SEM

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Semerari – Ossia: Grice e Semerari: la ragione conversazionale e il principio del dialogo in Socrate. Note su La fenomenologia. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice Giuseppe Semerari (Taranto, Puglia): Grice: “La ragione conversazionale e il principio del dialogo in Socrate. Grice’s account of reason-governed conversational meaning and Giuseppe Semerari’s philosophy of dialogue intersect most clearly around the status of dialogue as the medium in which reason becomes visible, while differing in how far that rationality is formalized. For Grice, conversational reason is procedural and local: meaning arises through speaker intentions interpreted against shared maxims, and dialogue is governed by norms that make mutual understanding possible without guaranteeing final agreement. Implicature is thus a rational achievement of interlocutors moment by moment, inherently provisional and always open to revision. Semerari, by contrast, understands dialogue in a more historical and communal sense, drawing on both Socrates and Vico to frame philosophical reason as an experiential and collective process. Dialogue is not merely a technique for clarifying meanings but the very form of philosophy, a lived encounter in which the individual self emerges through relation to others and to a shared historical world. Where Grice treats incompleteness as a pragmatic feature of conversational inference, Semerari elevates incompleteness to a constitutive principle of philosophy itself, a safeguard against dogmatism rooted in the Vichian idea that truth belongs primarily to the human, historical domain. In this light, Grice’s theory can be read as supplying the micro-rational mechanics of dialogue—the inferential discipline that keeps conversation coherent—while Semerari supplies its macro-philosophical justification, grounding dialogical reason in intersubjectivity, community, and historical becoming. Grice explains how dialogue works; Semerari explains why dialogue must remain open, shared, and ethically charged as the enduring horizon of philosophical reason. S. integrates the Socratic principle of dialogue with the Vico-centric tradition by framing philosophy as a relational, historical experience that bridges individual consciousness and universal human structures. Socratic Dialogue as Methodological Foundation S. interprets the Socratic method not merely as a pedagogy but as an "experience of philosophical thought". For him, dialogue is the essential tool to explore the underlying beliefs and "inner self" that shape individual views, mirroring the continual probing of the original Socratic method. This dialogic stance serves as a defense against dogmatism, emphasizing that philosophical investigations remain "destined to remain incomplete".  Centering on Vico: The "Intrinsically Italian" Tradition Despite his Socratic leanings, S.’s work is deeply rooted in the Italian tradition of VICO .  The Vico of Carabellese: S. notably explores "Il Vico di Carabellese," linking Vico's historical-humanist philosophy to the ontological perspectives of Carabellese. Verum-Factum Principle: He maintains the Vichian emphasis on history and the "human world" as the primary sphere of truth, where the historical development of society mirrors the development of the individual mind. Historicism: S.’s focus on the "human seed" of philosophy reflects Vico's Scienza, viewing philosophy as an evolving social and historical phenomenon rather than a static metaphysical system.  Connection to Idealistic Trends S. acts as a bridge between classical Italian humanism and the Idealistic trends of his era (such as those represented by Croce and Gentile): fascismo, Gentile, neo-idealismo come intrinseccamente fascista, Croce, Vico, intersoggetivo, io-tu, dialogo, dialogo autentico, comunita, valore comunitario, comunita umana, vico. G.: You have brought Semerari under your arm like a shield. Give me the title, and the year. S.: Giuseppe Semerari, La fenomenologia, 1963, Napoli, Morano. [La filosof...ponzio.com] G.: Good. Now, we have just been at the Plea for Excuses, and the man has used, with a straight face, the phrase linguistic phenomenology. S.: He did, and he did it at the point where he is describing his method. G.: Quote it. The sentence, and the two before. S.: He says that the methodology is one of examining what we should say when, and so why and what we should mean by it. Then he adds: When we examine what we should say when, what words we should use in what situations, we are looking again not merely at words but also at the realities we use the words to talk about: we are using a sharpened awareness of words to sharpen our perception of, though not as a final arbiter of, the phenomena. [jstor.org] G.: Yes, that is the passage. And now you will tell me, with your Semerari, that this is not a joke. S.: I will tell you it is a joke, but a joke with borrowed dignity. Austin borrows the continental word, phenomenology, and attaches linguistic to it, as if to say: do not take me for Husserl, I am only doing Oxford. G.: Only doing Oxford, yes: only doing botany. A taxonomy of uses, a herbarium of adverbs. Intentionally, voluntarily, deliberately, inadvertently, by accident, on purpose. A man collects them as if he were pinning butterflies. S.: Semerari would call that only the first moment: description. But phenomenology in the continental sense is not mere listing. It is tied to a logos, to method, to reduction, to the attempt to say what makes the appearing appear as it does. G.: Exactly. And by qualifying it as linguistic, Austin muddies the waters twice. First, he pretends that the route to the things is through the words; secondly, he pretends that the words, by being ordinary, carry an authority that exempts him from theory. S.: Yet Austin’s line explicitly says not as a final arbiter. [jstor.org] G.: That is part of the joke. Not as a final arbiter is a way of having it both ways. You claim you are not enthroning language, but you let language do the whole job you otherwise refuse to formalise. S.: You think the refusal is deliberate. G.: It was temper, and it was also prudence. While Austin lived, one did not say too loudly in Oxford that he lacked theory. Now that he is gone, dead since 1960, I can say it without sounding like I am needling him for sport. S.: He died in 1960, yes. [en.wikipedia.org] G.: So, what is the theoretical demand here. Let us take the very thing the Plea trades on: excuses, and the adverbial modifiers. Austin draws distinctions in the neighbourhood of the act: accidentally, inadvertently, unintentionally, involuntarily, and so on. S.: And you say: that does not yet explain. G.: Precisely. It saves phenomena, yes, and we may write the Greek: σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα. But saving is not accounting. It is not giving the reason why this distinction matters, why a speaker chooses one modifier rather than another, why an audience is licensed to accept one and reject another. S.: Semerari would insist that phenomenology is not only saving but grounding, by going back to the lived structure that makes the distinction intelligible. G.: And now we are closer. Because my own proposal is not a metaphysic of essences, but a principle of reason: for any utterance in which a speaker qualifies an act, there is a reason to do so, a point served in the conversational economy. S.: So you want to replace Austin’s linguistic phenomenology with a theory of reason-for saying. G.: Not replace, but underwrite. Give it the theory he refuses to give. Take intentionally. Why do we say he did it intentionally. Not merely because it contrasts with accidentally. But because in context we are answering a practical demand: we are allocating responsibility, we are licensing blame, we are blocking certain excuses in advance. S.: That is already in Austin, in the form of attention to excuses. G.: He has the material, yes. But he does not state the mechanism. He gives you a map of the vocabulary, but not the logic of the move. And his use of phenomenology gives the impression that description itself is already philosophical satisfaction. S.: And Semerari’s use of fenomenologia is, for you, the contrast case: phenomenology as a method with a commitment to an underlying logos, not merely a virtuoso ear. G.: Precisely. In Semerari, the talk of phenomenology comes attached to dialogue, to method, to the idea that philosophy is an open, communal enterprise. You brought me the passage where he ties reason to dialogue and to the Socratic inheritance. That already looks like theory, not mere catalogue. [La filosof...ponzio.com] S.: Then the issue is that Austin’s phrase linguistic phenomenology is a category mistake. G.: It is at least a provocation. Phenomenology, on the continental side, is not a matter of what we should say when; it is a matter of how the thing is given, how it shows itself under the suspension of naive commitments. Austin turns that into a recommendation: attend to usage, and you will be attending to the world. [jstor.org] S.: But perhaps he means: language is a repository of distinctions we have found worth keeping. G.: That is charitable, and may be true. But then he must tell us why those distinctions are worth keeping, and in which direction the worth points. Here is my principle, stated in the metalanguage you asked for. For any conversational move M in which a speaker chooses expression E rather than E’, there is typically a reason-for that choice, and that reason is recoverable as the point of the move given the speaker’s goals and the shared norms of the exchange. S.: That sounds like your familiar apparatus: point, reason, and the rest. G.: Yes. It is not rationality as a banner, but reason as the local explanation. Why voluntarily rather than intentionally. Why deliberately rather than on purpose. Why accidentally rather than inadvertently. Not because English is fussy, but because speakers are managing what inferences are to be drawn, and what liabilities are to be accepted. S.: So linguistic phenomenology becomes, in your hands, evidence for a theory of conversational reason. G.: Exactly. Austin’s botanising is not worthless. It is data. But data without theory is only a cabinet. Semerari, if he is to be believed, would say that phenomenology without logos is not phenomenology but mere description. [La filosof...ponzio.com] S.: And you would say that logos of phenomena alone is still not enough, unless it connects to reasons that explain why agents say what they say. G.: That is the point. A phenomenology may tell you how things appear; I want, in addition, the reason why this appearance is mobilised in talk, why the speaker selects it, why the hearer accepts it, why the community stabilises it. S.: Then your quarrel with Austin’s phrase is not merely terminological. It is that he uses the prestige of phenomenology to excuse the lack of theory, as if method were optional. G.: Exactly. He pleads for excuses, and then offers himself one: linguistic phenomenology, were it not such a mouthful. [jstor.org] S.: And Semerari would not accept that as an excuse, because fenomenologia, in his Italian context, is already a commitment to systematic grounding. G.: Good. Now let us test with an example from Austin’s own stock. Suppose a man says: I did it unintentionally. What is the point. S.: To block the inference to blame, by denying the intention condition. G.: And why say unintentionally rather than accidentally. S.: Because accidentally suggests the event was outside the agent’s control in a stronger sense, perhaps involving luck or mishap, whereas unintentionally may allow that it was still his doing, just not his aim. G.: Good. Now you see: the difference is not a botanical curiosity; it is a difference in the reason the speaker has for selecting the description, and in the inference the hearer is licensed to make. S.: So your theory does what Austin’s phrase gestures at: it links the words to the realities, by linking both to the inferential norms governing attribution. G.: Exactly. And that is how we keep σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα while not mistaking it for the end of philosophy.Grice: Caro Semerari, ogni volta che parliamo di Socrate e del suo “principio del dialogo”, mi viene in mente l’infaticabile curiosità pugliese: sarà che dalle parti di Taranto la filosofia si mescola al vento, e ogni domanda ne porta altre dieci! Dimmi la verità, hai mai visto Socrate smettere di chiedere, nemmeno davanti a un piatto di orecchiette?  Semerari: Ah Grice, se Socrate avesse avuto le orecchiette sarebbe diventato il filosofo più dialogico del Mediterraneo! Eppure, tu lo sai meglio di me: il vero principio del dialogo non si trova nei piatti ma nelle storie, nella capacità di trasformare la filosofia in una esperienza collettiva, come dice Vico, nata dal seme umano della storia. Grice: Certo, caro Semerari, ma a pensarci bene, questo “principio del dialogo” socratico è stato così tenace che Socrate l’ha tenuto stretto… proprio fino alla fine! Ecco, magari il vero “principio” è anche un “fine” – come dire, la giornata della cicuta non fu solo la fine del dialogo, ma anche il suo ultimo principio. Socrate, sempre coerente, non ha mai lasciato andare la conversazione… neanche quando non c’era più nessuno da convincere, tranne forse il farmacista! Semerari: La tua implicatura sull’implicatura, Grice, è implicaturale come deve essere, secondo il nostro – così condiviso e così amato – “principio del dialogo”, che è anche una fine del dialogo, dove la fine è la meta, non necessariamente il fine lieto dei melodrammi di Metastasio! D’altronde, in filosofia, la vera conclusione è sempre una nuova apertura… e se c’è una cicuta, almeno beviamo insieme, con lo spirito di Vico che non abbandona mai la comunità umana! Semerari, Giuseppe  (1963). La fenomenologia. Napoli: Morano. 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Semmola – Ossia: Grice e Semmola: I FONDAMENTI DELLA PSICOLOGIA RAZIONALE --  la ragione conversazionale della filosofia come istituzione. Note su Sulla dottrina delle fermentazioni. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Mariano Semmola (Napoli, Campania): Grice: “I FONDAMENTI DELLA PSICOLOGIA RAZIONALE -- la ragione conversazionale della filosofia come istituzione. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning and Mariano Semmola’s conception of philosophy as an institutional, naturalized psychology intersect around their shared concern with reason as a social and human practice, yet they diverge in level and function. Grice localizes rational governance at the micro-level of conversation: meaning emerges from speaker intentions constrained by norms of cooperation, with implicatures arising through the hearer’s rational reconstruction of what it would make sense to mean in a given context. Reason, for Grice, is neither metaphysical nor biological but practical and inferential, operating within ordinary language use and correcting itself through dialogue. Semmola, by contrast, treats reason as an institutional and anthropological phenomenon, rooted in the natural human organism and stabilized through systematic philosophical education. His psychologia rationalis absorbs logic, metaphysics, and language into a unified civil project, where language functions as the primary vehicle for transmitting ideas within a community and philosophy itself becomes an enduring social institution rather than an episodic exchange. From a Gricean perspective, Semmola’s system foregrounds the background conditions of conversational rationality—the embodied brain, sensory experience, shared linguistic inheritance—rather than the inferential mechanics of particular utterances. Where Grice explains how understanding is negotiated moment by moment under defeasible norms, Semmola explains why such negotiation is possible at all, grounding rational discourse in the natural unity of mind and body and in the civic task of philosophy to cultivate intelligible, living thought. The contrast, then, is not opposition but scale: Grice theorizes the rational grammar of conversation, while Semmola theorizes the rational infrastructure—biological, linguistic, and institutional—within which conversation can count as a bearer of meaning and truth. S.’s "Institutiones Philosophiae" remains a significant example of the Italian systematic trend, characterized by an encyclopedic effort to unify diverse fields of knowledge while rooting metaphysical inquiries in physical reality. Italian Systematic Tradition S.’s work embodies the Italian "civil and ethical" vocation of philosophy, which avoids abstract speculation in favour of "living thought" that addresses the human condition directly. His systematic approach integrates:  Origin of Ideas: Grounded in a tradition that mediates between sensism (Gioja, Romagnosi) and the nascent idealism of Serbati, S. explores how cognitive concepts emerge from sensory interaction with the world. Language as a Vehicle: He treats language not just as a tool for communication, but as the essential medium for the "transmission of ideas," aligning with the Italian focus on philology and the social utility of knowledge.  Naturalist Psychologia Rationalis While the term Psychologia Rationalis traditionally referred to the metaphysical study of the soul (as defined by Wolff), S. reinterprets it through a naturalist lens. He avoids the Cartesian separation of mind and body, instead adopting an anthropological approach where the human being is "fully part of nature".  The Centrality of the Brain (Cerebrum) S.’s naturalist outlook is distinguished by his frequent references to the physical man: istituzioni di filosofia, l’istituzione della logica, l’istituzione della metafisica. Grice: Devo ammettere, caro Semmola, che resto sempre affascinato dalla sistematicità con cui hai esplorato le fondamenta della psicologia razionale nella tua "Institutiones Philosophiae". Il tuo approccio enciclopedico e la capacità di unire discipline diverse sono davvero un esempio brillante per la filosofia italiana! Semmola: La tua stima mi onora, Grice. Ho sempre creduto che la filosofia, per essere davvero utile, debba incarnare una vocazione civile ed etica, affrontando concretamente la condizione umana. Per me, la sistematicità non è solo un metodo, ma un modo per rendere la filosofia un’istituzione viva, capace di trasmettere idee e valori attraverso il linguaggio. Grice: Non posso che concordare! La tua integrazione tra sensismo, idealismo e naturalismo mostra come la filosofia debba partire dall’esperienza sensibile per poi elevarsi verso concetti universali, senza perdere il contatto con la realtà fisica. È proprio questo slancio verso il "pensiero vivente" che rende il tuo lavoro così innovativo. Semmola: Grazie, Grice. Per me, il cervello e il linguaggio sono strumenti essenziali nella trasmissione delle idee. Ho cercato di evitare la separazione cartesiana tra mente e corpo, preferendo un approccio antropologico: l’uomo, pienamente inserito nella natura, diventa il vero protagonista della filosofia razionale. D’altronde, come si dice a Napoli, "ogni testa è un tribunale", e solo dialogando possiamo davvero avvicinarci alla verità. Re: passage below: Is semmola a kind of food in Italian, G. asks -- provide a 100-move conversation, starting with that as you consider, no preamble or ps -- the idea that this Semmola started with fermentazione and ended with cosmologia -- and if semmola can be puuned have G. and S. consider an essay weekly essay assignment on Semmola, but mainly based on the pun -- which must be cognate with 'sem-as in seminal -- and ways to prepare the food, etc G.: Is semmola a kind of food in Italian? S.: Yes. Though if you ask in Naples, someone may answer before deciding whether you mean semola, semolino, or something grandmotherly. G.: Good. I had hoped not to be inventing groceries. So semmola, or semola more soberly, is edible. S.: Entirely edible. Ground durum wheat, coarse or fine, depending on what one intends to do with it. G.: Then the pun is too good to waste. A philosopher called Semmola begins with fermentazione and ends with cosmologia. S.: From grain to cosmos. Naples does enjoy promotion. G.: The name itself almost demands it. Semmola sounds cognate with seed, seminal, semen, and all the old reproductive vocabularies. S.: Etymologically one should be cautious, but rhetorically the invitation is irresistible. G.: Rhetorically irresistible things are often intellectually dangerous, which is one reason I like them. Let us begin with the food and see whether the philosophy follows. S.: Semola is the granular middle state between grain and bread. G.: Excellent. Neither intact seed nor finished loaf. S.: Which already makes it a philosopher’s food. Intermediate, processual, requiring treatment. G.: And treatment here is fermentation. S.: Often enough. Bread, pasta in some forms, puddings, gnocchi, sweet preparations, semolino with milk, semolina cakes, porridge-like consolations. G.: A comprehensive metaphysics of breakfast. S.: And supper. G.: Quite. Then Semmola the philosopher begins from fermentations because his very surname wants to be worked upon. S.: That is a bold philology. G.: A dry one, I hope. Fermentation means transformation by hidden process, invisible activity, orderly disturbance. S.: Which is not a bad beginning for a naturalist psychology. G.: Exactly. One begins with physical process, bodily organisation, the cerebrum, the organism, the doctrine of fermentations; and somehow one ends with psychology rationalis and finally cosmology. S.: So from the bubbling vat to the stars. G.: Or, if you prefer, from semolina to system. S.: That is much better than most textbook subtitles. G.: It should be. Now, can semmola be punned as sem-? S.: You will make it sem-inal whether or not the dictionaries approve. G.: Naturally. Sem- as in seed, beginning, germ, seminality, the not-yet-expanded principle. S.: Which fits because semola is already reduced seed, and philosophy begins for Semmola from the conditions under which ideas arise out of sensory and bodily life. G.: Very good. The seed is no pure idea fallen from nowhere. It is worked matter. S.: So the pun writes itself: Semmola begins with what ferments, not with what descends. G.: Excellent. That is exactly the sort of thing one would turn into a weekly essay assignment to punish the bright. S.: You have one in mind already. G.: Of course. “Explain why a philosopher named Semmola could hardly begin with celestial mechanics, and assess whether fermentation is the proper prelude to cosmology.” Typewriting disallowed. Handwriting counts. S.: Very nice. The poor pupil would not know whether to start in the kitchen or in Aristotle. G.: Which is exactly the point. All good essays begin by not knowing where to stand. S.: Then what is the food, precisely? Coarse ground grain, usually durum wheat. G.: Yes, and that matters because granularity itself becomes conceptually useful. Semolina is not the seed entire, but not yet the bread. It is prepared matter awaiting process. S.: Which makes it an admirable analogue for Semmola’s institutional philosophy. Human minds as prepared natural matter requiring education, language, and social fermentation before rational discourse becomes possible. G.: Splendid. You are beginning to deserve lunch. S.: High praise indeed. G.: Do not become pleased. Now, the progression from fermentazione to cosmologia. How do we state it without sounding comic beyond rescue? S.: One might say that Semmola’s system insists that rational discourse must be grounded in the physical and anthropological conditions of life: brain, sensation, language, bodily organisation. From there he expands into logic, metaphysics, and finally cosmology. G.: Good. So the cosmic never leaves the kitchen entirely behind. S.: Or the laboratory. G.: Better. The point is that cosmology in such a system is not pure abstraction but the enlargement of natural inquiry from organism to universe. S.: Which is why Speranza’s contrast with your own micro-pragmatics works. G.: Exactly. I look at how one speaker gets a hearer to gather what is meant. Semmola looks at why there are creatures with brains, languages, institutions, and educational practices such that such gatherings can occur at all. S.: Hence philosophy as institution. G.: Yes. Not merely a series of bright exchanges, but a durable civil practice transmitting living thought. S.: Then semmola the food becomes a nice figure for institution too: something processed, shared, worked by culture, variable by region, but materially continuous. G.: Very good. In Naples, semmola is not merely substance; it is cuisine. In philosophy likewise, raw sensation is not yet thought; it must be worked into civic form. S.: Through language. G.: Precisely. Semmola’s insistence on language as vehicle for transmission is key. One does not simply have ideas; one hands them on, cultivates them, institutionalises them. S.: Which turns semolina into pedagogy. G.: Almost. At least into a metaphor for prepared intelligibility. S.: There is a danger that the pun will get away from us. G.: A danger worth running. Now, the weekly essay assignment you asked for. We need one that plays on the name without becoming entirely gastronomic. S.: “From Grain to Brain” is too obvious. G.: Too obvious and too good. Keep it in reserve. Better perhaps: “Semmola and the Civilisation of Grain: explain how a philosophy that begins from fermentations may nonetheless end in cosmology without ceasing to be anthropological.” S.: Typewriting disallowed. Handwriting counts. G.: Naturally. Handwriting matters especially when semolina is in the ink. S.: That is grotesque. G.: Which is why it may stay. Another assignment might be: “Discuss whether Semmola’s naturalist psychologia rationalis is better understood as the fermentation of sense into concept, or as the institutional cooking of the human animal into the citizen.” S.: Very severe on the citizen. G.: The citizen deserves some heat. Naples knew that. S.: Then perhaps the food itself deserves more exact handling. Semola may be used for pasta, gnocchi alla romana, semolino dolce, bread, cakes, dumplings, and porridge. G.: Excellent. The plurality of preparations helps. It shows that a single material under different forms of process yields distinct outcomes. S.: Which is a good analogy for his encyclopedic Institutiones. G.: Exactly. One natural basis, many forms of intellectual elaboration. S.: Logic, metaphysics, psychology, language, cosmology. G.: Quite. The same grain, various dishes. S.: You will offend the idealists. G.: All the better. Idealists deserve to be reminded that the cerebrum was there before the category. S.: Semmola would approve. G.: He would at least recognise the impulse. He avoids Cartesian separation by insisting that the human being is fully in nature. That is already a rebuke to airy rationalism. S.: So fermentation matters because it is a process in matter that yields transformation without importing a second substance. G.: Precisely. Fermentation is almost a parable of immanent development. Something happens within matter under conditions, and out of it come new forms. S.: Bread from dough, thought from organism. G.: Very good. One must be cautious with the analogy, but it illuminates the title beautifully. S.: Then the pun on sem- as seminal is not entirely idle. G.: No. Seed, grain, germ, origin, productivity. Semmola’s whole system is concerned with origins that remain materially rooted while opening into conceptual life. S.: So he is sem-inal in exactly the way he would perhaps deny if accused too quickly. G.: Quite. One should never call a Neapolitan thinker seminal without first checking whether one is in the pantry. S.: You are incorrigible. G.: Only etymologically. Now, there is also the possibility that semmola as food is not “kind of food” but “kind of ingredient.” S.: Better. Semola is often not the final dish but the material from which dishes are made. G.: Excellent. Then Semmola the philosopher is an ingredient-thinker. He attends to the underlying matter from which intellectual institutions are formed. S.: Brain, sensation, language, social inheritance. G.: Yes. He is less interested in finished doctrine than in the conditions under which doctrine becomes transmissible and living. S.: Which is why Speranza says he theorises the infrastructure rather than the inferential mechanics. G.: Exactly. I say how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant here and now. Semmola says what sort of embodied, linguistic, civic creature can ever inhabit such a space of reasons. S.: Then the move from fermentazioni to cosmologia is really a move from process at the low level to order at the high level. G.: Very good. And because the low level is never abandoned, the high level is not merely speculative. It is rooted in natural reality. S.: That sounds almost anti-Cartesian by cuisine. G.: A phrase worth keeping. Anti-Cartesian by cuisine. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become culinary. Now, if we were to set a truly perverse weekly essay on Semmola, what would it be? S.: “Assess whether semmola is closer to Aristotle’s hyle or to the Lockean tabula rasa, and explain why neither can be served plain.” G.: Excellent. Typewriting disallowed. Handwriting counts. S.: Another: “Explain why a philosopher who begins with fermentation cannot be accused of lifeless system, and why a philosopher who ends with cosmology cannot be accused of remaining in the pantry.” G.: Very good indeed. Typewriting disallowed. Handwriting counts. S.: You enjoy the formula too much. G.: It is a small compensation for collection. Now, should we make anything of Naples specifically? S.: We should. Naples is a city where food metaphors become civilisational without effort. A philosophy of institution there will almost naturally appear as something kneaded, worked, leavened, and shared. G.: Excellent. The civic vocation of philosophy appears here not as pure academy but as cultural transmission in a living society. S.: Which is why language becomes central. It is the medium through which the dish is served. G.: Splendid. Semmola is not merely interested in ideas existing, but in their passing from head to head, generation to generation. S.: “Every head is a tribunal,” as the saying goes. G.: Yes, and a tribunal needs language before it may pronounce. Semmola’s cerebrum is no solitary organ. It becomes philosophically interesting only within linguistic and institutional circulation. S.: So if the food pun is to be more than wit, it must mark precisely that transition from raw natural basis to socially elaborated form. G.: Exactly. The grain alone is not enough; one needs the milling, the water, the yeast, the oven, the recipe, the table, the custom. S.: Which is almost too good a model for an institution. G.: It is certainly better than most legal metaphors. And it reminds one that institutions are not merely constraints but forms of preparation. S.: Then one could say that Semmola’s philosophy is leavened naturalism. G.: Better than “fermented idealism,” yes. S.: He would dislike the latter. G.: He would have cause. Now, about the cognate question. Is semmola cognate with sem- in the strict philological sense? S.: Probably not in the direct way you are making merry with, but the rhetorical and associative field is close enough for a tutor’s title. G.: Excellent. That is all one needs. Weekly essays are not philological depositions; they are occasions for disciplined analogy. S.: A dangerous sentence. G.: A true one. Now, let us sharpen the transition from fermentation to cosmology. What is the exact conceptual path? S.: First, physical processes and the embodied human organism. Second, sensory interaction as source of ideas. Third, language as transmission of those ideas. Fourth, logic and metaphysics as institutionally codified reflections upon them. Fifth, cosmology as the enlargement of rational inquiry to the whole natural order. G.: Perfectly done. S.: Thank you. G.: And because he naturalises rational psychology, none of this requires a separate soul-substance descending from nowhere. S.: So again the fermentation image helps: transformation without ontological rupture. G.: Exactly. He can avoid Cartesian bifurcation while still preserving the dignity of rational thought. S.: Then the essay assignment might also ask whether fermentation is for Semmola merely a scientific topic or a model of philosophical becoming. G.: Excellent. “Discuss whether Semmola’s doctrine of fermentations functions merely as physiological science, or as an implicit model of how nature becomes intelligible to itself.” Typewriting disallowed. Handwriting counts. S.: That is vile. G.: In the best sense. Now, what ways of preparing the food shall we mention if we want the pun to have domestic authority? S.: Semolino with milk and sugar, semolina bread, semolina gnocchi, semolina pudding, semolina cakes, and certain Neapolitan uses tied to soups and enriched doughs. G.: Good. Variety of preparation from one base substance. Again the analogy holds: one rational infrastructure, many doctrinal forms. S.: And perhaps one may say that some systems are overcooked. G.: One may always say that. Though one should not say it too near Rosmini. Now, the surname. Mariano Semmola. S.: Yes. G.: Mariano almost calls for maternal and civic softness, while Semmola grounds him back in grain and process. S.: That is not science. G.: No, but it is criticism, which is better company. Now, would you say that his philosophy is more like bread or more like pudding? S.: Bread. It is institutional, civic, sustaining, and meant to support a whole form of life rather than merely to console the dessert course. G.: Excellent. Though there is some pudding in all encyclopedic systems. S.: Especially in Naples. G.: Quite. Then perhaps the final line for Speranza’s dry voice is this: a philosopher called Semmola was almost destined to begin from fermentations, for his very name suggests a matter prepared to rise. S.: And to end in cosmology because no systematic Italian is content to remain in the kitchen if the universe may still be plated. G.: Perfectly absurd. Perfectly usable. S.: Then the main answer to your opening question is yes: semmola is a kind of food in Italian. G.: Better: an ingredient, a prepared grain, an intermediate substance awaiting form. S.: Which is exactly why it becomes philosophically suggestive. G.: Precisely. Semmola is what matter looks like when already on its way to culture. S.: That is very nearly your final sentence. G.: Very nearly. Let us improve it slightly. Semmola is what matter looks like when nature has already admitted the possibility of institution. S.: Excellent. G.: And Semmola the philosopher is what rational psychology looks like when it begins not with disembodied clarity but with the grain, the brain, and the long civic work of making them speak. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Neapolitan, with one loaf still rising.Semmola, Mariano  (1869). Sulla dottrina delle fermentazioni. Napoli: Tipografia dell’Accademia Reale delle Scienze

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Semprini – Ossia: Grice e Semprini: implicatura cabalistica nel deutero-esperanto di Pico -- filosofia italiana. Note su La fenice degl’ingegni. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice.  Giovanni Semprini (Bologna, Emilia): implicatura cabalistica nel deutero-esperanto di Pico. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning and Giovanni Semprini’s reading of Pico della Mirandola articulate two sharply different rationalizations of meaning that nonetheless converge on the problem of universality. Grice treats meaning as emerging from the disciplined use of reason in concrete interaction: conversational implicatures are not encoded in symbols themselves but inferred by rational agents operating under shared expectations of cooperation, intelligibility, and restraint. Universality, for Grice, is procedural rather than symbolic: it lies in the recursive accessibility of reasoning practices, not in a privileged language or code. Semprini, by contrast, interprets Pico’s Christian cabala as an attempt to secure universality at the level of symbolic structure itself, transforming letters and numbers into rational characters capable of expressing metaphysical truth directly. In Semprini’s account, cabalistic symbolism functions as a proto-logical system, a speculative lingua universalis in which concordia universalis is achieved not through conversational negotiation but through formal combinatorics grounded in a shared divine architecture of reason. From a Gricean perspective, this ambition risks collapsing communicative meaning into cryptographic display: when symbols require prior initiation rather than mutual rational adjustment, implicature hardens into code and conversation gives way to decipherment. The contrast thus turns on where rational governance is located: for Grice, in the ongoing management of understanding between speakers; for Semprini’s Pico, in a pre-conversational symbolic order meant to guarantee agreement in advance. Grice’s “deutero-esperanto” remains firmly pragmatic and defeasible, while Semprini’s Pico aims at a rationalized sacral language whose elegance threatens to outpace its communicative clarity. Grice: “Implicatura cabalistica nel deutero-esperanto di Pico -- filosofia italiana S.’s interpretation of PICO  identifies his "christian cabala" not merely as mysticism, but as a proto-rationalist system that provides the blueprint for a  lingua universalis (universal language). S. argues that PICO  transforms cabala into a formal logic by utilising its structural components — letters and numbers — as a "characteristic" or symbolic system to achieve universal concord -- concordia universalis.  The Role of Cabalistic Symbolism PICO ’s cabalism led to this universal language through several key conceptual shifts: Mathematical Reduction: PICO  views letters as sub-kinds of images and numbers. S. highlights that by treating the alphabet as a set of mathematical variables, PICO  moves toward a characteristica — a symbolic system where complex metaphysical truths could be calculated rather than just debated. The Sefirot as Rational Attributes: PICO  interprets the ten Sefirot (emanations) as universal attributes or categories of the "supreme Mind". This provides a common framework that, in S.’s view, allows different philosophical traditions – both Platonic and Aristotelian – v. Grice A. D. Code --  to be translated into a single rationalized "lingua". Concordia Universalis: PICO ’s goal is a "universal system of knowledge" that includes all disciplines. S. posits that Pico’s use of cabala is the specific tool that allows him to bridge disparate traditions by identifying a shared "divine purpose and design".  Foundational Reason and the Lingua Universalis S. suggests that PICO ’s cabalistic "magic" is actually a form of speculative logic. Instead of traditional spells, Pico’s "magic" involves the "magical combinations of the sacred alphabet" to reach the first cause.  For S., this represents an  attempt to create a rationalized universal language (a lingua universalis) where symbols (characters) directly represent universal concepts. deuteuro-esperanto di Grice, PICO.  Grice: Semprini, spiegami: davvero Pico voleva una lingua universale—una specie di “deutero‑esperanto”—ma costruita più con alfabeti solenni che con frasi usabili al mercato? Semprini: Proprio così: l’idea è che lettere e numeri diventino una logica simbolica capace di portare a una concordia universalis. Non è (solo) mistero: è un tentativo di metodo, travestito da sacralità. Grice: Capisco… eppure, a orecchio mio, certe combinazioni “sacre” suonano un po’ troppo come un cifrario che si compiace di restare cifrario. Io—che vengo da Vadum Boum e ho un’educazione piuttosto “classica”—quando una lingua sembra richiedere prima la chiave e poi la conversazione, mi viene da chiedermi se stiamo ancora parlando di lingua o di cabinetto delle serrature. Semprini: Implicatura cabalistica la tua, Grice, anche se viene da un gentile integrale come te! Perché stai dicendo: “bella l’ambizione di Pico”, ma anche “se la combinatoria diventa più importante dell’intesa, la lingua universale si riduce a lingua per iniziati”. E in fondo la vera civiltà—occidentale o no—si misura da quanta chiarezza riesce a fare senza rinunciare all’eleganza. Re: passage below: provide without preamble or ps a 100-move conversation at Oxford between G. and S. on Walter Pater on Pico taking into account this Semprini study -- with G. calling "our Water" "ou man in Italian philosophy" -- and S. indicating that that usually means he is not good at it -- and they consider Pater's excursoions to Firenze and Mirandola to find the real Pico, and Semprini saying that the phoenix of wit is phoenicial, etc -- and most that you can get from Oxonian influence and reading of Pico -- alla G. and S. and Semprini -- thanaks. G.: Let us begin with the obvious provincial boast. Pater is our man in Italian philosophy. S.: Which usually means he is not very good at it. G.: Naturally. The English only call a man “our man” abroad when they mean he has become usable at a distance. S.: Or decorative. G.: Quite. But in Pater’s case the matter is subtler. He is “our man” in Italian philosophy not because he masters its schools, but because he lets Italy reorganise English inwardness. S.: That is the generous version. G.: The true one too, more or less. And with Pico in particular, Pater finds in Italy a figure who allows English criticism to flirt with universalism without becoming German about it. S.: A very Paterian flirtation. G.: Precisely. Now, Semprini. S.: Ah yes, Semprini and the phoenix. G.: La fenice degli ingegni. One of those admirable titles that sound simultaneously celebratory and faintly suspicious. S.: Especially once Semprini begins implying that the phoenix of wit may also be Phoenician. G.: Yes, that excellent little perversity. The phoenix, as a figure of singular rebirth, unexpectedly tied back to Phoenicia, as if wit itself had Levantine shipping routes. S.: Which would have amused Pater enormously. G.: No doubt. Pater likes all intelligences that seem at once antique, exotic, and internally over-cultivated. S.: Then Pico becomes for him not merely a historical humanist, but a scene of refined excess. G.: Exactly. And Pater’s famous chapter on Pico in The Renaissance is one of those English acts of appropriation which are also, in a way, acts of homage. S.: Because Pater does not simply report Pico; he inhabits him. G.: Yes. Or tries to. He introjects Pico as a style of spiritual and intellectual amplitude. Not exactly scholarship in the German sense, still less philosophy in the dry Oxonian one, but something more dangerous to both: a criticism that behaves like inward biography. S.: And here you would say Semprini matters because he helps separate the real Pico from the Paterian one. G.: Or at least helps us notice the distance between them. Pater goes to Florence and Mirandola in imagination, and perhaps in itinerary, in search of “the real Pico,” but what he recovers is already a Paterian construction. S.: As all “real” Italians in English prose eventually become. G.: Yes. Italy in English criticism is always half archive, half moral instrument. Pater’s Italy is not census Italy but elective Italy. S.: And Pico, for him, is the most elective of all. G.: Quite. Pico is wonderfully usable because he is already a figure of universality, youth, brilliance, syncretism, cabala, ambition, and verbal splendour. S.: A bad recipe for sober philosophy. G.: A marvellous recipe for Pater. The man who wants to write not a history of philosophy but an anatomy of cultivated intensity will naturally fasten on Pico. S.: Semprini, though, wants more architecture. G.: Yes. Semprini wants to show that Pico’s Christian cabala is not merely mystical theatre but a serious attempt at symbolic universality. S.: Letters and numbers as a proto-logical system. G.: Precisely. The sacred alphabet as characteristic, combinatory, universal language. A speculative lingua universalis before the later modern projects arrive with better diagrams and worse metaphysics. S.: Then the contrast between you and Semprini is almost too neat. G.: I should hope not too neat. My complaint would be that such a universal symbolic order threatens to outpace communication. Once understanding depends on initiation into sacred combinations, one has a code before one has a conversation. S.: Which is why you called it a cabinet of locks. G.: Yes. When a language requires the key before the exchange, it begins to look less like language and more like the proud concealment of language. S.: Yet Pico’s ambition is still magnificent. G.: Entirely magnificent. Semprini is right to rescue that. The ambition is not merely occult vanity; it is concordia universalis under symbolic compression. S.: And Pater responds to the ambition aesthetically. G.: Exactly. Pater is less interested in the technical possibility of the system than in what sort of mind would desire such a system. Pico fascinates him as a form of over-full consciousness seeking total synthesis. S.: Which is already philosophy in Pater’s own mode. G.: Very much so. Pater’s philosophy is always indirect. He asks not “Is this doctrine true?” first, but “What sort of soul does this doctrine make visible?” S.: So his Pico is a spiritual physiognomy. G.: Beautifully put. Yes. The chapter becomes a portrait of intellectual desire under Renaissance conditions. S.: And thus Oxford receives Pico not through scholastic disputation, but through criticism as character-study. G.: Precisely. Which is why Speranza likes to call Pater our man in Italian philosophy. He is “our man” because he domesticates the foreign sublime into an English prose of cultivated discrimination. S.: Again, which usually means he gets it slightly wrong. G.: And fruitfully so. Great reception is often fruitful misprision. If Pater were merely exact, he would be less influential. S.: Then what do you think Pater actually sees in Pico? G.: Youth, brilliance, universality, daring, syncretic appetite, and a kind of intensity that can be made exemplary for modern cultivated readers. Pico becomes the image of an intelligence too wide to remain doctrinally obedient. S.: A phoenix of intellect. G.: Yes, and there Semprini’s title is wonderfully apt. The phoenix dies and returns; Pico’s wit consumes traditions in order to rise from their ashes under a new rhetorical form. S.: And Semprini’s little Phoenician joke? G.: It points to the old traffic of alphabets, symbols, sacred lineages, the eastern aura under western universalism. Quite proper for cabala. The phoenix of wit is not only singular but also migratory. S.: So the bird flies from Phoenicia to Florence by way of Bologna and Oxford. G.: That is almost too handsome, but I shall allow it. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become pleased with yourself. Now, Oxford’s relation to Pico before Pater. S.: Rather thin, I should think. G.: Thinner than it later pretends. Oxford knew enough of Renaissance humanism, of course, but Pater’s chapter gives Pico to English readers in a distinctive way: as an inwardly available type of intellectual style. S.: Not merely as the author of the Oration. G.: Precisely. The Oration becomes less a doctrinal document than a voice, a gesture of ascent, a self-fashioning of the intellect. S.: Which means Pater prefers the philosophical aura to the technical labour. G.: Yes. Though one should not accuse him too quickly of negligence. His form of reading is not philological exactitude but selective intensification. S.: Semprini, by contrast, wants the machinery. G.: He does. He wants to say: Pico’s cabala is not just sacred ornament. It is a rationalised symbolic practice aiming at a universal language of concepts through letters and numbers. S.: Which then lets one talk about a proto-Leibnizian characteristic. G.: Exactly. And there I become interested and suspicious at once. S.: Suspicious because symbols may harden before understanding begins. G.: Precisely. My own procedural universalism says: rationality lies in what agents can mutually work out under cooperative norms, not in a privileged pre-conversational code. S.: So Semprini’s Pico risks replacing conversation with decipherment. G.: Yes. A splendid danger, but still a danger. S.: Pater would not care. G.: Not in the same way. For Pater, the very opacity of the ambition is part of the allure. A universal language that remains half sacred and half symbolic is excellent material for English cultivated yearning. S.: Then Pater on Pico is not really a philosophy of cabala, but a criticism of universal desire. G.: Excellent. That is exactly right. He asks what universal desire looks like when embodied in a Renaissance prodigy. S.: And the answer is: elegant, perilous, over-learned, youthful, and just sufficiently impossible. G.: Very good. Now, Semprini’s study. S.: It belongs to that twentieth-century Italian moment in which one wants to reclaim Pico from purely literary or mystical caricature and show him as methodical. G.: Yes. Pico becomes not merely the bright aristocratic dabbler, but a thinker attempting symbolic integration across traditions. S.: Christian cabala as formal ambition. G.: Precisely. One can see why Semprini liked that. It lets Pico belong not only to humanist glamour but to the prehistory of universal language and speculative logic. S.: Which then lets Grice enter, if only to say no. G.: A civilised no. I would say: yes, splendid ambition; no, symbols do not guarantee understanding merely by being combinatory. If the users must first be initiated into a sacred lock-system, mutual accessibility has been lost. S.: Then your “deutero-esperanto” joke is directed at precisely that danger. G.: Yes. A universal language that becomes too elegant for the market ceases to be language in the ordinary human sense. S.: Pater, though, would probably prefer it for that reason. G.: Exactly. Pater likes forms that exceed utility and become spiritual tests. He does not want the market; he wants the studiolo. S.: Or the Florentine interior. G.: Quite. And that is why his excursions to Florence and Mirandola matter symbolically, whether or not one maps every actual route. He goes in search of the real Pico and finds instead a geography of intensified consciousness. S.: Florence as concentration, Mirandola as origin. G.: Yes. The city and the small place together produce the tension between worldly splendour and singular birth. Pico becomes both cosmopolitan and locatable. S.: Which is very useful to an English critic. G.: Extremely. The English love universality best when it can still be tied to a precise Tuscan or Emilian hill. S.: Semprini, meanwhile, ties universality to letters and numbers. G.: Exactly. He gives the symbolic skeleton under the aesthetic flesh. S.: Then in an Oxford conversation one could say: Pater gave us the perfume of Pico; Semprini supplies the apparatus. G.: Dry, but accurate. S.: Is that not your ideal combination? G.: My ideal combination is apparatus without perfume. But one must sometimes settle for the history of reception as it has occurred. S.: And Oxford’s reception of Pico was very much Paterian first. G.: Yes. Through Pater, Pico becomes a figure of refined multiplicity, not a scholastic technician of cabalistic rationality. S.: Though later readers can return by Semprini’s path. G.: Precisely. That is what makes the whole thing interesting now. We can read Pater as a stylistic and philosophical event in English culture, then use Semprini to show what Pater selected, softened, and re-ordered. S.: Does that diminish Pater? G.: Not at all. It specifies him. Great readers are often great by selection. Pater’s greatness lies not in completeness but in the pressure of his omissions. S.: Pressure of omissions is a very Griceian compliment. G.: Naturally. Now, the phrase “our man in Italian philosophy.” S.: Which I still maintain is usually ominous. G.: Yes, but here ominous in a productive way. Pater is not “our man” because he mastered the schools of Padua, Naples, or Bologna. He is “our man” because he made an English philosophical style porous to Italian exemplarity. S.: So Italian philosophy enters Oxford not through doctrinal conquest but through cultivated reception. G.: Exactly. Through essays, portraits, chapters, style, moral psychology, and the conversion of historical persons into modern criteria of inward life. S.: That sounds perilously close to saying that Pater does philosophy by criticism. G.: He does. And criticism at its best is one of philosophy’s least acknowledged forms. S.: Then Pater on Pico is philosophical because it asks what kind of intellectual life is worth admiring. G.: Very good. It also asks what universality looks like when pursued not by system-builders but by prodigies. Pico’s universality is not bureaucratic, but incandescent. S.: Which is why the phoenix is so apt. G.: Exactly. The phoenix is not merely resurrection. It is self-consuming singularity. Pico burns through traditions and reappears as their impossible synthesis. S.: A dangerous model for undergraduates. G.: The best ones always are. S.: Oxford influence, then. Where exactly? G.: In the mode of reception. Pater makes it possible for English readers to approach Italian philosophy not only through direct doctrine but through exemplary portraits. That affects later ways of reading Renaissance thought in English. S.: Even when later scholarship corrects him. G.: Especially then. Corrections often remain within the space a first great reading opened. Semprini can oppose Paterian atmosphere because Pater made Pico atmospherically available in the first place. S.: So even the apparatus owes something to the perfume. G.: Reluctantly, yes. S.: Good. Now, what of Semprini’s “deutero-esperanto”? G.: I use the phrase mischievously, of course. Pico’s universal symbolic project is not Esperanto, nor second-order Esperanto. But the jest catches the dream of a rational medium meant to pre-empt misunderstanding. S.: Which you resist because misunderstanding is not cured by sacred algebra. G.: Exactly. Misunderstanding is cured, if at all, by rational adjustment among persons, not by a code requiring prior consecration. S.: So the difference between you and Semprini’s Pico is where universality is located. G.: Precisely. For me, universality is procedural: recursive accessibility of reasons, what any competent participant may in principle work out. For Semprini’s Pico, universality lies in symbolic structure itself: letters and numbers arranged under divine architecture. S.: And Pater stands aside from both, looking at the soul that wants it. G.: Very well put. S.: Thank you. G.: Again, do not become pleased. Now, the post-Grand Tour aspect. S.: You mean that by Pater’s time Italy is no longer merely a place to visit but a repertoire of inward standards. G.: Exactly. The older Grand Tour made Italy a finishing school for English gentlemen. Pater makes Italy a medium of philosophical criticism. One no longer simply sees Florence; one uses Florence to correct one’s soul. S.: Or to ornament it. G.: Both, perhaps. But with Pico the operation is especially intellectual. Italian philosophy becomes available as a style of universality that English thought can admire without entirely accepting. S.: Which is very Oxford. G.: Extremely. Oxford likes to adopt by reservation. S.: Then perhaps the most Oxfordian thing about Pater on Pico is that he makes excess respectable by converting it into style. G.: Excellent. Yes. Pico’s wild universality becomes something one may discuss in a common room because Pater has turned it into cultivated prose. S.: Semprini would perhaps wish for more numbers and fewer cadences. G.: Very likely. But he is grateful to Pater nonetheless, whether he admits it or not. S.: Because without Pater, Pico in English might have remained merely a name on a syllabus. G.: Precisely. S.: One last thing. Do you think Pater’s excursions to Florence and Mirandola were really a search for the “real” Pico? G.: In the biographical sense, perhaps not wholly. In the rhetorical sense, yes. Pater needs the gestures of recovery, local contact, geographical exactness, because English criticism likes to pretend that intimacy with place secures truth of portrait. S.: Even when the portrait is clearly selective. G.: Especially then. Place licenses selection by making it feel recovered rather than composed. S.: So Pater’s Italy is both archive and alibi. G.: Beautifully put. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep it and pretend Semprini implied it. S.: He probably did. G.: Then the final judgment? S.: Pater is “our man in Italian philosophy” because he made Italian intellectual figures, and Pico above all, available to English inward criticism; Semprini matters because he restores to Pico the formal and cabalistic ambition that Pater aestheticised; and the two together show that Oxford’s relation to Italian philosophy has long proceeded by selective admiration first, and technical correction afterward. G.: Perfectly done. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Florentine, with one Phoenix feather in the Bodleian.Semprini, Giovanni (1921). Pico: la fenice degli ingegni. Todi: Atanor.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sempronio – Ossia: Grice e Sempronio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sempronio Gaius Sempronius Gracchus addressing the Plebeian Council The gens Sempronia was one of the most ancient and noble houses of ancient Rome. Although the oldest branch of this gens was patrician, with Aulus Sempronius Atratinus obtaining the consulship in 497 BC, the thirteenth year of the Republic, but from the time of the Samnite Wars onward, most if not all of the Sempronii appearing in history were plebeians. Although the Sempronii were illustrious under the Republic, few of them attained any importance or notice in imperial times.[1]  Praenomina The praenomina favored by the patrician Sempronii were Aulus, Lucius, and Gaius. The plebeian families of the gens used primarily Gaius, Publius, Tiberius, and Marcus. The Tuditani used Marcus, Gaius, and Publius, while their contemporaries, the Gracchi, used Tiberius, Gaius, and Publius. Some families, including the Rutili and Muscae, used Titus instead of Tiberius.  Branches and cognomina Of the many branches of the Sempronia gens, the only family which was certainly patrician bore the cognomen Atratinus, a surname originally describing someone clad in black or mourning attire. Several of this family attained the highest offices of the Roman state under the early Republic, but the name does not occur again until 34 BC. Given the fashion for reviving old surnames in the late Republic, it seems improbable that this represented the direct line of the Sempronii Atratini, returning to prominence after more than three centuries in eclipse.[2][3]   Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, from Guillaume Rouillé's Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum Most or all of the other stirpes of the Sempronii were plebeian. Their surnames included Asellio, Blaesus, Densus, Gracchus, Longus, Musca, Pitio, Rufus, Rutilus, Sophus, and Tuditanus. Along with Atratinus, Gracchus and Pitio are found on coins.[1]  Sophus, referring to someone regarded as "wise", belonged to a small, plebeian family that flourished from the time of the Samnite Wars down to the middle of the third century BC. Blaesus, originally indicating someone known for stammering, was the surname of a plebeian family that attained prominence during the Punic Wars. Tuditanus, which the philologist Lucius Ateius Praetextatus supposed to have been bestowed upon one of the Sempronii with a head like a tudes, or mallet, belonged to a family that flourished during the latter half of the third century BC.[4][5]  Longus was a common surname, which usually referred to a person who was quite tall, although it could also mean "tedious". This family was prominent for a few decades, beginning around the start of the Second Punic War. Rutilus, or "reddish", usually referred to the color of someone's hair, and it marks a family that first appears in the early second century BC. A diminutive of Rufus, red, it may have belonged to the same family that later bore that surname. The cognomen Musca refers to a fly, a nickname might allude to someone's height, in contrast to Longus, or could refer to a person's persistence.[6]  The Sempronii Gracchi were the most distinguished family of the gens. They belonged to the plebeian nobility, obtaining their first consulship during the First Punic War, and remaining prominent for over a century. Their surname, Gracchus, indicated a jackdaw. The Sempronii Gracchi included several accomplished statesmen and generals, but they are perhaps better remembered for the Gracchi brothers, who were martyred in the cause of agrarian reform. A few members of this family are mentioned under the early Empire, but they were of little consequence.[7]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Sempronii Atratini Aulus Sempronius Atratinus, consul in 497 BC. Aulus Sempronius A. f. Atratinus, one of the first three consular tribunes in 444 BC, was compelled to resign along with his colleagues, as a result of a defect in the auspices.[8][9][10] Lucius Sempronius A. f. Atratinus, elected consul in 444 BC, following the resignation of his brother and the other consular tribunes, became one of the first censors in 443.[11][12][13] Aulus Sempronius L. f. A. n. Atratinus, consular tribune in 425, 420, and 416 BC.[14][15] Gaius Sempronius A. f. A. n. Atratinus, consul in 423 BC. Aulus Sempronius Atratinus, magister equitum in 380 BC.[16] Sempronii Sophi Publius Sempronius P. f. C. n. Sophus, consul in 304 BC and censor in 300, triumphed over the Aequi. Publius Sempronius P. f. P. n. Sophus, consul in 268 BC, and censor in 252. Sempronii Blaesi Gaius Sempronius Ti. f. Ti. n. Blaesus, consul in 253 and 244 BC, during the First Punic War. (Tiberius) Sempronius Blaesus, quaestor in 217 BC, during the Second Punic War, was killed during a raid upon the coast of Africa.[17] Gaius Sempronius Blaesus, tribune of the plebs in 211 BC, was probably the same person who served as legate under the dictator Quintus Fulvius Flaccus the following year.[18] Publius Sempronius Blaesus, tribune of the plebs in 191 BC, opposed the triumph of Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, but relented.[19] Gaius Sempronius Blaesus, praetor in 184 BC, obtained Sicily as his province. Sempronii Tuditani Marcus Sempronius C. f. M. n. Tuditanus, held the consulship in 240 BC, together with Gaius Claudius Centho as his colleague. Not much is known of his consulship. He served as censor in 230 BC.[20][21][22][23] Publius Sempronius C. f. C. n. Tuditanus, censor in 209 BC and consul in 204, was a survivor of the Battle of Cannae. He defeated Hannibal during his consulship.[i] Marcus Sempronius Tuditanus, one of Scipio's officers at the capture of Carthago Nova in 209 BC.[24] Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus, praetor in 197 BC, obtained Hispania Citerior as his province, and died of wounds received in battle the following year.[25][26] Marcus Sempronius M. f. C. n. Tuditanus, consul in 185 BC, defeated the Apuani.[27] Gaius Sempronius C. f. Tuditanus, perhaps one of the senior praetors in 146 BC, was that year sent with the consul Lucius Mummius in order to form the province of Achaia.[28][29][30] Gaius Sempronius C. f. C. n. Tuditanus, an orator and historian and consul in 129 BC, triumphed over the Iapydes. Sempronia C. f. C. n., daughter of the consul Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus, she married Lucius Hortensius, and was the mother of the orator Quintus Hortensius. Sempronius Tuditanus, the grandfather of Fulvia, the wife of Marcus Antonius the triumvir, was described by Cicero as a madman, who liked to scatter his money among the people from the Rostra.[31][32] Sempronia, the mother of Fulvia. Sempronia, implicated in the Catilinarian Conspiracy, was perhaps the aunt of Fulvia.[33] Sempronii Gracchi Tiberius Sempronius Ti. f. C. n. Gracchus, consul in 238 BC, carried on the First Punic War in Sardinia and Corsica. Tiberius Sempronius Ti. f. Ti. n. Gracchus, consul in 215 BC and 213 BC, during the Second Punic War, fell in battle against Mago. Publius Sempronius Ti. f. Ti. n. Gracchus, brother of the consul of 215 and 213 BC, and father of the consul of 177. Tiberius Sempronius Ti. f. Ti. n. Gracchus, elected augur in 203 BC, while still a young man, died in the great pestilence of 174 BC. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, commander of the allies in the war against the Gauls, under the consul Marcellus in 196 BC, fell in battle against the Boii. Tiberius Veturius Gracchus Sempronianus, apparently one of the Sempronii, who had been adopted into the gens Veturia, was subsequently elected augur to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in 174 BC.[34] Publius Sempronius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs in 189 BC, with his colleague, Gaius Sempronius Rutilus, charged Manius Acilius Glabrio, the consul of 191, with misappropriating part of the booty taken from Antiochus at Thermopylae.[35][36] Tiberius Sempronius P. f. Ti. n. Gracchus, consul in 177 and 163 BC, and censor in 169, triumphed over the Celtiberi and the Sardinians; father of the brothers Gracchi. Tiberius Sempronius Ti. f. P. n. Gracchus, tribune of the plebs in 133 BC, carried a major agrarian law, and was afterwards slain in a riot instigated by Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio. Gaius Sempronius Ti. f. P. n. Gracchus, tribune of the plebs in 123 and 122 BC, carried several major legal reforms; but as his opponents brought Rome to the brink of civil war, he was pursued from the city, and took his own life. Sempronia Ti. f. P. n., sister of the Gracchi, married Scipio Aemilianus. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, quadrumvir monetalis and quaestor-designate c. 40 BC or after.[37][38] Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a lover of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, was banished in AD 2, and put to death upon the accession of Tiberius. Sempronius Gracchus, praetor in AD 33, presided over a tribunal judging matters of usury. Given the large number of accusations and the disruptive financial consequences likely to result from his adjudication, Gracchus brought the matter before the Senate. Subsequent attempts to rein in usurious practices in compliance with existing laws provoked a financial crisis.[39][40] Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, praetor peregrinus in AD 37, is likely the same person who had accused the senator Granius Marcianus of maiestas two years earlier.[41][42] (Lucius) Sempronius Gracchus, consul suffectus in AD 167. Sempronii Longi Tiberius Sempronius C. f. C. n. Longus, consul in 218 BC, the first year of the Second Punic War, defeated by Hannibal at the Trebia. Tiberius Sempronius Ti. f. C. n. Longus, consul in 194 BC. Gaius Sempronius (Ti. f. Ti. n.) Longus, elected decemvir sacris faciundis in the place of Tiberius Sempronius Longus, the consul of 194 BC, who died in the great pestilence of 174.[43] Publius Sempronius Longus, praetor in 184 BC, obtained Hispania Ulterior as his province.[44] Gaius (Sempronius?) Longus, legate of a governor of Sicily in the 90s BC.[45] Sempronii Rutili Gaius Sempronius Rutilus, tribune of the plebs in 189 BC, together with his colleague, Publius Sempronius Gracchus, prosecuted Manius Acilius Glabrio, the consul of 191.[35] Titus Sempronius Rutilus, the stepfather of Publius Aebutius, whom he disliked. His wife, Duronia, was indirectly responsible for the discovery of the Bacchanalia at Rome in 186 BC.[46] Marcus Sempronius Rutilus, one of Caesar's legates in Gaul.[47] Marcus (Sempronius) Rutilus, proconsul in Asia Minor in an uncertain date. Possibly identical with Caesar's legate.[45] Sempronii Muscae Titus Sempronius Musca, one of five commissioners appointed to settle the disputes between the Pisani and the Lunenses, in 168 BC.[48] Aulus Sempronius Musca, mentioned along with his brother, Marcus, by Cicero in De Oratore.[49] Marcus Sempronius Musca, mentioned along with his brother, Aulus, by Cicero in De Oratore.[49] Sempronius Musca, scourged Gaius Gellius to death after detecting him in the act of adultery with his wife.[50] Sempronii Aselliones Sempronius Asellio, a military tribune under Scipio Aemilianus in 133 BC, wrote a history of his times.[51][52][53] Lucius (Sempronius?) Asellio or Asullius, praetor about 92 BC, restored Sicily after the slave revolt there.[54][ii] Aulus Sempronius Asellio, praetor urbanus in 89 BC, was lynched by a mob of creditors after introducing debt relief measures during the financial difficulties of the Social War.[58] Others Publius Sempronius, prefect of the allies in 194 BC, was slain in battle by the Boii while serving under the consul Tiberius Sempronius Longus.[59] Lucius Sempronius Pitio, triumvir monetalis in 148 BC.[60] Aulus Sempronius A. f., a senator circa 140 BC. He might be identical with Aulus Sempronius Musca, or may alternatively be an Asellio.[61][53] Gaius Sempronius C. f., a senator in 129 BC.[62] Sempronia, the wife of Decimus Junius Brutus, consul in 77 BC. Gaius Sempronius Rufus, a friend of Cicero, was accused by Marcus Tuccius in 51 BC.[63][64] Lucius Sempronius L. f. L. n. Atratinus, consul suffectus in 34 BC, was a friend of Cicero, and the prosecutor of Marcus Caelius Rufus, whom Cicero defended.[65][66] Sempronius Densus, centurion of a praetorian cohort, gave his life in AD 69, while attempting to defend Licinianus, adopted son of the emperor Galba, or in some accounts the emperor himself.[67][68][69] Sempronius Rufus, a friend of the younger Pliny.[70] Titus Sempronius Rufus, consul suffectus in AD 113. Lucius Sempronius Merula Auspicatus, consul suffectus in AD 121. Marcus Sempronius Liberalis, governor of Egypt from AD 154 to 159.[71] Sempronius Rufus, a eunuch from Hispania, who had committed various crimes, but had great influence over the emperor Caracalla.[72] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  See Livy, xxii. 50 for his actions, and xxii. 60 for the praise heaped on him by leading Roman senators, notably Titus Manlius Torquatus.  Mentioned only by Diodorus, who calls him Lucius Asullius. This was traditionally emended to (Sempronius) Asellio, and Badian considered Lucius to be an older brother of Aulus Sempronius Asellio, praetor in 89.[55][56] One recent reassessment of the evidence argues in favor of Asullius rather than Sempronius being his nomen.[57] References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 777 ("Sempronia Gens").  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 407 ("Atratinus").  Cassell's Latin and English Dictionary, s.v. atratinus.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1181 ("Tuditanus").  Festus, p. 352, ed. Müller.  Cassell's Latin and English Dictionary, s.v.v. longus, musca, rufus, rutilus.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, pp. 287–298 ("Gracchus").  Livy, iv. 7.  Dionysius, xi. 61.  Diodorus, xii. 32.  Dionysius, xi. 62, 63.  Livy, iv. 7, 8.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, ix. 21.  Livy, iv. 35, 44, 47.  Diodorus, xii. 81, xiii. 9.  Livy, vi. 28.  Livy, xxii. 31.  Livy, xxvi. 2, xxvii. 5.  Livy, xxxvi. 39, 40.  Fasti Capitolini, AE 1927, 101; 1940, 59, 60.  Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, xvii. 21.  Cicero, Brutus, 18; Tusculanae Quaestiones, i. 1, Cato Maior de Senectute, 14.  Friedrich Münzer, "Sempronius", No. 93, in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Second Series, Fourth Half-Volume, col. 1443.  Livy, xxvi. 48.  Livy, xxxii. 27, 28, xxxiii. 25, 42.  Appian, Hispanica, 39.  Livy, xxxv. 7, xxxvii. 47, 50, xxxxix. 23, 32, 40, 46, xli. 21.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1182 ("Tuditanus", No. 6.).  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, xiii. 6. § 4, 33. § 3.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 467, 469 (note 4).  Cicero, Philippicae, iii. 6, Academica Priora, ii. 28.  Valerius Maximus, vii. 8. § 1.  Schultz, Fulvia, p. 7.  Livy, xli. 26.  Livy, xxxvii. 57.  Festus, s. v. penatores.  Crawford, pp. 529–530.  Broughton, vol. iii, p. 190.  Tacitus, "Annales", vi. 16, 17.  PW, "Sempronius", No. 42.  Tacitus, Annales, vi. 38.  PW, "Sempronius", No. 43.  Livy, xli. 21  Livy, xxxix. 32, 38.  Broughton, vol. 3, p. 190.  Livy, xxxix 9, 11, 19.  Caesar, De Bello Gallico, vii. 90.  Livy, xlv. 13.  Cicero, De Oratore, ii. 60 s. 247.  Valerius Maximus, vi. 1. § 13.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 384 ("Asellio, P. Sempronius").  Broughton, vol. I, p. 491.  Badian, "Sempronii Aselliones", p. 1.  Diodorus, xxxvii. 8.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 9.  Badian, "Sempronii Aselliones", p. 2.  A. Díaz Fernández, "Asullius: A Missing Roman Nomen?", Latomus: revue d'études latines, vol. 76, no. 4 (2017), pp. 961–974  Broughton, vol. II, p. 33.  Livy, xxxiv. 46.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 256.  SIG, 674.  Sherk, "Senatus Consultum De Agro Pergameno", p. 367.  Marcus Caelius Rufus, apud Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, viii. 8.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, vi. 2. § 10, Epistulae ad Familiares, 22, 25, 29.  Cassius Dio, xlix. 39.  Cicero, Pro Caelio, 1, 3, 7.  Tacitus, Historiae, i. 43.  Cassius Dio, lxiv. 6.  Plutarch, "The Life of Galba", 26.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, iv. 22.  Bastianini, "Lista dei prefetti d'Egitto", pp. 292 ff.  Cassius Dio, lxxviii. 17. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Academica Priora, Brutus, Cato Maior de Senectute, De Oratore, Epistulae ad Atticum, Epistulae ad Familiares, Philippicae, Pro Caelio, Tusculanae Quaestiones. Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War). Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica (Library of History). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Historiae. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Sextus Pompeius Festus, Epitome de M. Verrio Flacco de Verborum Significatu (Epitome of Marcus Verrius Flaccus' On the Meaning of Words). Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Hispanica (The Spanish Wars). Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights). Cassius Dio, Roman History. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Wilhelm Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (Collection of Greek Inscriptions, abbreviated SIG), Leipzig (1883). August Pauly, Georg Wissowa, et alii, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Scientific Encyclopedia of the Knowledge of Classical Antiquities, abbreviated RE or PW), J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart (1894–1980). Broughton, T. Robert S. (1952–1986). The Magistrates of the Roman Republic. American Philological Association. D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin and English Dictionary, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York (1963). Robert K. Sherk, "The Text of the Senatus Consultum De Agro Pergameno", in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, vol. 7, pp. 361–369 (1966). Ernst Badian, "The Sempronii Aselliones", The Proceedings of the African Classical Associations, volume 11 (1968), pp. 1–6, ISSN 0555-3059. Crawford, Michael Hewson (1974). Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-07492-6. Guido Bastianini, "Lista dei prefetti d'Egitto dal 30 a. al 299 p." (List of the Prefects of Egypt from 30 BC to AD 299), in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 17 (1975). Celia E. Schultz, Fulvia: Playing for Power at the End of the Roman Republic, Oxford University Press (2021). Categories: SemproniiRoman gentes and for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sempronio – Ossia: Grice e Sempronio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sempronio For the Sempronii, the first-best Grice-Speranza vignette is not, despite every schoolbook temptation, immediately Tiberius or Gaius Gracchus. It is Publius Sempronius Tuditanus at Cannae. The Gracchi are too splendidly available: reform, martyrdom, agrarian law, popularis rhetoric, public violence. They almost write the entry themselves, which is always a warning. Tuditanus is better because he gives the precise Gricean structure of action under a description: after Cannae, when others sit in stunned deliberation, he redescribes the situation from “we are defeated” to “we are not yet captured,” and leads the survivors through the enemy lines. Livy’s Cannae scene makes Tuditanus the man who refuses the paralysing implicature of disaster. The Romans have lost; therefore, many infer, they can only wait, negotiate, or surrender. Tuditanus cancels that inference. The fact of defeat is not the same as the meaning of defeat. So long as movement remains possible, “defeated” does not yet entail “finished.” That is almost embarrassingly Gricean: what has happened is one thing; what follows conversationally, practically, and politically from the description of what has happened is another. A dry title would be Grice e Sempronio Tuditano: dopo Canne, ma non ancora catturati. A reconstructed exchange might run: Romanus: “Victi sumus; manendum est.” (“We have been defeated; we must stay.”) Tuditanus: “Victi, non capti.” (“Defeated, not captured.”) Implicature: The description “defeated” is conceded, but its suggested practical conclusion is denied. Tuditanus separates fact from fatal inference. Romanus: “Hostes undique sunt.” (“The enemy are everywhere.”) Tuditanus: “Ergo via una sufficit.” (“Then one road is enough.”) Implicature: Encirclement is not redescribed as impossibility, but as a problem of finding the single viable exit. He changes despair into search. Romanus: “Pauci sequuntur.” (“Few are following.”) Tuditanus: “Pauci vivi plures sunt quam multi sedentes.” (“A few living men are more than many sitting still.”) Implicature: Numbers are revalued by action. Survival with motion is politically and militarily superior to collective paralysis. This makes Tuditanus a sharper first choice than the Gracchi because the philosophical action is smaller and cleaner. The Gracchi force us into law, property, violence, and constitutional crisis. Tuditanus gives one central point: a Roman may be saved by refusing the wrong implicature of a true sentence. “We have lost” is true. “Therefore we are done” is not. The Gracchi should of course come later. Tiberius and Gaius are indispensable for Sempronian political speech, for agrarian reform as contested implicature of publicus in ager publicus, and for the rhetoric of the people against senatorial ownership. But first-best, for a vignette, is Tuditanus, because he is the Sempronius of conversational survival. He does not win Cannae. He prevents Cannae from meaning more than it is entitled to mean. Dry Speranzian formula: the Gracchi tried to rescue Rome from what ager publicus had come to imply; Tuditanus rescued Romans from what defeat was beginning to imply. For Grice, the second is the cleaner seminar. and then did Sempronio turn the thing into ~(We are defeated)? Consider 'yet'. Grice's first example of implicature in 1967 is in the third person and thus problematic: A: How is Smith getting on in his new job at the bank. B: He hasn't been to prison yet. Grice: "What B explicilty conveyed contrasts with what he implicitly conveys." His FIRST example, in 1961 is however in the first person, and thus less problematic, because there's first-person incorrigibility. "Smith has beautful handwriting" uttered by Grice as tutor -- he must know what he means. Apply mutatis mutandis to Sempronius with the 'yet' of 'not yet defeated' perhaps? Thanks Yes. Sempronius Tuditanus does not exactly turn the matter into “not defeated” tout court. That would be too strong and historically false. The more Gricean move is subtler: he separates “we have been defeated” from “we are finished,” or, with the useful little temporal operator, “we are defeated, but not yet captured,” victi sumus, nondum capti. The “yet” is doing almost all the philosophical work. It concedes the fact while blocking the fatal implicature. Compare Grice’s bank example: “He has not been to prison yet” explicitly says something compatible with Smith’s not having been imprisoned; but it conventionally or conversationally suggests that prison is the sort of future one might expect. The explicit content contrasts with the implicated assessment. In Tuditanus’ case, a Roman says: “Victi sumus.” (“We have been defeated.”) The bad implicature is: “Ergo mansuri sumus / dedendi sumus / actum est.” (“Therefore we must stay / surrender / it is over.”) Tuditanus’ reply: “Victi sumus; nondum capti.” (“We have been defeated; not yet captured.”) The explicit content concedes defeat and denies completed capture. The implicature is: the practical conclusion “there is nothing left to do” has not been earned. The defeat is real; the interpretation of defeat is still open. So he is not converting p into not-p. He is preventing p from generating an illicit q. That is very close to Grice’s interest in the gap between what is said and what is allowed to be inferred. “We are defeated” may conversationally suggest “we are done,” but Tuditanus cancels that suggestion by inserting “not yet.” The “yet” does two things at once: it acknowledges danger and keeps agency alive. A reconstructed Sempronian line could be: “Victi sumus, Quirites; sed nondum hostium sumus.” (“We are defeated, Romans; but we are not yet the enemy’s.”) +> Defeat has occurred, but possession by the enemy has not. The hearers must not treat the battle’s outcome as equivalent to political or bodily surrender. Or more compressed: “Clades facta est; servitus nondum.” (“A disaster has happened; slavery has not yet.”) +> The present calamity does not settle the next practical move. The temporal gap is the space of courage. This is also why your contrast between the 1967 third-person Smith example and the earlier tutor-letter example matters. “Smith has beautiful handwriting,” uttered by Grice as tutor, is less problematic because the speaker’s meaning is underwritten by his role and first-person authority over what he intends to convey. He knows that the sparse praise is meant to convey philosophical inadequacy. In the bank example, the third-person subject and the “yet” make the implicature more socially delicate: the speaker is saying something about Smith’s prospects or character without explicitly asserting the damaging claim. Tuditanus is closer to the first-person practical case because he is not gossiping about another man’s future. He is speaking from inside the threatened group. The relevant subject is “we.” That matters. “We have not been captured yet” is not an external insinuation; it is a collective self-redescription. It converts panic into possible action. The speaker is not merely reporting a state; he is trying to alter uptake within the group. So the Grice/Speranza formula might be: Tuditanus does not deny Cannae. He denies Cannae’s premature implicature. “Victi sumus” says enough. “Nondum capti” prevents the enemy from receiving, by conversational courtesy, what they have not yet obtained by arms. That gives a fine tutorial point. “Yet” is often the smallest word by which fatalism is postponed. So, Grice speaks of the dyad -- almost alla Leibniz's monad: conversationalist A and converationalist B- with this SEmpronio we have conversationalist 1 and collective conversationlist 2 (599 Romans) -- the 600 in total -- Not clear how he chose 599 -- and history likes round numbers -- as Abbott says in Comical History of Rome -- but can we parse the 'yet' into the 'not yet captivus' and 'never will' defeating implicature -- as contra Grice: "Hasn't been to prison yet and never will" -- It seems a long oratio recta for a conversational move, followed by action, not repartee. Thanks Tutti Immagini Video Notizie Maps Shopping Libri Voli Finanza 7 siti Yes. In Ab Urbe Condita (Book 22, Chapter 50), Titus Livy uses a dramatic, direct speech (oratio recta) by the military tribune Publius Sempronius Tuditanus to fundamentally reshape how the aftermath of the disaster at Cannae is understood. Brill +1 By rewriting history through this speech, Livy transforms a chaotic tactical breakout into a supreme moral and ideological battle over what it means to be a Roman. latinum publications ·LATINUM PUBLICATIONS 1. The Historical Context vs. Livy's Narrative Shift Historically, after the encirclement at Cannae, the remaining Roman troops were split between a larger and a smaller camp. Those in the smaller camp were ordered to cross over to the larger one so they could escape together. Most refused out of pure terror. Tuditanus simply took 600 brave men, charged through the sleeping Carthaginian lines, reached the larger camp, picked up more survivors, and made it safely to Canusium. Wikipedia Rather than reporting this as a mere military movement, Livy elevates Tuditanus by putting a fierce, direct speech (oratio recta) into his mouth, contrasting him against the paralyzed, cowardly majority. Brill +1 2. The Text: Latin and English (Livy, 22.50) The Latin Text (Oratio Recta) "Mali," inquit, "an uoluntario ergo uos seruitio a captiuos ab auarissimo ac crudelissimo hoste expeti uultis, aestimarique capita uestra et interrogari ciuisne Romanus an Latinus socius sis, ut ex tua contumelia et miseria alteri honos quaeratur? Non tu, si L. Aemili consulis, qui se honestae morti quam uitae turpi dedit, si tot fortissimorum uirorum, qui circa eum cumulatim iacent, ciues estis! Sed, antequam opprimit lux et maior hostium manus obsaepit uiam, per hos, qui inordinati atque incompositi obstrepunt portis, erumpamus! Ferro atque audacia uia fit, quamuis perfertis confertisque obstent inimici. Cuneo quidem hoc laxum et solutum agmen, ut si nihil opstet, disiciemus. Sequimini igitur me, qui uos et uestram rem publicam seruam cupio!" York University The English Translation The English translation of this speech highlights the urgent call to action, contrasting shameful capture with noble sacrifice in the name of the Republic. 3. How the Speech Changed the Events and Meaning Livy utilizes this specific oratio recta to achieve several profound narrative and historiographical goals: Weaponizing the Exemplum (Moral Example): In Augustan ideology, historical writing was meant to provide moral frameworks. Tuditanus evokes the memory of the dead consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus. By doing this, Livy uses the speech to connect the active breakout to Roman virtus (virtue) and decus(honor), turning a desperate retreat into an act of patriotic duty. York University +1 Shifting the Blame of the Disaster: Livy frames the tragedy of Cannae not just as a failure of military strategy, but as a crisis of Roman character and willpower. Tuditanus' speech sharply divides the survivors into two categories: those with true Roman spirit (who fight out) and those paralyzed by cowardice (who wait to be captured). York University +1 Creating Retrospective Foreshadowing: The speech specifically mentions the humiliation of being captured, interrogated, and ransomed ("interrogari ciuisne Romanus an Latinus socius sis"). This directly sets up the major political drama later in Book 22, where the Roman Senate famously refuses to buy back the prisoners who surrendered, arguing they lacked the grit shown by Tuditanus’ men. The Latin Library +2 The Power of Direct Speech: Had Livy used oratio obliqua (indirect speech, e.g., "Tuditanus told them that they should leave..."), the passage would be a simple historical record. By shifting to oratio recta, Livy forces the reader into the tent, making us feel the urgency of the moment and transforming Tuditanus into the ultimate embodiment of Roman resilience when all hope seemed lost. latinum publications Would you like to explore how Polybius covers this same breakout from the camp, or analyze how the Roman Senate later used Tuditanus' actions to justify abandoning the prisoners of war? L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 1 sito Here is the direct English translation of the speech, followed by a grammatical breakdown (parsing) of the key Latin phrases to show how Livy constructs his dramatic argument. 1. English Translation (Livy, 22.50) "Would you rather," he said, "choose a voluntary slavery to a most avaricious and cruel enemy? Do you wish to have a price set upon your heads, and to be cross-examined as to whether you are a Roman citizen or a Latin ally, so that another man may gain honor from your humiliation and misery? You will not do this, if you are truly citizens of the consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus—who chose a noble death over a shameful life—and of the many brave men who lie heaped around him! But, before dawn overtakes us and a larger force of the enemy blocks the way, let us break out through these men who are blocking the gates in a disordered and chaotic mob! A way is made by the sword and by daring, even if the enemy stands in tight, packed formations. With a wedge formation, we will scatter this loose and scattered column as if nothing stood in our way. Follow me, therefore, you who wish to save yourselves and your Republic!" 2. Latin-to-English Parsing and Grammatical Breakdown Livy uses intense, urgent language. Here is how the most important clauses break down grammatically: Clause 1: The Threat of Captivity Latin: "Mali... an uoluntario ergo uos seruitio a captiuos ab auarissimo ac crudelissimo hoste expeti uultis..." Literal Translation: "Or do you wish to be sought out as captives into voluntary slavery by a most greedy and cruel enemy..." Key Parsing: uultis (from volo): 2nd person plural, present active indicative — "you all want / wish". expeti: Present passive infinitive — "to be sought after / demanded". auarissimo ac crudelissimo hoste: Ablative of agent following ab. Both adjectives are superlative (-issimo), emphasizing the ultimate cruelty of Hannibal's forces to terrify the listeners. Clause 2: The Humiliation of Identity Latin: "...aestimarique capita uestra et interrogari ciuisne Romanus an Latinus socius sis..." Literal Translation: "...and [do you wish] your heads to be valued, and to be asked whether you are a Roman citizen or a Latin ally..." Key Parsing: aestimari / interrogari: Present passive infinitives dependent on uultis — "to be valued" / "to be interrogated". capita uestra: Accutative plural, subject of the passive infinitive aestimari — "your heads". ciuisne... an...: An indirect question introduced by the enclitic particle -ne ("whether") and an("or"). sis: 2nd person singular, present subjunctive of esse ("you are") — required because it is an indirect question. Clause 3: The Call to Heroic Ancestry Latin: "...Non tu, si L. Aemili consulis... si tot fortissimorum uirorum... ciues estis!" Literal Translation: "...Not you [will do this], if you are citizens of the consul Lucius Aemilius... if of so many bravest men!" Key Parsing: Non tu: Livy uses a sudden shift to the singular "you" (tu) to make the speech feel intensely personal to every individual soldier. L. Aemili consulis: Genitive singular — "of the consul Lucius Aemilius". estis: 2nd person plural, present active indicative — "you all are". Clause 4: The Tactical Escape Latin: "...per hos, qui inordinati atque incompositi obstrepunt portis, erumpamus!" Literal Translation: "...through these men, who disordered and chaotic block the gates, let us break out!" Key Parsing: erumpamus: 1st person plural, present subjunctive — This is a hortatory subjunctiveused to issue an urgent command ("let us burst forth!"). obstrepunt: 3rd person plural, present active indicative — "they block / clamor against". inordinati atque incompositi: Nominative plural adjectives modifying qui (the enemy or the panicked crowd) — "disordered and scattered". Clause 5: The Philosophy of Action Latin: "Ferro atque audacia uia fit..." Literal Translation: "By iron (the sword) and by daring a way is made..." Key Parsing: Ferro... audacia: Ablatives of means — "by means of the sword" and "by means of boldness". via: Nominative singular subject — "a path / way". fit (from fio): 3rd person singular, present indicative — "is made / becomes". Would you like to parse a specific phrase from the remaining sentences of the speech, or look at how Livy's grammar rules change when switching from indirect (oratio obliqua) to direct speech (oratio recta)? 15 siti 1. Where is Cannae? Cannae was an ancient village located in southeastern Italy, specifically in the central part of the Apulia region (modern Puglia). The battlefield sits on a flat plain along the banks of the Ofanto River (ancient Aufidus), roughly 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) inland from the Adriatic Sea. Today, the site features an archaeological park and museum known as the Antiquarium di Canne della Battaglia. Italy as the Romans did +1 2. What Year Ab Urbe Condita? The Battle of Cannae took place on August 2, 216 BC. Measured in the Roman dating system Ab Urbe Condita(A.U.C.), which means "from the founding of the City [of Rome]" in 753 BC, the battle occurred in the year 538 A.U.C. (some historical chronologies calculate it as late 537 A.U.C.). For Romans living through the Second Punic War, the year was officially identified by its senior magistrates as the Year of the Consulship of Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. 3. What Did Publius Sempronius Tuditanus Achieve? In the catastrophic aftermath of the Roman encirclement, Publius Sempronius Tuditanus achieved a monumental tactical feat that Livy later adapted into a legendary moral triumph: Encyclopedia Britannica Broke Through Enemy Lines: Surrounded in the smaller of the two Roman camps, Tuditanus successfully organized, rallied, and led a tight wedge formation of 600 soldiers through the Carthaginian lines under the cover of night. Secured the Survivors: He marched his unit safely to the larger Roman camp, incorporated the terrified troops waiting there, and navigated the combined forces through hostile territory to the nearby stronghold of Canusium (modern Canosa). Saved a Remnant of the Army: By refusing to surrender or wait passively for dawn, Tuditanus saved thousands of Roman troops who would otherwise have been slaughtered or sold into slavery. Italy as the Romans did Earned Historical Immortalization: His bold refusal to submit became the textbook benchmark for Roman courage (virtus). The Roman Senate explicitly cited his proactive bravery weeks later to justify their harsh refusal to ransom the thousands of other Roman soldiers who chose to surrender to Hannibal rather than fight their way out. Would you like to review the specific strategic military errors made by the consul Varro that forced Tuditanus into this camp breakout scenario, or examine how the city of Canusium protected the survivors? L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 13 siti Yes, you are exactly right. The vast majority of the Roman survivors of Cannae were treated with intense institutional cruelty, essentially becoming penal outcasts. However, Publius Sempronius Tuditanuswas the sole, massive exception to this rule. Because of how his tactical breakout was framed, the Senate drew a sharp, black-and-white moral line between him and the rest of the surviving army. 1. The Tragic Fate of the Survivors (Legiones Cannenses) For the roughly 10,000 to 14,000 Roman soldiers who managed to survive the slaughter and escape to Canusium, life became a living hell. The Senate chose to treat survival not as a relief, but as a systemic, criminal failure of duty. Quora +1 Exile and Disgrace: They were organized into two special penal units, the Legiones Cannenses (the Cannae Legions). They were stripped of their standard military status and banished to Sicily. Severe Penal Restrictions: They were forbidden from returning to Italy, entering any walled cities, or wintering indoors until the entire war with Hannibal ended. Quora +1 Fourteen Years of Purgatory: They were subjected to exhausting siege work and grueling campaigns under extreme conditions. They were only fully redeemed 14 years later when Scipio Africanusabsorbed them into his army to successfully defeat Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. Quora +2 2. What Happened to Tuditanus? Because Tuditanus did not wait passively to be captured or rescued, the Senate exempted him and his direct breakout group from this collective punishment. Instead of being branded a coward, he became a republican hero whose political career (cursus honorum) skyrocketed. Wikipedia +1 Political Rise: He was quickly integrated back into Rome's ruling elite. He served as a Curule Aedile in 214 BC, a highly competitive political office. Military Commands: He was trusted with critical military commands during the war. He served as a Praetor in Lucania in 213 BC, recaptured the city of Casilinum, and was later sent to fight in Greece. The Supreme Honor (Censor): In 209 BC, he was elected to the extraordinary office of Censor, the highest moral and civic honor a Roman politician could achieve. Consulship: He achieved Rome's highest office, the Consulship, in 204 BC. Ironically, his consular province was Bruttium, where he directly fought Hannibal's forces—the ultimate vindication for a Cannae survivor. Livius.org +3 Summary: The Senate's Ideological Divide The Senate used Tuditanus to justify their cruelty to the others. During the major Senate debate over whether to ransom the prisoners held by Hannibal, the senior senator Titus Manlius Torcuato explicitly weaponized Tuditanus’ breakout. Wikipedia Torcuatus argued that if Tuditanus and his 600 men could courageously fight their way out, the remaining thousands had no excuse for choosing to surrender. Therefore, Tuditanus was rewarded with the Republic's highest honors, while his surviving comrades were functionally treated as military criminals to preserve Rome's uncompromising martial ideology. Wikipedia +2 Would you like to explore the famous speech by Titus Manlius Torcuatus in the Senate, where he details this exact contrast to deny the prisoners their freedom? L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 1 sito You have struck precisely at the core paradox of the Roman military ethos. By modern standards of military logic, it is absolutely a double standard. Tuditanus’ action did not change the strategic outcome of the battle, kill Hannibal, or save Rome. He simply retreated successfully. Yet, to the Roman mindset, there was a vast, unbridgeable ideological gulf between his tactical retreat and the survival of the Legiones Cannenses. Here is how the Romans justified what looks to us like a blatant double standard. 1. Virtus (Virtue) vs. Passive Survival To the Roman Senate, military judgment was based entirely on moral willpower, not just the survival of bodies. The Cannae Legions: In the eyes of the Senate, the soldiers who stayed in the camps and were later rounded up had actively chosen capitulation over death. They waited passively for Hannibal to dictate their fate. In Roman culture, voluntary surrender was a form of self-enslavement and a total forfeiture of virtus. Tuditanus’ Troop: Tuditanus and his 600 men did not ask for quarter. They drew their swords, formed a wedge, and forced their way out through enemy steel. Even though they were retreating, they did so as active combatants. They maintained their agency, their weapons, and their Roman identity by fighting. 2. The Logic of the Exemplum (The Moral Example) Roman society ran on exempla—historical models of behavior that future generations were expected to mimic. If the Senate rewarded or even welcomed back the soldiers who surrendered, they feared it would create a dangerous precedent: that a Roman soldier could lose a battle, give up, and safely go home. By glorifying Tuditanus, the Senate sent a clear, uncompromising message: The state only values those who choose the risk of death over the safety of submission. Tuditanus was elevated to prove that breaking through was possible, thereby stripping the surrendering soldiers of any excuse. 3. Pragmatic Politics and Scapegoating There was also a deeply cynical, political dimension to this double standard. The disaster at Cannae was a catastrophic failure of Roman leadership—specifically by the consul Varro, who blundered into Hannibal's trap but managed to flee the field safely. The Senate faced a massive crisis of public confidence. They could not easily execute or banish the political elites who caused the mess. Therefore, the surviving rank-and-file soldiers became the perfect scapegoats. By branding the survivors as "criminals" who lacked Roman grit, the ruling class shifted the blame of Cannae away from systemic strategic failure and onto the alleged cowardice of the ordinary soldiers. Tuditanus was the perfect instrument for this propaganda. The Senate could point to him and say, "Look, the Roman system and training work perfectly. The disaster only happened because the rest of you didn't have the courage of Tuditanus." Would you like to examine how the consul Varro—the man actually responsible for the defeat—was treated by the Senate when he returned to Rome, which highlights an even greater double standard? L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 9 siti Yes, exactly. The 600 men who followed Tuditanuswere completely exempted from the stigma and the collective punishment that ruined the lives of the other survivors. The Latin Library +1 They were not lumped into the disgraced Legiones Cannenses and were never sent into penal exile in Sicily. Quora The Roman Senate specifically drew a legal and moral line between Tuditanus' 600 men and the rest of the survivors, utilizing distinct justifications for their treatment. 1. The Legal Distinction: "Free Men with Arms" In the famous Senate debate regarding whether to ransom the prisoners held by Hannibal, the severe senator Titus Manlius Torcuatus explicitly mentions these 600 men to praise them. According to Livy's account, Torcuatus argues: The Latin Library "Out of seven thousand men in arms there were six hundred who had the courage to force their way, and returned to their country free men with arms in their hands." The Latin Library By the Senate’s logic, the 600 had never technically "surrendered" or "lost" their status. Because they kept their weapons and forced their way out through enemy lines, they were legally viewed as an undefeated, intact unit that had simply executed a successful tactical maneuver. The Latin Library 2. Used as the Benchmark to Punish the Rest The 600 men were actively used as a political weapon to justify punishing everyone else. Torcuatus argued that if 600 men could successfully break out, then the remaining thousands who stayed behind had no excuse. They were told that they could have had "20,000 brave loyal soldiers" at Canusium if everyone had possessed the grit of Tuditanus’ men. The Latin Library Consequently, the soldiers who stayed in the camps were deemed to have actively chosen submission over death. They were the ones rounded up, stripped of their military dignity, and exiled to Sicily for 14 years. 3. Absolute Separation of Destinies The 600 Breakout Troops The Rest of the Survivors (Legiones Cannenses) Legal Status: Honored as "free men with arms" who maintained Roman virtus. Legal Status: Branded as military cowards who forfeited their dignity. Punishment: None. Completely exempt from any stigma. Punishment: Banished to Sicily; forbidden from entering cities or wintering indoors. Career Path: Re-integrated into standard Roman legions; their leader became Censor and Consul. Career Path: Forced into 14 years of brutal, unrewarded siege-work in exile. By isolating the 600 men and showering them with praise while devastating the rest of the surviving army, the Senate successfully protected the myth of Roman military infallibility. The narrative became clear: Rome didn't lose at Cannae because its soldiers were weak; Rome lost because only 600 of them acted like real Romans. The Latin Library +1 Would you like to look at the exact Latin text where Torcuatus delivers this harsh judgment against the non-breakout survivors, or look into how these 600 men were redistributed into the army? If you do +> for implicature -- it's best to just follow +> with the propositional content from the perspective of utterer, rather than third-person. Hence the point that Grice has incorrigibility and privileged access when at Collections he SAYS or utters, "Smith has beautiful handwriting" -- versus the cases where he deals with conversationalists other than himself -- about whom he can only hypothetise? Thanks and recall Lat. followed by Eng. thanks -- the implicatum need not be expressed in latin, though thanks T's conversational move seems protreptic in Grice's terminology, hort. exhort -- (What's the gramm. term.) in terms of mood, etc. -- Grice distinguishes between protreptic ("Trespassers will be prosecuted) and merely exhitibive ("It is raining +>-- or strictly: Expression of: I believe that it is raining). Thanks Yes. Sempronius Tuditanus gives a case where the Gricean dyad becomes asymmetrical in number but not in kind: one speaker addresses a collective addressee, roughly the 599 who may become the 600 only if they take up his move. History likes 600 because round numbers march better than frightened men. Abbott would certainly understand that. The crucial point is that Tuditanus is not merely exhibiting a belief, as in “It is raining” +> I believe that it is raining. He is issuing a protreptic or hortatory move. The grammatical term is hortatory subjunctive when Latin uses the first-person plural subjunctive, as in erumpamus, “let us break out.” More broadly, the speech is deliberative-exhortative: it urges action, and its success is measured not by a repartee but by movement. A compact Grice/Speranza reconstruction of the “yet” would be: Victi sumus; nondum captivi sumus. (We have been defeated; we are not yet captives.) +> Do not infer from defeat that surrender has already occurred. Nondum captivi sumus; neque, si me sequimini, erimus. (We are not yet captives; nor, if you follow me, shall we be.) +> The “yet” is cancelled as a mere expectation of future capture. Capture is not inevitable; action can prevent it. Here the contrast with Grice’s Smith example is exact: “He has not been to prison yet.” +> I expect, or invite you to consider, that prison remains a live prospect. “He has not been to prison yet, and never will.” +> The “yet” implicature is explicitly defeated. Tuditanus’ equivalent is not simply: Nondum captivi sumus. (We are not yet captives.) +> Capture may be coming. It is rather: Nondum captivi sumus; ferro atque audacia via fit. (We are not yet captives; by sword and daring a way is made.) +> Capture is not the next natural stage if we act now. So “yet” first opens an ominous temporal possibility, then the exhortation closes it by practical means. The logic is not “we are not defeated.” It is “defeat has occurred, but captivity is not yet part of the case; do not help the enemy by adding that conclusion yourselves.” This also clarifies the “privileged access” issue. In the “Smith has beautiful handwriting” case, the tutor’s own speaker-meaning is comparatively incorrigible: Grice, as the writer of the testimonial, knows that he intends the sparse praise to convey philosophical inadequacy. In the bank example, “He has not been to prison yet,” the third-person subject makes the implicature socially and epistemically more fragile: B is inviting an inference about Smith, but we must reconstruct B’s meaning from the conversational situation. Tuditanus is closer to the first-person case because the subject is “we” and the speech is practical. He is not speculating about someone else’s character. He is redefining the group’s present situation for action. He has privileged access not to the future, of course, but to his own intended protreptic force: “follow me, and do not treat yourselves as already captured.” A Livian-style Latin sequence could be: Tuditanus: “Victi sumus, fateor; captivi nondum sumus.” (Tuditanus: “We have been defeated, I admit; we are not yet captives.”) +> The truth of defeat is conceded; the fatal implication of captivity is blocked. Miles: “Hostes portas tenent; lux instat.” (A soldier: “The enemy hold the gates; daylight is near.”) +> The practical inference offered by fear is that resistance is pointless. Tuditanus: “Ergo nunc eundum est, antequam lux viam claudat.” (Tuditanus: “Therefore we must go now, before daylight closes the road.”) +> The same facts are reinterpreted as reasons for immediate action, not paralysis. Tuditanus: “Ferro atque audacia via fit; sequimini me.” (Tuditanus: “By sword and daring a way is made; follow me.”) +> This is the hortatory-protreptic core: the utterance is meant to produce coordinated motion. Miles: “Si te sequimur, captivi non erimus.” (A soldier: “If we follow you, we shall not be captives.”) +> The collective addressee has taken up the intended practical meaning; the “yet” has been defeated by resolve. Tuditanus: “Non verbis, sed gradu respondete.” (Tuditanus: “Answer not with words, but with your step.”) +> The correct uptake is not repartee but action. The grammatical centre is erumpamus, if one keeps Livy’s form: erumpamus (let us break out) First-person plural present subjunctive; hortatory subjunctive. It is not merely imperative in mood, because Tuditanus includes himself in the action. That matters. He does not say ite, “go,” but erumpamus, “let us break out.” The speaker is one of the risk-bearers. The protreptic force is strengthened because the utterer is not issuing a command from safety; he is making himself the first term in the collective action. So the Gricean structure is: Exhibitive: “It is raining.” +> I believe that it is raining. Protreptic: “Trespassers will be prosecuted.” +> Do not trespass. Tuditanus: “Victi sumus; captivi nondum sumus; erumpamus.” (We are defeated; not yet captives; let us break out.) +> Follow me now, or you will make the enemy’s interpretation of us true. Dry Speranzian formula: Tuditanus did not refute Cannae. He refuted the Romans’ proposed commentary on Cannae. “Yet” was the little hinge on which six hundred men ceased to be a frightened audience and became an escaping subject. And this is Grice 1967 using 'protreptic' -- 'an expression of impeccable pedigree' -- which may unrelate to 'statilica' as applied to 'accusatio' --: an ordinary-language philosopher using something not quite 'ordinary' -- but the point is slgithly ironic. 1 conversationalist -- our Sempronio 'hero' -- and the protrepsis of the 599 -- can we parse the most 'protreptic' bit of his long oratio recta? and why? Thanks. Grice: Contrast: "You shall not cross the barrier." "Do not cross the barrier." When uttering (a), U would characteristically intend A to think that U intends that A shall not cross the barrier; but it seems that a specification of U's meaning, for a normal utterance of (b), would be incompletely explicated unless it is stated that U intends A not merely to think that U intends that A shall not cross the barrier, but also himself to form the intention not to cross. Let us then draw a distinction between what I might call "purely exhibitive" utterances (utterances by which the utterer U intends to impart a belief that he [U] has a certain propositional attitude), and utterances which are not only exhibitive but also what I might call "protreptic" (that is, utterances by which U intends, via imparting the belief that he [U] has a certain propositional attitude, to induce a corresponding attitude in the hearer). The most protreptic bit is Livy’s erumpamus and the closing sequimini, because there Tuditanus is no longer merely exhibiting his own judgment but trying to make the 599 form the corresponding practical intention. The phrase ferro atque audacia via fit is magnificent, but it is still halfway gnomic: “a way is made by sword and daring.” Erumpamus is the turn from seeing to doing. The core sequence is: “Sed, antequam opprimit lux et maior hostium manus obsaepit viam, per hos, qui inordinati atque incompositi obstrepunt portis, erumpamus!” (“But, before daylight overtakes us and a larger force of the enemy blocks the way, through these men, who in disorder and confusion are making a din at the gates, let us break out!”) Parse of the protreptic force: sed: “but,” marking the practical reversal from fear or deliberation to action. antequam opprimit lux: “before daylight overtakes us.” Opprimit is vivid present; daylight itself becomes an approaching enemy. Tuditanus uses time as pressure. et maior hostium manus obsaepit viam: “and a larger force of the enemy blocks the way.” Obsaepit, “fences off, blocks, barricades,” gives the future as closing unless acted on now. per hos: “through these men.” He points to the immediate obstacle and makes it the route. That is the tactical redescription. qui inordinati atque incompositi obstrepunt portis: “who, disordered and unformed, are making noise at the gates.” The enemy is redescribed not as invincible but as confused. Their noise ceases to be a terror-sign and becomes evidence of weakness. erumpamus: first-person plural present subjunctive, hortatory subjunctive: “let us break out.” This is the grammatically decisive protreptic form. It includes the speaker in the intended action. Not ite, “go,” but erumpamus, “let us burst out.” Tuditanus intends the hearers not merely to believe that he wants a breakout, but to intend the breakout themselves. Then comes the slogan: “Ferro atque audacia via fit.” (“By sword and daring a way is made.”) Parse: ferro: ablative of means, “by iron,” i.e. by the sword. atque audacia: second ablative of means, “and by daring.” Material force and moral force are joined. via: nominative subject, “a way.” fit: “is made / comes into being.” The road is not found but produced by action. This line is exhibitive and protreptic together. It exhibits Tuditanus’s belief that escape is possible by violence and courage, but it is meant to induce the corresponding attitude: do not wait for a path; make one. The final push is: “Sequimini igitur me, qui vos et vestram rem publicam salvam cupio!” (“Follow me, then, you who wish to save yourselves and your republic!”) Parse: sequimini: second-person plural imperative deponent, “follow.” This is the plain imperative, no longer merely hortatory inclusion. igitur: “therefore,” making the order the rational consequence of the preceding argument. me: “me,” the leader as route. qui vos et vestram rem publicam salvam cupio: “I who desire you and your republic safe.” The relative clause supplies the speaker’s protreptic credentials: my intention is your safety and the safety of the res publica. This is exactly Grice’s protreptic rather than merely exhibitive structure. Tuditanus does not merely intend the soldiers to think, “Tuditanus intends that we break out.” He intends them, via recognising his intention and his reasons, to form the intention: “we shall break out with him.” The uptake is not verbal assent but marching. A compact Gricean formulation would be: “Victi sumus; captivi nondum sumus; erumpamus.” (“We are defeated; we are not yet captives; let us break out.”) +> Do not treat defeat as already implying captivity; form the intention to escape now. And the “yet” logic: “Captivi nondum sumus.” (“We are not yet captives.”) +> If we remain passive, captivity is the expected next state. “Captivi nondum sumus, neque, si me sequimini, erimus.” (“We are not yet captives, nor, if you follow me, shall we be.”) +> The ominous implicature of “yet” is defeated by the proposed action. So the long oratio recta is not repartee, but protreptic engineering. It moves the collective addressee from a belief-state to an intention-state. The 599 are not asked to admire Tuditanus’s sentence. They are asked to become its first-person plural. Yes, and this is Grice before Pricharding his theory with mode-specifications ("An officer telling the sergeant to have soldiers ready at dawn is giving a perfect imperative"). Note that of the two sentences above a and b -- only b is imperative mode (do not cross). The other is (a) is future intentional --, hence Grice thinks, protrepsis applies best to (b). This would give us 'sequimini' as most apt for 'protrepsis.' True, 'irrumpemus' is glorious but we can hear 599: repartee: "Sppeak for YOURSELF!" -- and staying put. INcidentally, the 'igitur' -- how does that contrast with 'ergo'? Because Grice says 'igitur' and ergo' conventionally but not conversationally implicate conclusion of argument. In any case, 'igitur' or not 'igitur' 'sequimi' seems more protreptic in that we suppose that by tautology, T. is following hisemfl -- so 'Speak for yourself' would be vain? Thanks--the point about 'sputatilica' refers to Atticus and Cicero making fun of 'inusitata' verbum -- 'worth spitting' -- and ordinary-language philosophers, Grice say, could very well, when prompted by the right protrepsis, ejaculate the 'perloctuion,' the 'rheme, the dictor, the clistic, the tropic, -- to just quote from Austin, Grice and Hare -- into some sort of meta-linguistic meta-language technical terminology, as the occasion requires even among ordinary-language philosophers and their tuttees at Oxford. Thanks. While the 1967 lectures were delievered overseas (Harvard), they grew out of semianrs on menaing and conversation -- some based on Peirce's lexical innovator if ever there was one -- by Grice at Oxfford as CUF lecturer. Thanks Yes. The strictest protreptic bit is “sequimini igitur me,” not the more glorious “erumpamus.” Erumpamus is hortatory subjunctive, first person plural: “let us break out.” It includes Tuditanus in the proposed collective act, and that inclusion matters; but precisely because it includes him, the frightened 599 can still mutter, “speak for yourself,” or more exactly, “you may break out if you like.” Sequimini me is harder to evade. It is second-person plural imperative, deponent in form, from sequor: “follow me.” Here Tuditanus intends not merely that the hearers recognise his intention, but that they form the corresponding intention to follow. That is Grice’s protrepsis almost in uniform. Latin: “Sequimini igitur me, qui vos et vestram rem publicam servam cupio.” (“Follow me, then, I who desire you and your republic safe.”) Parse: sequimini = second-person plural present imperative, deponent, from sequor. It is formally imperative and directly addressed to the hearers. This is the protreptic centre. igitur = “therefore,” “then,” “accordingly.” It marks the command as following from the preceding argument, not as a mere impulse. Grice is right that igitur, like ergo, conventionally signals inferential connection; it does not conversationally implicate it in the loose sense. The word tells you that a conclusion is being drawn. me = “me.” This matters. Tuditanus supplies himself as the route. “Follow me” is less abstract than “be brave”; it converts virtue into coordination. qui ... cupio = relative clause giving the speaker’s credential: “I who desire...” He presents his intention as benevolent and common-purpose-directed. vos et vestram rem publicam = “you and your republic.” The object of concern is not merely physical survival but civic survival. They must not save bodies at the cost of Roman standing. servam / salvam cupio = one would expect salvam, “safe.” If the tradition has salvam, that is the natural reading: “I want you and your republic safe.” If servam appears in a quoted form, it may be corruption or confusion with servare. The sense is safety/preservation. Why igitur rather than ergo? The two overlap, but there is a slight difference of feel. Ergo is often the more blunt “therefore,” a conclusion-marker with a hard logical edge. Igitur is often more connective and procedural: “then,” “accordingly,” “so.” In a speech like this, igitur fits the movement from argument to action. Tuditanus is not proving a theorem; he is moving the audience from fear to following. So “sequimini igitur me” says: given all this, the next rational step is not further debate but movement behind me. The contrast with Grice’s two barrier sentences is neat: “You shall not cross the barrier.” This is future or quasi-future authoritative declaration. It exhibits the speaker’s intention or determination that the addressee not cross, but the mood is not imperative. “Do not cross the barrier.” This is imperative. It is directly protreptic: the speaker intends the addressee to form the intention not to cross. Tuditanus has both sorts of resources in his speech. “Ferro atque audacia via fit” is almost gnomic-exhibitive: it displays his belief that a way is made by sword and daring. “Erumpamus” is hortatory: let us form a shared intention. But “sequimini me” is the cleanest imperative protrepsis: you, plural, follow. One could stage the point: Tuditanus: “Erumpamus.” (Let us break out.) +> I intend that we treat breakout as our collective course. Miles: “Tu erumpe; nos manebimus.” (You break out; we shall stay.) +> The soldier resists incorporation into the first-person plural. Tuditanus: “Sequimini me.” (Follow me.) +> Form the intention to move behind me now. Miles: “Iam non verba tua, sed vestigia sequimur.” (Now we follow not your words, but your footsteps.) +> The intended uptake has become action; the protrepsis succeeds. That last point is crucial. In a repartee scene, the response would be verbal. In Livy’s Tuditanus scene, the proper uptake is bodily. The 599 become addressees only fully when they move. The speech is therefore protreptic not because it is eloquent, but because it is designed to terminate eloquence in marching. On “sputatilica” and ordinary-language philosophy: yes, the irony is excellent. Ordinary-language philosophers were never allergic to technical vocabulary when the occasion prodded them hard enough. Austin, Hare, Grice, and others could coin or revive terms with the best of them: performative, perlocution, phrastic, neustic, tropic, dictor, rheme, clistic, implicature. The anti-jargon posture was never a vow of lexical poverty. It was a demand that the terminology earn its keep. Protreptic is therefore perfect: an expression of impeccable pedigree, mildly inusitata, and yet exactly what Grice needs when “imperative” alone is too grammatical and “persuasive” too broad. Dry Speranzian formula: Tuditanus’ “erumpamus” recruits the speaker into the plural; “sequimini me” recruits the hearers into the act. The first can still be mocked by “speak for yourself.” The second makes mockery expensive, since the next reply must be made with the feet. and the 'igitur' is literally a passive -- as in 'sequitur' and non-sequitur? Thanks Yes — but only historically, not grammatically in the live Latin of Livy. Igitur is historically connected with the same verbal family as agere, but in classical usage it is no longer felt as a transparent passive verb-form. It functions as an inferential particle: “therefore,” “then,” “accordingly.” So it is not literally “is followed” in the way sequitur is. Sequitur is still a verb: “it follows.” Non sequitur is simply “it does not follow.” Igitur has become a connective particle, even if its ancestry may be verbal. So the neat distinction is: sequitur (it follows) still a finite verb, third-person singular, deponent/passive-looking form from sequor. non sequitur (it does not follow) a logical or argumentative diagnosis: the conclusion does not follow from the premisses. igitur (therefore / then / accordingly) a discourse particle marking that the speaker presents what follows as consequent on what has just been said. For Grice this is useful because igitur behaves conventionally: it signals inferential uptake as part of its linguistic job. It does not merely conversationally implicate “I am drawing a conclusion”; it tells the hearer to take the next move as conclusion, consequence, or practical upshot. In Tuditanus: sequimini igitur me (follow me, then / therefore) The igitur makes the imperative the conclusion of the preceding argument. It is as if Tuditanus says: given that captivity is not yet settled, given that daylight will close the route, given that sword and daring make a road, the practical conclusion is: follow me. That is why sequimini is protreptic and igitur is its hinge. The command is not naked command; it is presented as what follows. Not merely “follow me,” but “follow me as the conclusion of the case just made.” The 599 are not only being ordered; they are being invited, under military pressure, to recognise the inference and embody it. Dry Speranzian formula: sequitur still walks as a verb; igitur has retired into logic. Tuditanus uses the retired form to send six hundred men walking. and indeed, the 599 have to provide the explicature: "we shall follow him in this break through (irrumptio). Note that 'irrumpo' makes sense -- and 599: Speak for yourself -- let see how you 'irruptas' -- With 'follow' it is more difficult for the 599 to let the utterer (our brave hero) 'follow' hisemfl -- it may not even be grammatical. So out of grammatical completion, the general has 'captured' them -- and not the Carthaginian (zeugma). I would double heck abt the igitur -- it seems anacronistic of LIvy to pretend that we'll believe that Livy's informant source was there when he heard 'igiitur' addressed to 599 infantry men. Grice would object that, if verbal, a comma would be needed: Sequimi, igitur, me -- cfr. Grice's example: (uttered by Jill): "Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore [ergo], brave." Thanks -- note that we are to assume that the utterer (Sempronio) and his addressee of 599 -- co-conversatiioanlists who obey his 'sequimi me' -- pass through the sleeping Carthaginians -- no one is hurt -- and the 599 + 1 enter Rome. ONe can assume that this is what had Cornelia, generations after? -- marry one of that gens? Thanks Yes. The 599 have to supply the practical explicature, as it were: “we shall follow him in this breakout.” With erumpamus, the first-person plural still leaves room for resistance: the hearer can refuse to become part of the “we.” “Speak for yourself” is a perfectly available anti-protreptic retort. With sequimini me, the grammar is less hospitable to such evasion. Tuditanus cannot “follow himself” in the same ordinary sense; the imperative assigns the uptake to the addressees. It is therefore cleaner protrepsis: the intended response is not assent but following. The zeugma is very good: Tuditanus captures them before the Carthaginians do. But he captures them by grammar and pace, not by chains. The imperative makes the addressee complete the action. “Follow me” is incomplete until they do. In that sense the 599 are made into the complement of the utterance. The Carthaginians are sleeping; the Latin is awake. A neat reconstruction: Tuditanus: “Sequimini me.” (Follow me.) +> Form the intention to move behind me now. Miles: “Te sequi? quo?” (Follow you? where?) +> The addressee recognises the imperative but asks for the practical completion. Tuditanus: “Per hostes dormientes; non verba sed vestigia quaerite.” (Through the sleeping enemy; seek not words but footsteps.) +> The meaning is to be completed in action, not in reply. Miles: “Sequimur.” (We follow.) +> The protrepsis succeeds; the collective addressee becomes the acting subject. On irrumpo/erumpo: erumpere is the better verb for breaking out from enclosure. Irrumpere is more “to burst into” or “break in upon.” So a frightened soldier could mock the wrong direction: “tu irrumpe, si vis,” as if Tuditanus were proposing a heroic incursion. But Livy’s erumpamus is exactly right: out of the camp, through obstruction, away from captivity. The action is not an irruptio into Carthaginian space for its own sake, but an eruptio from impending capture. On igitur, I agree with the suspicion. Livy’s oratio recta is literary reconstruction, not stenography from a survivor who carefully preserved the connective particle addressed to 599 infantrymen under pressure. The igitur is Livy’s historical-rhetorical hinge. It marks the command as the conclusion of the speech, not necessarily as Tuditanus’ exact word. Grice would say: do not treat igitur as documentary residue; treat it as Livian instruction for uptake. If it were parenthetical in a strict argumentative style, one might indeed write: “Sequimini, igitur, me.” (Follow, therefore, me.) That would make igitur almost an inserted logical marker, like Grice’s Jill: “Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.” But in Livian oratory “sequimini igitur me” reads more fluently as “follow me then/therefore,” with igitur integrated into the command. Ergo would sound sharper and more syllogistic; igitur is more procedural and narrative: “given all that, now follow.” Finally, on Cornelia and the later Sempronii: yes, the family’s survival and honour after Cannae make the later Gracchan marriage-world imaginable in a broad aristocratic sense. Publius Sempronius Tuditanus becomes a man not disgraced by Cannae but distinguished from the disgraced survivors; he later enters the highest magistracies. That matters for the gens’ prestige. Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, marries Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, not Tuditanus, but the Sempronian name by then has more than one honourable line of memory attached to it. One should not make Tuditanus the direct cause of Cornelia’s marriage choice, but he helps show why “Sempronius” is not a damaged name after Cannae. The gens had produced a man who heard defeat and refused the wrong implicature. Dry Speranzian formula: “Erumpamus” creates a we; “sequimini me” tests whether the we exists. Livy adds igitur so that even the reader understands that the argument has ended. The soldiers add their feet. and does the erumpere-irrumpere subsist in veranculars: not the irruption but the eruption of Vesuvius. -- apparently, there were TWO camps, as per quote above, at Cannae -- with our T. at the head of the smaller one? Thanks Yes. The eruption/irruption distinction survives very nicely in the vernaculars, though not always with strict popular awareness of the Latin prefixes. Erumpere is “to break out,” from e-/ex-, outward. That is why an eruption of Vesuvius is the right descendant: fire, ash, lava, or force breaks out from within. Latin eruptio is an outward bursting. Tuditanus’ erumpamus is therefore exact: let us break out of the threatened enclosure before daylight and a stronger enemy force seal the route. Irrumpere is “to break in,” from in-, inward. Irruption is an incursion, a violent breaking into a place or order. So if Tuditanus had said irrumpamus, a frightened soldier might indeed mutter, “Speak for yourself; I did not come to invade Hannibal’s camp.” But erumpamus says: we are inside the danger; let us burst out of it. Vesuvius erupts; barbarians irrupt; Tuditanus and his six hundred erupt from Cannae, if one is allowed a military volcano. On the two camps: yes. Livy’s narrative has the Roman survivors divided between two camps after Cannae, usually called the maior castra and minora castra, the larger and smaller camps. Tuditanus is associated with the men in the smaller camp, where paralysis and fear are strongest. The dramatic point is that the smaller camp is more immediately vulnerable and has to decide whether to move before dawn. Tuditanus gathers or persuades about six hundred men to break through the disordered Carthaginians and reach the larger camp; from there the combined survivors proceed toward Canusium. So the movement is not simply “599 plus 1 enter Rome,” at least not immediately. The path is: smaller camp → breakout through or past the Carthaginian obstruction → larger camp → Canusium. Rome comes later, and institutionally rather bitterly, since the later Senate will use Tuditanus’ six hundred as the honourable contrast against those who surrendered or waited passively. The Gricean force remains the same. Erumpamus is the linguistic hinge because it chooses the right direction of agency. They are not making an irruptio into glory; they are making an eruptio from impending captivity. Then sequimini me supplies the protreptic completion: not merely “let a breakout occur,” but “you, follow me in it.” The 599 become the necessary uptake of the imperative. Dry Speranzian formula: irrumpere is what Hannibal did to Italy; erumpere is what Tuditanus did from Cannae. Vesuvius and the six hundred share the prefix, which is perhaps the only geological compliment Livy would allow them. and the CCCCCC (is that 600?) featured in a speech later at Rome, giving again evidence that Rome loves round numbers? Thanks -- can we parse the CCCCCC sexicenta utterance? Thanks Yes: CCCCCC is a perfectly legible additive way to write 600, though the more compact classical numeral is DC. Romans could write numbers additively in inscriptions and informal contexts, but DC is the standard compact form: D = 500, C = 100, hence DC = 600. “Sexcenti” is the Latin word; if modifying “men,” sexcenti viri or sexcenti milites. The later senatorial use of the number is exactly what makes the 600 rhetorically useful. Rome loves round numbers because they convert messy survival into exemplum. “Six hundred” sounds like a formed moral unit; “about 587 frightened but persuadable men” would not survive Livy, still less a senatorial speech. A Livian-style formulation of the later argument would be: “Ex septem milibus armatorum sexcenti fuerunt qui erumpere ausi sunt, et liberi atque armati ad suos pervenerunt.” (“Out of seven thousand armed men there were six hundred who dared to break out, and reached their own people free and armed.”) Parse: Ex septem milibus armatorum = “out of seven thousand armed men.” Ex with ablative gives the larger group from which the exemplary subgroup is extracted. Armatorum is genitive plural dependent on milibus. sexcenti = “six hundred,” nominative masculine plural, the subject. fuerunt = “there were,” perfect indicative; the number is being installed as historical fact. qui erumpere ausi sunt = “who dared to break out.” Qui introduces the relative clause. Ausi sunt is perfect deponent from audeo, “they dared.” Erumpere is present active infinitive, “to break out.” et liberi atque armati = “and free and armed.” This is the ideological core. They did not merely survive; they remained Roman in status and posture. ad suos pervenerunt = “reached their own people.” Pervenerunt, perfect indicative; ad suos gives not just physical arrival but reintegration into the Roman side. +> The six hundred prove that capture was not inevitable. Their survival with arms is made to condemn the larger body who waited, surrendered, or allowed themselves to be classified as captives. The number itself does the moral work. Sexcenti is not just arithmetic; it is an accusatory unit. Once the Senate can say “sexcenti did this,” it can imply “the rest could have done so.” The round number turns a desperate breakout into a norm. If one wants the most compact inscriptional or rhetorical tag: “Sexcenti eruperunt; ceteri manserunt.” (“Six hundred broke out; the rest remained.”) +> The contrast is not tactical but moral. The same battlefield becomes two Roman characters: those who made a way and those who waited for Hannibal to define them. And with Tuditanus included: “Sempronio duce sexcenti eruperunt.” (“With Sempronius as leader, six hundred broke out.”) Parse: Sempronio duce = ablative absolute, “with Sempronius leading” or “under Sempronius’s leadership.” sexcenti = nominative masculine plural subject. eruperunt = perfect active indicative, “broke out.” +> The protrepsis has succeeded. “Sequimini me” has been converted into a historical plural: they followed. Dry Speranzian formula: CCCCCC is arithmetically six hundred, but DC is Rome with better manners. Livy and the Senate prefer sexcenti because a round number can become an accusation. Six hundred men followed; therefore the others must explain why they did not. The mathematics seems to be 600 (T. included) + 14,000? Can we see if we find the Latin for Torquatus? Thanks Torcuatus argued that if 600 men could successfully break out, then the remaining thousands who stayed behind had no excuse. They were told that they could have had "20,000 brave loyal soldiers" at Canusium if everyone had possessed the grit of Tuditanus’ men. and we can reconstruct the latin conv. using Roman numerals DC etc thanks Yes — the mathematics is roughly the moral mathematics Livy wants: DC under Tuditanus become the accusatory contrast against many thousands. But we should be careful with the exact totals. Livy’s later Torquatus passage is about prisoners and ransom, not a neat modern spreadsheet. The rhetorical number is what matters: “out of so many armed men, only six hundred dared.” Rome then turns DC into a standard of blame. A Livian-style reconstruction of Torquatus’ point with Roman numerals could run: “Ex VII milibus armatorum DC tantum inventi sunt qui, P. Sempronio Tuditano duce, ferro viam facerent atque ad suos liberi armati pervenirent.” (“Out of VII thousand armed men, only DC were found who, with Publius Sempronius Tuditanus as leader, made a way by the sword and reached their own people free and armed.”) Parse: “Ex VII milibus armatorum” (“Out of VII thousand armed men.”) “Ex” takes the ablative. “Milibus” is ablative plural; “armatorum” is genitive plural dependent on “milibus,” men under arms. “DC tantum inventi sunt” (“Only DC were found.”) “DC” = 600. “Inventi sunt” is perfect passive, “were found,” rhetorically useful because it treats the six hundred as a discovered moral subset. “qui ... viam facerent” (“who made / would make a way.”) Relative clause of characteristic or explanatory force. “Facerent” may be subjunctive in a Livian-style moralising construction. “P. Sempronio Tuditano duce” (“with Publius Sempronius Tuditanus as leader.”) Ablative absolute. The man’s leadership is grammatically subordinate but morally decisive. “ferro” (“by the sword.”) Ablative of means. “ad suos liberi armati pervenirent” (“reached their own people free and armed.”) “Liberi armati” is the ideological centre: they did not merely survive; they survived without becoming captivi. Then Torquatus’ implied accusation: “Quod DC facere potuerunt, cur XIV milia non temptaverunt?” (“What DC could do, why did XIV thousand not try?”) Parse: “Quod DC facere potuerunt” (“What DC were able to do.”) “Quod” is the thing done; “potuerunt” perfect of “posse.” “cur XIV milia non temptaverunt?” (“why did XIV thousand not attempt?”) “XIV milia” = fourteen thousand. “Milia” is neuter plural, so the verb is plural by sense; “temptaverunt” = attempted. Implicature: If DC could break out, the rest cannot claim impossibility. Their failure is redescribed as failure of will, not merely failure of circumstance. And the still harsher senatorial arithmetic: “Si eadem virtus omnibus fuisset, XX milia fortium fideliumque militum Canusii habere potuimus.” (“If the same courage had been in all, we could have had XX thousand brave and loyal soldiers at Canusium.”) Parse: “Si eadem virtus omnibus fuisset” (“If the same courage had been in all.”) Pluperfect subjunctive in a contrary-to-fact condition. “XX milia” (“twenty thousand.”) Round number, and therefore Romanly suspicious but rhetorically excellent. “fortium fideliumque militum” (“of brave and loyal soldiers.”) Genitive plural depending on “milia.” “Canusii” (“at Canusium.”) Locative form. “habere potuimus” (“we could have had.”) Perfect of “posse” with infinitive. The Senate converts a lost possibility into moral blame. Implicature: The missing XX thousand are not just absent bodies; they are absent Roman virtue. The number becomes an accusation. The Gricean “yet” connection would be: “Nondum captivi erant; sed manendo captivos se fecerunt.” (“They were not yet captives; but by staying they made themselves captives.”) Implicature: Captivity was not a brute fact at the moment of decision; it became the practical consequence of accepting the wrong inference from defeat. Dry Speranzian formula: DC is not only a number; it is the Senate’s counterexample. XIV milia is not only a statistic; it is an embarrassment. XX milia is not history; it is Rome’s preferred conditional. Torquatus’ arithmetic is therefore not mathematics but moral grammar. And is there a numeral for 20,000? The arithmetic in Torcuatus mentions the DC -- Sempronio's men BEFORE reaching the castra maior --and the counterfactual 20,000 brave men--since we assume that Sempronio did manage to collapse (erupt) the small castra (CX) into the larger castra--is Torquatus referring to the 20,000 who became captives -- and not mentioning the x of DC + X that managed to 'erupt'? Thanks -- and what is the loc. class of Torquatus anyway? Thanks For XX milia, the numeral is simply XX milia, not a single Roman numeral form like “XX000.” In Latin one would write viginti milia, or in mixed Roman-numeral shorthand, XX milia. If it is “twenty thousand soldiers,” the grammar is: XX milia militum (twenty thousand soldiers) Parse: XX = viginti, twenty. milia = neuter plural noun, “thousands.” militum = genitive plural, “of soldiers.” So the phrase is literally “twenty thousands of soldiers.” For “twenty thousand brave and loyal soldiers”: XX milia fortium fideliumque militum (twenty thousand brave and loyal soldiers) The adjectives fortium and fidelium are genitive plural, agreeing with militum, because they depend on milia. On Torquatus’s arithmetic: yes, he is exploiting the contrast between the DC who broke out with Tuditanus before reaching the larger camp and the larger number who did not act. The line of blame is not a clean tactical census but a moral counterfactual. Tuditanus’ DC prove, or are made to prove, that breakout was possible. Therefore the rest are treated as having chosen passivity. A plausible Livian-Torquatian reconstruction is: “Ex VII milibus armatorum DC tantum, P. Sempronio Tuditano duce, erumpere ausi sunt.” (“Out of VII thousand armed men, only DC, with Publius Sempronius Tuditanus as leader, dared to break out.”) “Si eadem virtus omnibus fuisset, XX milia fortium fideliumque militum Canusii habere potuistis.” (“If the same courage had been in all, you could have had XX thousand brave and loyal soldiers at Canusium.”) The DC are the initial breakout group; the XX milia are the counterfactual total Rome could have had at Canusium if the others had behaved with the same virtus. Torquatus is not primarily interested in the arithmetic of DC + X who actually got out after the smaller camp reached the larger camp. He is interested in making the DC function as an accusation against all who did not convert “not yet captured” into action. So yes: he largely suppresses the awkward middle category: those who may have escaped after Tuditanus’ breakout opened the way or after joining from the larger camp. A strict historian might want the full equation. Torquatus wants a moral binary: DC eruperunt. (The DC broke out.) Ceteri manserunt aut capti sunt. (The rest stayed or were captured.) This is Roman rhetoric, not actuarial science. The DC are purified into exemplum; the remainder are darkened into blame. Grice would say that the number carries an implicature: if DC could, the others should have. On Torquatus’s loc. class: if you mean social/political location, Titus Manlius Torquatus is as “high Roman” as one could wish. He belongs to the patrician gens Manlia, one of the great old houses. His cognomen Torquatus comes from the famous ancestral episode of a Manlius winning a torque from a Gaul. The Manlii Torquati carry exactly the old severe Roman ethos that Livy loves: discipline, austerity, refusal of soft pity, and an alarming readiness to sacrifice individuals to public virtue. That is why he is the right speaker for the anti-ransom argument. A Sempronius can perform the breakout; a Manlius Torquatus can turn it into a moral indictment. The locutionary class, if Speranza wants the joke, is patrician-severe, not plebeian-urgent. Tuditanus says, “follow me.” Torquatus says, later and safely, “you should have followed him.” Dry Speranzian formula: DC is the number of action; XX milia is the number of reproach. Tuditanus made the first by walking; Torquatus made the second by speaking. loc. class. was meant, sorry, to mean locus classicus or just locus or op. cit -- or locus -- Livy, I suppose (who else would care?) Torquatus's counterfactual is interesting -- yes, he omits the X -- we know the DC and he possibly knows the number of captives (XX milia) -- so the gap becomes arithmetically odd enough to inspire Frege to write the Grundlegung der Arithmetic. Thanks Can we re-calculate? Because T. seems to be implying: we got DC at Canosium -- but we had MORE than that -- part of Sempr.'s charm is that the protrepsis erupted from one castra to the other -- into one -- but bigger than DC --Thanks -- perhaps we can check with military historian who has studied the numbers thanks Yes — locus classicus: Livy 22.60, in Torquatus’ speech on the ransom of the Cannae prisoners. The searchable text confirms this is the relevant passage: Torquatus is called upon in the Senate after the prisoners’ envoys speak, and he explicitly contrasts those who surrendered with those who made their way to Venusia and Canusium, and with the consul Varro himself. Livy is the locus; Polybius is useful for the military situation, but the moral arithmetic is Livian-Torquatian. [perseus.tufts.edu], [thelatinlibrary.com] The reconstruction is right: Torquatus’ XX milia is counterfactual and accusatory, not a clean census. The DC are the initial exemplary breakout group under Publius Sempronius Tuditanus. But after that breakout, they reach the larger camp and the movement becomes arithmetically blurred: DC plus some X from the larger camp and other survivors reach Canusium. Torquatus’ rhetoric suppresses X because X weakens the binary. He wants two categories, not three: DC eruperunt. The six hundred broke out. Ceteri capti sunt. The rest were captured. But historically the more honest structure is: DC under Tuditanus leave the smaller camp. They reach the larger camp. Some further number X joins or is saved. A larger body reaches Canusium/Venusia. A separate large number remains captured and becomes the ransom problem. Torquatus’ speech is therefore not Fregean arithmetic but Roman moral arithmetic. The missing X is precisely what a logician would ask for and a senator would suppress. If X is acknowledged, then the contrast is no longer “six hundred brave men versus everyone else,” but “six hundred initiated a successful breakout that enabled some larger remnant.” That makes Tuditanus still heroic, but it makes Torquatus’ use of him less clean. And Torquatus needs cleanliness, not actuarial fairness. A Latin-style reconstruction with numerals: “P. Sempronio Tuditano duce DC eruperunt; maiora deinde castra adierunt; inde cum aliis ad Canusium pervenerunt.” (“With Publius Sempronius Tuditanus as leader, DC broke out; then they reached the larger camp; from there, with others, they arrived at Canusium.”) +> The true sequence contains an X. The DC are not the whole rescued remnant; they are the protreptic spark. “Torquatus autem non X numerat, sed exemplum.” (“But Torquatus does not count X; he counts the exemplum.”) +> His purpose is not military reconstruction but moral indictment. Then the counterfactual: “Si eadem virtus omnibus fuisset, XX milia fortium fideliumque militum Canusii habere potuimus.” (“If the same courage had been in all, we could have had XX thousand brave and loyal soldiers at Canusium.”) Parse: Si eadem virtus omnibus fuisset = “If the same courage had been in all.” Pluperfect subjunctive: contrary-to-fact condition. XX milia = “twenty thousand.” Latin writes this as viginti milia or XX milia, literally “twenty thousands.” fortium fideliumque militum = “of brave and loyal soldiers.” Genitive plural depending on milia. Canusii = “at Canusium,” locative. habere potuimus = “we could have had.” Potuimus is perfect indicative in the apodosis; one may also expect potuissemus in more regular counterfactual Latin, but Roman historical rhetoric can be lively in such places. +> Torquatus turns non-action into lost military capital. The prisoners are not merely absent; they are counterfactually guilty of not being the XX milia Rome could have had. If we want to make the arithmetical oddity explicit in Speranza’s dry register: “DC + X Canusium attigerunt; Torquatus X tacuit.” (“DC plus X reached Canusium; Torquatus kept X silent.”) +> The silence is rhetorical. The unnamed X would complicate the exemplary force of the DC. “XX milia non est numerus historicus purissimus, sed numerus obiurgans.” (“XX thousand is not a perfectly pure historical number, but a rebuking number.”) +> The figure functions as accusation rather than exact accounting. So the Gricean reading is that Torquatus exploits a suppressed quantifier. Tuditanus’ sequimini me produced an actual collective uptake, but not only among the original DC. The action radiated. Torquatus, however, reports the event under the most punitive description: if DC could do it, all should have. The missing X is the cost of making the moral inference too tidy. Dry Speranzian formula: Tuditanus saved men by protrepsis; Torquatus condemned men by arithmetic. The DC are historical enough; the XX milia are a counterfactual sermon; the X is what Roman severity prefers not to count.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sempronio – Ossia: Grice e Sempronio’ Gaio Sempronio Gracco (Roma, Lazio). Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning is built for the repairable rationalities of talk: what a speaker means, and what a hearer is entitled to take the speaker to mean, is recoverable by assuming cooperative norms (relevance, quantity, etc.) and then calculating implicatures as reasonable inferences from what is said plus context. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, by contrast, is almost a textbook case of how public speech strains (and sometimes breaks) those assumptions: in the Forum, “cooperation” is factional, audiences are plural, and hostile interpreters can force an implicature on you—so that a reformist slogan about ager publicus or a legal appeal in the contio de capite civis Romani can be made to “mean” (in the Senate’s uptake) crown-hunger, sedition, or tyranny, even when the orator’s declared intention is civic justice and due process. The interesting comparison is that Grice explains implicature as a rational bridge between speaker and hearer under shared conversational expectations, whereas Gaius’s experience shows a political limit-case where the bridge becomes contested territory: the same utterance supports competing “calculations” depending on who claims the right to set the background assumptions (what counts as relevant, what counts as enough, what counts as sincere), and the fight over the res publica becomes, in part, a fight over which implicatures are “reasonable” and therefore politically actionable. Grice: “Clifton College, 14 October 1926. Dear Father, Today Waddington (whom you met at the cricket match, the one who can turn a perfectly innocent innings into an occasion for Roman moralising) gave us a lecture on the difference between Caius Sempronius Gracchus and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. He delivered it with the air of a man who has personally cross-examined the Senate. What struck me, oddly enough, was not only the politics, but the family likeness: it set me thinking of Herbert Paul Grice and John Derek Grice, and then of you, John Herbert Grice, presiding over us all like a sensible consul of Harborne. Waddington pronounced that Tiberius was “righter” than Caius—by which he meant, I think, that Tiberius had the cleaner grievance and the worse press. Caius, he implied, was cleverer, louder, and therefore easier to suspect. That reminded me of what you once said about Harborne’s Lordswood—how the name itself sounds like a tiny private empire that has survived into suburbia: “lords” in the title, woods in the background, and everybody else expected to behave as if it were always so. It made me wonder (and I hope this doesn’t sound cheeky) whether there was ever any agrarian protest in our own neighbourhood, or whether England manages to do its land politics so quietly that it only shows up later as a street-name and a slight stiffness in the voice.Which brings me to the point I really want to ask you. Lordswood territory is still a bit new to you, since you came from the other suburb where the “lords” had less power, but where—if I recall your stories correctly—someone still planted the trees anyway. Were those woods natural to the area, or were they the whim of a lord who liked the look of “nature” from a distance? And did they use farm-hands for it, the way the Romans used other people’s backs for their roads? It is a funny thing, but once you start thinking about who owns land, you start thinking about who did the work that made the land look respectable. Waddington thinks Roman history is mostly about great men and grand speeches. But it seems to me it is also about who gets accused of what for saying the obvious. A man says, “The public land ought to be used for the public,” and immediately someone hears, “He wants a crown.” Even I can see the trick in that. It makes me suspect that Roman history can teach you quite a lot about Staffordshire and Warwickshire, and perhaps even about Harborne, if you listen for the implications as well as the declarations. Yours affectionately, Paul. GRICEVS: Gai, cum Tiberius diceret ager publicus esse reddendus, tu putabas eum tacite significare se regnum appetere, nonne? GRACCVS: Ita vero, nam senatus ex “ager” statim audiebat “diadema”, quasi iugera in coronam mutarentur. GRICEVS: Mirum est quam celeriter apud Romanos lex agraria fiat lex regia, sola implicatura currente. GRACCVS: Quare ego in contione de capite civis Romani monui: si verba pro factis puniuntur, tum frater meus ante legem damnatus est. In this two, the gens is Sempronia? Other members of that gens? Yes. In both cases the gens is Sempronia. The nomen is Sempronius, so the clan-name is gens Sempronia. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus both belong to the gens Sempronia; Gracchus is the cognomen of their branch. The family is a substantial and historically important plebeian gens, much larger and more consequential than some of the thinner gentes we discussed earlier. So here there are indeed many other members. The most important way to keep the Sempronii in order is by branch and by generation. First, the Gracchi themselves. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the tribune of 133 BC. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, the tribune of the 120s. Their father, also Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, was a major statesman and general, consul and censor, and very much not the same figure as the reforming sons. Earlier still there are older Sempronii Gracchi in the middle Republic, though the father is usually the most immediately relevant ancestor for your purposes. Then the broader gens Sempronia beyond the Gracchi. There are Sempronii Tuditanī, another important branch. The cognomen Tuditanus recurs in Republican politics and military history. There are Sempronii Atratini, another old branch. There are also Sempronii Blaesi, less famous to modern ears but well attested in prosopography. And of course the feminine form Sempronia appears for women of the gens. The best-known Sempronia for many readers is the Sempronia in Sallust, though her exact branch within the gens is not always the first thing under discussion when she appears. So the clean answer is: gens Sempronia nomen Sempronius cognomen Gracchus for the famous reforming branch A compact note in your dry register might be: Sempronius is the nomen of the gens Sempronia, an old and important plebeian gens of the Roman Republic. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus belong to its Gracchus branch, but the gens also includes other cognominal lines such as the Tuditanī and Atratini. In the case of the Gracchi, the family’s afterlife is so dominated by the two reforming brothers that the larger Sempronian background is often forgotten, though it is historically substantial. Two cautions are worth keeping in view. First, your selected passage blends different generations of Sempronii Gracchi. The material about victories over Ligurians, Sardinia, Cuma, Hannibal, Beneventum, and Mago belongs to earlier Sempronii Gracchi, above all the father and still earlier ancestors, not to Tiberius and Gaius the reforming tribunes themselves. So one must not let the glory of the larger gens collapse into the biographies of the two brothers. Second, when asking “in this two, the gens is Sempronia?”, the exact classical answer is yes: both brothers are Sempronii, therefore of the gens Sempronia. If useful, I can do one of three things next, still only in chat. I can give you a compact dictionary-style note on gens Sempronia and its principal branches. I can separate, in your supplied material, what belongs to the father Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, what belongs to the reforming Tiberius, and what belongs to Gaius. Or I can give you a dry Speranza-style paragraph on why the Gracchi are such good figures for a Gricean analysis of hostile political implicature.Gracco, Gaio Sempronio (a. u. c. DCXXXI). Contio de capite civis romani. Roma. Caius SEMPRONIO Gracchus was a man of action, rather than of words, and was the first to divide distance into portions of one thousand paces, each of which he called a mile, and which was one of his really useful measures. Sempronio's lexical implicature: he coined 'mile' to mean 'thousand steps' -- do Lewis and Short acknowledge the IMPLICATED 'step'? Abbott below. Input? Feedback? Thanks -- Passage: Abbott: Caius SEMPRONIO Gracchus was a man of action, rather than of words, and was the first to divide distance into portions of one thousand paces, each of which he called a mile, and which was one of his really useful measures. This is a very nice case where Abbott’s light irony has misled generations of readers—and your instinct to ask about the “implicated step” is exactly right. Let me separate three things clearly:  1. Did Gracchus “invent the mile”?  Short answer: No.  The “mile” (mille passuum) is:  a standard Roman unit of distance already part of Roman measurement practice   It means:   “a thousand paces” [en.wiktionary.org]  So Abbott’s statement that Gracchus invented it is:   not historically supported (a comic exaggeration)   What Gracchus did do Sources (and later tradition) sometimes connect him with:  roads / surveying / milestones (miliaria) administrative standardization  So:  he may have applied or institutionalized measurement, but did not coin the unit itself.   2.  Does Lewis & Short “acknowledge the step”?  Yes—explicitly, though not as a Gricean implicature, but as a definition. The Latin expression is:  mille passuum (= “a thousand paces”) [en.wiktionary.org]  And:  passus = “pace / stride” the mile =:  1,000 paces = 5,000 Roman feet [en.wikipedia.org]     Important nuance A Roman passus is:  not a single “step”  a double step (stride)  So:  “thousand paces” ≈ two thousand steps    So the “step” is not implicated, it is:  lexically encoded in passus   3. Your Gricean angle: is there an implicature? This is where your question becomes philosophically interesting.  Surface form  mille passuum = “thousand paces”   What is understood  that a “pace”:  is a bodily measure involves stepping / striding  So the communication works like:                  ExpressionUnderstoodpassusstridemille passuummeasurable distance via movement  Is this implicature? Not quite in Grice’s strict sense. It is:   lexical entailment / conventional meaning, not implicature   But there is a broader pragmatic layer The Roman system is:  anthropocentric   distance = countable human movement measurement = embodied action    So you might say (Gricean stretch):  the “step” is not merely semantic, but part of a background model of measurement   4. Why Abbott’s sentence is misleading (and amusing) Abbott writes:  Gracchus “called each thousand paces a mile”  This suggests:  a speech act of naming (as if lexical creation)   But historically:  the term and unit already exist     So Abbott turns:  administrative practice → lexical invention  for comic effect.  5. Final synthesis   mille passuum = “thousand paces” (standard Latin expression)  Lewis & Short fully acknowledge the “pace” element  Gracchus did not “coin” the mile  the “step” is:  not an implicature but part of the lexical meaning of passus     One-line takeaway  The Roman “mile” does not involve a hidden Gricean implicature but a lexical composition: mille passuum explicitly encodes “a thousand paces,” where the passus (a double step) provides the embodied basis of the unit, so Abbott’s claim that Gracchus “named” the mile humorously misrepresents what is actually a long-established Roman measure rather than a semantic innovation.   If you like, we can compare passus with gradus (step vs stride), which shows even more clearly how Romans conceptualized movement and measurement. Great question—and the answer is more subtle than a simple “yes” or “no.”  Short answer No—the Romans were not obliged to say passuum every time. They could and often did omit it, just as English normally says “mile” instead of “a thousand paces.”  1. The full expression vs shorthand The full technical form is:  mille passuum = “a thousand paces” [imperiumromanum.pl]  But already in classical Latin:  mille (sc. passuum) = “a mile” (with passuum understood) [latinlexicon.org]   Evidence from Latin usage Latin dictionaries explicitly note:  mille… passuum → a Roman mile but also:  mille used by itself = a mile (passuum understood) [latinlexicon.org]    And grammarians add:  sometimes the word passuum is omiSempronio Gracco, Gaio (a. u. c. DCXXXI). Contio de capite civis romani. Roma.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sempronio – Ossia: Grice e Sempronio: la ragione conversazionale e il concetto di stato.   Tiberio Sempronio Gracco (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il concetto di stato. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning is built for small-scale exchanges: it explains how a hearer recovers what a speaker means (including implicatures) by assuming rational cooperation and then inferring intentions from what is said plus shared norms of relevance, informativeness, sincerity, and clarity. With Tiberius Gracchus you can see almost the mirror-image case: public, adversarial “conversation” in which the very point is that what is said will be strategically re-heard by hostile audiences (senators, rivals, clients, crowds) so that a legislative proposal about the ager publicus is liable to generate a predictable political implicature—“he wants a crown,” “he’s aiming at tyranny”—regardless of the reformer’s declared content. In Gricean terms, Gracchus is operating in a forum where the Cooperative Principle is not reliably in force across factions, so implicature becomes less a benign by-product of shared rationality and more a weaponized inference shaped by institutional suspicion and incentives; Grice would say the hearer’s “calculation” of what is meant can still be rational, but it is rational under conditions of strategic non-cooperation, where the same utterance (“the state should reclaim and redistribute”) is designed to communicate one thing to one audience (justice, civic stability) while predictably licensing a different uptake in another (ambition, usurpation). The comparison, then, is that Grice offers a general model of how meaning can be responsibly inferred in cooperative talk, whereas Gracchus exemplifies the political limit-case in which the central pragmatic problem is precisely that hearers will insist on an implicature the speaker repudiates, and the struggle over “the state” is also a struggle over who gets to fix what counts as the reasonable interpretation of public speech. Grice: “At Oxford, a distinction was clearly made between those who were entitled to teach Plato and Aristotle – as Austin, himself, and Hare were – from those who would teach the minor schools, such as Il Portico!” Console, combatte vittoriosamente contro i Liguri; occupa inoltre la Sardegna. Suo figlio, magister equitum dopo la battaglia di Canne, console, difende Cuma da un assalto d’Annibale. Prorogatogli il comando, sconfisse Annone presso Benevento. Fu console; morì in un'imboscata ordita da Magone. G. propose, con alcune attenuazioni, il rinnovamento di una delle leggi attribuite dalla tradizione a Gaio Licinio Stolone e L. Sestio (aggiornata), per cui le parti di ager publicus in possesso di privati eccedenti i 500 iugeri (750 per chi avesse un figlio, 1000 per chi ne avesse due o più) venivano rivendicate dallo stato (che ne era il proprietario) e di stribuite in lotti ai cittadini poveri. L'aristocrazia si servì del collega di G., Ottavio, per porre il veto alla discussione della proposta. G., dopo aver inutilmente cercato di venire a un accordo, propose ai comizî tributi la destituzione del collega, accusandolo di abusare della carica. Destituito Ottavio, fu votata la legge agraria e l'esecuzione fu affidata ai triumviri agris iudicandis adsignandis (Tiberio e Caio G., e il suocero Appio Claudio): G. propone che con le ricchezze lasciate da Attalo III di Pergamo in eredità al popolo romano si finanziasse l'attuazione della legge. Quando egli, per assicurare tale attuazione, aspira al tribunato per l'anno seguente, ne nacque l'accusa che volesse stabilire un regime tirannico. Alle elezioni, G., ostacolato in più modi dagli impedimenti giuridici sollevatigli contro dagli avversarî, finì con lo scatenare i suoi seguaci. Rimane padrone dell'area del tempio di Giove Capitolino, ma i senatori adunati in quello di Fides, accusandolo di aspirare alla corona, guidati da Publio Scipione Nasica, seguiti da cavalieri, schiavi e clienti, piombarono nel Foro e sgominarono i partigiani di G.. Questi fu ucciso a bastonate e gettato nel Tevere. Tiberio Sempronio Gracco. Gaio Sempronio Gracco. Roma, Lazio. GRICEVS: Gracce, Oxonii clare distinguebatur inter eos qui Platoni Aristotelique docendo digni habebantur, ut Austin ipse et Hare, et eos qui minores scholas tractarent, velut Porticum. Ego vero, more meo, etiam Porticum interdum in mensa hospito. GRACCVS: Ego autem de re publica loquor: ager publicus non est fabula scholastica, sed res civium. Si quis plus quam quingenta iugera tenet, civitas repetat et in sortis pauperibus det: hoc est “status” sine sophismate. GRICEVS: Pulchra sententia; sed cave implicaturam: cum dicas “civitas repetat,” senatus audiet “Graccus coronam appetit.” Apud Romanos saepe fit ut lex agraria sonet quasi lex regia. GRACCVS: Tum ego respondeo: non est non scire, sed non velle—non tyrannidem volo, sed iustitiam. Quod si Ottavius vetat, ego veto vetatorem: et si postea in foro baculis philosophiam faciunt, saltem dicant se de statu disputare, non de grammatica. So the Romans were NOT allowed to skip the final part of this 'passuum' -- like the English literally do when they say 'mile' which strictly is equivalent to the 'thousand' -- with 'double steps' implicated? Input? Feedback? Thanks Great question—and the answer is more subtle than a simple “yes” or “no.”  Short answer No—the Romans were not obliged to say passuum every time. They could and often did omit it, just as English normally says “mile” instead of “a thousand paces.”  1. The full expression vs shorthand The full technical form is:  mille passuum = “a thousand paces” [imperiumromanum.pl]  But already in classical Latin:  mille (sc. passuum) = “a mile” (with passuum understood) [latinlexicon.org]   Evidence from Latin usage Latin dictionaries explicitly note:  mille… passuum → a Roman mile but also:  mille used by itself = a mile (passuum understood) [latinlexicon.org]    And grammarians add:  sometimes the word passuum is omiSempronio Gracco, Tiberio (a. u. c. DCXX). Contio de lege agraria. Roma