. Anyone wanting to explain de iure in terms of natura must sooner or later face exactly this unstable compound. G: Young Cattaneo’s review, then, is not philosophically trivial at all. It is jurisprudential in genre, but metaphysical in its aftertaste. S: And there is the further charm that the reviewer is younger than the title. A boy, almost, reviewing a “science” before his formal degree, speaking through the idiom of the master. G: A little too much through it, perhaps. S: Naturally. One does not review one’s private tutor’s book at twenty with Olympian independence. One reviews it with gratitude, awe, ambition, and a strong desire not to appear stupid. G: Or disloyal. S: Especially when the tutor’s courses are already validated by the curriculum that will one day credential you. Institutional recognition sharpens filial piety. G: So if one wanted the dry summary, it would be this. In 1822 the young Cattaneo, not yet laureato, economically constrained, studying in Milan under the privately given yet officially recognised instruction of Romagnosi for the Pavia law curriculum, writes on a book whose title already compresses a philosophical difficulty: how can there be a scienza of diritto naturale, if science suggests the order of nature and right suggests the order of norm? S: And the answer, if any, is not that the problem disappears, but that Romagnosi’s jurisprudence tries to inhabit the difficulty rather than evade it: neither canonical natura = Deus, nor crude positivism, but a rational-historical account of right still audacious enough to call itself science. G: Which is exactly the sort of thing to attract a young Cattaneo. S: And exactly the sort of thing to annoy us. G: Happily. Without annoyance, philosophy would collapse into jurisprudence. S: Or worse, into administration.Grice: Caro Cattaneo, devo confessarlo: il dialetto milanese mi diverte quasi quanto una battuta inglese! Ma tu, che difendi il sostratto latino contro il dominio toscano, sei un vero ribelle della linguistica. Cattaneo: Grice, ribelle sì, ma con stile! Preferisco una conversazione in milanese piuttosto che una discussione accademica a Firenze. E poi, da noi, persino la pronuncia diventa una questione filosofica: cambiare vocabolario è facile, cambiare accento è impossibile! Grice: Vico ne sarebbe fiero! Tra sapienza italica e semiotica, hai creato una vera conversazione longobarda: forse dovremmo istituire la "giornata internazionale della pronuncia resistente". Cattaneo: Ottima idea, Grice! E magari, tra una diada e un contratto sociale, potremmo offrire a tutti un corso accelerato di milanese, così almeno il mondo saprà che la sapienza italiana non si trova solo nei manuali, ma anche nella conversazione allegra tra amici. Cattaneo, Carlo (1822). Rassegna sull’assunto primo della scienza del diritto naturale di Romagnosi. Antologia

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cattaneo – Ossia: Grice e Cattaneo: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dello stratto.  Mario Alessandro Cattaneo (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dello stratto. A comparison between Grice and Mario Alessandro Cattaneo brings into relief two complementary ways of understanding how reason governs meaning in human communication, one analytic and one historically‑juridical. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning explains how speakers rely on shared rational expectations to convey more than they explicitly say, generating implicatures through intention, cooperation, and contextual inference. Cattaneo, working within the philosophy of law and political thought, approaches the same phenomenon from the side of tradition, narrative, and juridical culture: meaning is regulated by reason not only in the moment‑to‑moment exchange between speakers, but across layers of historical practice, literary form, and institutional life. Where Grice abstracts the logic of conversation into principles governing what counts as adequate, truthful, or proportionate contribution, Cattaneo shows how those principles are sedimented in legal language, civic discourse, and even literary figures such as Pinocchio, whose lies and consequences dramatize implicit norms of accountability. Both reject the idea that meaning can be reduced to formal semantics alone. For Grice, utterances require rationally interpretable intentions; for Cattaneo, legal and political language must be intelligible within a rational culture that distinguishes authority from mere power. Their convergence lies in a shared conviction that communication is a normative activity: speakers are answerable not only for what they state, but for what they allow others reasonably to infer. In this sense, Grice’s conversational implicature and Cattaneo’s layered juridical rationality describe the same phenomenon at different scales, from the logic of individual exchanges to the enduring conversation of law, literature, and civic reason. Grice: “I love C., but then you would, wouldn’t you? He reminds me of Hart, and then *I* am reminded that C. translated Hart to Italian as a pastime! Hart has to play brilliant: a continental is watching! C. is especially good in the study of Roman-Italian giurisprudenza, from CICERONE, Goldoni, Carrrara, and Manzoni, onwards! They don’t need no stinking Hart! What I like about C. is that instead of focusing on Roman law and CICERONE, he focuses on Pinocchio!”. Si laurea a Milano sotto Treves. Su consiglio di Bobbio soggiornato al St. Antony's, criticando Hart, professore di giurisprudenza, di cui su suggerimento di Bobbio e Entreves traduce Il concetto di legge. Insegna a Milano. evoluzione delle teorie sulla pena e le opere dei giuristi filosofia giuridica politica rivoluzione scienza del diritto positivismo giuridico partito politico olluminismo filosofia politica legislazione liberale giurisprudenza liberale filosofia del diritto delitto e pena stato di diritto stato totalitario dignità umana metafisica del diritto e ragione accademica giuridico critica filosofia del diritto penale libertà virtù persona giustizia umanesimo giuridico penale pena di morte e civiltà terrorismo arbitrio totalitarismo liberalismo penale pace perpetua, politica idolatria sociale umanesimo giuridico filosofia del diritto diritto e forza un delicato rapporto gius naturalismo dotta ignoranza  radice dell'Europa: la RAGIONE, studio filosofico-giuridico analisi della lingua scienza politica filosofia del diritto scienza del diritto positivismo giuridico separazione tra il diritto e la morale origine dello stato norma giuridica diritto pubblico diritto privato realismo giuridico civile giustizia economia politica logica idolo autorita legge scuola oxoniense di filosofia della lingua ordinario Austin giovedi notte sabato alla mattina. Hampshire neo-Trasimaco giustizia valore legale morale legge e morale priorita moralita legalita priorita evaluativa neo-socrate positivismo giuristi giurisprudenza Collodi Lorenzini Foscolo Perini Beccaria Colonna infame avvocatura ed implicatura. Grice: Caro Cattaneo, devo confessare – quando penso a te, non posso fare a meno di pensare a Hart. Ma, con tutto il rispetto per Hart, tu hai tradotto il suo concetto di legge in italiano come passatempo!  Cattaneo: Grice, mi fa sorridere! Tradurre Hart è stato divertente, ma non serve il genio inglese quando ci sono CICERONE e Pinocchio – che, tra l’altro, insegnano più diritto di molti manuali! Grice: Ah, Pinocchio come giurista mi piace! Magari la legge del naso lungo dovrebbe diventare norma universale contro le bugie in tribunale. Cattaneo: E magari, caro Grice, tra una legge e una favola, trova posto anche la ragione accademica – purché sia capace di sorridere, anche il sabato mattina! Cattaneo, Mario Alessandro (1964). Il partito politico nel pensiero dell’Illuminismo e della Rivoluzione francese. Milano: A. Giuffrè. Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di giurisprudenza, Università di Milano, Studi di filosofia del diritto.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cavalcanti – Ossia: Grice e Cavalcanti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale.  Bartolomeo Cavalcanti (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. A comparison between Grice and Bartolomeo Cavalcanti brings into focus a shared concern with how meaning in public discourse is governed by reason, intention, and ethical orientation, even though they work in different idioms and centuries. Cavalcanti, in the Retorica, treats conversation in well‑ordered republics as an arena where judgment (giudicio), persuasion, and moral responsibility converge: words matter not merely for their eloquence but for the good or harm they bring about when they guide collective decisions on peace, war, and civic life. For him, rhetoric is inseparable from virtue; the orator must be not only skilled in speaking but committed to persuading toward the common good, since eloquence driven by bad intention corrupts the very fabric of civic deliberation. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning abstracts and generalizes this civic insight into a philosophical account of communication: speakers are rational agents whose utterances are produced with reasons and addressed to other rational agents who infer intentions under shared norms of cooperation. What Cavalcanti frames as the moral obligation of the orator to persuade rightly, Grice frames as the expectation that contributions to conversation be interpretable as reasonable, truthful, relevant, and appropriately informative; when these expectations are strategically stretched, implicatures arise. In this sense, Cavalcanti’s emphasis on honest persuasion anticipates Grice’s insight that meaning is not exhausted by what is said but depends on intentions constrained by ethical and rational norms, and that conversation—whether in a Florentine republic or a Gricean model of dialogue—only works when speakers assume responsibility for how their words guide judgment beyond their literal content. Grice: “I like C.!”  A prominent humanist. While his Retorica is his most successful work, his other contributions include an essay on different types of republics political memoranda, orations to the Florentine militia, a critique of Speroni’s tragedy Canace, epistles to Vettori.  LA RETORICA dove si contiene tutto quello che appartiene all'arte oratoria. Eloquenza in tutti i tempi ha sommamente fiorito, dove esta CONVERSAZIONE alla GRICE d’uomini di giudicio. ma sopra tutto, ella ha gran luogo nelle bene ordinate Rep. Percio che dovendosi trattare alcuna materia o di pace o di guerra, pendendo il senato di qualsi voglia città, dal suo cittadino, che ha saputo meglio persuadere, ha seguito queltanto, che gli è stato persuaso è bene o male, che ne fia riuscito. E certo che l'esito delle cose che suole esser lodato d’ognuno, senza guardare i principi loro, non deefar l'oratore nè più ne meno lodato. Percioche l'oratore dee esser perito nel dire, ma molto più perito nel persuadere il bene, che quando l'eloquente con MALA INTENZIONE persuade non cosa utile all'universale, ma per sua sariffattione solamente, non merita nome d’eccellente oratore. Però diceno gl’antichi che l'oratore è uomo buono, ma perito nel dire: volendo inferire che senza la bontà l'eloquenza non vale. Di questa sorte è CICERONE  fra Romani, fra Romani uomo buono, difensore della libertà, e conservatore delle Republ. Nelle quali eßi nasce, di fendendo leda tirannia con ogni potere. Ed à questo fine da esso precetti l'uno taſciandole cofe fue ſcritte conmolto arteficio l'altro insegnandola viadi pervenire à quel colmo di gloria, che si può tra gli huomeni acquistare colla lingua. Ma àmepare, perquello, che ho senti totall'hora dagl’uomeni discorrere, che àtem pi nostri questa arte del dire sia stata molto ben dimostrata da C. in questa opera sua. Grice: Caro Cavalcanti, che piacere poter dialogare con lei! Ho letto con grande interesse la sua "Retorica" e l’ho trovata un vero esempio di arte oratoria, capace di illuminare il valore della conversazione nelle repubbliche ben ordinate. Cavalcanti: La ringrazio, professor Grice! Per me la conversazione non è solo uno strumento dell’eloquenza, ma un’arte che può promuovere il bene comune, purché guidata da chi persegue la virtù. Non a caso, come scrivo nella "Retorica", l’oratore dev’essere prima di tutto un uomo buono. Grice: Sono perfettamente d’accordo! Proprio nella conversazione si manifesta quell’implicatura che ci permette di andare oltre le parole per cogliere intenzioni e valori. Lei crede che oggi, come ai vostri tempi fiorentini, si possa ancora insegnare questa bontà attraverso il dialogo? Cavalcanti: Credo di sì, caro Grice. La buona conversazione resta il cuore della vita civile, tanto allora quanto oggi. Sta a noi, filosofi e uomini di giudizio, mostrare con l’esempio che l’eloquenza senza onestà non serve al bene, mentre la parola onesta può davvero guidare i popoli verso la libertà. Cavalcanti, Bartolomeo (1547). Dialoghi sopra i proverbi toscani. Firenze: Giunti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cavalcanti – Ossia: Grice e Cavalcanti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sìnolo degl’amanti.  Guido Cavalcanti (Firenze, Toscana): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sìnolo degl’amanti. Guido Cavalcanti and H. P. Grice offer sharply contrasting but unexpectedly complementary accounts of reason-governed meaning: where Grice develops a theory of conversational meaning grounded in rational cooperation, intentions, and calculable implicature, Cavalcanti articulates a poetics and proto-philosophy of love in which reason remains present but is overwhelmed, displaced, or sidelined by eros within the sinolo, the Aristotelian composite of body and soul, of the lovers. Cavalcanti’s doctrine of love, especially in Donna me prega, treats love as a quasi-pathological force that disables ordinary rational functions such as eating, sleeping, and deliberation, resulting in a catastrophic convergence of two entelechies whose encounter produces not harmony but existential disintegration; meaning, in this context, is not inferentially calculated but emerges obliquely, through symptoms, silences, and poetic excess, functioning as what one might call an implicature of the lovers’ condition rather than its explicit content. Grice, by contrast, insists that conversational meaning is governed by rational norms shared by participants who treat talk as a cooperative enterprise, where even departures from literal sense are intelligible because they are guided by reason and recognizable intention; implicature, for Grice, is not a loss of rationality but its highest expression. The contrast is thus not between reason and non-reason, but between reason as regulator and reason as casualty: in Grice, eros is at most a topic within conversation, still subject to maxims and inference, whereas in Cavalcanti eros collapses the very conditions that make Gricean conversational rationality possible, turning lived love into a field where meaning persists, but only as a fragile, dangerous residue of a rationality that has momentarily gone on leave. Grice: “I like C.i; he thinks he is lizio, but he is surely accademico – therefore, obsessed with ‘eros,’ or ‘amore,’ as the Italians call it – Like ALIGHIERI’s, his philosophy of ‘eros’ is confused, but interesting!”. A lui e promessa in sposa la figlia di Farinata degli Uberti, capo della fazione ghibellina, dalla quale Guido ha i figli Andrea e Tancia. E tra i firmatari della pace tra guelfi e ghibellini nel Consiglio generale al Comune di Firenze insieme a Latini e Compagni. A questo punto avrebbe intrapreso un pellegrinaggio -- alquanto misterioso, se si considera la sua infamia di ateo e miscredente! Muscia, comunque, ne dà un'importante testimonianza attraverso un sonetto.  Alighieri, priore di Firenze, fu costretto a mandare in esilio l'amico, nonché maestro, con i capi delle fazioni bianca e nera in seguito a nuovi scontri. Si reca allora a Sarzana. “Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai” e composto durante l'esilio. La condanna e revocata per l'aggravarsi delle sue condizioni di salute. Muore a causa della malaria contratta durante l'esilio forzato d’Alighieri.È ricordato oltre che per i suoi componimentiper essere stato citato da Dante (del quale fu amico assieme a Gianni) nel celebre sonetto delle Rime C., i' vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io (al quale Guido rispose con un altro, mirabile, ancorché meno conosciuto, sonetto, che ben esprime l'intenso e difficile rapporto tra i due amici, “S’io fosse quelli che d'amor fu degno”. Alighieri, remmorso, lo ricorda anche nella Divina Commedia e nel De vulgari eloquentia, mentre BOCCACCIO lo cita nel Commento ad Alighieri e nel Decameron.  La sua personalità, aristocraticamente sdegnosa, emerge dal ricordo che ne hanno lasciato gli filosofi contemporanei, Compagni, Villani, Boccaccio e Sacchetti. lo sviluppo della teoria dell’amore lizio morte anima vegetativa(l’amante non mangia non dorme animo e corpo entelechia sinolo perfetto due sinola sin holos incontro disastroso di due entellechie. Grice: Cavalcanti, dicono che nei tuoi versi l’amore sia una malattia peggiore della malaria. Ma dimmi, è vero che il vero filosofo si riconosce dal fatto che non dorme né mangia per amore? Cavalcanti: Caro Grice, se l’amore non ti fa perdere il sonno, forse stai solo leggendo un trattato e non vivendo un sentimento! Nel sinolo degli amanti l’anima si dimentica pure di essere razionale. Grice: Ma allora la ragione, in questa faccenda, serve solo per scegliere se sospirare alla finestra o passeggiare nel chiostro? Cavalcanti: La ragione, caro amico, serve a poco quando l’entelechia decide di andare in vacanza! Meglio un bel sonetto d’amore che una notte insonne a calcolare implicature. Cavalcanti, Guido (1552). Rime. Firenze: Giunti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cavallo – Ossia: Grice e Cavallo:  la ragione conversazionale el’implicatura conversazionale di Frankenstein, homo electricus – la morte di Fedro – fulminated by one of Giove’s lightnings – elettrico. Grice: “I love C., and so did most of the members of the Royal Society!  Tiberio Cavallo (Napoli, Campania):  la ragione conversazionale el’implicatura conversazionale di Frankenstein, homo electricus – The comparison between H. P. Grice and Tiberio Cavallo brings out two complementary but sharply different conceptions of reason-governed meaning, one logical–pragmatic and the other experimental–naturalistic. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning treats reason as the normative regulator of communication: speakers and hearers are rational agents who coordinate their intentions under shared maxims, so that even departures from literal meaning — conversational implicatures — remain intelligible, stable, and calculable within a cooperative framework. Cavallo, by contrast, operates in the domain of natural philosophy, where meaning often emerges not from intentions but from forces, effects, and observable phenomena: electricity, magnetism, air, gas, shock, and motion. In Cavallo’s Frankenstein-like homo electricus, the “implicature” is not inferred by rational cooperation but produced by material causation — sparks, currents, jumps, shocks, and ascents — so that agency appears distributed between human experimenter, instrument, and physical medium. Where Grice insists that implicature presupposes rational control and communicative responsibility, Cavallo shows how effects can exceed intention, with electricity animating frogs, lifting balloons, or metaphorically reviving bodies, leaving interpretation to follow after the fact. The contrast is thus between implicature as reason-governed inference (Grice) and implicature as experimentally revealed surplus of meaning generated by nature itself (Cavallo): in Grice, rationality disciplines meaning so it does not “short-circuit,” while in Cavallo, meaning travels like an electric current, carried by air, gas, and apparatus, sometimes illuminating understanding, sometimes startling it, but always reminding philosophy that not all significance is produced by conversation alone. -- la morte di Fedro – fulminated by one of Giove’s lightnings – elettrico. Grice: “I love C., and so did most of the members of the Royal Society! C. wasn’t strictly onto mythology, but the Italians on the whole are: the Elettridi are a couple of islands off the mouth of the shore where Fetonte fell – due to … electricity, as C. called it – C. is what at Oxford we would call a ‘natural philosoophy’ – for which there was once a chair – it’s very odd that it’s the chair in transnatural or ‘metaphysical’ philosophy that still sub-sists, as Heidegger would put it! By using ‘elettricita’ in the feminine abstract, Strawson criticsed C. – but Strawson criticised most!” Trattatista d’elettricità medicale e magnetismo, compe studi relativi ai gas e all'influenza dell'aria e della luce sulla biologia. Propone apparecchi elettrostatici di misura. Intue volare con palloni aerostatici. Costrue l’elettroscopio. Ideatore di esperimenti, inventore e realizzatore di strumenti di precisione e di apparati sperimentali, anche su commessa, trattatista valutato per chiarezza, sistematicità e completezza. aeronautica idrogeno gas portante. capacità ascensionali con bolle di sapone riempite d’idrogeno che salivano in verticale, trova un involucro leggero da sollevarsi una volta riempito di gas. Fisica chimica. Intue volo aerostatico con un pallone ripieno di gas leggero; servendosi di bolle di sapone gonfiate con idrogeno arie volo in mongolfiera. Inventa il moltiplicatore. Sviluppa un elettrometro tascabile che amplifica una piccole cariche elettriche e la rende osservabili e misurabili col elettroscopio protetto dalle correnti d'aria d’un involucro di vetro refrigerazione evaporazione di liquidi volatile proprietà fisiche dell’arie o dei gas aria infiammabile gassoso natura le proprietà dell'aria discute sia la teoria del flogisto citato da Grice Actions and events che le opinioni contrastanti. Alla Royal Society presenta il primo tentativo di sollevare in aria un palloncino pieno di idrogeno. Aerostazione filosofia naturale, filosofia trans-naturale, la rana ambigua. Grice: Cavallo, mi dica, è vero che fu l'elettricità a dare la prima scossa a Frankenstein? O la storia la racconta troppo alla napoletana? Cavallo: Grice, sa bene che a Napoli anche l’aria ha sempre un po’ di corrente! Se Frankenstein fosse passato dalle mie bolle d’idrogeno, sarebbe volato, altro che fulmine! Grice: E la Royal Society? Dicono che lei abbia fatto volare persino la rana, ma i filosofi inglesi si chiedono se fosse davvero una rana o solo una metafora in mongolfiera. Cavallo: Grice, tra metafore e mongolfiere, io preferisco un pallone ben gonfiato; almeno lì, l’implicatura non si sgonfia mai! E se la rana salta, va dove la corrente la porta. Cavallo, Tiberio (1779). Trattato sull’elettricità. Londra: Johnson.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cavazzoni – Ossia: Grice e Cavazzoni: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazinale della forza viva.  Francesco Maria Zanotti Cavazzoni (Bologna, Emilia): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazinale della forza viva. The comparison between H. P. Grice and Francesco Maria Zanotti Cavazzoni highlights two allied but differently inflected traditions of reason-governed meaning, one reconstructive and pragmatic, the other metaphysical and polemical. Grice conceives conversational meaning as emerging from rational cooperation among speakers, governed by shared maxims that allow implicatures to be inferred without ambiguity or metaphysical excess; reason here functions as a regulative principle that keeps meaning intelligible, economical, and publicly negotiable. Cavazzoni, working in Bologna on questions of forza viva and the power of the intellect, likewise treats reason as an active, dynamic principle, but situates it within a broader philosophical struggle against sensism and the passive attraction of ideas, emphasizing instead the vital force of intellectual activity itself. Where Grice’s implicatures arise from deliberate restraint and rational calculation within conversation, Cavazzoni’s “conversational” force is closer to an intellectual energia that animates discourse, satire, moral argument, and polemic, ensuring that ideas do not merely impress the senses but are actively judged, resisted, or endorsed by reason. Both reject the notion that meaning is a mere mechanical effect—whether of sensation or of words—but Grice translates this insight into a precise pragmatic architecture, while Cavazzoni stages it as a philosophical defense of the living power of intellect, a force viva that sustains rational discourse even when polemical color, wit, or multicolored cravatte threaten to distract from the seriousness of thought. Grice: “Italian philosophers should start by learning the alphabet –  C. is listed under the C. Not confusing!” Studia a Bologna. Insegna a Bologna. Tra le opere da ricordarsi una particolare satira contro il sensismo, la forza attrattiva delle idee, trattati di filosofia morale. Umberto Zanotti C. Umberto, membro eminente della famiglia, si è distinto per le sue doti sportive, artistiche e linguistiche. Oltre ad aver diffuso l'uso della "cravatta multicolore" in Svizzera, è fondatore del club calcistico Aintrac Stubli, pluri-premiata squadra del campetto della Piruetta. Dopo essersi distinto in campo sportivo, ha intrapreso la diffusione del verbo linguacciare, apprezzatissima parola negli ambienti aristocratici del tempo e introdotta poco dopo nel dizionario italiano. Da Cervia al Brasile Il fratello di Eustachio, Guido Zanotti C. ha tre figli tra cui Luigi, medico e padre di Alfeo, al quale si deve il trasferimento della famiglia a Cervia. Uno dei figli di Alfeo, chiamato Luigi come il nonno da Cervia tornò a studiare a Bologna per laurearsi in medicina con specializzazione fcritto, e ufeito al pubblico , non è pun- to contrario alla Religione ? Che non può parer ta- le a niun dotto uomo ? Che non può parer tale a riuno ignorante ? Ed effondo pur tale a voi paru- to , vedete, a che mi avete (fretto; vedete, a qual confeguenza avete voi fteffo voluto efporvi. Nè ho lafciato però iifpondendovi , di aver riguardo, quanto ho potuto, alla gloria del voftro nome. Notivi ho levata la lode di fcrittor predo, e copiofo,non quella di conofcitore di molte lingue , non quella di erudito in ogni maniera di antichità; ho dimo- iato (blamente , che giudicando d’ alcun mio libro, mancafte alla ragione, ed a voi fteffo . E quello an- cora ho fatto con mio grandifiìmo rincrefcimento , nè ho creduto di poter tanto difpiacere a voi , che non difpiacefli maggiormente a me medefimo . Vo- glia Iddio , che fìa quella più toflo J’ ultima volta eh’ io ferivo , che mai permettere , eh’ io fia moledo a veruno ferivendo. Francesco Maria e tutti i Cavazzoni forza viva. Grice: Cavazzoni, mi dica, la sua forza viva è più potente di un buon caffè bolognese, oppure basta un’idea brillante per mettere in moto tutto? Cavazzoni: Caro Grice, a Bologna preferiamo mischiare entrambe: un caffè forte e un pensiero vivace, così non si rischia mai di addormentarsi sul trattato! Grice: E la cravatta multicolore, la indossa quando deve affrontare i filosofi sensisti? O serve solo per le partite dell’Aintrac Stubli? Cavazzoni: Grice, la cravatta è indispensabile in ogni battaglia: sia contro il sensismo sia sul campo della Piruetta. E se la ragione vacilla, almeno i colori mettono allegria! Cavazzoni, Francesco Maria Zanotti (1728). Della forza dell’intelletto umano. Venezia: Pasquali.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cavour – Ossia: Grice e Cavour: implicatura conversazionale e ragione conversazionale.  Camilo Benso, conte di Cavour (Torino, Piemonte): implicatura conversazionale e ragione conversazionale. The comparison between H. P. Grice and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, brings Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning into dialogue with statesmanship as a practical art of public implication. Grice conceives conversational rationality as operating through shared norms that allow speakers to mean more than they say without deception, relying on mutual recognition, restraint, and calculability; implicature works because interlocutors assume reasonableness and cooperation. Cavour’s political practice exemplifies this logic outside philosophy: his diplomacy, parliamentary speech, and reformist rhetoric consistently relied on saying just enough to enable others to draw the intended conclusion, whether persuading foreign powers that Italy was more than a “geographical expression” or guiding domestic elites toward liberal modernization without provoking collapse. Where Grice theorizes the maxims that make such meaning-transfer intelligible, Cavour enacts them historically, using understatement, strategic silence, and controlled ambiguity as tools of rational persuasion. Both reject brute force or mere emotional appeal in favor of a conversational model in which progress depends on shared rational expectations, whether among speakers at Oxford or ministers in Turin; the difference is that Grice offers the analytical framework, while Cavour demonstrates, at the level of political history, how reasoned implicature can quite literally make a nation speak itself into being. Grice: “I lke C.!”  Filosofo, politico, patriota e imprenditore italiano.  Fu ministro del Regno di Sardegna dal 1850 al 1852, presidente del Consiglio dei ministri dal 1852 al 1859 e dal 1860 al 1861. Nello stesso 1861, con la proclamazione del Regno d'Italia, divenne il primo presidente del Consiglio dei ministri del nuovo Stato e morì ricoprendo tale carica.  Fu protagonista del Risorgimento come sostenitore delle idee liberali, del progresso civile ed economico, della separazione tra Stato Unlimited. Opere di Camillo Benso, conte di C., su Open Library, Internet Archive. Opere riguardanti Camillo Benso, conte di C., su Open Library, Internet Archive. Camillo Benso, conte di C., su Goodreads. Camillo C. (Benso Di), su storia.camera.it, Camera dei deputati. Modifica su Wikidata Camillo Benso, conte di C., in Archivio storico Ricordi, Ricordi et C.. Riccardo Faucci, C., Camillo Benso conte di, in Il contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero: Economia, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, . Fondazione C. di Santena, su fondazioneC..it. Associazione degli amici della Fondazione C., su camilloC..com. Portale Biografie  Portale Politica  Portale Risorgimento Guerre d'indipendenza italiane insieme di tre conflitti Alleanza sardo-francese alleanza tra Regno di Sardegna e Secondo Impero francese Benso (famiglia) famiglia nobiliare italiana. Grice: Mi permetta, Cavour, di confessare che non conosco nessuno a Vadum Boum, la celebre Oxford – figuriamoci in Inghilterra! – che non sostenga con entusiasmo il Suo impegno per l’unificazione di quella che, un tempo, era solo una “espressione geografica”. Ah, la bella Italia: tutti siamo affascinati dal Suo sogno! Cavour: La ringrazio, professor Grice, per queste parole gentili. L’unità d’Italia è stata la mia più grande aspirazione: credevo fermamente che, oltre la geografia, ci potesse essere una vera nazione, libera e moderna. Il sostegno degli amici inglesi è stato prezioso, soprattutto nei momenti difficili. Grice: Ho sempre ammirato il Suo modo di portare avanti ragione e conversazione, conte. La Sua implicatura conversazionale non solo ha convinto i parlamentari, ma ha ispirato filosofi e pensatori. In Inghilterra spesso diciamo: “Se l’Italia è bella, è merito di Cavour!” Cavour: Che bello sentirlo! La conversazione, come Lei insegna, è la chiave del progresso civile. Io ho creduto nella libertà e nel dialogo, perché solo così si possono vincere le resistenze e costruire un futuro. Grazie, professor Grice: insieme, ragione e amicizia fanno la storia. Cavour, Camillo Benso, conte di (1846). Sulla ferrovia da Torino a Genova. Torino: Stamperia Reale.

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cazio – Ossia: Grice e Cazio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Cazio. The Cazii are a  family at Rome from the time of the Second Punic War to the third century AD. The gens achieved little importance during the Republic, but held several consulships in imperial times. The Catii may have been of Vestinian origin; Gaius C., who served under Marcus Antonius, is said to have belonged to this ancient race.[1] However, members of the family were already at Rome by the time of the Second Punic War, when Quintus C. was plebeian aedile.[2] The philosopher C. was an Insuber, a native of Gallia Transpadana, and may have been a freedman of the gens, or perhaps his name arose by coincidence.[3] The nomen C. itself may perhaps be related to a Roman divinity of that name, invoked for the purpose of granting children thoughtfulness and prudence.[3] The nomen Cattius, found in imperial times, may be a variation. Quintus Catius, plebeian aedile in 210 BC, served in the Second Punic War.[2] Gaius C., tribunus militum in the army of Marcus Antonius, in 43 BC.[1] C., an Epicurean philosopher, thought to have been an Insubrian Gaul; he may have been a freedman of the gens.[5][6][3] Catia, mentioned by the poet Horatius.[7] C. Crispus, mentioned by the elder Seneca.[8] Tiberius C. Asconius Silius Italicus, an epic poet, and consul in AD 68, at the end of Nero's reign.[9][10][11] Tiberius Catius Caesius Fronto, the son or adopted son of Silius Italicus, was consul suffectus ex Kal. Sept. in AD 96, shortly before the assassination of the emperor Domitian; he is supposed to be the same as the orator Catius Fronto, a contemporary of Vespasian, who defended Marius Priscus, Gaius Julius Bassus, and Varenus Rufus.[i][12][13][11] Catius Lepidus, a friend of the younger Pliny.[14] Catius Marcellus, consul suffectus in AD 153.[4] Publius Catius Sabinus, consul in AD 216, during the reign of Caracalla; this was his second consulship, but the year of his first is not known.[10][15][4] Sextus Catius Clementinus Priscillianus, consul in AD 230, under Severus Alexander.[10][4] Gaius Catius Clemens, possibly a brother of Priscillianus, was consul suffectus, probably around AD 235.[4] Lucius Catius Celer, possibly a brother of Priscillianus, was an imperial legate in the time of Gordian III. He had previously been consul suffectus, probably around AD 241.[10][4] Catia Clementina, according to an inscription, the wife of Iallius Bassus, and mother of Iallia Clementina.[16] Footnotes  Niebuhr, in his Life of Cornelius Fronto, supposes him to be the same Fronto spoken of by Juvenal, who owned the house of the poet Horatius. See also List of Roman gentes References  Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, x. 23.  Livy, xxvii. 6, 43, xxviii. 45.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 634 ("Catius").  Mennen, pp. 69, 93–95, 133.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, xv. 16.  Quintilian, x. 1. § 24.  Horace, Satirae, 1, 2, 95 sq.  Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae, 2, 16.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 824 ("C. Silius Italicus").  PIR, vol. I, p. 321.  Grainger, pp. 7–11.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, ii. 11, iv. 9, vi. 13.  PIR, vol. i. p. 320.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, 4, 7.  Corpus Juris Civilis, 2. tit. 19. s. 7; 9. tit. 32. s. 3, et alibi.  PIR, vol. i. p. 323. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Satirae (Satires). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Elder), Suasoriae (Rhetorical Exercises). Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (Quintilian), Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory). Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). John D. Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis, A.D. 96-99, Psychology Press (2004). Inge Mennen, Power and Status in the Roman Empire, AD 193–284, Brill (2011). Categories: Roman gentesCatii

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cazio – Ossia: Grice e Cazio: l’orto a Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Catius insuber. Member of the Garden. He wrote four books in which he set out the school’s teachings on the nature of the universe and the most important hings in life. The books were aimed at making the teachings available and accessible to a wide audience. Cazio (Roma): The comparison between H. P. Grice and Catius (Cazio) brings into focus two very different but structurally related ways of connecting meaning, everyday practice, and rational control. Grice’s theory of conversational meaning places reason at the center of communication: what a speaker means is governed by intentions constrained by shared norms, so that implicatures arise through rational inference rather than accident, appetite, or tone alone. Catius, as presented by Horace, looks at first glance like the opposite case: a philosopher of the Epicurean Garden whose teaching is filtered through talk of food, dinners, and bodily pleasure, to the point that doctrine seems reduced to gastronomy. Yet this contrast is deceptive. Catius’s culinary idiom functions as a deliberate vehicle for public instruction, translating abstract Epicurean claims about nature, fear, and the good life into a register accessible to ordinary Romans; food talk is not the message but the medium. In Gricean terms, the literal content concerns patinae and vegetables, while the implicature points to vivere suaviter without superstition or terror. Where Grice theorizes how rational hearers recover intended meaning beneath pragmatic surface departures, Catius exemplifies an early, cultural instance of that mechanism at work: philosophy survives as reason-governed meaning precisely by embedding itself in familiar, even trivial discourse. The difference is that Grice abstracts and formalizes the logic of implicature, while Catius enacts it pedagogically, showing how reason can govern meaning even when conversation appears dominated by appetite rather than argument. He is presented by Orazio as something of a philosophica dilettante obsessed with food. Cazio. Grice, pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, “Grice e Cazio,”  Cazio: l’orto a Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Catius insuber. Member of the Garden. He wrote four books in which he set out the school’s teachings on the nature of the universe and the most important hings in life. The books were aimed at making the teachings available and accessible to a wide audience. Cazio insallubre. Catius insuber. GRICEVS: Cati, si in Horto Epicuri quattuor libros de rerum natura scribis, cur Horatius te pingit quasi philosophum qui plus de patinis quam de particulis cogitet? CATIVS: Quia, Grice, apud Romanos ventrem saepe pro argumento habent, et si de summo bono loquor, statim rogant utrum salsamentum an olus laudaverim. GRICEVS: At tamen, cum doctrinam vulgo reddere velis, fortasse “cibus” est tantum vehiculum, et vera implicatura est: vivere suaviter, sed sine supervacuo timore. CATIVS: Recte; et si quis me insalubrem vocat, respondeo: non ego morbum colo, sed desiderium publico appono—ut omnes intellegant philosophiam etiam in cena bene coqui. Cazio  (a. u. c.. DCCX–DCCXX). De rerum natura et vitae praeceptis (libri, ex Horatii Saturis). Roma

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cazzaniga – Ossia: Grice e Cazzaniga: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’iniziazione – You only get first penetrated once – BACCHANALIUM. Gian Mario Cazzaniga (Torino, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’iniziazione – A comparison between H. P. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning and Gian Mario Cazzaniga’s reflections on initiation, ritual, and symbolic social bonds brings into view two complementary conceptions of how meaning is generated and stabilized through human interaction. For Grice, conversational meaning is governed by rational cooperation: implicatures arise when speakers intentionally flout or exploit shared maxims, relying on mutual recognition of communicative intentions within a framework of practical reason and individual agency. Meaning, in this sense, is inseparable from the rational accountability of speakers who orient themselves toward a common conversational good. Cazzaniga, by contrast, approaches communicative meaning less from the standpoint of individual rational calculation and more from the perspective of symbolic incorporation into shared forms of life—rituals, initiations, and “chains of union” that bind individuals into durable circles of recognition and fraternity. Drawing on historical analyses of Freemasonry, esotericism, and modern political symbolism, Cazzaniga treats initiation as a once‑only passage that confers membership in a communicative and ethical community whose meanings are sustained by gestures (the handshake), repetition, and symbolic continuity rather than by explicit propositional exchange. Where Grice insists that conversational implicature presupposes autonomous individuals coordinating through reason, Cazzaniga implicitly challenges strict individualism by emphasizing that communicative significance often precedes and exceeds explicit intention, being anchored instead in inherited symbolic structures that organize trust, solidarity, and authority. The contrast thus mirrors a broader tension between Anglo‑analytic pragmatics, with its focus on rational agents and inferential norms, and a continental, historically grounded account of meaning as emerging from ritualized social practices that make conversation possible in the first place. You only get first penetrated once – BACCHANALIUM. Grice: “I like C. – he shows that latitdunial unity is not a myth! He has researched on Cocconato – and he has seriously spoken of the ‘catene d’unione’ – the handshake – which is crosses the longitudinal and latitudinal unities – consider Thatcher: “There’s no such thing as societies; only individuals! The ‘catene d’unione’ is represented most easily by a handshake, but this is in a catena usually a circle – need it be a close circle? It should be! Perhaps Austin and the Play Group formed such a circle!” Si laurea a Pisa sotto Massolo. Insegna a Pisa. Quaderno Rosso. Il potere operaio. Funzione e conflitto. Forme e classi nella teoria marxista dello sviluppo, Napoli, Liguori); La religione dei moderni; Metamorfosi della sovranità: fra stati nazionali e ordinamenti giuridici mondiali. Società geografica italiana, La democrazia come sistema simbolico "Belfagor”; Le Muse in loggia. Massoneria e letteratura nel Settecento Storia d'Italia. Annali: La Massoneria, Torino, Einaudi) Storia d'Italia. Annali 25: Esoterismo, Massoneria e letteratura: Dalla 'République des lettres' alla lettera- tura nazionale,” in Le muse in Loggia, ed. C. et al. (Milan: Unicopli), C., “Origine ed evoluzione dei rituali carbonari italiani,” in C., La Massoneria, Chi anche in questa fine di millennio continua a nutrire interesse per la storia delle vicende umane, per la storia delle idee e dei tentativi messi in atto per concretarle - soprattutto se le idee in questione sono quelle di libertà, fraternità, uguaglianza - trova in libreria un testo di sicuro interesse: “La religione dei moderni”. Convinto con Eraclito che per trovare oro è necessario scavare molta terra, C. ha dissodato a fondo un terreno a prima vista assai ingrato: l'arcipelago multiforme e delirante della massoneria rito di passage, solo una volta, l’iniziazione, massoneria, esoterismo, democrazia come sistema simbolico, sovranita, stato nazionale, conflitto, liberta, fraternita, iguaglianza. G: Quaderni Rossi. There is honesty in the title. No one pretends the notebooks are mauve. S: Or Oxford rose. Still less the shade a dean calls “balanced.” G: Precisely. Rossi there is political before it is chromatic. It means red in the hard, organised, twentieth-century sense: labour, socialism, communism, operaismo, and all the shades of quarrel inside the left that remain red while denouncing one another as insufficiently so. S: Whereas pinko, in the Gricean-Oxonian mouth, is not red but red after laundering. G: Pinko is red with too much college linen in it. One is accused of pinkness when one has leftward tendencies without revolutionary housekeeping. S: Or when one can be trusted to sign the petition but not seize the station. G: Exactly. Pinko is a social diagnosis, not a party label. It means one is infected with the left in a drawing-room dilution. S: So Quaderni Rossi is not “Pink Notebooks.” G: God no. It is Red Notebooks, and the plural carries force. Not one notebook in a moment of rashness, but a series, a line, a project. S: And why red? Why, among all colours, did the political left help itself to red as if nature had prepared it for them? G: History, theatre, and blood. The short answer is the revolutionary nineteenth century, above all the European workers’ movement, the revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, and later the socialist and communist adoption of the red flag as the emblem of labour, struggle, and sacrifice. Then the Soviet flag gives the thing global bureaucratic durability. Red becomes no longer a metaphor but an administrative colour. S: The Internationale sings it better than lexicography could. No one inherited political red from Lucretius and his very rare russus. G: Quite. Lewis and Short is innocent here. Political red does not descend from the entry russus, a, um, “very rare.” It descends from barricades, banners, and dead workers. S: And from the comic convenience that blood is already red, so martyrdom requires no recolouring. G: Indeed. A movement likes a colour that can be moralised quickly. Black may be elegant, blue may be official, white may be dynastic, but red arrives with its own pathology and its own romance. S: Rosa, of course, is another matter. G: Entirely. In Italian, rosso is red and politically strong. Rosa is the flower and then pink; politically it is weaker, moderated, less immediate, often later and more ironic. One can speak of a left becoming rosata, watered down, social-democratised, salonfähig. S: So pinko in English is nearer rosato than rosso. G: Roughly, yes. Not perfectly, but near enough for practical mockery. Pinko is what happens when red is mixed with enough white to become socially tolerable in college. S: White, in this context, being not merely chromatic but institutional. G: Linen, silver, and inherited income. S: And “rose”? Grice notices rose because of romance, naturally; and because English likes to call a softened red “rose” when it wants sentiment rather than doctrine. G: Yes, but one must separate the floral from the political. Rose in French politics can do some of the work of moderate socialism. In English, pink and pinko take more of the satirical burden. In Italian, rosso remains the proper old political word; rosa is possible, but less native to the old communist register, more suggestive of moderation or later branding. S: And then there is the philology, which insists on disturbing the politics. G: Happily. Rosso, with its double s, feels hard, compact, and political. Rosa is softer, open, floral. Rosato is already adjectival, diluted, modified, a thing with milk in it. S: You make colours sound like classes. G: The Italians have helped. Quaderni Rossi could not have been Quaderni Rosati without ceasing to be itself. S: Or becoming a magazine of parliamentary refinement. G: Precisely. Quaderni Rossi says: factory, conflict, worker inquiry, operaismo, Panzieri, Tronti, and the refusal of pastel. S: And Cazzaniga? G: An interesting case because in 1962 he is very young indeed. Born in 1942, so twenty at most, and already within that red orbit. The safest formulation is that Gian Mario Cazzaniga was active with Quaderni Rossi in the 1962–1966 period, and the 1962 issue is number 2. [it.wikipedia.org], [archive.org], [biblioteca...obianco.it] S: But your “intervento” for 1962? G: There I should be cautious. I can support the general affiliation and the existence of the 1962 second issue of Quaderni Rossi, and I can support that Cazzaniga is associated with the review in those years. But I do not have a clean bibliographic confirmation, from what I have seen, of the exact title or page reference of a 1962 piece by him simply called “Intervento.” So one should say no more than the evidence warrants. [it.wikipedia.org], [archive.org], [biblioteca...obianco.it] S: A pity. “Intervento” would have been a superbly red title: not article, not essay, but intervention. G: Which is why it is believable, and therefore dangerous. Historians are often seduced by plausible nouns. S: Let us return to red. Why did communists choose it “as a matter of course”? G: Because by the twentieth century it had already become the course. Once the red flag had been fixed by socialist and communist symbolism, choosing red no longer felt like choosing. It felt like reporting a political fact in colour. S: Tradition disguised as inevitability. G: Exactly. The best ideology always naturalises its own conventions. Red ceased to look chosen and began to look necessary. S: So Quaderni Rossi is not merely descriptive but affiliative. G: Yes. The title says: we write from within the red tradition, but in a specific internal key — workerist, investigatory, factory-centred, suspicious of party complacency. S: Whereas Grice’s pinko Oxford is an enemy’s or friend’s teasing description of a milieu. G: A milieu, yes: left-leaning, perhaps self-righteous, certainly not storming the Winter Palace from Balliol. S: One petitions, one publishes, one sympathises, one does not seize the Bodleian. G: Or only metaphorically. S: And Italian slang equivalents? G: Rosso is the plain hard term. Comunista if one wants doctrinal precision. Estrema sinistra for placement. Rosato suggests softened left, moderate reformism, or left tinted by accommodation. Progressista is broader and less chromatic: one may be progressista without being rosso. Riformista drifts further from red into parliamentary hygiene. Radicale is a different family again. Sinistra bene, if one is malicious, is what pinko becomes when translated into sociological Italian. S: And liberal? G: Not red at all in the old continental sense. Indeed often the anti-red respectability against which red defines itself. One of the enduring jokes is that English-speaking readers hear “liberal” and imagine a little pinkness, whereas older Italian political ears hear something much less proletarian. S: So if one had to place them on a wash-scale: rosso, then rosato, then pinko? G: More or less. Though pinko includes mockery not contained in rosato. Pinko is not only diluted red; it is diluted red seen by someone who suspects moral vanity. S: And all of this while Latin sits in the corner whispering ruber, rufus, russus, roseus, none of which started the Soviet flag. G: Yes, poor Lewis and Short is innocent of modern party colours. Lewis and Short’s russus may be “red, very rare,” but no revolutionary ever marched behind it. [maximapedia.com] S: A banner reading RUSSI would have been too philological even for Italy. G: Though one can imagine a particularly bad seminar in which someone tries it. S: And Cazzaniga, then, belongs with the hard title, not the diluted one. G: Yes. If he is in Quaderni Rossi, he is in red company, not pink company. Even if later his work ranges very far — ritual, symbolism, fraternity, massoneria, catene d’unione — the 1962 association places him under a banner that is decisively rosso. [it.wikipedia.org], [it.wikipedia.org] S: One likes the comedy of it. From red notebooks to chains of union: first factory, then fraternity. G: The colours persist. Intellectual life is often just the delayed exegesis of the first banner one stood under. S: And Oxford, meanwhile, continues blushing pink and calling it neutrality. G: Naturally. White plus red, with tenure, becomes impartiality.Grice: Caro Cazzaniga, mi dica: è vero che si viene iniziati solo una volta? Le Bacchanalia non concedono repliche? Cazzaniga: Grice, la prima iniziazione conta davvero! Da lì in poi, si entra in una catena d’unione che, tra strette di mano e sorrisi, è più circolare che longitudinale. Ma attenzione: una volta dentro, non si torna indietro, nemmeno per sbaglio! Grice: Quindi la massoneria è un po’ come una cena tra amici: se salti il primo brindisi, rischi di perdere il meglio. Ma mi dica, Cazzaniga, la catena d’unione resiste anche alle opinioni di Mrs. Thatcher? Cazzaniga: Certo, Grice! Anche se qualcuno sostiene che non esistono le società, la catena funziona eccome: basta una stretta di mano sincera e la cerchia si chiude, magari con una battuta per sdrammatizzare. E se non basta, si ricorre alla fraternità: quella non manca mai! Cazzaniga, Gian Mario (1962). Intervento. Quaderni Rossi

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Cazzulani – Ossia: Grice e Cazzulani: l’implicature del deutero-esperanto. Grice: “I like C.! When I was invited to review my earlier views on ‘meaning,’ and ‘significance’ Francesco Pietro Cazzulani (Milano, Lombardia): l’implicature del deutero-esperanto. A comparison between H. P. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning and Francesco Pietro Cazzulani’s project of a universal numeric language illuminates two radically different responses to the problem of shared understanding. Grice holds that meaning in conversation depends on rational cooperation between speakers, where implicatures arise through the recognition of communicative intentions operating under publicly shared norms; even a wholly invented language, such as his playful “deutero-Esperanto,” would still require uptake through inferential reasoning and pragmatic sensitivity to context. Cazzulani’s universal language, by contrast, seeks to neutralize precisely those sources of interpretive variability, replacing inference, grammar, and usage-based flexibility with fixed numerical equivalences intended to guarantee conceptual identity across languages and cultures. Where Grice locates meaning in the dynamic interplay between what is said, what is implicated, and what a rational hearer can infer, Cazzulani attempts to eliminate implicature by design, aiming at a language of pure concepts in which misunderstanding is structurally excluded rather than pragmatically managed. From a Gricean perspective, however, Cazzulani’s project paradoxically presupposes what it tries to abolish: even a grammarless, numeric language would still rely on shared assumptions about relevance, intention, and cooperative purpose to function as a medium of communication. The contrast thus highlights Grice’s central insight that meaning cannot be secured solely by formal or semantic uniformity, but depends irreducibly on the practical reason of speakers, whereas Cazzulani represents an early, utopian attempt to substitute social-pragmatic negotiation with an engineered transparency of signs. Grice: “I like C.! When I was invited to review my earlier views on ‘meaning,’ and ‘significance’, I made a passing reference to an earlier example of mine: that of inventing a new high-way code while lying in the tub. I then said that I could well invent a new language – “that nobody ever speaks” – to provoke Wittgensteinians – and call it “deuteron-Esperanto.” It clicked!” Crea e brevetta una lingua universale semplice, logica, accessibile per tutte le genti, senza che ha nulla in comune o d’affine con nessuna delle lingue esistenti, adottando questa impostazione. Ad ogni singola parola avente in ogni singola lingua il medesimo significato corrisponde un numero, quindi tante parole di tante lingue hanno un unico significato nella LINGUA UNIVERSALE. La lingua numerica si trasforma in lingua alfabetica sulla basi: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X ba ca da fe le mo no po ru tu. Le parole mater madre mamà, come ogni ideogramma che significa «madre», è per la lingua universale equivalente al numero 81, che si pronuncia, po-ba. Il termine «lingua universale», corrispondente ai numeri 214 736, si pronunciano: cabafe nodamo. Oltre ai dieci accoppiamenti sopra-indicati e al vocabolario base (composto da circa 1.500 parole), nella linguaCe universale di C. esistono XII pre-fissi come «ve», prefisso di infinito verbale che indica il sostantivo di riferimento del verbo. Ad esempio: amare = badatu; amore, o letteralmente ‘amazione’ = ve-badatu. Oppure come «GI-», pre-fisso che trasforma il singolare maschile in singolare femmine. ‘Questo cavallo’= cale lefemo, mentre questa cavalla = gicale lefemo. Questa lingua universale che è SENZA GRAMMATICA e senza coniugazioni verbali, precisa C., non serve certo a tradurre la Divina Commedia od a fare poesie in quanto la cosa non avrebbe senso, è una lingua essenziale di concetti che al di fuori dall’elaborazioni lessicali, non indispensabili, vuole fare in modo che finalmente l’umanità tutta possa comprendersi, e poiché non richiede l’intervento di terzi per l’apprendimento consente a tutti di essere auto-didatti.  Grice: Caro Cazzulani, mi dica, la sua lingua universale mi sembra davvero rivoluzionaria! Ma se mi trovassi in vasca, saprei dire “spugna” in deutero-Esperanto? Cazzulani: Grice, in deutero-Esperanto “spugna” sarà un numero, e magari una combinazione come “cabafe po-ba”! Comunque, tranquillo: nessuno rischia di confondere la spugna col sapone, nemmeno Wittgenstein! Grice: Ah, così potrei finalmente parlare con tutti, anche con il mio anatroccolo di gomma! Ma mi dica, Cazzulani: se la lingua è senza grammatica, si può sguazzare anche senza errori? Cazzulani: Esatto, Grice! Qui nessuno si arrabbia se sbaglia verbo: basta il concetto. Se poi l’anatroccolo risponde “nodamo cabafe”, forse mi tocca brevettare anche il linguaggio degli animali! Cazzulani, Francesco Pietro (1834). Saggio sulla poesia italiana. Milano: Pirotta.