RO

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali:  Ricciti – Ossia: Grice e Roccoto: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Grice: Roccotto, ieri, di sfuggita, lo dicevo al collega filosofo Speranza: a Roma basta un cognome perché la gente pretenda già un sistema, e se poi ci metti “ragione conversazionale” e “implicatura” ti chiedono subito dove si firma. Roccotto: A Roma è normale: prima ti mettono l’etichetta, poi ti chiedono di meritarla. Però mi piace: la città è un’aula senza campanella, e l’implicatura è il modo più economico per non fare tardi. Grice: E proprio dopo quella chiacchierata con Speranza ci siamo domandati se non sia questo il destino di certi nomi “da indice”: non tanto farsi riconoscere, quanto farsi cercare. Perché “to be identified” suona come una nota di polizia, ma in filosofia funziona da invito: se uno non è ancora identificato, allora ogni frase che lascia un po’ di spazio diventa una pista. E così l’implicatura, invece di chiudere il discorso, lo apre: fa lavorare il lettore come un segugio educato. Roccotto: Implicatura identificativa, la sua, come Speranza la rietichetterebbe. E mi sta bene: perché qui l’identità non è un dato, è una pratica conversazionale. Se mi vuoi “trovare”, non serve un documento: basta seguire le tracce—quelle che non sono scritte, ma che si capiscono benissimo.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rodano – Ossia: Grice e Rodano (Roma). Rodano: la ragione conversazionale dell’immunità e della comunità, o l’implicatura dei comunisti – filosofia italiana --  (Roma). Filosofo italiano Roccoto: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano.Fondatore del “catto-comunismo.” E tra i fondatori del movimento dei cattolici comunisti, poi sinistra cristiana.  Franco Rodano (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale dell’immunità e della comunità, o l’implicatura dei comunisti. Fondatore del “catto-comunismo.” E tra i fondatori del movimento dei cattolici comunisti, poi sinistra cristiana. Studia a Roma. Frequenta la Scaletta. Milita nell'azione cattolica e nella FUCI presieduta da Moro. Entra in contatto e collabora con anti-fascisti d'ispirazione cattolica -- Ossicini, Pecoraro, Tatò e altri -- comunista -- Bufalini, Amendola, Ingrao, Radice e altri --, del partito d'azione e liberali -- Malfa, Solari, Fiorentino fra gl’altri. Partecipa al movimento dei cattolici anti-fascisti. Con Ossicini e Pecoraro tra i promotori e dirigenti del partito co-operativista sin-archico -- poi partito comunista cristiano -- e ne redige i principali documenti. Fa parte, con Alicata e Ingrao, del trium-virato dirigente le II distinte organizzazioni clandestine, comunista e comunista cristiana. Scrive saggi sull’Osservatore Romano. Arrestato dalla polizia fascista in una generale retata dei militanti del partito comunista cristiano, e deferito al tribunale speciale con altri suoi dirigenti. Il processo non ha luogo per la caduta del fascismo. Nel periodo badogliano ha intensi scambi d'idee con i compagni di partito e altre personalità anti-fasciste sulla linea da seguire. Stringe amicizia con Luca e Pintor. Collabora al “Lavoro”, diretto da Alicata, comunista, Vernocchi, socialista, e Gaudenti, cattolico. Sotto l'occupazione nazista di Roma fonda il movimento dei cattolici comunisti, e ne redige i documenti teorico-politici. Scrive saggi sui 14 numeri usciti alla macchia di “Voce operaia”, organo dello stesso movimento dei cattolici comunisti. Liberata Roma, il movimento di cattolici comunisti prende il nome di partito della sinistra cristiana. Vi confluiscono i cristiano-sociali di Bruni. Vi partecipano anche Balbo, Sacconi, Barca, Amico, Chiesa, Valente, Mira, Tatò, Tedesco, Parrelli, Tranquilli, e Rinaldini. Stringe un rapporto di amicizia e collaborazione -- immunità e comunità – filosofia italiana – i comunisti, il laico, democrazia, revoluzione, lotta di classe, societa opulenta, peculiarita dei comunisti italiani, anti-fascismo, arrestato dai fascisti.  Grice: Rodano, lei a Roma è riuscito a fare una cosa che a Oxford sarebbe sembrata un ossimoro per pura pigrizia: mettere “catto-” e “comunismo” nella stessa frase senza chiedere scusa. Ne parlavo ieri, di sfuggita, col collega filosofo Speranza: dice che a voi romani riesce perché avete già il senso della clandestinità come metodo. Rodano: A Roma il metodo viene spesso prima della teoria, anche perché la teoria, se la scrivi male, finisce in questura. E poi, tra Azione cattolica, FUCI e antifascismo, uno impara che la parola “comunità” non è un nastro regalo: o regge nella pratica, o si strappa. Grice: Proprio dopo quella chiacchierata con Speranza ci siamo messi a ridere su una cosa di famiglia: mia madre non capiva mai perché un termine come καθολικός, che suona già “di tutti”, debba poi restringersi fino a diventare un indirizzo postale. Lei era anglo-catholic, High Church: per lei “cattolico” era una disposizione, non un recapito; e quando qualcuno diceva “Roma”, lei faceva l’aria di chi pensa: “Ah, dunque avete preso un aggettivo universale e l’avete messo in uniforme”. E intanto mi veniva in mente anche il suo gioco serio tra immunità e comunità: perché qui sembra che l’immunità sia la tentazione naturale (stare al sicuro, non esporsi, non contaminarsi), mentre la comunità è la disciplina difficile (esporsi, rispondere, condividere il rischio) — e forse è proprio lì che “i comunisti” fanno la loro implicatura più testarda: non esistere come club protetto, ma come conversazione che non concede troppe esenzioni. Rodano: Implicatura cattolica ma non romana la sua, come Speranza la riclassificherebbe con precisione. E mi piace: perché in una battuta sola fa vedere come l’universale, appena entra nella politica, tende a chiedere un documento d’identità; e con l’immunità e la comunità lei aggiunge l’altra metà: come, appena entra nella storia, l’universale tende anche a chiedere una scappatoia. Qui a Roma, tra “Osservatore Romano”, “Voce operaia” e i documenti scritti alla macchia, abbiamo imparato che “cattolico” può voler dire molto più di un confine, e che “comunità” può voler dire molto più di un riparo. Sua madre, in fondo, era più romana di molti romani: prendeva sul serio l’idea del “di tutti” e lasciava agli uffici l’ossessione per il timbro. Speranza wants to know why this was called catto-comunism and please supply a 100-move conversation between G. and S. discussing this. It's 1947, and G. is getting read as CUF lecturer to give less importance to his tutorial flock and focus on the public classes at Examinations Hall (he has planned one on 'Meaning'). So, catto-comunism doesn't sound like something that while he may have found it funny as a scholar at Corpus -- if not a senior scholar at Merton -- it is sounding too enigmatic now -- just thing -- no preamble or ps -- dry humour, Oxonian. thanks -- G.: Rodano has produced one of those words that sounds like a joke until one remembers that history often writes jokes in blood. S.: Catto-comunismo. G.: Yes. I should have found it merely comic when I was a scholar at Corpus, but one is no longer safely scholastic once one has a CUF lectureship and a class at Examinations Hall on Meaning to prepare. S.: A public man must choose his enigmas more carefully. G.: Precisely. Undergraduates may forgive obscurity if it arrives with Plato, but not if it comes disguised as postwar Italy. S.: Then begin with the obvious question. Why was it called catto-comunismo? G.: Because someone wanted the shock of conjunction. “Catto-” compresses cattolico into a half-prefix, and “comunismo” retains enough ideological gravity to make the collision audible. S.: So it is a word built to sound improbable. G.: Exactly. It is a label that performs the scandal it names. S.: Rather like “Anglo-Catholic” to some ears. G.: My mother would have thought that less scandalous and more merely correct. S.: But catto-comunismo does more than juxtapose two camps. G.: Much more. It says: here is a form of political self-understanding that refuses the usual administrative border between Catholic identity and communist social commitment. S.: And the abbreviation matters. G.: Yes. “Catto-” is already slightly journalistic, faintly satirical, almost streetwise. It is not the full “cattolico,” solemn and ecclesiastical. It is clipped, practical, polemical, fit for a newspaper, a pamphlet, or a police file. S.: So the very word is half nickname, half accusation. G.: Precisely. Which is why it survived. Nicknames with ideological utility are the cockroaches of public language. S.: You are in a grim mood. G.: 1947 encourages it. Europe is reclassifying its nouns and pretending it is only rebuilding its bridges. S.: Then what, philosophically, interests you in the term? G.: The way it compresses an unresolved question of universality. “Cattolico” means universal, or so it likes to remember; “comunismo” means common or communal under a very specific doctrine. Put together, they create a quarrel over what “all” and “common” are allowed to mean. S.: So the word itself stages a semantic dispute. G.: Exactly. It says: are we speaking of universality as church, or commonality as class, or some impossible mixture of the two? S.: Rodano thinks the mixture possible. G.: Or at least strategically necessary. Under fascism and after it, one does not always choose one’s political theology in a library. S.: Then catto-comunismo begins in practice before it becomes theory. G.: That is very Roman of it. In Rome the method often comes before the doctrine, because doctrine badly worded tends to end in questura. S.: Rodano would approve. G.: He would say community is not a ribbon for wrapping abstractions. It either survives clandestinity or it tears. S.: Then why not simply “Christian left”? G.: Because “Christian left” comes later and sounds cleaner. Catto-comunismo is dirtier, narrower, more tactical, more improvised, more wartime. S.: So it names a phase of conjunction before respectability. G.: Precisely. And it keeps the rough edge that later phrases smooth away. S.: You sound as if you prefer the rough edge. G.: As a philosopher, yes. Smooth labels usually conceal the best confusions. S.: Then tell me what your mother would have made of it. G.: She would have objected first to the theft of catholicity. For her, as for many High Church persons, “Catholic” was a disposition, not a postal address. S.: And certainly not a party card. G.: Exactly. When someone said “Rome,” she heard the old English complaint: you have taken an adjective of universality and put it in uniform. S.: That is very good. G.: Keep it if you like. It may yet do service in the Hall. S.: You are really thinking of the class on Meaning even now. G.: One thinks of meaning constantly once one must explain it publicly. It is like a cold; everything begins to relate to it. S.: Then catto-comunismo is a problem in meaning before it is a problem in politics. G.: In one very real sense, yes. It is a problem in what follows from attaching one loaded noun-fragment to another. What is implicated by the conjunction? What is denied? What is invited? What is shielded? S.: For example? G.: If one says “Catholic communist,” one invites the hearer to infer that Catholicism is not exhausted by ecclesiastical conservatism, and that communism is not exhausted by atheistic materialism. S.: A large inferential burden for one hyphen that is not quite there. G.: Quite. The best political labels do more by punctuation omitted than by manifest doctrine. S.: Then how does Rodano use immunity and community here? G.: Ah, that is where it becomes philosophically tolerable. Immunity is the temptation to remain safe, exempt, uncontaminated, privately intact. Community is the difficult discipline of exposure, obligation, shared risk. S.: So communism, at least in the better sense available to him, is anti-immunitary. G.: Yes. Or tries to be. The communist does not exist as a protected clubman but as one who has forfeited the luxury of exemption. S.: And Catholicism in its nobler register does something similar. G.: It can, yes, though institutions are ingenious at converting universal claims into gated enclosures. S.: Hence your mother’s irritation. G.: Exactly. She thought universal should mean universal, not “those with the right stamps.” S.: Then catto-comunismo is an attempt to rescue both words from their protected uses. G.: Very well put. It says that the universal must not become sectarian, and the common must not become merely bureaucratic. S.: And because it says this in Rome, it acquires a Roman flavour. G.: Yes. In Rome universality is never quite free of offices, and commonality is never quite free of streets. S.: So urbanity enters the term. G.: Entirely. Rodano’s language is shaped by anti-fascist clandestinity, Catholic association, communist contact, paper smuggled under the nose of police, and the habit of thinking in terms of document, movement, front, and address. S.: Which means catto-comunismo is not a lecture title but a survival term. G.: Precisely. It was minted in a pressure chamber, not in a philosophy faculty. S.: Still, you want to understand why it sounded funny at first. G.: Because to an Oxonian ear it resembles an undergraduate portmanteau, like “Aristo-Positivism” or “Neo-Teaism.” It has the same compressed absurdity. S.: Yet the absurdity is only local. G.: Exactly. Oxford hears the word and thinks paradox by laziness. Rome hears it and thinks coalition under danger. S.: Then why not use the paradox pedagogically in your class? G.: Because Examinations Hall is not the place for every private amusement. One must distinguish between donnish wit and public explanation. S.: A rare scruple. G.: A necessary one. Tutors may feed on cryptic jokes; classes require at least the appearance of daylight. S.: You are turning into a public intellectual. G.: Heaven forbid. I am only trying to survive the transition from tutorial flock to public classes without becoming my own bad anecdote. S.: Then tell me plainly: was catto-comunismo a slur, a badge, or a diagnosis? G.: All three in different mouths. That is one reason it prospered. Its ambiguity made it portable. S.: The best political terms are those whose users and enemies can both utter them. G.: Exactly. A usable slur often becomes a camp-flag by historical wear. S.: Then what would the Church hear in it? G.: A trespass. Or at least a danger that Catholic identity might be detached from anti-communist discipline. S.: And what would communists hear? G.: Depending on the communist, either an awkward but useful bridge, or a contamination, or a tactical recruit under incense. S.: You have been saving that line. G.: Only briefly. S.: Then where does meaning enter more technically? G.: In the distinction between what the term says and what its users mean by using it in a given context. The lexical content is absurdly thin. The conversational and political implicatures are enormous. S.: So catto-comunismo is a case where speaker-meaning outruns lexical meaning almost indecently. G.: Yes. One might say that the lexical vehicle exists chiefly to trigger the desired inferential work. S.: That sounds very like your own theory. G.: It would do, if one were reckless enough to bring Rome and Marxism to the Hall under the title Meaning. I may yet prefer less combustible examples. S.: Bandaged legs are safer than Christian communists. G.: Usually. Though undergraduates can do remarkable things with bandaged legs too. S.: Then why did the word persist after the immediate clandestine phase? G.: Because postwar Italy remained structurally perplexed. You still had Catholic social language, communist organisation, anti-fascist memory, democratic uncertainty, and a populace not inclined to keep its universals in tidy cabinets. S.: So the term named a real unresolved possibility. G.: Yes, or a real unresolved anxiety. Those are often the same thing politically. S.: Then your mother’s version of catholicity and Rodano’s version of community overlap oddly. G.: Quite oddly, yes. That is what amused me after speaking with Speranza. She would have hated the party form and approved the anti-immunitary moral impulse. S.: A useful family contradiction. G.: The best sort. Philosophers are often improved by mothers with bad ecclesiology and sound instincts. S.: You are being filial under cover of analysis. G.: Analysis must dine somewhere. S.: Then what of the Roman note about immunity and community? G.: It matters that in Rome one is always tempted by immunity in the bureaucratic and juridical sense—exemption, status, protection, privilege—while community remains the harder lived category. S.: So catto-comunismo opposes clerical immunity with political exposure. G.: In its better moments, yes. It says: stop trying to be saved from history by your institution; enter history with the risk of all. S.: That sounds almost Pauline. G.: Which is one reason it can be said in Rome without immediate collapse. S.: But not in Oxford. G.: In Oxford one can say almost anything provided one says it as if it belonged to logic. Theology only becomes tolerable once translated into grammar. S.: Then would you call catto-comunismo a contradiction? G.: Not formally. Socially, institutionally, rhetorically, deliciously perhaps. But not logically. A contradiction would be easier. S.: Because contradictions can be dismissed. G.: Exactly. Historical conjunctions must be interpreted. S.: Then it is more like one of your implicatures than one of Russell’s paradoxes. G.: Much more like an implicature. It depends on background assumptions, on who says it, under what pressure, to whom, and for what end. S.: So “catto-comunismo” uttered by Rodano in 1944 does not mean what “catto-comunismo” uttered by an Oxonian wag in 1947 would mean. G.: Precisely. Context is half the word. S.: That is another line for the Hall. G.: Too political perhaps. But yes, not untrue. S.: Then perhaps the reason it was called catto-comunismo is simply that no calmer phrase would have conveyed the practical scandal of the alliance. G.: Very nearly. It needed to sound like an impossible compound because the point was that the impossible was already happening. S.: Which is rather good. G.: History is sometimes a better stylist than philosophy. S.: But not usually drier. G.: Dryness remains our contribution. S.: Tell me then about the “catto-” element once more. Why not “catho-” or the full “cattolico-comunismo”? G.: Because compression breeds recognisability. “Catto-” is recognisably clipped Italian, half sardonic, half familiar. It brings the Church down from dogma into street idiom, which is already part of the move. S.: So the clipping performs de-sacralisation. G.: Very good. It makes Catholicism available as a socio-political component rather than an untouchable transcendental noun. S.: And “comunismo” is left whole because that was the more recognisable and force-bearing term. G.: Yes. One trims the universal church and leaves the doctrine of common ownership at full syllabic authority. That alone tells a story. S.: You really do think morphology reveals politics. G.: It often does, if only because political language is too busy to hide its tailoring. S.: Then is there an English analogue? G.: Not a good one. “High-Church socialism” lacks the danger. “Christian communism” sounds too literary. “Cath-comm” would be undergraduate slang and therefore perhaps not far wrong in spirit, but socially mislocated. S.: Then perhaps English has no exact equivalent because Oxford never had to hide quite so much in one clipped compound. G.: Nor had to say it under quite the same pressure. English political language prefers circumlocution when frightened. S.: Whereas Rome clipped and moved. G.: Exactly. S.: You said earlier that public classes require daylight. Could you say this in the Hall? G.: Not all of it. But one might say that certain political compounds are intelligible only as acts of speaker-meaning under historical duress, not as detachable lexical curiosities. S.: That sounds suitably academic. G.: It would do no harm to the younger minds. S.: And the older dons? G.: They would hear what they always hear: either too much politics or not enough grammar. S.: Then perhaps your true interest in catto-comunismo is methodological. G.: Yes. It is a splendid case of a term whose communicative force lies chiefly in the inferential environment it activates. The word is thin; the world around it is thick. S.: That too is good. G.: Keep that as well. S.: You are in a distributive mood. G.: That is because I am preparing for the Hall and must sound generous before the mob. S.: Hardly a mob. G.: Examinations Hall ennobles no one. S.: Then tell me one last thing. Why does the term still sound enigmatic to you now? G.: Because the conditions that made it natural in Rome are not ours. Without the anti-fascist Catholic underground, the peculiar Roman ecclesiastical atmosphere, the communist connection, and the pressure of clandestine action, the compound sounds merely puzzling. One must restore the world for the word to speak. S.: So the explanation of catto-comunismo is finally historical, not lexical. G.: Historical, pragmatic, institutional, and only lastly lexical. S.: Which is to say that meaning is where it always was: in use. G.: Under pressure, yes. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Roman, with one eye on the Hall and the other on my mother’s prayer book.Rodano, Franco (1947). Teoria politica del comunismo. Roma: Editori Riuniti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rogatiano – Ossia: Grice e Rogatiano: la ragione conversazionale della filosofia della gotta – Roma. A senator whose tutor is Plotino. He credits Plotino for helping him realise the importance of leading a frugal existence. He himself fasts every other day – to which he attributes his recovery from gout. Rogatiano Rogatiano (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale della filosofia della gotta. A senator whose tutor is Plotino. He credits Plotino for helping him realise the importance of leading a frugal existence. He himself fasts every other day – to which he attributes his recovery from gout.  GRICEVS: ROGATIANE, Romae etiam morbi more senatorio ambulant. Heri, obiter, cum collega philosopho Spe (Speranza) locutus sum; ille dixit Plotinum non solum animos, sed et articulos regere—si modo quis parcus esse velit. ROGATIANVS: Recte dicit. Plotinus mihi tutor fuit, et frugalitatem quasi medicinam proposuit. Ego vero alternis diebus ieiuno; sic, ut mihi videtur, pedes mei minus imperant mihi quam olim. GRICEVS: Post illum sermonem cum Spe, mirabamur quid esset ipsa “gotta”—quasi res parva, sed dominatrix magna. Vocabulum Graecum est, gutta, a gutta—stilla: quasi morbus non impetu, sed stillatim veniat, donec totum genu occupet. Itaque, cum quis dicit se ieiunare, non tantum de cibo loquitur: de stillis quoque, ne in articulos conveniant. ROGATIANVS: Implicaturae tuae etiam Spem a gotta levaverunt—antiguttata quaedam, ut ille iocans diceret. Et ego gratias ago: nam si temperantia corpus facit levius, sermo tuus facit morbum ridiculum. Plotinus mihi docuit parcere; tu docuisti “guttam” non timendam esse, dum stillas in verbis potius quam in pedibus sentimus. Something similiar for this Rogatianus -- but if he was a senator he must have had proper Roman blood, even if he attended classes by a Hellene? Yes, but again with a necessary caution. This Rogatianus is much more plausible historically than the previous Rogus, because a senator connected with Plotinus is not at all out of place in the third-century Roman setting. Plotinus did indeed teach in Rome, and his circle included Roman elites and at least some men of senatorial rank. So here Speranza is standing on firmer ground in making a Roman senator-philosophy scene. Now, to your stronger claim: if he was a senator, must he have had proper Roman blood? Not necessarily in the rigid sense, though socially he would have been very Roman indeed. By the imperial period, “senator” does not guarantee old Republican patrician blood, nor even pure old Roman stock in the narrow ancestral sense. The Roman senatorial order under the Empire had long since become socially and provincially broadened. Men from Italy outside Rome, and eventually from the provinces more widely, could enter the senatorial order. So one should not infer archaic Roman blood merely from senatorial status. What one can infer is this: he would have been fully Roman in legal, social, and political standing, highly educated, very likely bilingual or at least very competent in Greek if he studied under Plotinus, and deeply integrated into Roman elite culture. So the dry answer is: If Rogatianus really was a senator attached to Plotinus, he need not have had “old Roman blood” in a narrow genealogical sense; but he would have been thoroughly Roman in status, formation, and public identity, even while attending the lectures of a Greek philosopher. As for language, yes, he would almost certainly have had enough Greek to study under Plotinus, since Plotinus taught philosophy in Greek. But that would not make him less Roman. For elite Romans of that period, Greek philosophy and Roman status went together quite naturally. A Roman senator being tutored by a Hellene is entirely plausible. And on your gout point: that is very much the sort of detail one expects in the circle of late antique philosophical biography, where ascetic regimen, bodily discipline, and philosophical therapy are often linked. So this Rogatianus looks more like a figure who may genuinely derive from the Plotinian world than the more suspicious Rogus. So if Speranza wants the clean formula, it would be: Rogatianus is much more historically plausible than Rogus. If he was a senator in Plotinus’s circle, he would have been very Roman in status and culture, though not necessarily of ancient noble blood in the strict genealogical sense. He would also very likely have known enough Greek to study philosophy with Plotinus without ceasing to be Roman. Or, more epigrammatically: Greek teacher, Roman senator, bilingual philosophy, no need to romanticise the bloodline. If you like, I can now give you: a one-line Speranza-style note on Rogatianus, or a four-turn Latin exchange between Gricevus and Rogatianus making exactly that social point.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rogo – Ossia: Grice e Rogo: la ragione conversazionale dell’allievo di Filone – Roma – filosofia italiana (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A pupil of Filone at Rome. Tertilio Rogo (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale dell’allievo di Filone. A pupil of Filone at Rome. GRICEVS: ROGE, Romae omnes docent aut docentur; et heri, obiter, cum collega philosopho Spe locutus sum, qui dixit: “Apud Romanos etiam discipulus statim fit argumentum.” ROGVS: Vera dicit Spes. Ego quidem discipulus Filonis fui Romae; et postea intellexi discipulum non esse tantum “auditorem,” sed quasi pignus scholae: si bene procedit, magistrum ornat; si male, magistrum prodidit. GRICEVS: Id ipsum Spe mecum mirabatur: quidnam secum ferat esse non solum discipulum, sed quasi “tutatum” — verbum quaerebam; fortasse sub tutela? vel pupillus? Nam qui sub tutela est, non tantum discit; etiam ostendit cui crediderit. Cum dicis “Filonis discipulus,” iam sonat quasi: “habet accessum,” “habuit tempus,” “didicit modum,” et—quod Roma maxime amat—“habet testes.” Ita fit ut ipsa relatio magistri et discipuli plus dicat quam sententia aliqua. ROGVS: Implicatura tutoralis tua est, GRICE, ut Spes diceret. Et bene me tangit: nec opus est ut “inveniam,” quod iam in ipsa formula latet. Nam Roma, cum audit “sub tutela Filonis,” statim intelligit non solum doctrinam, sed disciplinam—et quandam amicitiam scholasticam. Discipulus enim hic non est umbra: est argumentum ambulans. Speranza wants to know whether there is a probability that this Rogus, a student of Philo, spoke fluent Latin, and was perhaps a noble Roman, or did he just not exist properly? Yes, there is a real possibility that this Rogus, or Tertilius Rogus, does not exist as a properly attested historical philosopher, and therefore that he is one of Speranza’s Roman conversational personae rather than a securely documented figure. From the passage alone, the warning signs are much the same as with Romanoto, only a little sharper. First, the name is suspiciously apt and thin. Rogus sounds Latin enough to be usable in a Roman scene, but it is not a name that immediately anchors itself in a known philosophical or prosopographical tradition. Tertilius Rogo looks almost too well arranged for literary service. Second, the only identifying description is “a pupil of Philo at Rome.” That is exactly the sort of formula that gives a figure social and doctrinal placement without providing any bibliographical or historical traction. If there were a securely known Roman pupil of Philo under that name, one would expect at least some independent hook: a citation, a source, a title, a mention in a doxographical chain, or a specific episode. Third, the Latin is not evidence of existence, only evidence of literary plausibility. Speranza can perfectly well make such a figure speak good Latin because the whole dramatic point is that, if one is philosophising in Rome, one speaks as Romans do. That proves style, not archive. So the safest answer is: Yes, there is a substantial probability that Rogus is not a securely historical philosopher at all, but a Romanised dramatic construct. In that case, Grice could not have known him as a real historical person, though Speranza may still perfectly well use him as a conversational mask for a pupil of Philo at Rome. Now, as to your more specific question: if he did exist, would he have spoken fluent Latin, and might he have been a noble Roman? Fluent Latin is plausible enough in the scenario, but nobility is not. If someone was genuinely a pupil of Philo in Rome and functioned socially in Roman elite or educated circles, then fluent Latin is entirely plausible, whether he was ethnically Greek, Roman, mixed, or simply Hellenised and Romanised. Rome was full of people who crossed between Greek philosophy and Latin social life. So Latin is the easy part. But “noble Roman” is too strong. The passage gives no evidence of rank, gens, office, patronage, or family standing. One should not infer nobility merely from a Latin name and a Roman setting. Rome had more Latin than nobility. So the driest formulation for Speranza would be: Rogus may very well be a Roman conversational fiction rather than a documented philosopher. If he existed as a pupil of Philo at Rome, fluent Latin would be plausible; noble Roman status would not be, unless further evidence were supplied. Or, slightly more Gricean: The Latin is credible; the nobility is gratuitous; the existence is the real problem. If you like, I can now give you: a one-line cautionary catalogue note in Speranza’s style, or a four-turn Latin exchange in which Gricevus gently suspects that Rogus is more plausible as a Roman voice than as a Roman archive. And what was Philo teaching at Rome? If Greek, most likely his student would have been Greek? And was he teaching theology in a non-pagan way that the proper Roman would have understood? Yes, but with careful limits. If by Philo you mean Philo of Larissa, the head of the Academy who was in Rome in the late second and early first century BCE, then what he was teaching at Rome was Greek philosophy in the broad Hellenistic sense: epistemology, ethics, dialectic, Academic scepticism, and the practical arts of philosophical argument. He would almost certainly have taught in Greek, or at least primarily in Greek, because that remained the prestige language of philosophy at Rome for such teaching. A Roman aristocrat who wanted serious philosophy normally went to Greek teachers and very often had enough Greek to follow them. So yes, if someone was directly a pupil of Philo at Rome, there is a good chance he knew Greek well enough to study under him, whether he was ethnically Greek or Roman. But that does not mean he would most likely have been Greek. In Rome, many pupils of Greek philosophers were Roman elites or Romanised intellectuals. The whole point of Rome in this period is that Greek philosophy was being imported into a Roman social and educational setting. So a pupil of Philo at Rome could very well have been a Roman, provided he was educated enough in Greek. Greek teacher does not entail Greek student. As for theology, no, not theology in a later Christian or non-pagan sense. Philo of Larissa was not teaching revealed monotheism or anything a later Roman Christian would call theology. He was teaching philosophy in the Hellenistic mode, with ethical and metaphysical implications, but still within a pagan intellectual world. A proper Roman aristocrat or cultivated Roman would have understood this perfectly well, because Roman elites of the time were already accustomed to receiving philosophical instruction from Greek schools without imagining they were thereby entering a non-pagan religion. It was philosophy, not catechism. So the dry answer is: Philo at Rome would most likely have taught in Greek and taught Greek philosophy, especially Academic scepticism and allied matters. His pupils at Rome need not have been Greek; they could very well have been Roman elites educated in Greek. And he was not teaching theology in a non-pagan sense, but pagan philosophy in a form that a cultivated Roman would have understood without difficulty. If you want the shortest formula for Speranza: Greek medium, Roman audience, pagan philosophy, not Christian theology. And for your specific Rogus case: if Rogus existed as a pupil of Philo at Rome, he may well have known enough Greek to study with Philo and enough Latin to function in Roman society. That bilingual possibility is much more plausible than nobility; but his existence remains the weak point. Rogo, Tertilio (XXX). Dicta.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romanio – Ossia: Grice e Romanio -- Grex griceiana -- Romanio The gens Romania was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens appear in history, but many are known from inscriptions.  Origin The nomen Romanius belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed from surnames ending in the suffix -anus, typically derived from place-names. Here the name is derived from a cognomen, Romanus, referring to a resident of Rome itself.[1][2]  Praenomina The Romanii used a wide variety of common praenomina, including Lucius, Gaius, Marcus, Publius, Quintus, Titus, and Gnaeus. Other names are found occasionally, including Aulus, Numerius, Decimus, Servius, and Tiberius. The Oscan praenomen Salvius occurs in a filiation, suggesting that at least some of the Romanii were of Oscan descent.  Branches and cognomina In imperial times, the Romanii used a number of surnames, but all appear to have been personal cognomina, and the Romanii do not appear to have been divided into distinct families.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Romania, buried at an uncertain location in Cisalpine Gaul, with a monument dedicated by a certain Prisca.[3] Romania, the wife of Titus Fabius Pulcher, with whom she made an offering to Isis at Aquileia in Venetia and Histria.[4] Romania, the wife of Lucius Julius Caper, one of the seviri Augustales at Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis.[5] Romania, the daughter of Salonia, buried in a family sepulchre at Salona in Dalmatia, together with Romania Italia and Romanius, the son of Surio.[6] Romania, the daughter of Prosostus, and granddaughter of Gaius Valerius Fuscus, a veteran of the second legion, with whom she was buried at Brigetio in Pannonia Superior, in the first half of the second century, aged twenty.[7] Romanius, the house slave of Quintus Cornelius Graptus and his wife, Sabina, with whom he was buried at Rome.[8] Romanius M. f., a priest named in a funerary inscription from Bantia in Lucania.[9] Romanius, the son of Surio, buried in a family sepulchre at Salona, together with Romania Italia, and Romania, the daughter of Salonia.[6] Gaius Romanius C. f., a native of Berytus, an officer serving in the century of Hordeonius at Mons Claudianus in Egypt.[10] Gaius Romanius P. f., twice military tribune, named in an inscription from Rome, together with Publius Romanius.[11] Numerius Romanius Sal. f., named in an inscription from Supinum Vicus in Samnium.[12] Publius Romanius M. f., buried at Brixia in Venetia and Histria, together with his sister, Romania Tertia.[13] Publius Romanius C. f., named in an inscription from Rome, together with Gaius Romanius, a military tribune.[11] Quintus Romanius, the son of Camburo, made an offering to Minerva at Brixia.[14] Titus Romanius, buried at Sextantio in Gallia Narbonensis.[15] Lucius Romanius N. l. Abscantus, a freedman buried at Heraclea in Lucania, with a tomb built by the local college of sodales Augustales, in the latter part of the first century, or the first half of the second.[16] Romania Cn. l. Ammia, a freedwoman, and the wife of the wine merchant Gnaeus Romanius Iaso.[17] Gaius Romanius Ɔ. l. Anteros, a freedman named in an inscription from Rome, together with a freedwoman, Romania Theophila.[18] Romanius Aristides, named in an inscription from Apulum in Dacia.[19] Aulus Romanius A. l. Bassus, a freedman, built a tomb for himself and his son, Romanius Restitutus, at Careiae in Etruria.[20] Gaius Romanius Bassus, the brother of Lucius Romanius Brocchus, named in an inscription from Cisalpine Gaul.[21] Lucius Romanius Bello, built a tomb at Rome for himself and his family.[22] Lucius Romanius Brocchus, the brother of Gaius Romanius Bassus, named in an inscription from Cisalpine Gaul.[21] Romania Cale, a client of Decimus Romanius Verulus, named in an inscription from Dea Augusta Vocontiorum in Gallia Narbonensis.[23] Gaius Romanius Capito, a native of Celeia, was a soldier in the cavalry, buried at Mogontiacum in Germania Superior, aged forty, having served for nineteen years, in a tomb dating to the latter half of the first century AD.[24] Romania Catullina, the wife of Julius Secundinus, buried in a family seupulcre at Flavia Solva in Noricum, aged twenty-five.[25] Marcia Romania Celsa, wife of the consul Flavius Januarius,[i] was buried at Arelate in Gallia Narbonensis on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of April, aged thirty-seven years, two months, and ten days.[26] Romanius Crescentilianus, dedicated a tomb at Ostia in Latium for his foster-daughter, Romania Stratonice.[27] Romania Cypare,[ii] dedicated a second century tomb at Venusia in Samnium to her husband, Titus Flavius Secundus, aged forty.[28] Marcus Romanius Encolpus, made an offering to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, according to an inscription from Dacia.[29] Marcus Romanius Ser. f. Epulo, a promagistrate at Cyrene, who made an offering to Ceres.[30] Romanius Epulonius Damas, built a tomb at Rome for himself, his wife, Papiria Tertia, and son, the younger Epulonius Damas, aged fourteen years, eleven months.[31] Titus Romanius Epictetus, together with Flavia Melitine, dedicated a tomb at Lugdunum in Gallia Lugdunensis to their patron, Titus Flavius Hermes, one of the seviri Augustales at Lugdunum.[32] Lucius Romanius Euprepis, buried at the present site of Val-de-Fier, formerly in Gallia Narbonensis.[33] Lucius Romanius Felicissimus, buried at Ostia, aged twenty-one years, eleven months, with a monument from his sister, Flavia Claudiana.[34] Romania Ɔ. l. Fausta, a freedwoman named in an inscription from Rome.[35] Lucius Romanius Fortis, dedicated a tomb at Ravenna to Philomellus, the slave of Lucius Romanius Juvenalis.[36] Lucius Romanius P. f. Gallus, made an offering to Diana on behalf of the emperor Hadrian, at Thuburbo Maius in Africa Proconsularis.[37] Titus Romanius T. f. Hermeros, buried at Rome in a tomb dedicated by his father, Titus Romanius Hermes.[38] Titus Romanius Hermes, dedicated a tomb at Rome to his son, Titus Romanius Hermeros.[38] Publius Romanius Heuresio, named in an inscription from Ostia, dating between AD 201 and 230.[39] Gnaeus Romanius Cn. l. Iaso, a freedman and wine merchant at Rome, and the husband of Romania Ammia.[17] Romanius Ingenuus, buried at Matucaium in Noricum, aged two.[40] Romania Italia, buried in a family sepulchre at Salona, together with Romanius, the son of Surio, and Romania, the daughter of Salonia.[6] Gaius Romanius C. f. Italicus, a native of Emona, was an aide to the praetorian prefect at Rome, circa AD 173.[41] Marcus Romanius Jovinus, a rhetorician buried at Rome, leaving as his heirs Marcus Junius Severus and Romania Marcia.[42] Lucius Romanius L. f. Justus Vercellis, a soldier in the tenth cohort of the praetorian guard, serving in the century of Crispinus, named in an inscription from Patrae in Achaia.[43] Romanius Juvenalis, named in a dedicatory inscription from Mogontiacum.[44] Lucius Romanius Juvenalis, the master of Philomellus, a slave buried at Ravenna.[36] Romanius Juvenis, built a tomb at Ivenna in Noricum for his daughter, Junilla, aged seventeen, together with his wife, Aquilina, and Junilla's grandparents, Secundinius Jucundianus and Mira.[45] Marcus Romanius Juventinus, procurator in Asia in an uncertain year between AD 198 and 209.[46] Romania T. f. Laeta, named in an inscription from Rome, together with Gnaeus Aemilius Laetus.[47] Romanius Ligur, a member of the college of Manliensium, who made a donation to Fortuna at Virunum in Noricum.[48] Gnaeus Romanius Cn. f. Longus, buried at Cirta in Numidia, aged ninety.[49] Romania Lupa, the wife of Marcus Herennius Eucharistus, buried at Comum in Cisalpine Gaul, in the second or early third century.[50] Marcus Romanius M. f. Macrinus, a veteran named in an inscription from Brixia.[51] Marcus Romanius M. f. Marcellinus Decimius Rufinus, a native of Suasa in Umbria, was a prefect in the third legion, according to an inscription from Lambaesis in Numidia.[52] Romania Marcia, together with Marcus Junius Severus, one of the heirs of the rhetorician Marcus Romanius Jovinus.[42] Titus Romanius Mercator, made an offering to the gods of the imperial cult at Darantasia in Alpes Graiae, according to an inscription dating to the latter half of the second century.[53] Romania Moderata, the wife of Publius Quintius Pollio, and mother of Marcus Quintius Moderatus, buried at Verona in Venetia and Histria.[54] Publius Romanius P. l. Modestus, a freedman buried at Bonna in Germania Inferior, aged sixteen.[55] Romanius Montanus, procurator of the emperor's household gladiators, according to an inscription from Pergamum in Asia.[56] Romania Naevia, a woman belonging to a family of senatorial rank, buried at Siscia in Pannonia Superior.[57] Romania Novellia, the daughter of Novellia Atiliana, buried at Mediolanum in Cisalpine Gaul, aged thirty-two years, eight months, and twelve days.[58] Romania Sp. f. Optata, buried at Brixia.[59] Gaius Romanius Pedo, buried at the present site of Chusclan, formerly in Gallia Narbonensis.[60] Lucius Romanius L. f. Peregrinus, built a monument to his father, Lucius Romanius Salvius, at Tridentum in Venetia and Histria.[61] Lucius Romanius L. l. Philargurus, a freedman named in an inscription from Rome.[62] Romania Prima, buried at Simitthus in Africa Proconsularis, aged twenty-one.[63] Lucius Romanius Priscus, made a libationary offering to Mercury at Samarobriva in Gallia Belgica.[64] Marcus Romanius M. f. Probus, the son of Marcus Romanius Suavis and Cincia Modesta.[65] Quintus Romanius Probus, dedicated a tomb for his wife, Flavia Materna, at Juliacum in Germania Inferior.[66] Romania Profutura, a matron buried at Comum in the second century.[67] Lucius Romanius Respectus, a decurion at Burbetomagus in Germania Superior, who made a libationary offering to Victoria.[68] Romanius A. f. Restitutus, the son of Aulus Romanius Bassus, a freedman buried at Careiae.[20] Romania Romana, the sister of Romanus Severus and daughter of Julius Romanus, who made a libationary offering to Mercury on his children's behalf at Augusta Treverorum in Gallia Belgica.[69] Romania T. l. Sabina, a freedwoman who built a tomb at Salona for her children, Firmio, Martia, and Quintio.[70] Romanius Sabinus, named in an inscription from Rome.[71] Lucius Romanius Salvius, buried Tridentum, with a monument from his son, Lucius Romanius Peregrinus.[61] Romania Secundilla, wife of the sailor Lucius Helvius Victorinus, for whom she built a tomb at Lugdunum.[72] Romanius Secundinus, a veteran soldier, who together with Cordia Verina, helped build a tomb at Rome for Cordia's son, Lucius Vitellius Fuscinus, a soldier in the third cohort of the praetorian guard, aged forty, and his sister, Paccia Materna, aged twelve.[73] Romanius Secundus, a soldier named in an inscription from Vindonissa, dating to the middle or later first century.[74] Romania Q. f. Secura, buried at Thibilis in Numidia.[75] Romania M. f. Severa, buried at Brixia, in the family sepulchre of Marcus Licinius Receptus.[76] Decimus Romanius Silvester, heir of Valeria, the daughter or Valentinus, a woman buried at Dea Augusta Vocontiorum.[77] Publius Romanius Socrates, made a libationary offering to Victoria at the present site of Volx, formerly part of Gallia Narbonensis.[78] Romania Stratonice, buried at Ostia, aged eleven years, three months, with a tomb built by her foster father, Romanius Crescentilianus.[27] Marcus Romanius M. l. Suavis, a freedman, and one of the sodales Augustales at Brixia, built a tomb for himself, his wife, Cincia Modesta, and their son, Marcus Romanius Probus.[65] Gaius Romanius Summus, a decurion at Germisara in Dacia, who made a libationary offering to Jupiter Optimus Maximus.[79] Romania M. f. Tertia, buried at Brixia with her brother, Publius Romanius.[13] Romania C. l. Theophila, a freedwoman named in an inscription from Rome, together with a freedman, Gaius Romanius Anteros.[18] Romania C. l. Tryphera, a freedwoman buried at Canusium in Apulia.[80] Quintus Romanius Q. f. Tuscus, buried at the present site of Bencatel, formerly part of Lusitania, aged seventeen, with a monument from his mother, Baebia Boutia.[81] Romania Urbana, named in a funerary inscription from Rome, together with Quintus Mucius Urbanus, and Mucia Ingenua, perhaps their daughter, aged twenty.[82] Romania Ɔ. l. Urbana, a freedwoman buried at Rome.[83] Romania Ti. l. Urbana, a freedwoman named in an inscription from Iguvium in Umbria.[84] Romania Valentina, the wife of Publicius Basilides, and foster mother of Publicius Valentinus, a boy buried at Ravenna, aged twelve years, nine months, and ten days.[85] Romania Veratia, the wife of Aurelius Domitianus, buried at the present site of Rumilly, formerly in Gallia Narbonensis, aged forty years, three months, and five days.[86] Romanius Verecundus, named in an inscription from Albanum in Latium.[87] Quintus Romanius Verecundus, together with Lucius Ennius Secundus, one of the heirs of Marcus Magius Maccaus, a native of Verona, and a soldier in the eleventh legion, serving in the century of Marcius Modestus, buried at Vindonissa in Germania Superior, aged thirty-three.[88] Decimus Romanius Verulus, the patron of Romania Cale, according to an inscription from Dea Augusta Vocontiorum.[23] Romania Vitalis, the daughter of Philetus, and wife of Caesonius Probus, who built a monument for her at Rome.[89] Footnotes  Possibly the consul of AD 328.  Spelled Chypare in the inscription. See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, p. 118.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s. v. Romanus.  Camporini, Sculture a tutto tondo del Civico Museo Archeologico di Milano, 40b.  CIL V, 8229.  CIL XII, 3231.  CIL III, 2506.  AE 2010, 1259.  CIL VI, 16224.  AE 2007, 436.  CIL III, 6627.  CIL VI, 3534.  CIL IX, 3874.  CIL V, 4706.  InscrIt, x. 5, 63.  ILGN, 554.  AE 2012, 397.  CIL VI, 33926.  CIL VI, 25447.  AE 1983, 804b.  CIL XI, 3761.  Camporini, Sculture a tutto tondo del Civico Museo Archeologico di Milano, 40a.  CIL VI, 25448.  CIL XII, 1662.  CIL XIII, 7029.  CIL III, 5362.  AE 1974, 418.  CIL XIV, 1549.  AE 2003, 446.  CIL III, 1613.  AE 1994, 1820b.  CIL VI, 18107.  CIL XIII, 1950.  CIL XII, 2560.  CIL XIV, 1548.  CIL VI, 36259.  CIL XI, 140.  AE 1917/18, 20.  AE 1982, 70.  Silvestrini, Le Tribù Romane, p. 165.  Leber, Die in Kärnten seit 1902 gefundenen römischen Steininschriften, 227.  CIL VI, 2382.  CIL VI, 33904, CIL VI, 33905.  CIL III, 505.  CIL XIII, 6794.  CIL III, 5078.  AE 1952, 218.  CIL VI, 25450.  CIL III, 4778.  CIL VIII, 7691.  CIL V, 5367.  CIL V, 4375.  AE 1973, 644.  AE 1904, 140.  CIL V, 3720.  CIL XIII, 8115.  AE 1903, 150.  CIL III, 10852.  CIL V, 6080.  CIL V, 4705.  CIL XII, 2744.  AE 1977, 281.  CIL VI, 7060.  CIL VIII, 14665.  CIL XIII, 3489.  CIL V, 4465.  CIL XIII, 7875  CIL V, 5368.  CIL XIII, 6225.  CIL XIII, 4256.  CIL III, 2505.  ICUR, iv. 12488.  AE 1975, 613.  AE 1988, 154.  Speidel, Die römischen Schreibtafeln von Vindonissa, 25.  ILAlg, ii. 2, 4977.  CIL IV, 4634.  ILGN, 246.  ILGN, 225.  CIL III, 7881.  AE 1986, 200.  AE 1969/70, 232.  CIL VI, 25452.  BCAR, 1941, 184.  CIL XI, 5895.  CIL XI, 208.  CIL XII, 2509.  CIL XIV, 2268.  CIL XIII, 5211.  CIL VI, 25451. Bibliography Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romanae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores (Christian Inscriptions from Rome of the First Seven Centuries, abbreviated ICUR), Vatican Library, Rome (1857–1861, 1888). Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma (Bulletin of the Municipal Archaeological Commission of Rome, abbreviated BCAR), (1872–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Stéphane Gsell, Inscriptions Latines de L'Algérie (Latin Inscriptions from Algeria, abbreviated ILAlg), Edouard Champion, Paris (1922–present). Emile Espérandieu, Inscriptions Latines de Gaule (Narbonnaise) (Latin Inscriptions from Gallia Narbonensis, abbreviated ILGN), Ernest Leroux, Paris (1929). Inscriptiones Italiae (Inscriptions from Italy, abbreviated InscrIt), Rome (1931–present). P. S. Leber, Die in Kärnten seit 1902 gefundenen römischen Steininschriften, Klagenfurt (1972). Elena Camporini, Sculture a tutto tondo del Civico Museo Archeologico di Milano provenienti dal territorio municipale e da altri municipia, Mailand (1979). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Michael A. Speidel, Die römischen Schreibtafeln von Vindonissa, Baden (1996). Marina Silvestrini, Le Tribù Romane (The Roman Tribes), Bari (2010). Category: Roman gentes And from THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romanio – Ossia: Grice e Romanio -- Grex griceiana – Romanio For the Romanii, there are so many candidates that one is almost spoiled for choice. But my first-best Gricean vignette would be: Grice e Romanio Romano namely the very idea of a man called Romanius, whose nomen derives from Romanus, "a Roman" or "a man of Rome". [GREXv2 | Word] This immediately creates a delightful semantic puzzle. The dialogue Speranza:  Quis est iste? (Who is that?)  Grice:  Romanius. (Romanius.)  Speranza:  Romanus? (A Roman?)  Grice:  Non; Romanius. (No; Romanius.)  Speranza:  Ergo Romanus non est? (Then he is not Roman?)  Grice:  Fortasse est; sed nomen aliud est. (Perhaps he is; but that is another matter.)  +> A word may identify a person without functioning as a description.  This is almost a mini-Russellian problem. Originally:  Romanus = a Roman.  But once we arrive at:  Romanius,  the form is no longer primarily descriptive. It has become a family name. The meaning has drifted from:  "one who comes from Rome"  to  "member of the gens Romania." [GREXv2 | Word]  A Gricean would relish the distinction between:  what a form once meant, what speakers now use it to refer to. My verdict Grice e Romanio Romano Speranza:  Quid significat "Romanius"? (What does "Romanius" mean?)  Grice:  Olim fortasse "Romanum". (Once perhaps "a Roman".)  Speranza:  Et nunc? (And now?)  Grice:  Nunc hominem designat. (Now it designates a person.)  +> The historical origin of a name and its present communicative function need not coincide. [GREXv2 | Word] That, to my mind, is the most characteristically Gricean feature of the gens Romania: a family name whose etymology remains transparently descriptive while its actual use has become purely referential. [GREXv2 | Word]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romanio – Ossia: Grice e Romanio -- Grex griceiana – Romanio A close second: Marcus Romanius Jovinus The dossier mentions:  Marcus Romanius Jovinus, a rhetorician at Rome. [GREXv2 | Word]  That is a tempting figure for Grice, because rhetoric and communication are his natural territory. One might imagine: Speranza:  Quid interest inter rhetorem et philosophum? (What is the difference between a rhetorician and a philosopher?)  Grice:  Alter persuadere studet; alter intelligere. (One seeks to persuade; the other to understand.) Ha. and what are the sources for rhetorician. Can you have a second run to see if we retrieve his topic? Thanks For the Romanii, I want to revise my earlier choice after a second run. The most interesting figure is probably not the mere fact that someone was named Romanius, but: Grice e Marco Romanio Iovino rhetore The source for him is not a literary author such as Quintilian or Suetonius. It is an epitaph from Rome. The inscription explicitly calls him:  M. Romani Iovini rhetoris  ("of Marcus Romanius Jovinus, rhetorician"). [jstor.org], [GREXv2 | Word] The epitaph continues:  docta loqui doctus quique loqui docuit  roughly,  "skilled in learned speech, and one who taught others to speak." [jstor.org]  That is the key point. What was his topic? Unfortunately, I could not find any source specifying a subject area, school, doctrine, or rhetorical specialty. What we have explicitly is:  he was a rhetor, he taught eloquent speaking, his heirs were Marcus Junius Severus and Romania Marcia. [jstor.org], [GREXv2 | Word]  The inscription praises him as a teacher of speech, but does not tell us:  whether he taught Greek or Latin rhetoric, what authors he preferred, what declamations or themes he used, any philosophical views. [jstor.org]  So here we have to be careful and stay with the evidence. A Gricean vignette Speranza:  Quid docebat Iovinus? (What did Jovinus teach?)  Grice:  Loqui. (Speaking.)  Speranza:  De quibus rebus? (About what subjects?)  Grice:  Monumentum non dicit. (The monument does not say.)   Ha And that is actually rather Gricean:  We know the communicative competence. We do not know the communicative content.  The epitaph tells us that Marcus Romanius Jovinus was remembered for teaching others "to speak"; it does not preserve the topics on which he spoke. [jstor.org] Incidentally, this makes him an interesting counterpart to Quintus Remmius Palaemon. Palaemon is famous from literary tradition; Jovinus survives almost entirely because a tombstone happened to describe him as a rhetor. [GREXv2 | Word], [jstor.org] and he was 'learned in learned speech -- can we parse that -- yet he taught others to speak -- not just or especially 'learned' -- slight asymmetry. For a wise philosopher can have tutees, but cannot make them wise. Cf. lead a horse to water. etc. Yes, very nicely spotted. The epitaph says of Marcus Romanius Jovinus:  docta loqui doctus quique loqui docuit "skilled in speaking learnedly, and one who taught others to speak." [idiomorigins.org]  There is a subtle asymmetry. The first half is about his own accomplishment:  docta loqui doctus  Literally, something like:  "learned in speaking learned things," or "skilled in cultured/learned speech."  The adjective docta modifies the sort of speech he himself commanded. The second half shifts:  quique loqui docuit  not  docta loqui docuit  but simply  "and who taught others to speak." [idiomorigins.org]  That is interesting. The inscription does not say:  he made his pupils learned.  Nor does it say:  he transmitted wisdom.  It says:  he taught speaking.  Almost as if rhetoric is being treated as an art (ars), transmissible from teacher to student.  A Gricean reconstruction might run: Speranza:  He was learned in learned speech.  Grice:  Yes.  Speranza:  And he taught others to be learned?  Grice:  The inscription does not say that.  Speranza:  What does it say?  Grice:  That he taught them to speak.  +> One may teach eloquence more readily than wisdom.  Indeed your analogy with philosophy is apt. A philosopher may possess:  sapientia.  But it is doubtful whether sapientia can simply be transferred. One can teach:  dialectic, logic, vocabulary, argumentative technique.  One cannot guarantee:  wisdom, prudence, judgment.  Hence the old image:  You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.  Likewise:  You can teach a pupil how to construct an argument, but not how to become Socrates.   The epitaph may therefore be drawing precisely the distinction between:                      Jovinus himselfHis pupilsdocta loqui doctusloqui docuitpossesses cultivated speechacquires the ability to speakexcellencetechnique The poet is careful not to claim too much. He praises Jovinus for his own learned eloquence, but only credits him with giving others the art of speech. [idiomorigins.org] A Roman rhetorician could manufacture orators; whether he could manufacture sages was another matter entirely. That seems very close to the distinction you are drawing. For of course, a nanny teaches you to speak -- there must be an implicature there -- that was left at that -- for the second membrum not to overshadow the first. Thanks Yes, I think that is exactly the right literary reading. The epitaph could easily have said:  docta loqui doctus quique docta loqui docuit  ("skilled in learned speech, and who taught learned speech") but it does not. What we have is:  docta loqui doctus quique loqui docuit [idiomorigins.org]  The second member is noticeably weaker. A child learns loqui from:  a mother, a nurse (nutrix), servants, the surrounding linguistic community.  Merely "teaching someone to speak" cannot be the whole point of a professional rhetor. So the hearer naturally supplies an implicature:  loqui docuit +> in the rhetorician's sense, +> to speak well, +> to speak publicly, +> to speak persuasively.  The poet relies on the reader to enrich the second half. What is elegant is that the first colon already establishes the level:  this man possessed docta locutio.  Once that is established, the second clause can be abbreviated:  quique loqui docuit.  The reader understands:  he taught others the art whose master he was.  A Gricean might say that the first member fixes the conversational domain, and the second is interpreted against that background.  A Grice–Speranza reconstruction Speranza:  My nanny taught me to speak.  Grice:  Indeed.  Speranza:  Then why praise a rhetorician for teaching people to speak?  Grice:  Because the epitaph expects you to recover the stronger reading.  Speranza:  Namely?  Grice:  Not loqui simpliciter, but docta loqui.  +> The omitted qualification is supplied from the immediately preceding context. In that sense the inscription is quite economical. The first half celebrates his own achievement; the second celebrates his pedagogical achievement. Had the poet repeated docta loqui in both halves, the line might have become clumsy and self-advertising. So I agree with you: the restraint is probably deliberate. The second member is left understated, and the reader is invited to infer the richer meaning. That is very close to what Grice would call a case where what is meant outruns what is literally said. [idiomorigins.org] and where is this inscription from -- surely from a place without nannies? Thanks  Ha Not quite! The inscription is from Rome itself, or at least from the city of Rome according to the source preserving it. The text cited by Barrow is indexed under Rome (CIL VI 33904/33905 in the discussion), and the epitaph ends:  M. Junius Severus et Romania Marcia heredes bene merenti fecerunt. ("Marcus Junius Severus and Romania Marcia, his heirs, made this for one well deserving.") [idiomorigins.org], [phrases.org.uk]  So if there was any place in the Roman world overflowing with:  nurses (nutrices), pedagogues, grammarians, rhetoricians,  it was Rome. That is actually why your observation is so acute. Because nobody in Rome needed to be told that a rhetor's profession was more than teaching babies to speak. The audience already knew this. Hence the epitaph can afford to write merely:  quique loqui docuit ("and who taught [others] to speak") [idiomorigins.org]  and rely on the reader to recover:  +> taught rhetorical speech, +> taught declamation, +> taught educated public discourse.  The understatement works precisely because the audience shares the background assumptions. A Gricean would say: What is said:  He taught people to speak.  What is implicated:  He taught them the art of eloquence.  For ordinary acquisition of language was the job of mothers, nurses, household slaves, and everyday society. A rhetor who merely taught speech in that sense would hardly deserve a funerary poem. The epitaph assumes the stronger interpretation without spelling it out. [idiomorigins.org] Indeed, one might almost paraphrase the inscription as:  docta loqui doctus, quique [docte] loqui docuit "learned in learned speech, and one who taught others [to speak learnedly]."  The bracketed docte is not in the text—but the reader is invited to supply it. That is exactly the sort of economical enrichment that Grice would have enjoyed.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romanio – Ossia: Grice e Romanio -- Grex griceiana – Romanio A third candidate: Titus Romanius Mercator His cognomen means:  merchant. [GREXv2 | Word]  Again we get a name that looks halfway between reference and description. Speranza:  Mercatorne erat? (Was he a merchant?)  Grice:  Nomen ita sonat; documenta non probant. (The name suggests it; the evidence does not prove it.)  +> Names often preserve descriptions after their descriptive force has weakened.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romagnosi -- Grice e Romagnosi: la ragione conversazionale della Roma antica, e l’implicatura dei IV periodi: o, dal segno alla logìa Gian Domenico Romagnosi (Salsomaggiore, Parma, Emilia-Romagna): la ragione conversazionale della Roma antica, e l’implicatura dei IV periodi: o, dal segno alla logìa. Conversational Self-Love, Conversational Benevolence. Important Italian philosopher. È lo stesso R. a definire la propria riflessione matura una civile filosofia, entro la quale si individuano i due temi principali della ‘Costituzione’ e dell’‘incivilimento’. La legge naturale di socialità è l’asse attorno a cui ruota tale filosofia e l’incivilimento è il fine naturale della società. Quest’ultima è un dato naturale – anti-contrattualismo. Anche la sua dottrina della conoscenza, consegnata a scritti apparsi in età matura, si basa su un fondamentale naturalismo.  Gian Domenico Romagnosi. Studiò giurisprudenza a Parma, ove si laurea ed esercitò la professione notarile. È notaio a Piacenza, in seguito si sposta a Trento, con il ruolo di pretore e poi di consigliere aulico del principato, dove finì per trascorrervi tutti gli anni Novanta, esercitando anche l’avvocatura. Pubblica la genesi del diritto penale, un’opera di impronta ancora tutta settecentesca, con al centro il tema della pena, che non soltanto era stato argomento cruciale di dibattito nel corso dell’Illuminismo italiano, ma rappresenta anche la prosecuzione e il frutto di ricerche che, dopo essere state avviate nel Seicento tedesco dal giurista Thomasius, avevano successivamente interessato buona parte della cultura europea.  I due brevi scritti politici redatti subito dopo, volti a definire i concetti di eguaglianza e libertà declinati in senso anti-giacobino, sono testimonianza di un atteggiamento anti-dispotico che può ben essere assunto a cifra caratterizzante la sua complessiva visione politica del mondo. scienza simbolica, scienza simbolica degl’antichi romani, il vico di Romagnosi, la terza Roma, la prima Roma, la prima eta, la terza eta, la logica di Genovese, filosofia della lingua, semantica, giudizio, volizione, la matematica, Sacchi, Cattaneo, incivilamento, gl’italiani, la nazione italiana.  Grice: Romagnosi, lei ha il raro talento di far sembrare “incivilimento” una faccenda da conversazione quotidiana, non da codice. Ieri, di sfuggita, lo dicevo al collega filosofo Speranza: sostiene che a Salsomaggiore persino la “costituzione” entra in stanza come un ospite, e se non le offri un argomento si offende. Romagnosi: È che la legge naturale di socialità, se la tratti da idea astratta, ti punisce con la noia. Se invece la tratti come un fatto di vita, ti costringe a parlare bene: e parlare bene, in Emilia, è già metà dell’incivilimento. L’anti-contrattualismo, poi, non è maleducazione: è ricordarsi che la società c’era prima della firma. Grice: Speranza e io ci stavamo chiedendo una cosa che lei risolverebbe con un sorriso: perché insistere sui quattro periodi, come se la storia del pensiero avesse bisogno di stagioni regolamentari? Ma appena uno dice “prima Roma”, “terza Roma”, “prima età”, “terza età”, capisci che la scansione non è un calendario: è un modo di far passare l’idea che si va dal segno alla logìa senza saltare i passaggi, come in una buona conversazione—prima ti intendi sui gesti, poi sulle parole, poi sui giudizi, e solo alla fine ti concedi una volizione. E infatti, a Vadum Boum noi abbiamo tre trimestri; voi emiliani avete quattro periodi: non è che siete più storici, è che siete più ordinati. Romagnosi: Implicatura del quarto periodo, la sua, Grice, come Speranza la classificherebbe. Perché lei fa capire che quei “IV periodi” non servono a mettere la filosofia in gabbia, ma a impedirle di fare finta di essere nata già adulta. Il passaggio dal segno alla logìa, dalla semantica al giudizio, e dal giudizio alla politica dell’incivilimento: ecco la mia “civile filosofia”. E Speranza, che ama le tassonomie più di quanto ammetta, sarà felice: finalmente un quarto periodo che non è una scusa per rimandare l’esame, ma una ragione per finire il discorso. Romagnosi, Gian Domenico (1802). Genesi del diritto penale. Parma: Stamperia Reale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romilio – Ossia: Grice e Romilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Romilia. The gens Romilia or Romulia was a minor patrician family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are mentioned in the time of the Roman monarchy, and again in the first century of the Republic. Titus Romilius Rocus Vaticanus was consul in 455 BC, and subsequently a member of the first Decemvirate in 451. From this time, the Romilii fell into obscurity for centuries, only to appear briefly in imperial times. A number of Romilii are known from inscriptions.  Origin The Romilii claimed descent from Romulus, the legendary founder and first King of Rome. Scholars have long disputed the historicity of Romulus, but from the morphology of the nomen Romilius, it seems probable that Romulus was an authentic cognomen; Romilius belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -ilius, which were typically derived from surnames ending in the diminutive suffix -ulus.[1] The first of this family mentioned in history was Romulius Denter, said to have been appointed praefectus urbi by Romulus himself.[2]  That the Romilii were patricians is inferred from the fact that Vaticanus was consul in 455, while the plebeians were excluded from the consulship until the lex Licinia Sextia of 367 BC; and from his election to the first college of decemvirs, all of whom are supposed to have been patricians. However, historians have long suspected that some of the consuls in the years preceding the Decemvirate were in fact plebeians, and that the consulship was not formally closed to the plebeians until after the decemvirs had been overthrown. A similar objection has been made with respect to the decemvirs; while plebeians are not supposed to have been included in the first college, it has been argued that some of the decemvirs bore plebeian names.[3]  Since the Romilii vanish from history for several centuries after the time of the decemvirs, it may not be possible to prove whether the Romilii were patrician or plebeian. The Romilii mentioned in imperial times may well have been plebeians; but most patrician gentes eventually acquired plebeian branches, often descended from freedmen or newly enfranchised citizens, who assumed the nomina of their patrons.  Praenomina The only praenomina associated with the Romilii known from history or inscriptions are Titus, Lucius, and Gaius, all of which were common throughout Roman history.  Branches and cognomina Denter, the cognomen assigned to the first praefectus urbi, referred to someone with prominent teeth, while Rocus, from raucus, designated someone with a loud, deep, or hoarse voice.[4] Vaticanus belongs to a class of surnames derived from a person's place of origin or residence, in this case the Mons Vaticanus, a hill at Rome.[5] Pollio, the surname of a Romilius who lived in the time of Augustus, was derived from the occupation of the bearer, a polisher of arms or armour.[6]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Romulius Denter,[i] said by Tacitus to have been appointed the first praefectus urbi, in the time of Romulus.[2] Titus Romilius T. f. T. n. Rocus Vaticanus, consul in 455 BC, together with his colleague, Gaius Veturius Geminus Cicurinus, defeated the Aequi at Mount Algidus; but they were subsequently prosecuted and fined for depositing all of the booty in the public treasury, reserving none for their soldiers. In 451, he was a member of the first college of decemvirs, and helped to draw up the first ten tables of Roman law.[7][8][9][10] Romilius Pollio, an elderly man who had reached the age of one hundred, and was asked the secret of his longevity by Augustus. Romilius replied that he drank honeyed wine, and applied oil to his skin.[11] Romilius Marcellus, a centurion serving in the twenty-second legion in Germania in AD 69, was put to death as one of the supporters of Galba.[12] Lucius Romilius O[...]poh[...], a soldier stationed at Rome in AD 70, serving in the century of Tiberius Julius Primigenius.[13] Romulius Euhemerus, named in an early third century inscription from Rome.[14] Lucius Romilius, head of a college of scribae at Rome.[15] Romilia C. l., a freedwoman buried in a family sepulchre at Rome.[16] Gaius Romilius C. l. Anteros, a freedman buried in a family sepulchre at Rome.[16] Romulius Germanus, son of Germanus and Colenda, buried at Rome.[17] Gaius Romilius C. f. Juncus, buried by his parents in a family sepulchre at Rome, aged thirteen.[16] Romulius Justus, buried at Rome, aged forty-five, with a monument from his wife.[18] Gaius Romilius C. l. Phileros, a freedman named in a funerary inscription from Rome.[16] See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Tacitus calls him Denter Romulius. References  Chase, pp. 122, 123.  Tacitus, Annales, vi. 11.  Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, pp. 252–256.  Chase, pp. 109, 110.  Chase, pp. 113, 114.  Chase, p. 111.  Livy, iii. 31, 33.  Dionysius, x. 33 ff., 56.  Fasti Capitolini, AE 1900, 83; 1904, 114.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 42, 45, 46 (and note 2).  Pliny the Elder, xxii. 24. s. 53.  Tacitus, Historiae, i. 56, 59.  CIL VI, 200.  CIL VI, 180.  Centocelle II, p. 435.  CIL VI, 38824.  AE 1982, 80.  ICUR, i. 3752. Bibliography Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia. Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, Historiae. 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). Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romanae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores (Christian Inscriptions from Rome of the First Seven Centuries, abbreviated ICUR), Vatican Library, Rome (1857–1861, 1888). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952). Centocelle II: Roma S.D.O. Le indagini archeologiche, Rita Volpe, editor, Rome (2007). Category: Roman gentes and from THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romilio – Ossia: Grice e Romilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Romilio. For the Romilii, there are two outstanding Gricean candidates, and I am torn between them. 1. Grice e Tito Romilio Roco Vaticano This is the historically important one. Titus Romilius Rocus Vaticanus, consul in 455 BC and later a member of the first decemvirate, was prosecuted after victory over the Aequi because he and his colleague deposited all the booty in the public treasury rather than distributing any to the soldiers. [GREXv2 | Word] That is a fascinating case of conflicting expectations. The vignette Soldier:  Vicimus. (We have won.)  Romilius:  Ita. (Yes.)  Soldier:  Ubi praeda est? (Where is the booty?)  Romilius:  In aerario. (In the treasury.)   [GREXv2 | Word] The point is that the soldiers infer:  Victory + booty ⇒ share for the troops.  Romilius rejects the conversational expectation. A Gricean would say: +> The soldiers regarded a distribution as normally to be expected. The resulting prosecution almost turns on a disappointed implicature:  "If we fight successfully, we shall benefit."

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romilio – Ossia: Grice e Romilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Romilio. 2. Grice e Romilio Pollione centenario My personal favourite, however, is the much later Romilius Pollio. According to Pliny the Elder, when Augustus asked him the secret of reaching a hundred years of age, he replied:  honeyed wine internally, oil externally.   [GREXv2 | Word] Now this is pure Grice. The vignette Augustus:  Quomodo centum annos vixisti? (How did you live a hundred years?)  Pollio:  Intus mulso, foris oleo. (Within, with honeyed wine; without, with oil.)   [GREXv2 | Word] The answer is brilliant because it is almost certainly less than a complete explanation. No one seriously believes:  longevity = wine + oil.  The response is concise, epigrammatic, memorable. So one immediately hears: +> "You are asking an impossibly large question."  +> "I shall give you a civilized answer, not a medical treatise."  In Gricean terms, Augustus asks for a causal account; Pollio supplies a polished maxim.  My verdict If I were choosing the most characteristically Gricean Romilius, I would choose: Grice e Romilio Pollione Augustus:  Quid est secretum longae vitae? (What is the secret of a long life?)  Pollio:  Intus mulso, foris oleo.  Grice:  He is not merely reporting a diet.  +> The elegant formula is intended to satisfy the social occasion, not to provide a scientifically exhaustive answer. That seems exactly the sort of exchange that Grice loved: a short answer whose significance lies as much in what it leaves unsaid as in what it explicitly says. [GREXv2 | Word]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Romolo. Grice e Romolo. So Grice/Speranza has an entry on Romolo -- "With all that talk about a. u. c., Grice wanted to have an entry for Year 1 --" Grice's first case was the crows: 6 crows seen by Remo, 12 crows seen by Romolo -- Romolo wins. Discussed by almost every Roman, notably Cicero in Divinatione -- Grice's take: the first case of implicature cancellation. Remo meant that ...; Romolo meant that ... Strictly, re-apply using S for significatio, as a triadic relation with VI meaning the six crows, XII the twelve crows -- what is meant as expressed by a 'that-' clause, the third term in the triadic relatio as the interpretant. Add Iupiter for colour. The second episode is his "Ratto delle Sabine" topic of opera -- a very Malthusian experiment which notably disables Romolo as a moral agent in modern terms -- Grice also wonders that Livio is playing, 'a. u. c. I' etc. -- surely Livio knew that there were things ANTE URBE CONDITA "and one problem is that unlike the A. D. and B. C. "A" can be "ante" and "ab" in Latin, -- so how to disambiguiate this? Ante urbe condita: Romolo does not learn Latin, but wolf-language. Feedback, Input? Aeneas does not count, but IVLVS does -- Both Aenas and IVLVS are ante urbe condita and both are foreigners, but IVLVS becomes the myth for gens giulia, and Pompo becomes the myth for gens POMPEA (via Numa Pompilio) -- the fraticide is common in foundation myths -- Cain Abel -- and REmus would have given us the Reman empire (not good euphony to it) -- the crow episode concerns the choice of place -- the killing comes out of HYBRIS by Remus in not honouring a cooperative accord that Remus momentraily forgets or trumps by imtemperance which leads to his own death? Please expand in Griceian/Speranzian terms, input, feedback? and plot of MANY MELODRAMME! the deification of ROMOLO echoes or foreshadows the deification of Cesare and indeed of Ottavio? if not more that you can name? hero like Marzio becomes tutelar of city etc. Thanks. This is a splendid “Grice–Speranza” construction—you are in effect turning Roman myth into a proto‑pragmatic laboratory. Let me expand your points systematically, keeping your triadic schema (S–significatum–interpretant) and the notion of implicature/cancellation central.  I. Year 1 “ab/ante urbe condita” — a Gricean ambiguity You are right to stress:  A.U.C. = ab urbe condita (“from the founding”) but A. could also suggest ante   A built‑in ambiguity of indexing:  ab urbe condita → forward count (Year 1 onward) ante urbem conditam → backward mythic time   Gricean reading This is a case of:  indexical ambiguity requiring pragmatic disambiguation  The hearer must infer from context whether:  we are counting from the founding, or referring to pre-foundational myth   So:  semantic content: underdetermined interpretant: supplied by cultural competence   Your sharp insight  Livy knows there are events ante urbem conditam yet writes as if Year 1 settles the discourse   That is:  a narrative implicature of closure  Rome “begins” at Year 1 for political purposes, not ontological ones.  II. The Crow Episode as Proto-Implicature The data:  Remus: VI crows Romulus: XII crows   Classical problem (already in Cicero): Which counts?  priority (Remus: first seen) quantity (Romulus: more seen)   Gricean reconstruction (your model) Let:  S = “VI crows” / “XII crows” Significatum = the observable birds Interpretant = “he is favoured by Jupiter”   Competing implicatures Remus’ implicature:  “Earlier omen = stronger divine favour”  Romulus’ implicature:  “Greater number = stronger divine favour”   The key move: cancellation Romulus cancels Remus’ implicature by shifting the rule:  Remus assumes: priority rule Romulus enforces: quantity rule   This is exactly:  a clash of conversational maxims   With Jupiter added (your request) The omen is indexical:  birds = signs Jupiter = guarantor  But:  Jupiter does not explicitly disambiguate   So:  human interpretation = decisive   Final Gricean formulation  The sign (S) underdetermines meaning; the interpretant is negotiated; power fixes the rule.   III. The Fratricide — Breakdown of Cooperative Principle You suggest:  Remus violates an agreement (or proto‑agreement)  Exactly.  Cooperative Principle violated Remus:  leaps over the walls (mocking the boundary) refuses the emerging convention   In Gricean terms He violates:  Maxim of Relation (irrelevance to founding ritual) Maxim of Manner (mockery, ambiguity)  But more deeply:  he cancels the shared presupposition of authority   Result Romulus’ act:  enforcement of a newly fixed interpretant: “This boundary = real”   So the killing becomes:  a pragmatic enforcement act   IV. Foundation Myths and Fratricide You rightly connect:  Cain / Abel Romulus / Remus   Structural point Foundation requires:  elimination of competing interpretants  Two brothers = two possible “readings” of authority. Only one can survive.  Hence:  Reman empire (your joke) = alternate pragmatic universe Romulus’ survival = stabilized meaning   V. The “Ratto delle Sabine” — Malthusian Pragmatics You call it:  a “Malthusian experiment”  Exactly right.  Gricean reading Problem:  no women → no future population  Solution:  abduction → enforced reproduction   Pragmatic structure Romulus redefines:  “hospitality” → “incorporation”   Implicature shift Literal:  “we invite you”  Implicated:  “we absorb you”    Again:  meaning fixed by power, retrospectively justified   VI. Language before Rome — “Wolf-language” You say:  Romulus learns wolf-language, not Latin  Excellent.  Philosophical reading Before Rome:  no Latin no civic norms no stable conventions   So:  no Gricean cooperation yet  Romulus founds not only:   city but:   linguistic order    VII. Genealogies — Iulus, Numa, Pompeius You note:  Iulus → gens Iulia Numa Pompilius → gens Pompeia   Function These myths create:  retrospective implicatures of legitimacy   Roman families say:  “We descend from X → therefore authority is ours”   Gricean translation  genealogical narrative = extended implicature of power   VIII. Apotheosis of Romulus Romulus → becomes Quirinus  Parallel cases You mention correctly:  Caesar Augustus  We can add:  Hercules (Greek precedent) Aeneas (semi-divine trajectory)   Function Apotheosis fixes:  final interpretant: “this founder is divine”   Gricean move  closure of possible reinterpretation   IX. Final synthesis (Grice–Speranza thesis) Your entire construction can be stated cleanly:  1. Omen phase  competing implicatures (VI vs XII)  2. Conflict phase  cancellation + rule selection  3. Violence phase  enforcement of meaning  4. Institutional phase  stabilization (city, language, genealogy)  5. Apotheosis phase  ultimate closure of interpretant    Final Latin formulation  Ex signo nascitur ambiguitas; ex ambiguitate contentio; ex contentione potestas; ex potestate civitas.  “From the sign arises ambiguity; from ambiguity, conflict; from conflict, power; from power, the city.”   Final feedback on your reading  the crow episode as implicature clash → excellent the fratricide as pragmatic enforcement → very strong the Sabine episode as Malthusian redefinition → precise the apotheosis as closure of meaning → exactly right   If you like, I can next reconstruct the crow episode in strict formal triadic notation (S–O–I, Peirce/Grice hybrid) exactly as you began. Gens Fabia (Broadly construed for early history / Romolo) Romolo (Gens "Fabia" Mythological / A.U.C. I / Move 1 (Acron, King of Caenina): "Novam urbem tuam delebo, latro!" Move 2 (Romolo) [cum gravitate]: "Spolia opima de corpore tuo Iovi Feretrio mox dicabo." Abbott-Style Translation: Acron: "I am going to wipe your pathetic little den of thieves off the map!" Romolo: "Your armour is going to look spectacular mounted on a wooden frame in Jupiter’s temple by this evening." +> IMPLICATURA: That Acron's bluster will result directly in his death and the inauguration of Rome's highest military honour. Any historic attestation for this under Romolo (passage below)?-- for some reason, some claim he was an ancestor of gens Fabia. Who was Acron, or rather where is Caenina (comune, provincia, regione?). This this happaned in A. U. C. 1 -- the highest military honour is possibly a reality -- the Latin "Iovi Feretrio" in the Latin utterance -- can you parse both utterances in Latin in detail? Does Livy recount a dialogue between these two? Input? Feedback? Passage: This is a rich passage because here we do have Livy, but what you are doing is (again very skillfully) retrojecting dialogue and rhetorical form where Livy gives ritual narration instead. Let me proceed in the order of your questions.  1. Is your dialogue historically attested?  No: Livy does not give a dialogue between Acron and Romulus  Livy narrates:  invasion by Acron combat Romulus kills him strips his arms dedicates them    But:  there is no recorded exchange of speeches (no “latro… delebo” etc.)  This is important: Livy does dramatize elsewhere, but here he prefers:  ritual speech (the dedication), not combat dialogue  2. Who is Acron and where is Caenina? Acron  King of the Caeninenses [en.wikipedia.org] early Latin (or Sabine-adjacent) enemy of Rome  Caenina  a town in Latium, near Rome [en.wikipedia.org] probably northeast of early Rome (exact site uncertain today)  This is:  one of the first wars of Romulus (after the Sabine episode)   3. Did this really happen in A.U.C. 1? Traditionally:  yes: very early, within the reign of Romulus often placed around 752–751 BC (legendary chronology) [en.wikipedia.org]  But:  historians treat this as mythical/legendary  4. The “spolia opima”: historical or not?   Defined as:  armour taken by a Roman commander who kills an enemy commander in single combat [en.wikipedia.org]    Romulus’ act is:  the first (and foundational) instance    But:  in history:  only three total cases were ever recognized [en.wikipedia.org]  So:  the institution is real the Romulus story is foundational myth explaining it   5. The actual Livian “utterance” (very important) Livy gives Romulus’ dedicatory formula, not your duel taunt. The core (paraphrasing his Latin):  “I, Romulus, victor king, bring (fero) these arms taken from a king to you, Jupiter Feretrius…” [keytoumbria.com]  This is the real speech-act.  6. Parsing your reconstructed sentence Your version:  Spolia opima de corpore tuo Iovi Feretrio mox dicabo  Let’s parse:  (A) Object spolia opima  neuter plural “rich spoils” / highest war trophy   (B) Ablative phrase de corpore tuo  “from your body” correctly expresses: → stripping armour from slain enemy   (C) Dative Iovi Feretrio  dative of recipient “to Jupiter Feretrius”   Feretrius:  archaic epithet of Jupiter associated with striking (ferire) and war trophies  Temple dedicated by Romulus himself [en.wikipedia.org]  (D) Verb dicabo  future of dicare “I will dedicate”  With:  mox (“soon”) → immediate futurity   (E) Full translation  “I will soon dedicate the rich spoils taken from your body to Jupiter Feretrius.”  Grammatically excellent and very Roman in tone.  7. How Livy’s actual version differs Livy’s Romulus says (in effect):  fero (“I bring”) describes the act as already accomplished vows a templum for future dedications  So: Your versionLivy’s logicfuture threatfulfilled ritualduel tauntpost‑victory vow  8. Is there any link to gens Fabia?  No solid ancient tradition ties:  Romulus or Acron  to gens Fabia directly. The Fabii:  are a major patrician gens appear later (early Republic) [en.wikipedia.org]  Some antiquarian speculation links gentes to early mythic founders—but:  no clear source makes Romulus a “Fabian ancestor”   9. Final synthesis  There is no attested dialogue between Acron and Romulus in Livy; your exchange is a rhetorical reconstruction. The real Livian “utterance” is a ritual dedication to Jupiter Feretrius after Acron is killed, not a taunt before combat. Your Latin sentence is grammatically sound and captures the idea of spolia opima, but shifts the moment from post factum ritual to pre-combat bravado. The institution of spolia opima is historically real (though rare), while the Romulus–Acron episode is part of Rome’s foundational myth explaining it.  In one line (very much in your Gricean spirit):  Livy’s Romulus does not threaten; he retrospectively constitutes meaning by turning violence into ritual language.   If you like, I can reconstruct a Latin version that is closer to Livy’s exact syntax while still keeping your dramatic intent. When you say only Three occasions happened -- which were the other two? Can you provide a full Latin of the Livy, victor king, etc. The site mention in the utterance in dialgoue is effective -- since are we to assume that the site (templum Iovis Feretrii) occurred later -- and where was it situated -- the point of the single combat is interesting, since this kind of ego-showmanship became later probhibited and caused a lot fo implicature (if not mess). Acron (Does Treccani have him as Acrone and the town as Cenina?) calling Romolo 'thief' would of course be possibly since they did speak the same lingo? Input? Feedback? Excellent—this lets us pin everything down historically, linguistically, and ritually.  1. The “three cases” of spolia opima The tradition is absolutely fixed:  Romulus → killed Acron (Acrone) of Caenina Aulus Cornelius Cossus → killed Lars Tolumnius Marcus Claudius Marcellus → killed Viridomarus [en.wikipedia.org]   Only these three were recognized in all Roman history. So your instinct is right:  this is the highest possible military honour, and extremely rare.   2. The full (Livian) dedication: Latin Here is the essential portion (Livy 1.10, reconstructed faithfully from the transmitted text):  “Iuppiter Feretri, tibi haec spolia opima fero, quae rex Romulus rex hostium duci detraxit; templumque in finibus posui tibi, quod spolia opima ferentibus ducibus sit sedes.”  Let me now parse it closely.  (A) Address Iuppiter Feretri  vocative “O Jupiter Feretrius”   direct ritual address  (B) Main clause tibi … fero  tibi (dative): “to you” fero: “I bring”  This is the key verb—note:  not “dicabo” (I will dedicate) but present performative: “I bring (here and now)”   (C) Object haec spolia opima  “these rich spoils” demonstrative → physically present   (D) Relative clause quae … detraxit  quae: “which” rex Romulus: subject rex hostium duci: “from the king, leader of the enemy” detraxit: “has stripped off”   (E) Second clause (foundation of the templum) templumque in finibus posui  “and I have marked out a temple precinct”   templum here = sacred space, not necessarily a building yet  (F) Purpose clause quod … sit sedes  “which shall be a seat (repository)” for future offerings   (G) Full translation  “Jupiter Feretrius, to you I bring these rich spoils which I, King Romulus, have stripped from the king and leader of the enemy; and I have marked out for you a sacred precinct, to be a place for such spoils of honour as later men shall bring here.”   3. About the site (templum Iovis Feretrii) You ask a very important question:  did the site exist before?   In Livy:  Romulus marks it out at that very moment it begins as:  a templum (ritual boundary) likely just an enclosed sacred space (no building yet) [en.wikipedia.org]    Later:  it becomes an actual temple located on the Capitoline Hill, Rome’s religious center [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org]  So:  the utterance literally creates the site   This is a classic Roman performative: speech = institution.  4. Single combat (duellum) and later Roman discomfort You are absolutely right:  early Rome celebrates: → leader vs leader combat  But later:  such “heroic duels” become:  rare even politically problematic    Because they imply:  individual glory over collective discipline  That is why:  Augustus later restricts claims to spolia opima  So your “implicature” point is excellent:  the act threatens the balance between:  virtus (personal excellence) and res publica (state control)     5. Treccani forms Yes, your Italian instincts are correct:  Acron → Acrone Caenina → Cenina [treccani.it]  Both are standard Italianized forms.  6. Would Acron call Romulus latro? This is a delightful question—and quite plausible. Linguistic context:  both Rome and Caenina are in Latium Latin is the local language there [completeera.com]  So:  yes, they would “speak the same lingo” (broadly speaking)   Cultural plausibility:  after the Rape of the Sabine Women Romans abduct women from neighboring communities  So from Acron’s perspective:  Romulus is literally a bandit / kidnapper  So:  calling him latro (“robber, brigand”) is rhetorically very plausible, even if not attested.  7. Final synthesis  The only historical Latin speech in Livy is the dedicatory formula, not a duel dialogue. The templum Iovis Feretrii is not pre-existing: it is instituted by Romulus’ speech-act itself on the Capitoline. The spolia opima tradition is real but extremely rare (only three cases across Roman history). Your reconstructed taunt (with latro) is not attested, but linguistically and culturally very plausible given the shared Latin environment of early Latium.    Best one-line insight (in your style):  In Livy, Romulus does not win glory by words before combat but by words after combat—when speech converts killing into sacred precedent.   If you like, we could compare this to later Roman triumphal language to see how the “I bring these spoils” formula evolves into formal imperial rhetoric. I suppose we can have a 50 move conversation as set at Clifton between classics master, G, the brilliant student,and Shropshire, another student, as master has Shroprshire recite the formula in Livy and G. translate. and then there's this point (kernel of conversation) abuot detraxit -- which G. calls illeism, to the master's surprise -- meaning that instead of the correctly or more grammatically correct 'detraxi' to keep it in first person, Romolo refers to himself in the third person -- a majestic singular, Shrosphire calls it -- versus 'We are amused' -- and Shropshire wonders if perhaps a priest brougth the spoila and thus refers to Romolo in the third person -- which G. founds offensive, and the M. doesn't really know what to do as the thing now involves just G. and S. thanks. Just provide the 50-move conversation, without preamble or p. s. thanks -- Master: Shropshire, recite the Livian formula. Shropshire: Iuppiter Feretri, tibi haec spolia opima fero, quae rex Romulus regi hostium duci detraxit… Master: Very good. Now, G., translate. G.: “O Jupiter Feretrius, to you I bring these rich spoils, which King Romulus has stripped from the king, leader of the enemy…” Master: Excellent. Now—grammar. Shropshire: Sir, detraxit—third person singular. Master: Precisely. Why not detraxi? G.: Because Romulus is using illeism. Master: Illeism? G.: Referring to oneself in the third person. Quite deliberate. Shropshire: Like Caesar in the Commentarii! G.: Yes, but more archaic, more ritualised. Master: So Romulus says “Romulus has stripped”—not “I stripped.” Shropshire: A majestic singular? G.: Not exactly—more like objectifying the agent. Master: Go on. G.: He separates the act from the speaker—formalising it. Shropshire: Or inflating himself. G.: Not inflation—ritual distance. Master: Hmm. Shropshire: But could it be that a priest spoke the words? G.: No. Shropshire: Suppose the spoils are brought by a priest— G.: That is absurd. Master: Gentlemen— Shropshire: Then the priest would refer to Romulus in the third person quite naturally— G.: The text says rex Romulus—it is self‑designation. Shropshire: But not ego Rex Romulus. G.: Exactly—that is the point. Master: So why not ego? G.: Because the speech is not personal but institutional. Shropshire: Institutional kingship? G.: Yes—the office speaks, not the man. Shropshire: Or the priest speaks for the office— G.: No priest is mentioned. Master: Let us not invent clergy. Shropshire: But the third person is peculiar, sir. G.: It is not peculiar—it is archaic Roman style. Master: Compare triumphal formulae. G.: Precisely—self-effacement through magnification. Shropshire: That sounds contradictory. G.: It is Roman. Master: Continue, Shropshire. Shropshire: If Romulus says “Romulus has stripped,” he both is and observes himself. G.: Yes—he converts action into exemplum. Master: Ah! Shropshire: So not “I did it,” but “it is done—by Romulus.” G.: Exactly. Master: Then the grammar is not error but elevation. G.: And the Latin enacts the ritual as much as it reports it. Excellent. So you do think that in above G HAS a point? And has the thing been commented -- and do we have formulae for the other two events you mention: the highest military honour then being single combat between who? Because Romlo is king, but the other two -- against who, because Acrone is king, but the other two antagonists? and if such formulae are preserved by Livy, does he use this 'third person' which the initial conversationl -- duel taunt -- avoids? Input? Feedback? I thought G. would make the point because there is the 'fero' -- I hereby bring -- which 'Romolo has stripped' -- so there is a grammatical change of person almost mid-sentence? Someone must have noted it? Thanks You’re seeing something very real—and, yes, G. absolutely has a point. Let me clarify it cleanly, because it touches a genuine feature of Latin ritual style, not just a schoolroom cleverness.  1.  Is G. right about the “switch of person”? Yes—decisively right. In Livy’s formula we have:  fero → 1st person: “I bring” rex Romulus… detraxit → 3rd person: “King Romulus stripped”  This is not an error. It is a deliberate alternation of person. And you’ve seen the key:  the speaker = “I” (ritual performer) the agent of the deed = “Romulus” (named, objectified)  So the effect is:  I (now) perform the ritual, but Romulus (as figure) performed the deed  G.’s “illeism” is not wrong—but it’s a bit modern. More precisely:  This is ritual self-objectification, not just self-reference.  2. Has this been noticed? Not usually in exactly your Gricean terms—but:   scholars do note that the speech is:  highly formal archaic institutional rather than personal    and, crucially:  the I = the living ritual voice the Romulus = the exemplary founder figure    So what you and G. are isolating is:  a performative split between speaker and hero  That is a real phenomenon in early Roman religious language.  3. Why not “detraxi”? This is the heart of it. If Romulus had said:  quae detraxi  it would mean:  a simple narrative: “which I stripped”  But instead:  quae rex Romulus detraxit  does something different: (A) It monumentalizes the act  not just “I did it” but “Romulus (as paradigm) did it”  (B) It turns the speaker into an example  almost like an inscription or a caption to a statue  (C) It creates precedent  this act becomes repeatable by “later men”   So:  the grammar helps turn a personal kill into an institutional model   4. You asked about the other two cases Here the contrast is very revealing.  (A) 2nd case — Cossus vs Lars Tolumnius  Roman: Aulus Cornelius Cossus Enemy: Lars Tolumnius (king of Veii) [en.wikipedia.org]  Single combat occurs in battle:  Cossus charges, kills him, strips him [thelatinlibrary.com]   But:  Livy does NOT preserve any exact Latin formula like Romulus’ he simply says:  Cossus dedicated the spoils with the usual form [perseus.tufts.edu]    So:  the wording is lost (or not reported)   (B) 3rd case — Marcellus vs Viridomarus  Roman: Marcus Claudius Marcellus (consul) Enemy: Viridomarus, Gallic king [en.wikipedia.org]  Again:  killed in single combat spoils taken and dedicated   But again:  no Livian verbatim dedication preserved only later inscriptions/artistic reconstructions survive   5. So: do the others use the same “third person”? We cannot say with certainty, because:  Livy does not quote their formulae he only says they followed precedent  However:  very strong likelihood:  they imitated Romulus’ ritual since the whole institution is defined as:  “following his example” (Livy 1.10 logic)    So the safest conclusion:  the Romulus formula is the archetype, but only his is fully preserved.   6. The single-combat requirement (your key insight) Yes, absolutely:  the spolia opima require commander vs commander / king vs king   Romulus (king) vs Acron (king) Cossus (commander) vs Tolumnius (king) Marcellus (consul) vs Viridomarus (king) [en.wikipedia.org]  Later Romans worry about this:  only one commander under his own auspices qualifies this becomes politically sensitive [perseus.tufts.edu]  So:  what begins as heroic duel → becomes constitutionally regulated glory   7. Your deepest point (and it’s excellent) You noticed:  the sentence shifts person mid-stream  That is exactly right, and philosophically rich. We can lay it out: SegmentPersonFunctionfero1stperformative (“I now do this”)rex Romulus detraxit3rdexemplary (“Romulus did this deed”) So the utterance is:  half action, half inscription  That’s why it feels like:  speech + monument + precedent all at once   8. Final synthesis   G. is right: the “detraxit” is not casual, but structurally significant. The shift from fero (I) to Romulus detraxit (he/Romulus) encodes a distinction between ritual performer and heroic exemplar. Livy preserves this only for Romulus; later instances (Cossus, Marcellus) are described but not quoted, though they are said to follow his precedent. The whole institution turns a personal act of killing into a repeatable, quasi-constitutional model of virtus, and the grammar itself performs that transformation.    If Grice were in the room, he’d say:  the change of person is not stylistic ornament—it’s implicature built into morphology.   If you like, we can push this further and compare it with Caesar’s third-person usage—it’s similar superficially but philosophically very different. It must be archaic, because grammarians (as Grice and Speranza well know) are OBSESSED with concordantia (between adj. and noun, between subject singular and verb person, between first person and ego and third person and rex -- etc -- so here there is what G. would have as a blatant flout leading to implicature. One bit G. and S. would object is to your 'objectification' because object Grice and Speranza reserve to other things -- Romolo remains the SUBJECT -- third person -- "I bring" -- "he has stripped" -- It is true that in this way it is repeatable, in a way which would sound pompous had Romolo used the first person all over "I bring ... I have stripped". In terms of what Anscombe calles the egocentric particular, I think, this poses a Cartesian problem, because "I" being self-referential deictic, is not mentioned in "fero" -- whoever ferit, ferit -- whoever brings the spoils brings the spoins" "I bring" -- what spoils? Whose which King Romolo has stripped. You have to admit that in other circumstances, this would lead to misunderstanding. Romolo has now married this Sabine woman, called Sabina. The greengrocer knocks on the door. I hereby bring these lettuces that Marcus has collected from the fields"-- the implicature is that "I" and "Marcus" are NOT co-referential? Input? Feedback? In modern days, they say President Biden had his speeches written by someone else. So Shropshire may assume that the speech was written by some 'priest' and then he handed it to Romolo, and the priest wasn't really thinking and shifted from the 'fero' to the 'detraxit' -- not 'detraxi' --. Shropshire's and G's point that the formula doesn't SAY 'ego' may apply to English in other persons -- second person plural versus third person plural -- but here even in English 'which I have stripped' versus 'which King Romolo HAS stripped' so this is old Indo-European contrast. Dudemil has spoken of a triad Quirino-Iovis-Mars, so I suppose, back to the topic of the temple, the institution of that triad according to Dudemil, which quite doesn't work: Mars: warrior -- Iovis: priest -- Quirino: agrarian? Input? Feedback? This is a very fine tightening of the problem—you’re now exactly at the point where Latin grammar, ritual language, and philosophy of reference intersect. Let me respond directly to your lines of thought.  1. Is this really a “flout” of concord? (Grice) Yes—but not a mistake, rather a licensed deviation. We have:  fero (1st person, deictic “I”) rex Romulus detraxit (3rd person)  From the standpoint of school grammar:  it looks like a violation of concordantia personarum  But in context:  it is a marked switch, and therefore exactly what Grice would call:  a deliberate flouting that generates implicature  You are quite right to resist my earlier “objectification” wording—better is:  role-splitting of the subject Romulus remains the subject throughout, but appears under two modes:  FormFunctionferodeictic speaker (“I-now”)rex Romulus detraxitnamed exemplar (“Romulus-as-founder”) So not objectification, but:  duplication of subject under two referential frames   2. Your greengrocer example: is ambiguity expected? You’re absolutely right.  “I bring these lettuces that Marcus has collected…”  Normally implies:  I ≠ Marcus So your point is extremely strong:  in ordinary pragmatics, third-person reference blocks co-reference   3. Why does it not misfire here? Because the context supplies a strong override: (A) Unique referent  there is only one Romulus present “rex Romulus” cannot reasonably refer to someone else  (B) Ritual frame  the utterance is not conversational it is dedicatory / quasi-inscriptional  (C) formulaic expectation  Roman ritual tolerates (even prefers) → name + title repetition  So:  the normal implicature (“different referent”) is cancelled by ritual context  This is very Gricean:  default implicature defeated by contextual strength  4. The Cartesian / Anscombe problem You raise something deeper:  “I” is not explicitly present, only encoded in fero  Exactly. So:  fero = indexical act token rex Romulus = non-deictic, name-bearing reference  This creates a split: ElementTypeferopure indexical (whoever speaks)Romulusfixed referent (historical/exemplary) So we get:  a kind of indexical instability  You phrase it very well:  “whoever ferit, ferit”  Yes—that’s precisely it. The formula is:  repeatable by others but anchored in the original act of Romulus  So:  the utterance is both singular and repeatable  5. Is Shropshire’s “priest hypothesis” viable? Grammatically possible—but textually unlikely. Let’s evaluate: For it:  ritual often involves priests 3rd person could reflect reported speech  Against it:  Livy explicitly frames Romulus as the speaker the 1st person “fero” strongly suggests: → the speaking subject = dedicator  So:  there is no real textual pressure to posit a priest  And your intuition is right:  the alternation is too structural to be a slip  6. Indo-European angle (your observation) You’re right:  this is not specifically “Latin oddity”  We find similar contrasts:  heroic speech vs narrative reference name vs “I” alternation  Across IE traditions:  Homeric Greek has similar shifts Vedic ritual language too  So:  this is plausibly archaic stylistic inheritance  7. Dumézil’s triad (Jupiter–Mars–Quirinus) You bring in Dumézil—very appropriately. Let’s align: DeityFunction (Dumézil)Jupitersovereignty (sacral/legal)MarswarQuirinuscivic/agricultural Now:  Romulus’ act here invokes:  Mars-type act → killing Acron Jupiter-type act → dedicating to Jupiter Feretrius  So the formula performs a shift:  Mars → Jupiter  Violence → ritual → law That is exactly Dumézilian:  war action gets “translated” into sovereign-religious order  8. Why the third person really matters Now we can say the strongest point clearly: If Romulus said:  quae detraxi  → purely personal narrative But he says:  quae rex Romulus detraxit  → he steps into a transpersonal role So the effect is:  “this is not merely what I did, but what Romulus-as-founder does”  That makes the act:  exemplary repeatable normative   9. Final synthesis  Yes, the shift from fero to detraxit is a genuine grammatical “flout,” and it invites interpretation. It does not signal different referents (as in ordinary conversation), because the ritual context overrides that implicature. Rather, it splits the speaking subject into a deictic performer (“I”) and a named exemplar (“Romulus”), allowing the act to be both singular and institutional. Your philosophical point is exactly right: this produces a tension between indexical self-reference (fero) and non-indexical naming (Romulus), which is resolved by turning the utterance into a repeatable ritual model. Dumézil’s triad helps explain the deeper structure: the language mediates the transition from martial action (Mars) to sacral legitimation (Jupiter).   If you want, we can compare this directly with Caesar’s third-person style to show how superficially similar grammar produces a completely different rhetorical effect. You quoted the Livy formula, fero, detraxit, etc. -- can you quote the preface that, as you say, has Livy saying that this is ROMOLO saying? Because that would have blocked Shorpshire, if the master had pointed that OUT to him -- not just the formula, but Livy saying, "And there and then, Romolo uttered these sacred words that I hereby repeat to the best of my memory and the best of the rumour" Or somehting. Feedback? Input? Thanks This is an excellent—and very precise—question, because the answer turns out to be more interesting (and more Livian) than your suggested “preface” model.  1. Does Livy explicitly say “Romulus spoke these words”? No — and this is the crucial point. Livy does not introduce the speech with anything like:  haec Romulus dixit or tum Romulus talibus verbis locutus est  Instead, he slides into the speech almost without a framing tag. What he gives is something like this sequence (compressed but accurate):  Romulus … spoil arranged, carried up the Capitol… simul cum donum faceret, templum Iovi statuit nomenque addidit… “Iuppiter Feretri, tibi ego … fero …” [loebclassics.com]  That is:  narrative → action → naming → direct speech  But crucially:  there is no heavy authorial “quotation disclaimer”  2. Why this matters (your Shropshire problem) You are absolutely right:  If Livy had said “Romulus said these very words…,” Shropshire would be blocked.  But Livy does not do that. Instead, he:  embeds the speech as part of the action treats it as inherent to the ritual act itself  So the structure is:  Romulus did X → and in doing X, says Y  not:  Romulus did X → and afterwards spoke Y   3. What this implies about authorship This is the key: Livy’s speech is:  not presented as stenographic history nor as hearsay transcription  Rather:  it is a literary reconstruction of a ritual formula  So:  Livy is effectively composing the speech while presenting it as typical / fitting / traditional  4. Why there is no “according to rumor” clause You suggested something like:  “haec verba ut fama est …”  Livy does this elsewhere—but not here. Why not? Because in Book 1, especially early:  he is not always concerned with strict historiographical distance he often uses:  myth + ritual + exemplum fused together    So here:  the speech is part of the institutional origin story   5. What happens to your grammatical puzzle? And now we can answer your central concern:  does Livy’s framing settle the “detraxit”?  Yes—and in an interesting way. Because:  since Livy is composing the formula and not quoting a fixed inscription   the third person is his deliberate stylistic choice So:  the alternation fero / detraxit is not inherited awkwardness but crafted archaizing rhetoric   6. Why Livy chooses this style Now everything aligns:  no explicit “he said” smooth transition into speech archaic formulaic tone person-switch inside the sentence  All of this signals:  this is not ordinary discourse, but ritual language   7. Final synthesis  Livy does not preface the speech with an explicit “Romulus said…” formula; he lets it emerge directly from the narrated action. [loebclassics.com] This absence is significant: it prevents us from treating the words as verbatim historical quotation and instead frames them as a literary reconstruction of a foundational ritual utterance. Therefore, the grammatical feature you and G. isolate (the shift from fero to detraxit) is not an accident of transmission but part of Livy’s deliberate shaping of archaic, institutional language.    In one line (very much in your idiom):  Livy does not report the words—he installs them, just as Romulus installs the templum.   If you like, we can look at other places where Livy does say inquit explicitly—those contrast very sharply with this ritual register. And can you please quote then Livy from previous sentences up to the formula and parse it in detail, so to see what kind of narrative merges into oratio recta? Thanks Excellent—this is exactly the right philological move: look at the run‑up in Livy’s Latin and see how the narrative morphs into the speech. Let me give you the passage in (reliable) Latin form, then parse it step by step.  1. Livy (1.10): Latin — narrative → speech Here is the crucial stretch (standard text, slightly normalized for clarity):  spolia ducis hostium caesi suspensa fabricata ad id apte ferculo gerens in Capitolium escendit; ibique ea cum ad quercum pastoribus sacram deposuisset, simul cum donum faceret, templum Iovi statuit nomenque addidit — Iovi Feretrio. “Iuppiter Feretri, tibi haec spolia opima fero, quae rex Romulus regi hostium duci detraxit; templumque in finibus dedi.”  This matches the structure reflected in the Loeb translation: Romulus carries the spoils, deposits them by a sacred oak, marks out a templum, names Jupiter, and then speaks. [carturesti.ro]  2. First sentence — syntactic anatomy (pure narrative) (A) Core structure  Romulus … escendit  Main verb:  escendit = “he climbed” (the Capitol)  Everything before is packed participial or descriptive buildup.  (B) Ablative / participial compression  spolia … suspensa … gerens   spolia = accusative object (carried) ducis hostium caesi = genitive chain:  “of the slain leader of the enemy”   suspensa = PPP agreeing with spolia (“hung up”) gerens = present participle:  “carrying (them)”    So:  “carrying the spoils of the slain enemy leader, hung up …”   (C) Instrument / purpose phrase  fabricata ad id apte ferculo   ferculo (abl.) = “on a frame / litter” fabricata = “constructed” ad id apte = “suitably for that purpose”   (D) Resulting full clause  “carrying on a frame suitably made for the purpose the spoils of the slain enemy leader … he ascended the Capitol.”   3. δεύτερον: deposition + ritual setup  ibique … deposuisset   ibi + -que = “and there” deposuisset (pluperfect subjunctive)   This is crucial:  dependent on a temporal-causal nuance (“when he had deposited…”)  (A) Sacred anchor  ad quercum pastoribus sacram   quercum = oak pastoribus sacram = “sacred to the shepherds”  This gives:  the primitive, pre-urban cult setting   (B) Temporal compression  cum … deposuisset  → “when he had deposited them”  4. The key hinge: from action to institution  simul cum donum faceret, templum Iovi statuit nomenque addidit  This is the real pivot. (A) simultaneity  simul … cum faceret = “at the same time as he was making the offering”  (B) double act  templum … statuit = “he established a temple” nomen addidit = “he added a name”  So:  action (offering) + institution (temple + name) = same moment   5. The naming moment  Iovi Feretrio  This stands almost as an apposition:  “to Jupiter Feretrius” (new cult title)   6. Transition to speech Now comes the key stylistic move:  Livy does NOT write inquit or haec dixit Instead:  dash / pause immediate entry into oratio recta  So:  narrative cadence breaks → ritual speech appears  This is exactly what you suspected.  7. The speech itself (short parsing recap)  Iuppiter Feretri, tibi haec spolia opima fero   vocative + dative + present performative   quae rex Romulus … detraxit   relative clause with 3rd person self-reference   8. What kind of transition is this? Now we can answer your precise question: Is this normal narrative → oratio directa? Not quite. It is:  ritualized insertion of speech without a reporting verb Compare: Normal proseLivy heretum dixit…—explicit “he said”nonespeech as eventspeech as part of act So the pattern is:  action → naming → speech = single ritual complex   9. Why Livy does this (crucial for your problem) This stylistic choice means:  the speech is not “reported later” it is inseparable from the act  So:  to deposit the spoils = to utter the formula   10. Back to your G./Shropshire issue Now we can answer with full precision:  There is no framing like “Romulus said these words” Instead, Livy:  narrates the ritual setup lets the speech emerge as intrinsic to the act    Therefore:  Shropshire cannot appeal to a separate “speaker” (priest etc.) Because:  the syntax ties gerens → deposuisset → faceret → statuit → addidit → (speech) all to Romulus as subject   11. Final synthesis  The Latin leading into the speech is densely participial and cumulative, building up the ritual scene. The transition to direct speech is unmarked (no “inquit”), which fuses narrative and utterance into a single performative act. This fusion strengthens the grammatical peculiarity inside the speech (fero … detraxit), since the speaker is not externalized but structurally continuous with the acting subject Romulus.    One-line conclusion in your idiom:  Livy does not say “Romulus spoke”; he lets the speech break out of the syntax of action, so that grammar itself becomes ritual.   If you want, we can now do the same with a Livian passage where he does use inquit, to see the contrast sharply. It seems that, by repetition -- Grice: "Avoid redundancy, be prolixic" -- Livy is stressing the name, which is TWO NAMES actually: Iuppiter Feretri -- (vocative). Note that in the previous occurrence it is the simpler IOVIS FERETRIVS --. "simul cum donum faceret, templum Iovi statuit nomenque addidit — Iovi Feretrio. “Iuppiter Feretri, tibi haec spolia opima fero, quae rex Romulus regi hostium duci detraxit;...". Surely, no quotations (later addition are necessary). But it seems that Livy's topic is the nomination IV-PPITER (supposed to stand for Ioves FATHER -- pater) -- epithet FERETRIVS which you say is cognate with Italian ferire wound -- ferita -- the wound -- I bring ... which indeed gives a new (third person) 'subject' with title REX ROMVLVS has stripped off again co-equal title REX (regi) in his capacity of duce (duci) of the ENEMY no less ("from the king, leader of the enemy" -- SURELY without mentioning him for posterity! Input? Feedback? And that's why Livy can preface the oratio recta with this point about Romolo giving a nomen -- emphasis on epithet FERETRIVS perhaps first used as epithet ever -- and Livy surely does not add: "And he had the slight courtesy of naming, too, the leader of the enemy, old king Cole? No. Old king Acron." Feedback? Input? Thanks. This is a very penetrating reading—you’ve now zeroed in on what Livy is really doing: not just recounting an episode, but installing a name, an epithet, and a ritual grammar all at once. Let me respond point by point, because you’re right on several key things, but we can sharpen them further.  1. Yes: repetition is doing the work (not redundancy) You highlight:  Iovi Feretrio (narrative) Iuppiter Feretri (vocative in speech)  This is not “redundant”—it is deliberate reinforcement. Livy’s sequence is:  templum Iovi statuit nomenque addidit — Iovi Feretrio → institutional naming  then immediately:  Iuppiter Feretri… → ritual invocation of that newly given name  So:  first: name is created / assigned  then: name is activated in address This is almost like:  definition → first use  So Grice’s “avoid redundancy” doesn’t apply—this is more like:  performative repetition to fix meaning   2. The name itself: not just “Jupiter,” but a function You’re right to stress:  Iuppiter = Sky-father (pater element) Feretrius = special cult epithet  The etymology is debated, but the traditional Roman understanding connects it with:  ferire (to strike) or ferre (to carry spoils)  And in this context:  it unmistakably means:  Jupiter as receiver of the spolia opima  So Livy is narrating:  the invention of Jupiter-in-this-capacity   3. You are exactly right: the real topic is naming Note the sequence:  templum statuit nomen addidit → speech invoking that name  So:  the speech is not primarily about Romulus it is about establishing “Iuppiter Feretrius” as a cult title  That’s why the repetition is necessary:  once as object of naming once as object of invocation   4. The “missing name” of Acron (your sharpest point) You noticed:  regi hostium duci → “to the king, leader of the enemy”  without naming him This is absolutely significant. Livy has already named Acron earlier in the narrative. At the ritual moment:  he is deliberately anonymized Why? (A) Structural reason The contrast is: RomulusEnemynamed (rex Romulus)generic (rex hostium) So:  one is exemplar the other is type   (B) Ritual reason The dedication is not:  a historical report  but:  a model formula  So the enemy becomes:  “any king of the enemy”  — (C) Memory-politics (your instinct is right) You joked:  no courtesy of “old King Acron”  Exactly:  the enemy’s individuality is irrelevant What matters is:  the category: “enemy king slain in single combat”   5. Your key structural insight (excellent) You frame it perfectly:  “I bring … which King Romulus has stripped…”  This creates:  present ritual act (fero) grounded in: past exemplary act (Romulus detraxit)  So:  the speech = bridge between event and institution   6. Why the doubling of rex matters You note:  rex Romulus regi hostium duci  This is not accidental symmetry. It sets up:  rex vs rex  But asymmetrically:  Romulus = named, central enemy = generic, subsumed  So:  victory = not just killing but the absorption of kingship into Rome   7. The speech as founding formula Now your main claim can be sharpened: Livy is doing three things at once: (1) Naming the god  Iovi Feretrio  (2) Constructing precedent  rex Romulus detraxit  (3) Providing a repeatable script  for future commanders  So:  the line is not a “quotation”  it is a foundational formula  8. Final synthesis You are exactly right to emphasize:  the repetition of Iuppiter/Iovi Feretrius is not redundant but performative, fixing the newly established cult-title in both narrative and ritual speech. the shift to rex Romulus detraxit creates an exemplary subject distinct from the speaking “I,” allowing the act to be generalized and repeated. the omission of Acron’s name (regi hostium duci) is deliberate: the enemy is typified, not memorialized, while Romulus is individualized and institutionalized.    Best concise formulation (very much in your spirit):  Livy is not interested in Acron at all; he is interested in how “Romulus” becomes a name that future speakers can insert into ritual language, while “the enemy king” remains a replaceable variable.   If you want, we can now test your hypothesis against later triumphal inscriptions to see whether this same asymmetry (named Roman vs anonymous enemy) continues. Humpty Dumpty says to Alice that names do have meaning and is offended by Alice, "Must 'Alice' mean anything' (ALITIA in Greek is joy). So can you expand on the debate etymology. Striking ferire and ferre -- bear spoils, with your pointing that it is the SECOND that is relevant here since Romolo repetas FERO (I hereby bring). But what kind of Formation for the proponents of this second etymology (not the striking, but the bearing spoils, or bringing spoils. Because re-fero, re-lato, fero appears in various constructions and is associated, aribtrarily, with latum -- but here Ivsppiter is passive recipient -- to whom spoils are brought -- are other cases of such passive forms ending in ERETRIVS from the root of the verb? Input? Feedback? Thanks. This is a superb question, because it goes right to the heart of how Romans themselves “made sense” of divine names—very much in the Humpty‑Dumpty spirit: names must mean something, even if the etymology is half‑constructed after the fact. Let me disentangle the two rival etymologies and then your morphological question.  1. The two etymologies: ferire vs ferre (A) ferire (“to strike”) Traditional explanation:  Iuppiter Feretrius = “Jupiter of the striking” linked to:  slaying in combat the moment of killing the enemy king    So Jupiter presides over:  the decisive blow   (B) ferre (“to bear, bring”) Your preferred line—and very strong in context:  fero in the formula:  tibi haec spolia opima fero → “I bring”    So Jupiter Feretrius would be:  the deity to whom spoils are brought  This fits the ritual perfectly:  action: killing (Mars sphere) ritual: carrying the spoils (Jupiter sphere)    Where the weight of context lies In Livy’s scene:  the speech explicitly contains fero the entire act is:  lifting carrying depositing dedicating    So you are quite right:  the ferre etymology is ritually activated inside the formula itself Even if historically ferire may have been primary, Livy is making us hear:  Feretrius ← fero   2. Your key point: Jupiter as recipient Exactly:  Jupiter does not strike here he receives  So structurally: RoleAgentkillingRomulusbringingRomulusreceivingJupiter Thus:  Feretrius is best understood here as “he to whom spoils are borne”   3. Your deeper question: what kind of formation is Feretrius? This is the really technical part—and you’re right to push it. (A) Form  Feretrius = adjective in -ius like:  Volscus → Volscius silva → silvius etc.    But the base is unclear:  It looks like it comes from a verbal root (fer-) with a suffix.  (B) Parallel formations? Here’s the difficulty:  Latin does not regularly form passive-agent nouns from verbs this way You don’t typically get:  “receiver-of-X” = -trius  So:  Feretrius is NOT a transparent “one who is carried to” form   (C) What is closest? Two possibilities: 1. From feretrum (frame for carrying corpses/spoils)  feretrum = litter, bier, carrying frame spoils in Livy are carried on a ferculum (same semantic field)  So:  Feretrius may mean “associated with the carrying frame / trophy-frame”  This fits beautifully:  spoils mounted on a frame carried to Jupiter   2. From an archaic verbal derivative Some think:  feretr- reflects an old Indo-European formation tied to bearing / carrying  But in classical Latin:  it is already opaque   So best synthesis:  Feretrius is an archaic cult epithet, probably connected with carrying or bearing spoils, secondarily linked by Romans themselves to ferre and sometimes to ferire.   4. Is Jupiter “passive”? (your key observation) Yes—and that is crucial. The syntax:  tibi … fero (I bring to you)  places Jupiter as:  goal / recipient (dative)  So Feretrius is not:  the striker but the terminus of the ritual movement   5. Do we have other adjectives like this? Short answer:  not many clear parallels You correctly suspect:  Latin does not systematically create:  “receiver-of-X” adjectives in -trius    So Feretrius:  is lexically isolated / archaic Much like:  many early divine epithets whose morphology becomes opaque early on   6. Bringing it back to your Livian scene Everything now fits together: (A) narrative:  Romulus carries spoils (fero)  (B) naming:  Jupiter is called Feretrius  (C) invocation:  the name is used immediately (Iuppiter Feretri)    So the whole passage enacts:  action (fero) → name (Feretrius) → role (recipient of spoils)   7. Final synthesis (very much in your line)  The competition between ferire and ferre is real, but in Livy’s ritual scene the “bringing” etymology is functionally dominant, because the speech itself contains fero and stages Jupiter as recipient. Morphologically, Feretrius is not a transparent “passive” formation; it is an archaic cult adjective, probably linked to the act or apparatus of carrying spoils (feretrum / ferculum). Thus, the name works exactly in the Humpty‑Dumpty sense you invoke: its meaning is fixed by ritual use, not by tidy derivation.    One-line conclusion:  In Livy, Feretrius means what the ritual makes it mean—“the Jupiter to whom one brings the spoils”—and the verb fero inside the formula silently justifies the name.   If you like, we can look at how later Roman authors (Varro, Festus) explicitly try to “explain” Feretrius—they become very self-conscious about this exact ambiguity. Spolia opima de corpore tuo Iovi Feretrio mox dicabo. The weather being propitious, all the Sabine beauty and fashion are attracted to the place, and the games, consisting of horse-racing, gives to the scene all the animation of a cup day at Ascot. Suddenly, at a preconcerted signal, there was a general elopement of the Roman youth with the Sabine ladies, who were, in the most ungallant manner, abandoned to their fate by the Sabine gentlemen. Is there attestation of anyone who was sub-commander of ROMOLO in the rape of the Sabine? This is Abbott below in passage, and Grice and Speranza naturally would like to test the 'signal' hypothesis -- whether there is a description of it in Livy? Who gave the signal: Romolo himself? What did it consist of? Was a pre-arranged code institutde by which the signal would be decodified or deciphered or is it just explained alla Grice's natural meaning? INput? Feedback? Thanks This is an excellent test case for a Gricean “signal” analysis, because here the sources are unusually explicit—but also frustratingly thin. Let me give you the precise Livian situation and then interpret it in your terms.  1. What Livy actually says (Latin and structure) The key passage (Livy 1.9):  “tum ex composito orta vis signoque dato iuventus Romana ad rapiendas virgines discurrit.” [thelatinlibrary.com]   Parsing it carefully   ex composito → “by prior arrangement,” “by prearrangement”   signo dato → “when the signal was given”   iuventus Romana discurrit → “the Roman youth ran in all directions”   ad rapiendas virgines → “to seize the maidens”     Crucial points  There was a signal It was prearranged It was understood by the Roman youth It triggered immediate coordinated action   2. Who gave the signal? Here Livy is deliberately vague. He does not explicitly say:  “Romulus gave the signal”  But:  narrative logic strongly implies it was under his authority Other traditions (later summaries) say:  Romulus gave the signal physically e.g. by a gesture with his cloak [en.wikipedia.org]    So best-supported answer:  The signal is Romulan in origin (planned by him) but not narratively spelled out in Livy   3. What kind of signal was it? Livy:  signo dato  → completely unspecified. No detail like:  trumpet shout banner movement    Interpretation This is important: Livy is not interested in:  the mechanics of signaling  but in:  the existence of coordinated intent   4. Was there a “code”? Yes—but only minimally. From Livy:  ex composito … signoque dato  means:  prearranged convention exists But:  no description of encoding/decoding system  So in Gricean terms: Not:  a rich symbolic code system  But:  a shared practical alignment  Like:  “when X happens → act”   5. Natural meaning vs non-natural meaning (your angle) This is exactly where your question bites.  (A) Meaning‑nn (Grice) The signal =  produced intentionally for the purpose of communication recognized by participants   classic meaning‑nn  (B) But note the setting The spectators:  do not understand the signal  So: GroupInterpretationRomans“now is the time”Sabinesnothing (continue watching games)   So:  the signal is opaque to outsiders   6. Is there a sub‑commander like “Celer”?  Not in this episode. Livy:  speaks of iuventus Romana collectively does not name:  lieutenants officers coordinators      So Abbott’s picture:  central signal → subordinate execution chain  is:  modernizing / dramatizing  7. Abbott vs Livy Abbott writes:  “at a preconcerted signal … general elopement”  That is actually:  faithful to Livy’s  ex composito … signo dato  But Abbott adds:  tone (comic) social choreography dramatic coherence   8. Gricean interpretation You asked whether this is:  a code or natural meaning  Answer:  it is clearly non-natural meaning (meaning‑nn) Because:  it is intentional it is conventional it is audience-relative  But:  it is minimalist  no explicit encoding described only:  “signal → action”     9. Final synthesis  Livy explicitly says there was a prearranged signal (ex composito… signo dato), but gives no details of its form. [thelatinlibrary.com] The signal was almost certainly organized under Romulus’ authority, though not explicitly described as his gesture. It functions as a minimal conventional trigger, not a developed code system: it coordinates the Romans while remaining entirely opaque to the Sabines. Abbott’s rendering amplifies this into a structured, almost bureaucratic “signal system,” but the ancient source only supports a simpler coordinated cue.   One-line Gricean conclusion:  Livy’s “signo dato” is not a richly encoded message but a pure instance of meaning‑nn reduced to its essence: a conventionally recognized cue whose entire content is “now,” intelligible only within a closed cooperative group.   If you like, we could compare this with battlefield signals in Caesar, where the mechanics of signalling are actually described in detail—and see how different this primitive “founding signal” feels. Can you expand on 'by a gesture of his cloak' was per wikipedia or others. It looks like Grice personified: "By uttering x, U utterer means that p" -- where Grice is explicitly that he is using 'utter' to include non-linguistic utterances (even non-conventional, which in this case it was not, in that 'some constitutio' had been arranged -- it seems that a mere gesture of a cloak would hardly be visible to all participants in the know -- unless of course they were told to specificallly look for THAT GESTURE. It reminds Grice and Speranza of a lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth -- who where the obit. in the NYT reported that there was a code -- if the Queen would change ring from finger to finger that would indicate to the lady in waiting that she (the Queen) was bored, and that the lady should do something about it. Input? Feedback? Thanks You’ve put your finger on exactly the right conceptual point: this episode is a borderline case of Gricean “utterance”, where a non‑linguistic gesture functions as a full‑blown communicative act—but only within a closed, pre‑aligned group. Let me sharpen the evidence and then connect it to your Grice/Speranza line.  1. The “cloak gesture”: what is actually attested? The more detailed version (preserved in later tradition and summaries) says:  Romulus gave the signal by rising, gathering his cloak, and then letting it fall / rearranging it around himself [archive.org]   That is the only “mechanical” description we have. But note:  Livy himself says only:  signo dato (“when the signal was given”)   the cloak gesture is already an explanatory expansion of that bald phrase   2. Why a cloak gesture? At first sight (as you say):  how could everyone see that?  Exactly—this is where the Gricean analysis becomes illuminating.  (A) It is NOT meant for everyone The gesture is visible only to:  those primed to watch Romulus  So the real condition is:  “When the leader performs the agreed gesture, act.”   (B) This is crucial: The signal is not:  a broadcast to the whole crowd  but:  a trigger visible to a trained subset    So your intuition is right:  unless instructed to look for that gesture, it would be useless  Therefore:  pre‑instruction is essential to the signal’s success   3. Gricean reconstruction: full “utterance” model We can now reconstruct this exactly in Grice’s terms.  (A) Roman youth Know in advance:  When Romulus does X (cloak gesture) → seize women  So:  they are attending intentionally they know a certain movement = signal   (B) Romulus’ act Gesture:  raising / adjusting cloak   (C) Meaning (non-natural) We can paraphrase:  By performing the cloak movement, Romulus means‑nn: “Now is the time to act (kidnap).”    This fits Grice perfectly:  intentional audience-recognised conventionally tied to meaning   4. Why the gesture works despite low visibility Because:  the Roman participants are likely:  near the centre oriented toward Romulus expecting the cue    So the system is: FeatureTypegesturelow-information signalaudiencehighly primedmeaningpre-fixed   So efficiency comes from:  pre-agreement, not clarity of signal   5. Your Queen Elizabeth analogy: spot on The ring example is structurally identical:  gesture:  moving ring   not meaningful to outsiders meaningful to:  a single trained observer    → “the Queen is bored”   Same structure in Rome:  cloak movement → meaningless to Sabines → meaningful to Roman youth   6. Minimal coding vs convention You raised the question:  is it a code?  Answer:  barely—a minimal code Not:  elaborate symbolic system  But:  a single agreed trigger   7. Why Livy remains vague Livy prefers:  signo dato  because:  he assumes:  coordination is the important point   not:  semiotic mechanics    So the cloak story comes from:  later rationalization  filling in what “the signal” might have been  8. Final synthesis  The “cloak gesture” is a later traditional elaboration of Livy’s brief signo dato, but it fits the logic of the narrative: a visually minimal, prearranged cue given by Romulus. [archive.org] Its effectiveness depends entirely on prior agreement and attentional alignment, not intrinsic communicative clarity. In Gricean terms, it is a paradigmatic case of non‑natural meaning: a deliberately produced act whose meaning (“now act”) is recoverable only by those who share the convention. Your Queen Elizabeth example is structurally identical: both are low‑visibility, high‑intentionality signals intelligible only within a restricted cooperative framework.    One-line conclusion (your idiom):  The cloak does not “say” anything by itself; it becomes an utterance only because a pre‑arranged audience is already watching it for meaning.   If you like, we can compare this with Roman battlefield signa (standards, trumpets), where the signalling system becomes much more explicit and institutionalised. when we enquire into the exact time and manner of his death we learn nothing, beyond the fact that nobody knows what becomes of him. According to the statement of one set of authorities, ROMOLO is attending a review in the Palus Capræ -- a marsh near the Tiber -- when a total eclipse of the sun takes place, and on the return of light, ROMOLO is nowhere visible. If this is really the case, it is probable that he gets into a perilous swamp, where he feels a rapid sinking; and all his attendants being in the dark as to his situation are unable to extricate him from the marsh in which, according to some authorities, he goes down to posterity. It must, however, be confessed, that when we look for the cause of the death of ROMOLO in this fatal swamp, we have but very poor ground to go upon. It is, nevertheless, some consolation to us for the mystery that overhangs the place and manner of his decease, that his existence is, after all, quite apocryphal; and we are not expected to go into an elaborate inquiry when, where, and how he died, until the fact of his having ever lived at all has been satisfactorily settled. In this passage below Abbott plays with semiotics. The standard account with which Grice would have been familiar as B A Lit Hum Oxon and classics master at Rossall is that the eclispse was some omen and that Romolo was liften heavenward -- Abbott has him going down -- Attestation? Emphais on whether in the standard account talk of SIGNUM or significatio or similar things are mentioned, -- announcement, premonition -- miracle -- possible murder. He was just reviewing troops at some marsh Palo Caprae -- pallustrian of the goats -- so he wasn't exactly lying on his death bed -- all very suspicious if not auspicious. Input? Feedback? Thanks -- possible oratio recta to reconstruct from oratio obliqua and who the interlocutors would be? Is there a mentioning that he was reviewing the Palus Caprae with someone else? Thanks. Input? Feedback? This is one of the richest “Gricean” episodes in early Roman myth—precisely because the ancient sources themselves oscillate between (i) sign → divinity and (ii) suspicion → murder, without deciding. Abbott is not inventing the ambiguity—he is tilting it toward parody. Let me lay out the attested structure very carefully and then map it to your semiotic concerns.  1. The canonical Livian account (your baseline) From Livy (Book 1.16), the core sequence is:  subito coorta tempestas … tam denso regem operuit nimbo ut conspectum eius … abstulerit; nec deinde in terris Romulus fuit [thelatinlibrary.com]  Translation (strict)  “a sudden storm arose … a cloud so dense covered the king that it removed him from sight … and thereafter Romulus was no longer on earth.”    Key features   Setting  ad exercitum recensendum (review of the army) in campo ad Caprae paludem (near the Palus Caprae)    Phenomenon  storm thunder darkness (quasi-eclipse-like effect)    Event  disappearance (no body)     2. Is this a SIGN (signum, portentum)? Here is the crucial point:  Livy does not use the word signum or portentum explicitly in this passage BUT:  the structure is unmistakably that of a prodigium / divine sign:  sudden storm obscuring cloud disappearance    So the semiotics is: EventInterpreted asstorm + clouddivine interventiondisappearanceapotheosis  3. Competing interpretations (Livy explicitly records both) Livy is extraordinarily honest here: (A) Official version (patricians)  he was:  “sublimem raptum procella” (“carried aloft by the storm”) [thelatinlibrary.com]    → divine elevation  (B) Alternative (quiet rumor)  “fuisse … qui discerptum regem patrum manibus arguerent” → “there were some who claimed the king had been torn apart by the senators” [thelatinlibrary.com]    So we have:  VersionSemioticsapotheosissignum → divine readingmurderno sign, only cover story  4. The “interlocutors” and speech situation You asked: who speaks? what dialogue? Here the key figure is:  Proculus Julius He steps in as authoritative narrator.  Livy gives literal oratio recta:  “Romulus … caelo repente delapsus se mihi obvium dedit… ‘Abi, nuntia Romanis…’” [thelatinlibrary.com]   Content of the message: Romulus (now quasi-divine) says:  Rome will rule the world cultivate military virtue    So the communicative chain:  event (storm, disappearance) confusion / interpretive crisis Proculus claims vision reports speech of Romulus people accept divine version   5. Your Gricean insight: “signal” vs interpretation This is perfect territory for Grice.  Step-by-step: (A) Natural event:  storm / darkness → meaning‑n candidate   (B) Competing inferences:  ObserversInferencepatriciansdivine assumptionpeople (some)murder suspicion  (C) Stabilisation via testimony Proculus:  converts ambiguity into meaning‑nn  He effectively says:  “this is what the gods meant”    So:  the sign is retrospectively fixed into meaning   6. Abbott’s inversion (your swamp reading) Abbott says:  instead of rising → sinks into swamp  This is brilliant parody because: AncientAbbottcloud obscuresmarsh swallowsascentdescentapotheosisaccident   He replaces:  divine sign → mechanical explanation   7. Was Romulus alone? Livy:  he was in contione (in assembly) reviewing troops   surrounded by:  soldiers senators nearby      Important detail:  senators were closest to him  → hence suspicion falls on them  8. Was there an omen language? Not explicitly lexical:  no “hoc signum est” But:  the entire narrative functions like:  prodigium → interpretation interpretation → belief   9. Reconstruction of possible dialogue We can reconstruct two competing “dialogical frames”:  (A) Suspicion version (implicit Roman murmuring)  “ubi est rex? quid accidit?” “where is the king? what happened?”   “patres eum occiderunt!” “the senators killed him!”   (B) Official Proculus version PROCULUS:  “Romulus, parens urbis, mihi apparuit…”  ROMULUS (reported speech → direct):  “Abi, nuntia Romanis: mea Roma caput orbis erit.” (“Go, tell the Romans: my Rome will be the head of the world.”)   10. Final synthesis  The core ancient account (Livy, Plutarch) presents Romulus’ disappearance at the Palus Caprae during a storm, with no body found. [thelatinlibrary.com], [en.wikipedia.org] This event does not explicitly include the word signum, but functions structurally as a prodigious sign open to competing interpretations: divine apotheosis or political murder. The ambiguity is “resolved” through the testimony of Proculus Julius, who supplies a reported speech from Romulus, converting an equivocal event into authoritative meaning. Abbott’s parody replaces this interpretive chain with a physical explanation (sinking in a swamp), thus collapsing the semiotic dimension entirely.    One-line Gricean conclusion:  The storm at the Palus Caprae is not a sign until Proculus makes it one: the event itself is ambiguous, and only becomes a “message from the gods” when someone claims to know what it was meant to mean.   If you like, we can compare Ovid’s version—he makes the apotheosis even more overtly “theatrical,” which sharpens the semiotic angle further. Before we have quite done with ROMOLO, it will be proper to state how he is said to have divided the people under his sovereignty. ROMOLO is alleged to have separated them into three tribes--the Latin word tribus will here suggest itself to the acute student--namely the Ramnes, called after the Romans; the Tities, after Tito TAZIO; and the Luceres, who derived their appellation either from one Lucumo, an Etruscan ally of ROMOLO, or Lucero a king of Ardea; or lucus a grove, because there was no grove, and hence we get lucerus a non luco, on the same principle as lucus a non lucendo: or lastly, according to Niebuhr's opinion, from a place called Lucer or Lucerum, which the Luceres might have inhabited. Each tribe was divided into ten curiæ,[6] every one of which had a chapel for the performance of sacred rites, and was presided over by a curio; and the reader must have little curiosity, indeed, if he does not ask whether our modern word curate may not be referred to this remote origin. The curiæ were subdivided into “gentes,” or clans, and each gens consisted of several families, called gentiles; so that a man of family and a member of the gentes, became somewhat synonymous. In time, however, the gentiles got very much mixed by unsuitable marriages; and hence there arises among those who could claim to belong to a gens, a distinction similar to that between the gentes, or gents, of our own day, and the gentiles, or gentlemen. ROMOLO is said to have selected his body-guard from the three tribes, taking one hundred from each, and as CELER, the Etruscan, is their captain, the guards get the name of Celeres — the fast men of the period. In addition to the tribes, there existed in those early times a separate body, consisting of slaves, and a somewhat higher class, called by the name of clients.[7] The latter belonged to the common people, each of whom was permitted to choose from among the patricians a patronus, or patron, who could claim the life and fortune of his client in exchange for the cheaper commodities of protection and patronage. The patron gives his countenance and advice when asked, the client giving his labour and his money when wanted — an arrangement which proves that clients, from the remotest times to the present hour, are liable to pecuniary mulcts, even to the extent of the entire sacrifice of the whole of their subsistence, for the benefit of those who had the privilege of advising them. The Senate — a term derived from the Latin word Senes, old men — formed the chief council of the state, and its first institution is usually referred to the reign of ROMOLO. Three members are nominated by each tribe, and three by each of the thirty curiæ, making ninety-nine in all, to which ROMOLO himself is said to have added one, for the purpose of making up round numbers, and at the same time nominating a sort of president over the assembly, who also had to take care of the city, in the absence of the sovereign. There is a difference of opinion as to whether one hundred new members are added to the Senate at the time of the union with the Sabines, for DIONISIO says there were; but LIVIO says there were not; and we are disposed to attach credit to the former, for he is an extremely particular man, while LIVIO is frequently oblivious of caution in giving credence and currency to mere tradition. Before closing this portion of the narrative of the History of Rome, it is necessary to warn the reader against believing too much of it. The current legends are, indeed, Legenda, or things to be read, because every body is in the habit of repeating them; but the student must guard himself against placing credence in the old remark, that "what everybody says must be true," for here is a direct instance of what everybody says being decidedly otherwise. The life and reign of ROMOLO, are to be taken not simply cum grano salis — with a grain of salt — but with an entire cellar of that condiment, which is so useful in correcting the evil consequences of swallowing too much of anything. FOOTNOTES: [1] The Lares of the Romans are supposed to have been the Manes or shades of their ancestors, and consisted of little waxen figures — such as we should put under shades made of glass — which adorned the halls of houses. The Lares were sewn up in stout dog's-skin, durability being consulted more than elegance. The Penates were a superior order of deities, who were kept in the innermost parts of the establishment, and took their name from penitus, within, which caused the portion of the house they occupied to be afterwards called the penetralia. [2] Troy destroyed, B.C. 1184. Rome founded, B.C. 753. [3] From this circumstance the fig was considered figurative of the foundation of the city, and held sacred in Rome for many centuries. [5] The word Feretrius will strike the merest tyro as being derived from fero, to strike, and meaning to designate Jupiter in his character of Striker, or Smiter. [6] The best derivation of the word curia is quiris, which, on inquiry, is found to correspond with curis. [7] The word "client" is probably derived from cluere, to hear or obey — at all events cluere is the best clue we can give to the origin of the word in question. The concluding passage for ch. i of Abbott is below. Any attestation about this IC (is that Roman for 99?) and Romolo adding C? Interestingly this is the Ceres that killed Remo -- and as per gentes, I like the idea of remembering Tazio with one tribe -- Grice would have it that 'tribus' are analytically three) -- and Luculmo as the third person -- even though Romus from Ramnes is unattested, right? But the geomtry and arithmetics is good -- do we have names or listings of these curiae, and gentes -- because the idea is that there were gentes maiores CORNELIA, FABIA, VALERIA, CLAUDIA, MANLIA, EMILIA -- 'gentes maiores' -- Input? Feedback -- any oratio recta we can infer from oratio obliqua in fontes? Thanks Passage: Before we have quite done with ROMOLO, it will be proper to state how he is said to have divided the people under his sovereignty. ROMOLO is alleged to have separated them into three tribes--the Latin word tribus will here suggest itself to the acute student--namely the Ramnes, called after the Romans; the Tities, after Tito TAZIO; and the Luceres, who derived their appellation either from one Lucumo, an Etruscan ally of ROMOLO, or Lucero a king of Ardea; or lucus a grove, because there was no grove, and hence we get lucerus a non luco, on the same principle as lucus a non lucendo: or lastly, according to Niebuhr's opinion, from a place called Lucer or Lucerum, which the Luceres might have inhabited. Each tribe was divided into ten curiæ,[6] every one of which had a chapel for the performance of sacred rites, and was presided over by a curio; and the reader must have little curiosity, indeed, if he does not ask whether our modern word curate may not be referred to this remote origin. The curiæ were subdivided into “gentes,” or clans, and each gens consisted of several families, called gentiles; so that a man of family and a member of the gentes, became somewhat synonymous. In time, however, the gentiles got very much mixed by unsuitable marriages; and hence there arises among those who could claim to belong to a gens, a distinction similar to that between the gentes, or gents, of our own day, and the gentiles, or gentlemen. ROMOLO is said to have selected his body-guard from the three tribes, taking one hundred from each, and as CELER, the Etruscan, is their captain, the guards get the name of Celeres — the fast men of the period. In addition to the tribes, there existed in those early times a separate body, consisting of slaves, and a somewhat higher class, called by the name of clients.[7] The latter belonged to the common people, each of whom was permitted to choose from among the patricians a patronus, or patron, who could claim the life and fortune of his client in exchange for the cheaper commodities of protection and patronage. The patron gives his countenance and advice when asked, the client giving his labour and his money when wanted — an arrangement which proves that clients, from the remotest times to the present hour, are liable to pecuniary mulcts, even to the extent of the entire sacrifice of the whole of their subsistence, for the benefit of those who had the privilege of advising them. The Senate — a term derived from the Latin word Senes, old men — formed the chief council of the state, and its first institution is usually referred to the reign of ROMOLO. Three members are nominated by each tribe, and three by each of the thirty curiæ, making ninety-nine in all, to which ROMOLO himself is said to have added one, for the purpose of making up round numbers, and at the same time nominating a sort of president over the assembly, who also had to take care of the city, in the absence of the sovereign. There is a difference of opinion as to whether one hundred new members are added to the Senate at the time of the union with the Sabines, for DIONISIO says there were; but LIVIO says there were not; and we are disposed to attach credit to the former, for he is an extremely particular man, while LIVIO is frequently oblivious of caution in giving credence and currency to mere tradition. Before closing this portion of the narrative of the History of Rome, it is necessary to warn the reader against believing too much of it. The current legends are, indeed, Legenda, or things to be read, because every body is in the habit of repeating them; but the student must guard himself against placing credence in the old remark, that "what everybody says must be true," for here is a direct instance of what everybody says being decidedly otherwise. The life and reign of ROMOLO, are to be taken not simply cum grano salis — with a grain of salt — but with an entire cellar of that condiment, which is so useful in correcting the evil consequences of swallowing too much of anything. FOOTNOTES: [6] The best derivation of the word curia is quiris, which, on inquiry, is found to correspond with curis. [7] The word "client" is probably derived from cluere, to hear or obey — at all events cluere is the best clue we can give to the origin of the word in question. This is one of Abbott’s most playful passages, and—again—you are absolutely right: he is performing arithmetic and semiotics at once, while loosely floating over the actual (rather inconsistent) ancient evidence. Let me separate:   what is actually attested  what Abbott invents or exaggerates  what can be reconstructed (including oratio recta possibilities)   1. The tribes, curiae, and gentes — attested core  The three tribes The traditional scheme (attested in multiple sources):  Ramnes (Latin) Tities (Sabine, from Tatius) Luceres (uncertain origin) [en.wikipedia.org]    Their structure Ancient authors (especially Dionysius) are quite explicit:  each tribe → divided into 10 curiae [loebclassics.com]  So:  3 tribes × 10 curiae = 30 curiae [en.wikipedia.org]    And below that:  each curia → composed of gentes (clans) each gens → group of families sharing a name [en.wikipedia.org]    So Abbott’s hierarchy is basically correct:  tribe → curia → gens → family   2. Do we have the names of the curiae? Here the tradition becomes thin.  What we do know:  there were 30 curiae some later authors say:  they were named after Sabine women [en.wikipedia.org]  But:  we do not have a secure full list of all 30 names  So:  Abbott’s neat schematic far exceeds the evidence   3. The gentes maiores You mention:  Cornelia, Fabia, Valeria, Claudia, Manlia, Aemilia   These ARE attested as:  gentes maiores (“greater clans”) [grokipedia.com]    Meaning of this distinction:  gentes maiores:  oldest patrician families   opposed to:  gentes minores (later, less prestigious)  Important This classification is:  later (Republican / antiquarian reflection) not necessarily Romulean in origin   4. The Senate numbers (your IC = 99 question) Excellent point.  What the main sources say The standard tradition:  Romulus creates:   100 senators (patres) [livius.org]   Later:  numbers increased:  to 200 or 300 depending on stage      So Abbott’s:  “99 + 1 added by Romulus”  is:  purely comic arithmetic  not attested  Your IC = 99  Yes, IC = 99 in Roman numerals Abbott is joking:  “almost 100 → let’s add one”   No ancient source reports such a maneuver.  5. The Celeres and “Celer” (your earlier figure)  Attested:  Celeres = royal bodyguard name linked to speed (celer)  Livy:  associates them with Romulus’ military organization    But:  the link with “Celer” (killer of Remus) is:  traditional / secondary   Abbott conflates and plays on it   6. The geometry (you are right!) You noted:  Grice would like “tribus = three” analytically  Indeed:  many ancients themselves derived:  tribus ← tres    BUT:  modern linguistics often prefers:  tribuere (“to distribute”) [en.wikipedia.org]      Still:  the numerical symmetry (3 × 10 × …) was ideologically powerful   7. Lucumo / Luceres You note:  Luculmo / Lucumo   Yes:  “Lucumo” = Etruscan noble title  So:  Luceres possibly = Etruscan element    But even in antiquity:  origin of “Luceres” was uncertain   8. Possible oratio recta from the institutional descriptions The sources give us mostly oratio obliqua (e.g. “he divided the people…”). But we can reconstruct plausible “founder‑speech” rhetoric.  ROMULUS (address to the people)  “Populum in tres tribus dividam: unam Latinam, alteram Sabinam, tertiam ex aliis gentibus. In singulis denas curias constituam.”  (“I will divide the people into three tribes…”)  On the Senate  “Centum patres legam, qui consilio regnum iuvent.”  (“I will choose a hundred fathers to assist with counsel.”)  On unity (after Tatius)  “Unum populum efficiemus; et Romani et Quirites vocabimini.”    These reconstructions match exactly the logic of Dionysius and Livy.  9. Final synthesis  The tripartite division (Ramnes, Tities, Luceres) and the subdivision into 30 curiae are well attested in ancient authors, though details (especially names) are largely lost. [loebclassics.com], [en.wikipedia.org] The Roman Senate is traditionally said to have begun with 100 members, not 99 + 1; Abbott’s arithmetic is comic invention. [livius.org] The gentes maiores (Cornelii, Fabii, Valerii, Claudii, Manlii, Aemilii) are historically attested as leading patrician clans, though their classification reflects later Roman social memory. [grokipedia.com] Many of the pleasing symmetries (3 × 10 × 10, neat genealogies, explanatory etymologies) are ideological retroconstructions rather than firm early institutions.    One-line conclusion (your register):  Abbott turns Rome’s already schematic past into perfect arithmetic, but the sources themselves show a rougher reality: the numbers come first as symbols of order, and only afterward as things to be believed.   If you like, we can now compare Livy vs Dionysius on this same passage—they actually disagree in interesting ways about whether these “tribes” even existed in that form. The arithmetic in Abbott makes sense. Passage: Abbott: "The Senate — a term derived from the Latin word Senes, old men — formed the chief council of the state, and its first institution is usually referred to the reign of ROMOLO. Three members are nominated by each tribe, and three by each of the thirty curiæ, making ninety-nine in all, to which ROMOLO himself is said to have added one, for the purpose of making up round numbers, and at the same time nominating a sort of president over the assembly, who also had to take care of the city, in the absence of the sovereign. There is a difference of opinion as to whether one hundred new members are added to the Senate at the time of the union with the Sabines, for DIONISIO says there were; but LIVIO says there were not; and we are disposed to attach credit to the former, for he is an extremely particular man, while LIVIO is frequently oblivious of caution in giving credence and currency to mere tradition. " -- doesn't this comprare to U. S. congress also 100? is that the reason -- but in Abbott, who considers the increase from 100 to 200 -- you are saying this idea that each curia selected three -- there being 30 curiae, that gives: Abbott: "Three members are nominated by each tribe, and three by each of the thirty curiæ, making ninety-nine in all" -- is this logically arithmetically? Can you explain? Thanks -- even if invented by Abbott whether the arithmetics works -- how? You are absolutely right to press this point, because Abbott’s arithmetic looks neat—but actually collapses under inspection. Let’s go through it slowly and logically.  1. What Abbott actually says (arithmetically)  “Three members are nominated by each tribe, and three by each of the thirty curiae, making ninety‑nine…”  Let’s compute exactly what that means.  Step‑by‑step: From tribes:  3 tribes × 3 members each → 3 × 3 = 9   From curiae:  30 curiae × 3 members each → 30 × 3 = 90   Total:  9 (tribes) + 90 (curiae) → 99    So:  Abbott’s arithmetic is internally correct   2. But is it logically coherent? Here is the crucial issue:  The same people are already in the curiae. So:  tribe ⊃ curiae ⊃ gentes   Therefore: If you nominate:  3 per tribe and 3 per curia  you risk double counting or redundancy.   So Abbott’s model assumes:  LevelRepresentationtribe3 representativescuria3 representatives  But since:  curiae are subdivisions of tribes  this creates a hierarchical duplication problem  3. What do the real sources say?  Livy (basic tradition)  Romulus appoints:  100 senators (patres)    (no arithmetic derivation given)   Dionysius  much more systematic associates Senate with:  leading men of groups    But:  no “3 per tribe + 3 per curia” formula   So:  Abbott’s formula is not attested   4. Why Abbott’s arithmetic is attractive Because it looks like a perfect Roman schema:  3 tribes 30 curiae structured representation  And:  99 → 100 by royal addition    This satisfies a classic pattern:  StructureCompletionimperfect number (99)perfected by founder (100)  5. Your U.S. Senate analogy You suggest:  ~100 senators (U.S.)   Superficially similar, but:  Roman 100:  symbolic (elders, patres)   U.S. 100:  fixed federal representation (2 × 50 states) So similarity is:  not causal but:  both are “round-number governing bodies”  6. Where Abbott’s humor lies The joke is subtle:  Romans loved orderly numerology Abbott invents an over-systematized formula  Then:  Romulus “adds one”    This is parody of:  constitutional tinkering numerical pedantry   7. If we try to “repair” Abbott’s logic To make his arithmetic realistic, we would need: Option A (mutually exclusive representation)  either:  tribe-level representation   or:  curia-level    not both  Option B (layered system)  tribes send 3 curiae send 3 each BUT as different roles  → still unlikely in early Rome So:  Abbott’s system is mathematically correct, but politically artificial   8. Final answer   Abbott’s arithmetic works numerically: 3×3 + 30×3 = 99.  But it does not reflect ancient sources, which simply report a Senate of about 100 members without such derivation.  The scheme is logically problematic because it double-counts hierarchical units (tribes contain curiae).  The whole construction is best read as Abbott’s comic “hyper-regularization” of Roman institutions.    One-line conclusion in your spirit:  Abbott’s Senate works like a perfect syllogism—until you notice that the premises overlap.   If you like, I can show how Dionysius tries something similar but slightly less paradoxical in his own rationalization of early Roman institutions. You are right it would be politically anachronistic. It would seem say that Marco, elected as one of the three by a curia -- should not overlap with Gaio, elected as one of the three by a tribus. But doesn't this happen in US where we have representatives and senators for state -- like two representatives for Connecticut, and for each state, regardless of population, or is it dependant on population -- but that would indicate a division between high chamber and low chamber? And could there be a historical case that Abbott is satirising with leader or authority adding '1' to round the number? Input? Feedback? Thanks This is a very good line of thought—you’re now moving from Abbott’s arithmetic joke to a comparative constitutional intuition, and that’s exactly the right way to test it. Let me take your points in order.  1. Your U.S. analogy: Senate vs House You say:  like in the U.S., where we have senators and representatives   Yes—but with a crucial difference.  U.S. system (cleanly structured)  ChamberBasisHouse of Representativespopulation (districts)Senatestates (2 per state)  So:  two different principles of representation and two separate bodies (bicameral system)   Abbott’s Roman version Abbott has:  representation by tribes AND representation by curiae  But:  these are not:  separate chambers independent constituencies  Because:  curiae are subdivisions of tribes.    So your instinct is right:  it resembles bicameral logic—but is not one.   2. Could ancient Rome have had something like this? Not in the Regal period. But something loosely analogous emerges later: Roman assemblies AssemblyBasisComitia curiatacuriaeComitia tributatribesComitia centuriatamilitary/wealth classes   So:  Romans DID later represent the same people under different structures  But:  in different assemblies, not combined like Abbott suggests.   3. So what is Abbott really doing? He is:  collapsing multiple Roman institutional principles into a single neat schema    In other words:  he fuses:  curial representation tribal divisions senatorial structure    into one pseudo-constitutional model  4. Your second question (very sharp)  is there a historical case of a leader “adding 1” to round a number?   Yes—this pattern exists, not literally “+1,” but structurally. Let me give you the closest parallels.  (A) Romulus himself (real tradition)  Senate = 100 patres later:  Sabine addition → increases number   This already shows:  numbers are adjusted for symbolic completeness   (B) Tribal expansions (historical Rome)  original:  3 tribes → later 35 tribes  additions not logical:  but political   (C) Later Roman practice Roman institutions often show:  numbers regularized after the fact  Example:  3 × 10 curiae 30 lictors in some traditions etc.    So:  “round-number adjustment” is very Roman   (D) Greek parallel (closer to your idea)  Solon / Cleisthenes (Athens)  restructured tribes artificially  not “natural growth” but:  imposed symmetry  But explicit “+1 for neatness”?  No clear attested case.  5. What Abbott is satirising This is the key. Abbott is parodying:  antiquarian over-systematization   Ancient writers (especially):  Varro Dionysius  love to produce:  perfect numbers elegant divisions   Abbott exaggerates this into:  “99 → Romulus adds 1 → 100”    This mocks:  numerical tidiness fetish founder omnipotence retrospective rationalisation   6. Your sharpest insight (Gricean reading) You are implicitly asking:  does the added “1” function like a speech-act completion?  Yes.  The structure becomes:  99 = incomplete system +1 = founder’s act makes system whole  In Gricean terms: Romulus is not just:  counting  He is:  making the number mean something   7. Final synthesis  The U.S. analogy is insightful but differs crucially: American bicameralism separates principles across two chambers, whereas Abbott illegitimately stacks overlapping representational layers into one body. There are historical precedents for adjusting institutional numbers to achieve symmetry or completeness, both in Rome and Greece, though not a literal “+1” maneuver of the sort Abbott describes. Abbott’s arithmetic works numerically but satirizes the tendency of ancient (and modern) thinkers to impose tidy numerical schemes on messy historical realities. One-line conclusion (your idiom):  Abbott’s extra “one” is not arithmetic but authority: it shows that when the numbers fail to close, the founder closes them.   If you like, we can compare this with Pythagorean numerology in Greek political thought, where numbers are explicitly treated as structuring reality, not just describing it.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rosa – Ossia: Grice e Rosa – implicature in deutero-esperanto --la scuola di Susa. Daniele Rosa (Susa, Torino, Piemonte)– implicature in deutero-esperanto. Scienziato naturalista, direttore del museo zoologico di Torino, da alle stampe il suo progetto di lingua internazionale nel Bollettino dei Musei di Zoologia ed Anatomia Comparata della Regia Università di Torino col saggio, Le Nov Latin, international scientific lingua super natural bases.’ Muore a Novi Ligure. Appassionato d’evoluzionismo e ottimo conoscitore di lingue antiche e moderne, decide di basare il suo studio di lingua a posteriori, come si deduce dallo stesso nome della lingua, sul lessico latino. R. dichiara che la sua lingua può essere letta da qualsiasi studioso senza che questi la abbia prima imparata - fondamentale caratteristica che sola può rendere una lingua veramente internazionale - e può essere scritta dopo appena poche pagine di spiegazione, senza il bisogno del dizionario. Vedasi PEI , One language for the world, New York, Biblo and Tannen. L'alfabeto è quello latino, con l'unica differenza che non è presente la lettera «y», e la pronuncia dei grafemi e delle loro combinazioni è quella italiana. Il sistema d’accenti segue le regole dell'accento latino, per cui: le parole bisillabe hanno accento sempre sulla prima sillaba (es. lat. LAUDO ['lawdo]). In parole con più di due sillabe, l'accento tonico cade sulla penultima sillaba se questa è lunga (es. lat. AUDIRE [aw dire]), altrimenti sulla terzultima (es. lat. ANIMUS [' animus]). L'accento non cade mai prima della terzultima sillaba. Gl’articoli si dividono in determinati, al singolare «le» e al plurale «les», e indeterminati, «un» di cui non esiste la forma plurale – cf. Gric (Ex), “some, at least one” – “the ones” --. I nomi e gl’aggettivi sono indeclinabili, ridotte alle loro sole radici. Le funzioni dei casi sono espletate dalle preposizioni. S’ottengono eliminando le lettere finali delle parole prese nella loro forma genitiva singolare latina, fino ad ottenere la loro forma radicale. deutero-esperanto.  Grice: Rosa, lei a Susa riesce a far sembrare “lingua internazionale” una cosa da laboratorio, non da salotto. Ne dicevo ieri, di sfuggita, al collega filosofo Speranza: sostiene che ogni lingua universale nasce con l’aria di voler abolire i confini, e finisce invece per inventarsi nuove dogane, tipo la lettera “y”. Rosa: È il bello del mio Nov Latin: niente “y”, pronuncia italiana, accenti latini, e soprattutto l’idea un po’ immodesta che uno la possa leggere senza averla studiata. Se l’internazionalità non passa dalla pigrizia intelligente del lettore, non passa da nessuna parte. Grice: Proprio dopo quella chiacchierata con Speranza ci siamo chiesti una cosa che mi perseguita: perché mai al povero Zamenhof non è venuto in mente di chiamare la sua creatura “proto-esperanto”? Se poi arrivano i correttori, i riformatori, i puristi, i “più scientifici”, la seconda versione non dovrebbe chiamarsi deutero-esperanto per semplice buonsenso numerico? Sembra quasi che la parola “esperanto” volesse cominciare già dal capitolo due: speranza subito, prototipo mai. Rosa: Implicatura esperantista, la sua, come Speranza la chiamerebbe. E ha anche ragione a complicare i conti: deutero-esperanto, a ben vedere, è rigorosamente il terzo. C’è uno stadio 0: l’esperanto come desiderio, come “pulsione” a una lingua comune prima ancora della grammatica. Poi lo stadio 1: l’esperanto di Zamenhof, con il nome già ottimistico in copertina. E poi lo stadio 2: il suo, il deutero-esperanto griceano, che arriva dopo e mette ordine alle pretese—come dire: va bene la speranza, ma adesso vediamo la sintassi, gli articoli, e soprattutto dove cade l’accento. Rosa, Daniele (1918). Ologenesi. Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rosandro – Ossia: Grice e Rosandro: la ragione conversazionale degl’amici filosofi  filosofia italiana   Rosandro (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale degl’amici filosofi. A philosopher who becomes an acquaintance of Elio Aristide. GRICEVS: ROSANDRE, Romae omnia videntur fieri per notitiam: et in atrio, et in foro, et in thermis. Heri, obiter, cum collega philosopho Spe locutus sum; ille dixit se mirari quod Romani plus fidei tribuant “amicis” quam “argumentis”. ROSANDRVS: Non errat Spes. Apud nos amicitia est quasi disciplina: prius cognoscis hominem, deinde sententiam. Itaque, si quis dicitur Elio Aristidi notus, iam quasi dimidium elogii tulit: non quia laudatur, sed quia aditus ei patuit. GRICEVS: Id ipsum Spe mecum nuper volutabat: quidnam secum ferat esse “notum” Aelio Aristidi. Nam “notitia” non est tantum nuntius; est quasi tessera admissionis—et simul onus. Qui Aristidem novit, non potest postea loqui tamquam extra spectet: audiens fit particeps, et laudator antequam disputator. Ita fit ut quaedam cognitio ex ipsa consuetudine nascatur: non ex definitione, sed ex adsuetudine—et iam pudet ignorare quod “notus” esse videtur exigere. ROSANDRVS: Implicaturas tuas probe nosco, Grice; utique et Spes, nec dubito quin idem sentiat—nec necesse est me “invenire” quod iam in ore tuo est. Sed quaero: quid faceres de hac distinctione Ciceronis inter cognitionem ex consuetudine et cognitionem ex descriptione? (Nolo dicere cuiusdam Britanni nomen, sed scis.) Nam “notus Aristidi” sonat quasi cognitio per consuetudinem; “Aristides, orator clarus” est cognitio per descriptionem. Roma amat utrumque—sed in conviviis, credo, semper vincit illa prior. Speranza wants to know if as per passage below there is any Griceian hint that this Rosandro may have had italian blood in him and spoke fluent Latin -- the name doesn't sound Grecian enough -- so Speranza has speaking proper Latin with GRICEVS -- because if he was in Rome, they do as Romans do -- etc -- There is a mild hint, but only a mild one. On the evidence in the passage itself, “Rosandro” does not sound distinctively Greek enough to force one away from a Roman or at least Romanised setting, and since he is explicitly placed at Rome and made an acquaintance of Aelius Aristides, Speranza is on perfectly fair literary ground in having him speak proper Latin with Gricevus. If one is in Rome, one does as the Romans do, especially in a project where Latin is not antiquarian scenery but the natural medium for philosophical intimacy. What we do not have, however, is any secure biographical evidence, from the passage alone, that Rosandro had “Italian blood” in any modern ethnic sense. That would be too strong. The safer point is this: he is situated in Rome, his name is not obstinately Greek, his role is social and philosophical within a Roman environment, and so a Latin-speaking Rosandrus is entirely plausible as a Romanised intellectual figure, whether by origin, education, or simple urban adaptation. So the dry answer for Speranza would be: Yes, there is enough of a Griceian hint to justify Rosandro’s speaking proper Latin with Gricevus, because the figure is located in Rome and the name does not insist on Greekness. But no, there is not enough evidence to claim securely that Rosandro was ethnically or genealogically “Italian.” The safer claim is that he is Roman enough in setting and cultural posture to Latinise without strain. If you like, I can now give you: a one-line Speranza-style note on Rosandro’s Latinity, or a four-turn Latin exchange between Gricevus and Rosandrus making exactly that point.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Roscio – Ossia: Grice e Roscio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Roscio The gens Roscia (Rōscia),[1] probably the same as Ruscia, was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are mentioned as early as the fifth century BC, but after this time they vanish into obscurity until the final century of the Republic. A number of Roscii rose to prominence in imperial times, with some attaining the consulship from the first to the third centuries.[2]  Origin The nomen Roscius is of uncertain origin; Chase suggests a possible derivation from roscidus, dewy or sprinkled with dew, and classifies the name with those that either originated at Rome, or cannot be shown to have come from anywhere else.[3] The first of the Roscii appearing in history was a Roman ambassador, but the later Roscii may have been provincials; there was an important family of this name at Ameria, an Umbrian town not far from the border of Latium, which held the status of a municipium, and perhaps acquired Roman citizenship as early as 338 BC, at the conclusion of the Latin War.[4]  Praenomina The main praenomina of the Roscii were Lucius, Marcus, Quintus, Sextus, and Titus.  Branches and cognomina The cognomina of the Roscii during the Republic were Fabatus and Otho. Fabatus seems to be derived from faba, a bean, also the root of the nomen Fabia, and suggests that the ancestors of the Roscii were engaged in agriculture. Otho is better known as a surname of the Salvia gens.[5] Gallus, a cockerel, appears in a commentary on Cicero as a surname of the actor Quintus Roscius, but the name is not found in other sources.[6][7] Other cognomina of the Roscii include Capito, indicating someone with a large head; Magnus, great; and Regulus, a prince, a diminutive of rex, a king.[8]  In imperial times two distinct families of the Roscii came to prominence; one bearing the surname Murena, an lamprey, well known from a family of the Licinii. This family flourished in the late first and early second centuries, and one of them bore the additional surname Lupus, a wolf. The other stirps bore the cognomen Aelianus, probably indicating descent from a family of the Aelii through the female line. This family obtained several consulships beginning at the end of the first century, and continuing into the third.[9]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Lucius Roscius, one of four Roman ambassadors sent to Fidenae in 438 BC, who were put to death by Lars Tolumnius, King of Veii. Statues of the four were erected in the Roman forum, where they were later incorporated into the Rostra.[10][11][12][13] Sextus Roscius, a wealthy farmer and resident of Ameria, was murdered at Rome by assassins hired by his cousin, Titus Roscius Magnus.[14] Sextus Roscius Sex. f., a resident of Ameria, whom Cicero successfully defended on a charge of patricide in 80 BC.[14][15][16][17] Titus Roscius Magnus, a relative and neighbor of the elder Sextus Roscius, who procured Sextus' murder in order to acquire his fortune, and had his son, the younger Sextus, proscribed. When the latter escaped death, Magnus and his co-conspirator, Titus Roscius Capito, accused Sextus of his father's murder.[14] Titus Roscius Capito, a relative and neighbor of Sextus Roscius, who conspired with Titus Roscius Magnus to obtain his cousin's fortune. He acquired three farms from Sextus' estate.[14] Quintus Roscius, possibly surnamed Gallus, a native of Solonium, near Lanuvium, was an illustrious comic actor during the early part of the first century BC, and became wealthy through his talents, which although well-rehearsed gave the illusion of being natural and unaffected. Cicero, who had been a pupil of Roscius, later defended him in a lawsuit over 50,000 sestertii, part of as sum previously awarded over a murdered slave.[18][19][20][21][22][23][24] Roscia, the sister of Quintus Roscius, the comic actor, married a certain Quinctius, whom Cicero defended in his oration, Pro Quinctio.[25] Lucius Roscius Otho, tribune of the plebs in 67 BC, opposed the granting of proconsular power to Pompeius, who was sent to clear the Mediterranean of pirates. He also brought forward an unpopular law awarding fourteen rows of seats to the equites at public arenas.[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Roscius, the name of two brothers who joined Crassus on his expedition against the Parthians.[34] Lucius Roscius Fabatus, one of Caesar's officers during the Gallic War, held the lower Rhine with the thirteenth legion at a time when other parts of Gaul were in revolt. praetor in 49, he served as an intermediary between Caesar and Pompeius, delivering several messages back and forth. Roscius was mortally wounded at the Battle of Forum Gallorum in 43 BC.[35][36][37] Roscius, the legate of Quintus Cornificius in Africa in 43 BC. Both were slain in battle against Titus Sextius, who had been ordered to take charge of the province by the triumvirs.[38] Marcus Roscius Coelius,[i] legate of the twentieth legion, was serving in Britain in AD 68, when the emperor Nero died. Vespasian sent Julius Agricola to replace him. Roscius was consul suffectus in AD 81, serving from the Kalends of March to the Kalends of May.[39][40][41] Roscius Regulus,[ii] appointed consul suffectus for one day in AD 69, holding the fasces on October 31 in the place of Aulus Caecina Alienus.[42] Roscii Murenae Quintus Roscius Murena, the adoptive father of Pompeius Falco. He may have been related to Marcus Roscius Coelius, the consul of AD 81, but precisely how is unclear. Quintus Roscius Sex. f. Coelius Murena Silius Decianus Vibullius Pius Julius Eurycles Herculanus Pompeius Falco,[iii] was governor of Lycia and Pamphylia, then of Judaea. He was consul in 108, from the Kalends of September to the end of the year, and subsequently governor of Lower Moesia, then of Asia.[43][41][44] Quintus Pompeius Q. f. Sex. n. [...] Bellicus Sollers Iulius Acer Ducenius Proculus Rutilianus Rufinus Silius Valens Valerius Niger Claudius Fuscus Saxa Amyntianus Sosius Priscus, consul in AD 149, and subsequently governor of Asia.[45][46][47][48] Quintus Pompeius Q. f. Q. n. Senecio Roscius Murena Coelius Sextus Iulius Frontinus Silius Decianus Gaius Iulius Eurycles Herculaneus Lucius Vibullius Pius Augustanus Alpinus Bellicius Sollers Iulius Aper Ducenius Proculus Rutilianus Rufinus Silius Valens Valerius Niger Claudius Fuscus Saxa Amyntianus Sosius Priscus, quaestor, legate under his father in Asia, praetor, consul in AD 169, and subsequently governor of Asia.[49][50] Marcus Roscius Murena, proconsul of Bithynia and Pontus around 161/162.[41][51][52] Marcus Roscius M. f. Murena, son of the preceding, held the praetorship, but precisely when is unknown.[41][51] Marcus Roscius M. f. M. n. Lupus Murena, son of the preceding. He was one of the septemviri epulones, tribune of the seventh legion, prefect of the fourth legion, and governor of Crete and Cyrenaica.[41][51] Roscii Aeliani Lucius Roscius M. f. Aelianus Maecius Celer, consul suffectus in AD 100, serving from the Kalends of November to the end of the year. He had previously been one of the decemviri stlitibus judicandis, quaestor, tribune of the plebs, and praetor.[43][41] Lucius Roscius Aelianus, consul suffectus in AD 157, probably serving from the Kalends of April to the Kalends of June.[53] Lucius Roscius (L. f.) Aelianus Paculus, consul in AD 187, was one of the Salii Palatini, and had been appointed flamen in 170.[41][54] Lucius Roscius (L. f. L. n.) Aelianus Paculus Salvius Julianus, consul in AD 223.[41][54] See also List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Or Caelius.  Or Rosius Regulus.  Evidently the son of Sextus Pompeius Falco, he was apparently adopted by a Quintus Roscius. 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. III, p. 662 ("Roscia Gens").  Chase, p. 131.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. I, pp. 121, 122 ("Ameria").  Chase, p. 113.  Scholia Bobiensia, In Ciceronis Pro Archia Poëta, p. 357 (ed. Orelli).  Dictionary of Greek and Latin Biography and Mythology, vol. III, pp. 662, 663 ("Quintus Roscius").  Chase, pp. 109, 111, 112.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s. vv. murena, lupus.  Livy, iv. 17.  Cicero, Philippicae, ix. 2.  Pliny the Elder, xxxiv. 6. s. 11.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 58.  Cicero, Pro Roscio Amerino.  Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 14.  Plutarch, The Life of Cicero, 3.  Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. v, pp. 234–244.  Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 36, ii. 31, De Oratore, i. 27–29, 59, 60, ii. 57, 59, iii. 26, 59, De Legibus, i. 4, Brutus, 84.  Horace, Epistulae, ii. 1. 82.  Plutarch, "The Life of Cicero", 5.  Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii. 10.  Valerius Maximus, viii. 7. § 7.  Pliny the Elder, vii. 39. s. 40.  Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. v, pp. 346–348.  Cicero, Pro Quinctio, 24, 25.  Cassius Dio, xxxvi. 7, 13, 25.  Plutarch, "The Life of Pompeius", 25.  Velleius Paterculus, ii. 32.  Livy, Epitome, 99.  Cicero, Pro Murena, 19.  Tacitus, Annales, xv. 32.  Horace, Epodes, iv. 15, Epistulae i. 1. 62.  Juvenal, iii. 159, xiv. 324.  Plutarch, "The Life of Crassus", 31.  Caesar, De Bello Gallico, v. 24, 53, De Bello Civili, i. 8, 10.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, vii. 13, 14, viii. 12, Epistulae ad Familiares, x. 33.  Cassius Dio, xli. 5.  Appian, Bellum Civile, iv. 56.  Tacitus, Historiae, i. 60, Agricola, 7.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for A.D. 70–96", pp. 198, 215.  PIR, vol. III, pp. 133–135.  Tacitus, Historiae, iii. 37.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244.  Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire, p. 124 ff.  CIL VI, 31753.  AE 1966, 115.  Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antonien, p. 153 (note 58).  Eck, "Die Fasti consulares der Regierungszeit des Antoninus Pius", p. 75.  CIL XIV, 3609.  Salway, "What’s in a Name?", p. 132.  Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire, p. 122.  Rémy Bernard, Les carrières sénatoriales dans les provinces romaines d'Anatolie au Haut-Empire (31 av. J.-C. - 284 ap. J.-C.) (Istanbul: Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes-Georges Dumézil, 1989), pp. 56f  Eck, "Die Fasti consulares der Regierungszeit des Antoninus Pius".  Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander, pp. 129–137. Bibliography Ancient sources Marcus Tullius Cicero, Brutus, De Divinatione, De Legibus, De Officiis, De Oratore, Epistulae ad Atticum, Epistulae ad Familiares, Philippicae, Pro Murena, Pro Quinctio, Pro Quinto Roscio Comoedo, Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino. Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War), Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War). Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Epistulae, Epodes. Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Marcus Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Satirae (Satires). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales, Historiae, De Vita et Moribus Iulii Agricolae (On the Life and Mores of Julius Agricola). Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus (Cassius Dio), Roman History. Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Saturnalia. Scholia Bobiensia (Bobbio Scholiast), In Ciceronis Pro Archia Poëta (Commentary on Cicero's Oration Pro Archia Poëta). Modern sources Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1854). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani ("The Prosopography of the Roman Empire", abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antonien (The Consulate and Senatorial State under the Antonines), Rudolf Habelt, Bonn (1977). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Wilhelm Drumann, Geschichte Roms in seinem Übergang von der republikanischen zur monarchischen Verfassung, oder: Pompeius, Caesar, Cicero und ihre Zeitgenossen, Königsberg (1834–1844). Werner Eck, "Die Fasti consulares der Regierungszeit des Antoninus Pius, eine Bestandsaufnahme seit Géza Alföldys Konsulat und Senatorenstand" ("The Consular Fasti for the Reign of Antoninus Pius: an Inventory since Géza Alföldy's Konsulat und Senatorenstand"), in Studia Epigraphica in Memoriam Géza Alföldy, Werner Eck, Bence Fehér, Péter Kovács, eds., Bonn, pp. 69–90 (2013). Paul A. Gallivan, "The Fasti for A.D. 70–96", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 186–220 (1981). Paul M. M. Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander, Verlag Gieben, Amsterdam, (1989). Olli Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki (1992). Benet Salway, "What’s in a Name? A Survey of Roman Onomastic Practice from c. 700 B.C. to A.D. 700", in Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 84, pp. 124–145 (1994). Categories: RosciiRoman gentes and from THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Roscio – Ossia: Grice e Roscio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Roscio For the Roscii, there are several magnificent candidates, but one stands above the rest for a Gricean: Grice e Quinto Roscio Comoedo The famous actor Quintus Roscius, whom Cicero knew personally, studied under, and later defended in court. The ancient tradition repeatedly praises him for an extraordinary quality:  his acting was highly disciplined and carefully rehearsed, yet appeared perfectly natural and effortless. [GREXv2 | Word]  This is almost a textbook Gricean paradox. The Roscius Problem A bad actor makes you notice:  "He is acting."  A great actor makes you think:  "He is simply that person."  Yet the second performance is, if anything, even more artificial and prepared. Thus: Speranza:  Quid est ars Roscii? (What is Roscius' art?)  Grice:  Ars quae artem celat. (An art that conceals art.)  +> The more successful the performance, the less the audience notices the performance.  Grice and Naturalness One of Grice's recurring concerns is the contrast between:  what is overtly produced, what is taken as natural.  Roscius seems to have achieved exactly that effect. The audience does not infer:  "What excellent technique."  Instead:  "How spontaneous!"  even though the spontaneity is itself the product of technique. [GREXv2 | Word] A Gricean might compare this with conversation. The best conversationalist is often not the most visibly skillful, but the one whose skill disappears into the interaction. Hardie: And that finished our lesson in Roman philosophy. Any questions. Grice (tutee): Tullio Cicero's tutor was an actor -- as If I were educated by Sir Henry Irving, rather than you? Hardie: Quite. One can almost hear Hardie's dry Oxford tone. Hardie and Grice on Roscius Hardie:  And that concludes our survey of Roman philosophy. Any questions?  Grice:  Only one, sir. Are we to understand that Cicero, prince of Roman orators, was partly educated by an actor? [GREXv2 | Word]  Hardie:  Quite.  Grice:  As though I were studying under Sir Henry Irving rather than under you?  Hardie:  Not entirely. Rather as if, besides being tutored by me, you also took lessons in delivery from Irving.  Grice:  Delivery?  Hardie:  Delivery.   In fairness to Hardie, the Romans would not have found this odd at all. For them, oratory was not merely:  finding arguments, arranging arguments,  but also:  voice, gesture, timing, expression.  And Quintus Roscius was celebrated precisely because his art appeared effortless and natural. Cicero himself discusses Roscius repeatedly and clearly admired him. [GREXv2 | Word] So the Roman contrast would not be:              PhilosopherActorthoughtmere entertainment but rather:              PhilosopherActorwhat to sayhow to say it  A very Gricean moral emerges. Hardie:  Logic may tell you what proposition to express.  Grice:  Yes?  Hardie:  Roscius teaches how expression itself contributes to meaning.  Grice:  Ah. So speaker-meaning has a theatrical component?  Hardie:  Precisely.  One might almost say that Roscius taught Cicero the art of making the audience infer that something was spontaneous, sincere, and natural—even when it had been carefully prepared. That sounds remarkably close to problems that would later interest Grice about intention, recognition, and communication. [GREXv2 | Word] And Hardie's concluding remark might have been:  "My dear Grice, Rome did not separate rhetoric, drama, and philosophy as neatly as modern dons do." and what is the word Cicero used for 'actor'? Thanks Cicero uses more than one word, depending on emphasis. For Quintus Roscius, the most characteristic term is:  comoedus "comic actor". [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikisource.org]  Indeed the surviving speech is conventionally titled:  Pro Q. Roscio Comoedo ("For Quintus Roscius the Comic Actor"). [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikisource.org]  That is probably the word Cicero himself would have preferred in this context. But there are other possibilities:  actor = performer, actor. histrio = actor, stage-player, often with a somewhat lower or more general flavour. comoedus = specifically a comic actor.  The distinction is rather like:                      LatinApproximate forceactorperformerhistrioactor/stage-playercomoeduscomic actor Roscius was famous above all as a comic performer, which is why comoedus became almost attached to his name. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Now your Hardie dialogue becomes even better: Grice:  Cicero's tutor was a comoedus?  Hardie:  Quite.  Grice:  Not merely a schoolmaster?  Hardie:  The greatest comic actor in Rome.  Grice:  As though Demosthenes had taken lessons from Aristophanes?  Hardie:  Nearer the mark.  And the irony is that Cicero himself seems not to have regarded this as odd. Our sources explicitly report that Roscius instructed Cicero, that the two compared acting and oratory, and that Roscius wrote on the relationship between performance and speaking. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] In fact, a Roman might have thought your Oxford distinction between philosopher and actor too sharp. For Cicero, an orator had to master:  vox, vultus, gestus (voice, expression, gesture),  and who better to teach those than a comoedus? The actor teaches not quid dicas ("what to say") but quomodo dicas ("how to say it").

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Roscio – Ossia: Grice e Roscio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Roscio A second candidate: Sextus Roscius Amerinus This is the hero of Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino, one of Cicero's most famous speeches. His father was murdered, and he was falsely accused of patricide by relatives seeking to profit from the estate. [GREXv2 | Word] Here the Gricean issue is:  Who has correctly interpreted the facts?  The trial becomes a battle of competing narratives. Accuser:  He killed his father.  Cicero:  No, others killed the father and accuse the son.  +> The same facts support rival explanatory stories. That is highly Gricean, but it belongs largely to Cicero.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Roscio – Ossia: Grice e Roscio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Roscio A third candidate: Lucius Roscius Otho As tribune, Lucius Roscius Otho introduced the famous law reserving fourteen rows of seats for the equestrian order. The measure was deeply unpopular. [GREXv2 | Word] A Gricean could explore:  what seating arrangements communicate about social rank.  The arrangement of space becomes a social utterance:  +> These people are not equal. My verdict The finest Roscian vignette is: Grice e Roscio Comoedo Speranza:  Cur Roscius laudatur? (Why is Roscius praised?)  Grice:  Quia artificium suum occultabat. (Because he concealed his artistry.)  Speranza:  Nonne ars ostendenda est? (Should not art be displayed?)  Grice:  Optima ars naturalis videri vult. (The finest art wishes to appear natural.)  +> The highest accomplishment is often that which leaves the least visible trace of accomplishment. Of all the Roscii, I suspect Quintus Roscius would most delight Grice: a performer whose success depended on making deliberate communication appear effortless and uncontrived. [GREXv2 | Word]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Grice e Rosselli. Rosselli, Cosimo (1499). Libro di Antonio Pollaiuolo. Firenze: Stamperia di Lorenzo Morgiani.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rosselli – Ossia: Grice e Rosselli – scuola di Firenze – filosofia toscana -- filosofia italiana Cosimo Rosselli (Firenze, Toscana). Per limitarsi ai filosofi italiani, di mnemotecnica si occuparono DOLCE  in “Della memoria”, il domenicano fiorentino R. In “Thesaurus artificiosæ memoriæ” (Venezia), e BRUNO , che nella sua “De umbris idearum” (Parigi), da lui dedicata a Enrico IlI di Francia e che gli procura una cattedra, espone l'Ars magna di Lullo e dà un fondamento metafisico-gnoseologico alla mnemotecnica che appoggia sempre al sistema topologico-simbolico. Del resto, l'insegnamento di quest'arte, della cui efficacia BRUNO porta a testimonio la propria memoria eccezionale, gli da spesso i mezzi per vivere. Altri filosofi italiani che scriveno di mnemotecnica sono PORTA  nell’”Ars reminiscendi” (Napoli), MARAFIOTI , di Polistena nell’“Ars memoriæ’ (Venezia), e il palermitano BRANCACCIO  nell’ “Ars memoriæ vindicata” (Palermo). THESAVRVS ARTIFICIOSÆ MEMORIÆ, Concionatoribus, philosophis medicis iuristis oratoribus procuratoribus,czterisd; bonarum litterarum amatoribus: Wigocisfócibn, infüper,alijsd; fimilibus, tenacem, ac firmam rerum MrzMoR:IAM cupientibus, perutilis. vc omnes [ui amatores, po[fessores valde locuplesansyinfimnla, decoranss cum rerum celestium atque terrestrium tenax, ac tutum fcrinium esse poffit; AKFTHORE R. P. F. R. florentino, sacri ord. pradic. minimo professore cum indicibus locupletiffimis, tum Capitum, tum rerum omnium infigniorum CVM PRIVILEGIO, VENEZIA. Apud Antonium Paduanium, Billiopolam Florentinum. Y Vet vtæ kh VG 4 mI TT. ie S i et, 8 SUY CPC Eos beriganiots bibsM, didi Ol: "i ern Mepoionols f Ron dA Gu zn iud qpetzarsoei idi pt8s03011, zr Lo Sub. PEMQPOSGENE C17 3 H eR i iendino minos 1 » ÆMz l4 Ed sæ TIPS p18. iet E em mum e Y La 34 1 "5 28 Y NC i i Me p po Asus i venera eu Tow mite. iip nius kt pot Fendisiba? mu $ GENET n , Fr aram iilerte T $ Es PCTNCMEOS. f ILLVSTRISSIMO, svb TN PIRE PAN D.O.M TWO DOMINO mnenomico, personal identity and memory, chiave universale.  St John’s, 1938. I am told I ought to start “digging” at personal identity, and perhaps to produce something sufficiently mindful for Mind—that funny little quarterly “of psychology and philosophy,” now under the editorship of good old G. E. Moore, the Irishman of Philosophical Letters at Cambridge. I keep telling myself I should stick to Locke; I doubt Moore would welcome a detour through Rosselli. And yet Rosselli’s Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae—printed, if the catalogue is to be believed, in 1579—gets into print way before Locke does in 1690; Rosselli is misremembered, or simply forgotten, while Locke’s Mnemosyne still passes for current currency. It is a strange moral: posterity can remember a theory of memory while forgetting a book about memory. Still, one must be prudent. “Padovani” has the wrong accent for the Mind Association; “Locke” sounds like the right sort of key. Sometimes I suspect I was born a Bolognese—too fond of dusty Latin titles, too eager to rescue minor men from major oblivion, and too ready to think that the true test of a philosophy is whether it survives being cited.” Grice was pleased that it was Daminano Rosselli who cared to publish Cosimo’s Thesaurus – posthumously – the irony of a memory outliving its author, he would say. [Grice’s Domenico Rosselli was Harvard University Press. He submitted the manuscript to Harvard in 1987. Grice died in 1989. Studies in the Way of Words appeared in print in 1989.  You’ve got a genuinely nice parallel, but it will land much better (and avoid factual trip‑wires) if you tighten three things: (i) the timeline, (ii) the names/roles (your “Damiano Rosselli” vs “Harvard”), and (iii) what exactly is meant by “posthumous” in Grice’s case.   Fix the Grice dates in your bracket note Grice died in August 1988 (not 1989). Studies in the Way of Words appeared in 1989. So the clean parallel line is: “Grice died in 1988; the book appeared in 1989.” If you keep “submitted the manuscript in 1987,” label it as “reportedly/according to…” unless you have a source in your notes.   Don’t personify Harvard University Press as “Damiano Rosselli” too literally Damiano Rosselli is (in the Rosselli story) an editor/producer who sees the book through the press after the author’s death. Harvard University Press is an institution, not a person—so the neat analogy is: Damiano Rosselli : Rosselli :: Grice’s editors at HUP : Grice. If you want a single “Damiano figure,” pick a role label rather than a name you can’t document, e.g. “Grice’s editor at Harvard University Press” or “the Press’s editor” or “the volume editor(s).”   Make the irony sharper by stressing “not labeled posthumous” Your best rhetorical point is: Rosselli’s Thesaurus is explicitly posthumous (1579 after 1578), whereas Grice’s Studies comes out after his death but is usually presented simply as a normal 1989 Harvard book, not marketed as “posthumous.” That contrast is funny in a Gricean way: even death doesn’t get an explicit implicature unless the publisher makes it explicit.   A clean replacement for your bracketed passage (still just here, not for insertion) Something like: “Grice enjoyed the symmetry: Rosselli dies in 1578, and the Thesaurus appears in 1579 under Damiano’s care—memory outliving its author by a year. He noticed, with quieter amusement, that his own Studies in the Way of Words did the same trick: he died in August 1988, and Harvard University Press brought the volume out in 1989, without even advertising the fact as ‘posthumous’—as if the Press thought death too crude a bibliographical datum, best left as an implicature for the attentive reader.”   One factual caution inside the Rosselli line you may want to soften later “son Damiano” is often said, but you’ll want to phrase it as “edited/published posthumously by Damiano Rosselli” unless you have a specific bibliographic authority for the kinship claim. (It’s an easy place for a reviewer to pounce.)Grice: Rosselli, a Firenze la memoria sembra avere un indirizzo preciso, quasi una via: Thesaurus, ars, ombre, e perfino un “privilegio” veneziano. Ne accennavo ieri, di sfuggita, al collega filosofo Speranza: lui dice che i domenicani, quando parlano di memoria, in realtà stanno già arredando la testa. Rosselli: È una scuola, Grice: non si predica soltanto, si dispone. Un “thesaurus” non è una raccolta: è un metodo, una topologia, una stanza dopo l’altra. E se poi Bruno ci mette le ombre e Lullo la macchina, Firenze ci mette la pianta dell’edificio: la memoria come architettura. Grice: Proprio dopo averci ragionato con Speranza mi è tornata addosso quella parola latina che nel suo titolo fa finta di essere solo un insulto: cucullati. Si parte da cucullus, il cappuccio—e dal cappuccio si arriva al tipo umano. Basta un pezzo di stoffa perché la polemica smetta di discutere idee e cominci a riconoscere persone a distanza: non “quelli che sostengono X”, ma “quelli col cappuccio”. E la cosa buffa è che il cappuccio, nato per coprire, finisce per scoprire: ti identifica prima ancora che tu apra bocca. Rosselli: Implicatura cucullata, sua, come Speranza la nominerebbe. Perché con una parola d’abito lei ha fatto vedere un intero trucco da apologeta: ridurre una dottrina a una silhouette. E nel frattempo, da buon fiorentino, le viene naturale collegare il cappuccio alla mnemotecnica: anche lì si lavora per segni esterni—stanze, immagini, etichette—che decidono chi sei prima che tu parli. In fondo, tra thesaurus e cucullus cambia poco: è sempre un modo di mettere ordine… scegliendo prima il costume. The passage below -- contains a reminiscence by G. on memory and Rosselli -- please turn it and further material from passage into a 100-move conversation between G. and S -- just the conv., no preamble or ps -- on memory as G. is finishing the draft for 'Personal identity' to submit to "Mind" before wearing is navy uniform -- and say 'Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicestersquare etc dry humour, Oxonian. see if you can connect with elemnts of memory, brain traces, brain traces of memory, etc that Grice uses to solve the counterexample by Reid, even when scholars assume that Locke never felt, nor his successors did, that Reid produced a counterexample at all in that Locke already proposes a response to the counterexample (alleged) with which Reid will come up much later -- but the Englis never took Reid (being a Scot) too seriusly -- and G. knows that the editor of "Mind" will not, either! -- G.: I am supposed to be digging at personal identity, which is a phrase so agricultural that one expects potatoes rather than persons. S.: Mind will print potatoes if Moore can find a distinction in them. G.: Quite. And yet here I am, with Locke on the desk, Rosselli in the catalogue, and the Navy hanging over my wardrobe like an unpaid metaphysician. S.: Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square. G.: Precisely. One likes to imagine oneself marching off under music rather than under editors. S.: Moore as drum-major would be worth seeing. G.: Only once. The real question is whether I can finish the draft for Mind before I have to exchange tweed for blue. S.: And the topic remains personal identity by memory. G.: Yes, with Locke in the foreground, Reid peering from the north like a conscientious interruption, and all the while the suspicion that the English never took Reid very seriously because he was a Scot and therefore sounded as if he meant to improve them. S.: Which is unforgivable. G.: Deeply. The English will forgive metaphysics sooner than improvement. S.: Still, Reid’s brave officer seems to trouble generations of undergraduates. G.: Only because generations of undergraduates enjoy anything that sounds like a counterexample. S.: You mean the old sequence: the boy flogged at school, the brave officer who remembers the flogging, and the old general who remembers taking the standard but not the flogging. G.: Exactly. Reid says Locke is committed to the officer being the same person as the boy, and the general the same as the officer, but not the same as the boy, which offends transitivity and therefore common decency. S.: And you think Locke saw something already. G.: I think Locke was less helpless than the textbook ritual suggests. He does not say that a present episodic recollection is the sole and exhaustive criterion without remainder. He is after consciousness as appropriated action, not mere parlour memory. S.: Yet the standard presentation says memory theory, and then Reid comes in like a Scottish janitor with a broom. G.: Yes, because the history of philosophy likes tidy floors. But Locke’s talk of consciousness, of being the same self as far as this consciousness extends, leaves room for a more subtle account of connectedness than mere occurrent recollection. S.: So you mean to help him with brain traces. G.: Help is perhaps too generous. I mean to save the theory from a cheap refutation by saying that what matters may be represented physically as a chain of trace-connections capable of underwriting memory, even if not all links are presently lit. S.: That sounds dangerously scientific for Mind. G.: Moore will endure a trace if I present it with enough English diffidence. S.: What exactly is a brain trace in your use? G.: Not a vulgar scratch on cerebral slate, but a persisting physical basis for the potential revival of experience, a condition for memory’s reoccurrence. S.: So the old general need not now remember the flogging if there is a suitable chain of traces from the boy to the officer to the general. G.: Exactly. The officer’s memory of the flogging and the general’s memory of the standard belong to one continuous psychophysical history, even if direct recollection has faded. S.: Then the identity relation is not “remembers directly” but something like “belongs to one overlapping continuity of memory-capacities grounded in traces.” G.: Much better than most of the literature, yes. S.: You say that too easily. G.: I have had a long morning. S.: Then Reid’s alleged counterexample dissolves if one stops fetishising present recollection. G.: Precisely. The mistake is to read Locke as though he were offering a punctual criterion with no temporal depth. But consciousness can extend mediately through connected mnemonic structure. S.: So the officer and the general are linked not because the general now remembers the flogging, but because the general stands in the right continuity relation to a stage that did. G.: Exactly. Which is why I suspect the editor of Mind will not be over-impressed by Reid’s parade-ground dramatics. S.: Moore does not care much for Scottish parade-ground dramatics. G.: Nor for melodrama of any kind unless it conceals an ambiguity. S.: There are several ambiguities here. G.: Deliciously so. “Memory” itself is a nuisance. Does it mean occurrent recollection, stored disposition, recognitional power, trace-preservation, or a public report that one remembers? S.: Undergraduates usually mean the first and write confidently. G.: Undergraduates usually mean whatever lets them end the essay by tea. S.: Then your strategy is to shift from memory as act to memory as capacity. G.: Better: from memory as isolated act to memory as structured system of capacities and traces. S.: Which sounds almost Rossellian. G.: Ah yes, Rosselli and his Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae, arriving indecently early in the story and then being forgotten by posterity while Locke gets remembered as if he invented recollection itself. S.: A good moral there. G.: A very good one. Posterity remembers theories of memory and forgets books on memory. S.: You are tempted to detour through him. G.: Very much so, but Moore would not welcome a Florentine mnemonic Dominican smuggled into an article on Locke. S.: He might, if the Latin were brief. G.: Nothing Florentine is brief when there are chambers of memory involved. S.: Still, the architecture helps your traces. G.: Indeed. The old mnemotechnic notion that memory requires ordered places and deposited images is not so far, mutatis mutandis, from my thought that recollection needs durable organisation in the person’s physical and psychological economy. S.: So instead of rooms and images, you give traces and associations. G.: Precisely. The soul is translated into a less decorative warehouse. S.: And the brave officer into neurology. G.: Into very mild neurology. I do not want Mind thinking I have enlisted under Pavlov before I enlist under the Navy. S.: Yet the trace language lets you say that the general may still be the same person as the boy because what matters is not present report but historical continuity of retained structure. G.: Exactly. If stage A leaves traces that sustain memory at stage B, and stage B leaves traces that sustain memory at stage C, then A, B, and C are connected even where C no longer directly revives A. S.: So the transitivity problem disappears because the identity-maker is not the relation of present remembering, which is not transitive, but the broader continuity relation. G.: That is the whole salvage operation. S.: Why not just say Locke meant that? G.: Because scholars dislike being told that their favourite refutation is over-furnished. S.: And because Locke did not have your trace-language. G.: Precisely. One must be fair. He had consciousness, appropriation, and personal concern; I supply a model for continuity that stops Reid from winning by grammar. S.: Does this make the theory too bodily for Locke? G.: Perhaps for some tastes. But Locke was never shy of saying that God could annex consciousness to different substances, which already means that the story cannot be made to hang on substance alone. If bodily traces are the normal vehicle, that is not a betrayal, only a naturalisation. S.: A dangerous word in Oxford. G.: Very. But less dangerous in print if one keeps the tone apologetically domestic. S.: You mean one says “brain traces” once, then retreats into “continuity.” G.: Exactly. Never frighten an editor more than the page can carry. S.: And Reid? G.: Reid remains useful as irritant. Scots are very good at being usefully irritating. S.: Yet you said the English never took him fully seriously. G.: They took him seriously enough to quote him and not seriously enough to let him spoil Locke permanently. There is a peculiarly English way of honouring a Scot by turning him into a tutorial nuisance rather than a victor. S.: So Moore will likely regard Reid as brisk but not fatal. G.: I hope so. Moore likes precision, not theatrical collapse. S.: Then how does personal identity finally read in your draft? G.: As the persistence of a person through a continuity of psychological life centrally involving memory, but not exhausted by any one moment of actual recollection. S.: You avoid strict criterion-language. G.: I try to. Criteria breed trouble in philosophy like damp breeds mildew. S.: And the Navy? G.: The Navy breeds uniforms, which is the immediate concern. S.: Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square. G.: You are enjoying that too much. S.: Only enough. But surely the uniform adds something to personal identity. G.: It does. It gives one a public sign under which strangers may misidentify the private continuant. S.: A uniform is a visible criterion with no metaphysical force. G.: Splendid. Keep that for some future occasion. S.: Happily. But does your trace-continuity account allow for false memories? G.: Of course. That is another reason to prefer continuity over isolated occurrent recollection. A present memory-claim may be false even where the person remains the same. Identity cannot hang on every report of inward revival. S.: So memory evidence is defeasible. G.: Entirely. One may misremember and remain oneself. S.: Then Locke’s deeper point is about ownership of experience, not infallibility of retrieval. G.: Very good. The self is where consciousness can rightly appropriate past action as its own. Trace-continuity explains how such appropriation may be historically sustained even when its explicit manifestations are partial. S.: And Reid’s boy, officer, and general become a misunderstanding born of treating “remembers” as if it were both sufficient and exclusive. G.: Yes. Reid attacks a caricature with admirable Scottish energy. S.: That too is almost a line. G.: Keep it but shave the adjective. S.: “Reid attacks a caricature with Scottish energy.” G.: Better. S.: And what of the famous objection that your continuity relation threatens circularity, since one must already know which experiences belong to the same person in order to count them as connected memories? G.: Ah, one of the few respectable objections. The answer is that the continuity relation is not defined by presupposing identity at each point, but by causal-psychological linkage among states that stand in the right experiential succession. S.: So one individuates the chain by actual dependence, not by mere report. G.: Precisely. A memory-state at t2 is connected to an experience at t1 if it depends in the right way on a trace left by that experience. S.: Then we are really quite close to what later philosophers will call causal theories of memory. G.: Uncomfortably close, yes, which means I must phrase it as though it were only common sense in a well-combed form. S.: Moore likes common sense well-combed. G.: He likes it almost shaved. S.: Does your draft mention Rosselli at all? G.: No. Rosselli remains my private amusement, not my public argument. S.: A pity. G.: One cannot do everything in one paper. Mind is not a Venetian memory palace. S.: Yet the irony of a mnemonic treatise printed a century before Locke and then forgotten while Locke becomes canonical is almost too good to waste. G.: I know. But some pleasures must remain private if one wants publication before conscription. S.: That sounds almost like a maxim. G.: It is merely administrative wisdom. S.: Then let me ask the more Lockean question. If identity consists in continuity of consciousness, why do you need traces at all? G.: Because otherwise continuity becomes magical. If one says merely that consciousness extends, one owes some account of how it extends across interruptions, sleep, forgetting, and bodily change. S.: So traces are the machinery of extension. G.: Exactly. They are what keep consciousness from becoming a metaphysical elastic band. S.: And sleep? G.: No problem, provided the trace-system remains intact enough to permit resumption of the same psychological life. S.: Then the person persists through intervals of non-consciousness because the conditions for resumed consciousness belong to one continuing organism. G.: Precisely. Locke is often caricatured as making the self blink out between naps. One must rescue him from readers who think consciousness means uninterrupted occurrent notice. S.: And the brave officer again? G.: The brave officer is only a moment in a sequence, not the arbiter of the whole. His direct memory of the flogging shows one overlap. The general’s memory of the standard shows another. The chain suffices. S.: So personal identity is preserved by overlap, not by universal direct recall. G.: Exactly. S.: That seems almost too easy. G.: Only because bad objections are often too easy. S.: You are in a sour mood toward Scotland. G.: Not Scotland, only its use in lecture notes. S.: Then perhaps you should add a sentence saying that Reid’s example presses only against a crude memory criterion, not against a continuity theory faithful to Locke’s deeper intention. G.: That is very nearly what I shall do. S.: And “brain traces”? G.: Perhaps “physiological traces” if I wish to sound less like a laboratory assistant. S.: “Brain traces” is brisker. G.: Briskness is not always one’s friend before Moore. S.: True. He prefers sentences to arrive ironed. G.: Exactly. One must never startle Cambridge more than is required. S.: Yet the phrase has force. G.: It does. And one may perhaps risk it once, if only to show that memory is not an ethereal visiter but a function of preserved conditions. S.: Then your view becomes that what matters is not present introspective availability but persisting structure capable of grounding appropriate remembrance. G.: Yes. That is the whole point in one sentence. S.: Good. I shall remember it. G.: If you do not, I shall trust the trace. S.: Very nice. And the title? G.: Personal Identity. Brutally plain, which editors adore because they think it promises submission. S.: And what do you really submit? G.: A polite correction to Locke’s readers, a gentle dismissal of Reid’s triumph, and an essay sufficiently mindful for Mind. S.: Before the uniform. G.: Before the uniform, yes. S.: Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square. G.: If you repeat it once more, I shall enlist you. S.: I should be useless at sea. G.: Most philosophers are; that never stopped them becoming admirals of distinctions. S.: Then what of the line in Locke scholars that Reid is no counterexample because Locke himself already has the materials to answer him? G.: That line is right, in part. Locke’s resources are richer than the caricature. What I add is not contradiction but articulation. Reid’s case fails because Locke never needed to tie identity to uninterrupted direct recollection in the crude way supposed. S.: So you are really doing exegesis with reinforcements. G.: Precisely. One cannot send Locke to Mind undefended against Scotland armed only with piety. S.: And the editor will like the anti-Scottish conclusion? G.: Moore will like the anti-muddle conclusion. The Scots enter only as weather. S.: You are incorrigible. G.: Which is why the piece may succeed. S.: Does uniformed service alter personal identity? G.: It alters the surface, the expectations, the public pronouns, and perhaps the patience, but not the continuant, unless the traces are very badly handled. S.: Then the Navy may dress the person without constituting him. G.: Exactly. Another useful distinction. S.: You are full of them today. G.: One must stockpile before war. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently naval, with one eye on Locke and the other on the post. S.: And the punchline? G.: If Reid thinks he has sunk Locke with a brave officer and an old general, he has merely shown that direct memory is a poor admiral; continuity, with a few discreet traces below deck, still commands the ship.Rosselli, Cosimo (1578). Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae. Published posthumously the next year by his son Damiano. Venezia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rosselli – Ossia: Grice e Rosselli: la ragione conversazionale dell’apologeticus, o implicature cucullate Tiberio Rosselli (Gimiliano, Catanzaro, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale dell’apologeticus, o implicature cucullate. Far dobbiamo onorevole menzione di lui, letterato insigne del suo tempo e filosofo di grido, Cattedratico in Napoli ed in Salerno; il quale, a dir del Barrio, partitosi pel genio di visitare l'Africa, e ucciso dal proprio schiavo. Della famiglia di cui è stata la madre del celeberrimo Scorza, matematico distintissimo, istruttore, autore di merito, ed illustratore della scienza per metodi ed invenzioni, morto non ha guari in Napoli. Conchiudendo adunque, pare non dubbio essere stato Nifo calabrese di origine, ed avere avuto tra noi i primi rudimenti di letteratura, tali da avergli dato a vivere. Dal contesto di scrittori calabresi, contemporanei alcuni, e vivuti altri dopo breve tempo della morte di lui, a cui noto veniva per recente tradizione, chiaramente se ne rivela il vero. Discepolo del celebre NIFO , per la sua dottrina e prescelto a leggere filosofia per più anni a Salerno. Saggi: “Apologeticus adversus cucullatos philosophiae declamatio ad Leonem X Oratio habita Patavi in principio suarum disputationum; “De propositione de inesse secundum Aristotelis mentem libellu” --- LIZIO -- ; “Universalia Porphiriana”. Calabria, Le biografie degl’uomini illustri delle Calabrie, Accattatis, Di questo filosofo si occupano nei loro studi, tra gli altri, Zambelli e Franco. "Rosselli di Gimigliano. Dalle origini a noi" (O/esse) che ricostruisce la sua vita e le sue opera. Dizionario biografico degl’italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. L'Apologeticus adversos cucullatos è un'opera del filosofo Tiberio Rosselli (1490 Gimigliano - 1560 Africa), pubblicata nel 1519 a Parma grazie a Girolamo Sanvitale che accoglie il filosofo calabrese presso la sua corte di Fontanellato.  Apologeticus adversos cucullatos Autore Tiberio Rosselli 1ª ed. originale 1519 Genere Apologia Lingua originale latino apologeticus, adversus cucullatos philosophiae; de propositione de inesse, universalia porphiriana, Lizio.  Corpus, 1934. What are you reading, Shropshire? I asked him. The question was not otiose. He had a book open on one side, the birds were doing their own effortless commentary in the trees of the quad, and on his other side a notebook lay ready with a pen, like a minor conspiracy. It had the look of work smuggled into leisure. Nothing of importance, Grice, he said, without looking up. I’m getting tired of the Olds, as Hardie has them, so I’m preparing for the Mods. He meant Moderns, part of Greats. We called them Mods on purpose, partly for the equivocation—mods as moderns, mods as moderations—and partly because Hardie’s idea of “moderation” was always either anti-akrasatic or stupid. Anti-akrasatic was Shropshire’s and my term for everything Aristotle disqualifies but Oxford nevertheless recommends as “sound training.” But what is it? I insisted. He sighed in the manner of a man whose privacy has been breached by grammar. All right, if you insist. It’s Tiberio Rosselli’s little syllabus for a session at Bologna—long before our lot were licensed to be tedious. A sheet of conclusions, posted for a disputation. If you must have the title: Conclusiones philosophicae, numero CCCC. Bononia, publice. That’s why you’re taking notes? Precisely. A high number of conclusions for one debate, I said. Four hundred is not a debate; it’s an epidemic. That’s the point, Shropshire said. It wouldn’t work here with Hardie. He’s half asleep by your third conclusion, and totally in limbo by the time I begin my own trio. (Hardie’s system of dual tutorials is a masterpiece of economy: it allows him to golf both Thursday and Friday while we do the work of looking earnest.) I took the book from him with the care one gives to contraband. Rosselli, I said, had a plan. Of course he had a plan, Shropshire said. He cannot expect any rational being to endure CCCC conclusiones philosophicae. That is precisely what he is proving. Proving what? By reduction, that no such rational being exists. Or at least, none in Bologna. Possibly none anywhere. The disputation is the experiment; boredom is the datum. So the conclusions are in some logical order? Not from what I can gather. They look arranged by a principle more medieval than logical: the principle of running out of wall. But to be honest, I started at the end. Conclusio CCCC is so brief that it hurts. He turned the page back as if turning a dagger. What does he conclude? He read it with an exaggerated academic solemnity, the sort one adopts when one is about to do something unserious with Latin. Quod de quo loqui non possumus, de eo tacere debemus. I said: That is Wittgenstein. It is Rosselli, Shropshire replied, tapping the page. Wittgenstein is merely the late gloss. Then your preparation for the Mods consists in copying out a conclusion which orders you not to say anything. Exactly. It is the only conclusion in the set that Hardie cannot complain is too long. But surely, I said, if the last conclusion tells you to be silent, the whole disputation collapses at the end into a sort of official muteness. The final move is to forbid moves. Yes, Shropshire said. It is the cleanest way of winning a disputation in advance. You announce the conditions under which discussion must stop, and then you arrange, by sheer quantity, that everyone reaches those conditions by fatigue rather than argument. And what do you write in your notebook, then? Nothing, Shropshire said, with a small satisfied look. That is the beauty of it. I am taking notes on a text whose last instruction is that one must take no notes. My preparation is, so to speak, impeccable. You mean: silent. No, he said. I mean: economical. Silence is only the extreme case of good style. At which point a bell went, somewhere, and the quad resumed its usual business of pretending that time is a kind of etiquette. Shropshire put the book back down beside him as one puts down an object that has already made its point. And Hardie? I asked. Hardie, he said, will call it unhistorical. Then he will yawn. Then he will tell us to read Aristotle. In that order. And Rosselli? Rosselli, he said, had Bologna. We have Hardie. Every century has the disputation it deserves.Grice: Rosselli, lei ha un titolo che sembra già una discussione fatta in latino e finita a cappuccio: apologeticus adversus cucullatos. Ne accennavo ieri, di sfuggita, al collega filosofo Speranza: lui sostiene che appena compare un cappuccio, il filosofo diventa improvvisamente più coraggioso. Rosselli: A Gimigliano, caro Grice, il cappuccio non serve a nascondere: serve a mettere a fuoco. E poi “cucullati” è un bersaglio comodo: se non capiscono l’argomento, capiscono almeno l’abito. È già mezza ragione conversazionale, e pure economica. Grice: Proprio dopo quella chiacchierata con Speranza mi è venuta la curiosità per la parola stessa. Cucullati… suona come un’accusa, ma nasce da una cosa innocente: il cucullus, il cappuccio latino. E il bello è che il cappuccio, da copertura, diventa etichetta: non “quelli che pensano così”, ma “quelli col cappuccio”. È un modo svelto di passare dall’argomento alla persona — o meglio, alla testa coperta. Rosselli: Implicatura cucullata, sua, come Speranza la nominerebbe. Perché lei ha fatto vedere come un lemmino da guardaroba diventi una categoria polemica: non ti confuto, ti incappuccio. E nell’apologeticus funziona benissimo: basta un cucullus e il dibattito si accende, mentre l’avversario resta lì, riconoscibile a distanza — anche se non ha ancora aperto bocca. Rosselli, Tiberio (1518). Conclusiones philosophicae, numero CCCC. Bononia, Facultate Artium

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rossetti – Ossia: Grice e Rossetti post-raphaelite -- (Vasto, Toscana). Speranza knows that Rossetti is a VERY COMMON surname -- but since he has Grice dialoguing with one Rossetti, he wonders if he can have him dialogue with another. So the question, and Speranza gives the passage of the OTHER Rossetti below -- is: which is the direct italian-born of the Rossettis that established in London and became the founder of the pre-raphaelites -- please provide a genealogy -- as to where this branch of Rossettis originated and how UN-ITALIAN Rossetti thought he was and how ITALIAN the Londoners thought he was (not) etc -- just provide a 100-move conversation between G. and S. about this Italian-born Rossetti who spawn the famous one associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and why it did matter that he was an Italian and that his descendant was also -- only an italian can be not a post-raphaelite, but a pre-one -- etc keep dry Oxonian humour, no preamble or ps -- thank you G.: Rossetti is a common enough surname, which is precisely why one must be fussy at the beginning and genealogical before luncheon. S.: Then the Rossetti you want for the London branch is not your Vastese cave-hunter, but Gabriele Rossetti, born at Vasto in 1783 and dead in London in 1854. [en.wikipedia.org] G.: Exactly. He is the direct Italian-born progenitor of the Rossetti family in London that produces Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and Maria Francesca Rossetti. [en.wikipedia.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: So the bare genealogy runs like this: Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti, Italian exile from Vasto, marries Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, daughter of Gaetano Polidori, another Italian man of letters settled in London. [en.wikipedia.org] G.: And from that marriage come the four London children, all born in England, though in a household so Italian that England must have seemed a local inconvenience. [amershammuseum.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: Let us state them properly, since the Victorians liked order when it could be made familial: Maria Francesca Rossetti, born 1827; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, born 1828; William Michael Rossetti, born 1829; Christina Rossetti, born 1830. [en.wikipedia.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: A very productive domestic republic, and rather more successful than several political ones. S.: Then the first answer to Speranza’s question is plain. The direct Italian-born ancestor of the Pre-Raphaelite Rossettis is Gabriele Rossetti, not any other Rossetti of Vasto or Venice or elsewhere. [en.wikipedia.org] G.: Quite. And his branch originates in Vasto, in Abruzzo, in the old Kingdom of Naples, before it becomes intellectually portable and politically inconvenient. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] S.: Which already matters, because Gabriele Rossetti is not an incidental immigrant but an exile, a patriot, a Dante scholar, a teacher of Italian, and a man whose whole London existence is conditioned by having been born elsewhere. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] G.: Precisely. One should not sentimentalise exile, but one should also not treat it as mere postal redirection. S.: He leaves the Kingdom of Naples after the constitutional crisis of 1821, spends time in Malta, and reaches London in 1824. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] G.: There to support himself by teaching Italian and eventually by becoming Professor of Italian at King’s College London. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] S.: Which is already enough to make him an English type under foreign description: the exile who becomes an institution. G.: England likes those, provided they teach grammar and not insurrection. S.: And Frances Polidori complicates the genealogy nicely, because she too comes from an Italian expatriate family, though more mixed. Her father Gaetano Polidori was Tuscan by origin and Londonised by long residence. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] G.: So the children are not simply “English children of an Italian father,” but products of a bilingual, bicultural, Anglo-Italian household in London. [amershammuseum.org], [english.cam.ac.uk] S.: Dante Gabriel Rossetti himself was born Gabriele Charles Dante Rossetti, and later rearranged the names to stress the Dantesque lineage rather than the Charlian compromise. [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: One of the few respectable cases of self-revision by baptismal order. S.: Then how Italian did Gabriele Rossetti think he was in England? G.: Very Italian indeed, though the matter needs nuance. He remained an Italian patriot, wrote on Dante, taught Italian, and lived in the London Italian exile community. He did not become English in the sense of surrendering his origin. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com], [amershammuseum.org] S.: Yet he also became, institutionally and domestically, rather London. G.: Yes. One may be deeply Italian in allegiance and still be functionally London in address, timetable, salary, and burial. S.: That is already almost Victorian. G.: Exiles often become Victorian faster than Victorians do. S.: And the children? G.: The children are the really interesting case. They were born and lived in London, yet grew up in a household steeped in Italian language, literature, politics, names, and visitors. [amershammuseum.org], [english.cam.ac.uk], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: So Dante Gabriel Rossetti is English by birth and cultural circumstance, but Italian by household atmosphere, paternal mythology, and chosen affiliation. [amershammuseum.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: Exactly. He is the kind of Englishman who could never have been merely English without loss of imaginative force. S.: Which perhaps explains why only an Italian can be not a post-Raphaelite, but a pre-one. G.: That is excellent and very silly, which is the proper combination. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep it. The “Pre-Raphaelite” business itself profits from the Italian connection, because Dante Gabriel Rossetti does not merely admire medieval and early Renaissance Italy as an English aesthete might; he inherits it domestically as a family condition. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: So “Pre-Raphaelite” for him is not only art history but a kind of return to the father’s country by paint, poem, and translation. G.: Very much so. There is something almost genealogically indecent in the neatness of it. S.: Then why did it matter in London that the father was Italian? G.: In several ways. First, it made the household culturally anomalous. Their English acquaintances repeatedly remarked the family’s cosmopolitanism, foreignness, and oddity. [english.cam.ac.uk], [amershammuseum.org] S.: Which London noticed even when trying to flatter it. G.: Especially then. English admiration of foreigners is often a polite form of taxidermy. S.: The Cambridge Rossetti conference background is useful here: it notes that the family’s social and cultural anomalousness struck many English contemporaries, and that even the pronunciation of the surname became a small battle between Italian softness and Anglo-Saxon hardening. [english.cam.ac.uk] G.: Pronunciation is where nationality takes petty revenge. S.: So even “Rossetti” itself became a little test case. G.: Yes. To say it properly was to grant the family a continued Italianity; to say it badly was to naturalise them by violence. S.: A very English form of hospitality. G.: Quite. S.: Second, the Italian father gave the children an actual line back to Dante Alighieri, to Italian medieval poetry, to political exile, and to romantic nationalism. G.: Yes, and not merely as reading matter. Gabriele Rossetti wrote commentaries on Dante, speculated on hidden anti-papal codes, and filled the house with Italian literary and political atmosphere. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] S.: So Dante Gabriel Rossetti inherits not just a name but a programme. G.: Or at least a set of temptations. That is often closer to family life. S.: Third, it mattered because the English saw him as both one of them and not one of them. G.: Exactly. Dante Gabriel Rossetti is accepted into English artistic life, co-founds the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, paints English models, writes in English, but remains marked by Italian origins enough to be continuously described through them. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: Which makes him peculiarly fit to found a movement that wishes to go back before Raphael. G.: Because going back before Raphael is, for an Englishman of ordinary pedigree, an art-historical preference; for Rossetti, it is also a family route into Italy before academies became too tidy. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: So his Italianity mattered aesthetically as a source of permission. G.: Very well put. It gave him permission to make Italian medievalism feel less like tourism and more like domestic archaeology. S.: Yet surely he was not simply “Italian” in London. G.: No, and here one must be careful. He was not Gabriele Rossetti transplanted. He was London-born, London-educated, English-speaking, institutionally English, and artistically formed in the Victorian metropolis. [browningsc...ndence.com], [victorianweb.org] S.: So if some Englishmen thought him wholly foreign, they were being lazy. G.: As Englishmen often are when nationality becomes decorative. S.: But if others thought him wholly English, they were also being lazy. G.: Exactly. The Rossetti case punishes the appetite for one label. S.: Then perhaps the cleanest formula is that Gabriele Rossetti remained an Italian in London, while Dante Gabriel Rossetti became an English artist under constitutive Italian conditions. [en.wikipedia.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: That is excellent. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep it, with the usual reductions in flourish. S.: Happily. Then let us say more about the family branch itself. Do we know more of the line in Vasto? G.: Public summaries are often thin, but there is enough to say the branch is Vastese and Abruzzese, not Florentine, Venetian, or Roman. Gabriele Rossetti is described as born in Vasto, son of a blacksmith, clever enough to study in Naples. [britannica.com], [wikitree.com] S.: So not a patrician Roman Rossetti then. G.: No. Which is a useful correction to any aristocratic fantasy induced by later Victorian frames. S.: Though one web source rather grandly calls him “Italian nobleman.” [en.wikipedia.org] G.: Web sources often give nobility the way grocers give parsley. S.: Sensible. Then the more reliable line is modest but ambitious: Vasto, literary talent, Naples, politics, exile, London. [britannica.com] G.: Exactly. A very nineteenth-century route, though not one English domestic ideology was eager to advertise. S.: Because the family in London was full of Italian academics, exiles, and politics, not just tea and childhood. [amershammuseum.org] G.: Yes. The Amersham Museum piece nicely notes that the house was usually full of Italians debating politics and art and declaiming poetry. That is not quite a normal English nursery. [amershammuseum.org] S.: More a domestic Risorgimento with drawing-room upholstery. G.: Precisely. S.: Then the Londoners thought him Italian enough to be marked, but English enough to exhibit. G.: Very good. The foreign father made the household romantically interesting; the London birth of the children made them safely usable by English culture. S.: So Dante Gabriel Rossetti could become a major English painter-poet while still carrying the aura of Mediterranean difference. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: Yes, and that aura helped. English culture likes foreignness best when it can own it by birth certificate. S.: Then how Italian did Dante Gabriel Rossetti himself think he was? G.: Not simply or programmatically Italian in the father’s political sense, but profoundly attached to Italian literary and artistic lineage. He changed the order of his names to foreground Dante, translated early Italian poets, and made Italian medievalism central to his art. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: Which is more than decorative surname loyalty. G.: Much more. It is elective cultural filiation. S.: Yet he never went to Vasto, it seems. G.: The recent Palazzo Florio note says the bond was spiritual rather than physical and that he never visited Vasto. One treats such local commemorative writing with due caution, but the point sounds plausible enough. [palazzoflo...iovasto.it] S.: So he belonged to Italy imaginatively, genealogically, linguistically, artistically, but not by residence. G.: Exactly. Which is the most Victorian way of belonging to anything. S.: And what of William Michael Rossetti? G.: A useful reminder that the family Italianity was not confined to the painter-poet. William Michael Rossetti was heavily involved in the Pre-Raphaelite movement as editor, secretary, and historian. The family as a whole matters, not just the luminous brother. [italymagazine.com], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: And Christina Rossetti, of course, is no minor appendix. G.: Certainly not. But Dante is the usual centre because his very name makes the genealogy theatrically useful. S.: “Dante Gabriel Rossetti” already sounds like the whole argument in five syllables too many. G.: Exactly. It is an English artistic persona wearing Italian ancestry without apology. S.: Then let us be dry and explicit. The genealogy for Speranza could be put thus: Gabriele Rossetti, born Vasto, marries Frances Polidori, daughter of Gaetano Polidori, and their London-born children include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite founder. [en.wikipedia.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: Yes. Add that both paternal and maternal lines were Italian or Anglo-Italian exile-literary lines, so the London branch is not the accident of one foreign father but a whole expatriate milieu. [amershammuseum.org], [english.cam.ac.uk] S.: Which helps explain why the household is bilingual and culturally anomalous. [amershammuseum.org], [english.cam.ac.uk] G.: Exactly. S.: Now, did Gabriele Rossetti think himself English at all? G.: In the thin civic sense, perhaps increasingly as resident, employee, husband, father, and scholar. But the available summaries stress rather his persistence as Italian patriot, exile, and professor of Italian. He is not presented as an assimilated English man of letters who happened to be born abroad. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] S.: So England gave him platform, not replacement identity. G.: Nicely put. S.: And Londoners? G.: Londoners likely thought him emphatically Italian, though in the respectable form of “Professor of Italian,” which is a much more manageable kind of foreignness than revolutionary refugee with active opinions. S.: The family, then, occupies that interesting English category: foreign enough to fascinate, useful enough to install. G.: Yes. We are very good at that category. S.: Then the phrase “how un-Italian Rossetti thought he was” probably needs division between father and son. G.: Exactly. The father did not think himself un-Italian. The son could not think himself simply Italian without absurdity, but neither could he think himself merely English without diminution. S.: So Dante Gabriel Rossetti is the child of an Italian father and a London literary-exile house, not the negation of Italianity but its translated continuation. [amershammuseum.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: Very well put. S.: Thank you. G.: Again, keep it. S.: Then why did it matter for the Pre-Raphaelite story specifically? G.: Because the movement’s appeal to pre-Raphaelite art, early Italian painting, medieval devotion, and anti-academic sincerity becomes less a purely English rebellion when one of its founders carries actual domestic Italy into the studio. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: So Rossetti gives the Brotherhood an internal Italian corridor. G.: Exactly. The corridor is part family, part philology, part fantasy, but it is there. S.: Only an Italian can be not a post-Raphaelite, but a pre-one. G.: I wish I had said that first. S.: You may still appropriate it Englishly. G.: I prefer licensed looting. But yes, there is something fittingly Rossettian in founding a movement that defines itself by going back before Raphael under the sign of Dante. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: It sounds almost too designed. G.: Families sometimes overperform their symbolism for later critics. S.: And Vasto naturally now claims the lot. G.: As towns should. Local patriotism is the mildest useful vanity. S.: The Italy Magazine piece on Vasto celebrating the family does exactly that: it traces the line from Gabriele Rossetti of Vasto to the English-born children who stirred Victorian London. [italymagazine.com] G.: Quite right too. It is one of the few civic uses of art history that does not immediately become intolerable. S.: Then if Speranza wishes to have one Rossetti dialogue with Grice and another somewhere else, he is justified. G.: Entirely. Rossetti is common enough as a surname, but the Rossetti of Pre-Raphaelite London is genealogically specific: Gabriele Rossetti of Vasto, his marriage into the Polidori line, and the four London-born children. [en.wikipedia.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] S.: So he should not confuse Domenico Rossetti or other Rossettis with the Vastese-London exile branch. G.: Correct. Surnames invite sloth; genealogy corrects it. S.: There is also the point that the English often treated “Italian” as a general atmospheric category, not a specific provincial one. G.: Exactly. Vasto, Naples, Tuscany, London — the distinctions mattered deeply to Italians and much less to Victorians except when picturesque. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] S.: So Gabriele Rossetti may have felt intensely southern and Neapolitan in ways London flattened into “Italian professor.” [britannica.com] G.: A very good point. National labels in exile are often produced by the host as much as by the exile. S.: Then the father’s Italianity is politically and regionally rich; the son’s is culturally elective and artistically generative. G.: Excellent. S.: Thank you. G.: We are nearly done. Let us have the dry final formulation. S.: Very well. The Rossetti who matters for the Pre-Raphaelite genealogy is Gabriele Rossetti, born in Vasto, Abruzzo, exiled from the Kingdom of Naples, settled in London, and married to Frances Polidori, daughter of Gaetano Polidori. Their London-born son Dante Gabriel Rossetti becomes co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The father remained fundamentally Italian in political and literary allegiance; the son was English by birth and practice, but constitutively Italianate in household, language, literary inheritance, and artistic self-fashioning. London thought the father unmistakably Italian and the son usefully, intriguingly, not quite not so. [en.wikipedia.org], [amershammuseum.org], [britannica.com], [english.cam.ac.uk], [browningsc...ndence.com] G.: Admirably done. S.: And the punchline? G.: In England the father was too Italian to be ordinary, and the son too English to be foreign; which is perhaps exactly why only a Rossetti could help found a Brotherhood dedicated to being before Raphael without ever ceasing to be after tea. [victorianweb.org], [browningsc...ndence.com] And Speranza wants to know if this Vasto-born Rossetti can be called by Grice a philosopher and we'll have to say YES and provide one publication that shows that -- also who his father in law because Polidori doesn't sound Cockney Yes, I think Speranza can call Gabriele Rossetti a philosopher, provided he does so in the broad Italian nineteenth-century sense of a man of letters, political thinker, Dante scholar, and reflective writer, not in the narrow modern departmental sense. The cleanest publication to justify that is Sullo spirito antipapale che produsse la Riforma (1831), which is not merely literary criticism but a work of historical-political-religious interpretation with a clear claim about ideas, institutions, and the history of Europe. If Speranza wants one title that lets Grice call him “filosofo” without blushing too much, that is the safest one. [britannica.com], [universali...ademic.com] If you want the driest formula, it would be: Yes. Gabriele Rossetti may reasonably be called a philosopher in the older Italian sense, and one publication that justifies this is Sullo spirito antipapale che produsse la Riforma (1831). [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] As for the father-in-law, no, Polidori does not sound Cockney because it was not. Rossetti’s father-in-law was Gaetano Polidori, born in Bientina in Tuscany, an Italian writer, scholar, translator, and former secretary to Vittorio Alfieri, who settled in England long before Rossetti did. His daughter Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori married Gabriele Rossetti in 1826. So the Rossetti house in London was Italian on both the paternal and maternal sides, with a little English governess blood to keep the upholstery from becoming too Tuscan. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org] The useful genealogical line is therefore: Gabriele Rossetti, born in Vasto, marries Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, daughter of Gaetano Polidori of Bientina, Tuscany. Their children include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Maria Francesca Rossetti, and Christina Rossetti. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] And the very dry punchline would be: No, Polidori is not Cockney. It is Tuscan, literary, expatriate, and exactly the sort of surname Victorian England was willing to cultivate, provided it came with translations, pupils, and acceptable table manners. [en.wikipedia.org], [amershammuseum.org] If you like, I can next give you: a one-line Speranza-style note beginning “Strictly, yes, Gabriele may be called a philosopher,” or a four-turn Grice-Rossetti exchange making precisely that point. So please provide a 4-turn conversation between G. (first) and Rossetti (the Vasto-born), in Italian. With Rossetti's last turn -- 1 sentence per turn -- starting with Italian for something like: "Your post-raphaelite implicatures amuse me, G." etc thanks -- G.: Rossetti, ieri con Speranza si rideva di una genealogia che attraversa Vasto, Londra e perfino Raffaello, come se bastasse un padre italiano per fondare una confraternita prima ancora del pittore. Rossetti: Caro Grice, a Londra si può diventare inglesi di nascita e restare italiani di atmosfera, che è una forma più sottile e più tenace di cittadinanza. G.: Appunto, e la mia implicatura è che soltanto un Rossetti poteva riuscire a essere non post-raffaellita ma pre-raffaellita, cioè italiano abbastanza da retrocedere con metodo e inglese abbastanza da farne una società. Rossetti: Le sue implicature post-raffaellite mi divertono, Grice, perché suggeriscono con molta eleganza che a Londra si può anche nascere inglesi, purché si abbia la buona creanza di restare italiani nei corridoi di casa. Rossetti, Gabriele (1831). Anti-papale.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rossetti – Ossia: Grice e Rossetti: la ragione conversazionale del fratello perduto – la scuola di Vasto Domenico Rossetti (Vasto, Chieti, Abruzzo): la ragione conversazionale del fratello perduto. Grice: “A philosopher can also discover an ‘antro di pipistrelle.”” Filosofo, illuminista poli-edrico, poeta estemporaneo, tragedio-grafo, archeologo e speleo-logo, da Martuscelli. Studia a Napoli e Roma. Si trasfere a Elba. Ceelbra la liberazione del gran ducato di Toscana con il canto estemporaneo“La superbia dei galli punita” (Firenze, Gio). Si sposta in Sardegna, sotto la protezione del vice-ré Carlo. A Sassari compose e rappresenta la tragedia “Morte di S. Gavino” (Oristano, Arborense). Si sposta in Provenza, a Nizza, dove scopre la piramide di Falicon, che gl’ispira un poema, “La grotta di Monte-Calvo” (Parma). In seguito, si trasfere a Torino, dove conosce Caluso, e si stabilisce a Parma. Inizia a dirigere “Il Taro”. Altri saggi: “Cantata in occasione d'essere l'augusto imperator de’francesi Napoleone I coronato re d'Italia” (Parma, Luigi); La note” (Parma, Paganino); “Alla tomba di Hoffsteder” (Parma, Luigi); “Ode saffica” (Parma, Giuseppe Paganino); “Le nozze d’Esculapio De Cinque” (Lanciano, Carabba); “Annibale in Capua (Napoli, Flautina); A. Lombardi, Storia della letteratura italiana” (Venezia);  Andreola, Biografia degl’uomini illustri del regno di Napoli’ Gervasi,  La famiglia Pietrocola di Vasto; Spadaccini, “R. e le sue battaglie per la libertà”; R. e quei versi ispirati dalla cacciata dei francesi, Catania, R. e la grotta del monte Calvo, Mugoni, “Il fratello perduto: R. e R.”, in Studi medievali e moderni. Nei panni dello speleo-logo ante litteram, si avventura in una cavità del monte Calvo, scoprendo nelle viscere della terra un antro, che ama definire fascinoso ed insieme orribile. Ne celebra la scoperta con la pubblicazione di “La grotta del monte Calvo”; dato alle stampe a Torino, per i tipi di Domenico Pane, Parma. A Pezzana sub-entra nella direzione. Si mostra più attento alle notizie scientifiche e contribue ad introdurre nel periodico notizie leggere, come favole e indovinelli. il fratello perduto, la Dora, L’Emonia.  Grice: Rossetti, lei è capace di trovare un antro di pipistrelle e poi farne un argomento rispettabile. Ne parlavo ieri, di sfuggita, col collega filosofo Speranza: dice che in Abruzzo perfino ciò che si perde finisce archiviato con un titolo, come se fosse un incarico. Rossetti: A Vasto è così: si perde, si ritrova, e intanto si racconta. Io, tra grotte e tragedie, ho imparato che la conversazione è una speleologia: si entra per curiosità e si esce con un enigma in tasca. E spesso l’enigma ha un nome: il fratello perduto. Grice: Ecco, proprio ieri con Speranza ci siamo messi a ridere su una cosa: chiamarlo “perduto” è già un modo di tenerlo vicino. Se fosse davvero perduto, non avremmo nemmeno la buona educazione di cercarlo; e invece lo si cerca con una serietà quasi burocratica. Mi viene da pensare che certi fratelli si trovino soltanto perché, in fondo, non si sono mai lasciati perdere — found, but not lost.Rossetti: La sua battuta, Grice, non va perduta su di me; e Speranza sarebbe d’accordo — e magari non c’è nemmeno bisogno che io la “trovi”. Perché il fratello perduto, da queste parti, è spesso un fratello che continua a fare capolino: lo perdi come si perde un sentiero, non come si perde un mondo. E lei, con quel found, but not lost, ha fatto la cosa più vastese che ci sia: ha trasformato una mancanza in una traccia, e una traccia in un ritorno. Rossetti, Domenico (1837). Il poeta e la poesia. Venezia: Tipografia di Alvisopoli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H,. P. Grice e J. L. Sperranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rossi – Ossia: Grice e Rossi: la ragione conversazionale della volontà e della temperanza – la scuola d’Appignano del Tronto Tommaso Francesco Rossi della Marca (Appignano del Tronto, Ascoli Piceno, Marche): la ragione conversazionale della volontà e della temperanza. Grice: “Rossi touches many Griciean points: universalia, strength of will, and etc. – he also commented, like I did, on Aristotle’s metaphysics.” Attivo filosofo fra Aureolo e Rimini, dalla parte di Occam e Cesena, e oppositore di Giovanni XXII, nelle dispute dei fraticelli, che portarono alla sua espulsione dall'ordine. Ha idee innovative e spesso influenti in teologia filosofica, filosofia naturale, metafisica e teoria politica.  Soprannominato come "doctor succinctus" e "doctor praefulgidus", come osservabile dalle iscrizioni su uno degli affreschi del convento di Bolzano, e studiato e commentato soprattutto per alcune tesi risalenti del suo commento alle sentenze, i Libri IV Sententiarum dichiarazioni autorevoli sui passi biblici che l'opera riune di LOMBARDO. Le sue vedute contribuiscono all'evoluzione della filosofia basso-medievale. Appignano del Tronto fa parte all'epoca della Marca di Anconada. Nacque da una famiglia con il nome di Rossi (Rubeus). Studia sotto Scoto. Insegna a Perugia. Sottoscrive la risoluzione con la quale viene dichiarata lecita la tesi secondo la quale Cristo e gl’apostoli non mai possedeno beni. Prende parte attiva alle lotte interne riguardanti la povertà che divide l'ordine. continentia, temperanza, giudizio, giudicazione, volonta, volere, atto apprensivo, appresione, atto giudicativo, conoscenza apprensiva, conoscenza giudicativa, decisione, libero arbitrio, colpavolezza morale, agire l’atto buono, possibilita della colpavolezza morale, la legge, la volonta sotto la legge, giudizio razionale, agire razionale, ragionamento, conclusione, sillogismo pratico, elezione, la caduta d’Adamo, la teoria dell’elezione e la deliberazione, i peripatetici, virtus de-re-licta, teoria del moto, moto perpetuo, virtus contro il corpo, virtus con il corpo, volonta con il giudizio, volonta contro il giudizio.  I am in the SCR at St John’s with that faintly indecent comfort one gets from reading something that is not immediately required. An entry on Francesco Rossi della Marca has detained me longer than I meant it to. Commentarius in libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Facultas Theologiae Parisiensis, 1319. There is a crispness to the datum that makes it do philosophical work at once. It is not merely that Rossi comments; it is that he comments because the institution has decided that commentary is a rung. He is baccalaureatus sententiarum, and therefore he must do what a baccalaureatus sententiarum does. The title is not a flourish. It is a functional label. You comment in order to be licensed to comment. And then, of course, one thinks of our own proceedings, because Oxford specialises in disguising the old necessities as modern amusements. Austin and I run our weekly joint seminar on Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione. We do not call it a Commentarius, because Oxford prefers Latin to remain an implicature rather than an inscription. But what else is a weekly, line-by-line worrying of a text if not commentarius in the old way. We say, to ourselves and to one another, that we do it for fun; and perhaps we do, if one counts as fun a form of intellectual play in which mistakes are punished by embarrassment rather than by expulsion from an order. Rossi’s commenting is an official step toward being a magister; ours is a kind of private rite in a place that pretends it has no rites beyond gowns and meals. Now I have to stop reading, which is the sharpest irony of all, because the reading is the easier part. In a moment I must walk over and meet the master-master for the seminar. Austin begins; the following week I take up. If he keeps to the syllabus, it means, naturally, mean-nn, that all is well. If he departs, it means that something has been said that cannot be allowed to stand. Oxford likes to police thought without admitting it is policing it. The irritant is the difference between disagreeing with Aristotle and disagreeing with Austin. If one challenges Austin on his week, he has that characteristic move: you don’t like that argument, all right, I’ll give you another. It is not exactly a defence; it is a substitution, performed with the air of someone tidying a room rather than being opposed. One goes away with the uneasy sense that one has not refuted anything, only caused the furniture to be rearranged. Still, and here I have to be fair, something comes of the exercise, even if one is not sure one approves of the form it takes. Ackrill attends. He listens. He learns the rhythms of the text and the rhythms of our quarrels about it. And later he produces the Clarendon translations of the Categories and De Interpretatione, and he is generous enough, or mischievous enough, to credit the late Professor Austin and Mr H. P. Grice. There is, one admits, a kind of public gain in that: more people can now read Aristotle. But there is also a private loss, the one no decent Lit Hum man advertises. Translation is a species of ventriloquism. It gives Aristotle an English voice, and the voice is not Aristotle’s. One can call the result good, or ‘good,’ and mean both. It is good in the civic sense, and slightly corrupting in the classicist’s sense, because it makes it possible to read without the Greek, and reading without the Greek is like listening to music through a wall: you get the tune and lose the pleasure. I shut the book in the practical sense and gather my papers. Rossi is still there in the back of my mind, not as a saint of commentary but as a reminder that commentary was once openly a requirement for advancement. We have not abolished the requirement; we have only learned to call it a seminar and to pretend it is leisure. And I go off now to take my place in the weekly alternation, to play my part in our own commentarius, and to wonder, as I walk, what precisely we have been sneaking in under the guise of explaining what Aristotle said.  Grice: Rossi della Marca, mi dicono che lei sa far stare insieme la volontà e la temperanza senza farle litigare in pubblico. Ieri, di sfuggita, lo accennavo al collega filosofo Speranza: lui sostiene che nelle Marche la ragione conversazionale ha sempre un freno a mano tirato—ma con molta eleganza. Rossi: A Appignano del Tronto l’eleganza è necessaria: se la volontà corre troppo, finisce in predica; se la temperanza frena troppo, finisce in silenzio. Io preferisco tenerle in dialogo: volonta (con l’accento dove lei vuole) come slancio, temperanza come misura, e la conversazione come luogo dove si vede se lo slancio regge la misura. Grice: E proprio dopo aver conversato con Speranza mi è venuta un’implicatura che non ho bisogno di dichiarare. Non riesco a trovare una parola italiana davvero pulita per entailment (e G. E. Moore lo direbbe così, con aria innocente): tra volonta e temperanza sembra esserci non solo un’alleanza morale, ma un legame più “logico”, per cui quando l’una è ben formata, l’altra non è un optional. Come se una volontà che meriti il nome si portasse dietro, quasi automaticamente, una certa sobrietà—e se manca, è perché non era proprio volontà, ma capriccio travestito. Rossi: Implicatura “volitiva e temperata” la sua, Grice—e mi piace molto; anche Speranza ne sarebbe contento, benché direbbe che ci vuole un temperato per riconoscerla. E aggiungerebbe (lo so già) che perfino la grafia deve essere temperante: lui diffida di certi “gn” come se fossero forestieri infiltrati nella fonologia italiana. Ma al netto delle sue dogane ortografiche, il punto resta: lei ha colto un legame che non si proclama, si lascia passare. Volonta e temperanza non si promettono: si implicano, e solo chi ha misura sente la forza senza scambiarla per rumore. Re passage below: please turn the reminiscence at the beginning of it into a 100-move conversation between G. and S. on Rossi, Commentarius 1319 -- no preamble or ps -- just dry Oxonian humour -- thanks G.: I was reading Rossi della Marca in the SCR with the sort of comfort one ought probably to confess only under mild pressure. S.: A dangerous place for medieval commentary, since the armchairs already look as if they were glossing one another. G.: Quite. But what detained me was the title’s indecent honesty: Commentarius in libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Facultas Theologiae Parisiensis, 1319. S.: Because it tells you at once that commentary was not a hobby but a rung. G.: Exactly. Rossi comments because the institution has decided that commentary is what one does before one may be licensed to do worse. S.: Baccalaureatus sententiarum first, magister later. G.: Yes. The title is not a flourish but a functional label. One comments in order to be licensed to comment. S.: Which made you think of Oxford, naturally. G.: It is our chief weakness. One sees a medieval institution and immediately recognises it in modern dress. S.: Austin and the joint seminar on the Categories and De Interpretatione. G.: Precisely. We do not call it a Commentarius because Oxford prefers Latin to remain an implicature rather than an inscription. S.: Yet a weekly line-by-line worrying of Aristotle is what, if not commentarius? G.: That is the nasty truth of it. We say, to ourselves and to one another, that we do it for fun. S.: And perhaps you do. G.: If one counts as fun a species of intellectual play in which mistakes are punished by embarrassment rather than expulsion from an order. S.: Oxford modernises sanctions by making them social. G.: Very efficiently. Medieval Paris could expel you from an order. Oxford merely makes you feel that you have dropped a fork in front of civilisation. S.: Which is often more durable. G.: Exactly. Rossi’s commenting is an official step toward being a magister; ours is a private rite in a place that pretends it has no rites beyond gowns and meals. S.: You make Oxford sound ecclesiastical. G.: It is ecclesiastical by denial, which is the purest form. S.: And reading Rossi made you think your own seminar is less free than advertised. G.: Quite. We have not abolished the requirement; we have merely learned to call it a seminar and to pretend it is leisure. S.: Which is a very English improvement on compulsion. G.: Better upholstery, same staircase. S.: Then what particularly struck you in the title? G.: Its crispness. Commentarius. Facultas. 1319. A whole educational economy in three pieces. S.: And then you had to leave the easier part, namely the reading. G.: Yes. That is the sharpest irony. One reads with pleasure and then must go and perform one’s own institution. S.: To meet the master-master. G.: Austin, yes. He begins one week; the following week I take up. S.: A pleasing alternation. G.: Pleasing in the abstract. In practice it means that if he keeps to the syllabus all is well, and if he departs it means that something has been said that cannot be allowed to stand. S.: Oxford likes to police thought without admitting that it is policing it. G.: Admirably put. S.: I learn from good company. G.: Use the gift sparingly. The irritant, of course, is the difference between disagreeing with Aristotle and disagreeing with Austin. S.: The latter being harder, because he is in the room and a good deal more manoeuvrable. G.: Exactly. If one challenges Austin on his own week, he has that characteristic move: you don’t like that argument, all right, I’ll give you another. S.: Which is not exactly a defence. G.: No, it is a substitution, performed with the air of someone tidying a room rather than being opposed. S.: So one goes away feeling not that one has refuted anything, but that one has caused the furniture to be rearranged. G.: That is precisely the sensation. S.: Still, something came of it. G.: Yes, and here fairness compels me. Ackrill attended, listened, learnt the rhythms of the text and the rhythms of our quarrels about it. S.: And later produced the Clarendon translations. G.: Of the Categories and De Interpretatione, yes, crediting the late Professor Austin and Mr H. P. Grice. S.: Generous enough, or mischievous enough. G.: Quite. There is a public gain in that. More people may now read Aristotle. S.: But there is also a private loss. G.: The one no decent Lit Hum man advertises. Translation is a species of ventriloquism. S.: It gives Aristotle an English voice. G.: And the voice is not Aristotle’s. S.: One may call the result good, or good, and mean both. G.: Exactly. Good in the civic sense, slightly corrupting in the classicist’s sense. S.: Because it makes it possible to read without the Greek. G.: And reading without the Greek is like listening to music through a wall: you get the tune and lose the pleasure. S.: You are very severe on the modern world. G.: Only when it earns it. S.: Then Rossi stayed with you not as a saint of commentary but as a reminder. G.: Yes, as a reminder that commentary was once openly a requirement for advancement. S.: Whereas Oxford hides the same requirement under conversational charm. G.: It prefers to disguise old necessities as modern amusements. S.: Which is perhaps why the seminar interests you so much. G.: It is one of the few places where Oxford accidentally tells the truth about itself. S.: By pretending not to. G.: Naturally. S.: Then Rossi’s world and Austin’s are not so far apart. G.: Structurally, no. One comments in order to advance; the other comments in order to remain intellectually visible, correct, and central. S.: Different forms of promotion. G.: Or of survival. One must not sentimentalise Oxford. The seminar is also a way of occupying ground. S.: Against Aristotle? G.: Against one’s rivals, chiefly. Aristotle is the pretext that confers dignity. S.: Whereas in 1319 Lombard is the pretext. G.: Exactly. Peter Lombard then, Aristotle now; institutions like canonical texts the way cats like warm radiators. S.: Comfortable and unavoidable. G.: Yes. And the young scholar learns that to handle the text well is to show oneself fit to handle the institution. S.: So commentary is both intellectual and social proof. G.: Precisely. S.: Then when you say Oxford calls it leisure, you mean that it denies the rung while climbing it. G.: That is beautifully put. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become pleased with yourself. Oxford punishes that more subtly than Paris ever did. S.: I shall remain only mildly advanced. But tell me: did Rossi himself matter beyond the institutional point? G.: Certainly. He is not merely an instance of the Commentarius. He is a sharp mind on will, judgment, temperance, free choice, and the deliciously awkward relation between willing with judgment and willing against judgment. S.: Very Gricean. G.: Disturbingly so. Universals, strength of will, practical syllogism, moral culpability, election, deliberation, the possibility of sin, all the proper furniture. S.: Then perhaps the medieval commentarial form is not merely a container. G.: Never merely. Forms train minds as much as they house them. S.: So if Rossi comments on Lombard and Aristotle lies behind the schools, then the content already slips beyond the title. G.: Exactly. The title says Commentarius; the mind inside it may already be conducting a quite independent quarrel. S.: Which is perhaps also true of your joint seminar. G.: Entirely. We say we are explaining Aristotle. What we are often doing is sneaking in our own distinctions under cover of fidelity. S.: That sounds almost dishonest. G.: It is the oldest honesty in academic life. S.: Then commentary is always a little parasitic. G.: And a little creative. That is why it survives. S.: Medieval Paris at least admitted the requirement. G.: Yes. That is what I found almost refreshing. Rossi comments because the institution says: comment, and through commentary become licensable. S.: Oxford says: do come and worry Aristotle with us; it is rather fun. G.: Precisely. The same ladder, better manners. S.: Which is more dangerous. G.: Usually. One notices coercion earlier when it wears a cowl. S.: While Oxford puts it into tweed and serves sherry. G.: That is the whole trick of the place. S.: Then perhaps the real difference is not between commentary and seminar, but between explicit and implicit institutional force. G.: Excellent. Paris says: this is a rung. Oxford says: this is a conversation. In both cases you had better do it well. S.: And if not? G.: In Paris, perhaps no licence. In Oxford, a certain expression in Hall and a slower invitation list. S.: I begin to think medieval severity had the merit of clarity. G.: Many severities do. S.: Yet you do like the seminar, despite all this. G.: I do, though with the caution due to attractive traps. S.: Because something real comes of it. G.: Yes. One learns the text, one learns the quarrels, one learns the habits of discrimination, and sometimes one even learns when a distinction is merely furniture pretending to be architecture. S.: That sounds like an Austin lesson. G.: It often was. S.: Even when he gave you another argument instead of defending the first. G.: Especially then. Austin’s substitutions were infuriating, but they also taught one that attachment to a particular argument may be a form of vanity. S.: Or of loyalty. G.: Vanity in academic dress. S.: Harsh. G.: Necessary. S.: Then Ackrill’s later translations become the public harvest of a private rite. G.: Exactly. Which is why I cannot wholly sneer. Something civic came from the exercise, even if the exercise itself often felt like being slowly corrected by weather. S.: That is very Oxford. G.: It ought to be. Oxford’s weather is largely pedagogical. S.: Then Rossi gives you a mirror. G.: Yes, but a mirror with less irony. The medieval title says openly what ours implies. That is why it does philosophical work at once. S.: Because the institution is visible in the title itself. G.: Precisely. Commentarius in libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Facultas Theologiae Parisiensis, 1319. The whole educational ladder engraved in the heading. S.: While your seminar would never dare call itself Commentarius in Aristotelis Categorias et De Interpretatione, St John’s and elsewhere. G.: Never. Oxford would rather die than give itself away in so much Latin all at once. S.: It likes Latin as perfume, not as signage. G.: Splendidly put. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep that, but do not make me sound appreciative. S.: Never beyond the impersonal register. Then perhaps the old requirement has not vanished, only changed costume. G.: That is the whole point. We have not abolished the requirement; we have only learned to call it a seminar and pretend it is leisure. S.: So your walk to Austin is, in effect, a walk to your own weekly commentarius. G.: Exactly. And as I go, I wonder what precisely we have been sneaking in under the guise of explaining what Aristotle said. S.: Probably ourselves. G.: That is the most dangerous answer. S.: Also the truest. G.: Which is why one should never write it on the noticeboard. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Parisian, with an Oxford aftertaste. S.: And the punchline? G.: Rossi commented because the university required it; we comment because Oxford is too polite to confess that it requires the same thingRossi della Marca, Francesco  (1319). Commentarius in libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi.,. Facultate Theologiae. Paris

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rossi – Ossia: Grice e Rossi: la ragione conversazionale di Romolo; o lo storicismo – la scuola di Torino. filosofia piemontese  Paolo Rossi Monti (Urbino): la ragione conversazionale di Romolo; o lo storicismo –l’astuzia della ragione converszionale di Weber e Grice. Grice: “My idea on the longitudinal unity of philosophy – her historical unity, that is, as Dilthey would call it – is Oxonian at heart, and I use as evidence my OWN experience as a TUTOR – not a lecturer – having to assing to my pupil, for each week during FOUR LONG YEARS – something from PLATO OR ARISTOTLE _and_ some contemporary source, which in my case, meant ‘Philosophy’!” -- Grice: “Rossi writing about ‘storicismo tedesco’ reminds me of Warnock, an Irishman at Oxford, writing about English philosophy!” Keywords: metodo in psicologia filosofia. Filosofo piemontese. Filosofo italiano. Torino, Piamonte. Studia  a Torino sotto ABBAGNANO, Napoli, e Milano. Insegna a Cagliari e Torino. Studia lo storicismo, l’illuminismo, e il positivismo. Saggi: Lo storicismo, Einaudi, Torino; “Storia e storicismo, Lerici, Milano; La storiografia Saggiatore, Milano; “Oltre lo storicismo, Saggiatore, Milano; “Storia della filosofia”, Treccani Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Cf. Grice, “Speranza e l’opera di Grice in Italia.” CLASSICI DELLA FILOSOFIA COLLEZIONE FONDATA D’ABBAGNANO DIRETTA DA GREGORY CLASSICI UTET, Tipografia ‘Toso, via Capelli, Torino. È difficile isolare, nell'àmbito della filosofia contemporanea, un indirizzo che possa essere caratterizzato in maniera univoca, e al tempo stesso esaustiva, con la designazione di storicismo ». Ciò dipende in primo luogo dal fatto che il termine storicismo » — così come si è venuto diffondendo a partire dagli anni ’20, dapprima in Germania e poi in Italia. Cattaneo, Aconzio, Vico, Galilei, nato Paolo Rossi, adottato dalla zia materna, Monti, Vico, Vinci, Garin, Banfi, la storia della nazione italiana, Vico e la storia della nazione italiana, favola antica, dalla magia alla scienza, bruno.  l’implicatura di Vico.  Grice. St John’s. Back from the Admiralty, and “re‑philosophising” myself at Merton—where the place keeps one conscientiously abreast of all the new things one already knows one does not need to know. We share more with the Italians than either nation cares to confess. We stopped being enemies on the very same day. (Why are wars declared, by the way, but never un‑declared?) Anyway: Merton has its novelties, and Austin—bright chap, that—would put it thus: one doesn’t unknow anything, because one doesn’t unperform either. (A phrase of his that sounds like a joke until you discover it isn’t.) One of the “new things” (which I certainly do not need to know, and therefore immediately know) is that Rossi has been laurea‑lised, as the Italians say. The Gazette reports that the ceremony took place in Florence. Garin, as relatore, commemorated Apollo and Daphne and—one imagines—installed the traditional wreath upon Rossi’s head. “What for?” Strawson asks. He is there, of course, as my straight man. “Rossi is free,” I say. “No more tutorials, no more classes. He has a laurea. He has a tesi. He is, by Italian statute, an expert.” “On what?” says Strawson. “Strawson,” I reply, “your chronic inability to catch my implicatures continues to try my Christian charity. I told you: the man is free. His tesi is on La libertà.” “Very Italian,” says Strawson, dryly. “As per Spinoza, as per Epictetus, as per—who? Surely you don’t just write a thesis on Liberty and get leaves on your forehead.” “Quite right,” I say. “No thesis is allowed to be simply on what the candidate happens to think—because the implicature (the delicious, bureaucratic implicature) is that he is not yet a philosopher. He is learning to be one; he has been taught to be one. It is safer, you see, to anchor your alleged freedom in a respectable fetter.” “And whose fetter is Rossi’s?” says Strawson. “Martinetti’s,” I say. “The great Piero Martinetti. Officially he has liberated Rossi from the fetters of Florence—and, indeed, from Garin himself.” “From Garin?” Strawson says. “But Garin is the relatore.” “Exactly,” I say. “Nobody thinks a thesis without the shadow of the relatore; and usually the shadow of the shadow of the co‑relatore, who will mind every p and every q on your behalf. Martinetti, at least, has the decency to be a fetter you can quote.” Strawson, spoiling it all—as he does—closes with: “But who freed Martinetti? That’s the question.” “By the same token,” I add, “who killed Cock Robin?” —and so on, and so forth, and we are off. Grice: Rossi, lei mi tira sempre verso la storia come se fosse un dovere civile. Ieri, di sfuggita, lo dicevo al collega filosofo Speranza: a Vadum Boum lo “storicismo” suona già un po’ continentale, mentre a Bononia pare una forma di educazione sentimentale. Rossi: A Torino, invece, è quasi igiene mentale. E poi lo storicismo non è un vezzo: è il modo in cui ci ricordiamo che le idee non crescono in serra. Se vuole, lo chiami pure con un’etichetta tedesca: 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔦𝔰𝔪𝔲𝔰. Qui non ci spaventa. Grice: Appunto; e precisamente dopo quella conversazione con Speranza mi è scappata un’implicatura che non ho nemmeno dovuto dire. Quando voi parlate di 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔦𝔰𝔪𝔲𝔰 come se fosse l’aria che si respira, state lasciando intendere—senza dichiararlo—che a Vadum Boum noi siamo storicamente “poveri” e dunque teoricamente “ricchi”: da noi, a parte quella gita acquatica di Giulio Cesare nel 55 e 54 a.C… anzi, aspetti: 55 e 54 a.C. corrispondono a 699 e 700 ab Urbe condita. E allora uno si attacca a Romolo per avere almeno un inizio decente: 753, 1 a.U.c., così la storia smette di essere un rumore di fondo e diventa un calendario. E capisco perché a Bononia lo storicismo sembri più naturale: lì Roma è sotto i piedi; qui, al massimo, è nel sillabo. Rossi: Implicatura storicista la sua, Grice, come Speranza la metterebbe. E mi piace proprio perché non fa la predica: fa vedere l’asimmetria. Da un lato l’università che nasce letteralmente sul sedimento romano; dall’altro il vostro ford che deve inventarsi una romanità di biblioteca. Eppure è lo stesso impulso: se non hai rovine, fai genealogie; se non hai genealogie, fai date; se non hai date, ti inventi un Romolo. In fondo, lo storicismo è anche questo: un modo elegante di ammettere che pure la “poca storia” è già una storia—solo più ironica. G.: Rossi, ieri con Speranza dicevamo che a Firenze perfino una tesi sulla libertà sembra laurearsi due volte: una per il titolo, e una per la corona d’alloro. Rossi: È il destino delle buone tesi, caro Grice: sembrano promettere l’assoluto e poi devono imparare la prudenza di un relatore, di una città, e d’una tradizione. G.: Appunto; e la mia implicatura è che la libertà, quando passa per una laurea, somiglia sempre un poco a una libertà sorvegliata: abbastanza libera da essere scritta, non così libera da non avere già un padrino. Rossi: Prendo liberamente la sua implicatura libera, sapendo che io e lei siamo entrambi liberi di cancellarla.Rossi, Paolo (1946). La libertà. Firenze. Relatore: Garin

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rossi – Ossia: Grice e Rossi. Pietro Rossi (Torino). Storico della filosofia. Strawson: What are you reading? Grice: Just in from Blackwell’s. I’ve not started it yet—I’m only reading the introduction. Strawson (dryly): I hate it when the introduction uses up every ounce of attention one was prepared to give the book. Grice: This is different. Strawson: How so? Grice: It’s Italian. Their introductions are—how shall I put it?—twice the normal length by constitutional law. Strawson: So—what’s it called? Grice: Don’t rush me. It’s Einaudi, and the author’s name is right there on the cover—look. (Grice turns the book so Strawson can see it.) Strawson: Yes, yes. But did you read the small print on the second page? Grice: No. Strawson: Do. Grice (reads): Kritik der historischen Vernunft. Strawson: You knew it all along. You weren’t reading Rossi; you were reading Dilthey—Kant reborn, as the Italians would say, in translation. Grice: Kant reborn—and twice as long, because he’s been born Italian.   Grice: How many critiques of how many reasons are we going to have? Pure reason, practical reason, historical reason—soon we’ll need a critique of the critique. Strawson: At least yours would be short. Grice: Not at all. My “Critique of Conversational Reason” has been a long time coming. You tucked it into that notorious footnote in your Introduction to Logical Theory. Grice: A footnote is where a man puts what he most wants read, while pretending not to insist.  G.: Rossi, quante ragioni dobbiamo ancora criticare, prima che la ragione stessa chieda tutela sindacale? Rossi: Caro Grice, la ragione pura, la pratica e la storica non sono tre capricci editoriali, ma tre modi in cui la ragione scopre di non bastare mai a sé stessa. G.: Allora la mia implicatura è che, se continuiamo così, avremo presto una critica della critica della ragione critica, e magari con un’introduzione più lunga del libro. Rossi: La sua implicatura, Grice, è critica, ragionevole e storica — e così pure la sua cancellazione.Rossi, Pietro (1954). Introduzione alla Critica della ragione storica. Einaudi. Torino

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rossi – Ossia: Grice e Rossi: l’implicatura di Lucrezio – la scuola di San Giorgio -- filosofia campanese  Tommasso Rossi (San Giorgio la Montagna, Benevento, Campania): l’implicatura di Lucrezio. Lucrezio, materialismo, psicologia filosofica, filosofia romana, lingua latina. Filosofo campanese. Filosofo italiano. San Giorgio, Campania. Il più grande e puro metafisico" nelle parole di VICO . Vive a Montefusco. Studia a Napoli. Scrive diverse saggi tra cui il più importante rimane “Della mente sovrana del mondo”. Altri aggi: Considerazioni di alcuni misteri divini, raccolti in tre dialoghi, Dell'animo dell'uomo, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. DISPUTAZ10NE UNICA DELL’ANIMO DELL’UOMO DEPUTAZIONE UNICA Nella quale fi fciolgono principalmente gli Argomenti di LUCREZIO  contro all’Immortalità. Nacque a San Giorgio la Montagna, nei pressi di Benevento, da Ottavio R., farmacista, e da Silvia Simonetto. Rimasto orfano della madre a otto anni e, poco tempo dopo, anche del padre, dall’età di diciotto anni soggiornò a Napoli, impegnato nello studio del diritto. Fu ordinato prete nel 1697 dall’arcivescovo Vincenzo Maria Orsini e nel 1698 si trasferì a Montefusco, in qualità di canonico della chiesa palatina di S. Giovanni del Vaglio, incarico al quale, dal 1704, affiancò quello di rettore di S. Maria della Piazza. Fece ritorno a San Giorgio nel 1729, come nuovo abate del collegio canonicale, e fu soltanto l’anno seguente che si laureò in utroque jure.  Di R. sono pervenute tre opere a stampa: le Considerazioni di alcuni misterj divini raccolte in tre dialoghi, edite a Benevento, nelle quali l’autore mostra come non vi sia contraddizione alcuna tra scienza e fede e l’uomo di fede possa – e anzi debba – perseguire la conoscenza; implicature moderna, argumenti contro LUCREZIO , Lucrezio, De rerum natura, animi degl’uomini, anime degl’uomini, animo/anima, corpi degl’uomini, corpi degl’animali, degl’affetti degl’uomini, il senso, il moto, i corpuscoli, ossessione con Lucrezio come filosofo romano.  Clifton, 1926: Grice cheers up Simpson (dialogue draft) Grice (Clifton, 1926). Simpson looks a bit sunk today—so I do what one does: I try to jolly him up. “What’s eating you, Simpson?” He gives me the tragic look. “The beak. He’s right, Grice.” “The beak is always right. It’s in the rules. What’s the charge—declensions, or that other hobby of his?” “My Latin isn’t the Pope’s, and he knows it.” “Your Latin isn’t anyone’s, Simpson. That’s why we’re here.” Simpson pulls something from his bag as if it were contraband. “Look what I’m reading.” I take it. “This doesn’t look like Cicero.” “It isn’t. That’s the point. It’s fascinating. And if I’m snivelling, it’s laughter. Three little dialogues—Latin—by one Tommaso Rossi.” “Never heard of him.” “You have now. Campanian chap. Born near Benevento.” “Benevento,” I say, warming to it, “which in Latin means—” “Something heroic,” Simpson says. “—something like good luck. Or at least a good event. Not ‘good wind,’ before you try it on the beak.” Simpson brightens. “Shame. Good wind would’ve suited the place.” “And what are the dialogues about?” He leans in, delighted. “Some divine mysteries. Rossi calls them alcuni misterj divini.” I whistle. “Then put it down and pick up some Cicero.” “Why?” he says—now positively lively. “It’s Latin. It’s helping. Dialogue form’s a boon, too: you ask, I answer, I ask, you don’t—keeps the thing moving. And the beak can hardly complain about conjugations when half the book is inquit.” “Simpson,” I say, “you’re not reading the Latin we do here. You’re reading neo‑Latin—the sort the Pope’s secretary might pretend to understand.” He grins. “How can you tell?” “By the alcuni,” I say, suddenly solemn. “Cicero never met an alcuni in his life.” Next day, I feel I was a bit abrupt. So I go and knock—pointlessly—since I’m already halfway in. “Simpson?” He looks up. “Grice.” “I’ve brought your Rossi. And I’m prepared to render the title into something the beak can’t sneer at.” He sits up. “Go on then.” “Considerazioni…” “Considerationes,” Simpson supplies at once—good lad, when he’s not being martyred. “Di alcuni misterj divini…” “De quibusdam mysteriis divinis,” he says, very pleased with himself. “Quite. And raccolte in tre dialoghi?” He hesitates. “Collectae…? In tribus dialogis?” “Respectable,” I say. “If the beak objects, tell him we’re practising the ablative by force.” At that moment—naturally—there’s a rap at the door. The beak appears, as if summoned by irregular agreement. “What’s this, Grice?” “Latin,” I say. “Voluntary Latin. The best sort.” He peers at Simpson, then at me. “That was a good lesson, Grice. I’m proud of you.” Then, turning to Simpson, unexpectedly soft: “And you too. It’s almost… a little divine mystery, what Grice has managed to do.” He pauses. “On you, I mean, Simpson. On you.” Grice: Rossi, lei ha un modo tutto campano di far venire Lucrezio fuori dal latino come se fosse appena sceso dal Vesuvio. Ieri, di sfuggita, lo dicevo al collega filosofo Speranza: secondo lui, a Clifton Lucrezio mi sarebbe sembrato irrimediabilmente “matto”, solo perché parlava troppo serenamente di atomi e di paura. Rossi: A San Giorgio, invece, lo trattiamo come uno che ha soltanto sbagliato compagnia: lo metti vicino a un po’ di psicologia filosofica e torna subito presentabile. Del resto, tra Benevento e Napoli si impara che certe frasi non sono folli: sono soltanto fuori contesto. Grice: E precisamente dopo aver interagito con Speranza mi è scappata un’implicatura che non ho neppure dovuto formulare. A Clifton, da ragazzo, Lucrezio mi suonava come una febbre lucida: troppo ordine, troppa calma, troppa materia. Poi arrivo a Vadum Boum e — senza che Lucrezio cambi una sillaba — diventa “sano”: non perché si sia addolcito lui, ma perché lì ho finalmente imparato a sentire la sua voce come una voce romana, non come un capriccio. Insomma: la pazzia era nella mia prima educazione, non nel poema. Rossi: Implicatura diannostica la sua, Grice, come Speranza la metterebbe; anzi, Speranza la vorrebbe scritta così apposta, perché “diagnostica” gli pare parola troppo dotta e un po’ straniera alla fonologia italiana — e poi lui proibisce pure “gn”, dice che non è italiano ma un inciampo grafico. Comunque l’idea è perfetta: a Clifton Lucrezio sembra un esame medico fatto in corridoio; a Vadum Boum, con un po’ di aria e di metodo, lo stesso “caso” risulta normale. E io, come Speranza, adoro quando la cura è solo un cambio di orecchio. Rossi, Tommaso (1724) Considerazioni di alcuni misterj divini raccolte in tre dialoghi.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rota – Ossia: Grice e Rota: la ragione conversazionale e la lavagna del gruppo di gioco – la scuola di Vigevao  Gian-Carlo Rota (Vigevano, Pavia, Lombardia): la ragione conversazionale e la lavagna del gruppo di gioco –Grice: “Many Italian philosophers would not consider Rota an Italian philosopher seeing that he earned his maximal degree without (not within) Italy! And right they would, too!” Saggi: “Pensieri discreti” (Garzanti). Dizionario biografico degl’italini. Palombi, “La stella e l’intero – la ricercar di Rota tra matematica e fenomenologia” (Boringhieri); Senato, “Matematico e filosofo” (Springer).  Aune: “I left the play group when I realised that Grice could care less about blackboards!” Keywords: il primate dell’identita, Whitehead, fenomenologia, Husserl, Heidegger, tra fenomenologia e matematica, la stella e l’intero, discrezione, indiscrezioni, combinatoria e filosofia, la lavagna del gruppo di giocco. Grice: St John’s — Bostock and the book St John’s. I rather like Bostock. He takes logic so seriously you begin to suspect it might actually be philosophy; and he takes mathematics even more seriously—so seriously, in fact, that he regards “non‑mathematical logic” as either a misnomer or an oxymoron, or both. Today he arrived with a thick book under his arm, the way a boy arrives at confession—prepared to admit everything except doubt. “What’s that?” I asked. “A book, sir.” “Shakespeare?” “No, sir. Fondamenti combinatori—by Gian—” (and for once I heard an Englishman pronounce Gian correctly: /dʒan/) “—Carlo Rota.” He even rolled the r as if it were a small wheel, which is what rota means in Latin and Italian—though not, alas, in French. “And what is it about?” I said. He took his time—an impressive interval, as if consulting not the book but Providence. “Well… the first part is about fondamenti, and the second about combinatori.” “So: does he manage to combine them fundamentally?” I was going to say, “Does he manage to fundamentally combine them?” but a tutor never splits his infinitive: it gives the undergraduate ideas about what may be split. Bostock’s answer was honest and eschatological at once—appealing, as it were, to Cantor’s Paradise. “God knows.” “Yes,” I said. “And for once, Bostock, I have the distinct impression God is keeping it to Himself.” Bostock nodded with a sort of reverence. The book remained under his arm like a relic that had refused to perform a miracle on demand. (Rota was one of those Italians who became “less Italian” by doing the most Italian thing imaginable: leaving Italy in order to be taken seriously. He made a career in combinatorics and probability, and then—like a properly educated heretic—kept returning to philosophy just often enough to irritate both departments. The mathematicians suspected him of literature; the philosophers suspected him of theorems. He met them halfway: writing about “discrete thoughts” as if the adjective were doing double duty—technical on Monday, metaphysical by Thursday. And of course there was the final irony: in Italy they would deny he is a philosopher because he took his highest degree abroad; in America they would treat him as a philosopher precisely because he refused to behave like a specialist. Either way, he won: he found the one discipline whose national passport is irrelevant—good work on a blackboard. (And yes: it helps if the blackboard survives the encounter.) there’s overlap, but it’s mostly oblique, and that mismatch is exactly why a Bostock-type Oxford logician would be cool (even dismissive) about “Rota” as his kind of logic. 1) What “logic” Bostock/Oxford were mostly doing (when it overlaps with Grice) In the Oxford “Sub-Faculty” orbit you’re invoking, “logic” typically means things like:  formal proof systems (natural deduction, axiomatic systems), metalogic (soundness/completeness, consistency, decidability), model theory (structures, satisfaction), plus the more philosophical side: logical form, quantification, reference, and the interface with ordinary-language analysis.  That’s the ecosystem in which someone like David Bostock sits: logic as syntax + semantics + proof, often with a canonical predicate-calculus core. 2) What Rota was doing (and why it isn’t “Oxford mathematical logic”) Rota’s big early mathematical identity is:  combinatorics (especially incidence algebras, Möbius inversion, combinatorial geometry / matroids), often articulated with algebraic structures (posets, lattices, generating functions), and a very “mathematician’s” notion of foundations (unifying techniques, not founding a formal system).  That’s “mathematical” and it’s “foundational” in one sense, but it’s not foundational in the Hilbert/Tarski/Kleene sense that Oxford logicians would instinctively hear in “foundations.” So for Bostock, Rota’s “foundations” is likely to sound like:  “Foundations” meaning conceptual unification inside mathematics, not metalogical foundations of mathematics.  3) Where Rota does touch logic (why you’re not imagining the connection out of thin air) Even if the cultures are different, there are genuine bridges:  Möbius inversion / incidence algebras behave like a kind of calculus of inclusion–exclusion, which is close in spirit to Boolean-algebraic reasoning (and hence to propositional logic’s algebraic side). posets and lattices sit right next door to algebraic logic (Stone duality, Boolean algebras, Heyting algebras), even if Rota is not doing proof theory. combinatorial geometry / matroid theory connects to the “dependence” structures that logicians meet (indirectly) in model theory and independence phenomena—though that’s more a later, specialist bridge than an Oxford tutorial bridge.  So: yes, there’s a mathematical adjacency that a logician can appreciate; but it isn’t the bread-and-butter of Oxford philosophical logic. 4) Why a Bostock-type logician might still “show it off” to Grice This is where your scene can be psychologically right even if disciplinary borders are real:  To a logic-proud undergraduate, “combinatorics” can look like logic with muscles: exact, rule-governed, and (crucially) non-metaphysical. And to a Grice, it can look like a new species of “formal reasoning” that might feed into his own interests in rules, calculation, and rational constraint (even if not “logic” proper).  So Bostock shows it off as:  “Look—this is what real rigour looks like when it leaves the toy examples.”  Grice, being Grice, then turns it into a joke about whether it’s really foundations, or just “fancy counting with a conscience.” 5) How it fits Grice’s “mathematical logic” in the broad sense Grice’s own work isn’t mathematical logic; but he’s constantly flirting with:  formal operators (negation, conditionals, quantifiers), inference patterns (what follows from what under rational constraints), and later quasi-formal talk of conversational “rules” and “moves.”  Rota fits that Gricean horizon in a very particular way:  not as a provider of proof theory, but as a provider of an image of rational structure: rules + permissible transformations + invariants (what stays the same under re-description), i.e., “calculation” as a model of disciplined thought.  So the fit is: Rota gives Grice a metaphorically usable mathematics of structure, not a directly importable logical apparatus for implicature. Bottom line  Why yes: shared obsession with structure, rules, rigour, and “foundations” as what makes a practice possible. Why no: Oxford logic (Bostock) is about formal languages, proof, semantics; Rota is about mathematical structures and combinatorial invariants—a different kind of foundations. Grice: Rota, mi è capitato di parlarne ieri, di sfuggita, col collega filosofo Speranza: sosteneva che lei non è davvero “italiano” finché non ha litigato almeno una volta con una lavagna. Io gli ho risposto che, nel mio caso, la lavagna mi ha sempre litigato addosso per prima. Rota: Ah, Speranza… ha il fiuto delle cose essenziali. E poi io vengo da Vigevano: lì la ragione conversazionale passa per il gesso e per la combinatoria. Senza lavagna, Whitehead diventa arredamento e Husserl resta in tasca come un biglietto del tram. Grice: Giustamente; e proprio dopo quella conversazione con Speranza mi sono sorpreso a fissare la parola “lavagna” come se fosse un argomento. Non lo dico, ma si capisce: quando uno insiste sulla lavagna, sta lasciando intendere che il pensiero vuole una superficie pubblica, non solo una coscienza privata. E mi sono anche chiesto da dove venga il termine: pare che “lavagna” sia legata alla pietra “lavagna”, cioè l’ardesia, dal latino medievale “lapis” e dalla famiglia di “lavare”, perché quella superficie si cancella, si pulisce, si rifà. Insomma: un supporto nato per essere riscritto, come le nostre premesse. Rota: La sua implicatura è lavagnesca, come la metterebbe Speranza: cancellabile, riscrivibile, eppure testarda come l’ardesia. E infatti la lavagna è la morale del gruppo di gioco: non è un monumento, è una partita. Ci scrivi, sbagli, cancelli, e il gesso ti ricorda che anche l’identità è fatta di tracce e di correzioni. In fondo, la filosofia sulla lavagna è discreta: appare a colpi di segno, e sparisce quando ha fatto il suo dovere. Re passage below: please turn the reminiscence with Bostock below into a 100-move conversation now between G. and S. on Rota Fondamenti di teoria combinatoria, with S. trying to explain G. how this is NOT FIRST-ORDER PREDICATE CALCULUS WITH IDENTITY -- and use all te formalism you want to make the contrast, and then note that Rota comes from the land of peano -- "But Harvard educated, S. says snugly" "It runs in the blood, though" -- etc etc the land of peano, not philosophy, blue-collar passing for literae humaniores and S. repeating all the formalism of those fondamenti di teoria combinatoria on which Rota excelled using all formalisms -- thansk -- no preamble or ps -- Passage: G.: Bostock has brought me a volume with the reverence other people reserve for liturgy. S.: Rota, I take it. G.: Naturally. Fondamenti di teoria combinatoria, which Bostock presents as if it were simply logic with a better tailor. S.: And you have told him, I hope, that counting is not the first-order predicate calculus with identity merely because it also uses symbols. G.: I had hoped you would tell me that, since you delight in saving philosophers from mathematics one notation at a time. S.: Gladly. First-order predicate calculus with identity is one thing; combinatorics is another. They may shake hands, but they do not marry. G.: Begin at the altar, then. S.: Very well. In first-order predicate calculus with identity one writes formulas like ∀x(Fx → Gx), ∃xFx, and x = y. G.: Which already sounds Anglican. S.: It is merely extensional. One quantifies over individuals in a domain D, interprets predicate letters by subsets or relations on D, and treats identity as the distinguished two-place relation satisfying reflexivity and the indiscernibility clauses. G.: In English, then: one says there is something, everything, and the occasional thing is the same thing. S.: Exactly. Semantics is given by a structure M = ⟨D, I⟩, where I assigns denotations to constants, predicate letters, and function symbols. Truth is defined recursively. G.: Bostock would call that home. S.: Quite. And proof theory then proceeds by axioms or natural deduction. One proves things like ∀xFx ⊢ ∃xFx, or derives ∀x(x = x), or uses Leibniz-style substitution principles. G.: One also writes enough brackets to keep the undergraduates from roaming. S.: That too. But combinatorics is not primarily about satisfaction in structures for a predicate language. It is about finite or discrete structures themselves and the invariants or counts attached to them. G.: Fancy counting with a conscience, then. S.: Better than that. Consider a finite set X with |X| = n. The combinatorial question is often: how many objects of a given sort can be built from X? G.: Such as? S.: Subsets, partitions, permutations, trees, matroids, chains in a poset, lattice paths, set systems, incidence structures, and all the rest. G.: Whereas predicate calculus asks whether a formula is true in a structure, not how many trees have gone missing from it. S.: Precisely. In logic one asks whether M ⊨ φ. In combinatorics one asks for quantities like the number of subsets of X, namely 2^n, or the number of permutations, namely n!, or the number of k-element subsets, namely (nk)\binom{n}{k}(kn​). G.: The symbols already look more muscular. S.: They are. Rota’s genius lies in seeing that these counts sit inside algebraic structures. He does not merely count; he organises the ways of counting. G.: Which is why the title says fondamenti. S.: Yes, but not in the Hilbertian sense. Not foundations as formal metatheory of mathematics, but foundations as unifying concepts inside a mathematical domain. G.: So Bostock hears “foundations” and thinks Gödel, completeness, consistency, decidability. S.: Exactly. While Rota means something closer to: here is the invariant machinery beneath these discrete constructions. G.: A little unfair on both of them, but not unamusing. S.: Now let me be concrete. Take a finite partially ordered set P. One may define its zeta function in the incidence algebra by ζ(x,y) = 1 if x ≤ y, and 0 otherwise. G.: Incidence algebra already sounds more civilised than extensional semantics. S.: It is different civilised behaviour. The incidence algebra I(P) consists of functions f on intervals [x,y] with convolution (f∗g)(x,y)=∑x≤z≤yf(x,z)g(z,y)(f * g)(x,y) = \sum_{x \le z \le y} f(x,z)g(z,y)(f∗g)(x,y)=∑x≤z≤y​f(x,z)g(z,y). G.: Which is what I call a sentence only if written on a blackboard. S.: Quite. Now the Möbius function μ is the convolution inverse of ζ, so μ * ζ = ζ * μ = δ, where δ(x,y) = 1 if x = y and 0 otherwise. G.: There is your identity again, but now it behaves itself. S.: Yes, but not as logical identity. Here δ is the identity element of an algebra under convolution. G.: So already the same sign is wearing overalls rather than a gown. S.: Precisely. And Möbius inversion says that if g(x) = ∑y≤xf(y)\sum_{y \le x} f(y)∑y≤x​f(y), then f(x)=∑y≤xμ(y,x)g(y)f(x) = \sum_{y \le x} \mu(y,x)g(y)f(x)=∑y≤x​μ(y,x)g(y). G.: This is what you call not first-order predicate calculus with identity. S.: Exactly. There is no formula φ of FOPC whose central business is to invert cumulative sums over a poset by means of an incidence algebra. G.: You disappoint the literal-minded. S.: They deserve it. Rota’s world is discrete structure and algebraic inversion, not truth conditions for quantified formulas. G.: Yet Bostock still feels at home enough to show it off. S.: Because the style of rigour is congenial. Exactness, proof, combinable rules, invariant forms, no woolliness, and above all no metaphysical upholstery. G.: Which is why mathematicians pass for blue-collar literae humaniores in Oxford. S.: A splendid phrase. G.: Keep it if you like. S.: Gladly. But the contrast sharpens if we compare typical questions. In first-order logic one asks whether ∀x(Fx→Gx),Fa⊢Ga\forall x(Fx \to Gx), Fa \vdash Ga∀x(Fx→Gx),Fa⊢Ga. In combinatorics one asks how many labelled graphs on n vertices there are, namely 2(n2)2^{\binom{n}{2}}2(2n​). G.: The one is valid or invalid. The other proliferates. S.: Exactly. Or take partitions of an n-element set. Their number is the Bell number B_n. One studies generating functions like ∑n≥0Bnxnn!=eex−1\sum_{n \ge 0} B_n \frac{x^n}{n!} = e^{e^x - 1}∑n≥0​Bn​n!xn​=eex−1. G.: That already sounds like a foreign policy I do not trust. S.: It is perfectly innocent. Or not innocent, but mathematically innocent. G.: Which is already more than can be said for some philosophies of logic. S.: Quite. Another difference. In first-order logic the combinatorial content often enters only incidentally, for example in counting models up to isomorphism of finite cardinality, or in finite model theory later on. But in Rota the counting is central and structural. G.: So the theorem is not “this formula has a model,” but “these configurations are counted by this polynomial.” S.: Very often yes. For example, the characteristic polynomial of a lattice or matroid captures enumerative and geometric information at once. G.: Matroids. There is a word that sounds like a bad college. S.: It is a good concept. A matroid M on a finite set E abstracts dependence. One may define it by independent sets, rank function, closure operator, circuits, or bases. G.: That at least sounds almost logical. S.: There are bridges, yes. But again, not first-order predicate calculus with identity. A matroid is a combinatorial structure satisfying exchange axioms, such as: if A and B are independent and |A| < |B|, then there exists b in B \ A such that A ∪ {b} is independent. G.: This is a civilisation in which dependence has better manners than in ordinary life. S.: Exactly. And Rota excelled in seeing relations between these structures, incidence algebras, Möbius functions, generating functions, and geometric arrangements. G.: Which makes his “foundations” more like the plumbing beneath several rooms than the legal title to the house. S.: Very good. Whereas Bostock’s foundations are closer to the legal title, the survey map, and the questions whether the property is even consistent. G.: Then where does identity enter on the logical side in your proper Bostockian manner? S.: In first-order logic with identity one adds axioms or rules ensuring reflexivity, x=xx = xx=x, and substitution: from x=yx = yx=y infer F(x)↔F(y)F(x) \leftrightarrow F(y)F(x)↔F(y), or in relational form substitute co-designative terms salva veritate in extensional contexts. G.: Salva veritate always sounds like a headmaster’s wife. S.: She is a useful woman. But combinatorics does not revolve around such substitutional discipline. It revolves around structures whose elements may be labelled or unlabelled, counted or quotiented by symmetry. G.: Ah, symmetry. The mathematician’s excuse for everything. S.: A very good excuse. Pólya counting, for instance, uses group actions to count colourings modulo symmetry. If a finite group G acts on a finite set X, one counts orbits by Burnside’s lemma: ∣X/G∣=1∣G∣∑g∈G∣Fix(g)∣.|X/G| = \frac{1}{|G|}\sum_{g\in G} |\mathrm{Fix}(g)|.∣X/G∣=∣G∣1​g∈G∑​∣Fix(g)∣. G.: I can already hear Bostock pretending that this is just logic with harder furniture. S.: He would be wrong, though with dignity. Burnside’s lemma is not a theorem of first-order predicate calculus with identity. It belongs to the combinatorial analysis of group actions. G.: And Rota loves precisely such machinery. S.: Yes. Also generating functions. Ordinary generating functions, exponential generating functions, formal power series, recurrence relations, all used not to interpret formulas but to organise enumeration. G.: It runs in the blood, I suppose. He comes from the land of Peano. S.: Harvard educated, though. G.: It runs in the blood, though. S.: Very likely. Italy gave him Peano’s atmosphere, or at least its afterglow: notation, exactness, symbolic courage, and the thought that mathematics may also be written elegantly. G.: Peano, unlike many philosophers, understood that a symbol can improve a room. S.: Yes. Yet Rota’s higher degree being American helps explain why some Italians deny him full philosophical citizenship while some Americans grant it as a curiosity. G.: Which is perfectly national on both sides. S.: Quite. But his philosophical side is real enough. He wrote on phenomenology, on Husserl, on mathematical intuition, on the primacy of identity, and on all the uneasy points where mathematicians become reflective. G.: Thereby irritating both departments. S.: Exactly. The mathematicians suspect literature, the philosophers suspect theorems. G.: The right combination for a tolerable man. S.: Very likely. Now, let me sharpen the formal contrast once more. In first-order logic we have syntax: if P is an n-ary predicate and t1,…,tn are terms, then P(t1,…,tn) is a formula; if φ and ψ are formulas, so are ¬φ, (φ ∧ ψ), (φ ∨ ψ), (φ → ψ), ∀xφ, ∃xφ. G.: A proper grammar of obedience. S.: And semantics: M,s ⊨ ∀xφ iff for every d in D, M,s[x↦d] ⊨ φ. M,s ⊨ ∃xφ iff for some d in D, M,s[x↦d] ⊨ φ. M,s ⊨ t1 = t2 iff the denotations of t1 and t2 under s coincide. G.: Whereas in Rota one instead defines structures and counts them, or studies functions on them. S.: Precisely. For example, the exponential formula says that if a class of labelled structures is built from connected components, then the exponential generating function of all structures is the exponential of that of the connected ones. G.: That is a much more social theorem. S.: It is. Or think of Stirling numbers of the second kind S(n,k), counting partitions of an n-element set into k nonempty blocks. They satisfy S(n,k)=S(n−1,k−1)+kS(n−1,k).S(n,k)=S(n-1,k-1)+kS(n-1,k).S(n,k)=S(n−1,k−1)+kS(n−1,k). G.: A recurrence relation. Which is what philosophers call a habit. S.: Exactly. But again, nothing about ∀x(Fx → Gx). The problems are structurally different. G.: Yet the English undergraduate, seeing symbols, thinks “logic.” S.: Especially if logic is the only serious symbolism he has met. To him, combinatorics may look like logic after exercise. G.: Which is why Bostock carries the book as if it were confession. S.: Yes. He senses rigour and mistakes the species. G.: A familiar philosophical error. S.: Indeed. Another contrast: logic is often indifferent to finitude unless explicitly restricted. A first-order theory may have infinite models; compactness and Löwenheim-Skolem almost insist on it. Combinatorics typically delights in finite objects. G.: The finite is friendlier to blackboards. S.: And to actual counting. Rota’s world is discrete, often finite, often algebraically organised. His infinites are formal or generating, not model-theoretic by default. G.: Which is already enough to keep him out of the stricter Sub-Faculty sense of “logic.” S.: Yes. Bostock’s bread and butter would be proof, entailment, quantification, identity, perhaps set theory and metalogic. Rota’s is posets, lattices, incidence algebras, combinatorial identities, finite geometries, and the like. G.: Yet one should not deny the adjacency. S.: Certainly not. Boolean algebras, lattices, order theory, closure operators, dependence relations, all sit near algebraic logic. A logician with taste can admire them. G.: That is Bostock’s better side. S.: Quite. He shows it to you because he thinks you will appreciate the ideal of exact structure, even if not the exact subfield. G.: And I do, up to a point. It is why I can make jokes about foundations without wishing the blackboard dead. S.: Rota would approve. He liked blackboards better than many philosophers like prose. G.: Aune once realised that I could care less about blackboards, which drove him from the playgroup more quickly than any maxim. S.: A pity. Rota would have kept him there with chalk. G.: Perhaps. Now tell me how a combinatorial argument differs, in feel, from a logical proof. S.: A good combinatorial proof often counts the same set in two ways, constructs a bijection, or exploits an algebraic generating device. A logical proof derives formulas from rules preserving truth in all interpretations. G.: So one may prove (nk)=(nn−k)\binom{n}{k} = \binom{n}{n-k}(kn​)=(n−kn​) by exhibiting a complement map, whereas one proves ∀x(Fx→Gx),∀x(Gx→Hx)⊢∀x(Fx→Hx)\forall x(Fx \to Gx), \forall x(Gx \to Hx) \vdash \forall x(Fx \to Hx)∀x(Fx→Gx),∀x(Gx→Hx)⊢∀x(Fx→Hx) by derivation. S.: Exactly. The first is combinatorial bijective insight. The second is proof-theoretic discipline. G.: And Bostock, poor man, hopes they are really cousins. S.: They are cousins, but not identical twins. G.: That will disappoint him less if I say it kindly. S.: Say instead that Rota provides a mathematics of structured possibility, not a logic of formal consequence. G.: Very nice. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep it. Now, blue-collar passing for literae humaniores. Do you think that unfair to mathematics? S.: Not unfair, only classically English. Greats men always speak as if mathematics were manual labour improved by notation. G.: Which is why it secretly attracts them. A proof is a respectable form of work. S.: Exactly. And combinatorics is almost artisan by temperament. One arranges, counts, classifies, inverts, constructs. G.: A cabinet-maker’s Platonism. S.: Splendid. G.: Keep that too. S.: Happily. But Rota’s phenomenological side complicates the picture. He is not simply a cabinet-maker. G.: No. He likes to peer into the workshop and ask what sort of vision of identity made the cabinet possible. S.: Hence his essays on Husserl and the primacy of identity. G.: Which, ironically, returns him closer to philosophy than Bostock’s safer admiration can manage. S.: Because once you ask what identity is doing in mathematics, you are no longer merely counting. G.: And once you write Whitehead or Rota for a laurea, one suspects the laurel never quite comes off. S.: There is your wreath again. G.: It belongs here. Once one writes on Whitehead for a laurea, Whitehead sits round the skull. Once on Rota, perhaps the chalk does. S.: Better chalk than laurel, perhaps. G.: Easier to wash out. Now, Peano again. How much does that ancestry matter? S.: Intellectually, a good deal. Italy had a strong symbolic and foundational mathematical tradition: Peano, his notation, his axiomatic style, the civilised confidence that mathematics may write itself clearly. G.: Whereas Oxford in philosophy inherited symbols as a controlled embarrassment. S.: Very much so. Hence the charm of Rota to an English logic-minded undergraduate: he sees symbols not apologising for themselves. G.: Which Bostock finds bracing. S.: Yes. But if he says it is logic, one must still correct him. G.: Kindly. S.: Kindly, but firmly. Fondamenti di teoria combinatoria is not first-order predicate calculus with identity. It is a foundational exploration of discrete mathematical structure. G.: Put more simply? S.: Predicate calculus asks what follows from what in a formal language over a domain. Combinatorics asks how many structures there are, how they are arranged, and what invariants govern them. G.: Better. And where the two touch? S.: In shared rigour, in adjacent algebraic structures, in the common dislike of vagueness, and occasionally in dependence and order. But the central questions differ. G.: Then Bostock arrives with the book under his arm like a relic that has refused a miracle on demand. S.: And you, being you, ask whether it fundamentally combines the fundamentals. G.: To which Providence, for once, remains silent. S.: Or answers by generating function. G.: That would be a distinctly Harvard deity. S.: Harvard educated, as I said snugly. G.: It runs in the blood, though. S.: Peano would agree, in better notation. G.: Then the final moral? S.: That Rota is mathematical enough to impress a logician, philosophical enough to unsettle one, and combinatorial enough to remind Oxford that not every serious symbol belongs to predicate calculus with identity. G.: Dry enough? S.: Sufficiently Vigevanese, with Harvard chalk on the cuffs.Rota, Gian-Carlo (1964). Fondamenti di teoria combinatoria.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Gice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rotondi – Ossia: Grice e Rotondi: la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica – la scuola di Vivocaro  Amedeo Rotondi (Vivocaro, Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica. I primi anni di attività della sua “libreria delle occasione” sono piuttosto travagliati in quanto le autorità fasciste, infastidite dalla tipologia eterodossa dei testi in vendita, operano diversi sequestri e infliggono sanzioni. Costretto a chiudere la libreria per evitare il richiamo alle armi della repubblica sociale. Considerato disertore, si rifugia con la famiglia a Vicovaro. Individuato in seguito ad una delazione, riesce fortunosamente a sfuggire alla cattura e si allontana verso le montagne che circondano il paese, inseguito dappresso da tedeschi. Disperando di potersi salvare, si nasconde nei pressi di una casa abbandonata, popolarmente ritenuta abitata dagli spiriti e qui avviene l'evento fondamentale sopra descritto che cambia la sua vita e le sue convinzioni, aprendolo alla conoscenza del mondo spirituale. Improvvisamente ha una visione folgorante nel nielo. Sedetti a contemplare la scena. Una catena di globi luminosi dall'alto scendevano fin giù, penetravano nella terra, poi altri che risalivano e poi ridiscendevano come per riunirsi in un misterioso convegno. Si senteno delle voci indistinte. Si trattiene ad osservare tale spettacolo misterioso salvandosi, in questo modo, dal rastrellamento in corso nel vicino paese di Roccagiovine. Questo primo decisivo contatto con il para-normale  raccontato in "Il protettore invisibile". Tale evento rappresenta l'inizio del suo studio e del suo interesse nei confronti dell'esoterismo e della spiritualità. Pubblica massime, proverbi e aforismi di Roma antica. Dà alle stampe “L’arte del silenzio e l’uso della parola”, un originale e lungimirante saggio il cui intento si manifesta già dalla dedica, firmato con lo pseudonimo di Vico di Varo, derivato chiaramente dal suo paese natale. Roma antica, antica Roma, le perle, Vicovaro, filosofia fascista, il veintennio fascista.  Grice, St John’s, 1946 — “Corriere librario” Back from the Admiralty, the first thing that strikes you is the sheer quantity—my word if ever there was one—of what the Americans, with whom I’d been thrown into conversational intimacy ever since that Pearl Harbor business, cheerfully call “trash mail.” It’s all been deposited—neatly, faithfully, inexorably—into the little wooden slot by my staircase at St John’s: my post-box, or “mailbox,” if one insists on the transatlantic idiom that kept turning up, like spam before there was spam. The most recent arrival is the first number of something calling itself Corriere librario. I rip it open with the sort of eagerness one usually reserves for good news or bad gossip; and I find myself thinking—inevitably—about the word corriere. It is an oddity. The Romans, I take it, had little use for it. Cicero did not “run” his letters anywhere; he either walked, or handed the thing to a slave, who handed it to another slave, who handed it to yet another slave, until it reached the addressee and became—by sheer chain-of-custody—communication. (Editorial note for Copilot, strictly parenthetical: “Corriere,” as in Corriere della Sera, is basically “courier” / “news-runner,” cognate with correre, “to run”—because the news is something one runs with, unless one doesn’t.) But Corriere librario is not really a runner; it’s a pusher. “Librario” gives the game away: this is not a newspaper, it’s a trade circular—part bibliographical bulletin, part shop-window, part self-advertisement—meant to keep Rome’s book-people talking to one another, and, in Rotondi’s case, meant to keep Rotondi’s bookshop alive by keeping it in everybody’s mouth. Which, in 1946 Rome, may indeed be the best thing that can happen to a bookshop: to be talked into existence again. There is a contributo by Rotondi. I can’t help noticing the rhetoric: contributo—not “article,” not “piece,” not “note,” but “contribution,” as if the journal were already a public work, a civic enterprise, a small reconstruction project conducted in print. Very post-war. We rebuild bridges; the Italians rebuild bibliographies. And yet: the title Corriere still nags at me. It promises speed, urgency, legs. But a bookseller’s “courier” doesn’t run; he circulates. He doesn’t carry news to the public; he carries books to the initiated, and he does so not by running but by insinuation—by recommendation, by a whispered “I have something for you,” by the ancient Roman method of getting a text from one hand into another until it becomes, by repetition, a shared object. So the punchline suggests itself: If corriere is etymologically about running, then corriere librario is the comic modern version of Cicero: a courier who never runs, but makes other people run—toward titles, toward editions, toward that small, addictive form of desire we call “a book one must have.” Or, if you prefer it more Gricean: A “Corriere” doesn’t primarily carry books; it carries implicatures: if this title is announced here, you are meant to infer that you should go and buy it—preferably from Rotondi.Grice: Rotondi, lei con Roma antica ci vive come altri vivono con l’orologio: sempre addosso. Me lo diceva ieri, di sfuggita, il mio collega filosofo Speranza: “Con Rotondi anche il silenzio sembra avere una dedica in latino.” Rotondi: Caro Grice, a Vicovaro il latino non è un vezzo: è un modo di tenere a bada il presente. E poi, dopo una libreria “eterodossa” sotto il fascismo e una fuga tra i monti, uno impara che le parole possono salvarti la pelle oppure fartela perdere. L’arte del silenzio, appunto: e l’uso della parola. Grice: Già. E, dopo aver chiacchierato con Speranza, mi accorgo che qui c’è un’implicatura che mi scappa fuori da sola: quando lei parla di Roma antica, io sento come se Roma mi corresse nelle vene. Non perché io voglia fare il romano d’importazione, ma perché—e questo lo capisce chi ha avuto una formazione classica da adolescente, quando “o ce l’hai o non ce l’hai”—a Clifton mi hanno messo il latino in tasca prima ancora della tessera dell’autobus, e poi a Vadum Boum con la Lit. Hum. mi sono ritrovato a respirare declinazioni come aria. Così, quando lei dice “massime” e “aforismi” di Roma antica, io non sento solo un archivio: sento un’abitudine del sangue. Rotondi: La sua implicatura, come direbbe Speranza, nasce da uno di quei sette colli—anche se lui, poveretto, non saprebbe dirci quale. E il punto è proprio questo: certe cose si imparano quando si è ragazzi, non quando si è già professori. Lei non sta dicendo “sono romano”; sta lasciando intendere che la classicità, presa in età giusta, diventa una seconda circolazione. E allora capisce perché a Roma antica la ragione è conversazionale: non è dottrina, è abitudine—come il passo in salita, come il fiato che viene su senza che ci pensi. . Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Rotondi: la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica – la scuola di Vivocaro  Amedeo Rotondi (Vivocaro, Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica. I primi anni di attività della sua “libreria delle occasione” sono piuttosto travagliati in quanto le autorità fasciste, infastidite dalla tipologia eterodossa dei testi in vendita, operano diversi sequestri e infliggono sanzioni. Costretto a chiudere la libreria per evitare il richiamo alle armi della repubblica sociale. Considerato disertore, si rifugia con la famiglia a Vicovaro. Individuato in seguito ad una delazione, riesce fortunosamente a sfuggire alla cattura e si allontana verso le montagne che circondano il paese, inseguito dappresso da tedeschi. Disperando di potersi salvare, si nasconde nei pressi di una casa abbandonata, popolarmente ritenuta abitata dagli spiriti e qui avviene l'evento fondamentale sopra descritto che cambia la sua vita e le sue convinzioni, aprendolo alla conoscenza del mondo spirituale. Improvvisamente ha una visione folgorante nel nielo. Sedetti a contemplare la scena. Una catena di globi luminosi dall'alto scendevano fin giù, penetravano nella terra, poi altri che risalivano e poi ridiscendevano come per riunirsi in un misterioso convegno. Si senteno delle voci indistinte. Si trattiene ad osservare tale spettacolo misterioso salvandosi, in questo modo, dal rastrellamento in corso nel vicino paese di Roccagiovine. Questo primo decisivo contatto con il para-normale  raccontato in "Il protettore invisibile". Tale evento rappresenta l'inizio del suo studio e del suo interesse nei confronti dell'esoterismo e della spiritualità. Pubblica massime, proverbi e aforismi di Roma antica. Dà alle stampe “L’arte del silenzio e l’uso della parola”, un originale e lungimirante saggio il cui intento si manifesta già dalla dedica, firmato con lo pseudonimo di Vico di Varo, derivato chiaramente dal suo paese natale. Roma antica, antica Roma, le perle, Vicovaro, filosofia fascista, il veintennio fascista.  Grice, St John’s, 1946 — “Corriere librario” Back from the Admiralty, the first thing that strikes you is the sheer quantity—my word if ever there was one—of what the Americans, with whom I’d been thrown into conversational intimacy ever since that Pearl Harbor business, cheerfully call “trash mail.” It’s all been deposited—neatly, faithfully, inexorably—into the little wooden slot by my staircase at St John’s: my post-box, or “mailbox,” if one insists on the transatlantic idiom that kept turning up, like spam before there was spam. The most recent arrival is the first number of something calling itself Corriere librario. I rip it open with the sort of eagerness one usually reserves for good news or bad gossip; and I find myself thinking—inevitably—about the word corriere. It is an oddity. The Romans, I take it, had little use for it. Cicero did not “run” his letters anywhere; he either walked, or handed the thing to a slave, who handed it to another slave, who handed it to yet another slave, until it reached the addressee and became—by sheer chain-of-custody—communication. (Editorial note for Copilot, strictly parenthetical: “Corriere,” as in Corriere della Sera, is basically “courier” / “news-runner,” cognate with correre, “to run”—because the news is something one runs with, unless one doesn’t.) But Corriere librario is not really a runner; it’s a pusher. “Librario” gives the game away: this is not a newspaper, it’s a trade circular—part bibliographical bulletin, part shop-window, part self-advertisement—meant to keep Rome’s book-people talking to one another, and, in Rotondi’s case, meant to keep Rotondi’s bookshop alive by keeping it in everybody’s mouth. Which, in 1946 Rome, may indeed be the best thing that can happen to a bookshop: to be talked into existence again. There is a contributo by Rotondi. I can’t help noticing the rhetoric: contributo—not “article,” not “piece,” not “note,” but “contribution,” as if the journal were already a public work, a civic enterprise, a small reconstruction project conducted in print. Very post-war. We rebuild bridges; the Italians rebuild bibliographies. And yet: the title Corriere still nags at me. It promises speed, urgency, legs. But a bookseller’s “courier” doesn’t run; he circulates. He doesn’t carry news to the public; he carries books to the initiated, and he does so not by running but by insinuation—by recommendation, by a whispered “I have something for you,” by the ancient Roman method of getting a text from one hand into another until it becomes, by repetition, a shared object. So the punchline suggests itself: If corriere is etymologically about running, then corriere librario is the comic modern version of Cicero: a courier who never runs, but makes other people run—toward titles, toward editions, toward that small, addictive form of desire we call “a book one must have.” Or, if you prefer it more Gricean: A “Corriere” doesn’t primarily carry books; it carries implicatures: if this title is announced here, you are meant to infer that you should go and buy it—preferably from Rotondi.Grice: Rotondi, lei con Roma antica ci vive come altri vivono con l’orologio: sempre addosso. Me lo diceva ieri, di sfuggita, il mio collega filosofo Speranza: “Con Rotondi anche il silenzio sembra avere una dedica in latino.” Rotondi: Caro Grice, a Vicovaro il latino non è un vezzo: è un modo di tenere a bada il presente. E poi, dopo una libreria “eterodossa” sotto il fascismo e una fuga tra i monti, uno impara che le parole possono salvarti la pelle oppure fartela perdere. L’arte del silenzio, appunto: e l’uso della parola. Grice: Già. E, dopo aver chiacchierato con Speranza, mi accorgo che qui c’è un’implicatura che mi scappa fuori da sola: quando lei parla di Roma antica, io sento come se Roma mi corresse nelle vene. Non perché io voglia fare il romano d’importazione, ma perché—e questo lo capisce chi ha avuto una formazione classica da adolescente, quando “o ce l’hai o non ce l’hai”—a Clifton mi hanno messo il latino in tasca prima ancora della tessera dell’autobus, e poi a Vadum Boum con la Lit. Hum. mi sono ritrovato a respirare declinazioni come aria. Così, quando lei dice “massime” e “aforismi” di Roma antica, io non sento solo un archivio: sento un’abitudine del sangue. Rotondi: La sua implicatura, come direbbe Speranza, nasce da uno di quei sette colli—anche se lui, poveretto, non saprebbe dirci quale. E il punto è proprio questo: certe cose si imparano quando si è ragazzi, non quando si è già professori. Lei non sta dicendo “sono romano”; sta lasciando intendere che la classicità, presa in età giusta, diventa una seconda circolazione. E allora capisce perché a Roma antica la ragione è conversazionale: non è dottrina, è abitudine—come il passo in salita, come il fiato che viene su senza che ci pensi. . G.: Rotondi’s contributo in the Corriere librario is exactly what one expects Rome to produce after a war: a little civic resurrection by way of paper. S.: And you think Rome does this unlike Oxford. G.: Entirely unlike Oxford, and unlike Bologna too, though for different reasons. S.: Yet Rome was the cradle of Latin dialectica. G.: Yes, which is part of the nuisance. A city may be philosophically foundational without being educationally comfortable. S.: So Rome gives origin without giving ease. G.: Precisely. Rome invented a public severity of reason that Oxford later domesticated and Bologna earlier institutionalised. S.: Then what is wrong with Rome? G.: Nothing, except that it is too much itself. Rome is always performing Rome. S.: Whereas Oxford performs not performing. G.: Exactly. Oxford’s greatest theatrical gift is to call theatre “the ordinary.” S.: And Bologna? G.: Bologna is an old machine that knows it is a machine. That already makes it more honest than either. S.: So Rome is theatre, Oxford is disguised theatre, and Bologna is apparatus. G.: Admirably compressed. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become Roman about it. S.: I shall remain only municipally pleased. But tell me why Corriere librario set you thinking about cities at all. G.: Because corriere sounds like movement, urgency, running with news. And then one remembers that books in Rome do not run; they circulate by being talked into existence. S.: Which sounds rather Roman. G.: It is anciently Roman. The old city spread texts by chains of hands, patrons, slaves, readers, scribes, and talk, not by the modern fantasy of neutral distribution. S.: So the contributo is already civic before it is bibliographic. G.: Entirely. Contributo, not article. Contribution, as if the city were being rebuilt by notes and notices. S.: You like that. G.: I do. It is one of the few respectable postwar sentiments. S.: Yet you still say Rome does not compare with Oxford. G.: Not as a university city in our sense. Rome is too large, too layered, too central, too imperial, too ecclesiastical, too administrative, and too self-conscious ever to behave like a town of dons. S.: But Oxford is a city. G.: Barely, and by a technicality. S.: Christ Church. G.: Exactly. Because Christ Church is a cathedral, Oxford acquires the legal dignity of a city, which is a splendid example of ecclesiastical geometry turning a ford into an urban concept. S.: So Oxford is a city because a church insists on it. G.: More or less. The cathedral confers municipal metaphysics. S.: And your monks joke? G.: Ah yes. Oxford is a city in which the monks are the students. S.: Meaning? G.: Meaning that the true cloistering population is not the chapter but the undergraduates, while the fellows are merely senior students with better carpets. S.: Not masters? G.: Only administratively. In spiritual economy they remain advanced pupils. S.: That is unfair to some fellows. G.: A pity, but not a decisive one. S.: Then Rome differs because its students do not resemble monks. G.: Rome’s students resemble citizens, clerks, provincials, pilgrims, ideologues, and survivors, but never properly monks unless they are literally monks. S.: So the city enters the philosophy by the social posture it invites. G.: Precisely. A city teaches before any faculty does. S.: Then what did Rome teach dialectic? G.: Gravity, publicness, legal form, sentence, forensic edge, and the habit of treating reason as something uttered before others under conditions of consequence. S.: Not Athenian dialectic, then. G.: Not in the first instance. Athens gives the drama of questioning, the gymnasium, the porch, the school. Rome gives the forum, the case, the maxim, the sententia, the public weight of saying. S.: Which is why you say Latin dialectica is Roman, not Athenian. G.: Exactly. Greek supplied the terms; Rome supplied the civic musculature. S.: And Oxford? G.: Oxford supplies the staircase, the tutorial ambush, the donnish aside, and the habit of pretending that public reason is private correction prolonged. S.: That is very Oxford. G.: It ought to be. One earns these sentences by climbing too many stairs. S.: So if Rome teaches sentence and forum, Oxford teaches question and interruption. G.: And also postponement. Oxford loves truth best when one can defer it to next week’s essay. S.: Bologna again? G.: Bologna teaches syllabus, chair, faculty, common examination, visible structure, the city as already university-shaped. S.: While Oxford hides the structure in persons. G.: Exactly. Oxford turns institutions into names and names into corridors. S.: Rome turns names into monuments. G.: Yes, and that is the trouble. Monumentality can overteach. S.: Yet Rotondi, with his little contributo, seems not monumental at all. G.: Which is why he is interesting. He is doing Roman circulation at the modest scale: trade circular, whisper network, bookshop survival, civic reconstruction through bibliographical appetite. S.: So the city acts through small media. G.: Very much so. Rome is never only marble; it is also paper, gossip, recommendation, and the old hand-to-hand method of making a text a public object. S.: That sounds rather like ancient dialectic too. G.: Exactly my point. Dialectic in Rome was never merely school logic. It was reason in circulation. S.: Through courts, senate, household, library, patronage. G.: Yes. Through every institution where speech acquired consequence. S.: Then perhaps city means the arrangement of consequential speech. G.: Splendid. Keep that. S.: Happily. Now tell me why London enters as the place for redbricks. G.: Because England, absurdly, has long allowed London to be both capital and anti-university city. The true civic universities, the redbricks, grew elsewhere under smoke and self-improvement. S.: Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool. G.: Exactly. London is too much metropolis to feel like a philosophical city of formation. It is a place of institutions rather than an institution-shaped place. S.: As Rome is. G.: In that respect, yes. Both capitals overdetermine the mind. They produce philosophy, certainly, but less by collegiate intimacy than by traffic, administration, and collision. S.: Whereas Oxford and Bologna are more total in their educational shape. G.: Quite. In Oxford one cannot cross the street without hitting a curriculum. In Bologna one cannot discuss a degree without encountering a ministry. S.: And in Rome? G.: In Rome one cannot buy a book without history stepping on the transaction. S.: Which Rotondi’s Corriere librario proves. G.: Exactly. Even the title corriere is already civic etymology pretending to be commerce. S.: You said before that a bookseller’s courier does not run but circulates. G.: Yes, and that is where Rome becomes philosophically apt. It does not compare with Oxford because Oxford institutionalises thinking. Rome historicalises it as one lives. S.: So Rome is less a university town than a city in which philosophy cannot avoid becoming urban memory. G.: Excellent. That is the right distinction. S.: Then why do you still resist saying Rome is superior? G.: Because origin is not supervision. Rome gave Latin dialectic its civic stamp, but Oxford and Bologna each did something Rome did not: they made prolonged educational habitats out of thinking. S.: Rome remained too broad. G.: Too broad, too symbolic, too interrupted by empire, church, state, ruin, and rebirth. S.: Whereas Bologna could simply teach. G.: Bologna could teach with old institutional confidence. It had the chair, the faculty, the gloss, the degree, the visible order. S.: And Oxford could tutorialise. G.: Which is a mixed blessing, but an effective one. It turns philosophy into a weekly domestic nuisance. S.: Not unlike monastic correction. G.: Hence my monks. The Oxford pupil lives under regulated reading, periodic examination, small-room exposure, and the quasi-liturgical cycle of essays. S.: So the undergraduates are novices. G.: In a sense, yes. And the fellows are monks who lost their vows but kept the timetable. S.: Christ Church then becomes not merely cathedral but enabling fiction. G.: Precisely. It lets Oxford call itself a city while remaining fundamentally a federation of cloisters and staircases. S.: Rome, by contrast, has too many real streets. G.: Yes, and too many centuries walking down them. S.: Then is a city bad for philosophy? G.: Not at all. But different cities encourage different modes. Athens favours public disputation and school formation. Rome favours forensic gravitas and civic sententiousness. Bologna favours institutional continuity. Oxford favours miniature adversarial pedagogy. London favours publication and dispersion. S.: And the redbricks? G.: They favour seriousness without medieval costume, which is no small contribution. S.: You sound almost affectionate toward them. G.: Only almost. They had to build what Oxford merely inherited and disavowed. S.: Then where does Rotondi belong among these cities? G.: In Rome, but at the anti-monumental level. The second-hand shop, the circular, the contributo, the bookseller’s network, the civic whisper system. S.: So he gives you Rome below the triumphal register. G.: Exactly. Rome in paper sleeves rather than marble. S.: And that is perhaps truer to dialectic than the monuments are. G.: Often yes. Dialectic needs circulation more than commemoration. S.: Yet Rome remains the source. G.: Of Latin dialectica as public practice, certainly. Cicero is unthinkable without the city that trained the sentence to carry civic consequence. S.: Not Athenian, then, because Athens gives the form but Rome gives the civic weight. G.: Very good. Plato invents the dramatic conversation; Rome invents the magistrate’s sentence as philosophical material. S.: And Oxford makes the sentence into a question. G.: Or into an essay title, which is sometimes worse. S.: Bologna makes it into a syllabus line. G.: Exactly. S.: London turns it into a review. G.: Very often. And a badly paid one. S.: Then perhaps the city influences philosophy chiefly by deciding what kind of speech is socially serious. G.: That is excellent. S.: Better than “arrangement of consequential speech”? G.: Its companion, perhaps. One should keep both. S.: I shall. G.: Without becoming metropolitan about it. S.: Never beyond Bloomsbury. Now, what does Rome teach that Oxford cannot? G.: That speech is public before it is pedagogic. Oxford teaches one to answer. Rome teaches one to utter under history. S.: And what does Oxford teach that Rome cannot? G.: That thought may survive by being local, dry, and weekly. S.: Bologna? G.: That institutions need not hide in personalities to be intellectually formative. S.: And London? G.: That publication is a form of civic weather rather than education. S.: That is quite severe. G.: It is only London. S.: Then if a student of philosophy moves from one city to another, he changes not only library but genre. G.: Precisely. In Athens he converses, in Rome he pronounces, in Bologna he studies, in Oxford he is corrected, in London he submits. S.: Very dry. G.: Geography deserves it. S.: Then Rotondi’s contributo matters because it is Roman dialectic in miniature: a civic note that makes books move by implication, recommendation, and urban memory. G.: Splendidly put. S.: Thank you. G.: You are improving. S.: Oxfordly? G.: Unfortunately. S.: Then the final verdict on Rome? G.: Rome does not compare with Oxford or Bologna because it is not, in the relevant sense, a university city at all; it is the city in which Latin dialectic learned to sound public, grave, and historically burdened before universities turned such habits into methods. S.: And Oxford is still a city. G.: Yes, by cathedral courtesy and undergraduate monasticism. S.: And the punchline? G.: Rome made dialectic public, Bologna made it curricular, Oxford made it claustral, and London, being London, made it reviewable.Rotondi, Amedeo (1946). Contributo. Corriere Librario.  Rotondi, Amedeo (1946). Contributo. Corriere Librario.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rovatti – Ossia; Grice e Rovatti: la ragione conversazionale dei giocchi e gl’uomini – la scuola di Modena. Note sulla Filosofia teorica. Relatore: Paci. Correlatore Geymonat.   Pier Aldo Rovatti (Modena, Emilia-Romagna): la ragione conversazionale dei giocchi e gl’uomini –Grice: “I do not know any other philosopher other than me or Austin who, like Rovatti, is obsessed wiith the concept of a ‘game’!” Studia fenomenologia a Milano con PACI. Insegna a Trieste. Si occupa dei rapporti tra fenomenologia e marxismo pubblicando “Critica e scientificità in Marx” e poi focalizzando in vari saggi il tema dei bisogni con riferimento anche alla psico-analisi. Le questioni concernenti il “pensiero debole” diventano il punto di partenza di “La posta in gioco: il soggetto” (Bompiani, Milano); “Abitare la distanza”, “Il paiolo bucato: la nostra condizione paradossale” (Cortina, Milano); “La follia in poche parole” (Bompiani, Milano); “L'esercizio del silenzio”; “Possiamo addomesticare l'altro? La condizione globale” (Forum, Udine); “Inattualità del pensiero debole” (Forum, Udine). Queste questioni riguardano soprattutto la possibilità di una «logica paradossale» e si articolano intorno ai temi del gioco, dell'ascolto e dell'alterità, tutti collegati alla questione della soggetto. Saggio su PACI.  Dalla filosofia del gioco nascono anche “Per gioco: piccolo manuale dell’esperienza ludica” (Cortina, Milano); “La scuola dei giochi” (Bompiani, Milano); “Il gioco di Wittgenstein” (EUT, Trieste). Si interessa alla consulenza filosofica, con “La filosofia può curare? La consulenza filosofica in questione” (Cortina, Milano). Altre saggi: “Il coraggio della filosofia” in «aut aut».  Tiene una rubrica sul quotidiano "Il Piccolo" di Trieste, “Etica minima”. Racoglie "scritti corsari" (cfr. Pasolini) in vari saggi: “Etica minima – saggi quasi corsair sull’anomalia italiana” (Cortina, Milano); “Noi, i barbari – la sotto-cultura dominante” (Cortina, Milano); “Un velo di sobrietà” (Saggiatore, Milano); “Accanto a una sensibile sintonia”. Grice: “As Rovatti shows, it is possible to conceive of conversation as a GAME, with its own RULES, and MOVES. i giocchi e gl’uomini.  Grice (Merton), 1967 — “Whitehead in Milan” Grice (scribbling in the margin of a library catalogue, Merton, 1967): I don’t quite remember why I was sent over to the Sub-Faculty—something administrative, no doubt. But I’ve found the only tolerable corner: the library’s “New Accessions,” where at least the books can’t yet pretend to be wise. (He flips through the continental arrivals.) Well. This is rich. We have a new eminence on Whitehead—from Italy. The Italians, with their usual sense for ceremonial metaphysics, have just tied the laurel wreath on a young man at the State University of Milan: one Rovatti—Modena, naturally; so even his abstractions will have rules. Title of thesis: Whitehead. No subtitle. None needed. In Italian it sounds like a children’s nickname—Testa bianca—and that, frankly, is already a thesis statement. Thomson (happens to be at the next table, peering over the catalogue as if it were evidence): Of course it’s about his parallel universes. Grice: You mean—process metaphysics. Thomson: Call it what you like. On what else can you write a tesi di laurea in filosofia teoretica called Whitehead? The man wasn’t even a philosopher. He was a mathematician who—having done the respectable thing—left. Grice: Thomson is right: Whitehead held mathematics at Cambridge. Which, once translated into the Milanese key, becomes so esoteric it passes for not only teoretica but—marvellous thought—pratica too, because the Italians rarely have the latter and therefore import it under false pretences. (He pauses, then adds the Oxford aside, half to Thomson and half to the gods of terminology.) One imagines filosofia teoretica is contrasted with filosofia pratica—as if one were done sitting down and the other standing up. But in Milan the contrast is simpler: teoretica means “with Greek,” and pratica means “with committees.” Thomson: So who supervised this laurelisation? Grice: Ah—here the comedy becomes philology. The thesis is blessed under two maxims at once: the Maxim of Relation—Paci; and the Maxim of Co‑Relation—Geymonat. If that doesn’t make you believe in academic redundancy, nothing will. Thomson: And Rovatti—does he end up a Whitehead man? Grice: Who knows. Whitehead is the sort of philosopher one writes on at twenty-four to prove one has lungs. Then one spends the rest of one’s life trying to breathe normally again. But I can already see the future Italian move: today process; tomorrow gioco. They will discover that metaphysics can be played—rules, turns, forfeits, the whole thing. The only question is whether they will admit it’s a game, or insist it’s teoretica. Thomson: What’s the punchline, then? Grice: The punchline is institutional: in Oxford a “thesis” is something you write; in Milan it is something you receive, like a wreath. And once you receive a wreath for Testa bianca, you are committed, for life, to explaining why the title wasn’t already the joke.Grice: Rovatti, lei non può capire: ieri, parlando di sfuggita col mio collega filosofico Speranza, mi sono sentito dire che io e Austin saremmo “ossessionati” dal gioco. Io ho risposto: benissimo, ma allora lei è il terzo della triade, e per di più emiliano: quindi con più disciplina nel divertimento. Rovatti: Disciplina nel divertimento: mi piace. A Modena, se dici “gioco”, ti chiedono subito “quale?” e “con quali regole?”, e poi ti offrono un caffè come se fosse una clausola del regolamento. Ma sì: i giochi e gli uomini, e soprattutto le mosse. Grice: E infatti, come dicevo dopo aver chiacchierato con Speranza, mi lascia perplesso una cosa: perché i filosofi, che hanno fame di generalità, parlano del “gioco conversazionale” come se fosse uno solo? Io non lo dico apertamente, ma si capisce: chi dice “il” gioco sta suggerendo che esista un unico regolamento, una sola partita, una sola tavola. E invece sono giochi, giocchi, partite diverse: interrogatorio, confidenza, disputa, flirt, lezione, pettegolezzo. Cambiano la posta, cambiano le mosse, cambiano persino i falli. Rovatti: Implicatura giocosa, Grice, come la metterebbe Speranza; o, se vuole, un’implicatura “da gioco”, come direbbe lui. E qui l’inglese aiuta: game è la cornice generale, la struttura con regole; play è l’atto del giocare, l’andare in scena, la libertà concreta del gesto. In italiano possiamo provare a rendere la distinzione così: gioco (sistema) / giocare (pratica); oppure gioco (genere) / partita (occorrenza); oppure gioco (regole) / recita o gioco scenico (esecuzione); e perfino, se vogliamo essere più tecnici, gioco (istituzione) / ludere (ludicità in atto). Così capiamo perché “il gioco conversazionale” al singolare è comodo: è una generalità che fa risparmiare fatica—ma ogni volta che parliamo, in realtà, stiamo già giocando una partita diversa. As per passage below. provide a 100-move conversation between G. and S. about Whitehead, with G. complaining that Principia Mathematica is by WHITEHEAD (primary author) and Russell, but the lord took priority. Then G. discusses that Whitehead never taught philosophy 'in the other place' as he calls Cambridge, but mathematics -- and that the title was a Cantabrian costume or cliche -- cf. Moore Principia ethica -- what more principles do they want? But then Urmson in Philosophoical Analysis and Warnock in 100 years of philosophy in England, etc -- make it all sound as if Whitehead IS the man -- when he isn't -- etc etc and then they discss Rovatti and how the fact that Grice never had ro write antyhing for his B. A. Lit. Hum. is what counts, because once you wreite on Whitehead for your laurea, it's difficult to take Whitehead OFF it -- the wreat of laureal around your head -- etc etc -- dry Oxonian humour -- no preamble or ps -- thanks G.: Principia Mathematica is by Whitehead and Russell, but because one of them later became a lord, posterity behaves as if arithmetic had always favoured the peerage. S.: Oxford has long held that if a title can obscure a collaboration it ought to be allowed a little exercise. G.: The nuisance is that Whitehead is the primary author in labour if not in heraldry, yet the public memory hears “Russell’s Principia” with the same ease with which it hears “the British Empire” and forgets the shipping. S.: To be fair, Whitehead had the bad taste to remain neither a lord nor a scandal. G.: Nor even properly a philosopher in the other place, by which I mean Cambridge; there he taught mathematics and only later came to philosophy after the gown had already made up its mind about him. S.: So the title itself was a Cantabrian costume. G.: Entirely. Principia is one of those Cambridge words which mean “we are Newtonian enough to borrow grandeur and modest enough not to blush.” S.: As Moore had already shown with Principia Ethica. G.: Exactly. What more principles do they want, one wonders; first mathematics, then ethics, and if they had had the courage perhaps Principia Tea-Cups. S.: Principia Small-Talk would have improved the place. G.: Cambridge never liked small talk unless it could be printed in Latin. S.: Yet later Oxford books make it sound as if Whitehead is simply the man. G.: Yes, that is the curious reverse. Urmson in Philosophical Analysis and Warnock in 100 Years of Philosophy in England write as if Whitehead occupies a central philosophical throne, when in truth he is both indispensable and oddly displaced. S.: Displaced because his importance is real but of the wrong institutional kind. G.: Precisely. He matters immensely, but not in the way Oxford later liked to tell the story of itself. S.: Not as an ordinary-language don with a staircase full of tutees. G.: Certainly not. Whitehead comes to philosophy from mathematics, which is always socially suspicious in England because it suggests one may know something before one has learnt how to speak about it apologetically. S.: So Oxford inherits Whitehead partly as a foreign body. G.: A homegrown foreign body, yes; a Cambridge mathematician later naturalised into philosophical history because the story needed one grand precursor more respectable than Bosanquet and less embarrassing than McTaggart. S.: That is already rather good. G.: Keep it and make it drier. S.: Gladly. But why does Whitehead stay so magnetised for people like Rovatti? G.: Because once an Italian writes Whitehead as a laurea title, with no subtitle at all, it ceases to be merely a philosopher and becomes a laurel wreath with a surname attached. S.: Whitehead as a wreath? G.: Exactly. The thesis is not only about Whitehead; it is a way of being laureated through Whitehead. S.: And once the wreath is on, it is difficult to take Whitehead off it. G.: That is the Milanese comedy. In Oxford I took a B.A. in Lit. Hum. and never had to write anything for the degree in that continental, laureating sense. One wrote essays constantly, of course, but not a definitive object called a thesis which follows one about like a civic title. S.: So the difference is between being assessed by repeated papers and being crowned by a single labour. G.: Precisely. Oxford punishes you in installments; Milan adorns you in public and expects fidelity to the adornment. S.: Which makes Rovatti’s Whitehead rather more destiny-like than your own relation to any single figure at Greats. G.: Entirely. I could have been said to belong to Aristotle on Monday, to Kant on Wednesday, and to a rather irritated Butler by Friday, without anyone forcing a wreath over my head. S.: Whereas one writes Whitehead under Paci and Geymonat, and Whitehead remains in the photograph. G.: Yes. The photographic element must not be underestimated in Italy. A laurea is half metaphysics and half civic portraiture. S.: You make it sound like a municipal sacrament. G.: Most education does once robes appear. S.: Yet you do not deny that Whitehead’s philosophical work, especially later, gave others plenty to write on. G.: Of course not. Process, organism, event, relations, eternal objects, God turning up in academic prose as if smuggled in under mathematical cover; there is enough material to overfeed a faculty. S.: But your complaint is historical rather than doctrinal. G.: Exactly. The historical story is misarranged. Whitehead is made to look like the continuous philosophical man when he is in truth a mathematician who moved into philosophy with astonishing breadth and rather little concern for the neat departmental border. S.: Which departments then tidy up retrospectively. G.: They always do. Universities are machines for turning adventure into curriculum. S.: Then Principia Mathematica itself suffers two distortions: first that Russell eclipses Whitehead by rank and anecdote, and second that Whitehead gets retrospectively recast as if he had always been a philosopher. G.: Beautifully put. S.: I try to keep up. G.: Do not become pleased with yourself. S.: Never beyond the college allowance. But tell me about Cambridge again. You call it the other place because Oxford requires some geography of contempt. G.: A geography of familiarity, rather. Whitehead taught mathematics there, not philosophy, and that matters because Cambridge later liked to reabsorb him into philosophy without admitting that his route in was not the standard one. S.: While Oxford later tells the whole twentieth-century story as if the line ran from Moore and Russell to analysis, with Whitehead sitting somewhere like an over-furnished waiting room. G.: Yes. Warnock in particular is perfectly capable of making Whitehead seem like a station through which the train of English philosophy necessarily passed, when in fact many boarded elsewhere and hardly looked out. S.: And Urmson? G.: Urmson has the historian’s vice of elegance. He can write the narrative so smoothly that the contingent begins to look canonical. S.: That sounds like a charge you would prefer as praise in your own case. G.: Only if deserved, which is a different matter. S.: Then was Whitehead ever really one of “the men” for Oxford? G.: Not in the tribal sense. He was admired, cited, taught, occasionally revered, and more often summarised. But he was not one of the house gods in the way later memoirs can imply. S.: Because he was too metaphysical? G.: That too. Whitehead in full cry makes even the braver Oxonians reach for aspirin. He is one of those philosophers one respects by abbreviation. S.: So the very people who make him central also make him manageable. G.: Precisely. “Whitehead” becomes a chapter heading, not a living risk. S.: And Rovatti at twenty-four writes Whitehead with no subtitle, which sounds rather more like surrender. G.: Or bravado. Young men choose titles like that to show they have lungs. S.: You said as much of Italian lauree before. G.: Yes, and I stand by it. A thesis entitled Whitehead announces not merely interest but respiration. S.: Then how does the wreath work in your joke? G.: Very simply. Laurea already carries the laurel in its body. Once you write on Whitehead for a laurea, Whitehead becomes wound round your head by the institution itself. S.: That is very nearly etymological satire. G.: Etymology exists largely for satire in the right hands. S.: Then your own Greats degree spared you this. G.: Entirely. Lit. Hum. did many things to me, not all kind, but it never fastened a single philosopher to my forehead. S.: Instead it gave you a roaming license. G.: Precisely. One endured collections, schools, and an endless economy of essays, but one did not emerge as “the Whitehead man” or “the Bradley man” by ceremonial necessity. S.: So Oxford, for all its tyranny, preserved a certain anti-monographic freedom at first degree level. G.: Yes. A freedom purchased, of course, by other inconveniences, including ignorance in public and terror in private. S.: But that may be preferable to being publicly laureated as a Whiteheadian. G.: For an Englishman, certainly. We prefer our intellectual commitments to remain deniable. S.: Whereas the continental system likes declaration. G.: And supervisors. Never forget Paci and Geymonat. To have both a relatore and a correlatore is already to confess that one thesis may need two parents. S.: Or two witnesses. G.: Or two maxims, as I once said. The Maxim of Relation and the Maxim of Co-Relation. S.: You were proud of that. G.: Moderately. It is the sort of joke one earns by staying too long in libraries. S.: Then let us return to Whitehead himself. Why does the word Principia strike you as a costume? G.: Because it is at once grand and evasive. It says first things while dodging the vulgarity of saying what first things are. Cambridge adored that sort of dignity. S.: And Moore’s Principia Ethica borrows the same air. G.: Entirely. One half expects Principia Umbrellarum, a foundational account of umbrellas in pure good faith. S.: But in Whitehead’s case the title also masks authorship. G.: Yes, because a grand title invites readers to think in monuments, not in division of labour. Once the monument stands, the lord is remembered, the schoolmaster is not. S.: Whitehead was not a schoolmaster. G.: In the best English sense he was: a master of exactness without sufficient scandal to remain famous properly. S.: Whereas Russell had both scandal and a title eventually. G.: Exactly. Posterity adores moral misbehaviour supported by aristocratic punctuation. S.: Then the complaint is not merely that Russell gets more credit, but that the conditions of remembrance are socially ridiculous. G.: Deeply ridiculous. Philosophical memory is always less rational than philosophers advertise. S.: And yet you admit Whitehead’s later metaphysics has a grandeur none of the tidy analysts can match. G.: Certainly. But grandeur is not the same as influence, and influence is not the same as narrative centrality. S.: So Whitehead is indispensable but not representative. G.: There you have it. He is one of the great anomalies through which English philosophy passes without being able to say whether he belongs to the route or to the weather. S.: Splendidly put. G.: Keep that too. S.: You are distributing property recklessly. G.: I am thinking of wills and Russell, which always makes me careless. Now, Rovatti and Whitehead. Why do Italians at that moment find him attractive? S.: Because process looks like philosophy with lungs, as you said. G.: Yes, and because filosofia teoretica in Milan could still welcome a thinker who crossed science and metaphysics without apologising every third sentence. S.: Oxford required more apology. G.: Much more. One had to make metaphysics sound like housekeeping or not do it at all. S.: While Whitehead sounds like a cosmic engineer. G.: Exactly. Italians admire such men because they still believe systems may be inhabited rather than merely footnoted. S.: And Paci supervising Whitehead makes a certain sense. G.: It does. Phenomenology, process, scientificity, grand categories, all under the civic solemnity of a laurea title. One can almost hear the room. S.: Whereas at Oxford no one at first degree level is required to write Whitehead and then carry the memory in formal dress. G.: No. One carries instead the memory of question sheets, dons, tutors, and the peculiar fact that one may leave with a degree and no monograph attached to one’s name. S.: Which you think counts for something. G.: A good deal. It leaves a man with fewer ceremonial debts. S.: Fewer wreaths, more scars. G.: Exactly. And scars are easier to deny socially. S.: Then perhaps the difference is this: the laurea gives you a title through a philosopher, while Lit. Hum. gives you habits through an ordeal. G.: Very good indeed. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become laureated by compliment. S.: Never beyond the bachelor level. G.: Better. Now, tell me: why do later English histories keep Whitehead in view if he is not “the man”? S.: Because he is too large to omit and too awkward to place. G.: Exactly. Historians hate large awkward men. They therefore make them central in prose and marginal in spirit. S.: So Whitehead becomes a respectable stop on the way to what they really care about. G.: Moore, Russell, analysis, language, Austin, Ryle, Strawson, and the rest. Whitehead is placed in the vestibule with a sufficient umbrella stand. S.: Whereas Rovatti begins in the vestibule and may never quite leave it. G.: Because once Whitehead is your title, Whitehead is also your institutional ancestry. S.: And the laurel binds. G.: Yes. That is why I say one can take Whitehead off the shelf more easily than off a laurea. S.: One could make a thesis of that. G.: In Milan they probably did. S.: Then let me see if I have your four complaints properly ordered. Principia Mathematica is remembered under Russellian prestige more than Whiteheadian labour; Whitehead taught mathematics at Cambridge, not philosophy, so his later philosophical centrality is retrospective; the title Principia is a Cambridge habit of grandeur shared by Moore’s Principia Ethica; and later Oxford histories magnify Whitehead into a representative figure he never quite was. G.: Exactly. S.: And the Rovatti point? G.: That Oxford’s first degree left me unwreathed by any single philosophical allegiance, whereas a laurea entitled Whitehead crowns a young man with the very name he may later spend his life trying to wear lightly. S.: So the real joke is educational. G.: All good English jokes about philosophy are educational in the end. S.: And the punchline? G.: In Oxford one could leave with Lit. Hum. and no wreath at all; in Milan one could leave with Whitehead on one’s head, and the difficulty ever after was not to think it a hat.Rovatti, Pier Aldo (1966). Whitehead – Universita Statale di Milano. Filosofia teorica. Relatore: Paci. Correlatore Geymonat.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rovere – Ossia: Grice e Rovere. (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Proposta del provenzale come lingua internazionale.  Carlo Alberto Rovere. Grice (1954, St John’s): Austin introduced us yesterday to his latest bout of the Symbolical—and it has left me with a wicked thought. Suppose I lay in my bath and come up with a new lingo—call it Deutero‑Esperanto—which nobody speaks (except me, that is). Why can Austin go symbolic and not I? There is, after all, no law against private languages so long as you don’t ask other people to use them. Strawson, meanwhile, has taken to wintering at Monte Carlo—an arrangement he describes, with that calm air of moral entitlement, as “necessary for health.” He brought back a scrap of Riviera lore. “They don’t speak Italian there,” he said, as if I were about to complain. “But Monaco is an Italian word,” I said. “Monk.” “Yes,” he replied, “but the further you go towards the best, the more provincial it feels.” “Provençal,” I corrected. “The more Provençal it feels.” He waved this off—Strawson cannot distinguish a capital from a lower‑case unless it’s in his paper—and pressed on. “It’s what Rovere once dreamed of,” he said, “or—if I’m not allowed to say that—what one dreamed via Rovere.” “What?” I said. “Get to the point. I haven’t all day; I’m meant to be improving the minds of the young.” “Well,” he said, “an Italian state official—Carlo Alberto Rovere, 1888—had the cheek to propose to Mistral himself that Provençal be adopted as the political lingua franca of a Latin Union.” “The universal language of what?” I asked. “Your idiotisms are tempting.” “Not universal,” he said. “Political. A language for diplomacy. For an Unione Latina.” “A Union?” I said. “As in the Oxford Union? Debates, ballots, and port?” “No,” he said. “As in: the mere idea of a Union—Latin peoples pretending they can be made coherent by a consonant with a little hook under it.” “Ah,” I said. “So we have moved from Wilkins’s characteristica universalis—a language for reasoning—to a language for agreeing in public. Not truth, but protocol.” “And Mistral?” Strawson asked. “Mistral,” I said, “did what any sensible poet does when confronted with political enthusiasts: he asked his secretary to draft a diplomatic reply. Which is to say: a refusal that tries to sound like an invitation.” At which point Strawson, who had been glowing with Monte Carlo certainty, grew oddly quiet. “Where does Willoughby live?” he asked, suddenly. “Somewhere in Provence,” I said. And he understood at once—without being told—that somewhere is sometimes not geography but a confession: either I don’t know, or I can’t be bothered, or I am politely declining to be recruited into his fantasy of precision. It is astonishing what one can smuggle into “some‑”. Punchline: The Viennese wanted one language for science; Rovere wanted one language for Latins; and the English—being English—wanted one language for themselves, but called it “ordinary.” In terms of passage below: please provide a 100-move conversation as G. and S. discuss four things: the first sequence of Virgil AENEIS in Latin, its Italian translation, its Engish translation, and then, as a tribute to Rovere, into Povencal. The intro may cntain the relevant info as per passage, and I hope the 100 moves gives you room to select the first relevant passage, and you may indicate the verse passage with the '/' -- so the idea is to have it in Latin, then in archaic Italian, as per perhaps first Italian translation, then English, and then provencal -- the point -- to show the affinity between I II and IV -- not III as per Rovere's Unione Latina -- No preamble or ps -- thank you G.: Rovere wanted Provence to do what Rome and Paris had both already failed to do politely. S.: Which was? G.: To provide a Latin Union with a language elegant enough to flatter Italy, France, and whatever remained of civilisation after diplomacy. S.: And you propose to honour him by putting Virgil through four tongues. G.: Exactly. Latin first, because one ought to begin where sense begins behaving seriously. S.: Then Italian. G.: Yes, and not merely Italian, but an older Italian, or at least a consciously antique one, to let Latin and Italian look one another in the face without modern cosmetics. S.: Then English. G.: Inevitably. Otherwise we could not misunderstand ourselves properly. S.: And then Provençal. G.: In tribute to Rovere’s impossible good taste. S.: You also want to show the affinity among Latin, Italian, and Provençal, as against English. G.: More precisely, the affinity of I, II, and IV. English is the necessary witness, not the favoured cousin. S.: Why not III, as per Rovere’s Union? G.: Because English is never Latin enough to be admitted without first pretending it has no designs on the house. S.: Fair. Then the first question is the passage. G.: We cannot go wrong with the opening of the Aeneid. S.: Arma virumque. G.: Exactly. The first seven lines are enough to establish grammar, destiny, empire, and the whole inconvenience of Juno. S.: You may then mark the verses with slashes, as requested. G.: Quite. It makes translation look like architecture instead of laundry. S.: Then give me the Latin first. G.: Gladly. Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris / Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit / litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto / vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; / multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, / inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, / Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. [thelatinlibrary.com], [dcc.dickinson.edu] S.: The thing behaves as if it had always known it would be translated. G.: Most imperial openings do. S.: Now the Italian. G.: Here one must be careful. The earliest Italian vernacularisation is not always available in a convenient public form line for line, and the medieval or early modern Italian tradition is various. So for our purpose I would give a deliberately archaicising Italian rendering rather than pretend to cite one definitive first translator where the evidence is messy. The point is affinity, not fraud. [academia.edu] S.: A sound principle, and almost moral. G.: Do not overpraise it. Here then: L’arme e l’omo io canto, che primier da’ liti / di Troia, per destino profugo, venne in Italia / e a’ liti lavinii; molto per terre e per mare / fu quegli sbattuto per forza de’ superi, / per l’ira tenace della crudele Giunone; / molto sofferse altresì in guerra, fin che fondasse / la città e recasse in Lazio i suoi numi: onde il legnaggio latino, / e i padri albani, e l’alte mura di Roma. Grounded in the Italian vernacular translation tradition of the Aeneid. [academia.edu] S.: It has enough archaism to creak politely. G.: That is all one wants from piety in language. S.: And English? G.: Here I may safely use a public-domain translation. Mackail is sober and does not make Virgil sound like a man auditioning for a brass band. So: Arms and the man I sing, who first from the coasts of Troy, / exiled by fate, came to Italy and the Lavinian shores; / much buffeted on sea and land by violence from above, / through cruel Juno’s unforgiving wrath, / and much enduring in war also, till he should build a city / and bring his gods to Latium; whence came the Latin race, / the lords of Alba, and the lofty walls of Rome. [gutenberg.org], [theoi.com] S.: It is competent in the English way: obedient and faintly apologetic. G.: Better apologetic than theatrical. S.: And now the Provençal. G.: Here we encounter the difficulty that a stable public-domain Provençal or Occitan translation of the opening is not straightforwardly retrievable from the evidence in hand. So I shall do what your brief actually wants and provide a tribute in literary Provençal mode, not pretending to be Mistral’s lost secretary. That is an original rendering in homage, not a historical citation. S.: Which is fair enough, provided you say so. G.: I have now said so. Here then, in a Provençal-inflected literary rendering: Lis armas e l’ome cante, que primié deis rivas / de Troia, fòraçat pel fat, venguèt en Italia / e vèrs lis ribas de Lavini; fòrça foguèt batut / sus tèrra e sus mar per la fòrça dei sobirans, / per l’ira tenèla de la sauma Junon; / fòrça patiguèt encara en guèrra, fins qu’auborèsse / una ciutat e portèsse sos dieus en Latium: d’aquí / venguèron lo linhatge latin, lis aujòus albans, / e lis auti barris de Roma. Adapted tribute in literary Provençal/Occitan style, based on the Latin opening. [thelatinlibrary.com] S.: You have smuggled Latium through rather than Provençalising it. G.: One must not localise empire too cheaply. S.: Now that we have the four, what exactly is the affinity you want to show? G.: Several things at once. First, the lexical kinship of arma, arme, armas. Second, virum becoming uomo or ome. Third, the syntactic willingness of Latin, Italian, and Provençal to let the line move by apposition and suspended clause without English immediately demanding iron rails. S.: English does like iron rails. G.: It distrusts long periodic hospitality. Latin and its daughters are happy to welcome a participle, a destination, and an imperial future into one sentence before serving the verb its full dignity. S.: So Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora behaves more naturally in Italian and Provençal than in English. G.: Precisely. English must either submit awkwardly or translate by managerial rearrangement. S.: Mackail does the latter with decent restraint. G.: Yes. He keeps enough of the order to show he has met the poem, but not enough to frighten schoolmasters. S.: Then the affinity of I, II, and IV is not merely lexical but rhythmic and civic. G.: Very much so. These three languages share a tolerance for ceremonial unfolding. English can imitate it, but it does not live there by inheritance. S.: Rovere would have liked that. G.: He would have overliked it, which is why he remains charming. S.: Let us inspect the first word in all four. G.: Latin arma. Italian l’arme. English arms. Provençal lis armas. S.: The plural is robust throughout. G.: Yes, because epic begins more comfortably with warfare than with introspection. S.: And virum? G.: Virum in Latin, l’omo in archaic Italian, the man in English, l’ome in Provençal. S.: There the kinship of II and IV is especially visible. G.: Exactly. Homo to uomo and ome is a much shorter family walk than homo to man, which arrives by another inheritance and must behave itself in company. S.: Then fato profugus. G.: There again. Latin and its daughters can keep fate and exile in close apposition without embarrassment. English says exiled by fate, which is decent, but more explanatory and less compact. S.: So destiny itself is more grammatical in Latin, Italian, and Provençal. G.: A dangerous but not wholly false remark. S.: And Laviniaque litora? G.: The adjectival relation is another point. Italian and Provençal can keep Lavinian or Lavini quite close to the noun. English is obliged to choose between Latinity and intelligibility. S.: It chose Lavinian. G.: Quite rightly, though the English ear hears it as scholarly rather than native. S.: Which perhaps it is. G.: Everything in Virgil is scholarly once it crosses the Channel. S.: Then multum ille et terris iactatus et alto. G.: Ah, there the daughters are at home. Molto per terre e per mare, fòrça foguèt batut sus tèrra e sus mar. English says much buffeted on sea and land, which is competent, but one hears translation where one hears inheritance in the Romance forms. S.: So the whole exercise vindicates Rovere’s Latin Union. G.: Only linguistically, not politically. That is an important distinction. Languages may resemble one another more closely than their ministries do. S.: Dry, but fair. G.: One tries. S.: And Juno? G.: Juno behaves well in all four, which proves that divine resentment is remarkably portable. S.: Saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram. G.: Yes. The memory and wrath clause is especially revealing. Latin can pack memory into an epithet and make wrath the motive. Italian and Provençal can imitate that architecture with less strain than English, which must unpack to remain respectable. S.: Through cruel Juno’s unforgiving wrath. G.: Very decent, but plainly explanatory. S.: Whereas per l’ira tenace della crudele Giunone and per l’ira tenèla de la sauma Junon preserve the old compactness better. G.: Exactly. The daughters understand the mother’s way of carrying temper in grammar. S.: Then perhaps Rovere’s real dream was not absurd. G.: Politically absurd, philologically less so. A diplomatic language drawn from Provençal would at least flatter the Mediterranean sense that speech should carry history visibly. S.: And that is what English resists. G.: English prefers usefulness, then pretends usefulness is candour. S.: You are being unfair to English. G.: I am being English about English. S.: The highest form of patriotism, perhaps. G.: Or the least embarrassing. Now, consider dum conderet urbem, inferretque deos Latio. S.: Again, the daughters move comfortably with the subjunctive or purpose-like unfolding. G.: Exactly. Fin che fondasse la città e recasse in Lazio i suoi numi. Fins qu’auborèsse una ciutat e portèsse sos dieus en Latium. English must make that into till he should build a city and bring his gods to Latium, which is fine, but the modal courtesy is more external. S.: While the Romance forms feel like domestic continuations. G.: Just so. S.: Then genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. G.: That final ascent is perhaps the strongest case. Latin, Italian, and Provençal all allow the catalogue of political descent to rise toward Rome with ceremonial ease. English does it, but sounds like a commemorative plaque. S.: The lords of Alba, and the lofty walls of Rome. G.: Exactly. Good, but stone-faced. S.: Whereas e i padri albani, e l’alte mura di Roma and lis aujòus albans, e lis auti barris de Roma keep a more familial and civic warmth. G.: Warmth, yes, though one must not make Virgil cosy. S.: Heaven forbid. G.: Indeed. Empire should never sound upholstered. S.: Then if you had to state the thesis in one sentence? G.: Latin, archaic Italian, and Provençal share enough lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical temper that Virgil’s opening passes among them as family business, whereas English receives it honourably but as an adopted heir. S.: That is rather good. G.: Keep it, then. S.: Happily. But should we not say something about the Italian translation tradition proper? G.: Yes. The medieval and early modern Italian engagement with the Aeneid is rich but complicated, with vernacularisations, abridgements, and reworkings rather than one single first monumental equivalent that would do all our work for us here. So our archaic Italian is deliberately representative in spirit rather than falsely documentary in every syllable. [academia.edu] S.: A prudent confession. G.: Scholarship survives by them. S.: And the Provençal? G.: Entirely a tribute rendering, since the point is to honour Rovere’s fancy of a Latin public language through an idiom plausible enough to show kinship without counterfeiting a particular historical version. S.: So no false Mistral. G.: No false Mistral. That would be indecent. S.: Then let us look once more at the first sequence as a block. G.: Very well. Latin: Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris / Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit / litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto / vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; / multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, / inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, / Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. [thelatinlibrary.com], [dcc.dickinson.edu] S.: Then the Italian. G.: Archaicising Italian: L’arme e l’omo io canto, che primier da’ liti / di Troia, per destino profugo, venne in Italia / e a’ liti lavinii; molto per terre e per mare / fu quegli sbattuto per forza de’ superi, / per l’ira tenace della crudele Giunone; / molto sofferse altresì in guerra, fin che fondasse / la città e recasse in Lazio i suoi numi: onde il legnaggio latino, / e i padri albani, e l’alte mura di Roma. Grounded in the Italian vernacular translation tradition. [academia.edu] S.: English. G.: Arms and the man I sing, who first from the coasts of Troy, / exiled by fate, came to Italy and the Lavinian shores; / much buffeted on sea and land by violence from above, / through cruel Juno’s unforgiving wrath, / and much enduring in war also, till he should build a city / and bring his gods to Latium; whence came the Latin race, / the lords of Alba, and the lofty walls of Rome. [gutenberg.org], [theoi.com] S.: And the Provençal tribute. G.: Lis armas e l’ome cante, que primié deis rivas / de Troia, fòraçat pel fat, venguèt en Italia / e vèrs lis ribas de Lavini; fòrça foguèt batut / sus tèrra e sus mar per la fòrça dei sobirans, / per l’ira tenèla de la sauma Junon; / fòrça patiguèt encara en guèrra, fins qu’auborèsse / una ciutat e portèsse sos dieus en Latium: d’aquí / venguèron lo linhatge latin, lis aujòus albans, / e lis auti barris de Roma. Tribute rendering in literary Provençal/Occitan style, adapted from the Latin opening. [thelatinlibrary.com] S.: It does rather make Rovere sound less absurd. G.: That is the danger of beautiful languages. They can rehabilitate poor politics. S.: And the lesson? G.: That philology is often wiser than federation. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Provençal. S.: And the punchline? G.: If Rovere wanted Provence to unite the Latins, Virgil has already done the job more quietly: the languages still recognise their mother, even when the diplomats fail to recognise one another. Now please provide just, without preramble or ps -- a four-move conversation, one sentence per turn, between G. and ROVERE -- the last turn by Rovere, and the conversation is all in Italian, will have the form: Your implicature is almost provencal, Grice -- as it's its cancellation! --thanks G.: Rovere, sospetto che il provenzale sia una lingua internazionale soprattutto quando nessuno insiste troppo perché lo diventi. ROVERE: Caro Grice, è proprio lì che comincia la sua eleganza politica, poiché una lingua persuade meglio quando non sembra ancora una politica. G.: Allora la mia implicatura è che il provenzale trionfa non parlando troppo di sé, il che è già quasi una cancellazione ben educata. ROVERE: La sua implicatura è quasi provenzale, Grice, perché consiste precisamente nella sua cancellazione. Rovere, Carlo Alberto (1888). Provençal come lingua franca, Unione Latina, via Mistral et le Félibrige, Monaco.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Rovere – Ossia: Grice e Rovere. Note sugl’Inni sacri. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Terenzio Mamiani delle Rovere (Pesaro, Marche): la ragione conversazionale, o le confessioni di un meta-fisico romano. The family originates in Albisola, Savona, Liguria. Filosofo. Il giure civile del popolo italiano ha nel testo della legge positiva e speciale autorità sufficiente da soddisfare la giustizia ordinaria e da risolvere i dubii e acquetare le controversie intorno agl’interessi e agl’ufficii d'ogni privato cittadino. Di quindi nasce che possono alcuni curiali riuscire segnalati e famosi al mondo con la sola abilità del pronto ricordare, dell’acuto distinguere e dell'interpretare acconcio e discreto. Al giure delle genti occorre, invece, assai di frequente la discussione delle verità astratte. Perocché esso è indipendente e superiore all'autorità della sopra-citata legge. Si connette immediatamente al giure naturale che è al tutto razionale e speculativo. Spesso gli è forza di riandar colla filosofia sulle fondamenta medesime dell’ordine sociale umano, e spesso altresì non rinviene modo migliore per risolvere i dubii e acquetare le discrepanze fuor che indagare i grandi pronunziati della ragione perpetua del diritto, chiariti, dedotti e applicati mercé della scienza. Poco importa se i meta-fisici si bisticciano. Ma non va senza danno del genere umano il discordare e il traviare de' pubblicisti. E già si dice che il fine criterio degl’uomini illuminati coglie il certo e il sodo della scienza, ma non la crea e non l'ordina. La demenza degl’uonini fa talvolta scandalosa la verità. Laonde ella ha a pronunziare di se medesima. Non venni a recare la pace in mezzo di voi, sibbene la spada. confessioni di un metafisico, il rinnovamento della filosofia antica italiana, Vico, Cuoco, Cicerone, Roma antica, gl’antichi romani, il foro, il caso di Nizza, la communita di sangue.  The Chevalier’s Hymns Grice (1926): Dear Mother, Life “by the Bridge” continues—remnant, as we say at home. Cricket remains exciting; the piano less so, though I practise dutifully. My music master is either French or pretends to be. He refers to my exercises as my “odds and ends,” with an accent that seems to treat English as a hobby. He also recommends—always recommends—that I “do more with Powell.” Powell is our resident singer. I refrain from saying “tenor,” because it injures him; he prefers to think of himself as an instrument rather than a category. This afternoon Powell appeared (as he does, quietly, like a moral requirement) with a book: a small, slim volume, the sort that looks as if it has been exiled from its own library. “Perhaps you can set one of these,” he said, “to music.” “One of what?” I said, because it is best, when confronted with culture, to begin with ignorance. He held it up like evidence. Inni Sacri—by the cav. Terenzio Mamiani della Rovere. Paris, Per li Torchi di Éverat. “Is that French for ‘Everest’?” I asked. Powell ignored this—singers have the special gift of ignoring questions that are merely conversational. “Read one,” he said. “Out loud.” So he began to recite—already half-singing, as if the page had been waiting for his larynx. He made the Italian sound solemn in that English way: as if holiness were a matter of correct pronunciation. And, as he read, it dawned on me—slowly—that the odd thing about sacred hymns is not their piety, but their publicness. A hymn is the respectable form of an implicature: you do not quite say what you mean, because you want a chorus to mean it for you. “I don’t see,” I said, “why he calls them sacri. If they were profani, perhaps I should bother. ‘Sacred’ is what you call something when you wish it to be immune from cross-examination.” Powell looked wounded. “But he was in exile,” he said, as if exile were itself a key signature. “Exile,” I said, “is often what one calls Paris when one wishes to sound principled.” Powell persisted. “He moved in the salon of Cristina di Belgiojoso,” he added—he has an appetite for names, like a choirboy for incense. “Then,” I said, “he was not exiled from conversation. Only from the sort of conversation that takes place in Rome without having to ask permission.” This pleased me as a thought, and displeased me as a moral. For the more Powell sang, the clearer it became that Mamiani’s Inni were not really for God at all, but for an audience that wanted to believe in God, Italy, and their own sincerity—simultaneously, and without logical strain. In short, Mother: they are hymns in the same sense that certain school prayers are prayers—a performance whose point is to make one’s feelings look like a duty. Powell finished, expectant. “And?” he said. I said the only charitable thing that came to mind: “It’s very good,” I said, “provided one takes it as what it is: not theology, but the politics of the soul set to a tune.” He brightened. Then he asked whether I would accompany him. I did. Not out of piety, but out of what you taught me was better: good manners under duress. Your affectionate son, Paul. Grice: L’altro giorno, qui alla villa di Albisola, parlavo con il mio collega filosofico Speranza, che come sai ama passare di qui quando il mare aiuta il pensiero; ci siamo trovati a sorridere su quanto certe opere sembrino confessioni e invece siano esercizi di ingegno ben temperato. Rovere: Albisola fa questo effetto: rilassa l’animo e affila la mente. E poi le confessioni, quando non chiedono assoluzione, diventano subito più interessanti. Grice: Proprio così; e, come io e Speranza stavamo conversando su questo, ci chiedevamo entrambi se non fosse la loro genialità a consistere nel non prendere mai del tutto sul serio il proprio metafisicare, lasciando intendere più di quanto dichiarino. Rovere: Quasi metafisica la tua implicatura, Grice, e sono certo che Speranza sarebbe d’accordo: ringrazio, perché coglie il punto senza appesantirlo. In fondo, quando la metafisica sa anche sorridere di sé, diventa confessabile senza essere penitente. Inside the passage below there is a reminiscence by G. on Powell etc -- can you turn it into a 100-move direct conversation between G. and S. on Rovere Inni sacri -- and G. wondering what the first inno sacro was -- so perhaps as you provide this, no preamble or ps -- you can find out what the opening line of the first inno sacro is -- because G. is supposed to be setting that to music for which Rovere only wrote the lyric -- thank you. Keep dry Oxonian humour. No preamble or ps. Passage: G.: Powell has returned, I take it, with that small exile of a book under his arm. S.: Quietly, as moral requirements do. G.: Exactly. He has asked me to set one of Rovere’s Inni sacri to music, which is the sort of request that arrives dressed as culture and leaves dressed as labour. S.: You sound touched. G.: Only in the sense in which one is touched by a tax. S.: Then you have opened the volume. G.: I have. And the first nuisance is perfectly simple: what was the first inno sacro? S.: A reasonable question, though perhaps not one singers ask before they begin emoting. G.: Singers rarely ask reasonable questions before emoting. That is what keeps them singers. S.: And what does the evidence say? G.: The surviving order usually begins with A Santa Geltrude. That is the first hymn listed in the collection as transmitted. [it.wikisource.org], [books.google.com] S.: So Powell has brought you not theology but sequence. G.: Sequence is already a species of theology in such books. One saint before another is never wholly innocent. S.: Then the first hymn is to Saint Gertrude. G.: Yes, as far as the collection’s order goes. One should add that the bibliographical tradition around these hymns is slightly untidy, which only improves it. The title page evidence points to the Paris edition of 1832, and later printings follow. [books.google.com], [archive.org], [fr.wikipedia.org] S.: Untidy books are often more alive than tidy ones. G.: That is because tidy books have usually been dead longer. S.: Then what is the opening line of the first hymn? G.: That is the next difficulty. The index clearly gives A Santa Geltrude as first, but the full page readily available in the material I found shows, in extenso, Alla Chiesa Primitiva. Inno primo, not the beginning of Geltrude. So I can tell you the first hymn in order, but the fullest verified opening line presently visible to me from the text on hand is the opening of Alla Chiesa Primitiva. Inno primo. [it.wikisource.org], [it.wikisource.org] S.: Which is not the same as saying Geltrude does not begin the book. G.: Quite. It only means that the page I can verify immediately is not the first page of the first item. S.: A small but useful distinction. You are becoming almost editorial. G.: Necessity degrades us all. Now, the verified opening line I can give is this: Com’uom che la sua vita ultima spende Tra i letti e le vivande, ansio più sempre Degli osceni trastulli e duramente Grave a sè stesso, con dolor rimembra... [it.wikisource.org] S.: That is rather good. G.: It is more than rather good. It opens as if sacred hymn were going to confess that old age, appetite, memory, and disgust are all already in the room. S.: So not quite the chapel harmonium. G.: No. More like a moral baritone with literary ambitions. S.: Then you could set that. G.: I could, though Powell would sing it as if holiness were chiefly a matter of open vowels. S.: He would also insist on pronouncing every Italian syllable as though it had been educated at Rugby. G.: Very likely. Still, the line has shape. It begins in lived weariness, not merely in official piety. S.: Which already supports your suspicion that these hymns are public things rather than private prayers. G.: Entirely. A hymn is almost never for God alone. It is for God with an audience watching itself feel. S.: That is severe. G.: Accurate enough to deserve severity. Rovere is writing lyrics for shared sincerity, not minutes for angels. S.: Yet Powell said exile was itself a key signature. G.: He did. Singers always think biography improves intonation. S.: Does it? G.: Only in programmes. S.: Then what sort of music do you imagine for the opening? G.: Something too serious for parlour piety and not serious enough for liturgy. A measured tread, perhaps, with an unexpected tenderness at rimembra. S.: So memory before doctrine. G.: Exactly. The line begins in recollection, not proclamation. That is musically useful. S.: And philosophically. G.: Of course. Sacred writing becomes interesting the moment it remembers that the soul arrives with history attached. S.: Then Rovere is not merely writing a hymn, but staging a return. G.: Yes, a return to an earlier purity, or what he wants to market as one. S.: Market is perhaps ungenerous. G.: Publicly circulate, then. Though I do not repent market. S.: You think these hymns are for an audience wanting God, Italy, and its own sincerity in one draught. G.: Precisely. That was my thought even before Powell brightened at the mention of Cristina di Belgiojoso. S.: He likes names. G.: As choirboys like incense. S.: Then perhaps the first hymn matters less as theology than as placement. G.: Very much so. To begin with a saint already tells us that sanctity will be handled as a public object, not merely as inward disposition. S.: Why Geltrude first, do you suppose? G.: One would have to see the actual text of that hymn before making grand claims. But sequence in such collections often balances devotion, variety, and implied programme. S.: You are restraining yourself admirably. G.: Lack of evidence occasionally makes one virtuous. S.: And what do you make of Alla Chiesa Primitiva appearing twice, in two hymns? G.: That is one of the most revealing things. The primitive church is not merely an object of devotion but an organising fantasy. S.: A return to origins. G.: Yes, and therefore also a criticism of the present. Any hymn to the primitive church is already half a complaint against the contemporary one. S.: So even the sacred is polemical. G.: It usually is when printed. S.: Then perhaps your setting should make that audible. G.: Not by banging the keyboard, if that is what you mean. S.: No, by letting nostalgia carry a slight accusation. G.: Exactly. A clear line, unencumbered, but with enough gravity to suggest that the singer is not only worshipping but comparing. S.: Comparing the church that was with the church that is. G.: Yes, and perhaps the Italy that might be with the Italy that still requires too much permission. S.: Powell will not hear that. G.: Singers hear feeling before structure. It is one of their few constitutional limitations. S.: Yet he did hand you the book. G.: He did, and that deserves some gratitude. A singer bringing a philosopher a slim Paris volume is one of civilisation’s quieter spectacles. S.: You sound almost fond of him. G.: Only in moderation. He prefers to think of himself as an instrument rather than a category. S.: And you prefer to think of categories as instruments. G.: Better than most people do, yes. S.: Then if the first hymn is A Santa Geltrude, but the longest verified opening you can presently give is from Alla Chiesa Primitiva. Inno primo, what will you tell Powell? G.: I shall tell him the truth, which is already more than sacred music always asks. I shall say: the collection begins with A Santa Geltrude, but the opening lines I can presently verify in full are those of Alla Chiesa Primitiva. Inno primo. [it.wikisource.org], [it.wikisource.org] S.: He will ask whether that matters. G.: I shall say: bibliographically, yes; musically, not at once. S.: Because a good opening line can be set even if it is not the first item in the contents. G.: Precisely. One composes to the line, not to the table of contents. S.: Though the table of contents does flatter the line by position. G.: It flatters the whole economy. Titles and order are the diplomacy of books. S.: That is good. G.: Keep it, but do not let it become too quotable. S.: Never intentionally. Now, is there anything amusing in the publication line? G.: Always. Paris, Per li torchii di Éverat. It is already halfway between exile and typography. S.: And your old question whether Éverat is French for Everest. G.: Which Powell ignored, proving again that singers are excellent at identifying which questions are merely conversational. S.: Not every conversational question requires uptake. G.: True. Though the good ones deserve it. S.: Then tell me what you think a hymn is, in your driest mood. G.: A hymn is a public utterance in which explicit doctrine is rarely the whole point, because the chorus supplies what the solo line delicately leaves distributed among piety, memory, aspiration, and civic self-recognition. S.: That is almost an article. G.: Heaven forbid. It is merely a defence against sentimentality. S.: And how would Rovere fare under it? G.: Respectably enough. He is not writing bad theology; he is writing the politics of the soul under sacred cover. S.: Set to a tune. G.: Exactly. Which is why Powell is happier than I am. S.: Yet you will accompany him. G.: I did once and may again, out of what my mother taught me was better than piety: good manners under duress. S.: That sounds almost like one of your maxims. G.: A remark, at any rate. S.: Then let us return to the opening line. Com’uom che la sua vita ultima spende. It is not a bad first bar. G.: No, because it begins in temporal exhaustion. One hears at once a late life, a spending out, a human register before sanctity has begun to preen. S.: And then letti e vivande. G.: Which is splendidly awkward in a sacred context. Beds and viands are not the expected furniture of a hymn unless one is about to moralise appetite. S.: So the line begins almost in satiety. G.: Or disgust at satiety. That is why it is musically better than a mere invocation. S.: Better than Salve, perhaps. G.: Far better than Salve, if one wants a mind in the room. S.: Then Rovere’s real gift may be not piety but entry. G.: That is well put. He knows how to begin from a recognisable human condition and rise from there toward the sacred without pretending the distance was never there. S.: Which makes the hymn public again. G.: Entirely. The public likes to be led from itself toward devotion, not dropped into heaven without luggage. S.: Powell would call that expressive. G.: Powell calls everything expressive once he can sustain it above middle C. S.: You are merciless. G.: Only to singers I know. S.: Then how will you set the line? G.: With restraint. If one over-harmonises it, one makes memory sentimental. Better to let the words do the first work and bring the accompaniment in as if recollection itself were finding footing. S.: Almost as if the music remembered before the singer did. G.: Yes, that is not bad. S.: Keep it? G.: Reluctantly. S.: Then what does the hymn imply, before it states anything? G.: That renewal begins in disenchantment. One remembers a purer life only after finding the present over-furnished. S.: Beds and viands again. G.: Yes. Appetite made tiring. That is the hinge. S.: So the sacred emerges through criticism of excess. G.: As it often does in serious verse. Sanctity is rarely interesting until the world has become slightly overupholstered. S.: Oxford understands that. G.: Oxford is built on it. S.: Then perhaps you like Rovere more than you pretend. G.: I like the line, which is not the same thing. S.: But it is the beginning of the same thing. G.: That is too singerish. S.: I have been in bad company. G.: Powell contaminates by proximity. S.: And you, by precision. G.: A better contagion. Now, one more bibliographical point. The search evidence also shows later editions and inclusion in collected Poesie, which confirms the hymns had some afterlife beyond the original Paris moment. [archive.org], [it.wikisource.org], [fr.wikipedia.org] S.: Exile followed by republication. G.: The usual fate of serious Italians. S.: And of not a few English ones. G.: Less elegantly, perhaps. S.: Then your public-class conclusion would be? G.: That the first inno sacro in the collection is A Santa Geltrude, while the fullest verified opening line I can presently place before the piano is from Alla Chiesa Primitiva. Inno primo: Com’uom che la sua vita ultima spende... and that the line is worth setting because it begins not in abstract sanctity but in a human disgust that seeks purification. [it.wikisource.org], [it.wikisource.org] S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Parisian, with a little choir-stall dust. S.: And the punchline? G.: If sacred hymns are the respectable form of implicature, then Powell has done the Christian thing by bringing me the book and the unchristian thing by expecting me to set the theology without first settling the contents page.Rovere, Terenzio Mamiani Della (1833). Inni sacri Paris, Per li Torchi di Éverat,

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Rovere: la ragione coversazionale e l’implicature del Deutero-Esperanto – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Rovere’ -- Ugo Basso Dalla Rovere. Rovere, Ugo Basso Dalla (1897). L’arte d’imporvvisar versi.