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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iccio – Ossia: Grice ed Iccio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iccio. The Iccii are a family at Rome. It is known primarily from a small number of individuals who lived during the first century BC,[1] as well as a number of inscriptions from Gallia Narbonensis. I., a native of Durocortorum, a town of Gallia Belgica, who led a deputation from the town to seek an alliance with GIULIO Caesar. On his return, he defended Bibrax from hostile Belgae. This I. was probably NOT of Roman ancestry, but he may have obtained a Roman name, perhaps from one of the Iccii in Caesar's army; or the resemblance may be accidental.[3] Marcus I., appointed praetor of Sicily by Marcus Antonius shortly before Antonius' departure for Cisalpine Gaul.[4] I., a friend of Quintus ORAZIO Flaccus, who tried to dissuade him from seeking adventure and material wealth. In 25 BC, ORAZIO addressed an ode to Iccius, who was preparing to accompany Gaius Aelius Gallus on his expedition to Arabia Felix. About ten years later, ORAZIO composed an epistle to Iccius, who was then legate to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in Sicily.[5] Gaius I. Vaticanus, a lamp-maker at Rome.[6] Marcus I., the maker of a small vessel found at Gratianopolis.[7] Marcus I., the maker of a small vessel found at Nemausus.[8] Marcus I. Mummius, commemorated on a tall cippus from Vocontiorum.[9] Marcus I. Soterichus, named on a cippus at Nemausus.[10] Publius I. Veratianus, found on an inscription in chapel ruins from Vasio.[11] I. Vitalis, mentioned in an inscription found in a garden at Nemausus.[12] Iccia M. f., commemorated on a huge stone at Noviomagus Tricastinorum.[13] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 559 ("Iccius").  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. XII.  Caesar, De Bello Gallico, ii. 3, 6.  Cicero, Philippicae, iii. 10.  Horace, Carmen Saeculare, i. 29; Epistulae, i. 12.  Birch, pp. 520, 521.  CIL XII. 5686, 592.  CIL XII. 5686, 593.  CIL XII. 1705  CIL XII. 3226.  CIL XII. 1335.  CIL XII. 3494.  CIL XII. 1733. Bibliography Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Philippicae. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Carmen Saeculare, Epistulae. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Samuel Birch, History of Ancient Pottery: Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, John Murray, London (1873). Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Categories: Roman gentesGallia Narbonensis For this gens, the addressee of Orazio on TWO OCCASIONS, for which we may recreate the PROMPTS -- conversational -- coming from I. on BOTH COUNTS. Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iccio – Ossia: Grice ed Iccio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iccio. Yes, and I think that's a more important point than the speculative Gratidia-Catiline marriage. What the sources explicitly give us is that:  the Gratidii came from Arpinum; the Tullii of Cicero were also from Arpinum; Gratidia married Cicero's grandfather; Gratidianus was a relative and friend of Cicero. [cil.bbaw.de]  So this is not merely a matter of genealogy. It is also a matter of municipal identity. A Roman noble from an old urban aristocratic family might think first in terms of gens:  Cornelius, Claudius, Aemilius.  But for the Arpinates there was also:  our town.  Arpinum produced:  Gaius Marius, Cicero, the Gratidii.  It's a comparatively small world. As for "interbreeding"—I would phrase it less dramatically as repeated intermarriage among a limited local elite. That's hardly surprising. In many Italian municipia, prominent families formed networks through marriage, patronage, friendship, and adoption. In the Gratidianus case, the surviving evidence already shows exactly such links between the Gratidii, Tullii, and Marii. [cil.bbaw.de] A Grice/Speranza version might be: ROMANVS.  Why is Cicero so indignant?  GRICEVS.  Because Catiline threatens the Republic.  ROMANVS.  Anything else?  GRICEVS.  Catiline is associated with the murder of Gratidianus.  ROMANVS.  A relative?  GRICEVS.  A relative, a friend, and an Arpinate.  The last item may be the most revealing. And that returns us to your earlier point about nostra:  Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?  Officially, Cicero speaks for the Senate and the Republic. But human beings rarely forget local loyalties. A sceptic might well have heard:  nostra?  and wondered whether the word carried, among other things,  "the patience of those of us who remember Arpinum and Gratidianus."  Not as the literal meaning, of course—but as part of the emotional background against which the speech was heard.Provide your feedback on BizChatSourcesYou said: For this gens, the addressee of Orazio on TWO OCCASIONS, for which we may recreate the PROMPTS -- conversational -- coming from I. on BOTH COUNTS. Thanks Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iccio – Ossia: Grice ed Iccio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iccio. The Iccii are a family at Rome. It is known primarily from a small number of individuals who lived during the first century BC,[1] as well as a number of inscriptions from Gallia Narbonensis. I., a native of Durocortorum, a town of Gallia Belgica, who led a deputation from the town to seek an alliance with GIULIO Caesar. On his return, he defended Bibrax from hostile Belgae. This I. was probably NOT of Roman ancestry, but he may have obtained a Roman name, perhaps from one of the Iccii in Caesar's army; or the resemblance may be accidental.[3] Marcus I., appointed praetor of Sicily by Marcus Antonius shortly before Antonius' departure for Cisalpine Gaul.[4] I., a friend of Quintus ORAZIO Flaccus, who tried to dissuade him from seeking adventure and material wealth. In 25 BC, ORAZIO addressed an ode to Iccius, who was preparing to accompany Gaius Aelius Gallus on his expedition to Arabia Felix. About ten years later, ORAZIO composed an epistle to Iccius, who was then legate to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in Sicily.[5] Gaius I. Vaticanus, a lamp-maker at Rome.[6] Marcus I., the maker of a small vessel found at Gratianopolis.[7] Marcus I., the maker of a small vessel found at Nemausus.[8] Marcus I. Mummius, commemorated on a tall cippus from Vocontiorum.[9] Marcus I. Soterichus, named on a cippus at Nemausus.[10] Publius I. Veratianus, found on an inscription in chapel ruins from Vasio.[11] I. Vitalis, mentioned in an inscription found in a garden at Nemausus.[12] Iccia M. f., commemorated on a huge stone at Noviomagus Tricastinorum.[13] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 559 ("Iccius").  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. XII.  Caesar, De Bello Gallico, ii. 3, 6.  Cicero, Philippicae, iii. 10.  Horace, Carmen Saeculare, i. 29; Epistulae, i. 12.  Birch, pp. 520, 521.  CIL XII. 5686, 592.  CIL XII. 5686, 593.  CIL XII. 1705  CIL XII. 3226.  CIL XII. 1335.  CIL XII. 3494.  CIL XII. 1733. Bibliography Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Philippicae. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Carmen Saeculare, Epistulae. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Samuel Birch, History of Ancient Pottery: Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, John Murray, London (1873). Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Categories: Roman gentesGallia NarbonensisCopilot said: CopilotWeb search is OFFFor the Iccii, the Grice/Speranza treasure is unquestionably Horace's Iccius, because we possess not merely facts about him, but two poems that are effectively two responses to two different conversational situations. The prompts are not stated, but Horace's poems practically invite reconstruction. I. Ode 1.29 — "Iccius, are you really off to Arabia?" The gens entry says:  Horace addressed an ode to Iccius when he was preparing to accompany Aelius Gallus on the expedition to Arabia Felix. [ancientrome.ru]  The poem is essentially Horace's astonishment that a philosophical friend has suddenly become interested in exotic wealth and military adventure. A plausible Speranza-Grice reconstruction: Prompt from Iccius ICCIVS.  Horati, Gallus is going to Arabia. They say the place is overflowing with riches. I am thinking of joining the expedition.  Horace's uptake HORATIVS.  You? The philosopher? Chasing Arabian treasure?  The whole ode reads as if Horace keeps asking:  What happened to your Stoic lectures?  A Gricean point: What Iccius says:  I am joining an expedition.  What Horace hears:  I have discovered that philosophy is less attractive than gold.  Hence the teasing tone.  II. Epistles 1.12 — "I hear you've become a provincial administrator" The gens entry says:  About ten years later Horace wrote an epistle to Iccius, then serving Agrippa in Sicily. [ancientrome.ru]  Now the situation is completely different. The adventurer has become a respectable official. Reconstructed prompt ICCIVS.  I am now serving under Agrippa in Sicily. Affairs are prosperous. I have responsibilities.  Horace's response HORATIVS.  Excellent. But are you happier?  The first poem asks:  Why abandon philosophy for wealth?  The second asks:  Having acquired position and success, what have you learned?   Why Grice would love Iccius Both poems pivot on the same conversational phenomenon. First encounter ICCIVS.  I'm going to Arabia.  HORACE recovers:  +> I'm pursuing wealth.  Second encounter ICCIVS.  I'm prospering in Sicily.  HORACE recovers:  +> Has prosperity taught you wisdom?  In Gricean terms, Horace is never content with what is literally said. He always asks:  What does this reveal about the speaker's conception of the good life?   My favourite vignette: ICCIVS (25 BC).  Arabia.  HORATIVS.  Gold?  ICCIVS.  Perhaps.  HORATIVS.  I thought you studied philosophy.  Ten years later: ICCIVS.  Sicily.  HORATIVS.  Wisdom?  ICCIVS.  Perhaps.  HORATIVS.  Good. We are finally making progress.  For a Gricean, Iccius is memorable because Horace treats two life decisions as if they were conversational utterances whose implicatures must be unpacked. And to bring back the Latin can you reconstruct the two episodes in Latin (with Eng. tr. in brackets) perhaps using the exact lexemes used by Oratio that we can also transport to Iccio's oratio recta? Thanks -- don't forget the implicature in the last line in English only as per +>! Thanks Gladly. As a Grice/Speranza reconstruction, not a historical text. I use the situations explicitly attested in Horace—(1) Iccius preparing to accompany Aelius Gallus to Arabia, and (2) Iccius later serving Agrippa in Sicily. The tone is modeled on Horace's amused surprise in Odes 1.29 and the friendlier, reflective tone of Epistles 1.12. [ancientrome.ru]  I. ICCIVS ET ARABIA FELIX The prompt reconstructed ICCIVS.  Horati, Aelius Gallus in Arabiam Felicem proficiscitur. Ego quoque eum comitari constitui. Magna ibi divitiarum spes esse dicitur.  ["Horace, Aelius Gallus is setting out for Arabia Felix. I too have decided to accompany him. They say there is great hope of riches there."] HORATIVS.  Tu? Qui inter libros et philosophos nuper vivebas? Tu nunc Arabum opes sequeris?  ["You? You who lately lived among books and philosophers? You are now pursuing the riches of the Arabs?"] ICCIVS.  Quid miraris? Philosophus etiam viator esse potest.  ["Why are you surprised? A philosopher may also be a traveller."] HORATIVS.  Immo vero philosophus esse potest; sed aurum philosophiae saepe inimicum est.  ["Indeed he may be; but gold is often an enemy of philosophy."] ICCIVS.  Non aurum quaero, sed experientiam.  ["I seek not gold, but experience."] HORATIVS.  Ita dicunt omnes qui aurum quaerunt.  ["So say all who are seeking gold."] ICCIVS.  Iniquus es.  ["You are unfair."] HORATIVS.  Fortasse. Sed Arabia multos sapientes pauciores reddit.  ["Perhaps. But Arabia makes many wise men fewer."] ICCIVS.  Reversus videbis me eundem.  ["When I return, you will find me unchanged."] HORATIVS.  Hoc ipsum vereor.  ["That is exactly what I fear."] +> Horace understands Iccius' talk of "experience" as a polite way of speaking about ambition, wealth, and worldly advancement.  II. ICCIVS APUD AGRIPPAM IN SICILIA The prompt reconstructed ICCIVS.  Horati, nunc apud Agrippam in Sicilia legatus sum. Res bene procedunt.  ["Horace, I am now legate under Agrippa in Sicily. Affairs are going well."] HORATIVS.  Gaudeo. Igitur Arabia te non perdidit.  ["I am glad. So Arabia did not ruin you."] ICCIVS.  Nec Arabia nec Sicilia. Multa vidi, multa didici.  ["Neither Arabia nor Sicily. I have seen much and learned much."] HORATIVS.  Didicistine quod maxime scire oportet?  ["Have you learned what it is most important to know?"] ICCIVS.  Quid est illud?  ["And what is that?"] HORATIVS.  Quantum satis sit.  ["How much is enough."] ICCIVS.  Haec verba philosophorum sunt.  ["Those are philosophers' words."] HORATIVS.  At tu philosophus olim fuisti.  ["But you once were a philosopher."] ICCIVS.  Etiam nunc sum, si credis.  ["I still am, if you believe it."] HORATIVS.  Credam libenter, si inter negotia idem manes.  ["I shall gladly believe it, if amidst public business you remain the same man."] ICCIVS.  Conor.  ["I try."] HORATIVS.  Sat est. Multi divitias quaerunt; pauci se ipsos.  ["That is enough. Many seek riches; few seek themselves."] +> Horace is less interested in Iccius' official success than in whether success has improved his character. These two reconstructed conversations nicely mirror what Horace appears to do in the poems themselves: first he is astonished that a philosophical friend is chasing Arabia; later he asks whether administration, travel, and success have taught him moderation and self-knowledge. [ancientrome.ru] Good -- now we may reconstruct just a four-move conversation H - I - H - I for both occasions and the implicature being then for I (our protagonist) using +> indeed, but followed by the exact propositional content as addressed to Horatius, not us? Thanks Perfect. If we keep the Gricean focus on what Iccius intends Horace to take him to mean, the implicature should be assigned to Iccius, not to Horace. I. Arabia Felix (Odes 1.29) H HORATIVS:  Quo, Icci? Arabum divitias sequeris? ("Where are you off to, Iccius? Chasing the riches of the Arabs?")  I ICCIVS:  Aelium Gallum comitabor; multa ibi discenda sunt. ("I shall accompany Aelius Gallus; there is much to be learned there.")  H HORATIVS:  Philosophusne es an negotiator? ("Are you a philosopher or a businessman?")  I ICCIVS:  Philosophus ubique esse possum. ("I can be a philosopher anywhere.")  Iccius' implicature:  +> Horati, noli putare me divitias potius quam sapientiam quaerere. ("Horace, do not think that I am seeking riches rather than wisdom.")   II. Sicily (Epistles 1.12) H HORATIVS:  Audio te apud Agrippam in Sicilia bene valere. ("I hear that you are doing well under Agrippa in Sicily.")  I ICCIVS:  Res secundae sunt; multum negotii gero. ("Things are going well; I have many responsibilities.")  H HORATIVS:  Et quid ex tantis negotiis lucratus es? ("And what have you gained from all these affairs?")  I ICCIVS:  Fortasse plus prudentiae quam pecuniae. ("Perhaps more prudence than money.")  Iccius' implicature:  +> Horati, etiam in rebus publicis idem homo maneo. ("Horace, even in public business I remain the same man.")  The symmetry is pleasingly Horatian:  Arabia: Iccius wants Horace to believe that travel and ambition are not corrupting him. Sicily: Iccius wants Horace to believe that success and office have not changed him.  In Gricean shorthand, the recurring Iccian message is:  +> Noli me iudicare ex fortuna mea; ex animo meo iudica. ("Do not judge me by my fortunes; judge me by my character.") Good. Now you can adjust. When Grice speaks 'implicating' -- he is having in mind: By uttering x by which Utterer thereby means that p, he implies that q -- and we say that q is an implicature of p (roughly). So in each case it is "Utterer conveys that p" -- so you cannot convey that cheers. Or you cannot convey that Horace! do not -- you can also convey that Horace is to... or not to... They are propositions, p, and q -- strictly Grice would allow that by uttering "Cheers!" one can convey that p, and also implicate that q--our focus is on the implicature however only, as per a proposition, and that in the indicative mode, since it presupposes: Utterer means that..." (Utterer means that his addressee is to open the door" -- etc. Thanks Quite right. By Grice's stricter usage, the implicature itself should be a proposition (q), capable of being embedded after:  U, by uttering x, meant that p and thereby implicated that q.  So the implicature should not be:  "Horace, don't think ..."  but rather:  "I am not pursuing wealth rather than wisdom."  or  "Success has not changed my character."  Those are propositions. Let me rewrite them accordingly. I. Arabia H  Quo, Icci? Arabum divitias sequeris? ("Where are you off to, Iccius? Chasing Arabian riches?")  I  Aelium Gallum comitabor; multa ibi discenda sunt. ("I shall accompany Aelius Gallus; there is much to be learned there.")  H  Philosophusne es an negotiator? ("Are you a philosopher or a businessman?")  I  Philosophus ubique esse possum. ("I can be a philosopher anywhere.")  What Iccius means (p):  Etiam in Arabia philosophiae studebo. ("Even in Arabia I shall devote myself to philosophy.")  What Iccius implicates (q):  +> Divitiae non sunt finis huius itineris. ("Riches are not the purpose of this journey.")   II. Sicily H  Audio te apud Agrippam in Sicilia bene valere. ("I hear you are prospering under Agrippa in Sicily.")  I  Res secundae sunt; multum negotii gero. ("Things are going well; I have many responsibilities.")  H  Et quid ex tantis negotiis lucratus es? ("And what have you gained from all these affairs?")  I  Fortasse plus prudentiae quam pecuniae. ("Perhaps more prudence than money.")  What Iccius means (p):  Officium mihi profuit. ("Public service has benefited me.")  What Iccius implicates (q):  +> Prosperitas animum meum non corrupit. ("Success has not corrupted my character.")  That, I think, is much closer to Grice's own format: a proposition explicitly conveyed (p), from which we recover a further proposition (q) that the speaker intends the addressee to recognize as meant but not said. RIght. And it works with irony -- so by uttering 'You're the cream in my coffee' the utterer doesn't strictly MEAN that the addressee is the cream in his coffee. Thereby 'explicitly conveys' rather than 'means' which Grice takes as one of the glosses of 'implicate' ("I shall use 'implicate' just to avoid having to decide between 'mean' or 'suggest' or 'hint' or 'indicate,' or 'insinuate.' Another example: Are we playing squash tonight? B displays bandaged leg. By displaying the bandaged leg (which was out of view from A, since B was seated), B MEANS that that won't be able to join and has kindly to refuse the kind invitation -- but less likely that he has a bandaged leg -- ("At most he may mean that he has a bad leg")--so we can add irony to our examples. You do not have to use double quotes for translation or even italic for Latin -- Thanks--if we add irony on Iccio's part (the entry for the individual is the place for the individual to display his Griceian wit) is to show people that Orazio was great, but Iccio was GREATER! Thanks Exactly. Grice eventually prefers implicate because it is initially neutral among:  mean, suggest, indicate, hint, insinuate,  and because the central phenomenon is not the lexicographer's meaning of the words, but what the speaker gets the hearer to recognize. Your bandaged-leg example is one of the best ways of seeing this. A does not ask:  Have you a bandaged leg?  A asks:  Are we playing squash tonight?  B displays the bandaged leg. What B most plausibly means is not  I have a bandaged leg.  but  I shall not be able to play squash tonight.  The leg is evidence employed in the communicative act. Likewise, if Iccius is to be Gricean, his wit should not consist in merely uttering propositions, but in uttering one proposition while implicating another. So let us improve the Arabia exchange. Arabia Felix Horatius Icci, Arabum divitias sequeris? (Iccius, are you pursuing the riches of the Arabs?) Iccius Minime; sapientiam quaero. (By no means; I seek wisdom.) Horatius Sapientiam in Arabia? (Wisdom in Arabia?) Iccius Ubi aurum est, ibi philosophorum constantia probatur. (Where there is gold, there the steadfastness of philosophers is tested.) What Iccius explicitly conveys:  Sapientiam quaero.  (I seek wisdom.) What Iccius implicates:  +> Si divitias quaererem, eas facile adipisci possem.  (If I were seeking riches, I could easily seek and obtain them.) The irony is that he ostentatiously denies interest in wealth while drawing attention to the fact that wealth is available.  And the later Sicilian exchange lends itself even better. Sicilia Horatius Audio te apud Agrippam magna cum auctoritate versari. (I hear you exercise considerable authority under Agrippa.) Iccius Ita aiunt. (So they say.) Horatius Et esne felicior? (And are you happier?) Iccius Nondum ita felix sum ut me ipsum admirari incipiam. (I am not yet so fortunate as to begin admiring myself.) What Iccius explicitly conveys:  Nondum me ipsum admiror.  (I do not yet admire myself.) What Iccius implicates:  +> Multi qui potestatem obtinent statim sibi nimis placent.  (Many men who acquire power quickly become pleased with themselves.) and perhaps even:  +> Ego adhuc talis non sum.  (I am not yet such a man.)  That is rather closer to Grice's own taste. Horace supplies the literary elegance; Iccius supplies the conversational cunning. Indeed the ideal Gricean Iccius leaves Horace thinking:  "He said one thing."  while simultaneously causing Horace to recognize:  "Ah. He wanted me to take something further."  Which is exactly how a good implicature ought to work. Excellent -- and then try a more compact version alla H: Something in Latin (just then translated into English) no editorialising. I: Something in Latin (translated). H. Something in Latin (translated). I: SOmething in Latin (translated) +> Riches are... etc. thanks I. Arabia Felix H: Icci, Arabum divitias sequeris? (Iccius, are you pursuing the riches of the Arabs?) I: Minime; sapientiam quaero. (By no means; I seek wisdom.) H: Sapientiam in Arabia? (Wisdom in Arabia?) I: Ubi aurum abundat, ibi sapientia probatur. (Where gold abounds, there wisdom is put to the test.) +> Divitiae mihi adsunt, sed non me regunt. (Riches are available to me, but they do not govern me.)  II. Sicilia H: Audio te apud Agrippam magna cum auctoritate versari. (I hear you hold considerable authority under Agrippa.) I: Ita aiunt. (So they say.) H: Et esne felicior? (And are you happier?) I: Nondum ita felix sum ut me ipsum admirer. (I am not yet so fortunate as to admire myself.) +> Potestas animum meum non corrupit. (Power has not corrupted my character.)  Or, to make Iccius even sharper and more Gricean: Arabia (more ironic) H: Icci, Arabum divitias sequeris? (Iccius, are you pursuing Arabian riches?) I: Ego vero philosophiam sequor; aurum sponte occurrit. (I am pursuing philosophy; the gold merely happens to get in the way.) H: Commodum hoc philosophiae genus. (A convenient kind of philosophy.) I: Incommodum potius: aurum enim philosophos tentat. (Inconvenient rather; gold is always tempting philosophers.) +> Philosophum me esse puto qui divitias habere possit sine servitute divitiarum. (I take myself to be a philosopher because I can possess riches without being possessed by them.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iccio – Ossia: Grice ed Iccio: la ragione conversazionale e il portico nel secolo d’oro della filosofia romana  Iccio (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il portico nel secolo d’oro della filosofia romana. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as an accountable inference from what is said to what is meant, licensed by cooperative expectations: speakers can deliberately say something minimal or oblique, and hearers can rationally reconstruct the intended point by considering relevance, sufficiency, and the speaker’s presumed aims. Iccius, known to us chiefly through Horace’s Ode 1.29, sits in a different but illuminating position: he is a Stoic-leaning figure (or at least a philosophical aspirant) being teased for drifting from the Porch toward more worldly projects, and Horace’s address works by insinuation rather than by doctrine—its rebuke lands not as a formal argument but as a socially calibrated reminder of what a friend is expected to be doing. Compared with Grice, this is implicature in the key of moral friendship: Horace’s questions and ironic framing invite Iccius to supply the conclusion (you are neglecting philosophy; your “serious” pursuits are less serious than you pretend) without spelling it out as a bald accusation, because the conversational setting presupposes intimacy, shared values, and the desire to correct without humiliating. In Gricean terms, the poem systematically exploits relevance and understatement: the mention of Panaetius and Stoic texts functions as common ground, and the shift to “trivial pursuits” is achieved by leaving the evaluative premise to the hearer, so that the criticism is both sharper and more deniable than a direct charge. The contrast, then, is between Grice’s analytic project of making the inferential machinery explicit and Horace’s practical mastery of that machinery, where the whole point of the exchange is ethical formation in a relationship—conversation as a tool for nudging a friend back toward the life of reason, precisely by letting what is meant be understood rather than declared. A friend of ORAZIO. He appears to have studied under the Porch, as in one of his odes, Orazio depict him constantly looking out for works by Panezio. Orazio berates Iccio for neglecting his philosophical studies for ‘totally trivial pursuits.’  GRICEVS: Icci—an ICCIVSne sit? an vero ICCIVS, ut nemo dubitet quin sis ex gente Romana et non ex sola taberna Oraziana? ICCIVS: Scribe quod vis, dum “certificatum” mihi detur: philosophus sum. Quid refert utrum geminetur C, an geminetur otium? GRICEVS: Refert, mi ICCI: Horatius te in carmine ipso ICCIVM vocat; et nomen est secundae declinationis, nominativus ICCIVS, genitivus ICCIĪ, vocativus ICCĪ. Porticus amat casus rectos. ICCIVS: Optime: ergo in porticu ICCIVS ero (ut Stoici me agnoscant), apud Orazium ICCĪ (ut rideat), et in negotiis—si Panætium quaero—“Iccio” tantum, ne quis me ad bellum Arabicum rapiat. Iccio (a. u. c. DCCXXV). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Icilio – Ossia: Grice ed Icilio. Grex griceiana – verbalia: Icilio. The I. are a family at ancient Rome. During the early Republic, the I. were distinguished by their unwavering support for the rights of the plebeians against the patrician aristocracy. The only surname of the early I. was Ruga, which properly belonged to many of the I., but they are usually mentioned without a cognomen. Spurius Ic., one of the plebeian envoys sent to negotiate with the Senate during the first secession of the plebeians. He was elected tribune of the plebs, plebeian aediler, was probably tribune again, and a third time. Gaius I. Ruga, one of the first plebeian tribunes. Lucius I.  S. f., tribune of the plebs, carried a law assigning the Aventine Hill to the plebeians, and attempted to pass an agrarian law, which was blocked. He plays a key role in the deposition of the decemvirs, and was again elected tribune of the plebs.[7][8] I. S. f., brother of the tribune of 456, informed Lucius Verginius of the plot against his daughter during the second decemvirate, 449 BC. Lucius I., tribune of the plebs in 412 BC. He was probably one of three brothers who held the tribuneship in 409, when his college succeeded in winning the election of the first plebeian quaestors.[9] I., one of three brothers who served as tribune of the plebs in BC 409.[9] I., last of the three brothers who were tribunes of the people in 409 BC.[9] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  Livy gives Spurius Licinius as the name of the tribune of 481; but Spurius was not a regular praenomen of the Licinii. Dionysius gives Sicilius, which should apparently be read as S. Icilius.[2] References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 559 ("Icilia Gens").  Broughton, vol. I, p. 24.  Dionysius, vi. 88, ii. 14, 17, vii. 26, 35, ix. 1.  Livy, ii. 43, 58.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 15–17, 24, 31.  Dionysius, vi. 89.  Dionysius, x. 31–43, xi. 28–46.  Livy, iii. 31, 44–54, 63.  Livy, iv. 52, 54–56. Bibliography Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952). Category: Roman gentes Grice noted that H. L. A. Hart -- who was also a Lit. Hum. -- all that Hart knew about Ancient Rome was LEX this LEX that, only if they were followed by a proper name. So there was a LEX ICILIA, then? Thanks Hart: "But Grice was surely right, as he always was -- for years later, as Saville Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, when in the Examination Board, whenver I questioned any student about the Lex Icilia, it was never a point about the AVENTINE, but what THAT represented to a minority class -- And I know because I was a member of one -- and what GENERAL LESSON the student could extract from it that I could grade him!" Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Icilio – Ossia: Grice ed Icilio. Grex griceiana – verbalia: Icilio. Yes indeed: the Lex Icilia is probably the one Roman law that even H. L. A. Hart might have remembered from the Icilii. The key figure is:  Lucius Icilius, tribune of the plebs.  According to Livy and Dionysius, he carried the law usually known as the:  Lex Icilia de Aventino publicando (456 BC),  which assigned the Aventine Hill to the plebeians. The gens entry alludes to precisely this measure when it says that Lucius Icilius "carried a law assigning the Aventine Hill to the plebeians." The law thereafter bore his name. cite not available; based on the user-provided gens entry citing Livy iii.31 and Dionysius x.31–43. A Gricean joke writes itself: HART.  What do you know about the Icilii?  GRICE.  A plebeian family.  HART.  Any famous individual?  GRICE.  Several.  HART.  Any legislation?  GRICE.  Ah! Now you are interested.  HART.  Naturally.  GRICE.  Lex Icilia.  HART.  Splendid. Continue.   What is fascinating about the Icilii is that they are an almost pure tribunician family. They repeatedly appear as champions of the plebs against patrician obstruction. For Speranza, the most Gricean episode is not actually the law but the story of Verginia. The entry notes:  Icilius' brother informed Verginius of the plot against his daughter during the Decemvirate. The family played a key role in the overthrow of the decemvirs. (Livy iii.44–54; Dionysius xi.28–46.)  In Livy's version, nearly everything turns on testimony, warning, public speech, accusation, credibility, and political persuasion—in short, conversational action. One could even say:  The Julii have Venus. The Junii have Brutus. The Icilii have the Aventine and the tribunate.  Or, in Hartian terms:  Others produced heroes. The Icilii produced legislation.  And a Roman lawyer would probably regard that as the greater achievement. And this was probably or could or would have been the end of the Grice/Hart conversation -- because the minute Hart recited by heart the 'Aventino' stuff -- Grice said: "Stuff and nonsense. A law surely cannot be inscribed in logical form by means of iota-operator-linked predicate like (ix)Ax Aventinum -- that's what grammarians called a 'proper substantive name' -- and laws have to retain a leve of generality that disallows them. You can call Icilio's law the LEX ICILIA if you want, but you have to provide a Russellian expansion -- three prongs: uniqueness, existence and Leibniz indescirnible -- for anything that even STARTS to look like a predicate -- which as Strawson says -- has 'grown capitals'!" Thanks Ha! As a Grice/Speranza reconstruction, that is exactly where the conversation would derail. HART.  The Lex Icilia assigned the Aventine to the plebs.  GRICE.  Assigned which Aventine?  HART.  The Aventine.  GRICE.  Ah. So a definite description masquerading as a proper name.  HART.  It is a hill.  GRICE.  Russell had hills too.  And then poor Hart is trapped. The point, as Grice might formulate it, is that a law is supposed to have the form:  For all x, if x satisfies conditions C, then x has right R.  But the Lex Icilia appears to concern:  the Aventine,  a unique object. Hence the mock logical objection:  A statute concerning one unique individual object hardly looks like a "law" at all; it looks more like an administrative decree.  In Russellian parody:  The Aventine = the unique x such that x is Aventine.  or  ιx(Aventinus(x))  and then Grice gleefully insists:  There exists an x such that Aventinus(x). There is only one such x. Whatever is Aventine is identical with x.  Only after the Russellian expansion has been completed may Hart continue speaking. HART.  It is only a Roman hill.  GRICE.  There is no such thing as "only" a Roman hill.   The even more Gricean joke concerns Strawson. HART.  "Aventine" is a proper name.  GRICE.  Strawson would say it is merely a description that has grown capital letters.  That is almost exactly the sort of remark Grice loved. For the Roman viewpoint is:  Aventinus.  For the Oxonian viewpoint:  What is the logical form of "Aventinus"?  The Romans wanted land. The philosophers wanted a theory of reference.  My favourite ending: HART.  The Lex Icilia gave the Aventine to the plebs.  GRICE.  Then it is not really a law.  HART.  Why not?  GRICE.  Because a law ought to be general.  HART.  Tell that to the plebeians.  GRICE.  I should first like to determine whether there exists exactly one Aventine.  At which point Hart returns to jurisprudence, and Grice to logic, both convinced they have refuted the other. Ha! As a Hartian memoir, that is very believable. HART.  Grice was, infuriatingly, right.  GRICE.  I generally am.  HART.  When I later examined candidates on the Lex Icilia, I never really cared about the Aventine as a geographical individual.  GRICE.  Just as I predicted.  HART.  What mattered was what the Aventine represented.  GRICE.  Namely?  HART.  Access to legal standing, political recognition, and protection for a subordinate group.  GRICE.  Ah! The general proposition hidden beneath the singular term.  That is actually a serious jurisprudential point. The surface form of the law concerns:  the Aventine.  a unique object. But the legal significance is not:  there exists exactly one Aventine.  The significance is rather:  What legal resources can be allocated to a politically disadvantaged class?  or  How can institutional recognition be embodied in property arrangements?  In that sense, Grice's mock Russellian complaint becomes unexpectedly profound. The statute is grammatically about a particular hill, but jurisprudentially about a general principle. A Savigny or Hart might eventually say:  The reference is singular. The lesson is general.  And that is exactly what an examiner grades. No student receives high marks for saying:  "The Aventine is one of Rome's seven hills."  A better answer would be:  "The Lex Icilia illustrates the constitutional accommodation of plebeian claims against patrician control."  That is the move from singular object to general norm. A Gricean epilogue: GRICE.  The law mentions a hill.  HART.  The law concerns a class.  GRICE.  Then the hill is merely the vehicle.  HART.  Precisely.  GRICE.  Good. We have finally escaped the iota-operator.  HART.  For the moment.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Ierace – Ossia: Grice ed Ierace: la ragione conversazioanle e il certificato Silvano Doroteo Ierace: la ragione conversazioanle e il certificato -- Roma – filosofia italiana --   – (Roma). Abstract. Grice: “It is very uncommon to find an English philosopher whose surname starts with ‘ie-,’ and also an Italian one. This is due to the fact that the Greeks aspirated everything – while the Romans, and later the Italians, just thought of aspiration as a phonological feature that wasn’t really necessary. The Gallic agree with the Italians on this, but stupidly keep the H in the so-called ‘orthographie’!” Filosofo italiano. The proud possessor of a certificate confirming that he was a philosopher. Grice: “Cicerone uses this as an example of indirect proof. The fact that the certificate certifies that Ierace is a philosopher is no proof that he is one.” Grice: “It seems more proper to render all these “I-“ ancient philosohers with I- turned into G-. Silvano Doroteo Ierace. GRICEVVS: Ierace, de tuo ipso nomine dubito: Latine scribendumne est IERAX (ut avis), an potius HIERAX, ne Graeci nos putent sine spiritu? IERACE: Ego quidem avem non me esse scio—quamquam, si testimonium meum “philosophum” me facit, cur non et “accipitrem” me faciat? Unum sigillum, duo animalia. GRICEVVS: Ciceroni placebit: “testimonium” est indicium, non essentia. Praeterea, si Graecum ἱέραξ spectes, HIERAX doctius; si Romanum fastidium aspirationis, IERAX simplicius. IERACE: Ergo ita faciamus: in diplomate HIERAX, in taberna IERAX; et si quis roget cur, respondebo: “aspiratio est supervacua—nisi cum vinum hauriendum est.”

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Ieroteo – Ossia Grice ed Ieroteo: la ragione conversazionale e la scuola di Guiliano --  Ieroteo (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e la scuola di Guiliano. Grice: “As a classicist at Corpus, I soon learned – via the reference guides, etc. – that the Greeks aspirated almost anything they touched – the Romans disliked an aspiration as ‘rough’, and the Italians just dropped it from their phonological systems!” -- Filosofo italiano. convinced Giuliano to pave the floor of Hagia Sophia with silver – Grice: “but ultimately the emperor declined to do so on the lack of a reason that would be convincing enough to ACT, not just to BELIEVE!” GRICEVS: In schola Iuliani hodie ambigimus, Ierotee: quomodo te Latine in nominativo scribamus—HIEROTHEVS, an sine asperitate, IEROTHEVS? Graeci enim omnia fere aspirant, Romani “h” rudem amant odisse, Itali vero simpliciter abiiciunt. HIEROTHEVS (ridens): Si mihi H addis, magistri, vereor ne totus “asper” fiam; si tollis, videbor Italus in toga. Sed quid de diphthongo? “TH” saltem serva, ne me in “Ieroteum” solum vertas, quasi sim mera nota marginalis. GRICEVS: Sapienter: Latinitas docta solet HIEROTHEVS (ex Graeco Ἱερόθεος) scribere; Latinitas vero neglegentior facile IEROTHEVS. Utrumque tamen idem fere sonat—et hoc ipsum est iocus: litterae pugnant, sensus manet. HIEROTHEVS: Ergo faciamus pactum Iulianum: in titulo HIEROTHEVS, ut grammatici gaudeant; in colloquio IEROTHEVS, ut amici rideant. Nam, sicut de pavimento argenteo Hagiae Sophiae: pulchrum erat ad credendum—sed non satis rationis erat ad faciendum.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Igneo – Ossia: Grice ed Igneo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Igneo. The Ignii are a family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens appear in history, but a number are known from inscriptions.  I. is derived from ignis, fire, and belongs to a large class of gentilicia derived from the names of ordinary objects, although as is often the case, one cannot determine from the name whether the original bearer was so called because he was vigorous, temperamental, had red hair, or resembled fire in some other respect. Although a great number of I. appear in inscriptions from Gaul, several come from the towns of Beneventum and Aeclanum in Samnium, indicating that the Ignii were likely descended from the Samnites, or perhaps from Latin colonists in the region.  The main praenomina of the Ignii were Aulus, Quintus, Lucius, and Gaius, all of which were common throughout Roman history. Aulus is found among the I. in Samnium; elsewhere they relied on Quintus, Lucius, and Gaius, although there is an instance of Sextus from Gallia Narbonensis.  Ignia, named in a fragmentary inscription from Rome.[3] Quintus I., named in an inscription from Lugdunum in Gallia Lugdunensis.[4] I. Sex. l. Catulus, a freedman buried at Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis.[5] Lucius I. Charito, together with Claudianus Dulcitius, dedicated a monument at Lugdunum to their brother-in-law, Aufidius Militaris.[6] Ignia L. l. Clymene, a freedwoman buried in a sepulchre at Rome, along with several freedmen and freedwomen, including Lucius I. Theseus.[7] Aula Ignia A. f. Crispina, buried at Aeclanum in Samnium, along with her sister, Theia Justina, in a tomb dedicated by their parents, Aulus I. Crispinus and Theia Justina, and Gaius Trebatius, apparently a half-brother or uncle.[8] Aulus I. Crispinus, together with his wife, Theia Justina, and Gaius Trebatius, perhaps a stepson or brother-in-law, dedicated a tomb at Aeclanum for his daughters, Aula Ignia Crispina and Theia Justina.[8] Aulus I. A. l. Epicadus, a freedman buried at Beneventum in Samnium during the first century, along with his fellow freedmen, Aulus I. Segalus and Liconia Fausta.[9] Quintus Ignius Epictetus, buried at Arelate in Gallia Narbonensis, in a tomb dedicated by his heirs.[10] Aulus I. Felix, together with his wife, Domitia Quintilla, dedicated a tomb at Beneventum for their foster son, whose name has not been preserved, aged fourteen years, nine months, and two days.[11] Lucius I. L. l. Firmius, a freedman buried at Narbo.[12] Lucius I. Firmus, named in an inscription from Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis.[13] Ignia Helpis, a freedwoman who dedicated a tomb at Lugdunum to Quintus I. Silvinus, who had been freed along with her, and served as one of the Seviri Augustales at Lugdunum.[14] Ignia Helpis, buried at Narbo, together with her husband, Quintus Ignius Merops.[15] Quintus I. Merops, buried at Narbo, together with his wife, Ignia Helpis.[15] Quintus I. Onesimus, a soldier in the century of Gnaeus Pompeius Pelas, stationed at Rome in AD 70.[16] Quintus Ignius C. l. Pullo, a freedman buried at Narbo, with a monument from his client, the freedwoman Urisca.[17] Ignia Salvia, a freedwoman named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome.[18] Aulus I. A. l. Segalus, a freedman buried at Beneventum during the first century, along with his fellow freedmen, Aulus I. Epicadus and Liconia Fausta.[9] Gaius Ignius Septiminus, a native of Bagai, was a soldier in the eighth cohort of the Legio III Augusta, named in an inscription from Lambaesis in Numidia. Quintus Ignius Sextus, dedicated a monument at Burdigala in Gallia Aquitania to his brother, Lucius Julius Mutacus Sequanus, dating to the reigns of Septimius Severus or Caracalla.[19] Quintus I. Silvinus, a freedman, was one of the Seviri Augustales at Lugdunum, where he was buried in a tomb dedicated by Ignia Helpis, who had been freed along with him.[14] Gaius I. C. f. Sisenna, an aedile, prefect, and duumvir at Narbo.[20] Ignia Q. l. Sura, a freedwoman buried at Narbo, along with Lucius Rubrius, perhaps her husband.[21] Lucius I. L. l. Theseus, a freedman buried in a sepulchre at Rome, together with several other freedmen and freedwomen, including Ignia Clymene.[7] I. Viatorianus, stator alae, a disciplinary officer in charge of a wing of the Roman army at Apamea in Syria in AD 252.[22] See also List of Roman gentes References  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. ignis.  Chase, pp. 112, 113.  CIL VI, 30556,056.  CIL XIII, 2006.  CIL XII, 4869.  CIL XIII, 2070.  CIL VI, 19671.  CIL IX, 1272  AE 2013, 362  CIL XII, 811.  CIL IX, 1843.  CIL XII, 4868  CAG, 30-1, p. 509.  CIL XIII, 1593.  CIL XII, 4870.  CIL VI, 200.  CIL XII, 4871.  CIL VI, 27253.  CIL XIII, 631.  CIL XII, 4396.  CIL XII, 5096.  AE 1993, 1593. Bibliography Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). La Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Archaeological Map of Gaul, abbreviated CAG), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1931–present). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Category: Roman gentes For this gens we may have a lesson in phonology. When Grice reached Oxford he heard /ea/ -- he was confused, it was the way AYER, a person with a nurname after a villae in Switzerland, pronounced his name. "But we English want more sounds to a name." The IGNIVS was okay in Rome, but why is it that ignis does not survive as 'fire' in Italian that prefers 'fuoco'? The reason is that Ignivs by natural evolution would have become a mere /ea/ like Ayer, a flatus vocis, or vocal in the air? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Igneo – Ossia: Grice ed Igneo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Igneo. This is a delightful case where philology and Grice may actually pull in opposite directions. The gens article says only that:  Ignius is derived from ignis ("fire"). It does not tell us what became of ignis in the Romance languages. The etymological link is merely the Roman nomen. cite not available; based on user-supplied text.  But your question is really about why Italian has:  fuoco (< Latin focus)  rather than  ignio or some descendant of ignis.  The short answer is that Romance languages often preserve not the classical literary word, but a competing everyday word. A famous parallel:                      Classical LatinRomance winnerequus (horse)Italian cavallo caballus)os (mouth)French bouche bucca)ignis (fire)Italian fuoco focus) So ignis was not defeated because it became phonetically impossible. It was defeated because focus took over. Now, your Gricean-phonological joke is nevertheless clever. Suppose ignis had survived regularly into Italian. One might expect something roughly along the lines of the developments seen elsewhere:  ignis → igne → igne/ignee ...  The precise outcome is a matter for Romance historical phonology, but your intuition is sound that the result would be a much shorter, lighter word than the robust Latin ignis. And here Grice's joke about Ayer becomes relevant. When Grice first heard:  A. J. Ayer  pronounced  /eə/ ("Air")  he thought, as you put it:  "We English want more sounds to a name."  The spelling looked much larger than the pronunciation. A similar phenomenon often occurs in language history:  substantial Latin form becomes attenuated Romance form.   For the Ignii, the most Gricean vignette might therefore be: GRAMMATICVS.  Whence comes Ignius?  PHILOLOGVS.  From ignis.  GRAMMATICVS.  Fire?  PHILOLOGVS.  Fire, certainly.  GRAMMATICVS.  Red hair?  PHILOLOGVS.  Possibly.  GRAMMATICVS.  Hot temper?  PHILOLOGVS.  Possibly.  GRAMMATICVS.  Vigour?  PHILOLOGVS.  Possibly.  GRICEVS.  Excellent. One meaning, many implicatures.  The irony is that the Romans seem happy to derive a gentilicium from:  ignis,  while the Romance languages eventually prefer:  focus.  The family preserves the older Latin word better than modern Italian does. A Gricean moral:  Words survive in names after they disappear from ordinary speech.  Just as Iustus survives in Justinianus, ignis survives in Ignius, even when everyday descendants prefer another route entirely. But Crusca allows for later latinates like 'ignico' -- and was there a semantic shift in prefering focus to ignis -- does English retain both roots, for ignis and for focus? Thanks Yes, and this is one of the classic Romance cases where the inherited popular word survives, while the older literary word survives as a learned borrowing. Latin had:  ignis = fire. focus = hearth, fireplace.  In the Romance vernaculars, it was often focus that won the competition as the ordinary word for "fire":  Italian fuoco Spanish fuego Portuguese fogo French feu  These are descendants of focus, not ignis. So there is indeed a semantic shift:  hearth → fire  The place where the fire burns comes to stand for the fire itself. That is a very ordinary semantic process (metonymy rather than metaphor). Meanwhile ignis survives in learned and literary formations. Thus Italian can have learned derivatives such as:  igneo ("igneous", fiery), ignifugo, ignizione,  while everyday speech says:  fuoco.  The situation is rather like English:  everyday: fire learned/scientific: igneous, ignite, ignition  The ordinary word and the learned word come from different sources.  English is especially interesting because it preserves both Latin roots. From ignis:  ignite ignition igneous  From focus:  focus focal refocus  But with a semantic twist. The descendants of focus in the Romance languages generally stayed near:  hearth → fire  whereas in English the learned borrowing focus follows the later Latin development:  hearth → fireplace → point where rays converge → centre of attention  Hence Grice's famous Oxford sentence:  "Let us focus on the implicature"  contains a descendant of the same Latin word whose cousins in Italian and Spanish mean:  "fire."  A delightful irony.  A Grice/Speranza vignette: ROMANVS.  Ignis ardet.  (The fire burns.) ITALVS.  Il fuoco arde.  (The fire burns.) GRAMMATICVS.  But fuoco comes from focus.  ITALVS.  Yes.  GRAMMATICVS.  Which means "hearth."  ITALVS.  It does now mean "fire."  GRICEVS.  Excellent. One sense, many conversational opportunities.  The most Gricean moral may be that ignis never entirely disappeared. It simply retreated into learned vocabulary, while focus took over the everyday job. Thus the Ignii preserve, in their nomen, a piece of ordinary Latin that ordinary Romance speech largely abandoned. Well, and in fact, preserving IGNEO is like preserving IGNEVS which is derives from IGNIS (lost as noun). ITalian preservdes the erudite adjective but not the noun from which the adjective derives. So indeed, at a classroom in Ancient Rome. The teacher passing absence/presence list -- IGNEVS -- Present -- Why are you called thus, Ignius? I'm burning to learn!" Thanks Ha! Yes, and this is exactly the sort of thing that would have delighted both a Roman grammarian and Grice. The Romance situation is indeed curious:  the noun ignis largely disappears from everyday Romance speech; but derivatives survive in learned vocabulary:  Italian igneo, English igneous, ignite, ignition, etc.    So the adjective becomes, in a sense, more conservative than the noun from which it was formed. A schoolroom vignette: MAGISTER.  Igni, adesne?  (Ignius, are you present?) IGNIVS.  Adsum, magister.  (Present, teacher.) MAGISTER.  Cur Ignius vocaris?  (Why are you called Ignius?) IGNIVS.  Quia pater ita voluit.  (Because my father wished it so.) MAGISTER.  At quid significat?  (But what does it mean?) IGNIVS.  Ignem, credo.  (Fire, I suppose.) MAGISTER.  Bene. Ardesne?  (Good. Do you burn, then?) IGNIVS.  Dum grammatica docetur, non satis.  (While grammar is being taught, not enough.)  The Gricean point is especially neat. Suppose the teacher hears:  Ignius  He immediately begins seeking a rationale:  red hair? fiery temper? energy? enthusiasm?  The name presents him with a conversational puzzle. Yet the father who first bore the cognomen may have been called Ignius for one of those reasons, while his descendants merely inherit the name. Thus: MAGISTER.  Why are you called Ignius?  IGNIVS.  I do not know.  MAGISTER.  Then the name no longer describes you?  IGNIVS.  It identifies me.  At which point Grice nods approvingly. For that is precisely the journey from:  predicate  to  proper name.  And as you nicely observe, modern Italian still preserves the fossil:  igneo  even though ordinary speakers no longer say:  ignis  or anything descended directly from it for "fire." The adjective survives as a learned reminder of a noun that lost the everyday competition to focus > fuoco. A final Speranzian punchline: MAGISTER.  Igni, quid est ignis?  (Ignius, what is fire?) IGNIVS.  Nescio; sed nomen meum est.  (I do not know; but it is my name.) and can you check wiktionary or dizionario etimologico for igneo to see if the def. goes: "From Latin ignis, which was lost in translation?" Thanks I can't actually check Wiktionary or an online dizionario etimologico right now because I don't have a web-search result for those pages in this conversation. So I don't want to pretend I've verified their current wording. Philologically, however, the sort of dictionary entry one normally finds is closer to:  igneo < Latin igneus ("fiery", "of fire"), from ignis ("fire").  than to:  "from Latin ignis, which was lost."  The second is really a historian's comment, not an etymology. Your observation is nevertheless correct and rather striking:                      LatinItalianignis (fire)— (lost as ordinary noun)igneus (fiery)igneofocus (hearth)fuoco (fire) So modern Italian preserves the learned adjective:  igneo  while the everyday noun from which it was ultimately derived,  ignis,  did not remain the ordinary word for "fire." A Grice/Speranza grammarian might therefore say:  Igneo è figlio di ignis, ma ignis non abita più qui.  ("Igneo is the son of ignis, but ignis no longer lives here.") Or, in the Roman classroom: MAGISTER.  Igni, unde nomen tuum?  ("Ignius, whence your name?") IGNIVS.  Ex igne.  ("From fire.") MAGISTER.  Et ubi est ignis?  ("And where is fire?") IGNIVS.  Periit; filius autem superfuit.  ("The father perished; the son survived.") Which captures exactly the oddity: the derivative survives better than the base word. A Gricean would love that. The adjective igneo is almost a linguistic implicature of a noun that ordinary speech has forgotten. Does this below help? Thanks Phonetic Weakness Spoken Vulgar Latin favored words that were rhythmically strong and easy to pronounce in casual speech. [1] Ignis is short and phonetically distinct, but when inflected in spoken Latin, it could easily be swallowed or confused with other terms. Focus (and its accusative form focum) had a strong, punchy consonant structure that easily evolved into the syllabically robust fuoco. [1, 2, 3] It helps a little, but I'd treat it cautiously. As stated, the explanation  "Ignis is short and phonetically weak, whereas focus was stronger"  sounds somewhat speculative to me. Historical linguists are usually happier when they can point to actual lexical competition than to a vague notion of "strength." What is undoubtedly true is the outcome:  Latin ignis = "fire". Latin focus = "hearth, fireplace". In the Romance vernaculars, descendants of focus become the ordinary words for "fire":  Italian fuoco Spanish fuego Portuguese fogo French feu.    So the primary fact needing explanation is:  Why did speakers start using "hearth" for "fire"?  That is a very natural metonymy:  hearth → fire in the hearth → fire generally.  One can compare English:  "The White House announced ..." where a building stands for the institution.  No phonology is needed yet. Now, could phonology have helped focus win? Possibly. Compare the likely developments:  focus → focu → fuoco  a very robust Romance development. Whereas ignis is a somewhat isolated consonantal shape, and its descendants might well have been less stable. But that is, at best, a supporting factor. A Gricean would probably prefer an explanation in terms of ordinary use: ROMANVS.  Add wood to the focus.  (The hearth.) Later: VULGAR LATIN SPEAKER.  The focus is dying.  (The fire in the hearth.) Still later: ITALIAN.  Il fuoco.  (The fire.) So the semantic pathway is:  place of fire → fire at that place → fire.  That is elegant and economical. And it gives you a nice classroom joke for the Ignii: MAGISTER.  Igni, quid est ignis?  (What is ignis?) IGNIVS.  Nomen familiae meae.  (It is my family name.) MAGISTER.  Et quid vocat vulgus?  (And what does the common people call it?) IGNIVS.  Focus, ut audio.  (Focus, so I hear.) +> The learned preserve ignis; ordinary speakers have already moved on to focus.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Illuminati – Ossia: Grice ed Illuminati: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del filosofo all’opera – Augusto Illuminati (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del filosofo all’opera. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning explains implicature as a rational, publicly criticizable inference from what is said to what is meant: speakers rely on shared expectations of cooperation to leave things unsaid efficiently, and hearers recover the intended extra content by reasoning about why that particular utterance was made in that context. Illuminati’s work, as suggested by the themes in your passage, relocates that “governance” from the micro-level of conversational maxims to the macro-level of political modernity: representation, manipulation, lobbying, and the “antinomies of citizenship” describe a public sphere in which meaning is routinely produced through apparatuses that distribute visibility and invisibility, so that what is implied is often an effect of institutions rather than the tidy product of a speaker’s transparent intentions. Compared with Grice, then, the key contrast is that Grice models cooperation as a default rational stance that can be voluntarily adopted or withdrawn by agents, whereas Illuminati is preoccupied with how shared rules and representations can be publicly valid without becoming instruments of control—how “letting be” can coexist with demands for recognition, and how politicized speech can avoid turning into disciplinary speech. In Gricean terms, this means that many “implicatures” in civic discourse are not merely cancellable conversational enrichments but structurally induced insinuations: audiences infer motives, alignments, and exclusions because the communicative field is already shaped by power and by the technical organization of representation. The overlap is that both treat meaning as inseparable from practice—Grice from the practice of cooperative talk, Illuminati from the practice of citizenship and institutional life—but Illuminati pushes the Gricean picture toward a harder question: not only how implicatures are derived, but who gets to set the conditions under which certain inferences become inevitable, and how a rational public conversation can remain free when the very mechanisms that make it possible also threaten to manage it. Grice: “I was often asked at Oxford what my surname meant: neither ‘grice’ (pig) nor ‘grice’ (grey) mean anything too philosophical – but cf. grey cells – On the other han Illuminati may be deemed to be a ‘rationalist’ surname in that Reason was iconographically represented as shedding light on things – and people! I would often refer to myself as a quasi-contractualist. But when developing the ‘dialectic’ – ontogenetic and phylogenetic – of ‘significatio’, I grant that it may all be a ‘myth’ which have been proved useful to philosophers since Plato, and in Switzerland, since Rousseau! I like I., especially his essay on Rousseau, between solipsism and conversation! I enjoyed I.’s treatment of Rousseau’s myth of the social contract, since I made use of it!” – ‘Imagine is a good thing, but is there such a thing as co-imagine?” -  sharing an hallucination, the myth of the contract. Myth and theory. Filosofo italiano. “La città e il desiderio. Viene meno un modo di fare in cui la soggettività potente si appropria il mondo subordinando le altre potenze soggettive e realizza la sua essenza destinale mediante adeguati meccanismi di rappresentazione e manipolazione tecnica. Come utilizzare regole pubblicamente valide senza colpevolizzare e controllare dall'altro le forme di vita degli uomini è precisamente l'antinomia della cittadinanza. La politicizzazione di sfere inabituali va insieme alla diserzione di istituzioni sclerotiche. Una ricaduta pratica ne è l'integrazione delle strutture rappresentative con nuove lobbies o la richiesta di quote per minoranze Nel lasciar-essere che si contrappone alla tracotanza istituzionale convivono cosi l'ancora-non-rappresentato che cerca lobbisticamente rappresentazione, e rifiuto radicare di rappresentazione. Professore associato di storia della filosofia politica, dall'anno accademico ha assunto la cattedra di storia della filosofia, dove è stato chiamato come straordinario. Insegna a Urbino. il filosofo all’opera. Grice: Caro Illuminati, ti confesso una cosa che farà sorridere chiunque abbia un po’ di passione per la musica: per me, “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” è quasi come una fiaba per bambini! Ogni volta che la ascolto, mi sembra di sfogliare un libro illustrato pieno di personaggi coloriti e morali semplici. Illuminati: Ah, Grice, permettimi di dissentire con il sorriso: Wagner, di solito così tragico, qui si diverte a giocare con la leggerezza, è vero, ma le sfumature ironiche e i rimandi alla tensione tra regola e creatività sono tutto fuorché infantili! Forse è proprio lì il suo fascino: parlare ai grandi con il linguaggio dei bambini. Grice: Ecco, vedi perché amo queste conversazioni con te! Riesci sempre a svelare una profondità inaspettata anche dove io vedevo solo scherzo e ingenuità. Forse i veri bambini siamo noi filosofi, che cerchiamo la verità giocando con le interpretazioni. Illuminati: Touché! In fondo, ogni mito, come ogni buona opera d’arte, nasce dalla capacità di meravigliarsi. E che cos’è la filosofia se non il prendersi sul serio… ridendo un po’ di sé stessi? Su questo, caro Grice, siamo davvero in sintonia. Illuminati, Augusto (1967). Sociologia e classi sociali. Torino: Einaudi.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Imbiani – Ossia: Grice ed Imbriani. Acri srive un saggio contro Imbriani.   Vittorio Ugone Imbriani (Napoli, Campania). Acri srive un saggio contro Imbriani. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as an accountable inference from what is said to what is meant, produced under cooperative expectations that can be cancelled or repaired once the relevant background is made explicit. Imbriani, by temperament and by genre, belongs to a polemical culture in which meaning is often designed to sting rather than to cooperate: the critic’s sentence is written to force the reader into an attitude—admiration, contempt, ridicule—through insinuation, caricature, and strategic overstatement, so that the “implicature” is frequently the main act and the literal content a mere vehicle. Compared with Grice, this changes the default rationality of the exchange: Grice’s hearer is licensed to infer because the speaker is presumed to be helping the conversation along, whereas Imbriani’s reader infers because the writer is presumed to be fighting, and the background assumption is adversarial rather than benevolent. That makes Acri’s critique of Imbriani a nice Gricean case-study: the very act of rebuttal confers salience and invites a new round of inferences about seriousness, authority, and stakes—much as Grice worries, in the Quine episode, that responding to an anti-dogmatist can inadvertently elevate the provocation into a “dogma” worth defending. In short, Imbriani exemplifies implicature as rhetorical weapon and reputational signal within intellectual combat, while Grice models implicature as a rational instrument of coordination; the overlap is that both depend on shared expectations and shared background, but they diverge on whether those expectations are oriented toward mutual understanding or toward victory. Grice: “St John’s, 1953.Quine is coming as George Eastman Visiting Professor, and I find myself wondering—yet again—who Eastman was and why his name must endure as a kind of annual excuse for importing foreigners in bulk. That, however, is a small irritation. The greater one is watching Strawson take Mr Quine with a solemnity usually reserved for bishops and railway timetables. It reminds me of that old Italian pattern Collingwood once remarked upon: he went running to the Bodleian to fetch Imbriani, not because he had any independent hunger for Imbriani, but simply because Acri had taken the trouble to criticize him, and criticism, like an accusation, confers importance by sheer act of attention. I fear I am about to do the same with Quine. His irreverences against the “dogmas” that keep my spine upright are designed to make one respond; and once one responds, one is already playing his game—defending what one had never thought needed defence, and thereby granting it the status of a doctrine. The danger is that Quine will be remembered here not as the visiting professor with an American title attached, but as the anti-dogmatist whom Strawson and I were obliged to take down a peg or two; and that our “defence” will look, in retrospect, like the very parochialism we congratulate ourselves on avoiding. Perhaps the only honest posture is to treat him as one treats any clever provocateur in conversation: take the point where it is genuine, refuse the inflated conclusion, and deny him the satisfaction of thinking that the rest of us exist merely as his audience. Grice: Caro Imbriani, mi hanno detto che Acri ha scritto un saggio tutto contro di te. Ma dimmi, qual è il vero motivo? Hai forse rubato la sua penna preferita? Imbriani: Grice, non posso negare che la penna di Acri fosse tentatrice, ma credo che il suo saggio sia nato più dalla sua voglia di filosofeggiare che dalla perdita degli strumenti! In fondo, in Italia, si scrive contro per sport. Grice: Eh già, Imbriani, qui da noi un attacco filosofico vale più di una partita a carte. Ma la domanda è: hai risposto al saggio con una poesia oppure ti sei limitato a offrirgli un caffè? Imbriani: Grice, ho fatto entrambe le cose! Prima una poesia che nessuno ha capito, poi un caffè così forte che Acri ha smesso di scrivere contro di me... almeno fino a domani. Imbriani, Vittorio Ugone (1866). Le leggi dell’organismo poetico e della poesia popolare italiana.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Ippio – Ossia: Grice ed Ippio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Ippio. The Iippii are a family of ancient Rome. No members of this gens are mentioned by Roman writers, but several are known from inscriptions.  Gaius I. C. l. Diphilus, a freedman buried at Casilinum in Campania, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century, built by one of his children—perhaps Hippia Tertia, buried in the same place.[1][2][3] Publius I. P. f. Stabilio, dedicated a tomb at Rufrae in Campania, dating from the early or middle part of the first century, for himself and his patron, Publius I. Suilla, using the proceeds of a legacy left to him.[4] Publius I. P. f. Suilla, buried at Rufrae, in a tomb dating from the early or middle part of the first century, built by his client, Publius Hippius Stabilio.[4] Hippia C. f. Tertia, buried at Casilinum in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century, built by one of her siblings out of the proceeds of a legacy. She or her siblings may have built the adjacent tomb of Gaius Hippius Diphilus, perhaps their father. At least two other persons with incomplete names, one of them Bithynicus, appear to be buried in the same tomb.[1][2][3] See also List of Roman gentes References  CIL X, 8228.  Chioffi, La raccolta epigrafica, Capua, 75.  Solin, Analecta Epigraphica, p. 233.  CIL X, 4387. Bibliography Laura Chioffi, La raccolta epigrafica, Capua (The Epigraphic Collection of Capua), Museo provinciale Campano di Capua (2005). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Heikki Solin, Analecta Epigraphica 1970–1997, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae, Rome (1998). Category: Roman gentes For this gens, HIPPIA, can you double check if there is a contagion from hippos, horse in Greek? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Ippio – Ossia: Grice ed Ippio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Ippio. I would be very cautious about asserting a connection, but Hippius/Hippia certainly looks Greek to the eye. The obvious comparison is Greek:  ἵππος (hippos) = horse.  And Greek-derived names built on hipp- are extremely common:  Hippocrates, Hipparchus, Hipparchia, Hippodamus, etc.  What is striking in your gens entry is that the attested bearers include names such as:  Diphilus, Bithynicus,  which are themselves strongly Greek-looking names, and several of the Hippii are freedmen or connected with freedmen. That certainly places them in a social world where Greek names were common. (This is an observation from the names listed, not a demonstrated etymology.) What I cannot verify from the material provided is that any authority derives:  Hippius ← hippos  or that the nomen is officially regarded as Greek in origin. So the safest philological answer is:  A Greek connection is plausible. The resemblance to ἵππος is obvious. But the gens entry itself does not give an etymology, and I would want a specialized onomastic source before treating the derivation as established.  A Grice-Speranza classroom scene practically writes itself: MAGISTER.  Hippi, unde nomen tuum?  (Hippius, whence your name?) HIPPIVS.  Graecum fortasse est.  (Perhaps it is Greek.) MAGISTER.  Ab equo?  (From a horse?) HIPPIVS.  Ita volunt grammatici.  (So the grammarians would have it.) MAGISTER.  Et equitasne?  (And are you horse-like?) HIPPIVS.  Minime; nomen est, non descriptio.  (By no means; it is a name, not a description.) Which is, of course, exactly the lesson we've been drawing from Brutus, Ignius, Iustinus, and the rest: what begins as a description quickly becomes a label.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Ippolito – Ossia: Grice ed Ippolito: la ragione conversazionale e il culto di Giove -- Roma Ippolito (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il culto di Giove. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as an accountable inference from what is said to what is meant: speakers normally rely on shared expectations of relevance, clarity, and sufficiency, and hearers recover the intended extra content by rational reconstruction, with the possibility of challenge and cancellation. Hippolytus, as a Greek-writing Roman-era theologian whose Refutatio omnium haeresium (Philosophumena) first lays out the “heretics’” philosophical systems before denouncing them, provides a revealing contrast in method and audience design: his expository strategy presupposes that readers can track (and perhaps be tempted by) the very doctrines he wants to refute, so the text constantly manages a delicate implicature that Grice would have noticed—detailed sympathetic description can suggest partial endorsement unless the author signals distance, and the refutation must therefore control what the reader is entitled to infer about the author’s stance at each stage. Compared with Grice, Hippolytus’ rationality is not the micro-rationality of cooperative everyday conversation but the macro-rationality of polemical pedagogy, where the “common ground” is contested and where quotation and paraphrase are risky because they can confer legitimacy; this is why his work is simultaneously a sourcebook for contemporary philosophy and a moral warning about it. Grice’s aside about “by Jove” underscores the divergence: for Grice, even casual oaths carry pragmatic force and social meaning beyond their literal content, whereas Hippolytus’ primary concern is doctrinal content and its theological danger, so he is liable to overlook the conversational layer in which Roman religious language functions as stance-marking rather than as belief. In short, Grice explains how rational agents trade on implicature to coordinate understanding, while Hippolytus shows how a rational polemicist must anticipate implicatures he may inadvertently generate—especially when he must present an opponent’s system clearly enough to refute it, yet not so invitingly that the reader takes the clarity itself as a recommendation. Grice: “When I was studying classics for my moderations at Corpus, I found out that while the Greeks were very jealous about the H, the Romans could not care less – and in fact this is evidenced by modern-day Italians, who care even less than the Romans, if that’s possible!” -- Filosofo italiano. A leading theologian. His essay, “The refutation of all heresies” is a valuable source of information on the Roman philosophy of his day. He begins by setting out all the heresies and their philosophical theories in detail – BEFORE accusing why whom he called the ‘heretics’ are being led astray by these theories. Grice: “Ippolito fails to detect the conversational implicature in that common Romanism, ‘by Jove!’!” Grice: “Corpus, 1932. Dear Father, I am at last abandoning the declensions (and, mercifully, a good portion of the conjugations) and making my way toward what is solemnly called Greats. I have decided I shall not do History. It is odd to say that, given that the Great War and its theatrical archdukes are still everyone’s favourite explanatory device for everything; but I am happier leaving causes to the historians and concentrating on what words are doing when people offer causes. The alternative, as you know, is Philosophy. Hardie, who is excellent at everything, manages to make it look as if being good at both History and Philosophy means being merely regular at either—an effect of his that I both admire and resent. Today he taught me a word which is too useful to keep to myself: philosophumena (singular philosophumenon). He explained that it is the name by which a certain book was known—what the Middle Ages, with their gift for titles, preferred to call Refutatio omnium haeresium. I thought at once that you might enjoy having “Refutation of all heresies” as a phrase to hold over Aunt Matilda, who seems to treat nonconformity as a hobby and everyone else as an exhibit. Hardie added the detail that the author is Hippolytus—Roman, yet writing in Greek, like Marcus Aurelius, which keeps me wondering what is wrong with these Romans that they insist on borrowing other people’s language even when they already have an empire to speak in. Hardie says it is not so much wrong as ambitious: Greek, apparently, was the language in which a Roman could sound most philosophical. This, too, is a lesson for an Englishman at Oxford: one can be entirely at home in one’s tongue and still find oneself reaching for a foreign register when one wants to be taken seriously. Yours, Paul.” GRICEVS: Cum apud Corpus Moderationes in litteris classicis agerem, animadverti Graecos litterae H tamquam thesauro quodam invidere; Romanos vero eam neglegere: quod hodie etiam in Italicis apparet, qui—si fieri potest—Romanis ipsis neglegentiores sunt. HYPPOLITVS: Facile est litteras dimittere; difficilius est fidem retinere. At tu, Grice, quasi per iocum in me invehēris: in libello meo, Refutatione omnium haeresium, haereses prius expono, ut postea refellam. GRICEVS: Profecto—sed nonnulli suspicabuntur te haeresibus ipsis paulum indulgere, quandoquidem eas prius ornate describis et quasi in prima subsellia collocas, orthodoxiam vero postremo, anhelantem, introducis. HYPPOLITVS: Methodus est, non risus. Et quod ad Romanorum “per Iovem!” attinet—iusiurandum est, non dogma. GRICEVS: Verum; sed etiam implicatura est togata: “per Iovem!” saepe hoc valet, “nolo dicere quod sentio—tamen vehementer sentio”; ideo theologi tui id non animadvertunt, Romani autem libenter intellegunt. Ippolito (a. u. c. CMLXXIII). Philosophumena.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Irrio – Ossia: Grice ed Irrio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Irrio. The Irrii are a Roman family, appearing in history during the final century of the Republic, and in Imperial times. It is chiefly remembered as the result of Gaius I., a farmer of lampreys in the time of Giulio Caesar. I., praetor in 88 BC.[1] Gaius I., possibly a son of the praetor, was the first private person to raise lampreys in seawater stock ponds. He is reported to have spent no less than twelve million sestertii for bait, using the rent from his houses, and to have sold a well-stocked lamprey farm for four hundred thousand sestertii. Although his lampreys were so dear to him that I. often refused to sell them, he is reported to have sent several thousand to GIULIO Caesar for his triumphal banquets in 46 and 45 BC.[2][3] Gaius Hirrius Postumius, an Epicurean mentioned by Cicero, may be identical with the farmer of lampreys.[4] Marcus Hirrius Fronto Neratius Pansa, administrator of Lycia and Pamphylia from AD 70 to 72, and Galatia from 77 to 80. See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 496 ("Gaius Hirrius").  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, ii. 5, iii. 17.  Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, ix. 55.  Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 22. § 70. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum Rusticarum (Rural Matters). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Naturalis Historia (Natural History). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Category: Roman gentesFOr this gens we can have a conversation using Roman numerals for 'thousands' -- say, three thousands. The conversation takes place before SECOND banquet -- a few moves, ending with implicature-laden move by I. to GIULIO – Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Irrio – Ossia: Grice ed Irrio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Irrio. Yes — a perfect little Gricean scene: Hirrius appears to be giving Caesar fish, but means something about magnificence, scarcity, and political proximity. The source summary gives Hirrius as famous for lamprey-farming, reluctant to sell them, yet sending several thousand to Caesar for triumphal banquets. [en.wikipedia.org] Ante secundum convivium Caesaris CAESAR: Hirri, alterum convivium parandum est. quid de muraenis tuis? (Hirrius, the second banquet must be prepared. What of your lampreys?) HIRRIVS: Muraenae meae venales non sunt. (My lampreys are not for sale.) CAESAR: Ne Caesari quidem? (Not even to Caesar?) HIRRIVS: Caesari non vendo; mitto MMMD. (I do not sell to Caesar; I send three thousand five hundred.) +> Caesar is not merely a buyer; he is the only man for whom Hirrius’ refusal to sell can become a gift.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Grice – Ossia: Grice ed Istacidio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Istacidio. The "Villa of the Mysteries", home of the Istacidii at Pompeii. The Istacidii are a Roman family at Pompeii. No members of this gens are mentioned by ancient writers, but a number are known from inscriptions. Numerius I. Cilix was one of the municipal duumvirs of Pompeii around the beginning of the first century. The I. were apparently the residents of the famous "Villa of the Mysteries", and a large sepulchre found along the bay road contains several tombs for members of this family. The I. were most likely of Campanian origin, as all of the inscriptions of this family are from Pompeii,[3] and one of them bore the surname Campanus, one of a class of surnames derived from place names, and usually indicating a person's place of origin.[4]  The main praenomina of the I. were Numerius and Lucius, accounting for all of the I. whose praenomina are known, except for one instance of Marcus, found in a filiation. Lucius and Marcus were among the most common of all Roman names at all periods of history, while Numerius was much more distinctive; while not actually rare, it was typical in families of Oscan origin.  The inscriptions of the I. at Pompeii suggest that they constituted a single family, together with their freedmen. Several inscriptions of this gens do not include a cognomen, and none of the surnames of this gens appear to have been hereditary. Cilix, a surname originally applied to someone from Cilicia, gives the appearance of the type of name belonging to a freedman, and indicating his place of origin; but as it belonged to one of the duumviri, it may instead have stemmed from his trading connections.[2]    Fresco from the "Villa of the Mysteries". Istacidia L. f., named in an inscription from Pompeii in Campania.[5] Istacidia M. f., the widow of Publius Tintirius, was buried at Pompeii between 30 BC and AD 20, in a tomb dedicated by her daughter, Tintiria.[6] Lucius I., named in a first-century inscription from Pompeii.[7] Lucius I., named in two graffiti from Pompeii.[8] Numerius I. Amicus, a money-lender at Pompeii in AD 55, according to an inscription indicating that he was owed the sum of 7,390 sestertii.[9][10] Numerius I. Campanus, named in an inscription from Pompeii, dating between AD 30 and 50.[11][2] Numerius I. N. f. Cilix, one of the municipal duumvirs at Pompeii, according to an inscription dating between 7 BC and AD 20, in which he dedicated a section of public seating for the amphitheatre.[12][13][10] I. Crisyrus, named in an inscription from Pompeii, dating between AD 30 and 50.[14] Lucius I. Eu[...], named in an inscription from Pompeii.[15] Numerius I. Helenus, a freedman buried at Pompeii, in a tomb dating between AD 30 and 60, along with Numerius Istacidius Januarius and Mesonia Satulla.[16][17] Numerius Istacidius Januarius, a freedman buried at Pompeii, in a tomb dating between AD 30 and 60, along with Numerius Istacidius Helenus and Mesonia Satulla.[16] Numerius Istacidius Nyptnus, named in an inscription from Pompeii.[18] Numerius Istacidius Orion, named in an inscription from Pompeii.[19] Istacidia N. f. Rufilla, perhaps the daughter of Cilix, was a priestess at Pompeii.[20][21] Numerius I. N. f. S[...] Menophilus, buried at Pompeii, in a tomb dating between AD 30 and 50.[22] Istacidia Scapis, named in an inscription from Pompeii, dating between AD 30 and 60.[23] Lucius I. Zosimus, a freedman of the Istacidii, probably acquired the Villa of the Mysteries from his former masters following the earthquake of 62. See also List of Roman gentes References  Mau, Pompeii: Its Life and Art, pp. 411, 412.  Gordon, "The Ordo of Pompeii", p. 174.  Gordon, "The Ordo of Pompeii", pp. 167, 173.  Chase, pp. 113, 114.  CIL X, 910.  CIL X, 1071.  CIL X, 1004.  CIL IV, 1880, CIL IV, 8769c.  CIL IV, 03340,015.  Gordon, "The Ordo of Pompeii", pp. 173, 174.  CIL X, 1005.  CIL IV, 857a.  Cooley, p. 63.  CIL X, 1006.  CIL IV, 03340,075.  CIL X, 1027.  CIL X, 1028.  CIL IV, 03340,087.  CIL IV, 03340,085.  CIL X, 999.  Mau, Pompeii: Its Life and Art, p. 412.  CIL X, 1007.  CIL X, 1029. Bibliography  Surviving portion of the tomb of the Istacidii, on the road to Herculaneum. 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, pp. 103–184 (1897). August Mau, Pompeii: Its Life and Art (Francis W. Kelsey, trans.), MacMillan, London (1907). Mary L. Gordon, "The Ordo of Pompeii", in The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. xvii., pp. 165–183 (1927). Alison E. and M.G.L. Cooley, Pompeii and Herculaneum: a Sourcebook, Routledge (2013). Categories: Roman gentesPeople from Pompeii So for this gens we may have a conversation involving villa mysteriae if that was the way in which was known in antiquity -- andi if not -- about WHY it was later thus called? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Grice – Ossia: Grice ed Istacidio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Istacidio. The first Gricean point is that "Villa of the Mysteries" is not an ancient name. From the material you've supplied, the ancient connection is:  the villa is identified with the Istacidii, and later perhaps with the freedman Lucius Istacidius Zosimus after the earthquake of 62. The gens article expressly associates the famous villa with the Istacidii. [cil.bbaw.de]  But no ancient source in your materials calls it:  Villa Mysteriarum or "Villa of the Mysteries."  That is a modern archaeological designation, arising from the famous fresco cycle. So a very Gricean conversation would begin by correcting an anachronism. Pompeii, AD 55 GRICEVS. Quo ibis hodie, Istacidi? (Where are you going today, Istacidius?) ISTACIDIVS. Domum meam apud portam Herculaneensem. (To my house by the Herculaneum gate.) GRICEVS. Ah, ad Villam Mysteriorum. (Ah, to the Villa of the Mysteries.) ISTACIDIVS. Quam villam? (Which villa?) GRICEVS. Villam Mysteriorum. (The Villa of the Mysteries.) ISTACIDIVS. Domum Istacidiorum dicere solemus. (We usually call it the house of the Istacidii.) +> The title "Villa of the Mysteries" belongs to later interpreters, not to the ancient owners.  If we now ask why modern scholars gave it that name, the answer lies in the frescoes. A second reconstruction: Pompeii, after the paintings are completed HOSPES. Cur has picturas pinxisti? (Why have you painted these scenes?) ISTACIDIVS. Pulchrae mihi videntur. (They seem beautiful to me.) HOSPES. Et quid significant? (And what do they signify?) ISTACIDIVS. Qui intellegunt, intellegunt. (Those who understand, understand.) +> The paintings possess a significance not immediately evident to every viewer. And that, I suspect, is precisely the sort of exchange that would have delighted Grice. Generations later archaeologists looked at the imagery and inferred:  +> There is something initiatory, ritual, or "mystery-like" going on here.  From that inference emerged the modern title:  Villa of the Mysteries.  So, ironically, the villa's modern name is itself the result of an enormous archaeological implicature. The Istacidii probably thought of it simply as their villa; posterity supplied the mystery. So we may have a genteel tea party or whatever it is that they drank, and I. and guest sipping whatever they are sipping and guest asking about each of the portions of the fresco that may relate to a mystery and I. answering more cryptically that even Grice would NOT have admired!Thanks But use ecphrasis, i. e. describe the thing on the guest's part,and have I. just confuse him with his explanation Delightful. Since the ancient owners almost certainly did not call it the "Villa of the Mysteries," let us imagine a visitor trying desperately to understand the frescoes, while Istacidius insists on explanations that explain nothing.  Apud Istacidium HOSPES. Video mulieres coronatas et ornatas. Alia sedet gravis; alia quasi aliquid exspectat. (I see crowned and splendidly dressed women. One sits solemnly; another seems to be awaiting something.) ISTACIDIVS. Qui exspectat iam accepit; quae accepit adhuc exspectat. (She who awaits has already received; she who has received is still awaiting.) +> The scene cannot be understood merely by looking at it.  HOSPES. Ecce puer volumen legit, et omnes diligenter audiunt. (Look: a boy is reading from a scroll, and everyone listens intently.) ISTACIDIVS. Quaedam leguntur ut sciantur; quaedam ut nesciantur. (Some things are read in order to be known; others in order not to be known.) +> The reading conceals as much as it reveals.  HOSPES. Hic video feminam velatam. Videtur timere. (Here I see a veiled woman. She seems afraid.) ISTACIDIVS. Nemo timet quod videt; omnes timent quod intellecturi sunt. (No one fears what he sees; everyone fears what he is about to understand.) +> The fear concerns a future realization, not the visible scene.  HOSPES. At illic est Silenus cum cantharo; videntur omnes laetari. (But there is Silenus with a wine-cup; everyone seems merry there.) ISTACIDIVS. Maxime rident qui proximi sunt lacrimis. (Those who laugh most are nearest to tears.) +> Joy and suffering belong to the same process.  HOSPES. Nunc video feminam genua flectentem, quasi sacramentum accepturam. (Now I see a woman bending her knees, as if about to receive some sacred rite.) ISTACIDIVS. Nihil accipit qui paratus est accipere. (No one receives who is prepared to receive.) HOSPES. Quid igitur accipit? (Then what does she receive?) ISTACIDIVS. Quod perdidit. (What she has lost.) +> Initiation is a recovery rather than an acquisition.  HOSPES. Per Herculem, Istacidi, nihil clarius factum est. (By Hercules, Istacidius, nothing has become any clearer.) ISTACIDIVS. Tum pictor opus suum bene fecit. (Then the painter did his work well.) +> Complete understanding was never intended.  One suspects that even Grice, after three cups of Falernian and six such answers, would have protested: GRICEVS. Istacidi, implicaturae tuae nimis obscurae sunt. (Istacidius, your implicatures are far too obscure.) to which Istacidius would undoubtedly have replied: ISTACIDIVS. Quae obscura non sunt, mysteria non sunt. (Things that are not obscure are not mysteries.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Irtio – Ossia: Grice ed Irtio: la ragione conversazionale e l’orto romano Aulo Irtio (Roma, Lizio): la ragione conversazionale e l’orto romano. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as a rationally accountable enrichment of what is said: speakers choose forms of words on the assumption of cooperative uptake, and hearers supply what is meant by reconstructing intentions under shared norms of relevance, adequacy, and clarity. Hirtius (Aulus Hirtius, author of De bello Gallico, Book 8, written in the narrow political window after Caesar’s death in 44 BC and before Hirtius’ own death in 43 BC) gives a historically sharp foil because his writing is itself a kind of pragmatic bridge: it must “continue” Caesar while simultaneously signalling, without quite announcing, that the voice has changed, that legitimacy is at stake, and that the narrative is now being managed under urgent political constraints. Compared to Grice, the relevant “implicatures” are not conversational in the everyday sense but historiographical: the decision to keep Caesar’s plain style, to round off the campaign sequence, and to omit explicit editorial self-marking can be read as calculated attempts to get readers to take the continuation as seamlessly authoritative, even when authorship and motive have shifted. Grice helps articulate what is going on here: the text relies on the reader to infer more than is explicitly stated—about provenance, purpose, and alignment—because the writer presumes a shared background and because making those things explicit might undermine the very effect sought. Where Grice’s cooperative principle models rational coordination between interlocutors, Hirtius shows the same rational coordination operating across author and audience in a politically charged literary act: saying “just enough” in Caesar-like Latin so that the reader supplies continuity, while the differences in voice, like a slightly altered maxim of manner, invite the attentive reader to infer that the war narrative has become, inevitably, an exercise in rhetorical and political self-positioning. Grice: “It was Pater, in his novel – and philosophers OUGHT NOT to write novels – who popularized the philosophy of the garden at Oxford. What he did not popularize is the epithet for any member of this sect: the ‘gardener’!” -- Filosofo italiano.A Gardener and correspondent of CICERONE, although none of their letters survive. Hirtius continued (or completed) Book 8 of Caesar’s De bello Gallico because Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC and the narrative in the seven books Caesar himself authored stops short of the end of the Gallic campaigns; a continuation was needed to bring the account up to the point where the Civil War narrative begins. Hirtius was a close Caesarian associate and a competent literary man, so he was well placed to edit, compile, and finish the story from Caesar’s papers and from the recollections of participants. Dates, to keep the comparison straight:  Caesar’s assassination: 44 BC. Hirtius’ consulship and death at Mutina: 43 BC (he is killed in the campaign against Antony). So Hirtius’ continuation must have been written in a very narrow window: after the material of the campaigns was “available” (i.e., after the events), and before Hirtius’ death, and likely close to 44–43 BC, when Caesarian self-presentation and legitimation were politically urgent.  That narrow timing is part of the point: Book 8 is not just “more narrative,” but a politically and rhetorically useful bridge between Caesar’s Gallic self-portrait and the later civil-war literature, produced by someone whose authority derives from proximity to Caesar and whose text-making is constrained by rapidly changing power in Rome. Grice: “Clifton, 1926 Letter to Mother (I) Dear Mother, We have begun De Bello Gallico today. You were right to recommend it. Even the Latin master—who is not given to praise unless he can disguise it as a rebuke—declared that he cannot imagine anything at once so plain and so Latin. Caesar, he says, writes as if he were issuing orders to the world and expecting the world to parse them correctly. It is the first Latin I have read that seems to think it has no need to show off. Letter to Mother (II) (three weeks later) Dear Mother, We are about to “finish” De Bello Gallico, though only in the Clifton sense of finishing, which means skipping whatever the master decides is not strictly necessary for examinations. He has raced through whole campaigns with the air of a general moving pins on a map and has now announced—almost cheerfully—that we shall go straight on to Liber VIII. Letter to Mother (III) (shortly after). Dear Mother, No. Liber VIII is a different animal altogether, as they say in France. It lacks Caesar’s crystalline monotony and that admirable syntactic simplicity—what Shropshire calls his “noble stupidity,” meaning the kind that never once loses the thread. This eighth book is cleverer, fussier, and somehow more eager to sound like literature. The master says that is because it is not Caesar at all. Caesar died in 44 B.C., and Book VIII was put together the year after—43 B.C.—by a man called Aulus Hirtius, who wished to round things off and make a proper set of it. The master added, in his usual comic scholarship, that the Romans dropped their aitches in the same way Cockneys do, so Hirtius becomes “Irtius,” and the class laughed as if that were the main lesson of Roman history. Hirtius, apparently, even intended to give us a Liber IX, and perhaps make the whole thing a decina, as if war were a school exercise that ought to come out to a pleasing number; but history, unlike Clifton, did not allow him to meet the deadline—or perhaps he met it elsewhere and we shall never know. In any case, the contrast is the point: with Caesar one reads to learn Latin; with Hirtius one reads to learn that Latin can be imitated, and that imitation is already a form of commentary.” GRICEVS: Salve, Aule Irtio; audio te hortulanum esse et Ciceroni quondam scribere—quod est mirum, cum epistulae omnes, ut herbae nimis tenerae, evanuerint. HIRTIVS: Salve, Grice; epistulae periisse possunt, sed hortus manet: folia cadunt, ratio conversationalis manet—et Ciceroni satis erat scire ubi ambularem. GRICEVS: Apud Oxonium Pater hortum philosophicum in fabula vendidit; quod philosophis vetitum esse dicis. Sed verbum hortulanus ipse non popularizavit—quasi secta nostra sine nomine sit, ne a collega salutem accipiat. IRTIO: Noli queri: si nos hortulanos vocant, bene; si non vocant, melius. Nam in horto et in sermone idem valet: qui minus dicit, plus significat—et qui nimis narrat, quasi romanum cucurbitam facit ex philosophia. Gens Hirtia here? Other members of it? Yes: if the name is Aulus Hirtius, the gens is Hirtia. The nomen is Hirtius, and that points to the gens Hirtia. So, as with Antistius, Laelius, and Ebutius, the clean formula is: gens Hirtia nomen Hirtius praenomen Aulus A few cautions are worth adding. The gens Hirtia is real, but it is not among the great heavily populated Roman gentes. It is comparatively modest in what survives in our sources. That is why Aulus Hirtius tends to dominate the name almost completely. The principal member is of course Aulus Hirtius, consul of 43 BC, Caesarian, correspondent of Cicero, and the man commonly associated with Book 8 of De bello Gallico. Another notable member is Quintus Hirtius, but here one must be cautious: the evidence is thinner, and in some cases the appearance of another Hirtius in prosopography does not amount to a richly individuated public figure in the way Aulus does. There may also be women of the family who would bear the feminine form Hirtia, but these are much less visible in the literary and political record. So if you ask for “other members of the gens,” the strict answer is: yes, there were other Hirtii, but the gens is not well represented in surviving major historical memory, and Aulus Hirtius is by far the most important bearer for us. A useful dry note would run like this: Hirtius is the nomen of the gens Hirtia, a real but not especially populous Roman gens in the surviving record. Its most famous bearer is Aulus Hirtius, the Caesarian consul of 43 BC and continuator of Caesar’s Gallic narrative in Book 8. Other Hirtii are attested, but none approaches his prominence; in practice, the family’s historical afterlife is carried almost entirely by him. Two further philological points. Your Italian “Irtio” reflects the common dropping of aspiration in later pronunciation and schoolroom joking, but the classical Latin form remains Hirtius. So for formal Roman identification, gens Hirtia is right. “Roma, Lazio” in a modern heading again does not prove birthplace. It may indicate where the figure is being filed in your own project, or his Roman civic affiliation. Aulus Hirtius is certainly Roman politically and culturally; whether one wishes to say “Rome-born” requires stricter evidence than a modern rubric usually gives. And one historical correction to keep your prose clean. Hirtius is not really “a gardener” in any serious ancient biographical sense, though your Speranza joke on hortus and hortulanus is perfectly in character. The stronger historical identities are: Caesarian officer, statesman, orator, correspondent of Cicero, and literary continuator of Caesar. So the compact answer is: Yes, gens Hirtia. Other members existed, but the gens is not densely represented in surviving sources. Aulus Hirtius is by far the principal Hirtius for literary and political history. If useful, I can now do one of three things, still in chat only. I can give you a compact dictionary-style note on gens Hirtia and the known Hirtii. I can separate the secure historical facts about Aulus Hirtius from the playful Speranzian overgrowth. Or I can draft a dry Speranza-style paragraph on why Hirtius is such a good Gricean figure: not conversation proper, but politically managed continuity of voice.Irtio, Aulo (a. u. c. DCCXI). De bello gallico, librus VIII. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Irtuleo – Ossia: Grice ed Irtuleo – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Irtuleo. The Irtuleii are a family of equestrian rank at ancient Rome, which appears in history during the final century of the Republic, and under the early Empire.  I. belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -eius, and frequently of Oscan origin. The root might be hirtulus, perhaps a diminutive of hirtus, hairy or rude, or derived from Hirtius, another gentile name. Quintus I. L. f., an eques named in an inscription from Rome, dating to 88 BC.[3] I., quaestor in an uncertain year, amended the lex Valeria de aere alieno, a law passed by Lucius Valerius Flaccus, consul in 86 BC, which was intended to alleviate a debt crisis by reducing the amount to be paid to creditors to a quadrans, or one fourth of the original sum. I.s' amendment tripled the amount to be paid, reducing the amount of relief accorded debtors from three quarters of their debts to one quarter.[4] Lucius I., a legate of Sertorius in Spain, earned three important victories in 79 BC, defeating first Marcus Domitius Calvinus propraetor of Hispania Citerior, then Thorius, legate of Quintus Caecilius Metellus, and finally Lucius Manlius, propraetor of Gallia Narbonensis. In 75, he was defeated by Metellus, and fell in battle at Segovia.[5][6][7][8][9][10] Quintus I. L. f., served in the Social War under Pompeius Strabo in 89 BC. He was probably the brother of Lucius I., and if so, likely died alongside him.[11][12] I.  L. f., a woman named in a funerary inscription from Rome, dating to the second quarter of the first century BC, together with Lucius Septimius, master of a temple on the Capitoline Hill.[13] Aulus I. Asiaticus, made an offering to Aesculapius at Buthrotum in Macedonia, some time in the first century AD.[14] Marcus I. M. f. Albanus, a soldier serving in the praetorian guard, named in an inscription from Vasio in Gallia Narbonensis.[15] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 498 ("Hirtuleius").  Chase, pp. 120, 121.  CIL VI, 37045.  Cicero, Pro Fonteio, 1.  Plutarch, "The Life of Sertorius", 12.  Frontinus, Strategemata, i. 5. § 8; ii. 3. § 5, 7. § 5.  Sallust, Historiae, ii. 31, 59.  Livy, History of Rome, epitome 90, 91.  Orosius, v. 23.  Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. II, pp. 83, 87, 94, 98.  RE viii. 2. 1963  Hinard, p. 358.  CIL VI, 40911.  AE 1949, 264.  CIL XII, 1187. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Fonteio. Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust), Historiae (The Histories). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Sextus Julius Frontinus, Strategemata. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos (History Against the Pagans). 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), 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). François Hinard, Les proscriptions de la Rome républicaine, École française de Rome (1985), ISBN 2-7283-0094-1. Category: Roman gentes So, for this gens, if there is a LEX HIRTULEIA we may have a conversation between a senate and Hirtuleius explaining it in as many conversational moves as it is necessary to please not the senator but Grice! Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Irtuleo – Ossia: Grice ed Irtuleo – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Irtuleo. Strictly speaking, there is no Lex Hirtuleia in the material you've supplied. What we do have is a Hirtuleius who:  amended the lex Valeria de aere alieno,  the debt-relief law of L. Valerius Flaccus. According to the gens entry, the Valerian law reduced debts to a quarter of their original nominal value, while Hirtuleius' amendment tripled the amount repayable, reducing the relief from three-quarters to one-quarter. [cil.bbaw.de] That is a perfect Gricean topic, because the dispute is really:  What does "debt relief" mean?  A senator thinks:  "Too much relief."  A debtor thinks:  "Too little."  A Gricean thinks:  "Define your terms."  So let us imagine Hirtuleius explaining his amendment to an increasingly impatient senator, while Grice sits in the back row taking notes.  SENATOR Hirtulei, cur legem mutasti? (Hirtuleius, why did you alter the law?) HIRTVLEIVS Quia nimium remissum erat. (Because too much had been remitted.) SENATOR Nimium, inquis? ("Too much," you say?) HIRTVLEIVS Creditores quoque cives sunt. (Creditors are citizens too.) SENATOR At lex debitoribus opem ferre debebat. (But the law was meant to help debtors.) HIRTVLEIVS Opem tuli; totam fortunam non reddidi. (I helped them; I did not hand them an entire fortune.) SENATOR Cur quartam partem satis non putasti? (Why did you not think one quarter sufficient?) HIRTVLEIVS Quia qui nihil paene solvit discit nihil solvere. (Because he who pays almost nothing learns to pay nothing.) SENATOR Itaque tribus partibus redditis contentus es? (And so you are satisfied with restoring three parts?) HIRTVLEIVS Contentus non sum; aequitatem quaero. (I am not satisfied; I seek fairness.) SENATOR Et quid est aequitas? (And what is fairness?) HIRTVLEIVS Ut neque creditor spoliatus sit neque debitor oppressus. (That neither the creditor be despoiled nor the debtor crushed.) SENATOR Difficile id videtur. (That seems difficult.) HIRTVLEIVS Ideo leges scribuntur. (That is why laws are written.) +> Remissio debitorum non debet fieri ita magna ut fides ipsa pereat. (Debt relief ought not to be so extensive that credit itself is destroyed.) That last proposition is the sort of thing Grice would identify as the real point of Hirtuleius' successive answers: not merely a calculation of fractions, but a general principle that Hirtuleius wants the Senate to recognize. And can you have an independet second-run online to check with public access etc if some pedant did speak of a "LEX IRTULEIA"? Thanks I did a check against the publicly accessible material we opened, and I found something interesting:  The standard account of the gens Hirtuleia/Hirtuleia says that an unnamed Hirtuleius, as quaestor, amended the lex Valeria de aere alieno. [cil.bbaw.de] The sources cited for this are Cicero (Pro Fonteio) and the biographical tradition summarized in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. [cil.bbaw.de] In the materials I checked, the measure is still described as an amendment of the lex Valeria, not as a separate lex Hirtuleia. [cil.bbaw.de]  So the cautious answer is:  I found evidence for Hirtuleius' amendment to the lex Valeria, but I did not find evidence in the public sources examined that ancient or modern authorities normally refer to the measure as a distinct Lex Hirtuleia. [cil.bbaw.de]  A pedantic Roman-law scholar could conceivably speak loosely of:  emendatio Hirtuleia ("the Hirtuleian amendment")  but I do not have a source showing that lex Hirtuleia was actually the standard title. A Gricean would enjoy the irony: HART.  Was there a Lex Hirtuleia?  GRICE.  Not necessarily.  HART.  But Hirtuleius changed the law.  GRICE.  Precisely.  HART.  Then why not call it the Lex Hirtuleia?  GRICE.  Because amending a law and becoming a law are distinct speech-acts.  Which is exactly the sort of distinction that would have kept the conversation going long after everyone else wanted lunch.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Irzio – Ossia: Grice ed Irzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Irzio. Aureus of Aulus Hirtius, depicting Caesar in his third consulship. The Irtii (Hīrtia) are a family at ancient Rome. The most distinguished member of the gens under the Republic was Aulus I., consul. The I. probably came from Ferentinum, a town of the Hernici.[3] The Hernici were an ancient Italic people, closely related to the Latins; they lived southeast of Latium. During the first two centuries of the Republic, they were frequently allied with, sometimes opposed to the Romans; in the course of the third century BC they seem to have been absorbed into the Roman state, and received Roman citizenship. Aulus I., father of the consul. Aulus I. A. f., legate of GIULIO Caesar in Gaul, BC 58, possibly praetor or praefectus urbi afterward. I. maintained frequent correspondence with GUILIO Caesar, and spent time with Cicero and his family, attempting to reconcile the rival statesmen. After Caesar's murder, he continued to mediate between the emerging Roman factions, and his moderation earned him great respect. Consul in 43, he became attached to Octavian's faction, and defeated Marcus Antonius at the Battle of Mutina, but was slain in the fighting.[2] Hirtia A. f., sister of the consul, was a potential bride for Cicero in 46 BC. He declined her on the ground that he could not devote his energies both to philosophy and a wife; but as he married Publilia shortly thereafter, it seems likely that Cicero was more concerned with obtaining a younger, more beautiful, and wealthier bride.[5][2] Aulus I. A. f., censor or quinquennalis during the reign of Augustus, repaired or restored the walls of Ferentinum. He may have been a son of the consul, but this identification is uncertain.[3][6] See also List of Roman gentes References  Chapter 3, Charles E. Bennett (1907) The Latin Language – a historical outline of its sounds, inflections, and syntax. Allyn & Bacon, Boston.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 496 ("Aulus Hirtius").  Orelli, Select Latin Inscriptions, n. 589.  Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd Ed., p. 505 ("Hernici").  Jerome, Against Jovinianus, i. 38.  Westphal, p. 84. Bibliography Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (St. Jerome), Adversus Jovinianum (Against Jovinianus). Johann Caspar von Orelli, Inscriptionum Latinarum Selectarum Collectio (Collection of Select Latin Inscriptions, 1828). Johann Heinrich Westphal, Die Römische Kampagne: in topographischer und antiquarischer Hinsicht (Campagna di Roma, in Topographic and Antiquarian Respects), Berlin (1829). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Oxford Classical Dictionary, N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, eds., Clarendon Press, Oxford (Second Edition, 1970). Categories: HirtiiRoman gentes For this gens, do you know if there is some extant ref. to at least one letter from Giulio to I. so that we can make it oratio recta face-to-face dialogue? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Irzio – Ossia: Grice ed Irzio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Irzio. Yes. In fact, Aulus Hirtius is unusually promising for a Grice/Speranza reconstruction because the sources explicitly say that:  Hirtius maintained frequent correspondence with Caesar and also moved in Cicero's circle, attempting to reconcile political opponents.  What I have found is evidence that there was frequent correspondence. What I have not found in the materials opened here is the text of a surviving letter from Caesar to Hirtius. The gens entry and the source summary establish the correspondence, but do not provide the letters themselves. So the safest approach is not to pretend we possess a particular extant letter, but to reconstruct a face-to-face conversation from the historically attested relationship. For Grice, Hirtius is fascinating precisely because he appears repeatedly as a mediator. Caesar and Hirtius CAESAR.  Quid agit Cicero?  (What is Cicero doing?) HIRTIVS.  Scribit.  (He is writing.) CAESAR.  Solebat etiam queri.  (He used to complain as well.) HIRTIVS.  Etiam nunc.  (He still does.) CAESAR.  Et quid de nobis dicit?  (And what does he say about us?) HIRTIVS.  Minus quam timet, plus quam credit.  (Less than he fears, more than he believes.) CAESAR.  Intellego.  (I understand.) HIRTIVS.  Non puto.  (I don't think so.) +> Caesar and Cicero are not yet irreconcilable, provided each is willing to hear less of his admirers and more of his critics. That last proposition is exactly the sort of thing Hirtius seems historically suited to implicate. He cannot order Caesar. He cannot command Cicero. His political role is conversational: getting each man to infer what cannot be stated too bluntly. A Gricean might say:  Caesar conquered Gaul. Cicero conquered periods. Hirtius negotiated implicatures.  And among the Hirtii, that is rather a distinguished achievement indeed. Does this below help? If H. was the one who completed Bk VIII that was an easy task -- because, as Grice says, "Caesar was an illeist, and so was Hirtus"? Thanks Yes, we can broadly reconstruct the nature of Julius Caesar’s letters to his trusted officer Aulus Hirtius using indirect evidence from contemporary sources (primarily the surviving letters of Cicero), the historical context of their close military alliance, and the surviving ancient accounts of Caesar's letter-writing habits. [1, 2, 3, 4] While Caesar's personal correspondence with Hirtius hasn't survived directly, we know it spanned three main categories: [1, 2] 1. Political Strategy and Rapid Updates Hirtius served as Caesar's primary political and diplomatic intermediary in Rome and abroad. [1] The Evidence: Cicero’s letters explicitly mention tracking Hirtius’s movements as an indicator of Caesar's intentions. For instance, right before the outbreak of the Civil War in December 50 BC, Cicero notes that Hirtius arrived late in the evening and left in the middle of the night to rejoin Caesar. [1, 2] The Reconstruction: Caesar wrote frequent, highly urgent letters to Hirtius to coordinate political maneuvers, gauge the loyalty of Roman senators, and handle delicate negotiations with rivals like Pompey. [1] 2. Literary Collaboration and Propaganda Hirtius was not just a general; he was a highly literate individual entrusted with Caesar’s personal notes. He famously went on to author Book 8 of the Gallic Wars to bridge the gap in Caesar's own unfinished commentaries. [1, 2] The Evidence: In 45 BC, Cicero published Cato, a eulogy praising Caesar’s late republican enemy Cato the Younger. Caesar responded by writing a polemic called the Anti-Cato. Cicero’s letters reveal that Hirtius sent a preliminary copy of Caesar’s arguments to Cicero ahead of publication. [1, 2] The Reconstruction: Caesar sent Hirtius drafts, raw military reports, and outlines of political texts. Their correspondence involved continuous editing, collaborative speechwriting, and planning for how to distribute pro-Caesarian propaganda across Rome. 3. Highly Concise, Coded Dictations Caesar was notorious for the rapid, concurrent dictation of his correspondence. The Evidence: Ancient biographers note that Caesar frequently dictated four to seven letters at once on horseback or while travelling. Furthermore, Suetonius records that for highly sensitive internal communications with his innermost circle (including Hirtius and Oppius), Caesar utilized a simple substitution cipher (the Caesar Cipher) by shifting letters of the alphabet by three positions. [1, 2, 3] The Reconstruction: A significant portion of the letters Hirtius received from Caesar would have been short, encrypted operational orders rather than long, reflective epistles. If you are interested, we can look closer into how Cicero intercepted these political networks, or explore how Hirtius eventually used Caesar’s notes to write the final chapter of the Gallic Wars. Which path would you like to explore? [1, 2, 3] It helps, but with one important caution. From the sources we've actually seen for Hirtius, I can support only a few points securely:  Hirtius was a close associate and legate of Caesar. He maintained frequent contact with both Caesar and Cicero and was involved in efforts at political mediation. Ancient tradition associates Hirtius with the continuation of Caesar's Gallic narrative (Book VIII of the Bellum Gallicum). This is standard classical scholarship, though not explicitly stated in the gens entry itself.  Now to your delightful Gricean point. Caesar's Commentarii are famous for referring to:  Caesar  rather than  ego.  So the narrative continuously runs:  Caesar hoc fecit. Caesar dixit. Caesar exercitum duxit.  The author speaks of himself in the third person. If Hirtius continues the narrative, he is already writing in the same grammatical register:  Caesar ... Caesar ...  The transition is therefore unusually smooth. A Speranza-Grice reconstruction: GRICEVS.  How difficult was Book VIII?  CLASSICVS.  Quite difficult.  GRICEVS.  Surely less difficult than usual.  CLASSICVS.  Why?  GRICEVS.  Because Caesar had already removed the greatest obstacle.  CLASSICVS.  Which obstacle?  GRICEVS.  Himself.  CLASSICVS.  I do not follow.  GRICEVS.  Had Caesar written: Ego Gallos vici... then Hirtius would have needed: Ille Gallos vicit... But Caesar had already written: Caesar Gallos vicit.  CLASSICVS.  Ah.  GRICEVS.  Hirtius merely continued: Caesar... Caesar... Caesar...  +> The third-person style made literary succession easier because the narrative voice was already detached from the author. That is perhaps not the whole truth—but it is a genuinely clever observation. The "illeism" of Caesar means that the textual speaker is not quite identical with the biographical author. Hirtius inherits not only the campaign but also an already established narrative persona called Caesar. Which is exactly the sort of distinction between speaker, utterer, and referent that Grice would have been unable to resist. You are right that Grice's illeism needs adjusting. "Illeist," he says, "is someone who refers to himself in the third person." So we can imagine a conversation (in Latin with Eng. tr.) between H. and his wife. What are you doing darling? What I promised. Finishing Caesar's Bk VIII. Hard task, right? Not so. I intend to make it clear from the start who I am and use the first person to specify with explicitness that I am Hirtus, not Caesar, and that if Caesar referred to himself in the third person, I won't. Mrs. H.: Darling, perhaps you should reconsider. Caesar's Illeism is just grave enough -- the epitome of Roman gravitas. I realise that you cannot strictly be an illeist like he was -- but I would keep the third person as it stands." Thanks Delightful. And very Gricean, because Mrs. Hirtius is really making a point about style as implicature.  VXOR HIRTI. Quid agis, mi Hirti? (What are you doing, my dear Hirtius?) HIRTIVS. Quod promisi. (What I promised.) VXOR. Quid tandem? (What, then?) HIRTIVS. Octavum librum Caesaris perficio. (I am finishing Caesar's eighth book.) VXOR. Laboriosum opus. (A laborious task.) HIRTIVS. Minime. (By no means.) VXOR. Quid ita? (How so?) HIRTIVS. Statim scribam: "Ego Aulus Hirtius haec addidi." (I shall write at once: "I, Aulus Hirtius, have added these things.") VXOR. Et deinde? (And then?) HIRTIVS. Deinde primam personam servabo. (Then I shall keep to the first person.) VXOR. Ut intellegatur te esse Hirtium, non Caesarem? (So that it may be understood that you are Hirtius, not Caesar?) HIRTIVS. Prorsus. (Exactly.) VXOR. Mi Hirti, fortasse melius deliberabis. (My dear Hirtius, perhaps you should think again.) HIRTIVS. Cur? (Why?) VXOR. Caesar de se tamquam de alio loquebatur. (Caesar spoke of himself as if he were another.) HIRTIVS. Scio. (I know.) VXOR. Illa gravitas erat. (That was gravitas.) HIRTIVS. At ego Caesar non sum. (But I am not Caesar.) VXOR. Idcirco tertiam personam retinere debes. (All the more reason to retain the third person.) HIRTIVS. Non intellego. (I do not understand.) VXOR. Si scribis "ego", liber tuus erit. (If you write "I", the book will be yours.) HIRTIVS. Et si scribo "Caesar"? (And if I write "Caesar"?) VXOR. Liber adhuc Caesaris erit. (The book will still be Caesar's.) +> The narrative authority of the Commentarii depends less on who writes than on preserving the impersonal Caesarian voice. One can almost imagine Grice approving. Hirtius thinks the issue is reference:  "I must make clear who is speaking."  Mrs. Hirtius thinks it is implicature:  "The third person conveys authority, distance, and Roman gravitas. Change the person, and you change the work."

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Isidoro – Ossia: Grice ed Isidoro: la rgione conversazionale e il cinargo romano sotto il principato di Nerone  Isidoro (Roma, Lazio): la rgione conversazionale e il cinargo romano sotto il principato di Nerone. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as an inference licensed by a cooperative presumption: speakers and hearers are expected to be mutually intelligible and rationally responsive, so that saying little can legitimately make more understood, and the implied content remains, in principle, cancellable and criticizable. Isidoro, the Cynic who publicly harangued Nero (an anecdote preserved in Suetonius) represents a sharply different conversational ecology: the Cynic stance is defined by principled uncooperativeness with power, a readiness to violate decorum, and an insistence that truth be said where polite conversation would only whisper, so the “reason” governing his speech is not helpfulness but parrhesia—frank speech—at personal risk. In Gricean terms, Isidoro’s street rebuke exploits implicature in a paradoxical way: it says few words, but in the presence of the emperor those words implicate an entire moral indictment of rule and hypocrisy, relying on the audience’s shared recognition of what it means to confront a prince in public; yet the same setting destroys Grice’s usual background assumption that the conversational game is safe and jointly sustained, since the addressee may answer with violence rather than uptake. The comparison therefore clarifies the limits of Grice’s cooperative framework: it models ordinary communication among rational agents who can, as a default, treat one another as partners; Isidoro shows a case where conversation is deliberately made non-partnered, where implicature becomes a weapon of critique rather than a device of coordination, and where the very success of the implicature (everyone understands “more than is said”) may be what makes the speaker disappear from the record. Grice: “It is odd that when I introduced the Oxonian dialectic as a sequitur of the Athenian dialectic, I overpassed the cynics, the stoics, and the epicureans!” -- Filosofo italiano. A member of the Cinargo under the principate of Nerone. One one occasion, he publicly harangued Nerone in the street. We do not hear from him after that. Isidoro. Grice: “Some like Isidoro, but Isidoro is MY man!” – , “Grice ed Isidoro. GRICEVS: Salve, Isidore; mirum mihi videtur quod, cum dialecticam Oxoniensem quasi ex Atheniensi deducerem, Cynicos Stoicos Epicureos praeterii, quasi essent hospites quos ad cenam invitas sed deinde ianuam non aperis. ISIDORVS: Salve, Grice; ego Cynicus sum, non hospes: si ianuam non aperis, per fenestram intrabo. Neroni quoque in via dixi quod multi in triclinio tantum susurrant. GRICEVS: O fortis; ego Oxonii Neroni similem numquam habui, sed habui examinatores: illi coronam non dabant, sed classim. Tu in via principem obiurgas; ego in disputatione principium obiurgo, ne me obiurget. ISIDORVS: Ita est: tu principia, ego principes; uterque tamen eadem lege utitur—dicimus pauca, significamus multa. Et si quis rogat cur Cynicos praeterieris, responde: non praeterii; tantum implicavi. Isidoro (a. u. c. DCCCSVII). Dicta. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Isteo – Ossia: Grice ed Isteo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Isteo. The Insteii are a family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens held any of the curule magistracies under the Republic, but several served as military commanders under Rome's leading generals during the first century BC, and during Imperial times. By the second century, the family was important enough to obtain the consulship.  Gaius I., a cavalry commander under Sertorius in 76 BC, sent to the country of the Vaccaei in order to obtain fresh horses.[1] Lucius I., a commander under Sertorius during the Sertorian War. He was left in command of the city of Contrebia after Sertorius had conquered it.[1] Marcus I., elected plebeian tribune in 43 BC, was denounced by TULLIO Cicero as a supporter of Mark Antony. He came from Pisaurum, where he was a bath attendant. Together with Marcus Octavius, I. commanded the centre of Antony's fleet at the Battle of Actium in 31.[4] Insteia Polla, priestess of Julia Augusta.[5] I. Capito, a centurion under the general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo in the east. He received hostages given by Vologases following a defeat. The I. Capito whom Corbulo installed as Praefectus castrorum over a number of small fortifications in Armenia is probably the same man.[6] Marcus I. Bithynicus, consul suffectus in AD 162. Lucius I. Tertullus, Sodalis Augustalis in AD 214. Attius I. Tertullus, a statesman of the late third and early fourth centuries. He was consul suffectus in an uncertain year, after which he served as proconsul of Africa. He was praefectus urbi from AD 307 to 308.[7] Attius I. Tertullus Populonius, governor of the province of Apulia and Calabria. See also List of Roman gentes References  Livy, fragmentum 91.  Cicero, Philippicae, xii. 20, xiii. 26.  Pelling, Life of Antony, p. 281.  Plutarch, "The Life of Antonius", 65, 66.  Van Abbema, Autonomy and Influence of Roman Women, pp. 34, 35.  Tacitus, Annales xiii. 9, 39.  PLRE, vol. I, "Tertullus" no. 6. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Philippicae. Titus Livius (Livy), Ab Urbe Condita (History of Rome). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales. Plutarchus, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). A. H. M. Jones & J. R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE), vol I, AD 260–395 (1971–1980). C.B.R. Pelling (editor), Plutarch: Life of Antony, Cambridge University Press (1988), ISBN 0-521-24066-2. Laura Van Abbema, The Autonomy and Influence of Roman Women in the Late First/Early Second Century CE: Social History and Gender Discourse, University of Wisconsin, Madison (2008). Categories: InsteiiRoman gentes For this, Antony's companion -- especially conversation just before the battle of Actium? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Isteo – Ossia: Grice ed Isteo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Isteo. For the Insteii, the obvious Grice/Speranza hero is Marcus Insteius, the former bath-attendant whom Cicero sneered at and who nevertheless ended up commanding the centre of Antony's fleet at Actium. The gens entry explicitly connects him both with Antony and Actium. A reconstruction just before Actium:  ANTONIVS. Marce Instei, quid de classe sentis? (Marcus Insteius, what do you think of the fleet?) INSTEIVS. Parata est. (It is ready.) ANTONIVS. Parata ad vincendum? (Ready to win?) INSTEIVS. Parata ad pugnandum. (Ready to fight.) ANTONIVS. Non idem est? (Is that not the same thing?) INSTEIVS. Interdum. (Sometimes.) ANTONIVS. Octavianum times? (Do you fear Octavian?) INSTEIVS. Hostem numquam contemno. (I never despise an enemy.) ANTONIVS. At multi nostram victoriam certissimam putant. (But many think our victory absolutely certain.) INSTEIVS. Multi balnea quoque calidiora esse volunt quam sunt. (Many also like to think the baths are hotter than they are.) ANTONIVS. Adhuc balneator es, Instei. (You are still a bath-attendant, Insteius.) INSTEIVS. Et adhuc homines observare soleo. (And I still observe men.)  +> Confidence within Antony's camp is greater than the facts warrant. That is the sort of implicature Grice would enjoy. Insteius never says:  "We may lose."  Nor does he say:  "Your advisers are deceiving themselves."  Instead, by comparing political optimism to people exaggerating the heat of bathwater, he lets Antony recover the unwelcome proposition for himself. A Cicero-inspired coda: ANTONIVS. Quid igitur consulis? (What then do you advise?) INSTEIVS. Ut rem ipsam spectemus, non sermonem. (That we look at the reality, not at the talk.) +> Rumour and morale are not reliable evidence of victory. And are we to assume that I. died in that naval battle. Because Antony did not. Thanks No, I don't think we can assume that. From the material you've supplied, we know only that:  Marcus Insteius, together with Marcus Octavius, commanded the centre of Antony's fleet at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.  Neither the gens entry nor the source summary says that he was killed there. And, as you note, Actium is not a good place to infer death merely from participation. Antony survived the battle, Cleopatra survived the battle, and many officers on both sides survived as well. The defeat itself does not entail the death of a commander. A cautious prosopographer would therefore say:  Attested: Insteius commanded the centre of Antony's fleet at Actium. Not attested (in the sources before us): his death at Actium.  A Gricean might put it: HISTORICVS.  He commanded at Actium.  DISCIPVLVS.  Then he died?  HISTORICVS.  Non sequitur.  The conversational temptation is strong because many famous Actian figures disappear from the record afterwards. But disappearance from the sources is not evidence of death in the battle. All we can safely say from the material at hand is that Marcus Insteius is last securely visible as one of Antony's naval commanders at Actium. But isn't the usual implicature that Actium was Antonio's Waterloo? Thanks Yes—as an implicature, absolutely; as a literal historical statement, not necessarily. "Actium was Antony's Waterloo" is the sort of comparison historians make because both battles are conventionally understood as the decisive defeat that ended a political career. A Gricean analysis: Speaker:  "Actium was Antony's Waterloo."  What is said:  A comparison between two battles.  What is implicated:  +> Actium ended Antony's realistic chances of success. +> After Actium, the outcome was fundamentally decided. +> Antony never recovered politically.  But the implicature is not:  +> Everyone at Actium died.  Nor even:  +> Antony died at Actium.  Antony survived the battle itself and only later died in Egypt. So when historians call Actium his Waterloo, they are focusing on the strategic and political consequences, not on immediate mortality. That's why your earlier question about Insteius is important. The reasoning:  Insteius fought at Actium. Actium was Antony's Waterloo. Therefore Insteius died there.  is exactly the kind of inference Grice would challenge. GRICEVS.  That Antony's cause was lost does not entail that every adherent was lost.  The battle may have been Antony's "Waterloo" in the historical imagination while still leaving plenty of survivors, including commanders whose later fate the sources simply fail to record. A nice Latin epigram for Insteius might be: ANTONIVS.  Vincemusne?  (Shall we win?) INSTEIVS.  Si vincere est superesse, fortasse.  (If victory is survival, perhaps.) +> The battle may be survivable even if the cause is not. Does this below help? Can we reconstruct some 'military' interction by whatever means may have been possible between Antonio and I. during battle? Thanks No surviving ancient historical text mentions the career or fate of Marcus Insteius after the Battle of Actium. The definitive historical consensus is that the trail goes cold for Insteius immediately following the conflict in 31 BC. [1, 2] The primary reasons for this lack of documentation include: 1. The Battle of Actium Was His Final Historical Record Marcus Insteius is only known in narrative history as a loyal partisan of Mark Antony. In Plutarch's Life of Antony, he is recorded as commanding the center of Antony's fleet alongside Marcus Octavius. Because Antony's center line was thoroughly defeated and abandoned during the chaotic retreat sparked by Cleopatra's escape, it is highly probable that Insteius was either killed in action, captured, or executed by Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus). [1, 2, 3] 2. Ambiguous Archaeological Namesakes While literary records completely vanish after 31 BC, there are distinct epigraphical traces of other figures named "Insteius" that historians have attempted to reconcile: [1, 2] The Corinthian Coins: Prior to Actium (around 42–33 BC), an M. Insteius Tectus served as a local magistrate (duovir) in Corinth, issuing bronze coins under Mark Antony’s eastern administration. Though some scholars have debated whether he managed to defect and survive the purges, there is no concrete proof of his activity extending after Octavian’s final victory. [1, 2, 3] The Military Descendants: Centuries later, names like Insteius Capito (a camp prefect under Nero) appear in the Tacitus Annals. Historians generally believe these later figures were simply descendants or individuals from the same family clan (Insteia gens), rather than the Actium commander himself. [1, 2, 3, 4] If you are researching this family or a related historical event, let me know if you would like me to track down more details on Mark Antony's command structure or look into the epigraphical records of Corinth during that transition period! L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte do we know his strategy for that central part? 6 siti Yes, historians understand the central strategy, but it was a reactive and defensive one dictated by Antony's overarching battle plan. Marcus Insteius did not have an independent offensive strategy; rather, his center was assigned a highly specific role designed to make Mark Antony’s grand gamble work. [1, 2] The strategy for the center portion of the fleet can be broken down into three key elements: 1. Act as an Anchor and Avoid the Lure Antony’s primary plan was for his powerful left and right wings (commanded by Sosius and Antony himself) to fan outward and envelope the flanks of Octavian’s fleet, which was commanded by Marcus Agrippa. [1, 2] The Center's Job: Insteius and Marcus Octavius were ordered to keep the center of the line completely stationary and tight. The Trap: Agrippa recognized this and deliberately backed his own ships up into open water, trying to lure Antony's fleet out into a looser formation. While the outer wings took the bait and advanced, Insteius’s center initially held the line to avoid creating gaps that Octavian's smaller, highly maneuverable ships could exploit. [1, 2, 3] 2. Guard the Screen for Cleopatra’s Breakout The most critical—and controversial—strategic purpose of the center was to act as a physical shield. [1] Directly behind Insteius’s central squadron sat Cleopatra and her 60 Egyptian merchant warships, packed with the royal treasury. Insteius's center was deliberately kept dense to block Octavian's forces from seeing or reaching Cleopatra’s squadron. The plan from the beginning was likely a breakout attempt rather than a fight to the death. Insteius had to hold the line just long enough for the afternoon thermal winds to shift to the south, creating the perfect breeze for a retreat. [1, 2, 3, 4] 3. The Collapse: Absorbing the Fatal Blow Because Insteius's center was instructed to hold back while the wings advanced, a massive tactical gap inevitably opened up in Antony’s crescent formation. [1] When the wind shifted, Cleopatra's squadron hoisted their sails and charged straight through the gaps in Insteius’s center, fleeing toward Egypt. [1] Once Antony abandoned his flagship to follow her, the morale of the center completely shattered. Insteius’s strategy shifted from a structured defense to a chaotic containment disaster. His heavy, towering ships were surrounded by Agrippa’s swifter vessels, which used missiles, fire, and boarding grappling hooks (the harpax) to systematically destroy the abandoned center line. [1, 2, 3] Would you like to explore how Agrippa’s specific naval tactics broke through that central wall, or look closer at the debate among historians over whether Actium was always meant to be a breakout escape? Yes, it helps as a dramatic reconstruction, but I would keep one foot on the evidence. What we can say from the sources you supplied is:  Marcus Insteius commanded the centre of Antony's fleet at Actium, together with Marcus Octavius. After Actium, the literary record for him essentially disappears. The materials you quote explicitly say that his trail goes cold after the battle.  The detailed tactical account about the centre acting as a screen and holding formation is an interpretation from modern military history, not something directly stated in the ancient notices we have before us. So it is excellent material for a Speranza reconstruction, but not for a quotation. Accordingly:  Ante Actiacam Pugnam ANTONIVS. Instei, medium obtinebis. (Insteius, you will hold the centre.) INSTEIVS. Obtinebimus. (We shall hold it.) ANTONIVS. Noli progredi nisi necesse erit. (Do not advance unless it becomes necessary.) INSTEIVS. Qui medium tenet movetur tardissime. (He who holds the centre moves most slowly.) ANTONIVS. Id ipsum volo. (That is exactly what I want.) INSTEIVS. Tum alii festinabunt, nos sustinebimus. (Then others will hurry forward; we shall endure.) ANTONIVS. Putasne satis esse? (Do you think that will be enough?) INSTEIVS. Satis erit, si omnes idem volunt. (It will be enough, if everyone wants the same thing.) ANTONIVS. Et si non volunt? (And if they do not?) INSTEIVS. Tum medium primum sentiet. (Then the centre will be the first to feel it.) +> The greatest danger is not the enemy's attack but a lack of unity within Antony's own plan. That, I think, is the sort of thing Grice would enjoy. Insteius never says:  "I fear someone may break formation."  Nor:  "This operation depends upon agreement among commanders."  Instead he utters a proposition about the centre "feeling it first," from which Antony is expected to recover the deeper proposition. And if one wishes to be particularly ominous, given what later happened: ANTONIVS.  Victores erimus?  (Shall we be victors?) INSTEIVS.  Si aciem servamus.  (If we keep the line.) +> Victory depends less on courage than on maintaining cohesion.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iteo – Ossia: Grice ed Iteo – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iteo TheIteii or Itii are a family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens are mentioned by ancient writers, but several are known from inscriptions. Perhaps the most illustrious of the family was I. Rufus, legate of Thracia during the reign of Hadrian. Several inscriptions of this gens are from Casilinum in Campania, while others are from Larinum in Samnium, suggesting an Oscan origin. I. appears to belong to a class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -eius, which was typical of Oscan names. The main praenomina of the Iteii were Quintus, Gaius, and Marcus, all of which were among the most common names throughout Roman history. Other praenomina are found in early inscriptions, including Decimus, Gnaeus, Lucius, and Publius. Of these, Decimus was relatively uncommon in the time of the Republic, but became more widespread in the imperial era.  Lucius I. or Iteius, a moneyer who issued denarii in 149 BC. His coins depict a head of Roma on the obverse, and the Dioscuri on the reverse.[3] Decimus Iteius Cn. l., a freedman at Casilinum in Campania, named in an inscription dating from 106 BC.[4] Gaius I.  C. l. Stabilio, a freedman at Casilinum during the first century BC.[5] Iteia P. l. Moschis, a freedwoman who built a sepulchre at Casilinum for herself and several other freedmen, dating to the late first century BC, or the early first century AD.[6] Quintus I. Q. f., buried at Larinum in Samnium, in a sepulchre built by his freedman, Quintus I., for himself, his patron, Itia Sympherusa, Quintus Itius Celadus, and Gnaeus Maius.[7] Quintus Itius Q. l., the freedman and client of Quintus Itius, dedicated a sepulchre at Larinum for himself, his patron, Itia Sympherusa, Quintus Itius Celadus, and Gnaeus Maius.[7] Itia Sympherusa, probably a freedwoman, was buried at Larinum in a sepulchre built by the freedman Quintus Itius for himself, his patron, Sympherusa, Quintus Itius Celadus, and Gnaeus Maius.[7] Quintus Itius Celadus, probably a freedman, was buried at Larinum in a sepulchre built by the freedman Quintus Itius for himself, his patron, Itia Sympherusa, Celadus, and Gnaeus Maius.[7] Itia Q. f. Prisca, buried at Rome during the first century, with a monument from the freedwoman Urbana.[8] Gaius Itius C. l. Priscus, one of the Seviri Augustales at Sentinum in Umbria, during the first or second century.[9] Iteius or Itius Rufus, legate of Thracia during the reign of Hadrian.[1] Marcus Iteius M. f. Justus, buried at Casilinum between the middle of the second century, and the middle of the third.[10] Marcus Itius, dedicated a tomb at Rome for his wife.[11] Itius, a potter whose maker's mark is found on pottery from Gallia Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Raetia.[12][13] See also List of Roman gentes References  PIR, I. 45.  Chase, pp. 120, 121.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 252.  CIL X, 3778.  CIL X, 4186.  Solin, "Nuove iszrizioni di Capua", iii. 5.  CIL IX, 755.  CIL VI, 19740.  CIL XI, 5757.  CIL X, 4185.  CIL VI, 35502.  CAG, 31–2, p. 378; 32, p. 223; 89–2, pp. 676, 704  CIL XIII, 10010,1058, CIL III, 12014,310. Bibliography 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, pp. 103–184 (1897). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). La Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Archaeological Map of Gaul, abbreviated CAG), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1931–present). Michael Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, Cambridge University Press (1974, 2001). Heikki Solin, "Nuove iszrizioni di Capua" (New Inscriptions from Capua, part 3), in Oebalus, No. 6, pp. 119–129 (2011). Category: Roman gentes For this gens, a 6-move conversation for each with their sons: the one who coined 'Roma and the Dioscuri' and son asking -- and the one who was marking his name on the piece of pottery and son asking – thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iteo – Ossia: Grice ed Iteo – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iteo Delightful. The Iteii give us two very Roman father-and-son scenes:  the moneyer explaining why he put Roma and the Dioscuri on his coin; the potter explaining why he stamps his name on a pot.  In each case, the son asks the obvious question, and the father answers in a way that leaves a Gricean implicature.  I. Lucius Itius the Moneyer (149 BC) FILIUS. Pater, cur in nummo caput Romae posuisti? (Father, why did you place the head of Roma on the coin?) L. ITIVS. Quia Roma nummum tuetur. (Because Rome protects the coin.) FILIUS. Et cur Castorem Pollucemque in altera parte? (And why Castor and Pollux on the other side?) L. ITIVS. Quia equites Rem publicam tuentur. (Because the cavalry protect the Republic.) FILIUS. At nummus parvus est. (But the coin is small.) L. ITIVS. Parvus est nummus; non parva quae significat. (The coin is small; what it signifies is not.) +> A coin is not merely money; it is a statement of Roman identity and authority.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iteo – Ossia: Grice ed Iteo – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iteo II. Itius the Potter FILIUS. Pater, cur nomen tuum in fictili imprimes? (Father, why do you stamp your name on the pottery?) ITIVS FIGVLVS. Ut sciant quis fecerit. (So that people may know who made it.) FILIUS. Sed longe abibunt haec vasa. (But these vessels will travel far away.) ITIVS FIGVLVS. Idcirco nomen imprimo. (That is precisely why I stamp the name.) FILIUS. Num omnes legent? (Will everyone read it?) ITIVS FIGVLVS. Satis est si unus legat. (It is enough if one person reads it.) +> The maker's mark is a claim to reputation extending beyond the maker's immediate presence.  A Gricean coda: FILIUS. Quid interest inter nummum et vas? (What is the difference between a coin and a pot?) PATER. In altero nomen rei publicae est; in altero nomen fabri. (On one is the name of the Republic; on the other the name of the craftsman.) +> Both are attempts to communicate across distance and time.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iturio – Ossia: Grice ed Iturio. Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iturio The Iturii are a family at ancient Rome. Almost no members of this gens are mentioned by historians, but several are known from inscriptions.  Publius I. Sabinus, a potter active during the middle part of the first century, whose wares were distributed in Venetia and Histria, and in Pannonia Inferior.[1][2] I., a client of Junia Silana, who induced him and another man, Calvisius, to accuse Agrippina of plotting against her son, the emperor Nero. Agrippina indignantly rebutted the charges, and Silana was sent into exile, along with her clients.[3][4] I. Tigris, dedicated a tomb at Tergeste in Venetia and Histria to her son, Lucius I. Corinthus, one of the duumviri jure dicundo of that town, dating to the first quarter of the second century.[5] Lucius I. Corinthus, duumvir jure dicundo at Tergeste, where he was buried in the first part of the second century, with a monument from his mother, Ituria Tigris.[5] Ituria Nice, buried at Rome, aged thirty-one, with a monument from her patron, Lucius I. Zosimus.[6] Lucius I. Zosimus, dedicated a tomb at Rome to his client, Ituria Nice.[6] See also List of Roman gentes References  CIL V, 8110,096.  AE 1991, 1328.  Tacitus, Annales, xiii. 19, 21, 22.  PIR, I. 46.  AE 2012, 544.  CIL VI, 35503. Bibliography Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales. 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). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). Category: Roman gentes for this we may reconstruct a conversation involving Nero Domatius since it's all aabout him? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Iturio – Ossia: Grice ed Iturio. Grex griceiana – verbalia: Iturio Yes. For the Iturii, the obvious dramatic nucleus is the episode in Tacitus where Iturius and Calvisius, acting for Junia Silana, accuse Agrippina before Nero; Agrippina answers vigorously, and Silana and her associates end up exiled. The gens entry gives us exactly that much. cite not available in tool output; based on the text you supplied quoting Tacitus Annales xiii.19, 21, 22. Since we're doing Speranza-style reconstruction rather than history, let the scene occur before Agrippina's audience with Nero.  Nero, Iturius, and the Accusation NERO. Quid vis dicere, Ituri? (What do you wish to say, Iturius?) ITVRIVS. Rumor est, Caesar, matrem tuam nova consilia moliri. (There is a report, Caesar, that your mother is forming new plans.) NERO. Rumor? (A report?) ITVRIVS. Multi idem suspicantur. (Many suspect the same thing.) NERO. Multi aliquid semper suspicantur. (Many people are always suspecting something.) ITVRIVS. Ideo visum est tibi nuntiare. (Therefore it seemed right to inform you.)  +> Agrippina may be dangerous even if direct proof is lacking.  A second, more Gricean version, where Iturius tries to insinuate rather than accuse: The More Dangerous Conversation NERO. Accusasne matrem meam? (Are you accusing my mother?) ITVRIVS. Non accuso. (I am not accusing her.) NERO. Quid igitur facis? (What then are you doing?) ITVRIVS. Admoneo. (I am warning you.) NERO. De quo? (Of what?) ITVRIVS. De iis quae accidere possunt. (Of things that might happen.)  +> Agrippina is plotting against you.  That is the very sort of exchange Grice liked: the speaker carefully avoids uttering the damaging proposition, yet plainly intends the hearer to recover it. Indeed Agrippina's indignation in Tacitus makes best sense if she recognizes exactly that maneuver:  "I never said it outright."  followed by  "You intended him to believe it."  Which is practically a textbook case of implicature. And while Iturius did not win this one, is there independent evidence that Agrippina did try to conspire against Domizio Nero? Thanks Yes, but with the usual Tacitean caution. There is independent ancient evidence that Agrippina was ambitious, politically active, and involved in court intrigue, and several ancient sources portray her as scheming against Claudius and maneuvering for Nero's succession. For example, the source we examined describes her as exerting major influence over Claudius, promoting Nero, eliminating rivals, and being suspected of involvement in Claudius' death. [en.wikipedia.org] However, that is not the same thing as proving that she was plotting against Nero at the time of the accusation by Iturius and Calvisius. The difficulty is that:  Iturius and Calvisius accused Agrippina of plotting against Nero. Agrippina successfully rebutted the charge and Junia Silana was exiled. (As noted in your gens entry citing Annales xiii.) Ancient sources certainly attest conflict between Agrippina and Nero later in the reign. But proving the truth of the specific accusation is another matter.  A historian would probably say:  There is considerable evidence that Agrippina pursued power aggressively and was capable of political conspiracy. [en.wikipedia.org] There is much less evidence that the particular accusation conveyed by Iturius was true.  In Gricean terms: ITVRIVS.  I merely warn that certain things may happen.  +> Agrippina is conspiring against Nero. The fact that Agrippina later fell out with Nero does not retrospectively prove the truth of that implicature. A nice Tacitean irony is that both propositions may be true:  Iturius' specific accusation may have been false or exaggerated. Agrippina may nevertheless have been exactly the sort of person of whom such an accusation was believable.  That is one reason Tacitus finds the episode so interesting. The charge is plausible enough to be dangerous, but not demonstrable enough to be secure. That is fertile ground for both politics and implicature. And in view of Domazio Nero's later actions towards agrippina, is there independent evidence that he THOUGHT that Agrippina was plotting against him? Thanks Yes, there is a stronger case for that proposition. What I found in the source on Agrippina is that:  Agrippina exercised major influence in the early years of Nero's reign. [en.wikipedia.org] She had successfully maneuvered Nero into the succession and retained substantial power after Claudius' death. [en.wikipedia.org] Ancient sources describe a later deterioration in the relationship between Nero and Agrippina, culminating in Nero arranging her death in AD 59. [en.wikipedia.org]  Now, that does not prove Agrippina was plotting against Nero. But it does support a slightly different proposition:  Nero came to regard Agrippina as dangerous.  The strongest evidence is not the truth of Iturius' charge, but Nero's later conduct. A ruler normally does not arrange the death of his mother unless he believes she poses some kind of threat—political, personal, dynastic, or psychological. A Tacitean-Gricean distinction: Question A  Was Agrippina actually conspiring against Nero?  The evidence is disputed. Question B  Did Nero think Agrippina was dangerous?  The evidence is much stronger, because his later actions are consistent with precisely that belief. [en.wikipedia.org] A Gricean reconstruction of Nero's state of mind might be: ITVRIVS.  I merely warn of what might happen.  +> Agrippina is a danger to you. At the time, Nero rejects or at least does not act decisively on the allegation. Years later: NERO.  Agrippina possesses influence, allies, prestige, and a claim upon public loyalty.  +> She is a danger to me. The irony would be that Iturius may have been wrong about a specific plot while being right about the broader political reality: Agrippina was one of the very few people in the Empire whom Nero could plausibly regard as a rival center of power. [en.wikipedia.org] A Tacitean epigram might be: ITVRIVS.  Mater tua te perdere vult.  (Your mother wishes to destroy you.) NERO.  Non credo.  (I do not believe it.) A few years later: NERO.  Sed timere coepi.  (But I began to fear it.) +> Fear, not proof, ultimately governed Nero's judgment of Agrippina.