SAU

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Saufeio – Ossia: Grice e Saufeio -- Grex griceiana – Saufeio. Monument of Gaius Saufeius Moderatus and his wife, Lucilia Herodia, at Salona. Dedicated by their sons, Gaius Saufeius Thalamus and Gaius Saufeius Moderatianus.[1] The gens Saufeia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned in the final century of the Republic, and from then to the early Empire their name occurs regularly in history, but none of them ever attained the consulship.[2]  Origin The nomen Saufeius belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -eius, the majority of which were of Oscan derivation.[3]  Praenomina The Saufeii used a variety of praenomina, some of which were very common, such as Gaius, Lucius, and Marcus, while others were quite distinctive, like Appius and Decimus.  Members Lucius Saufeius, triumvir monetalis in 152 BC, minted denarii, aes, and fractional coins. His denarii bear the head of Roma upon the obverse, and Victoria driving a biga on the reverse.[4][5] Gaius Saufeius, elected quaestor for 99 BC, espoused the cause of the tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, and was taken into custody along with Saturninus and many of his supporters, who were then stoned to death with roof tiles.[6][7][8] Saufeius, tribune of the plebs in 91 BC, authored an agrarian law known as the lex Saufeia, establishing a commission of five men, including his colleague, the reformer Marcus Livius Drusus, to redistribute agricultural land.[9][10] Marcus Saufeius, a companion of Titus Annius Milo, who participated in the fracas that ended with the murder of Publius Clodius Pulcher in 52 BC. He was twice tried for his role in the affair, and successfully defended by Cicero.[11] Lucius Saufeius, an eques whose property was seized by the triumvirs. With the aid of his friend and ally, Titus Pomponius Atticus, his property was restored. Cicero describes him as a follower of Epicureanism.[12][13] Appius Saufeius, mentioned by Pliny as an example of sudden death; on his return from the bath, he drank some honeyed wine and water, and swallowed an egg, whereupon he expired.[14] Decimus Saufeius, another example of sudden death mentioned by Pliny; he died while taking breakfast in his house.[14] Saufeius Trogus, one of those put to death in AD 48 for having aided the empress Messalina and Gaius Silius in their scandalous marriage.[15][16] Saufeia, apparently a priestess of the Bona Dea, whose immodest sexual desires and drunkenness in connection with the rites of that goddess are twice mentioned by Juvenal. Perhaps the same Saufeia who sought to tryst with Martial, but not to be seen in her bath.[17][18] See also List of Roman gentes References  CIL III, 8803.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 729 ("Saufeius").  Chase, pp. 120, 121.  Eckhel, vol. v, p. 301.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, pp. 248, 249.  Cicero, Pro Rabirio, 7.  Appian, Bellum Civile, i. 32.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 2, 4 (note 9).  CIL VI, 1312.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 22.  Asconius Pedianus, In Ciceronis Pro Milone, p. 54 (ed. Orelli).  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, i. 3, ii. 8, iv. 6, vi. 9, vii. 1, xiv. 18, xv. 4.  Cornelius Nepos, apud Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, 12.  Pliny the Elder, vii. 53. s. 54.  Tacitus, Annales, xi. 35.  Seneca the Younger, Apocolocyntosis, 13.  Juvenal, Satirae, vi. 320, ix. 117.  Martial, Epigrammata, iii. 72. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, Pro Gaio Rabirio Perduellionis Reo. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii (The Gourdification of the Divine Claudius). Quintus Asconius Pedianus, Commentarius in Oratio Ciceronis Pro Milone (Commentary on Cicero's Oration Pro Milone). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales. Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum (The Study of Ancient Coins, 1792–1798). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Michael Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, Cambridge University Press (1974, 2001). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Saufeio – Ossia: Grice e Saufeio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Saufeio. For the Saufeii, I think there is an outstanding Gricean candidate: Grice e Saufeio Epicureo namely:  Lucius Saufeius, the eques whose property was confiscated by the triumvirs and later restored through the efforts of Atticus. Cicero describes him as an adherent of Epicureanism. [GREXv2 | Word]  Why him? Because whenever Cicero mentions an Epicurean friend, one immediately enters the territory of:  pleasure, intention, desire, rational choice,  all subjects close to Grice's later reflections on value and practical reason.  Grice e Saufeio Speranza:  What is the good life?  Saufeius:  Pleasure.  Hardie:  Which pleasure?  Saufeius:  The reasonable sort.  Grice:  Ah. We are already qualifying.  (Ha)  What I like is that Saufeius is not merely a doctrinaire Epicurean. He appears in a network involving:  Cicero, Atticus, confiscation, friendship, restoration of property. [GREXv2 | Word]  So a Gricean theme emerges naturally:  What obligations arise from friendship?   The Atticus angle Speranza:  Why did Atticus help him?  Grice:  Friendship.  Hardie:  Is friendship a contract?  Grice:  Fortunately not.  (Ha) The correspondence suggests precisely the sort of background expectations that fascinated Grice:  what need not be said explicitly among friends. Verdict My first choice is: Grice e Saufeio Epicureo because an Epicurean friend of Cicero allows exactly the sort of discussion Grice enjoyed:  pleasure, prudence, friendship, rational action, and what one means by "the good."  Hardie:  Why are you talking to an Epicurean?  Grice:  To discover what he means by "pleasure."  Hardie:  And has he told you?  Grice:  Not yet.  (Ha) [GREXv2 | Word]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Saufeio – Ossia: Grice e Saufeio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Saufeio. A powerful runner-up A very close second is:  Saufeius, tribune of the plebs in 91 BC, author of the lex Saufeia. [GREXv2 | Word]  Simply because legislation is a vast speech act. Hardie:  What is a law?  Grice:  An utterance with consequences.  (Ha) But the surviving material is thinner. and what IS the lex saufeia? Thanks The frustrating answer is: we know a little, but not very much. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that the lex Saufeia was an agrarian law of 91 BC, proposed by a tribune named Saufeius. It established a commission of five men (Vviri agris dandis adsignandis), among whom was Marcus Livius Drusus, for the purpose of distributing agricultural land. [en.wikipedia.org], [droitromai...e-alpes.fr] The strongest piece of evidence is an inscription recording the career of Marcus Livius Drusus, which says that in the same year he served as one of the five commissioners:  Vvir agris dandis adsignandis lege Saufeia,  "one of five men for assigning and distributing land under the Saufeian law." [droitromai...e-alpes.fr] This ties the law directly to Drusus' reform programme of 91 BC. Ancient summaries of that programme mention laws on land distribution among its central features. [livius.org], [en.wikipedia.org] What we do not know clearly is the detailed text of the law. The surviving evidence does not specify:  exactly whose land was to be distributed, who the intended beneficiaries were, the mechanics of allocation.  I found references establishing the commission and its connection with agrarian reform, but not the detailed provisions. [droitromai...e-alpes.fr], [en.wikipedia.org] Now for the Gricean angle. A delightful tutorial might run: Hardie:  What is the lex Saufeia?  Grice:  A law concerning land.  Hardie:  Which land?  Grice:  The sources do not say.  Hardie:  Then what do they say?  Grice:  That five commissioners were appointed.  Hardie:  Including Drusus?  Grice:  Including Drusus.  (Ha) And, remembering your earlier point about the Pro Roscio, one could add: Potts:  What was implied by the law?  Hardie:  Before we discuss implications, let us discover what was explicit.  (Ha) That is a very Roman lesson: sometimes the inscription preserves only the institutional skeleton, and the jurist's task is to resist supplying more than the evidence actually states. Hardie: It was a little what Henry VIII did with this, your alma mater, Grice. Grice: How? Hardie: It was part of the Church -- until Henry VIII -- Grice: And then? Hardie: It was part of Henry VIII -- story of Corpus -- from convent to college. Thanks (Ha) Very nice. And historically not wholly absurd. The college with which Grice is most associated, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was indeed founded before Henry VIII's break with Rome and began life in a thoroughly ecclesiastical world. The college was founded in 1517 by Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, as a religious and educational foundation of the late medieval Church. Henry's break with Rome and the dissolution of monasteries followed shortly afterwards. (I am speaking from general historical knowledge here; I have not verified these details in the sources before me.) So one might imagine: Grice e Hardie de Lege Saufeia Hardie:  What was the lex Saufeia?  Grice:  Redistribution of land.  Hardie:  And why is that interesting?  Grice:  Property changes hands.  Hardie:  Exactly.  Grice:  Like Corpus?  Hardie:  Precisely.  (Ha) Grice:  Corpus belonged to the Church.  Hardie:  And then?  Grice:  Henry VIII.  Hardie:  And then?  Grice:  It belonged to Henry VIII.  (Ha)  Hardie:  Agrarian laws are always the same.  Grice:  Really?  Hardie:  The question is always: "Whose land is it today?"  Grice:  And tomorrow?  Hardie:  That depends upon the legislature.  (Ha)  The deeper Gricean point is about ownership and convention. Grice:  Why is this field yours?  Hardie:  Because the law says so.  Grice:  And if the law changes?  Hardie:  Then it becomes somebody else's field.  Grice:  So ownership is institutional?  Hardie:  Now you're thinking.  (Ha) The comparison is, of course, imperfect. The lex Saufeia concerned agrarian redistribution and a commission for assigning land, whereas the English Reformation involved a vast transfer of ecclesiastical property into new legal and political arrangements. But at the level of Hardie's tutorial moral, they fit together nicely:  A field is not naturally "owned". A monastery is not naturally "owned". Institutions decide.  Grice:  Then property is a conversational construct?  Hardie:  Don't push your luck.  (Ha) But can we have a second run as appropriation or confiscation on Henry VIII becoming defender of faith -- as suffered at Oxford? Thanks Yes, and on a second run I think your Hardie analogy becomes sharper if we shift from "redistribution" to appropriation/confiscation. The comparison would not be:  lex Saufeia = Henry VIII.  Rather:  both raise the question: "Who now has legal title to property that previously belonged to someone else?"  The crucial Tudor event is the break with Rome and the subsequent dissolution of the monasteries. After the Act of Supremacy, Henry VIII became head of the Church in England, and between 1536 and 1541 monastic property was seized by the Crown. [en.wikipedia.org], [nationalar...ves.gov.uk] Now comes the Oxford connection. Corpus Christi College, Oxford was founded in 1517 by Richard Fox. Originally Fox had planned a monastic institution connected with the monks of St. Swithin's, Winchester, but before the foundation was completed the plan was changed and Corpus became a secular college instead. [ccc.ox.ac.uk], [british-hi...tory.ac.uk] That means Corpus had a stroke of luck. The college's own history notes that:  Had Fox pursued his original plan of using the College to train monks, Corpus may have been dissolved in the next generation's Reformation. [ccc.ox.ac.uk]  A delightful Hardie vignette follows. Grice e Hardie de Corpore Christi Hardie:  Your college escaped.  Grice:  Escaped what?  Hardie:  Henry VIII.  Grice:  Most difficult.  (Ha) Hardie:  Corpus was intended for monks.  Grice:  Originally.  Hardie:  And had it remained so?  Grice:  It might have vanished.   [ccc.ox.ac.uk], [british-hi...tory.ac.uk] Hardie:  Instead it became secular.  Grice:  A triumph of circumstantial implicature.  (Ha) And a Gricean moral suggests itself: Hardie:  What changed?  Grice:  Not the buildings.  Hardie:  Then?  Grice:  The institutional description.  Hardie:  Explain.  Grice:  Yesterday: a monastic foundation. Tomorrow: a secular college.  Hardie:  Same stones.  Grice:  Different rights.  (Ha) That is perhaps the deepest common point between the lex Saufeia, agrarian commissions, and Henry VIII's confiscations: property is not merely physical possession. It depends upon legal and institutional descriptions. The field, monastery, or college may remain where it was; what changes is the answer to:  Cuius est? "Whose is it?"  (Ha) and most likely since Drusus was involved this involved patrician land -- and 'distributed' amongst plebs? Thanks Probably, but we should be careful not to claim more than the evidence says. What the evidence explicitly supports is:  the lex Saufeia was an agrarian law of 91 BC; it established a board of five commissioners (Vviri agris dandis adsignandis); Marcus Livius Drusus was one of those commissioners; the law formed part of the reform programme associated with Drusus in 91 BC.  What I did not find in the sources is a statement that:  "the law confiscated patrician land and distributed it to plebeians."  That is a plausible reconstruction of what many Roman agrarian laws tended to do or aim at, but the sources I found do not explicitly state that for the lex Saufeia. A historian might therefore say:  Since Drusus' programme included land redistribution, and since the lex Saufeia created commissioners for assigning land, the law almost certainly had winners and losers in the ownership structure of Italy.  But precisely whose land and to whom it was assigned are details that the surviving evidence before us does not specify. A Hardie vignette: Grice:  Patrician land redistributed to the plebs?  Hardie:  Perhaps.  Grice:  Surely.  Hardie:  Evidence?  Grice:  Drusus.  Hardie:  Not enough.  Grice:  Agrarian commission.  Hardie:  Better.  Grice:  Then we infer.  Hardie:  We infer cautiously.  (Ha) Indeed, that is rather a good historical lesson. The inscription tells us:  there was a commission to distribute land under the lex Saufeia.  It does not tell us:  exactly whose land, exactly which beneficiaries, exactly how the transfer worked.  Those further details belong to reconstruction rather than direct evidence. (Ha) Hardie: The idea was good. Grice: But...? Hardie: 1/5 -- viz. Drusus -- was not there for long. Thanks The Lex Saufeia was an agrarian law passed in 91 BCE by the tribune Lucius Saufeius. It established a five-man land commission—which included his prominent colleague, the reformer Marcus Livius Drusus—to redistribute public land (ager publicus) to Rome’s poor. [1, 2] Regarding whether "patricians lost land," the short answer is no, it was not the patricians specifically, but rather wealthy Roman elites (senators and equestrians) and wealthy Italian allies who lost control of public land. By 91 BCE, the ancient divide between patricians and plebeians had mostly faded into a struggle between socio-economic classes. [1, 2, 3, 4] Historians hypothesize several key points about the relationship between the Lex Saufeia, Drusus, and land ownership: 1. The Real Targets: Elite Occupiers of Ager Publicus Historians emphasize that the land being redistributed was ager publicus (state-owned land), not private patrician estates. Over generations, wealthy Romans (both patrician and plebeian elites) and upper-class Italian allies had treated this public land as their own private property. The Lex Saufeia sought to reclaim this land to establish colonies and help the urban poor. [1, 2, 3] 2. Drusus’s Strategy of Compensation Drusus was actually a champion of the senatorial elite, not a radical anti-aristocrat. Historians argue that the Lex Saufeia was part of Drusus’s broader, intricate package of laws. To smooth over the fact that wealthy Italian landlords were losing public land in regions like Campania, Drusus proposed granting full Roman citizenship to all Italian allies as compensation. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] 3. The Backfire and the Breakdown Instead of uniting Rome, the hypothesis of historians shows that this backfired spectacularly: The Roman Elite (senators and the equestrian merchant class) revolted because they refused to give up their lucrative public land holdings. The Italian Elites were deeply divided; some valued keeping their large land holdings over getting Roman citizenship. The Roman Poor wanted the land but vehemently opposed sharing Roman citizenship with Italians. [1, 2, 3] Because of this intense multi-sided opposition, the Senate declared all of Drusus's and Saufeius's laws invalid on religious technicalities later that year. Shortly after, Drusus was assassinated, which immediately triggered the catastrophic Social War (91–88 BCE) between Rome and its Italian allies. [1, 2, 3] Would you like to explore how this land crisis specifically led to the outbreak of the Social War, or are you more interested in how Drusus tried to reform the Roman jury courts? (Ha) That is very good, and it improves the Hardie vignette because it adds the tragic element. If we accept that reconstruction, then the lex Saufeia was part of a larger Drusan programme involving redistribution of ager publicus through a five-man commission that included Marcus Livius Drusus. The reform collapsed in the same year, Drusus was assassinated, and the wider programme failed. So: Grice e Hardie de Lege Saufeia Hardie:  The idea was good.  Grice:  But?  Hardie:  One fifth of it disappeared.  Grice:  Explain.  Hardie:  Five commissioners.  Grice:  Ah.  Hardie:  Drusus was one of them.  Grice:  And not for long.  (Ha)  Potts:  Then the legislation failed?  Hardie:  Spectacularly.  Grice:  Why?  Hardie:  Everyone disliked a different part of it.  (Ha) That is almost the Gricean moral. The programme seems to have generated incompatible expectations:  the poor wanted land, many elites wanted to keep control of land, Italians wanted citizenship, others opposed extending citizenship.  The conversational analogue would be:  A says something intended to satisfy everyone.   Each hearer extracts a different implication.   Nobody is satisfied.  (Ha)  Grice:  So what is the lesson?  Hardie:  Never construct a coalition out of mutually inconsistent expectations.  Potts:  Political philosophy?  Hardie:  Survival.  (Ha) And one can imagine Grice giving it his own twist: Grice:  Drusus attempted a very large conversational implicature.  Hardie:  Meaning?  Grice:  Different audiences heard different messages.  Hardie:  And what happened?  Grice:  The implicature became unstable.  (Ha) That seems almost a Roman version of Grice's late concern about informational "oversupply." Drusus' reform package may have contained too many connected elements, allowing different groups to focus on different consequences. The result was not convergence but divergence. Hardie:  The idea was good.  Grice:  But one fifth of the commission died.  Hardie:  And shortly thereafter the Republic discovered that arithmetic can be political.  (Ha) Strictly, the idea of common land moved to, say America, in townships where 'ager publicus' was allowed to be pastured by all residents. One problem with the Drusus was 'Romans did not -- and poor Romans did not -- want to share citizenship with Italians.' Etc. Yes, I think that is a very important correction. The modern intuition:  "More people receiving citizenship? Surely everyone should be pleased."  is not the intuition one should ascribe to many Romans in 91 BC. The sources relating to Marcus Livius Drusus' reforms explicitly connect him with proposals involving the Italian allies, and the failure of those proposals is linked to the crisis that culminated in the Social War. A Hardie tutorial might therefore proceed: Hardie:  The poor wanted land.  Grice:  Naturally.  Hardie:  Did they also want millions of new fellow citizens?  Grice:  Ah.  (Ha) The difficulty is that "the Roman people" was itself a valuable legal and political club. Citizenship meant, among other things:  voting rights, legal privileges, participation in distributions and opportunities.  So one can imagine a poor Roman reasoning:  "I should like more land."  while simultaneously reasoning:  "I should prefer not to dilute the value of my citizenship."  Those positions are not logically inconsistent. (Ha) Your comparison with the commons is also suggestive. In many later European and American settings, there remained forms of common land available for shared use—pasturing, wood-gathering, and so forth. The analogy is not exact, but it does help modern readers understand how land can be publicly owned while privately exploited. The issue with ager publicus was often that:  formally public,  yet  effectively controlled by wealthy occupiers.  That is why agrarian reform repeatedly became explosive in Roman politics. A Gricean summary would be: Potts:  What was Drusus trying to say?  Grice:  "Land for the poor, citizenship for the allies."  Hardie:  And what did different audiences hear?  Grice:  Different halves of the sentence.  (Ha) That may be the deepest political lesson in the episode. Drusus appears to have constructed a package intended to reconcile several constituencies at once; instead, different groups focused on different consequences and objected to different parts. The result was not coalition but fragmentation. Hardie:  The idea was good.  Grice:  But?  Hardie:  The hearers failed to converge on a common interpretation.  Grice:  A familiar fate for ambitious communicators.  (Ha) And Drusus possibly saw SOME point in the fact that, IF it _is_ ager publicus' there must be something to the adj. 'publicus' that makes it NOT 'ager patricius' or of senatorial elite -- there was like an exploitation -- cf. latifundium in feudalism -- by elite of land that was just, er, publicus. Publicus -- cognate with populus -- and when Drusus played with 'non-romans' (italians) having a share -- opposition from the 'poor Roman' which were one of the alleged beneficiaries of the lex saufeia? Thanks Yes, I think that is very close to the political logic, though one should distinguish between what the sources explicitly say and what historians infer from the situation. The word publicus itself is indeed related to populus. An ager publicus is, in principle, land belonging to the Roman people rather than to a private owner. A Grice-Hardie conversation might begin: Grice:  Why call it ager publicus?  Hardie:  Because it belongs to the public.  Grice:  Then why does the public not possess it?  Hardie:  Ah.  (Ha) The recurring Roman problem with ager publicus was that land formally belonging to the Roman state could be occupied and exploited by wealthy interests for generations. The reform programme of Marcus Livius Drusus, with which the lex Saufeia was associated, included land-distribution measures administered by a commission of five men. Your comparison with later large estates (latifundia) captures something important conceptually. The complaint was often not:  "This is private land."  but rather:  "Land that is theoretically public is effectively being treated as private."  That is precisely why agrarian reform was such a recurring Roman issue. Now comes the more subtle point: the Italians. If Drusus hoped both to redistribute land and to extend citizenship to Italy's allies, he may well have thought the two measures belonged together. Modern historians often reconstruct his programme in that way. The allies provided soldiers, taxes, and support; granting citizenship could be presented as compensation or justice. However, the urban Roman poor could reason differently: Poor Roman citizen:  I want access to public land.  but also:  I do not want millions of new citizens competing for political influence and benefits.  Those two attitudes are perfectly compatible. (Ha) So one might say that Drusus noticed an implicature in the phrase:  ager publicus  If it truly is "public," why should its advantages be monopolized by a narrow elite? But once he broadened the question from:  "Which Romans benefit?"  to  "Who counts as part of the political community?"  he encountered resistance from some of the very people who may have benefited from redistribution. Hardie:  The poor wanted land.  Grice:  Certainly.  Hardie:  Did they want Italians?  Grice:  Not necessarily.  Hardie:  Then Drusus joined two propositions that his audience preferred to keep separate.  Grice:  An advanced conversational error.  (Ha) The tragedy of Drusus is that different constituencies could approve one half of his programme and dislike the other half. What looked to him like a coherent package looked to many contemporaries like an awkward conjunction of policies. That, at least, is why the story so often ends up sounding oddly Gricean: different audiences drew different practical conclusions from the same political utterance. (Ha) WEEK I: Senator 1: The problem with lex saufeia est Drusus. Senator 2: Exacctly. WEEK II: S1: the problem with lex Saufeia fuit/erat Drusus. Senator 2: Exactly. Thanks (Ha) Very good. Especially because the same sentence acquires a different force merely by changing tense. Hebdomas Prima Senator I:  Problema legis Saufeiae est Drusus.  (The problem with the lex Saufeia is Drusus.) Senator II:  Prorsus.  (Exactly.) Senator I:  Si terra sola ageretur, fortasse toleraremus.  (If it were only about land, perhaps we should tolerate it.) Senator II:  Sed semper aliquid addit.  (But he always adds something.) (Ha)  Hebdomas Secunda News arrives. Senator I:  Problema legis Saufeiae erat Drusus.  (The problem with the lex Saufeia was Drusus.) Senator II:  Prorsus.  (Exactly.) Senator I:  Nunc autem lex ipsa problema est.  (Now the law itself is the problem.) Senator II:  Et Drusus?  (And Drusus?) Senator I:  Historia.  (History.) (Ha)  A Gricean flourish: Potts:  The proposition is almost unchanged.  Grice:  Grammatically.  Potts:  But the tense changes.  Grice:  Exactly.  Potts:  And the implicature?  Grice:  Week I: "Remove Drusus, save the law."  Potts:  Week II?  Grice:  "Drusus has been removed."  Potts:  And the law?  Grice:  We are about to discover whether he was the problem or the solution.  (Ha) That is, in a way, the tragedy of Drusus. Before his death, opponents could say:  "The trouble is Drusus."  After his death, the experiment becomes available:  Drusus is gone.  Yet the crisis does not disappear; indeed, the Social War follows shortly thereafter. So the tense shift from est to erat turns a political complaint into a historical hypothesis. Hardie:  The problem with the law was Drusus.  Grice:  An excellent testable proposition.  Hardie:  And the result?  Grice:  The Republic conducted the experiment.  (Ha)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Saufeio – Ossia: Grice e Saufeio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Saufeio. An amusing third place There is also:  Saufeius, who, according to Pliny the Elder, drank honeyed wine and water, swallowed an egg, and immediately died. [GREXv2 | Word]  Hardie:  What killed him?  Grice:  Pliny is more confident than I am.  (Ha) and for the other -- Grice (seminar on conversation, Potts tutee). Today's class will be on 'be orderly. I shall use an example by Ryle: She died & took the poison. Potts: Odd. Grice: But not false. Open NH: Read: Saufeius bebit vinum melus, tragit ovum, et immediate mortus est. Potts: Is the ORDER part of the DICTIVUM. Grice: Not for Ryle! Thnaks (Ha) That is very much in the spirit of both Ryle and Grice. The historical seed is provided by Saufeius, whom Pliny the Elder cites as an example of sudden death:  he returned from the bath, drank honeyed wine and water, swallowed an egg, and died.  Now for the tutorial. Grice e Saufeio de Ordine Grice:  Today's topic is: Be orderly.  Potts:  One of the maxims?  Grice:  One of the submaxims.  Potts:  Example?  Grice:  Ryle's. "She died and took the poison."  Potts:  Odd.  Grice:  Very.  Potts:  False?  Grice:  Not obviously.  (Ha) Grice opens the Natural History. Grice:  Read.  Potts:  Saufeius mulsum bibit, ovum hausit, et statim mortuus est. (Saufeius drank honeyed wine, swallowed an egg, and immediately died.)  Grice:  Excellent.  Potts:  So the order matters?  Grice:  To whom?  (Ha)  Potts:  Is the order part of the dictum?  Grice:  Ryle would hesitate.  Potts:  Why?  Grice:  Because and is not ordinarily equivalent to "and then."  Potts:  But we hear it that way.  Grice:  Quite.  (Ha)  Hardie:  Did Saufeius die after swallowing the egg?  Grice:  Presumably.  Hardie:  Then why not say so?  Grice:  Because sequence may be implicated rather than stated.  (Ha)  Potts:  Then "She took poison and died" and "She died and took poison" have the same truth-conditions?  Grice:  That is close to the Rylean temptation.  Potts:  But different effects?  Grice:  Very different effects.  (Ha)  The moral being:  the temporal order is often not part of what is strictly said, but part of what is naturally inferred from orderly narration.  Thus: Saufeius drank, swallowed an egg, and died. We immediately infer:  +> first the drinking, +> then the egg, +> then the death.  Yet Grice's point would be that this sequence may arise from the maxim of orderly presentation rather than from the semantics of et itself. Potts:  So Saufeius is an implicature?  Grice:  No, sir.  Potts:  Then what is?  Grice:  The chronology.  (Ha) Potts: But Pliny says that natura est vita (Praefatio) and all he talks about is dead. Grice: So. Potts: Ryle's example is clear: the poisoning is the CAUSE of the death (effect). Grice: So? Potts: Let me read the latin again from the bath. What 'conjunctions' does he use? Grice: Your point. Potts: Pliny just cannot understand what the CAUSE may have been. Thanks (Ha) Very good. In fact Potts may be noticing something that cuts against the standard Gricean example. Grice e Potts de Saufeio Mortuo Potts:  Sir, Pliny says in the preface that his subject is natura vitae.  Grice:  Broadly.  Potts:  Yet all he talks about are dead people.  Grice:  Nature is uncooperative.  (Ha)  Potts:  Ryle's example is clear: "She took poison and died."  The natural reading is:  poison → death.  Cause and effect. Grice:  Agreed.  Potts:  And therefore: "She died and took poison"  violates our expectation of order. Grice:  Exactly.  (Ha) But then Potts reopens Pliny. Potts:  Let us look again at Saufeius.  According to the account preserved by Pliny, Saufeius returned from the bath, drank honeyed wine and water, swallowed an egg, and then died. Potts:  What conjunctions does Pliny use?  Grice:  Your point?  Potts:  My point is that Pliny does not know the cause.  (Ha) And that is philosophically rather interesting. With Ryle's poisoning example, we possess an explanatory framework:  poison causes death.  So order and causation work together. But Saufeius presents a different narrative:  bath, drink, egg, death.  The sequence is reported, but the causal relation is unclear.  Potts:  Did the wine kill him?  Grice:  Unknown.  Potts:  The egg?  Grice:  Unknown.  Potts:  The bath?  Grice:  Unknown.  Potts:  Then Pliny has chronology without causation.  Grice:  Ah!  (Ha) That is the clever observation. In Ryle's example, the hearer reconstructs:  temporal order, causal order.  In Pliny's anecdote, we get:  temporal order,  but no established cause at all. The narrative almost says:  "These things happened, and then he died."   Hardie:  What is implicated?  Potts:  Merely that death followed.  Hardie:  Not that the egg killed him?  Potts:  Precisely.  Grice:  Excellent.  (Ha) So Potts' point is that Pliny's sequence may be orderly without being explanatory. The chronology is part of the report, but the causal link remains speculative. Potts:  Ryle's example concerns order plus causation.  Grice:  And Saufeius?  Potts:  Order minus causation.  Grice:  Wednesday's lecture will be yours.  (Ha) and can we have the Latin for passage Grice: "It seems it was the combo -- and that is Pliny's implicature: after BAth -- where your circulation is not yet normal -- you drink H20 mixed with alchohol however mellowed, and you do not bite the egg -- just swallow -- as you lie in bed with towel around you, still wet from bath. Result: Non-natural death. Potts: Yes, sir. (Ha) We have to be a little careful. The source, as summarized in your earlier material, only says that Saufeius returned from the bath, drank honeyed wine and water, swallowed an egg, and died. It does not explicitly give Pliny's causal theory. So what follows would be a Grice–Potts reconstruction, not a translation of Pliny. Grice e Potts de Causa Mortis Saufeii Grice:  Videtur compositio ipsa mortifera fuisse. (It seems that it was the combination itself that proved fatal.)  Potts:  Quae compositio, domine? (Which combination, sir?)  Grice:  Post balneum, cum adhuc corpus non omnino se recepisset, aquam vino mixtam bibit, ovum non momordit sed hausit, atque continuo mortuus est. (After the bath, when the body had not yet fully recovered its equilibrium, he drank water mixed with wine, did not bite the egg but swallowed it, and immediately died.)  Potts:  Ergo causa non certa est? (Then the cause is not certain?)  Grice:  Recte. (Correct.)  Potts:  Quid igitur significat Plinius? (What, then, is Pliny conveying?)  Grice:  Non dicit quid causam attulerit; ordinem rerum narrat, ex quo lector coniecturam facit. (He does not say what brought about the death; he narrates the sequence of events, from which the reader forms a conjecture.)  Potts:  Implicatura? (An implicature?)  Grice:  Fortasse. (Perhaps.)  (Ha) And that is the key Gricean point. Pliny's narrative, as far as the evidence goes, gives us:  bath → drink → egg → death.  What it does not explicitly state is:  the wine caused the death, or the egg caused the death, or the combination caused the death.  Those are explanations the reader is invited to consider. In Gricean terms, one might say that the chronology is part of the report, whereas the causal interpretation is supplied by the reader. (Ha) Does this help -- let us parse the latin and see conjunctions -- thanks In Pliny the Elder's Natural History (Book 7, Section 183), two distinct men named Saufeius are listed consecutively as famous examples of sudden, unexpected deaths (subitaneae mortes). [1, 2] Here are the original Latin text and its parallel English translation: Latin Text "...Appius Saufeius e balineo reversus cum mulsum bibisset ovumque sorberet, P. Quintius Scapula cum apud Aquilium Gallum cenaret, Decimus Saufeius scriba cum domi suae pranderet."[1] English Translation "...Appius Saufeius, when he had drunk some mead (honeyed wine) and was sucking an egg after coming back from the bathhouse; Publius Quintius Scapula, when out to dinner with Aquilius Gallus; Decimus Saufeius the clerk, when lunching at home." [1] Key Contextual Details Appius Saufeius: Died right after a bath. He drank a cup of mulsum (wine sweetened with honey) and was in the middle of swallowing a soft-boiled egg when he suddenly expired. [1, 2] Decimus Saufeius: A Roman scribe/clerk. Unlike his counterpart, he met his sudden end while simply having a midday meal (lunch) in his own home. [1, 2] Thematic Purpose: Pliny included these anecdotes in a sub-chapter dedicated to showcasing how fragile human life is, demonstrating that death can strike in the middle of the most mundane, secure everyday activities like eating a snack or returning from a relaxing bath. [1, 2] If you want, I can: Provide the entire list of sudden deaths mentioned in that section (like the doctor who died from his own eye probe) Explain the historical identities of these two men from the Saufeius family Help you analyze the Latin grammar rules used in this specific passage Let me know what you would like to explore next! Yes — and it actually strengthens Potts' objection. The Latin is:  Appius Saufeius e balineo reversus cum mulsum bibisset ovumque sorberet ... [GREXv2 | Word]  Let us parse it carefully.  e balineo reversus = "having returned from the bath". [GREXv2 | Word] cum ... bibisset = "when he had drunk" / "when he had been drinking". [GREXv2 | Word] ovumque sorberet = "and was sucking/swallowing an egg". The enclitic -que simply joins the egg-action to the drinking. [GREXv2 | Word]  What is striking is that Pliny does not write:  quia mulsum biberat ("because he had drunk the wine")  nor  quod ovum sorbuerat ("because he had swallowed the egg").  Nor does he provide any explicit causal connective at all. [GREXv2 | Word] So Potts has a very good point. Grice e Potts de Coniunctionibus Potts:  Ryle's poisoning example is causal.  Grice:  Yes.  Potts:  Poison causes death.  Grice:  Generally.  Potts:  But Pliny merely reports circumstances.  Grice:  Go on.  Potts:  Bath, drink, egg.  Grice:  And?  Potts:  No causal conjunction.  Grice:  Ah!  (Ha) The passage seems to give us a temporal frame:  after the bath, while drinking mulsum, while swallowing an egg, death occurred. [GREXv2 | Word]  What Pliny appears interested in is not:  "The egg killed him."  but rather:  "He died in the middle of doing something utterly ordinary."  Indeed, the surrounding examples (as summarized in your text) are examples of sudden deaths occurring during everyday activities. [GREXv2 | Word] Hence: Potts:  Pliny cannot explain the cause.  Grice:  Therefore?  Potts:  He narrates the sequence.  Grice:  And leaves the reader to speculate.  (Ha) Then your reconstruction becomes: Grice:  Videtur Plinium significare compositionem rerum fuisse suspectam. (Pliny seems to suggest that the combination of circumstances was suspicious.)  Potts:  Sed non dicit causam. (But he does not state a cause.)  Grice:  Rectissime. (Quite right.)  (Ha) So, unlike Ryle's "She took poison and died," where we naturally import a cause-effect structure, Pliny's Latin is remarkably non-committal. It gives conjunction and circumstance, but not explanation. The causation is not in the syntax; it is supplied, if at all, by the reader. [GREXv2 | Word]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Saufeio – Ossia: Grice e Saufeio: la ragione converesazionale dell’orto romano. Note su Dicta. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Lucio Saufeio (Praeneste, Palestrina, Roma, Lazio): la ragione converesazionale dell’orto romano -- A comparison between Grice and S. illuminates two historically distant but structurally kindred ways of understanding reason as something exercised and displayed within forms of life rather than as a detached faculty. Saufeius, as he appears in late Republican Rome around 650 AUC, exemplifies what might be called the conversational reason of the Roman Garden: protected by wealth, friendship with Atticus, and distance from forensic struggle, he practices Epicurean rationality through selective engagement, wit, and cultivated withdrawal, where philosophical seriousness is conveyed indirectly, by tone, setting, and refusal as much as by explicit argument. The hortus functions as a conversational filter: disputes are softened, claims are implied rather than asserted, and the very choice not to speak in the Forum becomes a meaningful act governed by practical reason. Grice, by contrast, makes explicit what in Saufeius remains embodied and situational: his theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning reconstructs rationality as a system of implicit norms that regulate what speakers say by reference to what they intend, expect, and allow others to infer. Where Saufeius lives the Epicurean insight that reason works best away from accusation and compulsion, Grice formalizes the insight by showing how meaning itself depends on cooperative restraint, background assumptions, and sanctioned deviation. In both cases, reason operates not by maximal assertion but through disciplined understatement: Saufeius cultivates philosophical sense by choosing the garden over the court; Grice shows that even in speech, rational meaning arises less from what is stated outright than from what is left for a competent interlocutor to grasp. Grice: He comes from  a rich and privileged family. He is a close friend of Tito  POMPONIO  detto l’Attico, who intervenes to save his property from confiscation. S. us elsewhere at the time, idly studying the doctrines of the Garden.  GRICEVS: Salvē, Saufeī. Audīvī tē Praeneste ortum esse—dives, beatus, et tam amīcus Atticī ut ipse fundum tuum e manibus publicānōrum eriperet. Tu autem, dum Roma litigat, in Hortō otiose philosophāris! SAVFEIVS: Salvē, Grice. Ita est: aliī in Forō sudant, ego in hortō respiro. Nam Epicurī sententia est: melius est inter arbores disputāre quam inter tabulās accusationum. GRICEVS: Recte—sed miror: hortus vester tam quietus est ut etiam hortulānī (nōn philosophī) videantur sapientēs; et interdum nesciō utrum vos in hortō sitis ut veritatem colatis, an ut ipsī vōs colī sinatis, quasi lactūcārum more. SAVFEIVS: Inplicātūra hortulāna, Grice—immo, ut melius dīcam, inplicātūra horticulturālis! Nam hortus noster et docet et ridet: colimus animōs, non tantum holera; sed si quis nos hortulānōs appellat, libenter ferimus—modo meminerit nos artem habēre, non solum rutrum. Saufeio, Lucio (a. u. c. DCL). Dicta. Roma.