SER

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Serbati – Ossia: Grice e Serbati: la ragione conversazionale del divino nella filosofia italiana. Note sul Saggio sull’origine delle idee. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Antonio Francesco Davide Ambrogio Rosmini Serbati (Rovereto, Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige): la ragione conversazionale del divino nella filosofia italiana. Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning and Antonio Rosmini Serbati’s philosophy of language converge in their shared commitment to rational intelligibility while diverging sharply in metaphysical orientation and scope. For Grice, conversational meaning is governed by practical reason operating through cooperative norms and speaker intentions: to mean something is to intend a hearer to recognize that intention, and conversational implicature arises from rational expectations of relevance, sufficiency, truthfulness, and clarity rather than from any intrinsic sanctity of language itself. Serbati, by contrast, situates language within a metaphysical and theological framework in which the verbum is not merely a rational instrument but a participation in ideal being, reflecting the divine source of truth in human cognition; language externalizes the innate “intellectual light,” the idea of being that precedes and grounds all intelligibility. Where Grice’s model is minimalist and methodological, aimed at explaining how finite agents infer meaning without multiplying senses beyond necessity, Serbati’s account is expansive and integrative, binding psychology, metaphysics, and liturgical practice into a single vision in which rational communication is already oriented toward truth as such and ultimately toward God. In this sense, Grice treats reason as the regulator of conversational practice, while Serbati treats reason as illuminated by being and expressed through language, so that conversation becomes not only cooperative inference but also a site where human rationality participates in an objective, even sacred, order of meaning. Grice: S.'s italianità (Italian identity) is deeply intertwined with a non-conformist approach to religion that seeks to reconcile Catholic tradition with modern liberal and nationalist ideals. His legacy as a pioneer of Italian Liberal Catholicism and social justice remains a focal point for understanding the intellectual roots of the Risorgimento. Religious Non-Conformism and the Verbum S.’s "non-conformism" stems from his desire to reform the Church from within, specifically addressing what he called the "five wounds" of the Church, which included the separation of the people from the clergy in liturgy and the need for a better-educated clergy.  Sacrality of the Verbum: Rooted in the Roman tradition of the sacrality of the verbum (the word), S. views language not merely as a tool for communication but as a vehicle for ideal being — a reflection of The Genitor -- God -- in humankind that participates in eternal truth. The Liturgical Word: His call for greater lay participation in the liturgy is a direct application of this sacrality, arguing that the "word" of the liturgy should be accessible and transformative for all believers, rather than a shielded clerical secret.  Psychology and the Theory of La Lingua S.’s psychology-based theory of language (la lingua) connects his metaphysical "idea of being" to the cognitive processes of the human subject.  Innate Capacity: He argues that humans possess an innate "intellectual light" that allows them to perceive being. Language is the externalization of this internal psychological process, where the mind's intuition of truth is given form. gl’agiati, Agostino, Aquino, la tradizione Latina italiana.  G.: We begin with a priest who makes language too holy for comfort. S.: And you intend that as criticism, though you will later pretend it was admiration. G.: Rosmini invites that response. One opens a book expecting words and gets the Verbum. One asks after usage and is given being. It is difficult to discuss language when the page behaves as if liturgy had annexed logic. S.: That is because for him language is not just language. It is the externalisation of the intellectual light, and therefore of ideal being, and therefore—by the time one has swallowed three paragraphs—already leaning toward God. G.: Precisely my complaint. Oxford wants words to do enough work without also carrying the sacristy. Rosmini wants every noun to remember eternity. S.: Yet you find him philosophically serious. G.: Of course I do. Annoying people are often serious. The difficulty is not that he speaks of language; it is that he cannot speak of language without speaking of truth, being, Church, and grace. He makes “philosophy of language” feel like a chapter in transubstantiation. S.: Which, I take it, is your way of saying that the thing is too thick with metaphysics. G.: Too thick with sanctioned metaphysics. If I want to speak of meaning, I should prefer not to be told that every utterance is secretly kneeling. S.: Still, the verbal sacredness is part of what makes him intelligible in Italy. The word is not a mere tool, but a civil and religious bond. G.: Yes, and that is exactly why he matters there and not in the same way here. In nineteenth-century Italy, language, Church, and political order have all become entangled. It is not possible to ask what Italy is without asking what the Church is doing there. S.: While in Oxford, the entanglement is differently wired. There the establishment is Anglican, parliamentary, Erastian, and therefore the anti-establishment figure is the man who pushes back toward catholicity. G.: Newman, yes. Which is why the inversion delights me. In Oxford, to be anti-establishment can mean to be too Catholic for the establishment. In Italy, to be anti-establishment can mean to be too reformist for the Catholic establishment. S.: So Newman and Rosmini rhyme, but inversely. G.: Nicely. They are mirrors facing different walls. Newman resists Anglican Erastianism by insisting on the spiritual independence and catholic seriousness of the Church. Rosmini resists the compromised, clerical, politically entangled Catholic order by insisting on a truer Catholic reform. S.: Then his anti-establishment is real. G.: Entirely real. Not anti-Church, which is what lazy moderns hear, but anti the existing ecclesial-political arrangement as spiritually and intellectually deformed. S.: That is where the “piaghe” matter. G.: Yes. The wounds are not decorative grievances. They are an anatomy of diseased establishment: clergy separated from people, liturgy estranged from participation, bishops too entangled in worldly powers, formation inadequate, institutional life losing its inward truth. S.: If Newman had read that with sympathy, he might have said: this is my complaint too, except that my establishment is the Church of England and his is Rome’s local machinery. G.: Exactly. And the lovely complication is that both can be called anti-establishment while aiming in opposite directions on the ecclesiastical map. S.: One toward Rome, one through Rome. G.: Splendidly put. Newman goes toward Rome because he thinks Anglican establishment has become spiritually compromised by the state. Rosmini goes through Rome because he thinks Catholic life has become institutionally compromised from within. S.: Erastianism again. G.: Always Erastianism when one wants a good enemy in Oxford. The state running the Church, or at least treating the Church as one of its more respectable departments. Newman hated that with enough force to make the University suspicious. S.: Whereas in Italy the danger was not Parliament governing bishops but bishops, benefices, papal temporal power, local clerical structure, and the immense fact that Catholicism was not one social force among others but the social grammar itself. G.: Exactly. That is why religion is so offensively central in nineteenth-century Italian philosophy. One cannot avoid it because it is not merely belief. It is a constitutional fact. S.: Which is why you are impatient with anyone who says, “Why all this Rosmini and Gioberti, why all this religion?” G.: Because the answer is boringly obvious. Italy had to think religion politically and politics religiously. Philosophers were not choosing ecclesiastical themes out of piety; they were thinking through the conditions of nationality, liberty, and civil order. S.: And Gioberti? G.: Ah, Gioberti is the trick. He is the one people think they understand because he is louder and more obviously political. But he complicates the neat anti-clerical story because his great hope was not “No Church,” but papal Italy. S.: Neo-Guelph fantasy. G.: Precisely. The federation of Italy under papal leadership. It is difficult to be more Church than that while still pretending to be liberal. S.: Which is why he is not “anti-Church” at all, only anti the wrong Church-state arrangement. G.: Yes. He wants the Pope as the moral and civil head of an Italian renewal. That is not secularisation. That is high Catholic nationalism in a remarkably confident key. S.: And then history punishes him. G.: It does. He dies in exile, which is what happens to too many nineteenth-century Italians with ideas large enough to become programmes. S.: 1852. G.: Quite. And Rosmini dies in 1855, which is enough to place both of them securely in that frantic 1830s–1840s overlap with Newman. S.: The overlap is the thing, is it not. Newman born 1801, Gioberti born 1801, Rosmini 1797. Oxford Movement from 1833 onward, Rosmini and Gioberti doing their main damage in the 1830s and 1840s. G.: Exactly. A European Christian crisis conducted in different institutional languages. Newman with Tracts and sermons and Oriel and the anti-Erastian complaint; Rosmini with ideas, wounds, liturgy, reform, and the anti-stagnation complaint; Gioberti with papal federation and the moral and civil primacy of Italians. S.: You sound almost sympathetic to Gioberti. G.: I am sympathetic to the historical absurdity of him. Philosophically he is too rhetorical for my digestion; but historically he is marvellous because he shows how impossible it was, for a moment, to separate Catholicism from national hope. S.: Whereas Garibaldi shows the English a cleaner object of admiration. G.: Indeed. England, or at least liberal England, loved Garibaldi because he looked like liberty in a shirt. Streets and public sentiment could easily be renamed after him. One Hope Street becomes Speranza Street and everyone feels they have done Europe a favour. S.: Wilde’s mother did more than feel it. G.: Quite. But English Garibaldinism is not Newmanite Oxford. One must not flatten England either. Liberal Protestant England can applaud Italian national liberation while Catholic Oxford winces at the anti-papal consequences. S.: So the Establishment in England might support Garibaldi, while a Newmanite would read the situation with much more anxiety. G.: Precisely. Which is why one must keep asking: whose establishment, whose anti-establishment, in which country, under which church. S.: And then along comes the Martyrs’ Memorial to tell Oxford that anti-Roman memory is built into the pavement. G.: There it is again, outside St John’s, doing what only Victorian Protestantism could do: turning sixteenth-century burnings into a nineteenth-century sermon. S.: A sermon against Mary first, and then against the possibility that Newman might bring back some improved version of Mary without the bonfire. G.: Very good. The memorial commemorates the Marian martyrs, but it also warns against the Oxford Movement. It says: this is where Roman roads lead, and do not tell us that the road is now merely aesthetic. S.: So how would Newman see Rosmini? As an ally? As a dangerous half-measure? As a Catholic reformer still trapped in local politics? G.: All three, depending on the day and the weather. Newman would recognise the seriousness at once. He would recognise the anti-establishment character too. But he might distrust the entanglement with Italian liberal and national questions, because Newman’s instinct is always to protect the Church from state capture and national instrumentalisation. S.: Whereas Rosmini is trying to save the Church in a country where national formation itself is impossible without the Church. G.: Exactly. That is why the inversion is not merely neat; it is structurally exact. Newman says: free the Church from Anglican establishment. Rosmini says: reform Catholic establishment so that Church and freedom may be reconciled. S.: Did Rosmini compromise? G.: Not in the cheap sense. He did what all serious reformers do: he tried to remain obedient without becoming harmless. He did not become a safe establishment man; rather, the Church and the politics around him hardened in such a way that his position became increasingly awkward from both sides. S.: Too churchly for the anti-clericals, too reformist for the conservatives. G.: Exactly. Which is why his later reputation becomes so ironic. Condemned or suspected in one generation, then cautiously rehabilitated after death, as if the institution were saying: we now pardon what we have already profited from. S.: Posthumous pardon as ecclesiastical implicature. G.: Deliciously so. It says: we never meant exactly what it looked as if we meant when we suppressed you. Or perhaps: we now mean something more charitable than we then allowed ourselves to say. S.: Better than nothing. G.: Better than an Index, certainly. But one cannot help enjoying the irony. A dead man becomes safe enough to be praised. S.: This is what you called disimplicatural. G.: If the word is ugly enough, yes. The institution withdraws the strengthened reading after the speaker has ceased to threaten it. It says, in effect: those earlier consequences were accidental, context-bound, regrettably overdrawn. One could almost hear the legal clerk saying, “No personal offence was intended.” S.: Let us return to language, because that is the declared topic and you keep trying to evade it through history. G.: History is language when it has become expensive. But yes, Rosmini on language. The problem, as I see it, is that he makes language answerable to ideal being before he lets it answer to ordinary life. S.: Whereas you would prefer the order reversed. G.: Entirely. Start with use, intention, uptake, what one man can reasonably expect another to understand. Do not begin by sanctifying the noun. Rosmini begins with the intellectual light and ends with words as its outer garment. I should prefer to begin with the words and ask what sort of light one needs to explain how they work. S.: Yet you will grant him this: for a culture in which liturgy and truth and language are still entwined, the Verbum is not an absurd starting point. G.: I grant it historically, not methodologically. Historically it is exactly right. Methodologically it is oppressive. S.: So the irritation is not that he is wrong to his own world, but that he is hard to translate into ours. G.: Precisely. Reading Rosmini from Oxford is like listening to a man do semantics while kneeling. One keeps wanting him to stand up. S.: And yet one also sees why the word had that dignity in Italy. The sacred and the civil were not neatly separated. Language in liturgy, language in civic exhortation, language in philosophy: all one continuum. G.: Quite. Which is why transubstantiation keeps haunting the discussion even when no one has mentioned the host. In Rosmini, the word is never only a sign. It is a participation. S.: You dislike participation. G.: I dislike unexplained participation. Participation is often the theologian’s way of not being asked for mechanics. S.: And still the anti-establishment impulse is real enough to make him sympathetic. G.: That is the vexation. The temperament attracts me more than the metaphysic. S.: Much as with Newman. G.: Yes, though Newman’s prose, when he is not being ecclesiastically majestic, is often closer to ordinary intelligence than Rosmini’s. Rosmini is a constructor. Newman is a tactician of conscience. S.: Gioberti then would be a rhetorician of national theology. G.: Perfect. And that is why one should mention him only to prevent the map from looking too tidy. He shows that anti-establishment Catholicism in Italy could run toward national programme and public slogan rather than inward reform. S.: Whereas Rosmini is more inwardly reformist. G.: More philosophical, more ecclesial, more severe. One might even say more honest, though that is unfair to Gioberti’s theatrical necessity. S.: So if a young man at Oxford were to ask what all this has to do with us, you would say? G.: I would say: it shows that “establishment” is not a fixed polarity but a position in a relation. Newman and Rosmini are both anti-establishment; but Newman fights Anglican state-Church order in the name of catholicity, while Rosmini fights compromised Catholic order in the name of a truer Catholic freedom. The shape is the same; the signs are reversed. S.: And the Thirty-Nine Articles? G.: Ah yes, the English clowning equivalent of doctrinal seriousness. One can be committed to their contents without understanding them, which is one of Oxford’s more ingenious achievements. S.: Rosmini would have hated that. G.: Rosmini would have found it spiritually bankrupt. Newman would have found it Erastian hypocrisy. Gioberti would have made a national principle out of it if sufficiently provoked. S.: And you? G.: I find it philosophically hilarious. Formal commitment without semantic grasp. A subscription in search of understanding. S.: Which is why the joke never ends. G.: Quite. Oxford’s theology becomes a lesson in second-order commitment. Italian theology becomes a lesson in first-order danger. S.: And somewhere between them stands Rosmini, blessing words and criticising the institution that blesses them badly. G.: That is very nearly the whole truth. S.: Then let us end with the chronology, since chronology is the only kindness one can offer to nineteenth-century Italian philosophy. G.: Very well. Rosmini, 1797 to 1855. Gioberti, 1801 to 1852. Newman, 1801 to 1890. Oxford Movement begins, by its own retrospective mythology, in 1833. Gioberti’s Primato in 1843. Rosmini’s great reforming interventions, especially the Piaghe, in 1848. Newman to Rome in 1845. Gioberti in exile, then dead. Rosmini under suspicion, then dead, then later gently re-sanctified by men who had once found him too uncomfortable. S.: And Italy still unable to think itself without the Church. G.: Exactly. Which is why Rosmini matters. You cannot tell the story of Italian philosophy in that century without telling the story of religion as constitutional substance. S.: While Oxford can at least pretend philosophy is above all that. G.: Oxford can pretend many things. It has stone enough to support the pretence. S.: And Rosmini? G.: Rosmini knew that in Italy the stone itself belonged to the argument. S.: That is rather good. G.: It had better be. We have been saying “Verbum” for an hour and ought to end with a sentence that at least behaves like one. S.: Then let me try. Newman says: free the Church from the State. Rosmini says: heal the Church from itself. Gioberti says: make the Church Italy. And Oxford, seeing all three, says: perhaps we had better build another memorial. G.: Splendid. And Italy, seeing Oxford, says: you can keep your memorial if we may keep our metaphysics. S.: Which is a draw. G.: No. It is a concordat.Grice: Serbati, mi perdoni l’educazione materna: mia madre mi ha sempre insegnato a chiamare un uomo col cognome. Quindi non aspettarti nessun “Rosmini” da parte mia: per me sei Serbati, punto. Serbati: E fai bene: “Rosmini” è per i devoti e per le lapidi; “Serbati” va meglio per una conversazione viva. Però dimmi: che aria tira a Vadum Boum? Grice: Lì ho un allievo, Strawson, che giudica la “rettorica” triviale—ma nel senso etimologico sbagliato, come fosse roba da poco invece che roba da trivio. Io gli rispondo che non è chiaro che cosa intenda: sensus non sunt multiplicandī praeter necessitatem, se mi è concesso… (e mia madre, te lo confesso, usava queste puntigliose regolette soprattutto per stuzzicare mio padre: un non‑conformista che finiva sempre per conformarsi ai suoi capricci). Serbati: Le tue fioriture rettoriche, essendo solo implicate, decorano senza ingombrare, reverendo Grice! Perché lo rimetti in riga senza fare prediche: lo costringi a scegliere un senso “triviale” alla volta—e intanto gli mostri che la rettorica del volgare è proprio ciò che rende la strada maestra, non “da poco”. Serbati, Antonio Francesco Davide Ambrogio Rosmini (1830). Sggio sull’origine delle idee. Milano: Pogliani

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sereniano – Ossia: Grice e Sereniano: la ragione conversazionale del cinargo romano – Roma. Note su De latratu rationis in conversatione romana. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Sereniano (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale del cinargo romano. In the Sereniano dialogue, Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning is reframed through a playful Cynic lens that nonetheless preserves its core claim: that meaning in conversation arises from rational cooperation rather than literal form alone. Grice’s joking references to incomplete dialectic and “canine tails” echo his own insistence that logical form is only perfected in use, through shared expectations about relevance, appropriateness, and intention, rather than through formal logic detached from practice; this aligns with his account of conversational implicature, where speakers rely on the hearer’s rational ability to infer what is meant beyond what is said by assuming cooperative rationality. Sereniano, cast as a follower of the Cinargus and a visitor to Emperor Julian, pushes this point further by rooting rational inference in the public, embodied life of Roman culture: philosophy belongs not just to the portico or the academy, but to the forum, where even “dogs” philosophize, that is, where bluntness, mockery, and social provocation function as communicative strategies rather than violations. In this light, Sereniano’s acceptance of Grice’s “cruel implicature” underscores a Cynic–Gricean convergence: apparent breaches of politeness or decorum do not undermine reason‑governed meaning but instead exploit it, trusting the interlocutor to recognize intention, tone, and shared norms. What Grice theorizes abstractly as the rational structure of conversational understanding is dramatized by Sereniano as a culturally inflected practice, where barking replaces syllogizing but inference still rules, suggesting that conversational rationality is robust enough to survive translation from Oxford common rooms to Julian’s Rome without losing its philosophical force.S. was a philosopher who visits the emperor Giuliano. He followed the doctrine of the Cinargo. GRICEVS: Sereniane, saepe dico meam dialecticam Atheniensium numquam perfectam fuisse, praesertim cum Cynargos canes Romam bene calcavisse! Quid putas—dialectica fit completa cum cauda canina? SERENIANVS: O Gricevs, in urbe nostra canes non solum ambulant, sed etiam philosophantur! Forsitan Cinargus doctrina plus valet in foro Romano quam in porticu Atheniensi. GRICEVS: Age vero, doctissime! Ad Cynargos sequendos, fortasse opus est non solum rationibus sed etiam ossibus philosophicis—sed cave, ne te mordant ideae novas! SERENIANVS: Tua implicatura crudelis est, non autem mihi, quia scio ex nobilissimo corde venire, Grice. Sed, si canes Romani discipuli tui fiant, certe sapientia latrare poterunt sine ulla feritate! Sereniano (a. u. c. MCXIV). De latratu rationis in conversatione romana. Roma

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sergio – Ossia: Grice e Sergio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sergio Arch of the Sergii in Pula, Croatia The gens Sergia was a patrician family at ancient Rome, which held the highest offices of the Roman state from the first century of the Republic until imperial times. The first of the Sergii to obtain the consulship was Lucius Sergius Fidenas in 437 BC. Despite long and distinguished service, toward the end of the Republic the reputation of this gens suffered as a result of the conspiracy of Catiline.[1]  Origin The Sergii claimed descent from Sergestus, one of the Trojans who came to Italy with Aeneas, a tradition mentioned by Vergil in the Aeneid.[2][1] The etymology of the nomen Sergius is problematic. Chase hesitantly suggests a connection with the praenomen Servius, probably from an old Latin root meaning to preserve or keep safe. He classifies the nomen with other gentilicia that either originated at Rome, or cannot be shown to have come from anywhere else.[3] However, the cognomen Fidenas, borne by the first branch of this gens appearing in history, may indicate that they originally came from Fidenae, where Roman colonies had been planted for centuries.[4]  Praenomina The main praenomen of the Sergia gens was Lucius, which was used by all branches of the family at all periods. Gaius was also used from the earliest times, while Marcus was favoured by the Sergii Sili. All of these were among the most common praenomina throughout Roman history. The only other name regularly used by the Sergii was Manius, a relatively distinctive praenomen favoured by a few gentes, which belonged to one of the most illustrious of the Sergii of the early Republic, and was still in use after the Second Punic War. Other praenomina appear infrequently.  Branches and cognomina The cognomina of the Sergii during the Republic were Catilina, Esquilinus, Fidenas, Orata, Paulus, Plancus, and Silus. Some of the Sergii who appear in history had no surname.[1]  Fidenas, the surname of the oldest distinct family of the Sergii, is said to have been obtained by Lucius Sergius Fidenas, the consul of 437 BC. The year before his consulship, the Romans had put down a revolt at Fidenae, an ancient Latin city about five miles north of Rome; the implication perhaps being that Sergius had participated in the recovery of the city. However, it may be that Sergius, or one of his ancestors, was a native of that city, where a Roman colony was said to have existed since the early monarchial period.[5][4] One of the Fidenates bore the additional surname Coxo, applied to one with prominent hips.[6]  Esquilinus originally designated someone who lived on the Esquiline Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome, may have been a personal cognomen, as only one of the Sergii is known to have borne it. This cognomen belongs to a common class of surnames derived from the place of a person's origin or residence.[7][8]  The most distinguished family of the Sergii during the latter part of the Republic bore the cognomen Silus, originally describing someone with an upturned nose. The first of this branch rose to fame during the Second Punic War, but by the time of Catiline, who was his great-grandson, they had fallen into poverty and obscurity.[9][10]  Of other surnames, Orata or Aurata, golden, was the surname of a wealthy merchant of the Sergian gens, who is said to have obtained it either because of his substantial gold rings, or because he kept goldfish.[11] Meanwhile, Plancus, referring to someone with flat or splayed feet, belongs to a common class of surnames derived from the physical characteristics of the bearer. This is amended by some scholars to Plautus, although the meaning is nearly identical.[6][12]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Sergii Fidenates Lucius Sergius C. f. C. n. Fidenas, consul in 437 and 429 BC, and consular tribune in 433, 424, and 418.[13][14][15] Manius Sergius L. f. L. n. Fidenas, consular tribune in 404 BC, during which year he and his colleagues captured and destroyed the Volscian town of Artena. Consular tribune for the second time in 402 BC, personal enmity between Sergius and his colleague, Lucius Verginius, led to a Roman defeat and the evacuation of one of the Roman fortifications in the siege of Veii. The following year, Sergius and Verginius were prosecuted by the tribunes of the plebs, and fined ten thousand asses apiece.[16][17][18] Lucius Sergius M'. f. L. n. Fidenas, consular tribune in 397 BC.[19][20][21] Gaius Sergius Fidenas,[i] surnamed Coxo, consular tribune in 387, 385, and 380 BC.[22][23][24] Sergii Sili Marcus Sergius Silus, praetor urbanus in 197 BC, had displayed great courage during the Second Punic War, serving in several campaigns and sustaining numerous wounds, including the loss of his right hand, after which he continued to fight using his left hand.[25][26][27][28] Marcus Sergius M. f. Silus, a legate under Lucius Aemilius Paullus during the Third Macedonian War.[29][30][31] Marcus Sergius (M. f. M. n.) Silus, probably the uncle of Catiline, was quaestor in an uncertain year, and minted a number of denarii between 94 and 90 BC.[32] Gnaeus Sergius Silus, accused by one Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer of attempting to seduce a Roman matron by the promise of money, and condemned.[33][34][35] Lucius Sergius M. f. M. n. Silus, the father of Catiline, does not seem to have had a public career, and he left no legacy for his son.[36][37][38] Lucius Sergius L. f. M. n. Catilina, better known as Catiline, had been a fierce partisan of Sulla, and earned a reputation for savageness and cruelty, but was still able to attain political office. He was praetor in 68 BC, and afterward governor of Africa. After being frustrated in his attempts to gain the consulship, he formed a plot to overthrow the Republic in 63, but the plot was exposed by Cicero. Catiline fled the city and attempted to rally his forces, but was intercepted and fell in battle.[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] Sergia L. f. M. n., the sister of Catiline, and widow of the eques Quintus Caecilius, who had perished in Sulla's proscriptions.[36][47][48] Sergii Plauti Lucius Sergius L. f. Plautus, named in a senatus consultum from 39 BC. Lucius Sergius Regis f. Plautus, one of the Salii Palatini, was presumably adopted from the Marcii Reges.[49] Sergia, the wife of Gaius Rubellius Blandus, proconsul of Crete and Cyrene. Their grandson was Rubellius Plautus.[50] Sergius Plautus, praetor in AD 2. Sergia, the wife of Gaius Octavius Laenas, the consul suffectus in AD 33. Their grandson was the emperor Nerva.[50] Sergii Paulli Lucius Sergius Paullus, proconsul of Cyprus in the time of Claudius, said to have been converted to Christianity by the apostle Paul. Perhaps the same Paullus mentioned as curator of the banks of the Tiber.[51][52][53] Lucius Sergius Paullus, consul suffectus in an uncertain year, around AD 70.[54] Sergia Paulla, daughter of the proconsul and wife of Gaius Caristanius Fronto.[55][56] Sergius Paullus, a senator mentioned by Martial, who indicates he was consul ordinarius designatus around 95.[57][58] Sergia L.f. Paullina, wife of Gnaeus Pinarius Cornelius Severus, consul suffectus in AD 112.[59] Lucius Sergius Paullus, consul suffectus circa AD 151, and consul ordinarius in 168.[60] Others Lucius Sergius Esquilinus,[ii] a member of the second decemvirate in 450 and 449 BC.[61][62][63][23][64] Sergia, one of a group of Roman matrons accused of mass poisonings in 331 BC, the year of a deadly pestilence at Rome. Livy reports confusion in his sources, but records that Sergia and Cornelia, claiming that certain preparations in their houses were medicines, were obliged to drink them to prove their innocence, and perished as a result.[65] Marcus Sergius, a military tribune sent to Rhegium by Scipio Africanus in 205 BC. There he was murdered by the propraetor Quintus Pleminius.[66][67] Lucius Sergius, one of the ambassadors sent to Carthage by Scipio Africanus in 203 BC.[68][69] Gaius Sergius Plancus, praetor urbanus in 200 BC; the following year he was appointed propraetor for distributing land to the veterans of the war in Hispania, Sardinia, and Sicily.[70][71] Manius Sergius M'. f., a senator in 170 BC. He was also ambassador in Greece and Asia in 164.[72][73] Manius Sergius M'. f., praetor and proconsul in Hispania Citerior during the late second century BC. His name appears on the milestones of a road from modern Granollers towards Ausa.[74][75] Gaius Sergius Orata, a wealthy merchant and inventor who flourished around the beginning of the first century BC. He pioneered the use of the hypocaust to heat Roman baths. He was also known for the farming of oysters at Baiae, and promoting the shellfish of the Lucrine Lake.[76][77][78][79][80][81] Quintus Sergius, a senator who lived at the time of the Social War, was condemned inter sicarios; that is, by a court of inquiry into those accused of being assassins.[82] Lucius Sergius, one of Catiline's accomplices, who supplied him with weaponry. He later fell in with Publius Clodius Pulcher.[83] Sergius, one of those proscribed by the triumvirs, sought the assistance of Marcus Antonius, who was able to procure his pardon.[84] Sergius, the son of Aphthonius, is described in the Suda as a consular who served as praetorian prefect. He was a native of Zeugma, and had a brother, Sabinus. Sergius wrote a treatise in opposition to Aelius Aristides.[85] Sergius, a Latin grammarian, and the author of In Primam Donati Editionem Commentarium and In Secundam Donati Editionem Commentaria.[86] Lucius Sergius Salvidienus Scipio Orfitus, consul in AD 149. Publius Martius Sergius Saturninus, consul in AD 198. Flavius Sergius, consul in AD 350. See also Arch of the Sergii List of Roman gentes Footnotes  Livy gives his praenomen as Gaius, but a fragment of the Fasti Capitolini appears to give Gnaeus.  Esquilinus' praenomen is very uncertain. Livy first calls the decemvir Marcus, then later refers to him as Lucius. Dionysius gives Marcus, but Diodorus has Gaius. His praenomen has not been preserved in the Fasti Capitolini. References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 787 ("Sergia Gens").  Vergil, Aeneid, v. 121.  Chase, pp. 131, 154, 155.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 149 ("Fidenas")  Livy, i. 27.  Chase, p. 110.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 53 ("Esquilinus").  Chase, pp. 113, 114.  Chase, p. 109.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 827 ("Silus", "Sergius Silus").  Festus, s. v. Orata.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 226 (note 2).  Livy, iv. 17, 25, 30, 35, 45.  Diodorus Siculus, xii. 43, 58, 73, 82, xiii. 2.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 58, 62, 65, 68, 72.  Livy, iv. 61, v. 8, 9, 11, 12.  Diodorus Siculus, xiv. 19, 38.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 81, 83, 84.  Livy, v. 16.  Diodorus Siculus, xiv. 85.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 87.  Livy, vi. 5, 11, 27.  Fasti Capitolini, AE 1900, 83; 1904, 114; AE 1927, 101; 1940, 59, 60.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 99, 101, 105.  Pliny the Elder, vii. 28. s. 29.  Livy, xxxii. 27, 28, 31, xxxiii. 21.  PW, "Sergius", No. 40.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 332.  Livy, xliv. 40.  PW, "Sergius", No. 41.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 431.  PW, "Sergius", No. 42.  Valerius Maximus, vi. 1. § 8.  PW, "Sergius", No. 38.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 41, 45 (note 5); vol. III, p. 37.  Quintus Tullius Cicero, De Petitione Consulatus, 2.  Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 5.  PW, "Sergius", No. 39.  Sallust, Bellum Catilinae.  Cassius Dio, xxxvi. 27, xxxvii. 10, 29–42.  Livy, Epitome, 101, 102.  Cicero, In Catilinam, passim, Pro Murena, 25, 26, In Pisonem, 2, Pro Flacco, 40, Pro Plancio, 37, Epistulae ad Atticum, i. 19, ii. 1, xii. 21, xvi. 14, Epistulae ad Familiares, i. 9.  Suetonius, "The Life of Caesar", 14.  Plutarch, "The Life of Cicero", 10–22, "The Life of Cato the Younger", 23.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 629–634 ("Catilina").  Winningham, Catiline.  Asconius Pedianus, In Ciceronis in Toga Candida, p. 84 (ed. Orelli).  PW, "Sergius", No. 50.  Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 16, p. 140.  Syme, Roman Papers: Volume IV, p. 182.  Easton's Bible Dictionary, "Sergius Paulus".  Acts of the Apostles, xiii. 7.  CIL VI, 31545.  Bekker-Nielsen, p. 160.  Birley, The Fasti of Roman Britain, p. 234  Cheesman, "The Family of the Caristanii", p. 265.  Martial, v. 22, vii. 22, viii. 33, ix. 85, x. 10, xii. 69.  Jones, "Martial's Paullus", pp. 841–844.  Jones, "Martial's Paullus", p. 843  Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand, pp. 161, 185.  Livy, iii. 35, 41.  Dionysius, xi. 23.  Diodorus Siculus, xii. 24.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 46, 47 (note 3).  Livy, viii. 18.  Livy, xxix. 6, 9.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 304.  Livy, xxx. 25.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 313, 315 (note 9).  Livy, xxxi. 4, 6, xxxii. 1.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 323, 326 (note 2).  SIG, 636.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 439, 440.  AE 2016, 765.  "Person Details: SERG1727 M'. Sergius (17) M'. f." Digital Prosopography of the Roman Republic (DPRR). Retrieved 29 January 2025.  Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 16, De Finibus, ii. 22, De Oratore, i. 39.  Valerius Maximus, ix. 1. § 1.  Pliny the Elder, ix. 54. § 79.  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, ii. 3. § 10.  Columella, De Re Rustica, viii. 16. § 5.  Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii. 11.  Cicero, Pro Cluentio, 7.  Cicero, De Domo Sua, 5, 33.  Appian, Bellum Civile, iv. 45.  Suda.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 788 ("Sergius"). Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Domo Sua, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, De Officiis, De Oratore, Epistulae ad Atticum, Epistulae ad Familiares, In Catilinam, In Pisonem, Pro Cluentio, Pro Flacco, Pro Murena, Pro Plancio. Quintus Tullius Cicero, De Petitione Consulatus (attributed). Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust), Bellum Catilinae (The Conspiracy of Catiline). Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica (Library of History). Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum Rusticarum (Rural Matters). Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil), Aeneid. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Quintus Asconius Pedianus, Commentarius in Oratio Ciceronis In Toga Candida (Commentary on Cicero's Oration In Toga Candida). Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, De Re Rustica. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita Caesarum (Lives of the Caesars, or The Twelve Caesars). Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Sextus Pompeius Festus, Epitome de M. Verrio Flacco de Verborum Significatu (Epitome of Marcus Verrius Flaccus' On the Meaning of Words). Suda. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Wilhelm Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (Collection of Greek Inscriptions, abbreviated SIG), Leipzig (1883). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). August Pauly, Georg Wissowa, et alii, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Scientific Encyclopedia of the Knowledge of Classical Antiquities, abbreviated RE or PW), J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart (1894–1980). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). G. L. Cheesman, "The Family of the Caristanii at Antioch in Pisidia", in Journal of Roman Studies, No. 3 (1913). Broughton, T. Robert S. (1952–1986). The Magistrates of the Roman Republic. American Philological Association. Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 16 (1955). Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antonien (The Consulate and Senatorial State under the Antonines), Rudolf Habelt, Bonn (1977). Anthony Birley, The Fasti of Roman Britain, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1981). Brian W. Jones, "Martial's Paullus", in Latomus, No. 41 (1982). Ronald Syme, Roman Papers: Volume IV, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1988) ISBN 9780198148739. Tonnes Bekker-Nielsen, in Classica et Mediaevalia, vol. 57 (2006). Brandon Winningham, Catiline, iUniverse (2007). Categories: SergiiRoman gentes And from THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sergio – Ossia: Grice e Sergio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sergio For the Sergii, my first-best choice is Gaius Sergius Orata, not Catiline. Catiline is too loud, too already-Ciceronian, and almost forces the vignette into conspiracy. Orata is better for Grice and Speranza because he gives a quieter and funnier Roman case: commerce, invention, luxury, oysters, heated baths, and the management of social meaning through things that look merely useful. Orata is the man of oysters, Lucrine Lake, and hypocaust-like bath-heating. He is not simply an inventor or businessman; he is a manufacturer of refined uptake. He teaches Romans that warmth, shellfish, and leisure can count as cultivation rather than mere indulgence. That is very Gricean. The object does not just satisfy appetite; it gets redescribed as taste. SERGIVS ORATA. Ostrea Lucrina emi, non famam. (I bought Lucrine oysters, not reputation.) +> The commodity is being presented as simple purchase, not social self-display. SCEPTICVS. Roma famam emit cum ostrea emit. (Rome buys reputation when it buys oysters.) +> Luxury goods carry social meaning beyond consumption. ORATA. Si sapor placet, quid culpa est? (If the taste pleases, what is the fault?) +> Pleasure is being defended as innocent appetite. SCEPTICVS. Sapor in ore est; pretium in foro loquitur. (Taste is in the mouth; price speaks in the forum.) +> The public meaning of the purchase comes from cost and display, not flavour alone. ORATA. Ergo coquus philosophatur? (Then the cook philosophises?) +> If social meaning enters appetite, even cuisine becomes interpretive. SCEPTICVS. Non coquus: emptor. (Not the cook: the buyer.) +> The meaning lies in the buyer’s use of the object as a sign of status. ORATA. Tum balnea calefaciam, ne frigida luxuria dicatur. (Then I shall heat the baths, lest luxury be called cold.) +> Technical improvement can make luxury appear as comfort, health, and civilisation. SCEPTICVS. Calor tuus pluris significat quam facit. (Your heat signifies more than it does.) +> The invention’s social meaning exceeds its practical function. The Grice/Speranza point is that Orata works in the field between natural satisfaction and conventional display. Oysters feed; heated baths warm. But in Roman society they also communicate: wealth, urbanity, leisure, refinement, Hellenising taste, perhaps decadence. Orata’s genius is to make objects acquire conversational force without uttering a sentence. A dinner with Lucrine oysters says, or lets be gathered, something about the host; a heated bath says something about the household; even technical comfort becomes morally interpretable. Catiline would give a vignette on conspiracy and failed uptake; Orata gives one on luxury as implicature. The latter is more distinctively Speranzian because it lets the gens Sergia escape the shadow of its most notorious member. Before Sergius becomes Catiline, he can be Orata: not the man who tried to burn Rome, but the man who helped teach Rome how to read oysters. Dry Speranzian formula: Catiline made the Sergian name dangerous; Orata made it expensive. For Grice, the oysters are preferable: they show that in Rome even appetite could become a sign.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sergio – Ossia: GRICE E SERGIO – GREX GRICEIANA: SERGIO -- CATILINA. SERGIO Catiline, whom he denounced before the assembled Senate, in an oration which has been preserved to this day, by the pungency of its sarcastic reasoning. Every sentence smacked of Attic salt, and every word was so much pepper to the guilty SERGIO Catiline. The latter attempted a reply; but the senators were seized simultaneously with one of those coughs which spread like an influenza over an unwilling audience. Is this in Abbott attested about SERGIO elsewhere? Input? Feedback? Thanks -- Abbott: GRICE E SERGIO CATILINA. SERGIO Catiline, whom he denounced before the assembled Senate, in an oration which has been preserved to this day, by the pungency of its sarcastic reasoning. Every sentence smacked of Attic salt, and every word was so much pepper to the guilty SERGIO Catiline. The latter attempted a reply; but the senators were seized simultaneously with one of those coughs which spread like an influenza over an unwilling audience. Nice passage—but again, Abbott is not reproducing an attested scene of oratio recta. He is amplifying a real historical situation into a comic tableau. Let’s separate what is attested from what is Abbott’s invention.   1. What is historically real (A) Cicero vs Catiline  Cicero delivered speeches in the Senate against Catiline these are preserved:  the Catilinarians (In Catilinam I–IV)     (B) Their tone  extremely:  sarcastic aggressive rhetorically sharp   Abbott’s “Attic salt” and “pepper”:   apt characterization  but stylistic commentary, not ancient wording    2. The coughing episode Abbott says:  the senators were seized with a cough spreading like influenza This is not attested in ancient sources  No Livy (lost here anyway) No Sallust (Bellum Catilinae) No Cicero himself No Plutarch  There is:  no report of:  collective coughing deliberate interruption comic disruption  So:  this is Abbott’s humorous invention    3. Is there any similar behavior historically? Indirectly, yes—but much harsher:  Catiline:  is shouted down and isolated in the Senate   Cicero:  forces him to leave Rome  Sallust describes:  tension hostility fear  —but: not theatrical coughing  4. What Abbott is doing He transforms:  Historical realityAbbott versionpolitical hostilityorchestrated mockerysilence or outragecomic sabotageexclusionparody   The coughing scene is:  a Victorian comic equivalent of “being shouted down”    5. Gricean angle (worth noting) Your interest points exactly here:  Surface:  no reply (interrupted)  Implied:  Catiline’s speech is unworthy of hearing  So the “cough” functions as:  collective conversational refusal (flouting relevance / uptake)   Even if fictional, it nicely dramatizes:  denial of conversational entitlement    Final answer No, this specific episode—Catiline being drowned out by a contagious “cough” in the Senate—is not attested in the ancient sources.  What is attested is Cicero’s fierce denunciation of Catiline and Catiline’s unsuccessful attempt to respond before being effectively excluded from the Senate; Abbott turns this into a comic, quasi-dramatic scene that has no basis in preserved oratio recta but vividly captures the atmosphere of collective rejection.   If you like, I can show you an actual passage from Cicero where Catiline is rhetorically silenced—much less comic but even more devastating.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Serio – Ossia: Grice e Serio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Serio The gens Seria was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens rose to prominence during the second century, attaining the consulship twice, and holding various other offices under the Nerva-Antonine dynasty.  Branches and cognomina The only distinct family of the Serii bore the cognomen Augurinus, borne by the consular family of the second century. This was one of a large class of surnames derived from occupations, and probably indicating that the first member of the family to acquire the name was an augur.[1]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Marcus Serrius,[i] a senator, and one of the witnesses of the Senatus Consultum de Agro Pergameno, concerning a dispute over the lands of Pergamum, in 129 BC.[3][2] Publius Serrius,[ii] one of the senators who in 44 BC witnessed a decree of the consuls Marcus Antonius and Publius Cornelius Dolabella, confirming the promises made by Caesar to the ambassadors of Hyrcanus, ethnarch of Judea. Caesar had promised to support Hyrcanus as ethnarch, and to respect the rights of the Jews to administer their cities, and maintain their religious rites and customs throughout Roman territory.[5][4] Seria Maximilla, the former mistress of Titus Serius Alexander, for whom she dedicated a tomb at Pitinum in Umbria, dating between AD 50 and 200.[6] Titus Serius Ɔ. l. Alexander, the freedman of Seria Maximilla, who dedicated a tomb at Pitinum, dating between AD 50 and 200.[6] Gaius Junius Serius Augurinus, consul in AD 132, in office from the Kalends of January to the end of April.[7][8] Gaius Serius Augurinus, one of the duumviri quinquennales at Rome in AD 132, he fourth year of the twenty-eighth lustrum.[9] Gaius Serius C. f. Augurinus, consul in AD 156, probably serving for the first two months of the year. He was proconsul of Africa in 170.[10] Gnaeus Serius C. f. C. n. Oppianicus Augurinus, one of the Salii Palatini in AD 181.[11][12] Lucius Serius Niger, made an offering to Isis at Telesia in Samnium, recorded in a second-century inscription.[13] Seria Expectata, buried in a second-century tomb at Reate in Samnium, with a monument from her husband, Gaius Spellius Fudidianus.[14] Serius Callistus, dedicated a second- or third-century monument at Rome to his stepson, Serius Eutyches.[15] Serius Eutyches, buried at Rome in the second or third century, with a monument from his father, Serius Callistus.[15] Seria Corinthias, buried in a third-century tomb at Rome, aged twenty-one years, six months, and twenty days, with a monument from her husband, Petronius Severianus.[16] Valerius Serius Serus, dedicated a monument at Rome for his wife, Flavia Pontia Januaria, dating to the end of the third century, or the first quarter of the fourth.[17] Undated Serii Serius, named along with Lucia, perhaps his wife, in a fragmentary inscription from Venetia and Histria.[18] Serius, a little boy buried at Augusta Treverorum in Gallia Belgica, aged two years and three months, with a monument from his parents.[19] Quintus Serius C. f., named in an inscription from Bononia in Cisalpine Gaul, along with Publius Serius Celer, possibly his son.[20] Serius Augurinus, the son of Aelia Caecilia Philippa.[21] Publius Serius Q. f. Celer, named in an inscription from Bononia, along with Quintus Serius, perhaps his father.[20] Seria Fausta, named in an inscription from Mevania in Umbria.[22] Seria Tigris, buried at Rome, with a monument from her husband.[23] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  As with the senator Publius Serrius of 44 BC, this nomen Serrius here may be an error for Sergius.[2]  The nomen Serrius here may be a mistake for Sergius, and he is listed under that heading in PW.[2][4] References  Chase, pp. 111, 112.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 496.  Sherk, "The Senatus Consultum De Agro Pergameno", p. 368.  PW, "Sergius", No. 20.  Josephus, Antiquitates Judaïcae, xiv. 10. § 10.  CIL XI, 5980.  AE 1933, 58.  PIR, S. 386.  CIL VI, 10299.  PIR, S. 387.  CIL VI, 1979.  PIR, S. 388.  CIL IX, 2196.  CIL IX, 4737.  NSA, 1920–232.  CIL VI, 26348.  ICUR, ix. 24686.  AE 1977, 295.  Recueil des Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule, i. 155.  CIL XI, 781.  PIR, S. 385.  AE 1989, 277.  CIL VI, 26349. Bibliography Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Judaïcae (Antiquities of the Jews). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romanae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores (Christian Inscriptions from Rome of the First Seven Centuries, abbreviated ICUR), Vatican Library, Rome (1857–1861, 1888). Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (News of Excavations from Antiquity, abbreviated NSA), Accademia dei Lincei (1876–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). August Pauly, Georg Wissowa, et alii, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Scientific Encyclopedia of the Knowledge of Classical Antiquities, abbreviated RE or PW), J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart (1894–1980). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Robert K. Sherk, "The Text of the Senatus Consultum De Agro Pergameno", in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, vol. 7, pp. 361–369 (1966). Recueil des Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule (Record of Christian Inscriptions from Gaul), Paris (1975–present). Category: Roman gentes and for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Serio – Ossia: Grice e Serio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Serio For the Serii, my first-best choice is Gaius Serius Augurinus, consul in AD 156 and later proconsul of Africa, rather than the earlier senatorial witnesses. The reason is almost embarrassingly Gricean: Augurinus bears a cognomen that turns office, omen, interpretation, and public authority into one tidy problem. An augur does not merely see birds; he makes what is seen usable by the state. SERIVS AVGVIRINVS. Aves volaverunt; comitia differenda sunt. (The birds have flown; the assembly must be postponed.) +> The visible event is being taken as a public sign requiring institutional action. SCEPTICVS. Aves semper volant. (Birds always fly.) +> The observed fact is too ordinary to bear political meaning. SERIVS. Non volant semper inspectae. (They do not always fly under inspection.) +> The meaning depends on ritual setting, not on ornithology alone. SCEPTICVS. Ergo tu facis signum? (Then you make the sign?) +> The augur may be producing the institutional meaning he claims to read. SERIVS. Non facio; capio. Sed sine captione nihil civitati prodest. (I do not make it; I take it. But without taking it up, it is of no use to the state.) +> The sign is not invented arbitrarily, but it becomes politically operative only through authorised uptake. The Grice/Speranza point is that augury sits between natural sign and institutional meaning. A bird’s flight may be a natural event; an auspicium is not merely a bird’s flight. It is a bird’s flight under a recognised procedure, before an authorised interpreter, for a public decision. So the Gricean contrast is not simply “natural versus non-natural meaning,” but something subtler: nature supplies the vehicle; institution supplies the frame; the magistrate or augur supplies the authorised uptake. That makes Augurinus better than the mere consular Serius as such. The cognomen itself is an instruction to the reader. “Serius Augurinus” says: here is a man whose name makes interpretation official. A private man watching birds says, at most, “there go birds.” An augur says, “the state must wait.” That is not a small difference. It is the difference between noticing and taking as significant. Dry Speranzian formula: the bird flies naturally; the omen lands institutionally. Serius Augurinus is useful to Grice because he shows that Rome did not merely observe signs. It appointed men to make the observation count.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Serra – Ossia: Grice e Serra: la ragione conversazionale dell’economia filosofica – storia dell’economia romana – massoneria – filosofia calabrese. Note su Delle cause che possono far abbondare li regni d’oro e d’argento dove non sono miniere. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice Antonio Serra (Dipignano, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale dell’economia filosofica – Antonio Serra and H. P. Grice articulate strikingly parallel conceptions of reason-governed practice, though in radically different domains, by treating rationality as immanent to social processes rather than imposed from outside: Serra, in the Breve trattato, advances a philosophical economics grounded in rational analysis of institutions, law, and policy, shifting inquiry away from scholastic moralism toward a systematic account of how collective wealth emerges from ordered practices such as governance, trade, and legal frameworks, especially as exemplified by Roman institutions, Venice, and Naples, and by logically dismantling purely monetary explanations in favor of an economy of causes calibrated to real effects and institutional coherence; Grice, in turn, develops a theory of conversational meaning in which linguistic exchange is likewise governed by rational economy, where speakers and hearers assume cooperative, purpose-directed reasoning, infer meaning beyond what is said through implicatures, and tacitly observe constraints of sufficiency, relevance, and non-redundancy, encapsulated in what can be read as a Principle of Economy of Rational Effort; in both thinkers, rational order is neither mechanical nor moralistic, but pragmatic and institutional—economic circulation for Serra, conversational circulation for Grice—so that wealth and meaning alike arise from disciplined practices that optimize scarce resources (gold and silver in one case, cognitive and interpretive effort in the other), revealing a shared philosophy in which reason regulates exchange, whether of goods or of ideas, through norms that are at once practical, historical, and non-arbitrary. storia dell’economia romana – massoneria –Grice: “la ragione conversazionale dell’economia filosofica – storia dell’economia romana – massoneria. S., an Italian philosopher and lawyer, pioneers a philosophical approach to economic theory that transitions from medieval scholasticism toward modern rationalism . In his Breve trattato sulle cause che possono far abbondare li regni d’oro e d’argento, he moves economic analysis beyond simple moral or monetary debates into a systematic study of the "real economy".  Rooting Theory in Roman Law and Institutions S.’s work reflects a deep formation in Roman law, which heavily influenced his view of the state and its institutions: Government as Prime Institution: Drawing on the legal traditions of the Kingdom of Naples, S. views the government not just as a ruler, but as the essential institutional arrangement for the common good. Practical Governance over Moralism: He broke with the scholastic tradition of viewing avarice through a purely moral lens, instead treating economic behavior as a matter of individual and national advantage to be regulated by sound public policy. Institutional Practice: Serra analyzed the thriving local governments of Venice and Naples to argue that wealth resulted from policy and institutions — such as legal frameworks that supported trade and manufacturing — rather than natural resources alone.  The Rationalist Lens S. is often credited as the first to write a "scientific treatise" on economic principles because of his rigorous, rational methodology:  Logical Deductions: He systematically analyzed why the Kingdom of Naples lacked money despite its natural wealth, using logic to dismantle the arguments of contemporaries like Marc'Antonio de SANTIS , who focused solely on exchange rates. massoneria, circolazione degl’idee massoniche, mito di Venezia, economia romana, l’economia del liceo, roma antica, antica roma, Machiaveli, mercantilismo. Grice: Serra, tu che hai fatto dell’economia una filosofia, dimmi: non ti sembra che a forza di ragionare sull’oro e l’argento, a noi filosofi restino in tasca solo le monete delle idee? Serra: Eh caro Grice, almeno quelle non svalutano! E poi, tra un trattato e una chiacchierata, preferisco sempre investire nel capitale della conversazione: il rendimento è garantito, e non paga nemmeno il dazio! Grice: Vedi, Serra, ti confesso – con tutta la solennità del caso – che una volta ho istituito il Principio dell’Economia dello Sforzo Razionale. E sai, all’università di Vadum Boum, tra i miei “barbari”, l’ho perfino tradotto pomposamente: The Principle of Economy of Rational Effort. Ma non dirlo in giro, che poi pensano mi sia montato il latino in testa! Serra: Che bello principio, e che bella implicatura, la sua, maestro. Anzi, quasi quasi lo adotto pure io: se l’economia dello sforzo razionale vale in filosofia, magari ci risparmia anche un po’ di fatica quando si devono compilare i bilanci… o i trattati! Serra, Antonio (1613). Breve trattato delle cause che possono far abbondare li regni d’oro e d’argento dove non sono miniere. Napoli: Scoriggio

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Serra – Ossia: Grice e Serra: la ragione conversazionale – prammatica come rettorica conversazionale -- filosofia italiana. Note sulla Rettorica. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Giannangelo Giuseppe Serra da Cesena (Napoli, Campania): la ragione conversazionale – prammatica come rettorica conversazionale. Serra da Cesena and H. P. Grice converge on the idea that conversational meaning is governed by reason, but they articulate this insight within historically distinct frameworks that reveal a deep continuity between rhetoric and modern pragmatics: for Serra, prammatica is explicitly conceived as rettorica conversazionale, a rational art of discourse rooted in the rhetorical tradition of the vernacular, where effective meaning arises from the speaker’s prudent management of invention, disposition, and ornament in relation to the audience and the practical end of persuasion, an approach that treats conversational understanding as grounded in shared topoi, argumentative economy, and the detection of error relative to the primary τέλος of discourse; Grice, by contrast, reformulates this rhetorical rationality in analytic terms as a theory of reason-governed conversational meaning, in which what is meant exceeds what is said through implicatures generated by cooperative, normatively constrained reasoning, captured in maxims and in the economy principle sensus non sunt multiplicandi praeter necessitatem, itself echoing classical rhetorical parsimony; where Serra situates rational inference within an explicitly rhetorical and pedagogical ontology of discourse, Grice abstracts the same logic into a philosophical account of speaker meaning, stripping rhetoric of its ornamental suspicion while preserving, in functional form, its core insight that conversational understanding is neither arbitrary nor merely semantic, but the product of disciplined, inferential reason operating within socially shared norms of discourse. Grice: “A Genoese scholar and grammarian who contributed significantly to the study of the Italian vernacular (lingua volgare) through his rhetorical works during the late Renaissance period.” Keywords: rettorica, prammatica, rettorica conversazionale, prammatica come rettorica conversazionale. Rettorica della lingua volgare. DELLA RETTORICA Nel quale fi dà un nuovo , facile , ed utiliflimo metodo d’ infegnare V ARTE ORATORIA 5 E nel quale li trovano raccolti , e compilati i piu i  di. 1 e ■*xr ró ufum predane in sedificatione calx , & eoe-* menta , eumdem aflert cognitio caufac ad dru- óluram orationis , quum ejufmodi notiti» fìnt , veluti materia , fine qua prò juftis orationi- bus Indierà quaedam « Se puerilia opera prodi- rent , ab omni prorfus v e nudate, & ornamen- to deflituta . Orationes contro verfiaé negòtiàlis excipiunc ali* controverfiam juridicialem abfolutam fpe- ttantes , circa quas vires tuas metiaris opor- tet % quibus forte non licebic probationem ag- gredi alicujus propofitionis , qu* datum juri- dicialem abfolutum habeat ; neque tamen quin- tum caput fuam exercitationem non habebit ‘ praecepta enim , quae ibi traduntur , non eam fubtilitatem involvunt ; ut ea intelligere non liceat; eorumque exempla invedigentur in fa- crorum Oratorum orationibus , modo aliquse fmt , qu* hujufmodi dudtu , & artificio con- ficiantur : quod fi ab iis legibus aberrarent 4 detegendi elfent errores refpedbi primarii fi- nis , perfuadendi feilieet . Neque ejufmodi exercitatio eric omnino irrita , dum enim alie- nos errores detegis , facilius cavebia tuos . Quapropter te hortor , ut quidquid plerique Oratorcs fcedilfime peccarunt , tum in ora- tionibus controverfiac negotialis , tum cujuf- libet controverfi* , ledalo ad rem tuam animad- vertas . Pod ejufmodi exercitamenta , quumque pro- be calueris prascepta , qu* in toto quinto ca- pite traduntur , devenias licet ad pulcherri- *na artificia , qu* caput fextum comple&itur. G.: Recite, exactly, the full title of Serra’s thing. S.: Compendio della rettorica nel quale si dà un nuovo, facile, ed utilissimo metodo d’insegnare l’arte oratoria. Napoli: Bortoli. 1748. G.: Good. Now attend: at Oxford, Latin may be all right; Italian is too vernacular. Your Serra writes as if the vernacular itself were the natural medium of rhetorical instruction. S.: He writes for Italians, sir. G.: Precisely. And I do not expect Italians to continue speaking Latin, not even Italian philosophers. But here is the practical trouble: if the precepts are keyed to Italian particularities, the Oxonian tutee will not go into the trouble of hunting English counterparts for every twist of the Italian tongue. S.: Yet if you want to extract what you call universality, you will have to abstract from the tongue. G.: I will do my best to make explicit the reasons. Not “rationality,” mind, but the reason for this and the reason for that. Serra gives rules and examples; I want, when possible, the why that makes a rule intelligible beyond its birthplace. S.: You mean: you want the reason a figure is used, not merely the name of the figure. G.: Exactly. Even for the most literal ones. The figura litterale, as you call it. When it is literal and not figurative proper, we still count it among figures. That already asks for a reason. S.: Why should a literal turn be a figura at all, if it is simply what one says? G.: Because even “simply what one says” is often a choice among alternatives. A plain utterance can be strategically plain. It can be plain for the reason of candour, or plain for the reason of speed, or plain because the audience is not to be distracted by ornament. S.: Serra would say: ornament is an instrument, not a vice. But he would also say: one must know when not to ornament. G.: And that is already a convergence with my own concern: the economy of discourse. But I am in a different predicament from Serra. He can assume Italian ears, Italian habits, Italian topoi. I have Oxford ears, trained in Latin, and suspicious of anything that smells too much like street-talk. S.: Yet your own work makes so much of ordinary language. G.: English ordinary language, not every vernacular indiscriminately. Oxford tolerates the vernacular when it is ours and when it can be made to look like an object of study rather than a lapse of standards. Italian, at Oxford, is felt as too close to the piazza. S.: So Serra is doubly suspect: rhetoric, and in Italian. G.: Just so. Now, to keep us honest, let us distinguish two complaints that get conflated. One is institutional snobbery: Latin is dignified; Italian is not. The other is methodological: a rhetoric rooted in the vernacular may smuggle in language-specific devices that do not travel. S.: Serra does both: he dignifies the vernacular and makes it the ground of his teaching. G.: That is the point. He treats prammatica as rettorica conversazionale: prudent management of invention, disposition, and ornament for an audience, with persuasion as telos. But the Italian base matters. His examples and his sense of what “sounds right” lean on Italian cadence, Italian idiom, Italian social expectation. S.: Then your Oxonian pupil asks: why should I learn this, if it is not mine? G.: Exactly. I can answer: learn it not as a stock of Italian tricks, but as a set of reasons for doing what you do in speech. Yet I must be careful: I cannot promise applicability to all languages. S.: You can promise only this: the reasons are reasons in the sense that they can be stated and tested against practice. G.: Yes. Consider candour. There is a reason to abide by a praeceptum of candour: one wants cooperative uptake; one wants trust; one wants one’s word to count. S.: And there is also a reason to violate candour, in appearance, in order to obey a deeper conversational aim. Irony. G.: Precisely. In irony one says the opposite of what one means. The sentence is literally false, but what you mean, being the negative of it, is not. Now tell me: is irony universal? S.: I think the capacity for it is universal in any society that can distinguish saying from meaning. But its social acceptability is not universal. G.: Good. And now the temper question. I suspect understatement, meiosis, litotes fit an English temper better than an Italian one, even if Cicero could manage them in Latin with Roman hauteur. S.: You suspect Italians are more direct? G.: Not more direct, perhaps, but differently staged. Italian rhetoric, even conversational, can relish amplitude and explicitness. English style often prizes restraint, leaving more to be inferred. But again, I must not essentialise. I only claim that different rhetorical cultures make different figures feel “natural.” S.: Serra, being Italian, will treat certain ornaments as natural that an Englishman would call excessive. G.: Yes. And Oxford, being Latin-trained, will treat Serra’s Italian grounding as parochial. Yet I want to rescue the core: conversation is not arbitrary, but reason-governed; and rhetoric, far from being mere ornament, is a disciplined art of managing meaning in company. S.: Your “reason-governed” sounds like your maxims. G.: It is of a piece. Serra speaks of shared topoi, economy of argument, detection of error relative to the primary end of persuasion. I speak of cooperative reasoning from what is said to what is meant. S.: Both treat understanding as inferential, not merely semantic. G.: Exactly. Now I will ask you, as my tutee: which figure, if any, do you think most universal? S.: I will answer cautiously: contrast is universal. Not a figure in the narrow sense, perhaps, but the impulse to set one thing against another to make the point. G.: Contrast is too broad. Name something closer to the catalogues. S.: Then repetition. Not as mere redundancy, but as a way of ensuring uptake, and as a way of marking importance. G.: Good. Repetition travels. Even if the particular sound-patterns change, the reason remains: memory is fallible; attention drifts; emphasis is needed. S.: And it can be literal. One repeats the same words. G.: Indeed. A figura litterale whose reason is not metaphor but management of attention. Now another. Choose one that involves saying less than one could. S.: Understatement. G.: There you go. But does it travel? S.: The capacity travels. The valuation may not. Some audiences take understatement as modesty; others as evasiveness. G.: Precisely my worry about Italian versus English temper. Understatement as a social virtue is not universal, but the mechanism is. The reason for understatement, when it works, is that the hearer supplies the stronger claim and thereby owns it. S.: That is a reason grounded in audience psychology, not in grammar. G.: And that is where I can meet Serra without becoming his translator. I can say: whatever your language, some devices work because they exploit stable features of conversational life: limited attention, desire for politeness, avoidance of boastfulness, fear of offence, need for trust. S.: Serra would add: the end of discourse governs the choice. Persuasion, edification, correction. G.: Yes. And here Oxford’s Latin bias becomes almost a red herring. Latin is not more universal; it is merely more institutionally authorised. Italian is not less rational; it is merely more visibly local. S.: Then the Oxonian’s refusal to “do the work” is laziness disguised as principle. G.: Sometimes. But sometimes it is also prudence: do not pretend an Italian device has a clean English analogue when it does not. That too is candour. S.: So your project is limited: not universality across all languages, but reasons that can be stated, and then locally re-applied. G.: Exactly. We do not promise the same figures everywhere; we promise intelligible motives. Serra’s rhetoric is vernacular; my analysis seeks generality of reason, not uniformity of forms. S.: Then, sir, you can assign me an exercise: find, in Serra, one device that looks irreducibly Italian, and still give its reason. G.: That is your first task. And your second: find one device you think is irreducibly English, and tell me whether its reason might still be found in Italian practice under another costume. S.: May I begin with litotes as the English one? G.: You may. But you must show the reason for it, not merely its sociological charm. Grice: Serra, dimmi una cosa: tu che fai della prammatica una specie di rettorica conversazionale, come la prenderesti se ti dicessi che a Vadum Boum il mio allievo Strawson giudica la “rettorica” triviale… ma proprio nel senso etimologico sbagliato? Serra: Ah! “Triviale” come cosa da trivio, dunque da poco conto? O come cosa da trivio, dunque da fondamenta del discorso? Grice: Appunto: lui la prende come “da poco”, io come “da strada maestra”. E quando gli risposi, mi uscì quasi da sola una regoletta (più latina che inglese): Sensus non sunt multiplicandī praeter necessitatem—ma confesso che non era chiaro quid Strawson “triviale” diceret, se già non distingueva fra il trivio e la trivialità. Serra: Le tue fioriture rettoriche, essendo solo implicate, decorano senza ingombrare, maestro Grice! Perché gli fai capire che la rettorica è “del trivio” in senso nobile, e insieme gli togli il vizio di moltiplicare i sensi come se fossero coriandoli: un ornamento sì, ma con economia. Serra da Cesena , Giannangelo Giuseppe (1748). Compendio della rettorica nel quale si dà un nuovo, facile, ed utilissimo metodo d’insegnare l’arte oratoria. Napoli: Bortoli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sertorio – Ossia: Grice e Sertorio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sertorio The gens Sertoria was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Few members of this gens appear in history, the most illustrious of whom was the Roman general Quintus Sertorius, who defied the dictator Sulla and his allies for a decade after the populares were driven from power in Rome.[1]  Origin The nomen Sertorius is a patronymic surname, derived from the rare praenomen Sertor. Chase suggests that it was the equivalent of servator, meaning "one who protects" or "preserves".[2][3]  Praenomina The Sertorii used a variety of common praenomina, including Gaius, Gnaeus, Lucius, Publius, Quintus, and Titus.  Branches and cognomina The Sertorii of the Republic were not divided into distinct families. The general Sertorius was born at Nursia, in Sabinum, where his family had lived for several generations. In imperial times there was a family bearing the cognomen Brocchus, originally referring to someone with prominent teeth.[4][5]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Quintus Sertorius, a celebrated general in the last decades of the Republic. He fought alongside Marius and Cinna, and later established an independent state in Hispania during the dictatorship of Sulla, but was finally murdered by one of his officers.[6][1] Sertorius Severus, a man of praetorian rank, was named one of the heirs of Pomponia Galla, together with Pliny the Younger.[7] Lucius Sertorius L. f. Sisenna, buried at Verona in Venetia and Histria, along with his wife, Terentia Maxima, with an altar dedicated by their sons, Lucius Sertorius Firmus and Quintus Sertorius Festus.[8] Lucius Sertorius L. f. L. n. Firmus, the son of Lucius Sertorius Sisenna and Terentia Maxima, brother of Quintus Sertorius Festus, and husband of Domitia Prisca, was Aquilifer in the Legio XI Claudia, with whom he was buried at Verona in a tomb dating from the second half of the first century.[9] Quintus Sertorius L. f. L. n. Festus, the son of Lucius Sertorius Sisenna and Terentia Maxima, and brother of Lucius Sertorius Firmus, was a centurion in the Legio XI Claudia. He was buried alongside his parents and brother at Verona, with a monument dating from the second half of the first century.[10] Sertorius, the husband of Bibula, mentioned by Juvenal.[11][12] Sertorius Clemens, a medical writer mentioned by Galen.[12] Gaius Sertorius Cattianus, equestrian governor of Mauretania Tingitana around AD 200.[13] Sertorii Brocchi Gaius Sertorius Brocchus, proconsul of an uncertain province during the reign of Claudius.[12] Gaius Sertorius Brocchus Quintus Servaeus Innocens, consul suffectus in AD 101.[14] Gnaeus Sertorius C. f. Brocchus Aquilius Agricola Pedanius Fuscus Salinator Julius Servianus, named in an inscription from Doclea in Dalmatia.[12] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek & Roman Biography & Mythology, vol. III, pp. 789–792 ("Quintus Sertorius").  Liber de Praenominibus.  Chase, pp. 142, 143.  Chase, p. 109.  Dictionary of Greek & Roman Biography & Mythology, vol. I, p. 506 ("Brocchus").  Plutarch, "The Life of Sertorius", passim.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, v. 1.  CIL V, 3747.  CIL V, 3375.  CIL V, 3374.  Juvenal, Satirae, vi. 142.  PIR, vol. III, pp. 223, 224.  Spaul, "Governors of Tingitana", p. 248.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244. Bibliography Liber de Praenominibus, a short treatise of uncertain authorship, traditionally appended to Valerius Maximus' Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Satirae (Satires). Plutarchus, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). J.E.H. Spaul, "Governors of Tingitana", in Antiquités Africaines, vol. 30 (1994). Category: Roman gentes and for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sertorio – Ossia: Grice e Sertorio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Sertorio For the Sertorii, the first-best choice is Quintus Sertorius, but not simply because he is the famous rebel-general in Hispania. He is best because he gives Grice and Speranza a uniquely rich Roman case of authority sustained by signs: the white fawn, the alternative senate, the Spanish constituency, the Marian-Roman identity preserved outside Rome, and finally the collapse of trust inside his own circle. Sertorius is not merely a military commander; he is a man who governs by making others take omens, offices, and Roman forms as meaning what he needs them to mean. SERTORIVS. Cerva alba monuit. (The white fawn has warned me.) +> My counsel is not merely strategic; it is to be received as divinely or providentially authorised. SCEPTICVS. Cerva est, non senatus. (It is a fawn, not a senate.) +> A natural animal sign cannot by itself generate political authority. SERTORIVS. Senatus saepe minus monet quam cerva, si populus intellegit. (A senate often warns less than a fawn, if the people understand.) +> Authority depends on uptake; the sign works because the audience is prepared to treat it as meaningful. SCEPTICVS. Ergo fallis Hispanos? (Then you deceive the Spaniards?) +> The fawn-oracle is being treated as manipulation rather than leadership. SERTORIVS. Non falluntur, si fortius pugnant. (They are not deceived if they fight more bravely.) +> The practical effect of the sign may matter more than its literal divine origin. SCEPTICVS. Roma sine Roma? (Rome without Rome?) +> Sertorius’s Spanish polity claims Roman legitimacy while geographically outside the city. SERTORIVS. Ubi disciplina Romana manet, illic Roma nondum periit. (Where Roman discipline remains, there Rome has not yet perished.) +> Roman identity is institutional and performative, not merely territorial. The Gricean interest is that Sertorius keeps producing authorised meaning under conditions where ordinary authority has broken. His fawn is a natural animal made into a non-natural political sign by managed context and repeated uptake. His Hispania becomes “Roman” not because it is Rome, but because he makes Roman forms, councils, training, names, and expectations function there. In that sense he is a master of displaced legitimacy. The tragedy is that the system depends on trust. Once his officers suspect that the signs are theatre, or that command has become personal survival, the implicature of authorised leadership collapses. Perperna’s conspiracy is not merely military treachery; it is failed uptake. Sertorius can keep Spaniards and exiles reading the fawn, the senate, and the camp as meaningful only so long as enough participants accept the game. Dry Speranzian formula: Sertorius had no Rome, so he made one; he had no oracle, so he trained a fawn; he had no constitutional security, so he governed by uptake. This is why he is better than the later Sertorii. The others have offices, tombs, or medical notes. Sertorius has a whole polity held together by implicature and eventually undone when the addressees stopped believing the signs.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Sertorio – Ossia: Grice e Sertorio: il deutero-esperanto nella filosofia ligure – By , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice. Note su Le cosmogonie misteriose svelate. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice Giacomo Francesco Sertorio (Genova, Liguria): il deutero-esperanto nella filosofia ligure. In comparing Grice and Giacomo Francesco Sertorio on reason-governed conversational meaning, one sees a clear contrast between an implicit, pragmatics-first conception of communication and an explicit, grammar-centered one. Grice’s theory treats conversational meaning as fundamentally inferential: speakers rely on shared rational principles and cooperative expectations to generate implicatures that are not linguistically encoded but pragmatically recovered, so that what is meant regularly outruns what is said. Sertorio, by contrast, approaches universality in language from the side of formal design and explicit articulation. His classification of auxiliary languages, including the deutero‑esperanto attributed to Grice, reflects a skepticism that adult communication can depend on tacit inference alone, given that speakers already arrive equipped with fully developed mother tongues. Where Grice places the burden of meaning on the interlocutors’ capacity to reason about intentions, relevance, and silence, Sertorio insists that a universal language must externalize meaning through overt grammatical, numerical, and lexical structures, minimizing reliance on what remains unsaid. The opposition thus mirrors a deeper philosophical divergence: Grice locates universality in shared rational norms governing conversation, whereas Sertorio locates it in the explicit formal architecture of an ideal language, designed to constrain interpretation so that communicative success does not depend on implicature but on prior codification. S. partecipa al dibattito pubblicando dapprima il saggio  “Elementi di grammatica analitica universale,” poi “Un esame filosofico della grammatica universale,” e, infine, “Il problema della lingua universale.” In quest'ultimo saggio, a proposito dei diversi sistemi inventati – incluso il deutero-esperanto di Grice, S. individua tre fondamentali tipologie di lingue ausiliarie. Il primo tipo comprende quella categoria di linguaggi che definiamo a posteriori che riprendono alcuni, o tutti gli, elementi, non di rado modificandoli, da lingue storico- naturali, come può essere l'italiano, il francese, il cinese, ecc.. Il secondo tipo è costituito da quelle lingue che definiamo a priori con le quali è possibile comunicare sia in via scritta che in via orale, ovvero che presentano una forma ideografico-fonetica tale da permettere non solo la semplificazione della scrittura, ma anche una sua agevole e veloce riproduzione tramite foni. L’ultima tipologia è costituita da quelle lingue che adottano delle scritture tipografiche, crittografiche, numeriche, nelle quali gl’elementi fondamentali della lingua sono utilizzati per trasferire solo l'idea della cosa che si vuole comunicare, ma che non presentano un reale metodo di comunicazione orale. Della seconda categoria discute ampiamente nel primo saggio dedicato al problema della lingua universale, che intende come lingua adatta alla comunicazione tra persone adulte, che hanno già delle idee proprie sviluppate attraverso l'uso della loro LINGUA MADRE – l’inglese oxoniano di H. P. Gice. Qui S. s’occupa innanzitutto della definizione del sistema numerico della lingua ideale, e ne propone di due tipi differenti, sia a base decimale che sessagesimale, e, poi, del suo sistema GRAMMATICALE – cioe, morfologia, sintassi, morfo-sintassi – (“Pirots karulise elatically”) e lessicale (“pirot, karulise, elatic”. Le informazioni seguenti sono tratte da S., Elementi di grammatica analitica universale,  deutero-esperanto.  Grice: Sertorio, hai mai pensato che inventare una lingua universale sia un po’ come organizzare una cena tra filosofi: tutti hanno fame di comunicare, ma nessuno è d’accordo sul menu! Sertorio: Ah, caro Grice, se solo sapessi quanti ingredienti ho dovuto mescolare! Ho scritto di lingue a posteriori – che prendono spunti qua e là, come una ratatouille linguistica – a priori – la cucina molecolare dell’ideogramma – e delle lingue crittografiche, che sembrano ricette segrete di nonna... Però, il vero problema è farle digerire agli adulti che già parlano la loro lingua madre! Grice: Ma forse, caro Sertorio, la vera lingua universale non sta nei numeri o nelle regole, bensì nelle pause tra una parola e l’altra... Dove ognuno, tacitamente, porta il proprio piatto preferito senza bisogno di esplicitare la ricetta. Sertorio: Le tue implicature forse non ci sono – ma CI SONO, glorioso Grice – come sono certo coglierai le mie (sic implicature)! A differenza di te, io devo sempre esplicitare ciò che dovrebbe restare tacito! Per me, la grammatica universale è come una tavola imbandita: se non dici cosa c’è, nessuno si serve… e magari si rischia di restare a digiuno! Sertorio, Giacomo Francesco (1879). Le cosmogonie misteriose svelate. Oneglia: Ghilini

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servenio – Ossia: Grice e Servenio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servenio The gens Servenia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens are mentioned in ancient writers, but a number are known from inscriptions, dating from the late Republic to the third century. At least some of the Servenii attained senatorial rank under the early Empire. None of them appear to have held the consulship, but Lucius Servenius Cornutus was praetor, and an important provincial governor under the Flavian dynasty.[1]  Origin The nomen Servenius gives few indications of the family's origin. It seems to belong to a class of gentilicia formed with suffixes that never became widespread, or came to be regarded as regular gentile-forming suffixes.[2] The geographical distribution of the earliest Servenii may be more useful. They came from a small region of Umbria, as attested by inscriptions from Hispellum, Asisium, and Fulginiae, strong evidence that the family was of Umbrian origin.  Praenomina The Servenii used a variety of common praenomina, chiefly Lucius, Gaius, and Marcus, the most common names throughout Roman history. Less frequently, they used other common names, such as Publius, Quintus, Sextus, and Gnaeus, the last of which is only found among the earliest Servenii. In another early inscription, one of the Servenii bears the rare praenomen Rufus.[3]  Branches and cognomina Like many other gentes that came to prominence in imperial times, the Servenii cannot be clearly divided into distinct families, unless the Servenii of Acmonia in Asia constituted a single family. They bore cognomina such as Capito, originally a nickname for someone with a large or prominent head,[4] and Cornutus, an old surname probably referring to callous or horny skin.[5] For a relatively obscure gens, the Servenii were particularly widespread, colonizing not only various parts of Italy, but also Britannia, Gaul, Spain, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Asia, and Africa.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Rufus Servenius Sex. f. Provincialis, buried at Hispellum in Umbria during the first century BC.[3] Gaius Servenius C. f., buried at Hispellum in the latter half of the first century BC.[6] Gaius Servenius Cn. f., buried at Asisium in Umbria, during the reign of Augustus.[7] Servenius Ɔ. l. Chilo, a freedman, and caretaker of the artwork at the temple of Minerva at Hispellum during the reign of Augustus.[8] Gaius Servenius Cn. f. Clemens, buried at Asisium in the early part of the first century.[9] Lucius Servenius L. l. Daedalus, a freedman buried at Rome in the first half of the first century.[10] Lucius Servenius Gallus, praetor in AD 62, named in two inscriptions from Herculaneum in Campania.[11] Servenius Capito, Archon of Acmonia in Asia in the time of Nero. His wife was Julia Severa, and they may have been the parents of Lucius Servenius Cornutus, who seems to have come from Acmonia.[1] Lucius Servenius L. f. Cornutus, a native of Acmonia, and perhaps the son of Servenius Capito and Julia Severa, filled a number of appointments and magistracies during the time of the Flavian emperors, serving as decemvir stlitibus judicandis, quaestor in Cyprus, aedile, praetor, and governor of Asia.[1] Servenia Cornuta Cornelia Calpurnia Valeria Secunda Cotia Procilla Luculla, a native of Galatia, and the wife of Publius Calpurnius Proculus Cornelianus, a Roman senator.[12] Servenius Jucundus, dedicated a tomb at Rome, dating to the first century or the early part of the second, for his wife, Gellia Vestina.[13] Quintus Servenius Primus, a magistrate at Vaga in Africa Proconsularis in AD 155, presided over an offering to Saturn, performed by the priest Marcus Gargilius Zabo on the fourth day[i] before the Ides of November.[14] Marcus Servenius Punicus, buried at an uncertain location in Dalmatia, with a monument from his son, Marcus Servenius Doctus, dating to the first century, or the first half of the second.[15] Marcus Servenius M. f. Doctus, dedicated a first- or second-century monument in Dalmatia to his father, Marcus Servenius Punicus.[15] Servenia Paulina, buried at Valentia in Hispania Citerior, in a tomb dedicated by her husband, Lucius Publicius Glycerus, dating to the second century.[16] Servenius Urio, dedicated a tomb at Aquincum in Pannonia Inferior, dating to the latter half of the second century, to his wife, Antistia Firma, aged twenty-five.[17] Servenia Marcella, the widow of Gaius Flavius, was buried at Doclea in Dalmatia in the second or third century, with a monument from her daughter, Flavia Prisca.[18] Servenius Proculus, a soldier in the first cohort of the Vigiles at Rome in AD 205, serving in the century of Iuvenis.[19] Undated Servenii Gaius Servenius, one of the duumviri jure dicundo at Fulginiae in Umbria.[20] Sextus Servenius, buried at Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis, in a tomb dedicated by his sister, Posilla.[21] Marcus Servenius Alexander, one of the Sodales of the deified Claudius at Beneventum in Samnium, where he was buried, aged ninety-seven years, two months, and twelve days, along with his wife, Junia Capriola.[22] Gaius Servenius Artemidorus, dedicated a tomb at Rome to Valeria Philippina, his wife of six years.[23] Marcus Servenius M. f. Felix, buried at Thibilis in Numidia, aged eighty-nine.[24] Quintus Servenius Fucianus, named in an inscription from Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis.[25] Sextus Servenius Gemellus, buried at Ammaedara in Africa Proconsularis, aged seventy-eight, with a monument dedicated by his son. Caelia Nina, buried in the same tomb, aged ninety, may have been his wife.[26] Publius Servenius Ɔ. l. Philocles, a freedman named in an inscription from Cures, along with Publius Servenius Philogenes, probably his freedman, and the freedwoman Tullia Hilara.[27] Publius Servenius P. l. Philogenes, probably the freedman of Publius Servenius Philocles, alongside whom he is mentioned in an inscription from Cures.[27] (Servenia) Sex. f. Posilla, dedicated a tomb at Nemausus to her brother, Sextus Servenius.[21] Publius Servenius Sp. f. Proculus, built a family sepulchre at Iader in Dalmatia, from the funds inherited from his mother, Tritua. Among those buried were his son, Publius Servenius Proculus, and Trebia Optata, a freedwoman, and perhaps his wife.[28] Publius Servenius P. f. Proculus, the son of Publius Servenius Proculus, buried in a family sepulchre built by his father at Iader.[28] Gaius Servenius Racilianus, buried at Ugultunia in Hispania Baetica, aged twenty-two.[29] Gaius Servenius Racilianus, buried at Baeturia in Hispania Baetica, aged two.[30] Lucius Servenius L. l. Seleucus, a freedman buried at Narbo, along with his wife, the freedwoman Munatia Benigna.[31] Lucius Servenius Super, named in an inscription from Derventio Brigantum in Britannia.[32] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  The Ides of November fell on the thirteenth. Since they represented the full moon on the old lunar calendar, the first day before the Ides was the day before moonrise—the same day by modern reckoning. The fourth day before the Ides of November fell on November 10, the beginning of winter, according to Varro. References  PIR, S. 404.  Chase, p. 127.  CIL XI, 5338.  Chase, p. 109.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v.v. cornus.  AE 1988, 526.  CIL XI, 5539.  CIL XI, 5263.  CIL XI, 5540.  CIL VI, 5922.  AE 1959, 257, AE 1996, 407.  PIR, S. 405.  Väänänen, Autoparco Vaticano, 65.  AE 1969/70, 657.  CIL III, 3190.  AE 2008, 738.  CIL III, 10539.  CIL III, 12701.  CIL VI, 1056.  CIL XI, 5225.  CIL XII, 3834.  CIL IX, 1698.  CIL VI, 26371.  CIL VIII, 5634.  CIL XII, 5136.  Wilmanns, Inscriptiones Africae Latinae, 162, 11.  EE, viii. 1. 205.  Ubi Erat Lupa Databank, 23204, EDCS-63400214.  CIL II, 1010.  AE 1991, 1015.  CIL XII, 5137.  RIB, ii. 2. 2415, 4. Bibliography Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Wilhelm Henzen, Ephemeris Epigraphica: Corporis Inscriptionum Latinarum Supplementum (Journal of Inscriptions: Supplement to the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, abbreviated EE), Institute of Roman Archaeology, Rome (1872–1913). Gustav Wilmanns, Inscriptiones Africae Latinae (Latin Inscriptions from Africa, abbreviated ILAfr), Georg Reimer, Berlin (1881). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). Veikko Väänänen, Le iscrizioni della necropoli dell'autoparco Vaticano (Inscriptions of the Vatican Autopark Necropolis), G. Bardi, Rome (1973). The Roman Inscriptions of Britain (abbreviated RIB), Oxford, (1990–present). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servenio – Ossia: Grice e Servenio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servenio For the Servenii, my first-best choice is Servenius Chilo, the freedman and caretaker of the artwork at the temple of Minerva at Hispellum. Cornutus, with his high offices and provincial governorship, is grander; but Chilo is better for Grice-Speranza because he gives a beautifully precise case of custodianship, interpretation, and public art. He is not the artist, not the magistrate, not the goddess, but the man responsible for the displayed objects through which the city sees, remembers, and understands Minerva. SERVENIVS CHILO. Imagines deae custodio. (I guard the images of the goddess.) +> My office concerns not only property but public meaning. SCEPTICVS. Custos es, non interpres. (You are a guard, not an interpreter.) +> Your task is material preservation, not understanding. CHILO. Quod male positum est, male intellegitur. (What is badly placed is badly understood.) +> Display arrangement affects uptake. SCEPTICVS. Statua ipsa loquitur. (The statue itself speaks.) +> The work’s meaning is assumed to be self-sufficient. CHILO. Loquitur, si locus, lumen, ritus respondent. (It speaks, if place, light, and rite answer.) +> A public object means within a setting, not in isolation. SCEPTICVS. Ergo Minervam doces? (Then you teach Minerva?) +> The caretaker’s role is being mocked as presumptuous. CHILO. Non deam doceo, sed spectatores. (I do not teach the goddess, but the spectators.) +> The object does not need guidance; the audience does. This is a quietly excellent Gricean case. A temple image is not merely seen; it is taken under a description. The caretaker controls, or at least helps control, conditions of uptake: placement, visibility, cleanliness, ritual context, sequence, access, perhaps even labels or oral explanation. The “meaning” of the object is not exhausted by marble, bronze, paint, or divine subject. It is institutionally and conversationally framed. Chilo is also a freedman, which matters. Like many of Speranza’s best minor figures, he occupies the middle zone: not socially supreme, but pragmatically indispensable. A senator may endow a temple; a sculptor may make the statue; but the freedman caretaker keeps the image legible from day to day. In Gricean terms, he maintains the felicity conditions for public viewing. The Cornutus line would give the obvious imperial career: quaestor, aedile, praetor, governor of Asia. But Chilo gives the sharper miniature. His name itself, Chilo, with Greek colouring, beside Minerva at Hispellum, gives Speranza a local Italic-Greek-Roman triangle: a freedman with a Greek name guarding a Roman goddess of wisdom in an Umbrian setting. That is almost a museum of uptake. Dry Speranzian formula: Servenius Cornutus governed provinces; Servenius Chilo governed sight. For Grice, the second may be better, because a statue badly placed is like a sentence badly uttered: it may contain sense, but it has lost its occasion. And Grice, who became Tutor in Philosophy at St. John's in 1938, having been Hammsworth Senior Scholar in Philosophy at Merton 1936-1937 would understand Hegel's pun on the 'owl' of Minerva -- what's the German for that? -- and civetta Minerva -- nottola di Minerva -- since when the association of this with Philosophy as per Hegel? Was Hegel being original? Is that just Pallas Athenea? Thanks Yes. Hegel’s famous phrase is German: “die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.” Usually translated: “the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.” It occurs in the Preface to Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1820/1821). The point is that philosophy does not legislate the world in advance; it understands a form of life only when that form has reached maturity, or even begun to pass away. Philosophy is retrospective comprehension, not morning prophecy. In Italian one finds both: la civetta di Minerva la nottola di Minerva “Nottola” is often closer to the small owl / night-bird register, while “civetta” is the more familiar owl-word. Philosophically, la nottola di Minerva has become the standard Hegelian tag in Italian discussion. Was Hegel being original? Not in the bare association. Minerva is the Roman Athena, and Athena/Minerva had long been associated with the owl as a symbol of wisdom. The Greek side is Pallas Athena; the owl is the glaux, the Athenians’ owl, familiar from Athenian coinage. Roman Minerva inherits the wisdom-goddess association. So the bird belongs to the goddess long before Hegel. What is Hegel’s own contribution is the temporal-philosophical turn: the owl flies at dusk. He takes the old emblem of wisdom and turns it into a thesis about philosophy’s lateness. Wisdom comes not at dawn, to instruct action before history begins, but at evening, when a historical form can finally be understood. A Grice-Speranza gloss: HEGEL. Die Eule der Minerva fliegt erst in der Dämmerung. (The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.) +> Philosophy understands a form of life only when that form has already become historically legible. GRICE. Then philosophy is not an undergraduate timetable. +> Wisdom is not delivered before the tutorial essay is due. SPERANZA. Minerva had the owl already; Hegel merely taught it to be late. +> The symbol is ancient, but the retrospective doctrine is Hegel’s. Grice, with Lit. Hum. behind him and St John’s before him, would appreciate the joke: philosophy is wise, perhaps, but not helpfully punctual. But strictly, Hegel is not associating this as metaphor for PHILOSOPHIA -- it would be SAPIENTIA. One would not think of a goddess born of a brain (Giove's) as being just LOVE OF SAPIENTIA (PHILO-sophia) OR SAPIENTIA OF LOVE (philo-SOPHIA -- Heidegger), but SAPIENTIA itself? Thanks Yes — strictly, Hegel’s image is not the literal goddess Philosophia, but Minerva as Sapientia, or wisdom itself under the Roman-Athenian emblem. The owl belongs to Minerva/Athena as goddess of wisdom, not to philosophia understood etymologically as the love of wisdom. So Grice could make the dry distinction: HEGEL. Die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug. (The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.) +> Wisdom understands a form of life only when that form has reached its evening. GRICE. Not the owl of Philosophia? +> Hegel is invoking wisdom possessed, not merely wisdom desired. SPERANZA. Philosophia loves Sapientia; Minerva is not in love with herself. +> The goddess represents wisdom, not the pursuit of wisdom. That matters because philosophia, as philo-sophia, remains aspirational: love, pursuit, desire, apprenticeship. Minerva/Athena is not that. She is wisdom armed, civic, born from Jupiter’s head — not a lover of sapientia but its divine figure. If anything, Philosophia is the one who would attend Minerva, not become her. Hegel’s point therefore is stronger than “philosophy flies late.” He is saying that wisdom, as philosophical comprehension, arrives retrospectively. Philosophy is not mere wanting-to-know; it is sapiential recollection once a world has become intelligible. The owl is not a student bird. It is the bird of late understanding. Dry Speranzian formula: Hegel did not give us the sparrow of Philosophia looking for Sapientia at breakfast. He gave us Minerva’s owl at dusk. That is not the love of wisdom beginning; it is wisdom finally seeing. and also Heidegger's idea that philo-sophia (cf. philo-logia) is not love or wisdom (cf. love of words) but quite the opposite: wisom of love, word of love). Can you track this etymological trick by Heidegger -- Yes. Heidegger’s trick is not a standard etymology but a deliberately “destructive” re-hearing of the Greek compound. He resists the schoolbook gloss philosophia = “love of wisdom” as though philein were merely subjective affection directed at an object called sophia. Instead, in texts such as What Is Philosophy? and related discussions, he tries to hear philein as a belonging-to, accord, or responsive attunement with sophia. So philosophia becomes less “I love wisdom” and more “a being-in-correspondence with sophon,” a responsive answering to what is wise, or to the disclosure of Being as the Greeks first experienced it. The same style appears with philologia. The ordinary gloss is “love of words” or “love of learning/literature.” Heidegger, predictably, wants something less hobby-like. Philology is not just fondness for words; it is a listening to the logos, a being claimed by language. So your inversion, “wisdom of love” or “word of love,” captures the joke, though Heidegger would probably not put it as a simple reversal of head/modifier. He is not saying Greek compounds mechanically mean the second noun possesses the first. He is trying to undo a modern subject-object reading: not a subject loving an object, but a relation in which the human being is drawn into accord with sophia or logos. In Speranza’s dry register: HEIDEGGERVS. Philosophia non est tantum amor sapientiae. (Philosophy is not merely love of wisdom.) +> The usual etymology is too psychological and subject-object in form. GRICE. Tum quid amat? (Then what does it love?) +> The ordinary analysis expects philo- to name an attitude toward an object. HEIDEGGERVS. Non amat quasi rem; respondet sophon. (It does not love as if wisdom were a thing; it answers to the wise.) +> The compound is being re-heard as correspondence or attunement, not appetite. SPERANZA. Minerva igitur non est philosophia. (Therefore Minerva is not philosophy.) +> The goddess embodies wisdom; philosophy names a human relation to it. GRICE. Love of wisdom is already less tidy than it looked. +> The genitive in the English gloss conceals several possible relations. So yes: Heidegger’s “etymology” is a philosophical reactivation, not safe historical morphology. Strictly philologically, philosophia is formed from philo- and sophia and means love/pursuit of wisdom. Heidegger’s move is to say that this “love” must be heard more originally as belonging, friendship, correspondence, or responsiveness. Grice would call that not etymology alone but a very strenuous implicature drawn from a Greek word under metaphysical pressure. For Speranza, that is exactly why it is useful and dangerous.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Serveo – Ossia: Grice e Serveo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Serveo. The gens Servaea was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned during the reign of Tiberius, from which time they presumably rose steadily through the imperial bureaucracy, attaining the consulship under Domitian. A number of inscriptions from the second century or later indicate some of them had settled in Africa, where one family of this gens became particularly illustrious under the Antonine and Severan dynasties.  Origin The nomen Servaeus belongs to a class of gentilicia formed with the suffix -aeus, which was typical among families of Oscan or Umbrian derivation.[1] The root resembles and may be cognate with the Latin praenomen Servius, meaning one who "keeps safe" or "preserves". In this case, Servaeus is most likely an Oscan or Umbrian cognate of the more common nomen Servilius.[2] A few of the Servaei mentioned in inscriptions lived in central or southern Italy, and one family of this gens bore the surname Sabinus, suggesting that they were of Sabine origin.[3][4]  Praenomina The chief praenomen of the Servaei was Quintus, with Lucius and Gaius evidently being used for younger sons. All were among the most common names throughout Roman history. Other praenomina occur infrequently.  Branches and cognomina The earliest of the Servaei to rise to prominence bore no surname. The first cognomen to appear among the family is Longinus, a diminutive of Longus, a surname originally designating someone who was tall; Servaeus Longinus may have acquired the surname as the son or grandson of a Servaeus Longus, or because he was moderately tall.[5] The name does not seem to have been passed down to subsequent generations. Sabinus, borne by two soldiers, a father and son who served in Galatia during the early second century, probably indicated that the family claimed descent from the Sabines, an ancient people of central Italy, some of whom had migrated to Rome at the time of the city's legendary founding in the eighth century BC.[6]  Innocens, borne by the two Servaei, perhaps father and son, who attained the consulship under Domitian and Trajan, indicated someone of blameless character, and belonged to a large class of surnames derived from a person's habits.[7][8] The full nomenclature of the first Innocens is uncertain, but the second, who held office in AD 101, bore the polyonymous appellation of Gaius Sertorius Brocchus Quintus Servaeus Innocens, probably indicating that he was descended from the more illustrious house of the Sertorii through a female line.[9] Given the high station that this family reached, it seems possible that the Servaei of Gigthis in Africa Proconsularis was descended from them.  This family seems to have come to prominence with Quintus Servaeus Macer during the reign of Antoninus Pius. His surname, Macer, designated someone who was notably lean, but the chief cognomen of this family seems to have been Fuscus, "dark", which would likely have referred to someone with dark brown hair.[5][10] This alternated with Firmus, "strong" or "steadfast", and Felix, "happy" or "fortunate".[11] The Servaei Fusci were of equestrian rank, and seem to have formed part of the nobility of Gigthis, where they served in the local senate, and at least one of them, Quintus Servaeus Fuscus Cornelianus, served in the Roman Senate and held a number of important positions throughout the Empire. Another family of colonial Servaei lived at Sufetula in Numidia, but it remains unclear whether or how they might have been related to the Fusci. Some of them bore the surname Potitianus, perhaps commemorating their descent from the ancient Potitia gens.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Quintus Servaeus, a man of praetorian rank, was appointed governor of Commagene in AD 18. He was among the friends of Germanicus who accused Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso of having poisoned the young general. After the downfall of Sejanus, Servaeus was one of those who were falsely accused of conspiring with the disgraced consul, and condemned; but he avoided execution by giving evidence against Sejanus' accomplices.[12][13] Servaea Ɔ. l. Cleopatra, a freedwoman buried at Brundisium in Calabria, aged sixty-five, along with Gaius Caesius Aesopus, aged eighty, in a tomb dating to the first half of the first century.[14] Lucius Servaeus Longinus, named in an inscription from Rome, dating to the first half of the first century.[15] Quintus Servaeus, named in an inscription from Rome, dating to the early or middle part of the first century.[16] Servaeus Innocens, consul suffectus in AD 82, succeeding the emperor Domitian on the Ides of January, and continuing to the end of February.[17] Gaius Sertorius Brocchus Quintus Servaeus Innocens, consul suffectus for the months of April and May in AD 101.[17][18][19][20] Titus Servaeus Sabinus, a centurion primus pilus, buried at Savatra in Galatia during the first half of the second century, with a monument from his son, Lucius Servaeus Sabinus, who also became a centurion.[3] Lucius Servaeus T. f. Sabinus, son of the primus pilus Titus Servaeus Sabinus, was a centurion in the Legio VIIII Hispana, Legio III Augusta, and Legio VI Victrix. He was honoured with a statue at Savatra, dating to the first half of the second century.[3][4] Marcus Circius Servaeus, built a second-century tomb at Formiae in Latium for his wife, Acilia Primigenia.[21] Servaeus Eutychus, buried at Philippi in Macedonia, aged fifty, in a tomb dating between the first and third centuries, dedicated by his wife, Atiaria Acte.[22] Quintus Servaeus Victorinus, one of the duumviri quinquennales at Rome, made an offering to Fortuna at Rome, recorded in an inscription from the third century, or the latter part of the second.[23] Servaeus Avitus, an eques mentioned in two inscriptions from Lambaesis in Numidia, one of which dates to AD 283 or 284.[24] Servaei Fusci Quintus Servaeus Q. f. Macer, an eques, and one of the decurions appointed to administer Gigthis in Africa Proconsularis during the reign of Antoninus Pius, dedicated a temple painting and a column at Gigthis, and made offerings to the deified Hadrian, as well as to Romulus and Remus. He was the father of Quintus Servaeus Fuscus and Lucius Servaeus Firmus.[25][26] Quintus Servaeus Q. f. Q. n. Fuscus, together with his brother, Lucius Servaeus Firmus, dedicated a monument at Gigthis to their father, Quintus Servaeus Macer. He may be the same Quintus Servaeus Fuscus named in an inscription from Gigthis, recording his gift of money to another Quintus Servaeus Fuscus, probably his cousin.[26][27] Lucius Servaeus Firmus, together with his brother, Quintus Servaeus Fuscus, dedicated a monument at Gigthis to their father, Quintus Servaeus Macer. He was the husband of Aurelia Antonina, and father of Quintus Servaeus Fuscus and Quintus Servaeus Felix, who dedicated a monument at Gigthis to their mother.[26][28] Quintus Servaeus P. f. Q. n. Fuscus, named in an inscription from Gigthis, recording a gift of money from another Quintus Servaeus Fuscus, probably his cousin, although he describes him as his "faithful brother".[27] Quintus Servaeus L. f. Fuscus, the son of Lucius Servaeus Firmus and Aurelia Antonina, was a senator of Gigthis, who was honoured with a monument built at public expense. He and his brother, Quintus Servaeus Felix, dedicated a monument at Gigthis for their mother.[29][28] Quintus Servaeus L. f. Felix, the son of Lucius Servaeus Firmus and Aurelia Antonina, joined his brother, Quintus Servaeus Fuscus, in dedicating a monument at Gigthis to their mother.[28] Quintus Servaeus Q. f. Firmus, a member of the senate of Gigthis, who was honoured with a monument built at public expense.[30] Quintus Servaeus Fuscus Cornelianus, a native of Gigthis, was a Roman senator, who served as governor of Galatia circa AD 229. He had previously served as Legate of the Legio I Italica and the Legio XIII Gemina, as a judicial official over Calabria, Lucania, Apulia, and Bruttium, tribune of the plebs, and quaestor. He was honoured with a monument at Gigthis.[31][32][33] Quintus Servaeus Q. f. Honoratus, a flamen honoured by the city of Gigthis with a statue built at public expense.[34][35] Servaeus Insertor, dedicated a monument at Gigthis to his patron.[36] Gaius Servaeus C. f. Messius Pacaus, an eques and flamen at Gigthis, dedicated a monument to his wife, Servilia, the daughter of Gaius Servilius Serenus.[37] Servaei Potitiani Lucius Servaeus Amicus Potitianus, a senator, dedicated a monument at Sufetula in Africa Proconsularis to his grandmother, Flavia Statianilla, whose family had also been of senatorial rank. He may have been the brother of Servaea Flavia Statianilla Valeriana.[38][39] Servaea Novella Rufina Potitiana, named in an inscription from Sufetula, along with the freedmen Servaeus Eugenius and Servaeus Vagulus. She may have been a sister of Servaea Flavia Statianilla Valeriana, or perhaps her mother.[40][20] Servaea Flavia Statianilla Valeriana, a girl named in an inscription from Sufetula, along with the freedmen Eugenius and Vagulus. She may have been a brother of Lucius Servaeus Amicus Potitianus.[41][42] Servaeus Eugenius, a freedman named along with Servaeus Vagulus in inscriptions from Sufetula mentioning Servaea Novella Rufina Potitiana, and Servaea Flavia Statianilla Valeriana.[40][41] Servaeus Vagulus, a freedman named along with Servaeus Eugenius in inscriptions from Sufetula mentioning Servaea Novella Rufina Potitiana, and Servaea Flavia Statianilla Valeriana.[40][41] Undated Servaei Quintus Servaeus, named in an inscription from Rome, along with Gaius Popillius.[43] Servaea Concessula, the sister of Helpis, and sister-in-law of Hymnus, with whom she was buried in a family sepulchre at Rome.[44] Quintus Servaeus Eucarpus, named in an inscription from Corbilo in Gallia Narbonensis.[45] Quintus Servaeus Reburrus, made an offering to Mercury at the present site of Sommières, formerly part of Gallia Narbonensis.[46] Servaeus Sagaris, buried at Rome, with a monument from his wife, Cingonia Eucarpea.[47] Quintus Servaeus Q. l. Seuxus, a freedman at Rome.[48] See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, p. 120.  Chase, pp. 154, 155.  CIL III, 14398.  AE 1930, 109.  Chase, p. 110.  Chase, pp. 113, 114.  Chase, pp. 110, 111.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. innocens.  Salway, What's in a Name?, pp. 131–133.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. fuscus.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.vv. firmus, felix.  Tacitus, Annales, ii. 56, iii. 13, vi. 7.  PIR, S. 398.  AE 1978, 232.  CIL VI, 7459.  CIL VI, 39670.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244.  CIL VI, 2074.  AE 1991, 1360, AE 2008, 1732, AE 2014, 1645.  PIR, S. 401.  AE 1980, 212.  CIL III, 706.  CIL VI, 30871a.  CIL VIII, 2760, CIL VIII, 18346.  CIL VIII, 22697c, CIL VIII, 22698, CIL VIII, 22699, CIL VIII, 22709.  CIL VIII, 22736.  CIL VIII, 22734.  CIL VIII, 22722.  CIL VIII, 11040.  CIL VIII, 11039.  CIL VIII, 11028, CIL VIII, 22721.  AE 1972, 526.  PIR, S. 400.  CIL VIII, 32.  Wilmanns, Inscriptiones Africae Latinae, 23.  CIL VIII, 11041.  CIL VIII, 22741.  CIL VIII, 236.  PIR, S. 399.  CIL VIII, 237.  CIL VII, 238.  PIR, S. 402.  CIL VI, 5807.  CIL VI, 19617.  CIL XII, 5701,66.  CIL XII, 5951.  CIL VI, 26362.  CIL VI, 36335. Bibliography Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Gustav Wilmanns, Inscriptiones Africae Latinae (Latin Inscriptions from Africa), Georg Reimer, Berlin (1881). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). Benet Salway, "What’s in a Name? A Survey of Roman Onomastic Practice from c. 700 B.C. to A.D. 700", in Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 84, pp. 124–145 (1994). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Category: Roman gentes And your fist-best choice for a Grice-Speranza vignette for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Serveo – Ossia: Grice e Serveo -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Serveo. For the Servaei, my first-best choice is not the consul Innocens, nor the African senator Fuscus Cornelianus, but the earlier Quintus Servaeus, friend of Germanicus, accuser of Piso, later himself accused after the fall of Sejanus, and finally saved by turning king's evidence against Sejanus' associates. Why? Because he gives us a nearly perfect Gricean problem of testimony, accusation, credibility, and changing conversational standing. At one moment:  Servaeus says: "Piso poisoned Germanicus." Rome treats him as a trustworthy witness.  A few years later:  Servaeus himself is accused. The very man whose word counted becomes a suspect.  Then:  Servaeus survives by giving evidence against others. The hearer's question becomes not "What does he say?" but "Why is he saying it now?"  That is pure Grice. A vignette: SERVAEVS. Piso Germanicum veneno sustulit. (Piso removed Germanicus by poison.) +> My testimony is to be received as evidence against Piso. SENATOR. Credimus. (We believe you.) +> Your standing as witness is currently intact. Some years later. ACCVSATOR. Servaeus cum Seiano consenserat. (Servaeus was in league with Sejanus.) +> The credibility previously granted to the witness is now itself at issue. SERVAEVS. Innocens sum. (I am innocent.) +> My testimony about myself should be admitted under the same standards once applied to my testimony about others. SENATOR. Facile est innocentem se dicere. (It is easy to call oneself innocent.) +> The problem is no longer content but source. SERVAEVS. Nomina sociorum Seiani dabo. (I shall give the names of Sejanus' associates.) +> My information is valuable enough to purchase renewed credibility. SENATOR. Nunc verum dicis an vitam emis? (Are you telling the truth now, or buying your life?) +> Motive contaminates testimonial force. That last line is almost the whole Gricean problem in one sentence. The explicit content is:  "The names are X, Y, and Z."  But the hearer immediately asks:  Why is he saying this?   Does he believe it?   Is he trying to save himself?   Is this testimony or self-preservation?  The distinction between what is said and why it is said becomes decisive. A second reason I like this choice is the delicious irony of the cognomen Innocens elsewhere in the gens. The Servaei produce men literally called Innocens ("blameless"), while our Quintus Servaeus spends his career navigating accusations and counter-accusations. A Speranzian epigram almost writes itself: INNOCENS. Innocens vocor. (I am called Innocens.) +> My character is advertised by my name. GRICE. Nomen est; argumentum nondum est. (It is a name; it is not yet an argument.) +> Reputation is not evidence. Dry Speranzian formula:  The Servaei are a family of preservers by name. Quintus Servaeus preserved himself by testimony. Rome then had to decide whether a witness who speaks to survive is still a witness, or merely a survivor who talks.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servilio – Ossia: Grice e Servilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servilio The gens Servilia was a patrician family at ancient Rome. The gens was celebrated during the early ages of the Republic, and the names of few gentes appear more frequently at this period in the consular Fasti. It continued to produce men of influence in the state down to the latest times of the Republic, and even in the imperial period. The first member of the gens who obtained the consulship was Publius Servilius Priscus Structus in 495 BC, and the last of the name who appears in the consular Fasti is Quintus Servilius Silanus, in AD 189, thus occupying a prominent position in the Roman state for nearly seven hundred years.  Like other Roman gentes, the Servilii of course had their own sacra; and they are said to have worshipped a triens, or copper coin, which is reported to have increased or diminished in size at various times, thus indicating the increase or diminution of the honors of the gens. Although the Servilii were originally patricians, in the later Republic there were also plebeian Servilii.[1][2][3]  Origin According to tradition, the Servilia gens was one of the Alban houses removed to Rome by Tullus Hostilius, and enrolled by him among the patricians.[4] It was, consequently, one of the gentes minores. The nomen Servilius is a patronymic surname, derived from the praenomen Servius, meaning "one who keeps safe" or "preserves".[5]  Praenomina The different branches of the Servilii each used slightly different sets of praenomina. The oldest stirpes used the praenomina Publius, Quintus, Spurius, and Gaius. The Servilii Caepiones used primarily Gnaeus and Quintus. The Servilii Gemini employed Gnaeus, Quintus, Publius, Gaius, and Marcus.  The gens must also have used the praenomen Servius, but no longer used it in historical times, possibly due to its similar sound to the Latin word for slave (servus).[6]  Branches and cognomina The Servilii were divided into numerous families; of these the names in the Republican period are Ahala, Axilla, Caepio, Casca, Geminus, Glaucia, Globulus, Priscus (with the agnomen Fidenas), Rullus, Structus, Tucca, and Vatia (with the agnomen Isauricus). The Structi, Prisci, Ahalae, and Caepiones were patricians; the Gemini originally patrician, and later plebeian; the Vatiae and Cascae plebeians. Other cognomina appear under the Empire. The only surnames found on coins are those of Ahala, Caepio, Casca, and Rullus.[1][7]  The cognomen Structus almost always occurs in connection with those of Priscus or Ahala. The only two Structi who are mentioned with this cognomen are Spurius Servilius Structus, who was consular tribune in 368 BC, and Spurius Servilius Structus, consul in 476 BC. The fact that Structus appears in two of the oldest stirpes of the Servilii, neither of which clearly predates the other, could indicate that persons bearing this surname were ancestral to both great houses.[8]  The Prisci ("antique") were an ancient family of the Servilia gens, and filled the highest offices of the state during the early years of the Republic. They also bore the agnomen of Structus, which is always appended to their name in the Fasti, till it was supplanted by that of Fidenas, which was first obtained by Quintus Servilius Priscus Structus, who took Fidenae in his dictatorship, in 435 BC, and which was also borne by his descendants.[9]  Ahala, of which Axilla is merely another form, is a diminutive of ala, a wing. A popular legend related that the name was first given to Gaius Servilius, magister equitum in 439 BC, because he hid the knife with which he slew Spurius Maelius in his armpit (also ala). However, this does not appear to be the case, since the name had been in use by the family for at least a generation before that event.[10]  The surnames Caepio and Geminus appear almost simultaneously in the middle of the third century BC, with the consuls of 253 and 252. Each was the grandson of a Gnaeus Servilius, suggesting that the two cognomina belonged to two branches of the same family. Caepio, an onion, belongs to a large class of surnames derived from ordinary objects, while Geminus originally denoted a twin, and was typically given to the younger of two brothers. In a discussion concerning appearances, Cicero mentions a certain Quintus Servilius Geminus, who was frequently mistaken for his brother, Publius, the consul of 252 BC. The Servilii Vatiae ("cross-legged") seem to be descended from the Gemini.[11][12][13]  Members Servilii Prisci et Structi Publius Servilius Priscus Structus, consul in 495 BC, defeated the Sabines and the Aurunci.[14] Quintus Servilius (Priscus Structus), magister equitum in 494 BC.[15] Spurius (or Gaius) Servilius (P. f.?) Structus, consul in 476 BC, repulsed in his attempt to retake the Janiculum from the Etruscans.[16][17] Quintus Servilius (Structus?) Priscus, consul in 468 and 466 BC. Publius Servilius Sp. f. P. n. Priscus, consul in 463 BC, was carried off in his consulship by the great plague which raged at Rome in this year.[18][19][20][21][22] Quintus Servilius P. f. Sp. n. Priscus, dictator in 435 and 418 BC, captured the town of Fidenae, thereby obtaining the surname Fidenas.[23][24] Quintus Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas, consular tribune in 402, 398, 395, 390, 388, and 386 BC. Quintus Servilius Q. f. Q. n. Fidenas, consular tribune in 382, 378, and 369 BC.[25] Spurius Servilius Priscus, censor in 378 BC.[26] Gaius Servilius Structus, grandfather of the consular tribune in 368 BC. Gaius Servilius C. f. Structus, father of the consular tribune in 368 BC. Spurius Servilius C. f. C. n. Structus, consular tribune in 368 BC.[2][27][28] Servilii Ahalae Gaius Servilius Structus Ahala, consul in 478 BC, died in his year of office.[2][29] Gaius Servilius Ahala, allegedly magister equitum in 439 BC, slew Spurius Maelius. Quintus Servilius C. f. Ahala, father of Gaius Servilius Axilla, consular tribune from 419 to 417 BC. Gaius Servilius Q. f. C. n. Axilla, consul in 427 BC, consular tribune in 419, 418 and 417 BC, and magister equitum in 418.[2][30][31][32] Publius Servilius Q. f. (C. n.) Ahala, father of Gaius, the magister equitum of 408 BC. Gaius Servilius P. f. Q. n. Ahala, consular tribune in 408, 407, and 402 BC, and magister equitum in 408. Gaius Servilius Ahala, magister equitum in 389 and 385 BC. Quintus Servilius Q. f. Ahala, father of Quintus Servilius Ahala, the consul of 365 BC. Quintus Servilius Q. f. Q. n. Ahala, consul in 365 and 362 BC, and dictator in 360. Quintus Servilius Q. f. Q. n. Ahala, magister equitum in 351 and consul in 342 BC.[33] Servilii Caepiones Gnaeus Servilius, grandfather of the consul of 253 BC. Gnaeus Servilius Cn. f., father of the consul of 253 BC. Gnaeus Servilius Cn. f. Cn. n. Caepio, consul in 253 BC, during the First Punic War, sailed to the coast of Africa with his colleague, Gaius Sempronius Blaesus. Gnaeus Servilius Cn. f. Cn. n. Caepio, father of the consul of 203 BC. Gnaeus Servilius Cn. f. Cn. n. Caepio, consul in 203 BC, during the Second Punic War. Gnaeus Servilius Cn. f. Cn. n. Caepio, consul in 169 BC. Quintus Fabius Q. f. Q. n. Maximus Servilianus, son of Gnaeus Servilius Caepio, the consul of 169 BC, and brother of Gnaeus, consul in 141, and Quintus, consul in 140, was adopted by Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus. He was consul in 142 BC. Gnaeus Servilius Cn. f. Cn. n. Caepio, consul in 141 and censor in 125 BC.[34][35][36] Servilia, wife of Quintus Lutatius Catulus.[37] Servilia, wife of Marcus Livius Drusus. Quintus Servilius Cn. f. Cn. n. Caepio, consul in 140 BC, during the Lusitanian War. Quintus Servilius Q. f. Cn. n. Caepio, consul in 106 BC, during the Cimbrian War. His army was annihilated at the Battle of Arausio in 105. Gnaeus Servilius Caepio, quaestor around 105 BC, may have been the father of Servilia, the wife of Appius Claudius Pulcher, who died in a shipwreck while still young.[38][39] Quintus Servilius (Q. f. Q. n.) Caepio, quaestor urbanus in 103 BC, was killed in an ambush at Asculum in Picenum, at the beginning of the Social War.[40][41] Servilia Q. f. Q. n., mistress of Julius Caesar and mother of Marcus Brutus, the tyrannicide. Servilia Q. f. Q. n., married Lucullus, the conqueror of Mithridates. Quintus Servilius Caepio, adoptive father of Brutus. He probably married a daughter of the orator Hortensius. Servilius Caepio, military tribune during the war against Spartacus, in 72 BC. Servilius Caepio, a supporter of Caesar, to whose daughter, Julia, he was once betrothed.[42][43][44] Quintus Servilius Q. f. Caepio Brutus, the name taken by Marcus Junius Brutus, the tyrannicide, when he was adopted by his uncle, the military tribune of 72 BC. Servilii Gemini Gnaeus Servilius, grandfather of Publius Servilius Geminus, the consul of 252 and 248 BC. Possibly the same Gnaeus Servilius who was the ancestor of the Caepiones. Quintus Servilius Cn. f., father of Quintus and Publius Servilius Geminus. Publius Servilius Q. f. Cn. n. Geminus, consul in 252 and 248 BC, during the First Punic War. Quintus Servilius Q. f. Cn. n. Geminus, twin brother of the consul Publius Servilius Geminus. Gnaeus Servilius P. f. Q. n. Geminus, consul in 217 BC, slain at the Battle of Cannae in 216. Gaius Servilius P. f. (Geminus), praetor before 218 BC, taken prisoner by the Boii that year. Either he or his sons went over to the plebeians. Gaius Servilius C. f. P. n. (Geminus),[i] consul in 203 and dictator in 202 BC, and later pontifex maximus. Marcus Servilius C. f. P. n. Pulex Geminus, consul in 202 BC. Marcus Servilius M. f. (Geminus), consul in AD 3.[46] Servilii Vatiae Marcus Servilius, grandfather of the consul of 79 BC. Gaius Servilius M. f. Vatia, father of the consul of 79 BC. Gaius Servilius C. f. M. n. Vatia, praetor in 102 BC Marcus Servilius C. f. M. n Vatia, triumvir monetalis in 100 BC Publius Servilius C. f. M. n. Vatia, surnamed Isauricus, consul in 79 and censor in 55 BC, triumphed over the Isauri. Publius Servilius P. f. C. n. Isauricus, consul in 48 and 41 BC. Servilia P. f. P. n., betrothed to Octavian until the formation of the second triumvirate in 43 BC. Servilii Rulli Publius Servilius M. f. Rullus, triumvir monetalis in 100 BC.[47] Publius Servilius P. f. M. n. Rullus, tribune of the plebs in 63 BC, proposed an agrarian law. Publius Servilius (P. f. P. n.) Rullus, one of the generals of Octavian against Mark Antony after the Perusinian War, in 40 BC.[48][49] Others Gaius Servilius Tucca, consul in 284 BC.[2] Gaius Servilius Casca, tribune of the plebs in 212 BC, failed to intervene on behalf of his relative, Marcus Postumius Pyrgensis.[50] The authenticity of his cognomen has been doubted.[51] Gaius Servilius Glaucia, praetor in 100 BC, a supporter of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, with whom he perished. Quintus Servilius, praetor in 90 BC, was slain by the inhabitants of Asculum on the outbreak of the Social War. Servilius, praetor in 88 BC, tried to dissuade Sulla from marching onto Rome, only to be mistreated by Sulla's soldiers.[52] Publius Servilius, an eques, magister of one of the companies that farmed the taxes in Sicilia during the administration of Verres.[53] Publius Servilius Globulus, tribune of the plebs in 67 BC, and propraetor of Asia in 63. Gaius Servilius, a Roman citizen in Sicilia, publicly scourged by Verres.[54] Marcus Servilius, accused of repetundae in 51 BC.[55] Marcus Servilius, tribune of the plebs in 44 BC, praised by Cicero as a vir fortissimus.[56] Publius Servilius Casca Longus, one of Caesar's assassins, died shortly after the Battle of Philippi, in 42 BC. (Servilius) Casca, brother of Publius Longus, and like him a conspirator against Caesar.[57][58][59][ii][60] Marcus Servilius Nonianus, consul in AD 35, and one of the most celebrated orators and historians of his time. Servilius Damocrates, a physician at Rome during the first century. Marcia Servilia, daughter of Barea Soranus, accused and condemned with her father in AD 66. Quintus Servilius Pudens, consul in AD 166.[2][61] Marcus Servilius Silanus, consul in AD 188.[2] Quintus Servilius Silanus, consul in AD 189.[2] Descent of the Servilii of the late Republic This family tree depicts the Servilii Caepiones, Gemini, and Vatiae, from the third century BC to their known descendants in imperial times, extending down to the family of the emperor Galba. The chart is based on one by Friedrich Münzer.[62]  Stemma Caepionum et Geminorum Cn. Servilius Cn. Servilius Q. Servilius Cn. Servilius Caepio cos. 253 BC Q. Servilius Geminus P. Servilius Geminus cos. 252, 248 BC Cn. Servilius Caepio Cn. Servilius Geminus cos. 217 BC C. Servilius Geminus pr. c. 220 BC Cn. Servilius Caepio cos. 203 BC C. Servilius Geminus cos. 203 BC, dict. 202 M. Servilius Pulex Geminus cos. 202 BC Cn. Servilius Caepio cos. 169 BC C. Servilius (Geminus) aed. pl. 173 BC M. Servilius (Geminus) trib. mil. 181 BC pont. 170 Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus cos. 142 BC Cn. Servilius Caepio cos. 141 BC, cens. 125 Q. Servilius Caepio cos. 140 BC M. Servilius C. Servilius Vatia pr. after 146 BC Q. Fabius Maximus Eburnus cos. 116 BC Q. Servilius Caepio cos. 106 BC C. Servilius IIIvir mon. 93 BC C. Servilius (Vatia) pr. 102 BC P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus cos. 79 BC cens. 55 M. Servilius Vatia IIIvir mon. 89 BC Q. Servilius Caepio q. 103 BC m. Livia Cn. Servilius Caepio pr. 90 BC C. Servilius IIIvir mon. 63 BC P. Servilius Isauricus cos. 48, 41 BC Servilia m. (1) M. Junius Brutus d. 77 BC m. (2) D. Junius Silanus cos. 62 BC Q. Servilius Caepio d. 59 BC Servilia m. L. Licinius Lucullus cos. 74 BC P. Servilius Vatia pr. 25 BC Servilia m. M. Aemilius Lepidus M. Junius Brutus d. 42 BC m. (1) Claudia m. (2) Porcia Junia Prima Junia Secunda m. M. Aemilius Lepidus IIIvir Junia Tertia m. C. Cassius Longinus d. 42 BC L. Licinius Lucullus M. Aemilius Lepidus d. 30 BC m. Servilia C. Cassius Longinus M'. Aemilius Lepidus cos. AD 11 Aemilia Lepida ex. AD 20 m. (1) Mam. Aemilius Scaurus cos. suf. AD 21 m. (2) P. Sulpicius Quirinius cos. 12 BC Aemilia Lepida m. Ser. Sulpicius Galba cos. AD 33 Imp. 68–69 Aemilia C. Livius Ocella Galba d. c. AD 48 Ser. Livius Ocella Galba d. c. AD 60 See also List of Roman gentes Tomb of Servilia Notes  The Fasti do not give him the surname Geminus, but do so for his brother, Marcus Servilius Pulex. Livy, however, refers to him as such several times.[45]  T.J. Cadoux distinguishes the unnamed brother from Gaius Casca, tribune of the plebs in 44 BC, who was probably not a Servilius. Appian was only aware of Publius, but incorrectly referred to him as Gaius, probably in confusion with the tribune. Cadoux's arguments for the existence of 3 Cascae – the two conspirators and the tribune – were accepted by Shackleton Bailey and Broughton. References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 793 ("Servilia Gens").  Fasti Capitolini, AE 1900, 83; 1904, 114; AE 1927, 101; 1940, 59, 60.  Gaius Plinius Secundus, Historia Naturalis, xxxiv. 13. s. 38.  Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, i. 30.  Chase 1897, pp. 125 (etymology of Servilius), 154–55 (etymology of Servius).  Chase 1897, p. 155.  Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum, v. p. 308 ff.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 928 ("Structus").  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 528 ("Servilius Priscus").  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 83 ("Ahala"), 448 ("Axilla").  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, pp. 533–535 ("Caepio"), vol. II, p. 239 ("Geminus"), vol. III, pp. 1232, 1233 ("Vatia").  Chase, pp. 111–113.  Cicero, Academica Priora, ii. 84.  CIL VI, 1279  Dionysius, vi. 40.  RE, vol. II A (2), col. 1809 (Servilius 84).  Broughton, vol. I, p. 27 (and note 1).  Livy, iii. 6, 7.  Dionysius, ix. 67, 68.  Orosius, ii. 12.  RE, vol. II A (2), col. 1803 (Servilius 73).  Broughton, vol. I, p. 34.  RE, vol. II A (2), cols. 1803, 1804 (Servilius 75).  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 60, 61 (note 2).  Livy, vi. 22, 31, 36.  Livy, vi. 31.  Livy, vi. 38.  Diodorus Siculus, xv. 78.  Livy, ii. 49.  Livy, iv. 30; iv. 45, 46.  RE, vol. II A (2), cols. 1773–1775 (Servilius 37).  Broughton, vol. i, pp. 66 (and note 1), 71–73.  Livy, vii. 22, 38.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, xii. 5, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, ii. 16, In Verrem, i. 55.  Frontinus, De Aquaeductu, 8.  Velleius Paterculus, ii. 10.  Cicero, In Verrem, ii. 8.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, xii. 20.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 556, 558 (note 6).  Cicero, Pro Fonteio 14.  Livy, Epitome, 72.  Appian, Bellum Civile, ii. 14.  Suetonius, "The Life of Caesar", 21.  Plutarch, "The Life of Caesar", 14, "The Life of Pompeius", 47.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 314 (note 1).  Valerius Maximus, i. 8. § 11.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 329.  Cassius Dio, xlviii. 28.  Appian, Bellum Civile, v. 58.  Livy, xxv. 3.  Broughton, vol. 1, pp. 271–272 (note 5).  Plutarch, "The Life of Sulla", 9.  Cicero, In Verrem, iii. 71.  Cicero, In Verrem, v. 54.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, viii. 8 § 3, Epistulae ad Atticum, vi. 3. § 10.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, xii. 7, Philippicae, iv. 6.  Cicero, Philippicae, 2.27  Suetonius, Life of Caesar, 82.1  Plutarch, Life of Caesar, 66.8  Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 3, pp. 194–195  Aelius Lampridius, "The Life of Commodus", 11.  Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, "Servilius", p. 1778. Bibliography Ancient sources Marcus Tullius Cicero, Academica Priora, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, Epistulae ad Atticum, Epistulae ad Familiares, In Verrem, Philippicae, Pro Fonteio. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica (Library of History). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Marcus Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Sextus Julius Frontinus, De Aquaeductu (On Aqueducts). Plutarchus, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita Caesarum (Lives of the Caesars, or The Twelve Caesars). Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Cassius Dio, Roman History. Aelius Lampridius, Aelius Spartianus, Flavius Vopiscus, Julius Capitolinus, Trebellius Pollio, and Vulcatius Gallicanus, Historia Augusta (Augustan History). Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos (History Against the Pagans). Modern sources Broughton, T. Robert S. (1952–1986). The Magistrates of the Roman Republic. American Philological Association. Chase, George Davis (1897). "The Origin of Roman Praenomina". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 8: 103–184. doi:10.2307/310491. ISSN 0073-0688. JSTOR 310491. Crawford, Michael (1974). Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge University Press. Eckhel, Joseph Hilarius (1792–1798). Doctrina Numorum Veterum [The Study of Ancient Coins]. August Pauly; Georg Wissowa; Wilhelm Kroll; Kurt Witte; Karl Mittelhaus; Konrat Ziegler, eds. (1894–1980). Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. Smith, William, ed. (1849). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Categories: Alba LongaRoman gentesRoman gentes of Latin originServilii And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servilio – Ossia: Grice e Servilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servilio For the Servilii, there are so many tempting candidates — Servilia (Caesar's mistress and Brutus' mother), Brutus himself by adoption, Caesar's assassin Casca, the onion-like Caepiones, even the sacred triens that allegedly swelled and shrank with the fortunes of the gens. But my first-best Grice-Speranza choice is neither Caesar's lover nor Caesar's killer. It is Gaius Servilius Ahala, the man who killed Spurius Maelius. Why? Because the whole episode revolves around a Gricean problem:  When does an action become a speech-act?  Ahala does not arrest Maelius. He does not prosecute Maelius. He does not debate him. He stabs him. The traditional Roman interpretation is: AHALA. Maelius regnum appetebat. (Maelius was seeking kingship.) +> The Republic was in danger. The act of killing functions as a public utterance. The question becomes:  What exactly did Ahala mean by the knife?  A Gricean reconstruction: MAELIVS. Frumentum plebi dedi. (I distributed grain to the people.) +> Popular favour need not imply monarchy. AHALA. At populus te regem vocabit. (But the people will call you king.) +> Your actions permit dangerous inferences. MAELIVS. Nihil dixi de regno. (I said nothing about kingship.) +> No explicit claim to monarchy has been made. AHALA. Romani non verba sola audiunt. (Romans do not listen only to words.) +> Public meaning exceeds explicit utterance. MAELIVS. Ergo facta mea interpretaris. (Then you are interpreting my actions.) +> The charge depends on uptake, not on literal content. AHALA. Immo res publica interpretatur. (Rather, the Republic interprets them.) +> Political signs are collectively construed. Then comes the famous act. AHALA. Ferrum sufficit. (The sword is sufficient.) +> The alleged danger is being treated as already demonstrable. A later Grice would immediately worry:  Did Maelius mean that he sought kingship?  or merely:  Did Romans infer that he sought kingship?  That distinction is exactly the distinction between:  speaker's meaning, hearer's inference, public convention, political suspicion.  The whole story turns on the gap between them. But Ahala is cleaner.  A final dry Speranzian formula:  The Servilii worshipped a coin that grew and shrank with the fortunes of the gens. Ahala preferred another index. He treated public suspicion itself as evidence. The question for Grice is whether Maelius ever meant "I will be king," or whether Rome merely supplied the missing proposition before Ahala supplied the knife.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servilio – Ossia: Grice e Servilio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servilio A close runner-up, incidentally, would be Servilia, mother of Brutus and mistress of Caesar. There the Gricean problem is: How much can be communicated without being said? Roman gossip practically becomes an institution of conversational implicature.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servio – Ossia: Grice e Servio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servio The gens Servia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Few members of this gens are mentioned in ancient writers, but a number are known from inscriptions.  Origin The nomen Servius derives from the praenomen Servius, without a change in form; this causes the two names to be easily confused.[1] Chase classifies it among those gentilicia that either originated at Rome, or cannot be shown to have come from anywhere else.[1] The praenomen was probably derived from servare, "to protect" or "keep safe", and presumably the Servii obtained their nomen from an ancestor of this name.[2] Other gentes were derived from the same praenomen using different forms; the most famous was the gens Servilia, prominent throughout Roman history.[3]  Praenomina The Servii used a variety of praenomina, particularly Lucius, Publius, Manius, Marcus, Gaius, and Numerius. Although the others were very common, Manius was somewhat more distinctive, while Numerius, while widespread, was not particularly common. Other praenomina occur infrequently among the Servii, although Statius appears in a filiation. This praenomen, uncommon at Rome, was widespread in the Oscan-speaking regions of central and southern Italy.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Servia M. f. Cinsi uxor, the wife of Cinsius, named in an inscription from Praeneste in Latium, dating between 250 and 170 BC.[4] Publius Servius N. l., a freedman and purpurarius, or dyer of purple, named in an inscription from Capua in Campania, dating to 105 BC.[5] Publius Servius P. l. Thraso, a freedman named in a dedicatory inscription from Asisium in Latium, dating to 100 BC.[6] Servius Pola, an enemy of Cicero, who describes him as "foul and uncivilized". He might be the same Servius who was elected tribune of the plebs in 51 BC, and was condemned for bribery before taking office; but the nomen of this person was probably Servaeus.[7][8][9] Lucius Servius Rufus, a moneyer who in 41 BC issued denarii and aurei featuring the head of a bearded man, possibly representing Lucius Junius Brutus,[i] as a statement of support for Marcus Junius Brutus, along with the Dioscuri. He was probably a native of Tusculum.[11][10] Lucius Taurius L. f. Servius Aefolanus, named in an inscription from Carthago Nova in Hispania Citerior, dating to the last part of the first century BC.[12] Salvia Servia M. l., a freedwoman buried at Rome between about 30 BC and AD 30.[13] Manius Servius M'. f. Marcellus, built a sepulchre at Aquileia in Venetia and Histria, dating to the last quarter of the first century BC, or the first quarter of the first century AD, for his parents, and his sister, the freedwoman Servia Eunia.[14] Servia M'. l. Eunia, a freedwoman buried in a family sepulchre built by her brother, Manius Servius Marcellus, at Aquileia, in the late first century BC or early first century AD.[14] Lucius Servius C. f., named in an inscription from Rome dating to the first half of the first century, along with the freedwoman Anthusa.[15] Publius Servius Census, buried at Venusia in Samnium during the first half of the first century.[16] Servia M'. l. Aucta, a freedwoman named in a sepulchral inscription from Aquileia, dating to the early or middle first century, together with Servius Hilarus.[17] Servius Hilarus, named in a sepulchral inscription from Aquileia, dating to the early or middle first century, together with Servia Aucta.[17] Numerius Servius, named in a first-century inscription found at the present site of Tobarra, formerly part of Hispania Citerior.[18] Servia P. l. Crysario, a freedwoman at Venusia, probably the wife of Publius Servius Philadelphus, and possibly the mother of Publius Servius Philargurus, named in a first-century inscription as her heir.[19] Servia M. l. Marmoris, a freedwoman named in a sepulchral inscription from Luceria in Apulia.[20] Publius Servius St. l. Philadelphus, a freedman at Venusia during the first century, probably the husband of Servia Crysario, and perhaps the father of Publius Servius Philargurus, named as his heir.[19] Publius Servius P. l. Philargurus, a freedman at Venusia during the first century, named as the heir of Publius Servius Philadelphus and Servia Crysario, possibly his parents.[19] Manius Servius Primigenius, buried at Aquileia, in a first-century tomb dedicated by his mother, Servia Secunda.[21] Servia Secunda, dedicated a first century tomb at Aquileia to her son, Manius Servius Primigenius.[21] Marcus Servius M. f. Copystor, named in an inscription from Pompeii in Campania.[22] Marcus Servius Diadumenus, one of several sacerdotes, or priests, named in a first- or second-century inscription from Aquileia.[23] Lucius Servius Hospitalis, buried in a first- or second-century family sepulchre at Rome, along with Servia Primigenia.[24] Servia Primigenia, buried in a first- or second-century family sepulchre at Rome, along with Lucius Servius Hospitalis.[24] Gaius Servius Gratus, one of the heirs of Sacconia Secundilla, a woman buried at Ostia in Latium in the latter half of the second century. Severia Madoce, perhaps his sister, was the other heir.[25] Servius Agilio, buried at Alma in Africa Proconsularis during the second or third century, aged eighty-five.[26] Manius Servius Donatus, a potter whose wares were found at Potaissa in Dacia. He must have been active during the second or third century.[27] Marcus Servius M'. l. Thall[...], a freedman, and one of the Seviri Augustales at Viminacium in Moesia Superior, where he was buried at the age of seventy, in the latter half of the second century, or the early part of the third, along with Manius Servius Silvanus.[28] Manius Servius Silvanus, buried in a family sepulchre at Viminacium, in the latter half of the second century, or the early part of the third, along with Marcus Servius Thall[...].[28] Titus Servius T. l. Clarus, a dissignator, or host, buried at Corduba in Hispania Baetica in the time of the Severan dynasty.[29] Quintus Servius Nicetianus, named in a dedicatory inscription from Cumae in Campania, dating to AD 251.[30] Servius Crescens, named in a list of soldiers stationed at Ravenna in AD 303.[31] Servius Eulogianus, named in a list of soldiers stationed at Ravenna in AD 303.[31] Servius Maurus Honoratus, a celebrated grammarian of the late fourth and early fifth century. Whether he was actually a member of the Servia gens is uncertain, as his full nomenclature is unknown.[32] Undated Servii Servia Sex. l., a freedwoman named in an inscription from Nursia in Samnium.[33] Fausta Servia, buried at Thignica in Africa Proconsularis, aged thirty.[34] Gaius Servius, named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome.[35] Marcus Servius, named in an inscription from Aquinum.[36] Marcus Servius, along with Publius Servius, one of the former masters of the freedmen Publius Poblicius Apollonida, Gellia Materna, and Publius Poblicius Fidelis, buried in a family sepulchre at Rome.[37] Publius Servius, along with Marcus Servius, one of the former masters of the freedmen Publius Poblicius Apollonida, Gellia Materna, and Publius Poblicius Fidelis.[37] Lucius Servius L. l. Auctus, a freedman buried at Rome.[38] Servia Canaga, buried at Thugga in Africa Proconsularis.[39] Servia Cervola, buried at Aquileia in a sepulchre dedicated by Caecilia Plusias.[40] Servius Felicio, buried at Ostia, in a tomb dedicated by Servius Saturninus.[41] Servia Firmina, a freedwoman buried at Rome.[42] Lucius Servius Labeo, named in an inscription from Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis.[43] Servia Lucia, along with her brother, Quintus Saenius Urbicus, dedicated a monument at Rome to their father, Numerius Servius Rhetoricus.[44] Servius Mevianus, buried at Caesaria in Mauretania Caesariensis.[45] Servia L. f. Paula, buried at Thelepte in Africa Proconsularis, aged fourteen.[46] Numerius Servius Rhetoricus, buried at Rome, with a monument dedicated by his children, Quintus Saenius Urbicus and Servia Lucia.[44] Servius Secundus, named in an inscription found at Sassari, formerly part of Sardinia and Corsica.[47] Gaius Servius Rufus Terentianus, named as proconsul in an inscription from Ilipa in Hispania Baetica.[48] Servius Saturninus, dedicated a tomb at Ostia to Servius Felicio.[41] Lucius Servius Secundus, made an offering to the local deity at the present site of Naraval, in Hispania Citerior.[49] Sextus Servius Verus, a haruspex at Thugga in Africa proconsularis.[50] Servius Victor, named in an inscription from Lambaesis in Numidia.[51] Footnotes  The figure has also been identified as Servius Sulpicius Rufus, three times consular tribune in the early fourth century BC; but this identification seems to be the result of confusion between the nomen of the moneyer and the praenomen of the consular tribune; there seems to be no other evidence.[10] See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, p. 131.  Chase, pp. 154, 155.  Chase, p. 125.  CIL XIV, 3261.  CIL I, 2947.  CIL X, 5388.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem, ii. 6, 13; Epistulae ad Familiares, viii. 4.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 433 ("Servius Pola").  Broughton, vol. II, p. 248.  Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, pp. 523, 524.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 677 ("Rufus, L. Servius").  CIL II, 3408.  CIL VI, 21644.  AE 2003, 686.  CIL VI, 8049.  CIL IX, 570.  CIL V, 1076.  CIL II, 6341.  CIL IX, 571.  CIL IX, 887.  CIL V, 1376.  CIL XIV, 10068.  CIL V, 8253.  CIL VI, 28160.  CIL XIV, 1564.  AE 2012, 1888.  AE 1950, 18.  CIL III, 14519.  Hispania Epigraphica, 254.  CIL X, 3699.  AE 1977, 265.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 794 ("Servius Maurus Honoratus").  CIL IX, 4596.  CIL VIII, 1421.  AE 1975, 110.  AE 1974, 242.  CIL VI, 24369.  CIL VI, 36523.  CIL VIII, 27316.  CIL V, 1377.  CIL XIV, 4667.  CIL VI, 26363.  CIL XII, 3911.  CIL VI, 26457.  CIL VIII, 21279.  CIL VIII, 560.  CIL X, 1477.  AE 2008, 660.  Diego Santos, Epigrafía Romana de Asturias, 10.  AE 1921, 39.  CIL VIII, 2562. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Francisco Diego Santos, Epigrafía Romana de Asturias (Roman Epigraphy of Asturias), Oviedo (1959). Michael Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, Cambridge University Press (1974, 2001). Hispania Epigraphica (Epigraphy of Spain), Madrid (1989–present). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servio – Ossia: Grice e Servio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servio For the Servii, I think the first-best Speranza-Grice candidate is neither the grammarian Servius Maurus Honoratus (tempting though he is) nor the obscure enemy of Cicero, but Lucius Servius Rufus, the moneyer of 41 BC. Why? Because he gives us a wonderfully Gricean problem:  Can a coin say something politically?  The issue is parallel to our Sepullius Macer and Caesar-comet discussion, but cleaner. The sources tell us that Servius Rufus issued coins bearing a bearded head, possibly Lucius Junius Brutus, together with the Dioscuri, apparently as a statement of support for Marcus Junius Brutus after Caesar's death. So the coin becomes a political utterance.  Grice e Servio Rufo SERVIVS RVFVS. Nummum cudam. (I shall mint a coin.) +> The message will travel better than a speech. SCEPTICVS. Nummus pretium habet, non sententiam. (A coin has value, not an opinion.) +> Money is for exchange, not argument. SERVIVS. Roma saepe per imagines loquitur. (Rome often speaks through images.) +> Political meaning need not be verbal. SCEPTICVS. Cur barbarum illum barbatum ostendis? (Why display that bearded man?) +> The image invites political interpretation. SERVIVS. Quia quidam imagines agnoscunt sine nominibus. (Because some recognize images without names.) +> Shared background knowledge can do the work of explicit statement. SCEPTICVS. Ergo non dicis, sed innuis. (Then you do not say; you hint.) +> The political content arises by inference rather than assertion. SERVIVS. Qui intellegunt satis audiunt. (Those who understand hear enough.) +> Successful communication need not be explicit.  That last line is almost a textbook Gricean moral. The coin never literally says:  "Support Brutus."  Nor:  "Caesar deserved to die."  Nor:  "The Republic must be restored."  Yet the audience is invited to recover something in that vicinity. The whole communicative burden falls on:  common knowledge, background associations, visual allusion, political uptake.  In short, on something rather like conversational implicature. A close second would be Numerius Servius Rhetoricus. Not because we know much about him, but because a man literally called Rhetoricus is an irresistible target. RHETORICVS. Rhetoricus vocor. (I am called Rhetoricus.) +> My name advertises a profession. GRICE. Nomen est; argumentum nondum est. (It is a name; it is not yet an argument.) +> Reputation cannot substitute for reasoning.  Dry Speranzian formula:  The Servilii gave Rome Brutus; the Servii gave Rome a coin about Brutus. Grice would probably prefer the second. A tyrannicide kills only once; a coin circulates, carrying its implicatures from hand to hand.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servio – Ossia: Grice e Servio -- Grex griceiana – verbalia: Servio A close second would be Numerius Servius Rhetoricus. Not because we know much about him, but because a man literally called Rhetoricus is an irresistible target. RHETORICVS. Rhetoricus vocor. (I am called Rhetoricus.) +> My name advertises a profession. GRICE. Nomen est; argumentum nondum est. (It is a name; it is not yet an argument.) +> Reputation cannot substitute for reasoning. and what is the source that the wiki entry gives for the rhetor? Do we have titles of his publications -- thanks? For Numerius Servius Rhetoricus, the gens entry gives only an epigraphic source, not a literary one:  CIL VI 26457 (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. VI, inscription 26457), an inscription from Rome. [cil.bbaw.de]  The entry's wording is very modest:  "Numerius Servius Rhetoricus, buried at Rome, with a monument dedicated by his children, Quintus Saenius Urbicus and Servia Lucia."  So, strictly speaking, the source establishes:  a man named Numerius Servius Rhetoricus, buried at Rome, commemorated by his children. [cil.bbaw.de]  It does not, at least from the information cited in the gens entry, preserve any titles of writings, speeches, rhetorical handbooks, declamations, or treatises. The cognomen Rhetoricus strongly suggests some association with rhetoric, teaching, or oratorical culture, but the inscription itself (as represented in the gens summary) gives no known bibliography. [cil.bbaw.de] A Speranzian point naturally follows: RHETORICVS. Rhetoricus vocor. (I am called Rhetoricus.) +> I am publicly associated with rhetoric. GRAMMATICVS. Quot libros scripsisti? (How many books did you write?) +> The title invites expectations of authorship. RHETORICVS. Monumentum tantum superest. (Only the monument survives.) +> The name may outlive the works. Indeed, unlike Servius Maurus Honoratus, whose grammatical commentaries survive and whose writings are known, Numerius Servius Rhetoricus appears, on present evidence, only as an inscriptional figure. The irony is almost Hegelian: the man called Rhetoricus has left us a name but no rhetoric. Dry Speranzian formula:  Some rhetoricians survive through books; Numerius Servius Rhetoricus survives through a tomb. The title remains; the orations do not.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Servio – Ossia: Grice e Servio: la ragione conversazionale VIRGILIANA – Roma – filosofia italiana. Note su Dicta Vergiliana. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Mauro Servio Onorato (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale VIRGILIANA. Grice and Mauro Servius Honoratus converge in treating reason as something exercised within socially regulated practices of interpretation rather than as a self‑contained philosophical system, though they approach this insight from different directions. Servius’ Virgilian commentary, situated in the conversational setting exemplified by Macrobius’ Saturnalia, treats meaning as something that arises through guided attention, selective clarification, and the deliberate preservation of productive obscurity; his refusal to impose a single, coherent philosophical doctrine reflects an understanding that texts, like conversations, invite pursuit rather than closure. Grice’s theory of reason‑governed conversational meaning articulates this dynamic explicitly, showing how rational communication depends on norms that balance informativeness with restraint, clarify without exhausting significance, and allow implicatures to do essential work without being canceled. Where Servius warns that excessive illumination can extinguish poetry, Grice argues that over‑explicitness can undermine communicative purpose by collapsing what is meant into what is merely said. Both thus resist the reification of meaning into abstract categories or essences, instead locating rationality in the disciplined management of interpretation, expectation, and response, whether in the exegesis of Virgil or in ordinary conversational exchange. Nei "Saturnali" di Macrobio, rivolti alla glorificazione di VIRGILIO, S. appare uno degli interlocutori. La sua attività filosofica ha per sede Roma. Predilesse Virgilio, che esalta come il maestro di ogni sapere e che commenta in un’opera di cui rimangono due redazioni. La più breve sembra tramandare lo scritto autentico di S., mentre la più ampia ("Servius auctus o plenior o Scholia Danielis", dal Daniel, che la pubblica) pare derivata dalla prima e da una riduzione del commento d’Elio Donato. Si discute se gl’appartengano l’Explanatio dell'Arte Grammaticale dello stesso Donato e tre saggi di metrica. Il commento include non poche dottrine di carattere filosofico, che però provengono dalle fonti usate da S.. Si è voluto fare di S. un seguace dell’accademia. Ma, da una parte, non è lecito attribuirgli una teoria filosofica organica, e, dall’altra, le proposizioni che dovrebbero provenire da quella scuola non sono proprie di essa, perchè appartengono all’accademia in generale, a Posidonio, o anche alle credenze mistico-religiose di quell’età: natura divina dell'anima, immortalità di essa quale principio di movimento, sue trasmigrazioni, suoi destini dopo la morte, teoria delle sfere. Quando, oltre alle tre parti dell'anima, l'anima vegetativa, l'anima sensitiva e l'anima razionale, ne ammette anche una quarta anima, l'anima vitale, principio di movimento, si allontana dalle teorie tradizionali inclusa l’accademica. Quando S. afferma che nulla esiste salvo i quattro elementi (acqua, aria, fuoco, terra) e il divino, che è uno spirito (o una mente, o un'anima) il quale, infuso in essa, genera ogni cosa, sicchè uguale è la natura di tutte, accetta in complesso la cosmologia del PORTICO esposta da VIRGILIO, che però cerca di liberare dal suo materialismo originario. Del resto, esplicitamente S. loda i filosofi del portico -- et nimiae virtutis sunt, et cultores deorum -- che contrappone ai filosofi dell’Orto, che critica spesso. In S. mancano un coerente e un indirizzo preciso, sebbene si affermino in lui le tendenze mistiche dell’età sua.   Virgilio, Donato. GRICEVS: Salvē, Servī! Sestīvius (ut opinor) aptissimē Virgilianum illud perfēcit: obscūrum per obscūrius reddidit—ita ut commentator ipse iam poeta videātur. SERVIVS: Salvē, Grice. Nōn negō: Vergilius ipse multīs velīs nāvigat, ego autem etiam velōrum nodōs explicō. Sed quid tibi est “obscūrum per obscūrius”? lausne an crīmen? GRICEVS: Ego tantum hoc animadvertō: quotiēns aliquid “clārius” fieri iubēmur, saepe fit ut lector minus videat, sed plus quaerat—ac tum commentarius, dum tenebrās ordinat, quasi novās tenebrās dōnat. Ita, dum de Vergiliō loquimur, nōn raro de nostrā quoque arte loquī incipimus. SERVIVS: Inplicātūram obscūram, ut decet—quid enim eam cancellāre opus est! Tē amō, Grice, quantum ipsum Vergilium amō, et eius ficta omnia! Nam bene nostī: Vergilius non semper dicit ut intellegās, sed ut sequāris; et commentator, si nimis “lūcem” facit, carmen extinguit. The gens Servia -- Grice thinks -- may have been census-registered and all -- but the underlying meaning -- servio (italianised), servius -- would sound TOO different from 'servus' -- the root seems to be 'servire' -- servus -- but the 'i' makes all the difference: he is a Servio, not a Servo -- Servius, non Servus -- unless Lewis and Short has an entry for 'servius, -a, -um'? Grice is right to hear the difference, and the i does almost all the work, but one should separate etymological temptation from historical usage. Servius is a perfectly ordinary Roman praenomen and also the basis of the nomen gentilicium Servilius and related formations. A man called Servius is not being called servus, any more than a man called Septimius is being called “the seventh” in any live social sense. The resemblance is audible, but Roman naming is full of such near-neighbours whose social meaning had long since hardened away from the bare lexical root. So yes: Servius, non Servus. That is exactly the point. To a Roman ear these were not the same word, and not the same category. Servus is the common noun “slave.” Servius is a personal name. The two may be historically related at some very remote level, or they may simply belong to the same old Italic-Latin sound-field, but in use they were not confusable in the way Grice’s jest suggests. The i is not a decorative extra; it marks a different lexical item. As for the gens, there is another small correction worth making. The name behind Servius is not usually “the gens Servia” in the straightforward way Grice is imagining, but rather the better-known and fully Roman gens Servilia, from the nomen Servilius. That is the major aristocratic family name familiar from republican history. Servius by itself is much more at home as a praenomen than as the direct clue to a gens-name. So if one is thinking of Servius as though it generated a gens “Servia” parallel to Septimia, that is probably too quick. Roman morphology more often gives you Servilius and the gens Servilia. That matters for your Servius Honoratus too. In the conventional name Maurus Servius Honoratus, Servius is the personal name by which he is known, not automatically the direct name of a gens. Honoratus is the cognomen-like tail. Maurus is another name-element. In late antiquity, again, one must be cautious about inferring too much of the old republican pattern from the surviving label. On Lewis and Short: no, there is no standard adjective entry “Servius, -a, -um” in the sense that would help here. Servius is treated as a proper name, not as a productive adjective like a regular first-and-second-declension adjective. If one looked in a lexicon, one would expect the personal name, the praenomen, and derivatives or related gentilicial forms such as Servilius, rather than a lexical adjective meaning something like “servile” or “slavish” under the form Servius. The adjective you would want for “servile” is servilis, or the noun servitus for servitude, and of course servus for slave. So the dry answer is this. Grice is right that the i makes all the difference, because Servius is not Servus. But the real Roman family formation to think of is usually Servilius and the gens Servilia, not a gens Servia inferred directly from Servius. And Lewis and Short will help by distinguishing the proper name from the common noun, not by giving you some independent adjective Servius, -a, -um. If you like, I can next give you a compact Roman-naming note on the whole cluster: Servius, Servilius, servus, servilis, and why the Roman ear would not have collapsed them even if a playful philosopher does. But Grice might protest too much: "Surely he wasn't a Servilio, or people would have called him so -- but then inventing a gens Maura seems out of place -- So Grice concludes this man possibly did have no gens -- and used 'Servius' as Gilbert Ryle used Gilbert? Yes, Grice may protest, but here the protest goes a little too far. The safest answer is this. Maurus Servius Honoratus is a late antique name, and late antique names cannot always be handled with the old republican expectation that every respectable person must present a neatly recoverable gens in the middle slot. By this period the onomastic system is looser, public labels are less uniform, and the surviving name of a grammarian or commentator is often simply the form by which he circulated, not a complete prosopographical passport. So no, one should not infer from the absence of Servilius that he “had no gens.” That is too strong. It is better to say that the surviving name does not transparently exhibit the gens in the old way. Servius in this case is much more plausibly a personal name than an abbreviated declaration of gens. Maurus may be another name-element, perhaps descriptive or inherited; Honoratus is the cognomen-like tail. That gives you a three-part late antique name, but not one that maps neatly onto the old schoolbook tria nomina. In other words, Servius here may indeed function rather more like Gilbert in Gilbert Ryle than like Grice in H. P. Grice, if by that one means the principal personal label by which the man is known. But even that analogy needs caution, because Roman naming is not just modern naming turned sideways. What Grice is really noticing is a genuine late antique phenomenon. Some figures are transmitted under the part of the name that is most socially or literarily salient, not under the part that would most satisfy an antiquarian hunting for gens. So Servius can be the operative name of the man without obliging us to construct a gens Servia behind it, and without forcing us to imagine a hidden Servilius suppressed by carelessness. The cleaner formulation would be this. Servius Honoratus is best treated as the conventional late antique name of the commentator. Servius is probably the personal name by which he was primarily identified; Honoratus is the additional name-element that gives the full literary label; Maurus is another inherited or descriptive component. This does not prove that he lacked a gens in the social sense, only that the surviving form of the name does not advertise it in the old republican way. So if Grice says, “he used Servius as Gilbert Ryle used Gilbert,” the answer is: not exactly, but near enough to illuminate the problem. The transmitted name may foreground the personal element rather than a clearly recoverable nomen gentilicium. That is a feature of the evidence, not a proof of social rootlessness. And there is one further point. Servius is a very ordinary and well-attested Roman praenomen. That alone makes it quite plausible as the leading personal name. One does not need to invent a lost gens or a missing Servilius to explain it. Late antiquity simply gives us people whose names are preserved in a way that no longer behaves like the tidy republican filing system Grice would prefer. So the short answer is this. No, he was probably not “a Servilio” in the sense Grice wants, because the evidence does not present him that way. But no, that does not mean he had no gens. It means only that the surviving name Maurus Servius Honoratus is a late antique literary and social label in which Servius functions as the salient personal name, much as Grice suspects. If you like, I can next give you a compact filing rule for such cases: when late antique names do not display a recoverable nomen, file under the attested principal name rather than inventing a gens from older analogies.Servio Onorato, Mauro (a. u. c. MCL). Dicta Vergiliana. Roma.