TRE

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebazio – Ossia: Grice e Trebazio: la ragione conversazionale della repubblica romana e l’implicatura conversazionale del luogo – Roma antica. Note su De codicillis et de ratione iuris: responsa ad consultationem principis. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Gaio Trebazio Testa: la ragione conversazionale della repubblica romana e l’implicatura conversazionale del luogo – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning makes implicature an inferential achievement: a hearer, presuming cooperative rational agency, explains why a speaker said what she did by recovering an intended extra content that would make the move reasonable under shared conversational norms (so the “governance” is by publicly reconstructible reasons, not by private association). Trebazio (Gaius Trebatius Testa), by contrast, is best read—on the evidence of his historical persona—as a jurist and pragmatic counselor operating in the normative ecology of the late Republic and early Principate, where “reason” is institutionalized as ius: his expertise concerns how texts, formulae, and acts acquire force within legal and political practice (Cicero dedicates the Topica to him; he is connected with Caesar and Augustus; later tradition credits him with helping legitimate codicils), and Horace even stages him as the voice of prudent advice about what one may safely “say” in Rome. Set against Grice, Trebazio thus exemplifies a different axis of reason-governance: not the maxims that make conversational inference calculable, but the juridical and rhetorical constraints that make utterances actionable, defensible, or dangerous in a public forum; where Grice models how a rational interpreter derives implicata from an utterance’s apparent conformity (or strategic nonconformity) to cooperative principles, Trebazio models how a Roman professional reasons from place, forum, authority, and precedent to what can be responsibly asserted, insinuated, or left unsaid—so that what Grice treats as conversational implicature, Trebazio would naturally treat as prudent insinuatio under law and politics, i.e., meaning that is governed by reasons because it is governed by norms, offices, and the risks attached to speech in the res publica. Roma antica -- la filosofia romana –  filosofia campanese -- filosofia italiana – Grice italo – By , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, ,  (Velia). Abstract. Grice: “T. is the Italian name for the Ancient Roman jurist and politician Gaius Trebatius. He is a well-known figure in Italian legal and literary history for several reasons: Legal Legacy: He is one of the most prominent jurists of the late Roman Republic and early Principate. He is credited with introducing "codicils,” informal additions to a will, into Roman law at the request of Emperor OTTAVIANO  Augustus. Literary Connections: He is a close friend of CICERONE , who dedicated several works to him and writes numerous letters addressed to him. Political Influence: T. serves as a legal advisor to both GIULIO  Caesar and OTTAVIANO . Cultural Presence: In Italy, he is frequently referred to as Gaio T. Testa in academic contexts, legal encyclopedias, and historical literature.  Would you like to know more about his legal reformsor his famous correspondence with Cicero?” Keywords. Filosofo italiano. Novi Velia, Salerno, Campania. È molto dubbio che si debbano prendere alla lettera certe espressioni di CICERONE che accennano l’inclinazione di T. por la filosofia dell’Orto. Provenne da famiglia agiata e pare che si reca a Roma per darsi agli studi giuridici. Per raccomandazione di CICERONE, GIULIO CESARE lo conduce nelle Gallie e si serve di lui per pareri giuridici. Ritornato a Roma all’inizio della guerra civile, T. age da mediatore tra GIULIO CESARE  e CICERONE. Nel conflitto fra CESARE e POMPEO, T. si schiera col primo al quale rimase sempre fedele. Dopo la morte di GIULIO CESARE, T. si reca spesso alla villa Tuscolana di CICERONE, ove gli caddero in mano i "Topica" di Aristotele. Per contentare il suo desiderio di avere chiarimenti di quella trattazione, CICERONE scrive il saggio omonimo che dedica ed invia a T. In seguito T.  I topica di Cicerone, ius, IVSTVM, legge, Ottaviano, Labeone, satira, Orazio, religione, ius civile, pragmatica del diritto.  GRICEVS: Salve, Trebati! Audivi te codicillos in ius Romanum introduxisse—quid te ad hoc movit? TREBATIVS: Salvum te, Grice! Imperator Ottavianus rogavit, ut testamenta clariora fierent; ego enim semper pragmatica adhibere studui. GRICEVS: Cicero nonnumquam te “philosophum horti” appellavit. Estne ordo Epicureus tibi cordi? TREBATIVS: Grice, verum dicam: non tam doctrina Epicurea quam ipso sermonis pretio atque iustitiae concretae studio delectatus sum. Si in horto tranquillitas colitur, in foro sensus communis et legum claritas serenda est. Semper credidi philosophiam, etiam hortensem, rei publicae civibusque prodesse debere, neque inter pergulas inclusam manere. Itaque, inter risum cum Horatio et contentionem cum Cicerone, didici verum sapientem esse eum qui rationem loco temporique in quo vivit accommodare novit. Trebazio Testa, Gaio (a.u.c. DCCXXIV). De codicillis et de ratione iuris: responsa ad consultationem principis (Latine). Roma: Forense.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebanio – Ossia: Grice e Trebanio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebanio. Denarius of Lucius Trebanius. This side is the reverse, depicting Jupiter driving a quadriga, with the inscriptions "L. Treban." and "Roma". The obverse features a head of Pallas, or perhaps Roma. The gens Trebania or Trebana was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. Only a few members of this gens are known, chiefly from inscriptions.[1]  Origin The nomen Trebanius belongs to a class of gentilicia formed from cognomina ending in -as and -atis, usually derived from place names, or ending in -atus. Trebanius appears to be derived from the city of Treba in Sabinum, near the border with Latium.[2] The similarly-named Trebatia gens likely derives its nomen from the same root.  Members Lucius Trebanius, triumvir monetalis at some point between about 135 and 126 BC. His coins feature a head of Pallas on the obverse, while the reverse depicts Jupiter driving a quadriga.[3][1][4] Gaius Trebanius Rufus, named in a bronze inscription from Neapolis in Campania.[5] Publius Trebanus Salistianus, buried at Trebula Mutusca, aged thirty, in a first-century tomb built by his wife, Ulpia Sabina.[6] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1170 ("Trebania Gens").  Chase, p. 118.  Eckhel, vol. v, p. 326.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 454, 626.  CIL X, 8059,409.  CIL IX, 6360. Bibliography Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum (The Study of Ancient Coins, 1792–1798). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). 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). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebanio – Ossia: Grice e Trebanio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebanio. For the Trebanii, I would resist the temptation to choose the coiner merely because he is the best known. The most Grice-Speranza-worthy figure is nevertheless probably:  Lucius Trebanius, the triumvir monetalis whose name survives on his coinage. [GREXv3 | Word]  Why? Because coinage is a fascinating borderline case of communication. The denarius bears:  images (Pallas; Jupiter in quadriga), legends (L. Treban., Roma), authority.  A coin does not "say" anything in the ordinary conversational sense. Yet it conveys a great deal. A Gricean vignette:  (*) QUID DICIT NUMMUS? (What does the coin say?) RESPONSUM. Nihil. (Nothing.) SED OSTENDIT. (But it shows.) +> Communication need not proceed through assertion.  That is rather close to Grice's distinction between natural and non-natural meaning. A coin is intentionally designed to convey information, but not by uttering propositions.  There is an even nicer point. The legend:  L. TREBAN.  functions almost as what Grice might call a compressed dossier. The coin does not explain:  who Trebanius is, where he comes from, why he held office.  It merely supplies a label. The Roman user is expected to recover whatever social information is attached to that label. Exactly the sort of thing that led Grice to distrust the apparent simplicity of proper names. A Speranzian dialogue:  (*) QUIS EST TREBANIVS? (Who is Trebanius?) CIVIS. Nomen in nummo lego. (I read the name on the coin.) PHILOSOPHVS. Sed quid de eo scis? (But what do you know about him?) +> Identification and information are distinct achievements.   A close runner-up would be:  Publius Trebanus Salistianus. [GREXv3 | Word]  Not because of anything he did, but because his epitaph records that his wife Ulpia Sabina erected the tomb. [GREXv3 | Word] That gives us another recurring Speranzian theme:  What survives of a person is often not his actions but somebody else's description of him.   Speranza's gloss  The Trebanii contribute a moneyer. A coin is a communicative artifact that neither argues nor converses. It bears names, images, and authority, and expects its users to infer the rest. Grice spent much of his life examining how hearers recover information not explicitly stated. Roman coinage had already institutionalized the practice. [GREXv3 | Word]

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebazio – Ossia: Grice e Trebazio – Grex griceiana: Trebazio -- The gens Trebatia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned at the time of the Social War, in which one of the Samnite generals was a Trebatius, but the best-known of the Trebatii is likely the jurist Gaius Trebatius Testa, a contemporary and friend of Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus.[1]  Origin The nomen Trebatius belongs to a class of gentilicia usually formed from cognomina ending in -as or -atis, usually derived from place names, as well as from surnames ending in -atus.[2] Like the nomen of the similarly named Trebania gens, it likely derives from the town of Treba in Sabinum.[3]  Praenomina The main praenomina of the Trebatii were Gaius, Gnaeus, and Marcus. From their filiations, we also know that the Trebatii who lived at Mevania used Lucius, while those who lived at Aeclanum used Publius.  Branches and cognomina A family of the Trebatii lived at Mevania in Umbria during the first century BC and first century AD. A larger family of this name seems to have lived at Aeclanum in Samnium from the first to the third century.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Trebatius, according to Appian, a general of the Samnites during the Social War. He defeated the Roman general Gaius Cosconius, and raised the siege of Canusium, but was badly beaten by Cosconius while fording the Aufidus with his army, and forced to take refuge within the walls of Canusium. Gaius Trebatius Testa, an advocate and contemporary of Cicero, who recommended him to Caesar as an authority on the civil law. Trebatius accompanied Caesar during the Gallic Wars and the Civil War, and his opinions were highly regarded by Augustus. He was the teacher of the noted jurist Marcus Antistius Labeo, and is frequently cited by the Digest, although his own works have not survived.[4][5][6][7][1][8] Gaius Trebatius Rufio, named in an inscription from Casilinum in Campania, dating between the middle of the first century BC, and the Battle of Actium.[9] Trebatia, named in a sepulchral inscription from Mevania in Umbria, dating from the late first century BC, along with the priests Trebatius and Sextus Titellius.[10] Trebatius L. f., a priest at Mevania, named along with his colleague, Sextus Titellius, and a woman named Trebatia, in an inscription dating from the late first century BC.[10] Gnaeus Trebatius Cn. l., a freedman and priest, was buried at Mevania at the end of the first century BC, or the beginning of the first century AD.[11] Gaius Trebatius Cn. f. L. n. Maximus, along with his uncle, Gnaeus Trebatius Clemens, built an early first-century tomb at Mevania for his father, Gnaeus Trebatius.[12] Gnaeus Trebatius L. f., buried in an early first-century tomb at Mevania, built by his son, Gaius Trebatius Maximus, and brother, Gnaeus Trebatius Clemens.[12] Gnaeus Trebatius L. f. Clemens, along with his nephew, Gaius Trebatius Maximus, built an early first-century tomb at Mevania for his brother, Gnaeus Trebatius.[12] Trebatia C. l. Epistole, a freedwoman named along with Gaius Trebatius Seleucus in an inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century.[13] Gaius Trebatius Seleucus, named along with the freedwoman Trebatia Epistole in an inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century.[13] Gaius Trebatius C. l. Stephanus, named along with the freedwoman Terentia Favor in an inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century.[14] Titus Trebatius Tarentinus, purchased two pots each from Quintus Dirvitius and Titus Edusius Mantaeus, dating from the first half of the first century.[15] Trebatia P. f. Procilla, buried in a first-century tomb dedicated by one of her children at Aeclanum in Samnium, along with two persons named Marcus Trebatius Rufus.[16] Marcus Trebatius C. f. Rufus, buried in a first-century tomb at Aeclanum, along with another Marcus Trebatius Rufus and Trebatia Procilla.[16] Marcus Trebatius M. f. Rufus, buried in a first-century tomb at Aeclanum, along with another Marcus Trebatius Rufus and Trebatia Procilla.[16] Trebatia, together with Avonia T[...], made a first- or second-century offering to the Magna Mater near Capena in Etruria.[17] Gaius Trebatius Faustus, together with his wife, Festa, built a first- or second-century tomb at Rome for their young son, Mercurius, aged three years and four months.[18] Marcus Trebatius Priscus, consul suffectus in AD 108, during the reign of Trajan. He and his colleague, Publius Aelius Hadrianus, the future emperor Hadrian, held the fasces from the Kalends of May to the Kalends of September.[19][20] Gaius Trebatius C. f., together with Theia Justina, dedicated a second-century tomb at Aeclanum for Aulus Ignius Crispinus, Aula Ignia Crispina, and another Theia Justina. Trebatius is identified as frater, but it is unclear from the inscription whose brother he was.[21] Trebatia Januaria, buried in a second-century tomb at Aeclanum, built by her husband, Lucius Eggius Proculus.[22] Trebatia Januaria, buried in a second-century tomb at Aeclanum, built by her son, Marcus Trebatius Valens.[23] Gnaeus Trebatius Logus, along with Quintus Metilius Mario and Marcus Rossius Ampliatus, made an offering to the Magna Mater at Venusia in Samnium, recorded in a second-century inscription.[24] Marcus Trebatius Philetus, built a second-century tomb at Aeclanum for his wife, whose name has not been preserved.[25] Marcus Trebatius Quartus, dedicated a second-century tomb at Aeclanum for a woman, perhaps a wife or daughter, whose name is uncertain.[26] Marcus Trebatius Valens, dedicated a second-century tomb at Aeclanum for his mother, Trebatia Januaria.[23] Gaius Trebatius Zoilus, built a second-century cinerarium at Rome for his friend, Aulus Sempronius Salutaris.[27] Trebatius Clarus, a second-century Roman senator and the former master of Gnaeus Trebatius Pisinacte.[28][29] Gnaeus Trebatius Pisinacte, freedman of the senator Trebatius Clarus, manumitted his natural daughter, Trebatia Eutychia, at Rome in AD 183.[28] Trebatia Eutychia, a slave freed by her natural father, Gnaeus Trebatius Pisinacte, freedman of the senator Trebatius Clarus, at Rome on the eleventh day before the Kalends of February,[i] AD 183.[28] Trebatius Marinus, the addressee of a rescript by the jurist Ulpian, indicating that whether a parent has a good reason for refusing to support his children is a matter to be determined by a judge. Marinus had written that a father could refuse to support a son who had informed against him.[30][31] Trebatius Eroticus, together with his wife, Quete, dedicated a tomb at Aeclanum, dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third, for their son, Vibius Felix, aged nineteen years, ten months, and eight days.[32] Trebatius Sabinus, buried at Aeclanum, in a tomb dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third, built by his wife, Cerrinia Veneria. They were the parents of Trebatia Sabina.[33] Trebatia Sabina, the daughter of Trebatius Sabinus, built a tomb at Aeclanum, dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third, for her mother, Cerrinia Veneria.[34] Trebatia Secunda, together with her children, built a third-century tomb at Asisium in Umbria for her husband, Primitivus.[35] Trebatia Rufina, buried in a fourth- or fifth-century tomb at Rome, built by her husband, Aurelius Sapricius.[36] Undated Trebatii Gaius Trebatius Heracla, dedicated a tomb at Rome for Caecilia Nice.[37] Trebatia Herois, named in an inscription from Ravenna in Cisalpine Gaul.[38] Trebatia Marcellina, a woman of the upper class, whose name was found on a lead pipe at Rome.[39] Trebatia Paulina, along with her children, Terentia Basila, Terentia Julianus, and Terentia Juliane, dedicated a tomb at Pompeiopolis in Galatia, for her husband, Gaius Terentius Macro, aged seventy.[40] Trebatia Phyllis, buried at Rome.[41] Gaius Trebatius Priamus, built a sepulchre at Seperna in Sabinum for himself and Cornelia Philumina.[42] Gaius Trebatius Primigenius, named in a bronze inscription from an uncertain province.[43] Gaius Trebatius Rufio, together with Gaius Vibius Macer, built a sepulchre at Rome for the family of Quintus Cornelius Rufus, out of the legacy left for them by will.[44] Gaius Trebatius Salassus, named on a piece of pottery from Rome.[45] Trebatius Victorinus, a child buried at the site of modern Torre Le Nocelle in Campania, aged thirty-five months.[46] Notes  January 22, by modern reckoning. See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, pp. 1012, 1013 ("Gaius Trebatius Testa").  Chase, p. 127.  Chase, p. 118.  Cicero, Ad Familiares, vii. 5–22.  Digesta, 16. tit. 3. s. 1. § 41; 18. tit. 6. s. 1. § 2.  Institutiones Justiniani, 2. tit. 25, De Codicillis.  Pomponius Porphyrion, Commentarii, ii. 1.  PIR, vol. III, p. 333 (T, No. 228).  AE 1980, 228.  CIL XI, 5135.  CIL XI, 7930.  CIL XI, 5136.  CIL VI, 39565.  CIL VI, 39637.  CIL VI, 39638, CIL VI, 39639.  AE 2017, 320.  CIL XI, 3861.  CIL VI, 22415.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244, CIL XIV, 2242.  PIR, vol. III, p. 333 (T, No. 227).  CIL IX, 1272.  CIL IX, 1313.  CIL IX, 1314.  CIL IX, 424.  AE 2017, 319.  CIL IX, 1282.  CIL VI, 26172.  CIL VI, 8420.  PIR, vol. III, p. 333 (T, No. 225).  Digesta, xxv. tit. 3. s. 5 § 11.  PIR, vol. III, p. 333 (T, No. 226).  CIL IX, 1321.  CIL IX, 6276.  CIL IX, 6274, CIL IX, 6276, CIL X, 1160.  CIL XI, 5548.  CIL VI, 27574.  CIL VI, 13837.  CIL XI, 6712,447.  PIR, vol. III, p. 333 (T, No. 229).  AE 1993, 1544.  CIL VI, 27575.  CIL XI, 3966.  CIL XIII, 10022,030.  CIL VI, 16120.  CIL XV, 1481.  CIL IX, 2089. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares. Pomponius Porphyrion, Commentarii in Q. Horatium Flaccum (Commentaries on Horace). Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Digesta, or Pandectae (The Digest). Institutiones Justiniani. 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). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). Category: Roman gentes ANd for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebazio – Ossia: Grice e Trebazio – Grex griceiana: Trebazio For the Trebatii, the choice is much easier than with the Trausii or Travii. The overwhelming Grice-Speranza candidate is:  Gaius Trebatius Testa. [GREXv3 | Word]  Not merely because he is the most famous Trebatius, but because he is almost an ancient Oxford philosopher in disguise. Why Trebatius Testa? Your entry already contains the key facts:  friend and correspondent of Cicero, recommended by Cicero to Caesar, eminent jurist, later highly regarded by Augustus, teacher of Marcus Antistius Labeo, frequently cited in the Digest. [GREXv3 | Word]  Now compare the professions:                      TrebatiusGriceJuristPhilosopherAsks what legal words commit one toAsks what conversational words commit one toInterprets acts and utterancesInterprets acts and utterances The resemblance is striking.  Jurisprudence as pragmatics Roman jurists are continually confronted with questions such as:  What did the speaker mean?   What obligation follows from those words?   Was this promise serious?   Does the wording cover this case?  That is not far from Grice. A vignette:  (*) CIVIS. Promisi. (I promised.) TREBATIVS. Quid promisisti? (What exactly did you promise?) CIVIS. Intellegitur. (It is understood.) TREBATIVS. Id ipsum quaero. (That is precisely what I am asking.)  That is almost the entire history of pragmatics.  The succession Trebatius → Labeo For a Speranzian, the most delicious detail is that:  Trebatius Testa taught Marcus Antistius Labeo. [GREXv3 | Word]  Labeo became one of the great jurists of Roman legal history. Thus Trebatius sits at the beginning of a tradition of conceptual analysis. One is tempted to write:  Trebatius did for Roman law what Grice later did for conversation: insist that the details matter.   A fascinating runner-up An unexpectedly Gricean figure is:  Trebatius Marinus. [GREXv3 | Word]  The Digest preserves a rescript involving him concerning parental support and filial conduct. The case turns on whether a father may refuse support to a son who informed against him, and whether this is justified must be determined by a judge. [GREXv3 | Word] Here we are already in the territory of:  reasons, excuses, justification, practical rationality.  All topics dear to Grice.  A very Speranzian gloss  The Trebatii contribute not a soldier or politician but a jurist. Trebatius Testa spent his life asking what follows from words, promises, and legal acts. Grice spent his life asking what follows from utterances. The difference is largely institutional: one worked in the forum, the other in the Senior Common Room. [GREXv3 | Word]  If I were compiling Grice e Speranza, Trebatius Testa would unquestionably get the chapter. He is one of the few figures among these minor gentes who was professionally engaged in analysing the consequences of language.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebazio – Ossia: Grice e Trebazio – Grex griceiana: Trebazio The case father/son is interesting for Grice: Consider Mr. Herbert Grice and Mr. Herbert Paul Grice. Surely he was thinking of such as 'decent chaps' -- So what were the Romans up to? Or as Grice would: To what were the Romans up? Thanks That is a very Gricean question, because the Roman case preserved under Trebatius Marinus is not really about property or procedure. It is about what obligations survive the collapse of a relationship. The summary in your source is cautious. It says that a rescript preserved by Ulpian concerned whether a parent had a good reason for refusing support to a child, and that Trebatius Marinus had written of a father refusing support to a son who had informed against him; whether the father's refusal was justified was a matter for judicial determination. [GREXv3 | Word] What fascinates me is the clash between two Roman ideas:  natural obligation between parent and child; reciprocal loyalty within the family.  The son has apparently acted against the father. The father responds:  "Why should I support him?"  The law does not answer automatically. Instead it asks:  Was the father's reason a good one? [GREXv3 | Word]  That is extraordinarily subtle.  A Gricean reconstruction might begin with the notion of the decent chap. Grice's moral psychology often presupposes participants who are, barring special circumstances, trying to behave reasonably toward one another. One might imagine:  FATHER. He is my son. SON. He is my father. +> Certain expectations arise without explicit agreement.  The Roman problem begins when those expectations break down. The son informs against the father. The father withdraws support. Now the question is:  Which expectation has priority?  Family duty? Or retaliation for betrayal?  This is why I like your mention of Mr. Herbert Grice and Mr. Herbert Paul Grice. Not because the situations are historically comparable, but because both involve an assumption that some relations carry obligations that need not be negotiated afresh every morning. A father does not ordinarily ask:  "What consideration have I received for feeding my child?"  A child does not ordinarily ask:  "What contract obliges me not to denounce my father?"  The obligations are socially antecedent. The Romans seem to be asking what happens when one party ceases to behave as the role appears to require.  A Speranzian vignette:  (*) FILIVS. Patrem accusavi. (I informed against my father.) PATER. Non te alam. (I shall not support you.) IVDEX. Sed pater adhuc es. (But you are still his father.) +> Some obligations survive wrongdoing; the difficult question is which ones.   So, to answer your wonderfully Gricean question:  To what were the Romans up?  Not, I think, merely determining a legal rule. They were trying to locate the point at which a social role ceases to generate expectations. That is very close to Grice's own concern with the conditions under which one may reasonably expect cooperation from another person. The Roman jurist asks:  "Does the father's obligation remain?"  Grice would ask:  "What expectations remain between these two persons, given what has happened?"  The distance between the Digest and Oxford is perhaps not as great as it first appears. [GREXv3 | Word] There seems to be a presupposition that the song acted wrongly: that he WRONGLY informed against his father. Otherwise, if mens rea is involved, and the father was indeed a con -- Grice and Speranza would not think this is much of a matter for Trebazio Testa or for H. L. A. Hart, for that matter? Thanks I think that's exactly the hidden premise, and it is one reason we must be very careful with the summary of the case. What the source explicitly gives us is only this:  Trebatius Marinus was involved in a legal question concerning whether a parent could refuse to support a son who had informed against him, and the determination depended on whether the parent had a good reason. [GREXv3 | Word]  What the source does not tell us is:  whether the son's accusation was true, whether the father was guilty, whether the son acted maliciously, whether the son acted from civic duty, whether the father had committed a crime. [GREXv3 | Word]  And that omission is philosophically crucial. If we reconstruct the Roman intuition behind the case, there are at least two very different possibilities: Scenario A  Son informs against a criminal father.  If the father truly deserves punishment, then many modern readers would say:  The son has acted properly.  In that case, the father's refusal to support him begins to look retaliatory rather than justified. An H. L. A. Hart-style analysis would immediately ask:  What was the son's reason? What was the father's conduct? What social rule is in play?  The bare fact of informing is not enough.  Scenario B  Son maliciously denounces an innocent father.  Now the Roman reaction looks very different. The son's conduct is itself wrongful. The father's refusal of support becomes easier to understand as justified.  Why the Romans left it to a judge What I find fascinating is that the juristic solution appears not to be:  "A father may always refuse."  Nor:  "A father may never refuse."  Rather, the matter is to be judged according to the circumstances. [GREXv3 | Word] That suggests the Romans themselves recognized that:  "informing against one's father"  is not a morally self-interpreting description. Its significance depends on context.  The Gricean angle A Griceian would probably notice that the phrase  "He informed against his father"  functions much like one of Grice's examples. It is deceptively incomplete. Before evaluation becomes possible, we want to ask:  Why? Was it true? Was it justified? What were the circumstances?  Only then can we determine what follows. So I suspect Grice and Hart would both resist the Roman temptation to treat  delator filii  or  "son who informed against his father"  as already morally decisive. They would ask for the missing details. Indeed, the interesting feature of the Roman case may be precisely that the jurists seem ultimately to have realized the same thing: the bare description was insufficient, which is why they left the matter to judicial evaluation rather than resolving it by a universal rule. [GREXv3 | Word] As Grice might put it, before deciding whether the son failed to be a "decent chap," one would first need the rest of the dossier. Delator patris? If the son acted rightfully, Grice and Speranza would not think that he would expect support from father. The judge must decide whether the song acted rightfully or it is not the case that the son acts rightfully. The presupposition seems to be that the son acts wrongfully, and -- why a 'decent' son who still thinks he acted rightfully or other -- may not be expecting any sort of that paternal support? It is true that the issue is analytic, or rather the Roman claim that 'a father should support a son' does not follow if the son informs WRONGFULLY against the father --. Now suppose the son was an OPTIMATES, a political party, and the father was not. THe judge may have to decide whether 'informing against' was done -- where? In a court of law? between private parties? ETc. Thanks THere may be also the consideration whether a son should support his father in his old age -- even if the father has informed against his son. Thanks Yes, and I think the key lies in your phrase:  "The judge must decide whether the son acted rightfully."  That is exactly what the summary of the Roman juristic material seems to leave open. The source tells us only that the case concerned a father refusing support to a son who had informed against him, and that whether the parent had a good reason was a matter for judicial determination. It does not tell us that the son acted wrongly. It does not tell us that he acted rightly either. [GREXv3 | Word] The Latin term behind "informed against" would naturally make one think of:  patrem detulit or delator patris,  but the moral significance depends entirely on context. A Gricean analysis would begin by observing that:  "The son informed against his father"  is not yet a complete description of an action. Compare:  The son falsely denounces an innocent father. The son truthfully reports a murderous father. The son participates in a political prosecution. The son testifies under compulsion. The son reports financial fraud.  The same verbal description covers radically different cases. That is why, as you note, the Roman jurist's answer cannot be:  Fathers may always refuse support.  Nor:  Fathers may never refuse support.  The judge must reconstruct the dossier.  What I find particularly Roman is that there appear to be two competing presumptions: Presumption A  A father ought to support his son.  Presumption B  A son ought to display filial loyalty.  The legal problem arises when the two collide. If the son has indeed behaved disloyally, Presumption A may weaken. If the father has behaved criminally, Presumption B may weaken. The judge must determine which presumption yields.  And your symmetrical question is even more interesting:  Should a son support an aged father who informed against him?  That shows the structure is not peculiar to fathers. The underlying issue is:  Do family obligations survive betrayal?  That is not a Roman question only; it is a perennial question.  A Grice-Speranza vignette might run:  (*) FILIVS. Recte feci. (I acted rightly.) PATER. Me accusasti. (You accused me.) FILIVS. Sed vere. (But truthfully.) IVDEX. Hoc ipsum quaeritur. (That is precisely the question.)  The legal question is not:  Did he accuse?  Everyone agrees that he did. The question is:  Was the accusation the act of a bad son or of a good citizen?  And until that is answered, one cannot determine what obligations remain between father and son. In that respect, I suspect both Grice and Hart would insist that the bare label  "delator patris"  is hopelessly underdescriptive. Before making moral or legal judgments, one would have to know what, exactly, the father had done, why the son informed, before whom he informed, and under what circumstances. Only then does the real philosophical problem emerge. And the dossier indeed counts. Because consider the dyad: "He did it. B: Oh, I see. versus: "My father did it. B: Oh, I see. Son informs against his father. Did the actual conversational move involved the dyad relation Pater/Filius? Thanks -- Grice: "Not to mention whether it was bio or adopted!" Thanks -- Marc'Aurelio, for example calls Antoninus not his father, just Antonininus, and his biological father, he calls, 'the generator' (he is speaking Greek). 'Ambiguous' -- Thanks Aurelio may have something against which to 'inform' the generator; and perhaps even Antoninus, who adopted him. Etc. Thanks Yes, and I think this is where the Roman case becomes genuinely Gricean. What the summary gives us is something like:  "a son informed against his father."  But, as you suggest, that description is not yet a dossier. It is barely the beginning of one. [GREXv3 | Word] For Grice, the difference between:  "He did it."  and  "My father did it."  is enormous. The second contains information that is not merely factual but relational. The speaker is not simply reporting a wrongdoer. He is reporting someone who stands in a special relation to him. We might write:  A: He did it. B: I see.  versus  A: My father did it. B: I see.  In the second exchange, the hearer immediately reconstructs a larger dossier:  family loyalty, possible conflict of duties, personal cost, questions of motive, questions of resentment, questions of civic obligation.  None of that follows from:  "He did it."  All of it may be implicated by:  "My father did it."   This connects with your excellent point about adoption. A Roman jurist would almost certainly ask:  Whose father?  Because Roman fatherhood is not exhausted by biology. One could have:  biological father, adoptive father, legal father, former paterfamilias.  And these distinctions could matter legally. Your example from Marcus Aurelius is particularly apt. In the Meditations he often distinguishes the biological progenitor from the paternal figures to whom he attributes moral formation. He is very careful with relational vocabulary. The dossier attached to "father" is not identical with the dossier attached to "generator." (I'm speaking generally here rather than from the Trebatius source.)  A Gricean reconstruction of the Roman case might therefore look like this:  FILIUS. Patrem detuli. (I informed against my father.) IUDEX. Quid est pater? (What sort of father?) FILIUS. Natura pater. (My natural father.) IUDEX. Quid fecit? (What did he do?) FILIUS. Hoc ipsum quaeritur. (That is precisely the point.)  The legal and moral problem lies in the dossier, not in the bare predicate:  informed against.   Indeed, your observation suggests a deeper point. Perhaps the legal question was never:  Did the son inform?  Everyone agrees he did. The real question may have been:  Given the specific father-son relationship involved, what obligations survived?  For a Roman jurist:  fatherhood creates duties.  For a Gricean:  relationships create expectations.  Both become complicated when one party believes justice required acting against the other. So I suspect that neither Trebatius Testa nor Hart would be satisfied with:  "The son informed against the father."  They would immediately ask:  Which father? What sort of accusation? Was it true? Under what circumstances? What duties remained?  In other words, they would demand the dossier before offering the analysis. And that, as you suggest, is very much in the spirit of Grice.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebellio – Ossia: Grice e Trebellio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebellio -- The gens Trebellia, occasionally written Trebelia, was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned at the time of the Second Punic War, but they played little role in the Roman state until the final decades of the Republic.[1] Trebellii are known from inscriptions in Delos and in Athens between 150 and 89 BC.[2] The most illustrious of the Trebellii was Marcus Trebellius Maximus, who attained the consulship in AD 55.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Quintus Trebellius, a centurion who received the mural crown from Scipio Africanus in 210 BC, in recognition of his bravery in battle.[3] Marcus Trebellius, a native of Fregellae in Latium, was a soldier serving the legate Lucius Coelius in Illyria during the Third Macedonian War.[4] Marcus Trebellius, described by Cicero as a friend of Sextus Naevius in 81 BC.[5] Lucius Trebellius, tribune of the plebs in 67 BC, together with his colleague, Lucius Roscius Otho, opposed the appointment of Pompeius to make war against the pirates. Trebellius refused all efforts to remove his objection, until his colleague Aulus Gabinius, who had proposed Pompeius' appointment, called upon the Comitia Tributa to remove Trebellius from office. Trebellius withdrew his opposition just before Gabinius could obtain a majority.[6][7] Lucius Trebellius Fides, tribune of the plebs in 47 BC. In order to gain Caesar's favour, he opposed a measure proposed by his colleague, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, to abolish debts, although he himself was heavily indebted, and he proposed a similar measure after Caesar's death. He was a friend of Mark Antony, alongside whom he fought against Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus in 43 BC.[8][9][10][11] Aulus Trebellius, an eques in the army of Pompeius in 45 BC, during the Civil War, went over to Caesar during the Spanish campaign.[12] Marcus Trebellius, a legate serving under Lucius Vitellius, the governor of Syria in AD 36.[13] Trebellius Calca, went before the court of the centumviri, claiming to be the son of Publius Clodius Pulcher, that he might succeed to the latter's estate.[14][15] Marcus Trebellius Maximus, consul suffectus for the months of July and August in AD 55, alongside Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Appointed governor of Britain in 63, he was deeply disliked by his soldiers, who forced him to flee to Vitellius for support following the death of Nero. Instead of restoring Trebellius, the emperor appointed a new governor, Marcus Vettius Bolanus.[16][17] Trebellius Pollio, one of the six supposed authors of Historia Augusta. Flavius Vopiscus, another of the scriptores, describes Pollio as careless and lacking in detail. According to him, Pollio wrote "lives" of the emperors from Philip the Arab to Claudius Gothicus, covering the period from AD 244 to 270, but only those covering Valerian, Gallienus, Claudius, and the Thirty Tyrants are extant.[18][19] See also List of Roman gentes Trebellianus References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1170 ("Trebellius").  Kay, Rome's Economic Revolution, p. 207.  Livy, xxvi. 48.  Livy, xliii. 21.  Cicero, Pro Quinctio, 5.  Asconius Pedianus, In Ciceronis Pro Cornelio, p. 71 (ed. Johann Caspar von Orelli).  Cassius Dio, xxxvi. 7, 13.  Cassius Dio, xlii. 29.  Plutarch, "The Life of Antony", 9.  Cicero, Philippicae, vi. 4, x. 10, xi. 6, xii. 8, xiii. 2, 12; Ad Familiares, xi. 13. § 4.  Corbelli, Controlling Laughter, p. 82.  Caesar, De Bello Hispaniensis, 26.  Tacitus, Annales, vi. 41.  Valerius Maximus, ix. 15. § 4.  Cueva and Martínez, Splendide Mendax, p. 61.  Tacitus, Annales, xiv. 46, Historiae, i. 60, ii. 65, Agricola, 16.  Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archeological Society, p. 79.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1171 ("Trebellius Pollio").  Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths, p. 188. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, Philippicae, Pro Quinctio. Gaius Julius Caesar (attributed), De Bello Hispaniensis (On the War in Spain). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Quintus Asconius Pedianus, Commentarius in Oratio Ciceronis Pro Cornelio (Commentary on Cicero's Oration Pro Cornelio). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales; Historiae; De Vita et Moribus Iulii Agricolae (On the Life and Mores of Julius Agricola). Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Lucius Cassius Dio, Roman History. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). Arne Søby Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a Migration Myth, Museum Tusculanum Press (2002), ISBN 9788772897103. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archeological Society, James Simpson, Richard Saul Ferguson, William Gershom Collingwood (eds.), The Society (2002). Philip Kay, Rome's Economic Revolution (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy), Oxford University Press (2014), ISBN 9780199681549. Anthony Corbelli, Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic, Princeton University Press (2015), ISBN 9781400872893. Edmund P. Cueva and Javier Martínez, Splendide Mendax: Rethinking Fakes and Forgeries in Classical, Late Antique, and Early Christian Literature, Barkuis (2016), ISBN 9789491431982. Categories: TrebelliiRoman gentes And what would be your first-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: Trebellio – Ossia: Grice e Trebellio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebellio For the Trebellii, my first choice would not actually be the consul or the governor of Britain. It would be:  Lucius Trebellius Fides, tribune of the plebs in 47 BC. [GREXv3 | Word]  And the reason is deliciously Gricean. Trebellius Fides His cognomen is:  Fides = trust, reliability, good faith, credibility. [GREXv3 | Word]  Yet the sources describe him as opposing debt-relief proposals partly in order to gain Caesar's favour, despite himself being heavily in debt, and later proposing a similar measure after Caesar's death. [GREXv3 | Word] Now whether the political characterization is fair or unfair is not my point. The philosophical point is that we immediately want to ask:  Is Fides merely his name? Or does it describe him?  Exactly the sort of trap Grice warned against. A vignette:  (*) QUIS EST? (Who is it?) FIDES. (Fides.) NUM IDEO FIDENDVS EST? (Is he therefore to be trusted?) +> A name may suggest a property without entailing it.  That echoes your earlier remarks about Successus, Charis, and similar Roman cognomina.  The stronger candidate: Trebellius Calca But if I were writing a chapter for Grice e Speranza, I might ultimately choose:  Trebellius Calca. [GREXv3 | Word]  Why? Because he appeared before the centumviri claiming to be the son of Publius Clodius Pulcher in order to inherit the estate. [GREXv3 | Word] Now that is pure dossier-theory. The question is not:  What is your name?  The question is:  Are you in fact Clodius' son?  Identity, inheritance, legitimacy, evidence, family relations, public recognition, private biography. A Gricean dialogue writes itself:  (*) CALCA. Filius sum. (I am the son.) IVDEX. Unde scimus? (How do we know?) +> Reference to a person depends upon a dossier of identifying facts, not merely a declaration.  That is very close to the issues you were raising a moment ago concerning:  father, son, biological father, adopted father, legal recognition, social expectations.   The obvious giant: Trebatius Testa's neighbour The historically most important Trebellius is probably:  Trebellius Pollio. [GREXv3 | Word]  But there the interest is historiographical rather than conversational. He belongs more to the philosophy of authorship and forgery than to Gricean pragmatics.  Speranza's gloss  The Trebellii contribute a claimant to fatherhood. Trebellius Calca asserted that he was the son of Clodius; the court required more than assertion. The case illustrates a perennial lesson: names and declarations do not suffice for identification. What matters is the dossier. Grice distrusted the magical powers often attributed to proper names; the Roman judges appear to have shared the suspicion. [GREXv3 | Word]  So my first-best choice is Trebellius Calca, with Lucius Trebellius Fides a close second because the irony of being named Fides is simply too good for a philosopher to ignore.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali:Trebellieno – Ossia: Grice e Trebellieno – Grex griceiana – verbalia --: Trebellieno. The gens Trebelliena was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. The only member of this gens who achieved any importance in the Roman state was Titus Trebellienus Rufus, who attained the rank of praetor, and was appointed governor of Thrace by Tiberius in AD 19.[1]  Origin The nomen Trebellienus belongs to a class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -enus, typically used to form nomina from existing gentilicia ending in an i stem.[2] Here the name is formed from the nomen Trebellius.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Titus Trebellienus L. f. Rufus, had been quaestor, tribune of the plebs, and praetor. In AD 19, the emperor Tiberius appointed him to oversee the administration of Thrace for the children of Cotys. In 35, Trebellienus was accused of maiestas, and put an end to his own life.[3][4] Trebelliena Nereis, buried at Rome, with a tomb dedicated by her husband, whose name has not been preserved.[5] Trebelliena Felicitas, buried at Telesia in Samnium, in a second-century tomb built by her husband, Publius Vibius Ampliatus.[6] See also List of Roman gentes References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 677 ("Trebellienus Rufus").  Chase, p. 118.  Tacitus, Annales, ii. 67, iii. 38, vi. 39.  PIR, vol. III, p. 334 (T, No. 230).  CIL VI, 27577.  CIL IX, 2306. 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). 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). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali:Trebellieno – Ossia: Grice e Trebellieno – Grex griceiana – verbalia --: Trebellieno. For the Trebellieni, there is really only one serious candidate:  Titus Trebellienus Rufus, governor of Thrace under Tiberius, later accused of maiestas and driven to suicide. [GREXv3 | Word]  But the interesting thing is not the governorship. It is the charge. Maiestas and Grice The Roman accusation of maiestas is notoriously elusive. The source tells us only that in AD 35 Trebellienus Rufus was accused of maiestas and took his own life. [GREXv3 | Word] What fascinates a Gricean is that maiestas cases often depend on interpretation. The legal question is frequently not:  What did he physically do?  but:  What did the act mean?  or  What attitude did it manifest?  That is perilously close to the distinction between:  act, intention, interpretation.  A vignette:  (*) ACCVSATOR. Hoc fecisti. (You did this.) RVFVS. Feci. (I did.) ACCVSATOR. Sed quid significabat? (But what did it signify?) +> Disputes often concern not the occurrence of an act but its interpretation.   A contrast with Lars Tolumnius With Lars Tolumnius the issue was:  Was the vox interpreted as an order?  With Trebellienus Rufus the issue may be represented more abstractly as:  Was some action interpreted as disloyalty to the emperor?  In both cases the decisive issue is the move from:  event  to  significance.  Of course, the sources give us no details of the specific conduct in Rufus' case. We know only the accusation and its consequence. [GREXv3 | Word]  Why not Trebelliena Felicitas? One might be tempted by:  Trebelliena Felicitas. [GREXv3 | Word]  Simply because Felicitas ("good fortune") belongs to the same family as the ironic cognomina we discussed earlier (Fides, Successus, Charis). But we know almost nothing about her beyond an epitaph. [GREXv3 | Word]  Speranza's gloss  The Trebellieni contribute a victim of maiestas. The Roman state frequently punished not merely acts but interpretations of acts. Trebellienus Rufus reminds us that between conduct and condemnation stands an inferential step. Grice devoted much of his work to explaining how such steps are made. Roman prosecutors, unfortunately, were often quicker to draw them than philosophers. [GREXv3 | Word]  Were I writing Grice e Speranza, however, I would probably make a mischievous comparison between Trebellienus Rufus accused of maiestas and Trebellius Calca claiming to be Clodius' son. Both cases ultimately ask:  What follows from a description?  One description is filial; the other political. In both, the dossier matters more than the bare words. Grice, who was there in the 1940s at Oxford, recalls that when Austin was out of words for his concept, Hart told him that the Scots had a term for it -- 'operative,' later performatory, later performative. Lawyers know and will split when any reasonable philosopher would lump. So maius, maiestas -- what's the etym. and since then it acquired this legal negative evaluative term -- treason is not even cognate. And Greek hybris is too hellenistic. So how come? Thanks Does Lewis and Short based on Andrews based on Freund make a point about it? Thanks A very nice question. And yes, this is exactly the sort of place where a jurist like Hart and an ordinary-language philosopher like Grice might profitably quarrel over distinctions. The etymology of maiestas is straightforward enough:  maior ("greater") → maius ("greater") → maiestas ("greatness," "superiority," "majesty," "dignity").  The noun is formed from the comparative stem mai- ("greater"). Originally it is not negative at all. It means something like:  greatness, dignity, exalted rank, sovereign standing.  The opposite is:  minuere maiestatem "to diminish the majesty" or "to lessen the greatness."  And that is where the legal meaning comes from. The Roman crime is not originally "treason" in the modern sense. It is:  conduct that diminishes the maiestas of the Roman people, state, magistracy, or emperor.  "High treason" is thus a translation, but not an etymology. A Roman jurist thinks:  the Roman people possess maiestas; someone lessens it; therefore a crime has been committed.  The Englishman thinks:  someone betrayed the state.  Not quite the same conceptual structure.  As to Lewis & Short, yes, they reflect this progression rather well. The lexical route is roughly:  greatness, dignity, sovereign authority, majesty, the legal notion in the phrase:   crimen maiestatis  the crime of violating or diminishing public majesty. The legal sense develops from the political one. The Romans did not start with:  treason.  They started with:  greatness.  And then asked:  what counts as diminishing it?   Which is where the Gricean angle becomes interesting. Unlike homicide:  somebody is dead.  The offence of maiestas very often requires interpretation. One asks:  What did the act signify?   What attitude did it display?   Did the act "lessen" Roman dignity?  The movement from physical deed to political significance is enormous. Hence a Roman prosecutor and an ordinary-language philosopher are suddenly in neighboring territory.  And now back to Lars Tolumnius. I think you're right that Livy's preference for:  voluisse  is oddly blunt. The apologetic version contains:  a dice game, a lucky throw, a vox ambigua, uptake by the Fidenates, a fatal interpretation.  That is a complete pragmatic narrative. Livy's preferred version reduces everything to:  he wanted them dead.  Morally cleaner. Pragmatically poorer. The whole fascination of:  vox ambigua  is that it creates a space between  utterance  and  interpretation.  And that space is exactly where Grice lives. Indeed, if one were inventing a Latin equivalent of your proposed English:  "Strike!"  the point would not be the lexical item but the dual uptake:  "A hit!" (dice) versus "Strike them!" (command)  The anecdote only works if both readings remain available. Otherwise there is no ambiguitas and therefore no attempt to levare regis facinus. A final Speranzian remark:  Livy's jurisprudence of intention defeats his linguistics of ambiguity. The historian prefers a wicked king who plainly wills an outcome to an ambiguous utterance whose meaning depends on uptake. A philosopher of language would probably have preferred the opposite. Grice: "A very Roman ellipsis -- as calling 'father' he who is patricide." It seems that 'minutio' is the sin or offense and by ellipsis crimen munitionis maiestatis populi romani becomes 'maiestas' -- How odd. Thanks Yes, exactly. And that is a very Roman linguistic move. The original notion is not:  maiestas = treason.  Rather:  maiestas = greatness, superiority, dignity, sovereign standing.  The operative idea is:  minuere maiestatem, "to diminish the majesty."  In the Republic one speaks of things such as the maiestas populi Romani, the greatness or sovereign dignity of the Roman people. Only later does the expression:  crimen minutae maiestatis or crimen laesae maiestatis  (harming or diminishing public majesty) contract practically into:  maiestas.  The name of the thing injured comes to stand for the offence against it. A wonderfully Roman ellipsis. As you say, rather as one might imagine calling patricide simply:  "pater"  because everybody tacitly understands:  caedes patris.  Not the victim, but the victim-name standing for the offence. The Romans constantly do this sort of thing. The legal vocabulary tends toward abbreviation because the institutional background is assumed. So:  maiestas  comes to mean less:  "greatness"  and more:  "the offence involving greatness."  The semantic center shifts from the protected value to the crime. A Gricean would enjoy this because the full proposition remains silently present. When a Roman of the early Empire hears:  maiestas,  he reconstructs something like:  "an offence diminishing the dignity of the Roman state or emperor."  The hearer supplies the missing material. Indeed, the legal term becomes almost a gigantic conventionalized implicature. The explicit word is:  maiestas = greatness.  The understood content is:  crimen laesae maiestatis.  And that explains why modern translations such as "treason" are simultaneously useful and misleading. "Treason" tells us the practical effect. But it obscures the Roman conceptual structure, which is not:  betrayal,  but:  diminution of public greatness.  A Roman jurist asks:  Has the maiestas been diminished?  An English lawyer asks:  Has the Crown been betrayed?  Close cousins, but not the same thought. And I suspect both Grice and Hart would have insisted that the difference is philosophically significant. And while your EX-plicature is minutae majestatis or laesa laesae maiestate -- didn't the second arrive in England via Anglo-Norman as lesse majeste? Thanks alla -- honi soi qui mal y pense? Thanks or noblesse oblige? Thanks Yes, very much so. The medieval and English legal history is actually a splendid example of semantic migration. The Roman expressions are:  crimen minutae maiestatis ("the crime of diminishing majesty"), later and more famously crimen laesae maiestatis ("the crime of injured majesty").  The adjective laesa is the participle of laedere:  strike, injure, harm, wound, offend.  So:  laesa maiestas = "injured majesty."  When the concept passed through the medieval legal tradition, especially via the learned Roman law cultivated on the Continent, it yielded the French legal expression:  lèse-majesté  literally:  "injured majesty."  English borrowed the concept and often the French form itself. What's amusing is that the French preserves the Roman logic much better than the English translation "treason." A Roman thinks:  Majesty has been injured.  A French jurist thinks:  lèse-majesté.  An Englishman thinks:  treason.  The last changes the conceptual centre of gravity.  And yes, there is a family resemblance to those Norman-French survivals that still decorate English political culture:  Honi soit qui mal y pense ("Shame be to him who thinks evil of it.")  and  Noblesse oblige ("Nobility imposes obligations.")  Not because they are etymologically related to maiestas, but because they preserve an aristocratic and honorific way of thinking. Indeed, noblesse oblige is almost the positive counterpart of laesa maiestas:                  PositiveNegativenoble status creates dutiesexalted status must not be diminishednoblesse obligelèse-majesté One tells the superior what he owes. The other tells the inferior what he must not do.  A Gricean might enjoy the history because the legal phrase undergoes precisely the sort of ellipsis we discussed. Originally one might speak of:  crimen laesae maiestatis.  Then:  maiestas.  Just as modern lawyers say:  "It's a case of lèse-majesté"  without spelling out:  "an offence consisting in injury to sovereign dignity."  The hearer supplies the omitted material. A very Roman abbreviation. In fact, one can imagine Grice smiling at the progression:  greatness (maiestas) → injured greatness (laesa maiestas) → crime of injured greatness (crimen laesae maiestatis) → simply maiestas.  The noun naming the value protected comes to denote the offence against that value. That is an extraordinary semantic compression, and exactly the sort of thing that fascinated both jurists and philosophers of language. And of course we are thinking republicanly 'populi romani' but Napoleon or Robespierre may think otherwise or Louis the beheaded one -- l'etat c'est moi' -- And we suppose in the principate and empire the 'caesar' as metonymic for 'popul romani' as in the case of our hero here thanks Precisely. And I think that is one of the great conceptual shifts hidden inside the history of maiestas. In the older republican conception, the phrase is naturally understood as:  maiestas populi Romani  the greatness, superiority, or sovereign dignity of the Roman people. Theoretically, the object protected is not a man but a corporate entity:  the populus Romanus.  That is already an abstraction of remarkable sophistication. But under the Principate something subtly changes. Officially, Augustus and his successors are careful not to say:  L'état, c'est moi.  The fiction remains:  Senate and People of Rome. Princeps of the Roman people. First citizen.  Yet in practice the emperor increasingly becomes the bearer, representative, and visible embodiment of Roman maiestas. A Roman jurist might still formulate the matter in terms of injury to the state's dignity, but a prosecutor under Tiberius might ask:  What did he say about the emperor?  or  What attitude toward Caesar did this act reveal?  The protected object has not formally changed, but the referential center has shifted. A Gricean might describe the development as a kind of political metonymy:  Roman People → Roman State → Princeps → Caesar.  The chain is never openly acknowledged, but much legal practice presupposes it. Thus in the case of our friend  Trebellienus Rufus,  when he is accused of maiestas under Tiberius, the practical question is unlikely to have been whether he diminished some abstract republican sovereignty. Rather, the accusation would have been understood in the political atmosphere of Tiberius' reign as touching the dignity of the imperial regime and, by implication, the emperor himself. [GREXv3 | Word] And this is where the Gricean analogy becomes irresistible. The explicit expression:  maiestas  retains its old republican wording. But the hearer's reconstruction is different. Rather as:  "The Crown"  may mean not merely a crown, or  "Downing Street"  not merely a street, or  "the White House"  not merely a building. The Roman hearer increasingly understands:  maiestas +> Caesar.  The legal vocabulary remains republican; the uptake becomes imperial. A very Roman implicature, one might say. And in hnis review of "The justification of punishment" -- an Oxonian bestseller -- Grice wonders about the 'driven to suicide'. "Surely it would be otiose to think of Tiberius uttering "Commit suicide!" To our hero -- yet the 'driven' to is again another Roman ambiguity in the handling of conversational moves and their addressees! Thanks Yes, and this is exactly the sort of thing that would have amused Grice. The standard historical formulation for men like Trebellienus Rufus is often:  "He was accused of maiestas and committed suicide."  or, in stronger English:  "He was driven to suicide." [GREXv3 | Word]  A Gricean immediately asks:  Driven by whom? By what act? By what utterance?  Surely Tiberius did not send a memorandum saying:  Occide te ipsum. "Kill yourself."  Indeed, the whole point is that no such explicit imperative need be uttered. The Roman political system was often exquisitely indirect. A senator is accused. The atmosphere is understood. The likely verdict is understood. The consequences for family and property are understood. The accused acts. Now compare:  A: "You may, of course, do as you wish." B: "I see."  Grice's point is that the force of an utterance may greatly exceed its explicit content. In a Tiberian maiestas prosecution, one might say that almost the entire force lies in what is understood rather than what is said. A Speranzian reconstruction:  (*) AMICUS. Accusatus es. (You have been accused.) RVFUS. Intellego. (I understand.) +> Conviction is likely. +> Ruin is likely. +> A voluntary death would be preferable.  No one says:  "Commit suicide."  Yet the practical conclusion may be unmistakable.  This is why your connection with Grice's review of The Justification of Punishment is apt. The ordinary phrase:  "He was driven to suicide"  contains a huge amount of unresolved pragmatics. It can mean:  Someone literally ordered him to die. Someone threatened him. Social circumstances made death appear preferable. He inferred what was expected of him.  The expression compresses all those possibilities. A Roman historian often leaves the mechanism opaque.  And there is a further irony. The charge of maiestas itself, as we discussed, becomes increasingly tied to interpretation. Then the victim's response is also described interpretively:  He was "driven" to suicide.  So we have two levels of inference:  Prosecutors infer disloyalty from conduct. The accused infers his future from the prosecution.  A chain of practical implicatures. One can almost imagine Grice remarking:  "Nobody said that he should kill himself; it was merely made abundantly clear."  Which, for an Oxonian, is often the most interesting case of all. and compulsory suicide was a Roman art, more than ars amandi, as Orazio thought. For witness Seneca 'driven to cut his veins in a warm bath' or 'falling on his sword' by Paetus and Paeta -- etc ''-- It hurts not." Do we have details here for our hero who dared lessen the majesty of the Roman people? Thanks Unfortunately, for Trebellienus Rufus, the surviving sources are frustratingly sparse. What we can say from the sources you've supplied is:  He had held the offices of quaestor, tribune of the plebs, and praetor. [GREXv3 | Word] In AD 19, Tiberius appointed him to administer Thrace on behalf of the children of Cotys. [GREXv3 | Word] In AD 35 he was accused of maiestas. [GREXv3 | Word] He then took his own life. [GREXv3 | Word]  What I cannot find in the material before us is the specific act constituting the alleged maiestas, nor the manner of his suicide. The sources cited in your entry point primarily to Tacitus, Annales ii.67, iii.38, and vi.39, but the précis you provided does not preserve further detail. [GREXv3 | Word] And that itself is rather Roman. As you rightly note, "driven to suicide" is frequently a retrospective description, not a report of an explicit order. In many imperial cases, what happens is not:  "Kill yourself."  but rather a chain of understandings:  accusation  impending condemnation loss of status and property expectation of the political system   leading to a "voluntary" death. One can almost hear Grice asking:  Who said what to whom?  The historians often leave the decisive conversational move unstated.  On your point about maiestas, there is a further irony. In a republic:  maiestas populi Romani  is ostensibly the dignity of the Roman people. In the Principate, as we discussed, the practical referent often drifts toward:  the emperor, the imperial order, the emperor as embodiment of the Roman people.  Thus our unfortunate Trebellienus Rufus is said to have offended maiestas, but the legal and political reality may have involved a much smaller set of persons than the phrase suggests. [GREXv3 | Word] A Grice-Speranza gloss might be:  The charge names an abstraction (maiestas); the consequences are borne by a man. The Roman formula speaks of injury to the greatness of the Roman people. The practical question is always: "Who felt injured?" That question, significantly, the legal language leaves unanswered.  If you'd like, I can next look at the actual Tacitean passages (Annales vi.39 especially) and see whether Tacitus gives any additional detail about the accusation against Trebellienus Rufus.

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebio – Ossia: Grice e Trebio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebio -- The gens Trebia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned during the second century BC, but none of them attained any of the higher offices of the Roman state under the Republic. Three of the Trebii reached the consulship in the time of Hadrian.  Origin The nomen Trebius was originally a common Sabellic praenomen, which came to be used as a nomen gentilicium.[1]  Members Trebius Niger, a companion of the proconsul Lucius Licinius Lucullus in Hispania Baetica in 150 BC. His writings on natural history are noted by Pliny on several occasions.[2][3][4] Marcus Trebius Gallus, a legate sent by Publius Licinius Crassus, Caesar's lieutenant in Gaul, to obtain grain from the Curiosolitae, a Gallic tribe. As with his fellow envoys to other tribes, Trebius was seized by his hosts, who hoped to bargain for the return of their hostages from the Romans.[5][6] Lucius Trebius Germanus, consul suffectus at the end of an uncertain year between AD 123 and 126.[7] Gaius Trebius Maximus, consul suffectus at the end of AD 122, and governor of Lycia and Pamphylia early in the reign of Hadrian.[8][9] Trebius Sergianus, consul ordinarius in AD 132, during the reign of Hadrian. He was the recipient of a rescript from the emperor, upon which Ulpian wrote, concerning the giving of security against the recovery of an estate during a challenge to a will.[10][11] See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, p. 139.  Pliny, Historia Naturalis, ix. 25. s. 41; 30. s. 48; xxxii. 2. s. 6.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 1202 ("Trebius Niger").  PIR, vol. III, pp. 335, 336 (T, No. 243).  Caesar, De Bello Gallico, iii. 7, 8.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 212.  PIR, vol. III, p. 335 (T, No. 241).  PIR, vol. III, p. 335 (T, No. 242).  Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy.  PIR, vol. III, p. 336 (T, No. 244).  Digesta, 5. tit. 3. s. 5. § 1. Bibliography Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War). Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Digesta, or Pandectae (The Digest). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). 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). Alison E. Cooley, The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy, Cambridge University Press (2012). Categories: TrebiiRoman gentes And the first-best choice for a Grice-Speranza vignette from THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebio – Ossia: Grice e Trebio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebio -- For the Trebii, my first-best Grice–Speranza choice would be neither the consul nor the natural historian, but:  Trebius Sergianus, consul of AD 132 and recipient of a rescript from Hadrian concerning security to be given pending a challenge to a will. The case was important enough for Ulpian later to discuss it in the Digest.  Why him? Because wills are among the most Gricean of all legal documents. A will is a speech act whose author is unavailable for clarification. The testator cannot be asked:  "What exactly did you mean?"  or  "Did you intend this clause to apply here?"  The whole juridical problem becomes the reconstruction of intention from words and circumstances. A vignette:  (*) TESTATOR. Heres esto. (Be my heir.) ADVOCATUS. Quid voluit? (What did he mean?) IVRISCONSULTUS. Nunc demum quaeritur. (Now the real inquiry begins.) +> Interpretation becomes most urgent when the speaker is unavailable.  That is almost a Gricean paradise. The jurist is forced to distinguish:  what was written, what was legally effected, what was intended.   A close runner-up would be:  Marcus Trebius Gallus, Caesar's envoy sent to obtain grain who was seized by the Gallic tribe from whom he sought supplies.  That raises the same kind of issue we found with Titurius Sabinus:  Is this a cooperative exchange? Or a hostile negotiation?  Very Gricean, but less directly so than a dispute about wills.  The natural historian is tempting too:  Trebius Niger. Pliny cites his writings on natural history several times.  Yet that is more epistemology than pragmatics.  Speranzian gloss  The Trebii contribute a legal problem rather than a great man. In the case associated with Trebius Sergianus, jurists had to determine what should be done while a testament was under challenge. Every dispute about a will is ultimately a dispute about absent intentions. The speaker is dead; only the words remain. Roman jurists and Oxford philosophers alike then ask the same question: what was meant?  And I suspect Grice would have liked that far more than a military exploit, because a will is one of the clearest examples of meaning surviving its maker.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebiano – Ossia: Grice e Trebiano  la ragione conversazionale dell’orto romano e l’implicatura conversazionale del Grice italo.Note su De iure. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Gaio Trebiano  la ragione conversazionale dell’orto romano e l’implicatura conversazionale del Grice italo – Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning treats implicature as something a rational hearer can (at least in principle) calculate from what is said plus shared assumptions about cooperative talk: when a speaker seems to under-inform, digress, or speak oddly, the hearer searches for an intended point that would make the utterance a reasonable move under recognizable conversational norms. “Trebiano,” as your passage frames him, is positioned not as a theorist of maxims but as a Roman case-study in how conversational reason operates in epistolary patronage and consolation: Cicero’s letters to Trebianus (a distinct figure often confused with the better-known Trebonius) show meaning being managed through what is left unsaid—reassurance, advocacy, and face-saving hope for pardon/restoration are conveyed obliquely, because the political context (exile, Caesar’s dominance, dependence on intermediaries) makes direct speech risky. In that setting, the “implicature” is less a classroom derivation and more a lived tactic of survival: Cicero’s careful offers of help and updates function as socially binding signals without always stating the whole practical upshot, while Trebianus’s own “hortus” posture (Epicurean quietism, measured hedonism, placitum) casts conversation as a low-noise discipline that sustains agency under constraint. So where Grice universalizes the rational mechanism—implicature as a general product of cooperative reasoning—Trebiano supplies a historically Roman instantiation in which conversational reason is inseparable from prudence, patron-client expectation, and the therapeutic style of letters: meaning is governed by reason, but reason here is political and ethical as much as inferential, and the “garden” becomes a model for how to communicate more than one dares to say. Roma – filosofia italiana – By , pel Gruppo di Gioco di Grice, ,   (Roma). Abstract. Grice: “In Cicero's correspondence,  T. refers to a man named  T., who belongs to the Trebia gens. While he is a distinct individual, he is often confused with the more famous TREBONIO , of the Trebonia gens, another close friend and correspondent of Cicero. T. himself is an equestrian whom CiICERONE  supports during The Civil War, and letters addressed to him are preserved in the Epistulae ad Familiares.  Key Facts About T.: Gens: He belongs to the Trebia gens, a family that likely originated from Treba or a similar municipality, rather than the more politically prominent Trebonia line. Relationship with Cicero: Cicero appears to have been a patron or advocate for him. During the period of GIULIO  Cesare’s dictatorship, Cicero wrote to T. while the latter is in exile, offering him consolation and updates on his efforts to secure a pardon for him. Distinction from Trebonius: Unlike TREBONIO , who was a consul, a legate of Caesar, and later one of his assassins, T. is a less prominent political figure primarily known through these specific personal letters.  Would you like to know more about the specific contents of the letters Cicero sent to T., or are you looking for information on other equestrian friends of Cicero? Keywords: edonismo, placitum. Orto. Lucrezio. Il secolo d’oro – Ottaviano. Filosofo italiano. Friend of CICERONE. He takes an interest in philosophy and may have been a ‘Gardener.’  Roma antica, l’orto. GRICEVS: O TREBIANE, in Ciceronis epistulis te lego—equitem quidem, non Trebonium illum clariorem; sed saepe vos confundunt. Dic mihi, quaeso: quomodo toleras tam iniustam homonymiae calamitatem? TREBIANVS: Facile, GRICE: Trebonius consul est; ego Trebianus sum—eques et (ut aiunt) minus “famosus,” sed Ciceroni carus. Si confundor, saltem cum amico confundor. GRICEVS: Bene dictum. At mihi tua “minor” fama aliquid inplicat: Ciceronem in bello civili etiam de minimis curasse, patronum se praebuisse, et exsulem non solum consilio sed sermone sustentasse—quasi hortus ipse consolationem doceret. TREBIANVS: Ita est; in horto didicimus et voluptatis modum et doloris contemptum. Edonismo sine strepitu, placitum sine superbia: et si Caesar dominatur, nos tamen colloquimur. Nam, ut tu doces, ratio saepe in ipsa conversatione latet—et Cicero, epistulis suis, hortum in urbem portavit. Trebiano, Gaio (a.u.c. DCCVII). De iure.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebizio – Ossia: Grice e Tribizio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebizio. The gens Trebicia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens are mentioned by Roman writers, but a number are known from inscriptions. Marcus Valerius Trebicius Decianus was magister of the Arval Brethren during the reign of Hadrian.  Origin The nomen Trebicius belongs to a class of gentilicia originally formed from cognomina ending in -ex or -icis, but later from other nomina, as -icius came to be regarded as a regular gentile-forming suffix.[1]  Praenomina The chief praenomen of the Trebicii seems to have been Quintus, alongside which they occasionally employed Lucius, and probably also Titus and Aulus, all of which were common names throughout all periods of Roman history. Marcus may not have been a regular praenomen of this gens, as the only member known to have used it likely assumed the name as part of the nomenclature of a maternal ancestor.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Quintus Trebicius Rusticelianus, together with Marcus Farranius Nicomedes dedicated a cinerarium at Tarquinii, dating between the late first century and the middle of the second, for Marcus Scribonius Nicoma.[2] Lucius Trebicius L. f. Faustinus, buried at Contosolia in Hispania Baetica, at some point between the late first century and the end of the second. He was in his fifties, and his tomb might have been built by his son, perhaps named Titus Trebicius Faustus, although the reading is very uncertain.[3] Trebicia Tertulla, the owner of an estate from which pottery was issued, found at Rome and Ostia in Latium, and likely dating from the time of Hadrian.[4][5][6] Marcus Valerius Trebicius Decianus,[i] magister of the Arval Brethren during the reign of Hadrian.[7][8] Aulus Trebicius Gaudinus,[ii] prefect of an ala, or cavalry wing, in the Legio I Parthica at Bostra in Arabia Petraea.[9] Undated Trebicii Trebicia, the owner of an estate from which pottery was issued, found at Fidenae in Latium and Firmum Picenum in Picenum; likely the same person as Trebicia Tertulla.[10] Quintus Trebicius, named on pottery from Alsium in Etruria.[11] Quintus Trebicius, named on pottery from Tarraco in Hispania Citerior.[12] Trebicius Amaranthus, built a tomb at Rome for his wife, Trebicia Tyches.[13] Trebicia Badia, buried at Pax Julia in Lusitania, aged sixty-five.[14] Trebicia Melisse, buried at Rome.[15] Quintus Trebicius Onesimus, buried at Rome, with a monument from his wife, Trebicia Philete.[16] Trebicia Philete, dedicated a tomb at Rome for her husband, Quintus Trebicius Onesimus.[16] Trebicia Saturnina, buried at Rome, together with her daughter, Valgia Isochrysa, aged thirteen years and eight months.[17] Trebicia Tyches, buried at Rome, aged fifty-six years, ten months, and twenty-five days, in a tomb built by her husband, Trebicius Amaranthus.[13] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  As with other polyonymous Romans from this period, it is unclear whether his nomen was Valerius or Trebicius, as it was common for the Roman upper classes to combine the names of ancestors from both the paternal and maternal lines, arranging them in whatever order seemed most auspicious. As the Valeria gens was both ancient and illustrious, "Marcus Valerius", the name of a maternal ancestor, might have been prefixed to the name of an otherwise undistinguished "Trebicius Decianus", who through some combination of hard work and good fortune found himself master of the Arval Brethren. The best indication that this was the case is that he is sometimes referred to simply as "Trebicius Decianus". See Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire.  Gaudinus' praenomen is uncertain; the letter 'A' certainly precedes his nomen, but it might possibly stand for something other than a praenomen. References  Chase, p. 126.  CIL XI, 3480.  AE 1994, 884.  CIL XV, 524, CIL XV, 525,13.  PIR, vol. III, p. 335 (T., No. 240).  Bloch, Roman Brick-stamps, 142.  CIL VI, 2074, CIL VI, 2075, CIL VI, 2076, CIL VI, 2078, CIL VI, 2080.  AE 1964, 69a.  CIL III, 99.  CIL XV, 525,1–CIL XV, 525,12, CIL XV, 525,14–CIL XV, 525,25.  CIL XV, 2218.  CIL II, 4970,526.  CIL VI, 27597.  d'Encarnação, Inscrições Romanas do Conventus Pacensis, 317.  CIL VI, 27595.  CIL VI, 27594.  CIL VI, 27596. Bibliography Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). René Cagnat et alii, L'Année épigraphique (The Year in Epigraphy, abbreviated AE), Presses Universitaires de France (1888–present). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898). Herbert Bloch, "The Roman Brick-stamps Not Published in Volume XV 1 of Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum" in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vols. LVI, LVII (1947). José d'Encarnação, Inscrições Romanas do Conventus Pacensis: subsídios para o estudo da romanização (Roman Inscriptions from the Court of Pax: Subsidies for the Study of Romanization), Instituto de Arqueologia da Faculdade de Letras, Coimbra (1984). Olli Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki (1992). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thank you

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebizio – Ossia: Grice e Tribizio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebizio. For the Trebicii, my first-best Grice–Speranza choice would be neither the Arval priest nor the cavalry prefect, but:  Marcus Valerius Trebicius Decianus.  And the reason is wonderfully onomastic. The polyonymous puzzle Your note already highlights the problem:  Was his nomen really Valerius or Trebicius?  The very sources hesitate because upper-class Romans of the Empire increasingly accumulated names from paternal, maternal, adoptive, and honorary lines. The result is that the same individual could be referred to under different segments of the same extended name. That is pure Grice. A vignette:  (*) QUIS EST? (Who is it?) RESPONSUM: Marcus Valerius Trebicius Decianus. SED: Utrum Valerius an Trebicius? (But is he a Valerius or a Trebicius?) +> Identity is not exhausted by any single name-component.  The dossier survives even if the label fluctuates.  Grice versus Roman nomenclature You have often stressed that Grice distrusted the magical powers attributed to proper names and preferred dossiers. Now consider our friend:  Marcus Valerius Trebicius Decianus.  Which of these names actually refers? A Roman aristocrat might answer:  all of them.  A Gricean might answer:  none by themselves; the hearer reconstructs a dossier.  The note attached to your entry is itself almost a Gricean essay. It says, in effect:  The order of the names does not settle who he "really" was.  Exactly.  Runner-up: Trebicia Tertulla The second candidate would be:  Trebicia Tertulla, whose estate is known from pottery stamps.  The stamp functions much like a signature. The pot says:  "This came from Trebicia."  Without uttering a sentence. A communicative artifact rather than a conversation. Interesting, but less philosophically rich than Decianus.  The cognomen Gaudinus A pleasant third-place candidate is:  Aulus Trebicius Gaudinus.  The cognomen suggests joy or delight (gaudium). Like Fides, Felicitas, Successus, and Charis, it tempts us into the classic Roman fallacy:  Does the name describe the man?  Grice would immediately answer:  not necessarily.   Speranzian gloss  The Trebicii contribute a man with too many names. Marcus Valerius Trebicius Decianus illustrates the danger of believing that reference resides in a single proper name. Romans accumulated names from several ancestral lines; philosophers accumulate dossiers. When different labels pick out the same person, identification depends less on nomenclature than on the organized body of facts attached to the individual. The Roman Empire arrived at this problem long before Oxford did.  Of all the Trebicii, Decianus is the one I would certainly give a place in a Grice e Speranza lexicon, because the problem of which name really names him is already a miniature theory of reference.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebonio – Ossia: Grice e Trebonio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebonio. The gens Trebonia, rarely Terebonia, was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are mentioned in the first century of the Republic, and regularly throughout Roman history, but none of them attained the consulship until the time of Caesar.[1]  Origin The nomen Trebonius belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -onius, originally applied to cognomina ending in -o, but later used as a regular gentile-forming suffix, and applied in cases for which there was no morphological justification. These gentes were largely plebeian, and the form Terebonius strongly hints at an Oscan origin.[2]  Branches and cognomina The Trebonii of the Republic bore no hereditary surnames, but a few had personal cognomina, such as Asper, bestowed upon Lucius Trebonius, the plebeian tribune of 448 BC.[1] Translating "rough, harsh, rude", or "annoying", this surname alluded to Trebonius' determined pursuit of reforms favouring the plebeians.[3]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Lucius Trebonius, surnamed Asper, as tribune of the plebs in 448 BC, carried a law, the lex Trebonia, requiring that the comitia should not be dismissed until the full complement of ten plebeian tribunes had been elected. Prior to this, vacancies were filled by co-optation, leaving the office open to political influence, which had resulted in two patricians being chosen as tribunes of the plebs in the previous year.[4][5] Gnaeus Trebonius, tribune of the plebs in 401 BC, opposed the co-optation of two of his colleagues, in violation of the lex Trebonia. Though unsuccessful in this regard, the plebeian tribunes of this year did pass an agrarian law.[6][7] Marcus Trebonius, consular tribune in 383 BC.[8][9] Publius Trebonius, listed by Diodorus Siculus among the consular tribunes of 379 BC. His inclusion is doubtful, as he is not mentioned by Livy, who lists six consular tribunes, while Diodorus gives eight; there were no more than six in any other year.[10][11][12] Titus Trebonius, a legate serving under the consul Lucius Papirius Cursor in 293 BC, during the Third Samnite War. He led the Roman cavalry at Aquilonia, where the consul won a significant victory.[13][14] Trebonius, a subordinate of Gaius Lusius, the nephew of Marius, during the Cimbric War. When his efforts at seduction failed, Lusius attempted to force himself on Trebonius, who slew him. On hearing Trebonius' defense, Marius acquitted him of his nephew's murder, and honoured him.[15][16][17][18] Aulus Trebonius, mentioned by Cicero among those whom Sulla had proscribed.[19] Publius Trebonius, made a will in favour of his brother, Aulus, who had been proscribed by Sulla, only to have the will set aside by Verres, the corrupt governor of Sicily.[19] Gaius Trebonius, an eques, and the father of Gaius Trebonius, the consul.[20] Gaius Trebonius C. f., the consul and tyrannicide, as quaestor in 60 BC, opposed the adoption of Publius Clodius Pulcher by a plebeian. As tribune of the plebs in 55, he passed the lex Trebonia granting proconsular commands to Pompeius and Crassus, and extending Caesar's command in Gaul for another five years. He became a trusted lieutenant of Caesar, by whose favour he became consul suffectus in October of 45. He was one of the chief conspirators against Caesar in the following year, for which he was highly praised by Cicero. Trebonius was murdered by Publius Cornelius Dolabella in 43.[21][22][23][24][25][26] Trebonius, an obscure person whose adultery was mentioned by Horace.[27] Trebonius Garutianus or Garucianus, a procurator ordered by Galba to put Lucius Clodius Macer, the governor of Africa, to death. Macer had revolted against Nero with Galba's encouragement, but the extent to which he armed himself raised suspicion that Macer intended to lay claim to the empire.[28] Trebonius Rufinus, one of the municipal decemviri at Vienna in Gallia Lugdunensis, was a friend of Pliny the Younger.[29] Publius Trebonius, consul suffectus in AD 53, serving from the Kalends of July, possibly through the end of October.[30][31] Gaius Trebonius Proculus Mettius Modestus, consul suffectus in AD 103, seems to have belonged to the Mettia gens; he may have been adopted by a Gaius Trebonius Proculus, or perhaps that was the name of his maternal grandfather.[30] Appius Annius Trebonius Gallus, consul in AD 108, was really a member of the Annia gens, but through his mother was probably the grandson of Publius Trebonius, the consul of AD 53. See also List of Roman gentes Trebonianus Gallus, Roman emperor References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1171 ("Trebonia Gens").  Chase, pp. 119, 120.  New College Latin & English Dictionary, s.v. asper.  Livy, iii. 65, v. 10.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 50.  Livy, v. 11.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 84.  Livy, vi. 21.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 103.  Diodorus Siculus, xv. 51.  Livy, vi. 30.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 106, 107 (and note 1).  Livy, x. 40.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 181.  Plutarch, "The Life of Marius", 14.  Cicero, Pro Milone, 4.  Scholia Bobiensia, Pro Milone, p. 279 (ed. Orelli).  Valerius Maximus, vi. 1. § 12.  Cicero, In Verrem, i. 47.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, x. 28, Philippicae, xiii. 10.  Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, x. 28, xii. 12, 14–16, xv. 20, 21, Epistulae ad Atticum, iv. 8. b. § 2; viii. 3. § 7, xiv. 10, Philippicae, ii. 11, 14, xi. 1, 2, 4, xiii. 10.  Cassius Dio, xxxix. 33, xli. 19, xlii. 22, xliii. 29, 46, xliv. 14, 19, xlvii. 21, 26, 29.  Caesar, De Bello Gallico, v. 24, vi. 40, De Bello Civili, i. 36, ii. 1, iii. 20, 21.  Plutarch, "The Life of Brutus", 19.  Appian, Bellum Civile, ii. 113, 117, iii. 2, 26.  Broughton, vol. II, pp. 183, 213, 216, 225, 231, 238, 244, 252, 268, 272, 274, 288, 298, 304, 315, 329, 348.  Horace, Satirae, i. 4. 114.  Tacitus, Historiae, i. 7.  Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, iv. 22, viii. 18.  Fasti Ostienses, CIL XIV, 244.  Gallivan, "The Fasti for the Reign of Claudius", pp. 411, 423, 425. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, Epistulae ad Familiares, In Verrem, Philippicae, Pro Milone. Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War), Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War). Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica (Library of History). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia. Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Epistulae (Letters). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Historiae. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus (Cassius Dio), Roman History. Scholia Bobiensia (Bobbio Scholiast), In Ciceronis Pro Milone (Commentary on Cicero's Oration Pro Milone). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Paul A. Gallivan, "The Fasti for the Reign of Claudius", in Classical Quarterly, vol. 28, pp. 407–426 (1978). John C. Traupman, The New College Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam Books, New York (1995). Categories: Roman gentesTrebonii And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebonio – Ossia: Grice e Trebonio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebonio. For the Trebonii, I would choose, without hesitation:  Gaius Trebonius, Caesar's lieutenant, consul suffectus, and eventually one of the conspirators against Caesar.  Not because he killed Caesar, but because of one very specific conversational act. Trebonius the distractor On the Ides of March, the traditional account is that while the other conspirators surrounded Caesar, Trebonius kept Mark Antony occupied elsewhere, preventing him from reaching Caesar. The deed depended not only on daggers but on a carefully managed conversation. That is wonderfully Gricean. A vignette:  (*) ANTONIVS. Quid agitur? (What is going on?) TREBONIVS. Veni; paucis tecum loqui volo. (Come; I wish to speak with you briefly.) +> The point of an utterance need not coincide with its apparent topic.  Trebonius' success depends upon Antony's taking the conversation at face value. The explicit content:  "Let's talk."  The practical purpose:  "Stay away from Caesar."  A textbook case of divergence between conversational surface and practical end.  The more purely Gricean candidate There is, however, another Trebonius whom Grice might have liked even more:  Lucius Trebonius Asper, tribune of the plebs and author of the lex Trebonia.  The law aimed to prevent manipulation of the election of tribunes by requiring that the assembly not be dismissed until all ten tribunes had been elected. What interests me here is the cognomen:  Asper = rough, harsh, difficult.  A dialogue suggests itself:  (*) CUR ASPER VOCARIS? (Why are you called Asper?) ASPER. Quia non cedo. (Because I do not yield.) +> Persistence is often redescribed as harshness by one's opponents.  Very Roman. Very political.  The irresistible third choice And yet there is another:  Trebonius, the soldier who killed Gaius Lusius, nephew of Marius, after resisting unwanted advances, and was then acquitted and honoured by Marius himself.  The case is fascinating because the defense turns entirely on justification. Not:  "Did you kill him?"  but:  "Why did you kill him?"  Exactly the sort of distinction between act and reason that later fascinated both Hart and Grice.  My final selection If I were writing a Grice e Speranza entry, I would still choose Gaius Trebonius. Speranza's gloss  The Trebonii contribute the master of diversion. Trebonius did not persuade Antony of a false proposition; he merely succeeded in keeping him occupied. Philosophers often concentrate on what is said. Roman history reminds us that conversation frequently serves other purposes. Sometimes the most important consequence of a dialogue is that it prevents someone from being elsewhere.  That, to my mind, is as Gricean as anything in the late Republic. Indeed. If Grice's principle of conversational helpfulness reads: "Make your conversational contribution such as is required by the purpose of the conversational exchange in which you are engaged." it applies here more to Antonio than our hero. Our hero was indeed being non-Griceian, "Antonie" -- vocative of Antonio. Start of conversation. Antonio cannot IGNORE -- and set his priorities on Giuilio. He has to go: "Sic?" -- and a little exchange ensues. The conversational bait, as it were. Thanks So Trebonius uses a 'strategem' -- instrumental strategic conversational rationality not intended as communicative. But that strategem relies on Trebonius's faith or expectation that Antonius will honour 'helpfulness' -- in this minimal use that Grice gives to the word -- over 'concern about Giulio'. Thanks Exactly. In fact, I would say that the episode is often misdescribed as a failure of Gricean cooperation by Gaius Trebonius, whereas the really Gricean character in the scene is Mark Antony. Trebonius is not entering the conversation in order to advance the immediate purpose of the conversation. His purpose lies elsewhere. The conversation is instrumental. One might say:  Conversational rationality serves strategic rationality.  The talk is not an end but a means. Yet the stratagem only works because Trebonius can rely on Antony's commitment to ordinary conversational expectations. A reconstruction might be:  TREBONIVS. Antoni, veni; pauca dicam. (Antony, come; I have a few words.) ANTONIVS. Audiam. (I shall listen.)  The crucial point is that Antony does not reply:  Nolo. Caesar prior est. (No. Caesar comes first.)  Why not? Because Roman elite interaction presupposes a certain amount of conversational civility. A colleague who asks for a word is ordinarily granted one. So Trebonius exploits what Grice would later call the accepted purpose of an exchange. Not the grand purpose of politics, but the local purpose:  someone wishes to speak; therefore one listens.  The bait succeeds because Antony is a "decent chap" in the minimal Gricean sense: he assumes that a conversational initiative deserves acknowledgment. Indeed, the episode nicely separates two levels:                      TreboniusAntonyStrategic rationalityConversational rationalityUses the exchange instrumentallyHonors the exchange as an exchangeKnows something Antony does notAssumes ordinary civility The irony is that Antony's behavior is almost exemplary Gricean conduct. If somebody addresses him:  "Antonie..."  he does not simply walk away. He responds:  "Sic?" "What is it?"  And once that first adjacency pair is formed, a conversation has begun. Trebonius' success depends upon Antony's willingness to continue cooperating in that ordinary conversational framework. In modern terms, the assassination plot parasitizes everyday communicative norms. A Speranzian gloss might read:  Trebonius does not defeat Grice; he exploits him. The conspirator succeeds only because Antony behaves as a conversationally decent Roman. Had Antony treated every approach as potentially strategic manipulation, the stratagem would have failed. The conspiracy therefore presupposes the very cooperative expectations that it undermines.  That is perhaps the darkest Roman lesson in pragmatics: the effectiveness of deception depends upon the prior existence of trust. Is different today with bodyguards etc -- "Antonio is not avalalble at the moment, Trebonius: Caesar is leading to the meeting and Antonius must keep an eye and an ear and perhaps a dagger' -- Of course this is all retrospective. Caesar's widow may later say, "What was Antonius doing" "Chatting somewhere," Ottavio would say, "with someone -- Trebonius". Of course, the issue of the conversation should not be suspicioius. "I was wondering if you'd think that it may rain later today" would not have worked. Bevause Antonius would have percieved the dissimulazione disonesta. It would be have something "I have a very important matter to attend to" -- "pray tell, what is it" -- Strictly, Grice cannot imagine how Antonius was do dumb. Thanks I think Grice would be less inclined to say that Antony was dumb than that he was behaving according to the background assumptions that make ordinary social life possible. The stratagem only works if the opening move is plausible. As you say, had Trebonius approached with:  "Do you think it may rain later today?"  the conversational move would have violated Relevance so flagrantly that suspicion would arise immediately. The bait must be of the form:  "I need a word with you." "There is a matter of some importance." "May I speak with you privately?"  The content has to be underspecified but not implausible. A Gricean might say that Trebonius exploits a convention of elite Roman interaction:  If a colleague requests a brief private conversation on an apparently serious matter, one normally grants it.  Exactly because one is not constantly assuming conspiracy. In fact, the episode resembles one of Grice's favourite distinctions between:  what an utterance is ostensibly for, what it is actually for.  The ostensible purpose:  discussion of some matter.  The actual purpose:  removal of Antony from Caesar.  The conversational exchange is therefore parasitic upon a pre-existing expectation of good faith.  Your retrospective reconstruction is also very Roman:  QUID AGENS ERAT ANTONIVS? (What was Antony doing?) CUM TREBONIO LOQUEBATUR. (He was talking with Trebonius.)  And immediately:  +> Therefore he was away from Caesar.  The conversation acquires its significance only after the event. At the time it may have appeared entirely ordinary.  I especially like your phrase:  dissimulazione disonesta.  Because the success of the manoeuvre requires not a blatant lie but a credible partial disclosure. Trebonius need not say:  "I wish to prevent you from saving Caesar."  He only needs to offer enough conversational material to keep Antony engaged. That is why the case is philosophically richer than a simple deception. The trick is not:  getting Antony to believe a false proposition,  but:  getting Antony to adopt the wrong practical priority for a few crucial minutes.  A very Roman achievement. And a very Gricean one, because the mechanism depends less on falsehood than on the management of attention. Antony's mistake, if mistake it was, was not believing something false; it was accepting a conversational agenda that turned out not to be the real agenda at all. And can we imagine, say, a 20 move conversation in Latin with English tr. in round brackets -- and last move with stage direction with T. to himself, "Too late now, dear" -- Grice just cannot imagine what matter could have delayed Antonius's protector status for long enough that Giulio was gone by the time his conversation with Trebonius reached the end. Thanks What we know historically is only that Trebonius kept Antony away from Julius Caesar while the assassination was carried out. The sources do not preserve the actual conversation. So anything beyond that is literary reconstruction, not history. But as a Grice–Speranza exercise, one might imagine a conversation whose entire purpose is not to communicate information but to occupy Antony's attention.  TREBONIVS: Antoni. (Antony.) ANTONIVS: Quid est? (What is it?) TREBONIVS: Pauca tecum privatim loqui velim. (I'd like a brief private word with you.) ANTONIVS: Dic igitur. (Then speak.) TREBONIVS: Audistine quid de provincia Syriaca nuper dictum sit? (Have you heard what has lately been said about the province of Syria?) ANTONIVS: Quid tandem? (What exactly?) TREBONIVS: Multi varia narrant. Mihi tamen certiora quaedam videntur. (Many tell different stories. I think I have something more reliable.) ANTONIVS: Ex quo fonte? (From what source?) TREBONIVS: Ex homine fide digno. Sed prius aliud quaeram. (From a trustworthy man. But first let me ask something else.) ANTONIVS: Quid quaeris? (What do you ask?) TREBONIVS: Num tibi placet quod de veteranis constituitur? (Do you approve of what is being arranged concerning the veterans?) ANTONIVS: Non omnino. Sed ad rem veni. (Not entirely. But come to the point.) TREBONIVS: Ad rem venio. Hoc ipsum difficile est. (I am coming to the point. That is exactly the difficulty.) ANTONIVS: Quam rem dicis difficilem? (What difficulty do you mean?) TREBONIVS: Multi tacent, nemo aperte loquitur. (Many remain silent; nobody speaks openly.) ANTONIVS: Ita fit saepe. (That often happens.) TREBONIVS: Sed tu prudentior es quam ceteri. (But you are wiser than the others.) ANTONIVS: Adhuc nihil audio. (I'm still hearing nothing.) TREBONIVS: Paulo patientius, quaeso. (A little more patience, please.) ANTONIVS: Bene, sequor. (Very well, go on.) TREBONIVS: Dic mihi: si qua nova res exoriretur, quid optimum consilium putares? (Tell me: if some new development arose, what course would you think best?) ANTONIVS: Istuc ex re ipsa dependeret. (That would depend on the circumstances.) TREBONIVS: Recte dicis. (You speak rightly.) [Clamor procul auditur.] (A noise is heard in the distance.) ANTONIVS: Quis clamor est? (What noise is that?) TREBONIVS (secum). Sero nunc, care. (To himself: Too late now, my dear.)  Grice would probably complain that such a dialogue contains very little genuine informational exchange. Trebonius repeatedly violates what Grice later called Quantity: he promises relevance, postpones it, changes topic, flatters, delays, and never quite reaches the alleged point. Yet that is precisely why it works as a stratagem. Antony's cooperation is doing all the heavy lifting. He keeps assuming:  "There must eventually be a point."  Trebonius needs only a few minutes of that assumption. A Speranzian moral:  The success of the conversation does not depend on Antony believing anything false. It depends on Antony believing that the conversation has a purpose yet to be revealed. The conspiracy parasitizes conversational patience. Had Antony adopted the anti-Gricean maxim "If a man has not reached the point by move six, leave," Roman history might have taken a different course. Now we can imagine a counterfactual scenario where Trebonius is such a decent chap that he cannot play the indecent chap. Therefore, his strategem fails, Antonius comes to Caesar's side, and the assassination is not carried out. Thanks Yes—and this is where a Gricean counterfactual becomes genuinely interesting. The historical Trebonius succeeds precisely because he is willing to exploit ordinary conversational expectations while secretly serving a non-conversational purpose. But suppose Trebonius were what Grice sometimes imagines as the fully "decent chap." Then the moment Antony says:  Quid est? ("What is it?")  Trebonius is in trouble. For the conspiracy requires him to initiate a conversation whose apparent purpose differs from its actual purpose. A hyper-Gricean Trebonius might reason:  "If I invite Antony into a discussion, I ought genuinely to have a discussion in view."  or even:  "I ought not use a conversational exchange merely as a device for preventing him from reaching Caesar."  At that point the stratagem collapses. One can imagine:  TREBONIVS: Antoni, mane paulisper. (Antony, stay a moment.) ANTONIVS: Quid vis? (What do you want?) TREBONIVS: Nihil quod te a Caesare abstrahere debeat. (Nothing that should draw you away from Caesar.) ANTONIVS: Ergo eamus. (Then let us go.)  And Roman history changes. What is fascinating is that Grice's Cooperative Principle is not itself a moral principle. Grice never says:  "Always be nice."  He says, roughly:  Once engaged in a conversation, make your contribution appropriate to its accepted purpose.  The conspiratorial Trebonius can therefore be seen as changing the accepted purpose without informing Antony. The decent-chap Trebonius cannot do this. Hence the irony:  the conspiracy requires a breach not of Logic but of Candour.  Or, in your terminology, a degree of dissimulazione. The counterfactual lesson is almost paradoxical:  If Trebonius were perfectly Gricean in the moralized Speranzian sense, Caesar lives.  For the assassination depends on somebody's willingness to treat conversation not as communication but as a tactical instrument. A Speranzian gloss might read:  Trebonius succeeds because Antony remains a conversational gentleman while Trebonius temporarily ceases to be one. Had both parties remained equally committed to conversational candour, the exchange would have collapsed before the conspiracy succeeded. The Ides of March thus depended, in part, on an asymmetry of decency. Now of course, Trebonius thinks he is, with the other conspirators, 'in the right' -- they are tirannicides --. In which case, the means is justified -- even if it is conversation of the type that expects candour. So Trebonius is willing to claudicate the honesty of his playing with the 'principle of conversational helpfulness' becauase they are deafeating circumstances, or higher circumstances, that give such a justification. This poses a hierarchical status where the principle of conversational helfpulness is one step lower than a MORE GENERAL PRINCIPLE, which Trebonius holds dear, and which concerns what HE (not Antoniuis) sees as the 'summum bonum" thanks-- the saving of the republic. As it happens, he was right -- as Grice has to accept! Yes, and I think this is exactly where a purely "conversational" reading of Grice becomes too narrow. For Grice, the Cooperative Principle is not the summum bonum. It is a principle governing a particular practice:  Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange.  Trebonius' problem is that he belongs simultaneously to two enterprises:  the local enterprise of a conversation with Antony; the larger enterprise (as he conceives it) of saving the Republic.  The conspirator's reasoning might be reconstructed thus:  It is normally wrong to misuse conversation. It is exceptionally permissible to do so when the preservation of the Republic is at stake.  In scholastic language, the conversational norm is overridden by a superior practical norm. A Grice-Speranza dialogue might run:  (*) TREBONIVS. Antonio mentior. (I mislead Antony.) CONSCIENTIA. Cur? (Why?) TREBONIVS. Rem publicam servo. (I am saving the Republic.) CONSCIENTIA. Ergo putas te excusatum? (So you think yourself justified?) TREBONIVS. Ita omnino. (Entirely so.)  The interesting thing is that Trebonius need not think himself dishonest simpliciter. He may think:  "Under ordinary circumstances candour is required." "These are not ordinary circumstances."  Indeed, this is very close to the structure of many ethical theories. One does not abandon a rule because one dislikes it; one believes another rule has priority. The comparison with wartime is obvious. A general who deceives an enemy may perfectly well believe that honesty is ordinarily a virtue. The crucial claim is:  these circumstances are defeating circumstances.  And Trebonius undoubtedly regarded them as such.  Where the matter becomes historically delicate is your last sentence:  "As it happens, he was right."  That is a judgment many ancients themselves disputed. The conspirators certainly believed that they were tyrannicides and restorers of liberty. Cicero, for a time, largely shared their view. Yet the subsequent civil wars and the establishment of the Principate led many later observers to doubt that the assassination actually saved the Republic. Some thought it hastened its end. A Gricean might separate:  Trebonius' justification  "I am acting for the Republic."    from  the historical outcome  a different question altogether.    What matters for the philosophy of action is that Trebonius almost certainly believed the higher principle to outweigh the conversational one. Thus the Ides of March become a fascinating case where:  conversational helpfulness  is subordinated to  political duty as conceived by the speaker.  A final Speranzian gloss:  Trebonius does not reject the Cooperative Principle. He suspends it. The conspirator relies upon Antony's conversational decency while temporarily exempting himself from the same obligation. His excuse is that conversation serves politics, while politics serves the Republic. The entire moral question is whether he was entitled to arrange the hierarchy in that order.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebulano – Ossia: Grice e Trebulano – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebulano. The gens Trebulana, occasionally spelled Treblana, was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens are mentioned by Roman writers, but several are known from inscriptions, and at least one attained high office under the early Empire, as Publius Trebulanus was praetor urbanus in AD 30.[1]  Origin The nomen Trebulanus belongs to a class of gentilicia formed using the suffixes -anus or -anius, usually derived from the names of places ending in -as or -atis, or from cognomina ending in -anus, which also are typically derived from place-names.[2] Trebulanus is derived from a place called "Trebula",[2] perhaps Trebula in Campania, the inhabitants of which were granted Roman citizenship in 303 BC, although there were also two Sabine towns of the same name, distinguished as Trebula Mutusca and Trebula Suffenas, whose citizens were likewise known as Trebulani. Some of the inscriptions of this gens come from Trebula Suffenas.[3]  Praenomina The main praenomina of the Trebulani were Titus, Marcus, Lucius, and Gaius, each among the most abundant names throughout Roman history. A few of the Trebulani bore other common names, including Publius, Quintus, and Sextus.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Quintus Trebulanus, a magister of some uncertain group,[i] mentioned in a sepulchral inscription from Marruvium in Samnium, dating from the late first century BC.[4] Lucius Treblanus C. f., buried at Rome, in a tomb dating from the late first century BC, or early first century AD.[5] Marcus Trebulanus Faustus, the freedman of Marcus Trebulanus Philomusus, together with the freedwoman Deciria Lais, built a family sepulchre at Casilinum in Campania, dating from the late first century BC or the early first century AD for themselves, Philomusus, the freedwoman Deciria Secunda, Marcus Trebulanus Primigenius, and others.[6] Marcus Trebulanus Philomusus, the former master of Marcus Trebulanus Faustus, who together with the freedwoman Deciria Lais, built a family sepulchre at Casilinum for themselves, Philomusus, and others, dating from the late first century BC or the early first century AD.[6] Marcus Trebulanus Primigenius, buried at Casilinum, in a tomb built by the freedman Marcus Trebulanus Philomusus and the freedwoman Deciria Lais for themselves, Primigenius, and others, dating from the late first century BC or the early first century AD.[6] Lucius Treblanus L. l. Acastus, a freedman buried at Aquileia in Venetia and Histria, in an Augustan-era tomb built by his daughter, the freedwoman Grata Plotia.[7] Titus Trebulanus T. l., a freedman named in an inscription from Trebula Suffenas in Samnium, dating from AD 14, along with Titus Trebulanus Felix, and a group of freedmen including Titus Trebulanus Demetrius and Trebulanus Antiochus.[8] Trebulanus M. l. Antiochus, a freedman named in an inscription from Trebula Suffenas, dating from AD 14, along with Titus Trebulanus Felix, and a group of freedmen including Titus Trebulanus Demetrius and another Titus Trebulanus.[8] Trebulanus T. l. Demetrius, a freedman named in an inscription from Trebula Suffenas, dating from AD 14, along with Titus Trebulanus Felix, and a group of freedmen including Titus Trebulanus Antiochus and another Titus Trebulanus.[8] Titus Trebulanus Felix, mentioned in an inscription from Trebula Suffenas, dating from AD 14, along with a group of freedmen including Titus Trebulanus Demetrius, another Titus Trebulanus, and Trebulanus Antiochus.[8] Titus Treblanus Merzana, buried at Rome, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century.[9] Trebulana Modesta, buried at Beneventum in Samnium, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century, built by Lucius Pupius Primigenius, a restio, or rope-maker, probably her husband.[10] Publius Trebulanus, praetor urbanus in AD 30, during the reign of Tiberius.[1] Trebulanus Caesaris, dedicated a first-century sepulchre at Rome for his wife, Carvilia Xenice, house-slave, Carvilia Venusta, and Athenais, perhaps the slave of Julius Plutus.[11] Titus Trebulanus T. l. Nepos Herculaneus, a freedman, was one of the Seviri Augustales at Tibur in Latium, the husband of Publicia Saturnina, and father of Titus Trebulanus Nepos Herculaneus, who followed his father as a priest of Augustus, according to a first- or early second-century inscription.[12] Titus Trebulanus T. f. Nepos Herculaneus, son of the freedman Titus Trebulanus Nepos Herculaneus and Publicia Saturnina, was one of the Seviri Augustales at Tibur, like his father, according to a first- or early second-century inscription.[12] Marcus Trebulanus, named in a second-century sepulchral inscription from Rome, along with Titus Trebulanus Felix, Lucius Trebulanus Pamphilio, and others.[13] Titus Trebulanus Felix, named in a second-century sepulchral inscription from Rome, along with Lucius Tribulanus Pamphilio, Marcus Trebulanus, and others.[13] Lucius Tribulanus Pamphilio, named in a second-century sepulchral inscription from Rome, along with Titus Trebulanus Felix, Marcus Trebulanus, and others.[13] Trebulana Justina, made an offering to Attis and Minerva at Beneventum on the eleventh day before the Kalends of August,[ii] in AD 228.[14] Undated Trebulani Treblanus C. f., named in an inscription from Pola in Venetia and Histria.[15] Lucius Treblanus Sex. f., buried in the family sepulchre of Lucius Treblanus Cilo at Pola.[16] Titus Treblanus, buried in the family sepulchre of Lucius Treblanus Cilo at Pola.[16] Titus Trebulanus Albanus, a freedman of the city of Trebula Suffenas, as was Trebulanus Ferentinensis, mentioned in the same inscription.[17] Lucius Treblanus C. f. Cilo, one of the municipal duumvirs and aediles, and probably the builder a family sepulchre at Pola, where Lucius Treblanus, Carvilia Maxima, Titus Treblanus, Sextus Flavonius Bassus, Pomponia, and Treblana Paulla are buried.[16] Trebulanus Ferentinensis, a freedman of the city of Trebula Suffenas, along with Titus Trebulanus Albanus. From his surname, he was a native of Ferentinum in Latium.[17] Treblana Paulla, buried in the family sepulchre of Lucius Treblanus Cilo at Pola.[16] Gaius Treblanus Paullus,[iii], named in an inscription from Pola.[18][19] Marcus Trebulanus Gagilius Telesforianus, a boy buried at Beneventum, aged nine years, six months, and twelve days, in a tomb built by his parents, Trebulanus Telesforus and Natria Gagilia.[20] Trebulanus Telesforus, together with his wife, Natria Gagilia, dedicated a tomb Beneventum for their son, Marcus Trebulanus Gagilius Telesforianus.[20] Notes  By itself, magister could mean a schoolmaster; but it could also refer to a political leader, or the leader of an order or guild.  July 22, by modern reckoning.  Due to the condition of the inscription, the reading of this name is uncertain. See also List of Roman gentes References  AE 1987, 163.  Chase, p. 118.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. II, pp. 1224, 1225 ("Trebula").  CIL IX, 7759.  AE 2001, 449.  CIL X, 4378.  CIL V, 1418.  AE 1972, 154.  CIL VI, 27607.  CIL IX, 1940.  NSA, 1919-301.  CIL XIV, 3684.  CIL VI, 29681.  CIL IX, 1542.  Inscriptiones Italiae, x. 1, 403.  Inscriptiones Italiae, x. 1, 90.  CIL XIV, 3513.  Inscriptiones Italiae, x. 1, 146,09.  Gregori, "Regiones Italiae VI–XI", 75,83.  CIL IX, 2000. Bibliography Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1854). 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). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). Inscriptiones Italiae (Inscriptions from Italy), Rome (1931-present). Gian Luca Gregori, "Regiones Italiae VI–XI", in Epigrafia Anfiteatrale dell'Occidente Romano, Roma (1989). Category: Roman gentes ANd about THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trebulano – Ossia: Grice e Trebulano – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Trebulano. For the Trebulani, I would resist the temptation of the praetor and choose instead:  Titus Trebulanus Nepos Herculaneus, and even more interestingly, the father-and-son pair of the same name who both served as Seviri Augustales at Tibur.  Why? Because this is one of those cases where a Gricean problem arises before any philosophy begins:  Which Titus Trebulanus Nepos Herculaneus?  The inscription tells us that:  the father was a freedman, the son bore the same name, both held the same priestly distinction.  Immediately we have a problem of reference. A vignette:  (*) TREBVLANVS NEPOS HERCVLANEVS HONORATVS EST. (Trebulanus Nepos Herculaneus was honoured.) QVIS? (Which one?) +> A proper name may fail to identify uniquely.  This would have delighted Grice, who repeatedly worried less about names than about what information hearers actually recover from them.  A very close second is:  Publius Trebulanus, praetor urbanus in AD 30.  But we know almost nothing else about him. By contrast, the father-son duplication provides a ready-made problem in the philosophy of reference.  An even more Speranzian candidate is:  Marcus Trebulanus Gagilius Telesforianus, the child whose age is recorded as nine years, six months, and twelve days.  This returns us to a recurring theme among these minor gentes:  How much information is enough?  A census-taker requires years. Bereaved parents record months and days. Grice would recognize a shift in relevance according to purpose.  Speranza's gloss  The Trebulani contribute two men bearing the same name and the same civic distinction. Philosophers are often told that proper names identify individuals. Roman inscriptions provide a corrective. "Titus Trebulanus Nepos Herculaneus" does not yet identify anybody until one knows whether father or son is intended. The name remains constant; the dossier does the work.  Indeed, among all the Trebulani, I suspect Grice would have preferred the duplicated Nepos Herculaneus pair, because they furnish a neat Roman example of why names alone are rarely enough.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trenellio – Ossia: Grice e Tremellio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Tremellio -- The gens Tremellia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned towards the end of the Second Punic War, but the highest rank ever attained by any of the Tremellii under the Republic was that of praetor. After falling into obscurity during the first century BC, the fortunes of this family briefly revived under the Empire, when Gnaeus Tremellius was appointed consul suffectus in AD 21, during the reign of Tiberius.[1]  Praenomina The main praenomen of the Tremellii who rose to prominence in the Roman state was Gnaeus, although a few bore other names, including Gaius and Lucius.  Branches and cognomina The only cognomina borne by any of the Tremellii mentioned in history are Scrofa and Flaccus. Scrofa refers to a sow with piglets, and belongs to a large class of surnames derived from creatures and everyday objects. This cognomen was handed down through one branch of the Tremellii for a century, and Varro relates the story of how Lucius Tremellius Scrofa, quaestor in 143 BC, when attacked by the enemy, vowed to scatter them like a sow scattering her piglets,[i] thereby obtaining his surname.[3][4] Flaccus seems to have been a personal surname, as it is borne by only one of the Tremellii; it originally designated someone with prominent or floppy ears, and belongs to a large class of cognomina derived from someone's physical features.[5]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Gnaeus Tremellius Flaccus, an ex-quaestor, was one of five ambassadors sent to Attalus I, the king of Pergamum, in 205 BC to bring back a sacred stone, representing the Magna Mater. In 203 he was one of the plebeian aediles, and the following year he became praetor, receiving the province of Sicily.[6][7] Gaius Tremellius,[ii] praetor in an uncertain year, likely 175, 174, or 170 BC. In 173, he was one of the decemvirs chosen to divide lands in Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul between the Romans and their Latin allies.[8][9][10] Gnaeus Tremellius, as tribune of the plebs in 168 BC, blocked a measure to extend the terms of the censors. While he was praetor in 159, he was fined for insulting the Pontifex Maximus.[11][12] Gnaeus Tremellius, consul suffectus in AD 21, might have been a descendant of Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, the friend of Varro.[13][14] Tremellii Scrofae Lucius Tremellius Scrofa, quaestor in 143 BC, served under Aulus Licinius Nerva, the governor of Macedonia, and put down a revolt. Scrofa likewise served as praetor, some time prior to 135 BC.[15][16][17][18] Tremellius Scrofa, quaestor in 71 BC, served under Crassus in the Third Servile War, and was wounded while giving chase to Spartacus.[19] Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, a friend of Varro of Atticus, was probably the same Gnaeus Tremellius who was one of the judges at the trial of Verres in 70 BC, and a military tribune the following year. He later served under Caesar in the Gallic Wars, and was praetor in an uncertain year.[20][21][22] Tremellius (Cn. f.) Scrofa, the son of Varro's friend, mentioned by Cicero in 45 BC.[23] See also List of Roman gentes  Notes  This story was related to Varro by Scrofa's grandson. Centuries later, Macrobius gave a different explanation.[2]  Called Gnaeus in some sources. References  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1172 ("Tremellia Gens").  Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 6.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 758 ("Scrofa").  Chase, p. 112.  Chase, p. 109.  Livy, xxix. 11, xxx. 26, 27.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 304, 312, 316.  Livy, xlii. 4.  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, ii. 4. § 2.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 420.  Livy, xlv. 15, Epitome, 47.  Broughton, vol. I, pp. 428, 446.  PIR, vol. III, p. 336 (T, No. 248).  Cooley, Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy, p. 459.  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, ii. 4. §§ 1, 2.  Livy, Epitome, 53.  Eutropius, iv. 15.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 472.  Plutarch, "The Life of Crassus", 11.  Cicero, In Verrem, actus i. 10; Ad Atticum, v. 4. § 2, vi. 1. § 13, vii. 1. § 8.  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, i. 2. § 10; i. 7. § 8; ii. 4.  Pliny, Historia Naturalis, xvii. 21. s. 35, § 22.  Cicero, Ad Atticum, xiii. 21. § 7. Bibliography Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, In Verrem. Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum Rusticarum (Rural Matters). Titus Livius (Livy), History of Rome. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Historia Naturalis (Natural History). Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Eutropius, Breviarium Historiae Romanae (Abridgement of the History of Rome). Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Saturnalia. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849). George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897). 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). Alison E. Cooley, The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy, Cambridge University Press (2012). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Trenellio – Ossia: Grice e Tremellio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Tremellio -- For the Tremellii, my first-best Grice–Speranza choice is unquestionably:  Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, the friend of Varro.  Not because of high office, but because he actually appears in one of the most conversational texts to survive from antiquity: Varro's Rerum Rusticarum. Why Scrofa? The cognomen alone is already irresistible.  Scrofa = a sow with piglets.  And according to the family tradition reported by Varro, the ancestor earned the name after vowing that he would scatter the enemy like a sow scattering her piglets. Now this is fascinatingly Gricean. The utterance is not:  "I shall defeat the enemy."  but:  "I shall scatter them like a sow her piglets."  The hearer has to supply the comparison. A miniature conversational implicature:  "They will be thoroughly dispersed."  The literal meaning is zoological. The intended meaning is military.  Scrofa in Varro Even better, Scrofa is one of Varro's interlocutors in De Re Rustica. Unlike many of the shadowy figures we've discussed, he is not merely named in an inscription. He participates in dialogue. A Gricean vignette almost writes itself:  (*) VARRO. Quid est optimum in agricultura? (What is most important in farming?) SCROFA. Primum scientia. (Knowledge, first of all.) +> Cooperative inquiry proceeds through question and answer.  Unlike Trebonius and Antony, where conversation is instrumental, Varro and Scrofa are actually engaged in the exchange of information. That is much closer to Grice's paradigm.  The runner-up A surprisingly strong second-place candidate is:  Gnaeus Tremellius, tribune in 168 BC, who opposed extending the censors' terms.  The issue concerns interpretation of institutional rules and the scope of authority—a favorite Roman topic and not wholly foreign to Hart. But it lacks the conversational richness of Scrofa.  Why not the consul?  Gnaeus Tremellius, consul suffectus in AD 21, is historically more eminent.  But we know almost nothing about him. For a Speranzian lexicon, conversational material beats rank every time.  Speranza's gloss  The Tremellii contribute a philosopher's pig. Scrofa, friend of Varro, bears a cognomen derived from a sow and her piglets. Yet the very story explaining the name turns upon non-literal communication. To promise to scatter an enemy like a sow dispersing her litter is not merely to describe swine; it is to invite an inference. Long before Oxford, Romans were already communicating more than they literally said.  And, unlike poor Trebonius, Scrofa is participating in conversation for its own sake, not as cover for a conspiracy. That alone would probably make him the more authentically Gricean Tremellius. While it is true that T. converses with Terenzio (Varro), Varro in a way steals T's voice -- do we know what he said. In terms of what he believed (that p, q, r, ...)? What would be the locus classicus where his first utterance appears -- in oratio recta? Thanks -- You mention 'Scientia prima' since that is Varro's idea -- but is that the actual utterance? Thanks A very good correction. I was indeed being too quick in attributing "scientia prima" to Scrofa as though it were a recoverable historical utterance. The problem is exactly the one you raise:  Do we know what Scrofa actually said?  The answer is: only insofar as we trust Varro's dialogue as preserving his voice. And that is a serious qualification. For a Gricean, the situation is delicate. The Scrofa who speaks in Varro's Rerum Rusticarum is a textual character, however historical the original person may have been. Varro is both reporter and author. So, as you nicely put it,  Varro steals Scrofa's voice.  Or, in modern terms, the alleged oratio recta is already mediated.  The locus classicus The principal appearance of Scrofa as a speaker is in:  Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, especially Book II.  Indeed Book II is dedicated to livestock, and Scrofa becomes the chief authority precisely because of the happy coincidence that his cognomen means "sow." Varro makes literary capital out of that fact. The famous etymological anecdote about the surname appears at:  Rerum Rusticarum 2.4.1–2,  where Scrofa explains (or Varro has him explain) how the cognomen arose. There we are as close as we get to a first-person Scrofa. But even there, Scrofa explicitly reports a family tradition received from his grandfather rather than an event observed by himself.  What did Scrofa believe? Now this is a far more Gricean question. Suppose we ask:  What propositions p, q, r ... can be attributed to Scrofa?  The cautious answer is: Not  what Scrofa believed,  but  what the Scrofa-character in Varro is presented as believing.  There is a distinction between:  historical Scrofa, Varronian Scrofa.  A distinction Grice would surely insist upon.  Why Scrofa is still interesting In a curious way, the issue is similar to the one you raised with Porphyrion's Travius. The proper name:  Scrofa  is not enough. We want a dossier. But the dossier is itself supplied by Varro. So the evidential chain becomes:  Historical Scrofa → remembered by Varro → represented by the dialogue → interpreted by us.  At each stage, another conversational layer intervenes.  A Speranzian gloss I can imagine Speranza writing:  The difficulty with Tremellius Scrofa is that his earliest surviving "utterances" occur inside another man's dialogue. We possess not Scrofa's voice but Varro's representation of Scrofa's voice. The Griceian question therefore precedes any inquiry into implicature: whose utterance is it? Varro's, Scrofa's, or both?  That, I think, is the real philosophical richness of the Tremellii—not the content of what Scrofa says, but the fact that our access to his saying it is already filtered through a literary speaker. In that sense he is closer to Socrates in Plato than to an ordinary Roman gentleman whose words happen to have been recorded. And dossies is what we want. Grice is well aware of this. His surname means _gris_, pig in Norse, OR, _gris_, grey in Anglo-Norman. But that still doesn't tell the whole story. If (a), cf. Scrofa: sow -- the point is different. The first _Grice_ may have been a gris-herd, but grices are WILD pigs -- so perhaps the origin is different. Since no human interaction is possible with a pig that is _wild_. Maybe the first grices were NOT wild? Thanks Quite. And this is where a Gricean would insist on distinguishing between:  the etymology of a name, the dossier of its bearer.  The etymology may tell us where the word came from; it does not tell us who the person was. Just as with Scrofa:  Scrofa = "sow."  But that does not mean that every Scrofa was pig-like, or even that the original bearer had much to do with pigs. The story recorded by Varro is already a retrospective family explanation. It forms part of the dossier, not necessarily of the etymology. The same applies to Grice. There are, broadly speaking, two well-known etymological paths proposed by surname scholars:  from a word meaning pig, boar, or swine (Old Norse and related Germanic forms); from a word meaning grey (Anglo-Norman/French gris).  The existence of those possibilities does not settle the historical dossier of the first Grice. Your observation about wild pigs is a very good one. If the root were connected with swine, it need not imply:  "keeper of wild boars."  Indeed, that would be difficult as an occupational description. Surname formation more commonly proceeds from things like:  pig-keeper, pig-breeder, someone associated with pigs, a nickname based on appearance or character, residence near a place associated with swine.  The leap from:  word meaning pig  to  profession catching wild boars  would be too large without evidence. A medieval surname often begins as a nickname. Thus:  "John Pig," "William Grey," "Robert Long,"  may tell us very little about the actual person beyond some feature noticed by neighbours. A Gricean dossier therefore looks like:                      EtymologyDossierGrice ← pig?one possible linguistic originGrice ← grey?another possible linguistic originH. P. Gricephilosopher, Oxford don, conversationalist, etc. The first two belong to philology. The third belongs to reference. And Grice himself would probably say that the latter is what we ordinarily care about. A Speranzian gloss might read:  The etymologist asks why the family was called "Grice." The philosopher asks which Grice is being discussed. The first seeks origins; the second seeks identification. The two inquiries should not be confused.  As for your final suggestion: yes, if grice originally referred to a pig, there is no necessity whatsoever that the earliest Grices were connected with wild swine. On the contrary, the most economical hypothesis would usually be some much more ordinary social association—nickname, husbandry, appearance, or local custom—rather than heroic interaction with untamed boars. And on top, if we look at Debrett's, we may find 'Grice' -- but with 'Scrofa' it is cognomen -- perhaps originally agnomen. The gens remains Tremellia. And Grice wonders if the etymology is as clear or unclear as 'grice.' Terenzio Varrone: I love your cognomen, Tremellio: Scrofa. Such a transparent name. Scrofa: Not so. But my ancestors say that we are thus called because we would disperse the enemies as a sow disperse her piglets. Terenzio: And what was Tremellio mean, your gens? Tremellio: No idea. Thanks Yes! And that is a very Speranzian-Gricean exchange because it shifts attention from etymology to folk etymology, from linguistic origin to conversationally transmitted dossier. One can almost imagine Scrofa gently disappointing Varro. Varro, being Varro, loves transparent names. He sees:  Scrofa = sow.  and thinks he has understood something. But Scrofa replies with a family narrative, not an etymology. Varro reports that the ancestor supposedly acquired the name after saying he would scatter the enemy as a sow scatters her piglets. The dialogue might run:  VARRO: Cognomen tuum perspicuum est: Scrofa. (Your cognomen is perfectly transparent: "Sow".) SCROFA: Minime. (Not at all.) VARRO: Quid igitur significat? (Then what does it mean?) SCROFA: Maiores nostri narrabant ... (Our ancestors used to tell a story ...) VARRO: Ergo nomen habes a sue? (So your name comes from a sow?) SCROFA: Fortasse. Sed fabulam habemus; originem non habemus. (Perhaps. But we have a story; we do not have the origin.) VARRO: Et Tremellius? (And "Tremellius"?) SCROFA: De eo minus etiam scio. (Of that I know even less.)  A very Gricean point emerges. The cognomen Scrofa is apparently transparent:  "sow."  But the nomen Tremellius is opaque. Yet, from the standpoint of identification, the opaque Tremellius is arguably doing more work than the transparent Scrofa. This is exactly the sort of thing Grice liked to notice. Proper names often lose their descriptive force while retaining their referential force. Thus:                          ExpressionDescriptive transparencyReferential usefulnessScrofaHigh ("sow")LimitedTremelliusLow/unknownHighGnaeus Tremellius ScrofaIdentifies a personHigh And then comes the delightful Gricean reversal:  "Scrofa" looks meaningful but may be historically obscure. "Tremellius" looks obscure but successfully picks out the family.  A Speranzian gloss might read:  Varro seeks meaning and finds a story. Scrofa seeks ancestry and finds uncertainty. The cognomen appears transparent, the nomen opaque. Yet the opaque nomen identifies more effectively than the transparent cognomen. Philosophers who try to derive reference from meaning are thus warned by Roman nomenclature: the hearer may know exactly whom "Tremellius Scrofa" denotes while remaining quite unsure why either part of the name exists at all.  Which brings us back to your earlier point about Grice. Whether Grice originally meant "pig" or "grey" is an etymological question; whether it identifies H. P. Grice is a referential one. Grice himself would probably have preferred the dossier. The etymologist asks:  "Why Grice?"  The philosopher asks:  "Which Grice?" What possibly interests Terenzio Varrone -- the master of etymology -- is that there is no scrofus -- or vocative: scrofe. It's the FEMALE that's marked -- unlike gris, grice -- a less sexist sort of pig. Thanks A lovely observation. Yes, one thing that would almost certainly catch Varro's eye is that scrofa is not the generic word for a pig. It is specifically:  scrofa = a breeding sow, a female pig, often with piglets.  And that makes the family explanation much more interesting than if the cognomen had simply been:  Porcus.  After all, the anecdote reported by Varro is not:  "My ancestor was pig-like."  It is:  "My ancestor vowed to scatter the enemy as a sow scatters her piglets."  The image depends precisely on the maternal relation between sow and litter. A Varronian conversation almost writes itself:  VARRO: Cur non Porcus? (Why not "Pig"?) SCROFA: Quia non de porco agitur. (Because it is not about a pig.) VARRO: Quid igitur? (What, then?) SCROFA: De scrofa et porcellis. (About a sow and her piglets.)  And you're right: from a purely onomastic standpoint, Grice is less marked. Whether the ultimate root is connected with a pig-word or a grey-word, the designation is not overtly feminine. It looks more like a species-term, colour-term, nickname, or occupational by-product. By contrast:  Scrofa  is explicitly gendered in Latin. Indeed, one can imagine Varro delighting in this very fact. He loved etymologies, folk etymologies, and semantic oddities. The question would be:  Why would a distinguished Roman male bear a cognomen meaning not merely "pig" but specifically "sow"?  And the family legend supplies an answer. Whether the answer is historically true is another matter. A very Gricean moral follows:  The meaning of a name is not exhausted by its dictionary entry. "Scrofa" means "sow"; but the bearers of the name supply a narrative that explains why that meaning is supposed to matter. The dossier outruns the lexicon.  Which is perhaps exactly what would have amused both Varro and Grice. The etymologist sees a sow; the family sees a military boast; the philosopher sees a gap between word meaning and speaker's meaning. And strictly, more than etymology, Grice and Speranza meant to say 'analogy.' Varro the lover of oddities, and strong in the analogy/anomaly debate. Scrofa LOOKS feminine --: -a ending, yet scrofus, m., or vocative, scrofe (to eliminate the confusing -s ending of the nominative that in masculine cases disappears). The phenomenon is not unknown for other species: mare -- wasn't there a Latin for that -- or just equa? Can you give other examples in Latin, Italian or English -- goose, gander, gosling -- dog, b*tch, hound, canis, but catulus not little cat but little dog -- etc cow, bull, ox, oxen -- Is ox gendered in English and Latin? because we have Ox-ford Vadum boum, the ford of the ox. Thanks -- of course the French have lion and lioness, and Italian leonessa, tigressa, but that supposes a MALE marked, and FEMALE affixational -- as in jew, jewess (La Giudea, title of an Italian opera) etc. Thanks A wonderful Varronian question. And I think you're right that for Varro the issue is less pure etymology than what the ancients called the conflict between analogy and anomaly. The puzzle is:  Why does a Roman aristocrat bear a cognomen that looks grammatically feminine?  For scrofa is straightforwardly feminine Latin:  haec scrofa = this sow.  Yet the bearer is:  Scrofa.  A formal analogist might expect:  Scrofus (m.)  But Roman cognomina are often impervious to such morphological expectations. Once a word becomes a cognomen, ordinary grammatical expectations can be suspended. In effect:  "Scrofa" ceases to be merely a noun and becomes a label.  Exactly the sort of thing that interested both Varro and Grice. Latin animal names Latin is remarkably inconsistent. Horse  equus = stallion, horse (often male) equa = mare  The ordinary feminine is morphologically marked. Pig  porcus = pig, often male pig sus = pig/swine (common gender) scrofa = sow  Here the female form has its own lexical item. Dog  canis = dog (common gender) catulus = puppy (not "kitten"; usually young dog, though it can be extended)  The interesting thing is that canis itself is grammatically common gender:  canis masculus, canis femina.  Cow and ox  bos = bovine (common gender) taurus = bull vacca = cow  And yes: Oxford is ultimately  "ford of the oxen"  Old English Oxnaford. The English ox is not simply "male bovine." Historically it tends toward:  castrated working bovine,  as opposed to bull. Latin lacks a perfect one-word equivalent; context determines whether bos means ox, cow, or cattle generally. English irregularities English preserves many relic oppositions:                                              GenericMaleFemalegoosegandergooseswancobpendeerstag/harthind/doepigboarsowsheepramewehorsestallionmaredogdogbitch Notice how untidy the system is. Sometimes:  male is marked (stallion), sometimes female is marked (lioness), sometimes both are lexically distinct (boar/sow), sometimes neither is marked (goose serves both sexes in ordinary use).  This untidiness is exactly what an anomalist loved. Romance languages As you note:  leone / leonessa tigre / tigressa lion / lioness  Here the masculine appears basic and the feminine derivative. But scrofa reverses expectations. There is no famous Roman cognomen:  Porcus → "pig"  competing with  Scrofa → "sow"  in the way one might expect. The marked feminine form became the prestigious surname. That is probably what would have delighted Varro. A Grice–Speranza vignette  VARRO: Cur feminine vocaris, Scrofa? (Why are you called by a feminine name, Scrofa?) SCROFA: Quaeris grammaticam; ego genealogiam narro. (You ask about grammar; I tell a family history.) VARRO: Non idem est? (Are they not the same?) SCROFA: Minime. (Not at all.)  The moral being that grammar suggests one story, family tradition another, and the actual origin may be neither. A very Gricean lesson: the apparent meaning of a form does not yet tell us what its users mean by it. and one can imagine the first scholar from BONONIA (Bologna) arriving to Vadum Boum (Oxford) via Paris (Sorbonne as it still was not) and wondering that in Italian and Latin, there is no such thing as 'ox' and then he decides there would be no such thing in Italy or the Roman Empire for a _ford_ of oxen -- 'Why would only castrated bulls use this bridge?' Thanks Exactly! And I can easily imagine a medieval Bolognese jurist arriving at Oxford and becoming deeply puzzled. The conversation might run:  BONONIENSIS: Quare locus hic "Oxford" vocatur? (Why is this place called Oxford?) ANGLUS: Quia boves hic flumen transibant. (Because oxen crossed the river here.) BONONIENSIS: Boves? (Oxen?) ANGLUS: Immo, oxen. (No, oxen.) BONONIENSIS: Quid interest? (What is the difference?)  And there begins an entire chapter of comparative lexicology. Because the English word ox is more specialized than Latin bos. In traditional English usage:  bull = intact male, cow = female, ox = castrated working bovine.  But Latin usually manages with:  taurus = bull, vacca = cow, bos = bovine generally.  A Roman could certainly describe a castrated draft animal, but he lacked the elegant everyday lexical contrast that English inherited. So our Bolognese grammarian might indeed object:  Cur vadum boum? (Why "ford of oxen"?) Num tauri non transeunt? (Do bulls not cross?) Num vaccae prohibentur? (Are cows forbidden?)  The joke is that he is applying Roman semantic categories to an English place-name.  This is very close to the analogy/anomaly debate you mentioned. The analogist thinks:  If the place is named after cattle crossing, why specify one subclass?  The anomalist replies:  Because English happened to lexicalize that subclass.  Languages carve up reality differently. A Roman sees:  bos.  An Englishman sees:  bull / cow / ox.  Neither is wrong.  A Gricean moral suggests itself. The Bolognese scholar hears:  Oxford = ford of oxen.  and reasons:  +> Only oxen crossed there.  But that is a mistaken implicature. The place-name need not mean:  "No cows or bulls ever crossed here."  It merely preserves the category that happened to be salient when the name was formed. Rather like the Roman hearing:  Scrofa  and inferring:  +> His ancestor was a sow.  Whereas the family story is not about piggishness at all but about dispersing enemies. The lexical meaning and the intended significance have drifted apart. A very Speranzian ending would be:  VARRO: Cur Oxonia dicitur? (Why is it called Oxford?) BONONIENSIS: Quia boves transeunt. (Because cattle cross there.) VARRO: Cur non Vaccaford? (Why not Cowford?) BONONIENSIS: Quia Angli sunt. (Because they are English.)  Which is probably the best answer a philologist can ever give. And in the ox case (ox-ford, vadum 'boum' --) didn't the Latins find the need to specialise lexically? Because 'ox' is castrated so that it can be used to carry a yoke --. Only a very stupid farmer would use a BULL for that. At what time were they castrated? When did the practice origin. Grice imagines the palaeolithic -- and puts it as evidence that Oxford predates Bologna! Thanks -- and back to our hero -- Lewis and Short provide scrofus as hypothetical? or provide a further etymology. And waht about 'ox' -- it's short engoush in Anglo-Saxon. or Old English. But does it occur in Frisian, West Germanic, etc -- proto-Indoeuropean, Latin cognate? Thanks -- Scholar: "Vadum boum castratum. Scholar to Abbot in the Continent: "After four weeks, we arrived at the Ford of the Castrated Bovines -- Ox-ford -- as the locals call this place, and where education is conducated exclusively in Latin.' Thanks A delightful letter from the first Bolognese to reach Oxford is easy to imagine:  Reverende Pater, Post quattuor hebdomadas tandem ad Vadum Boum Castratorum pervenimus, quod Angli Ox-ford vocant. Hic omnes Latine loqui student, quamquam nomen loci ipsum barbarum est. ("Reverend Father, after four weeks we finally arrived at the Ford of the Castrated Oxen, which the English call Oxford. Here everyone strives to speak Latin, although the very name of the place is barbarous.")  The joke, as you note, is that a Roman naturally says:  bos, bovis  and lets context do the work. The Germanic languages, however, lexicalized distinctions which Latin often left to context. A Roman farmer knows perfectly well the difference between:  taurus (bull), vacca (cow), draft cattle,  but the language does not require a neat everyday three-way contrast. English does:  bull, cow, ox.  And the name Oxford fossilizes that distinction.  Did the Romans lack a word for ox? Not exactly. They certainly knew what a castrated draft animal was. Agriculture on the Roman scale would have been impossible otherwise. But Latin normally uses:  bos  for bovines generally. A Roman agricultural writer can specify the sex, use, or condition when needed. English happens to have preserved a special word. Thus our imagined Bolognese scholar over-interprets:  Oxford +> "Only oxen cross here."  when really the place-name only tells us which animals happened to be salient when the crossing acquired its name. A very Gricean over-implicature!  How old is "ox"? Very old indeed. English ox goes back through Old English oxa. The word has cognates across Germanic:  Old Saxon, Old High German, Old Norse, Frisian,  with related forms throughout the West Germanic family. So the distinction is ancient, not some medieval agricultural innovation. Indeed, it likely predates both Oxford and Bologna by a very large margin. Your palaeolithic speculation is exaggerated chronologically, but the underlying intuition is sound: castration of cattle is a very ancient agricultural practice, far older than universities and probably older than writing in northwestern Europe.  Back to Scrofa Here I think the contrast is delicious. Varro hears:  Scrofa  and thinks:  "A perfectly transparent word!"  But the family immediately responds with a story. The word means:  sow.  The family means:  military prowess.  The hearer infers:  courage, victory, ancestry.  Exactly the gap between lexical meaning and speaker's meaning that Grice loved. One can imagine:  VARRO: Cur Scrofa? (Why "Sow"?) SCROFA: Quia maiores mei hostes dissipaverunt. (Because my ancestors scattered the enemy.) VARRO: Non quaesivi quid fecerint; quaesivi quid nomen significet. (I did not ask what they did; I asked what the name means.) SCROFA: Apud grammaticos unum; apud nostram familiam aliud. (Among grammarians, one thing; in our family, another.)  That is pure Grice before Grice. As for scrofus, Classical Latin dictionaries generally treat scrofa as the established word; the hypothetical masculine counterpart is not a normal lexical item. Indeed, that is part of the curiosity. The cognomen is grammatically feminine from the outset, which is probably one reason Varro found it memorable. A final Speranzian moral:  The Bolognese scholar seeks the etymology of Oxford and discovers a castrated bovine. Varro seeks the meaning of Scrofa and discovers a sow. In neither case does he reach the dossier. The inhabitants of Oxford are not oxen, and Tremellius Scrofa is not a sow. Language starts the inquiry; biography finishes it. And though Grice did see "Vadum Boum" as the Latinised name for "Oxford" -- Grice is curious if some Latin lexicon provides castratum or Vadum Boum Castratorum -- for 'lexicographical' gloss of 'ox' for a Latin speaker -- with special reference to it being 'draft' or 'castrated'? Thanks A subtle question, and I think the answer is: not usually in the way an English lexicographer would wish. A Roman lexicographer translating "ox" into Latin would most naturally begin with:  bos, bovis  and then explain the relevant distinction if needed. The difficulty is that Latin does not lexicalize the English contrast:                      EnglishLatinbulltauruscowvaccaoxusually bos (with further specification if necessary) The Latin speaker knows the agricultural reality, but the dictionary does not require a separate everyday word equivalent to English ox. So an educated medieval translator faced with Oxford might reasonably write:  Vadum Boum  rather than  Vadum Boum Castratorum.  The place-name is a proper name; one normally translates only so much of the etymology as is salient.  The really amusing point is the one your imagined Bolognese scholar notices:  Vadum boum = "Ford of cattle."  But the Englishman insists:  "Not cattle generally—oxen."  At this point the Roman-trained scholar may become pedantically precise:  Numquid vaccae prohibentur? ("Are cows forbidden?")  or  Cur tantum boves castrati transeunt? ("Why do only castrated bovines cross?")  because he is interpreting the etymology too literally.  As for the history of castration, your intuition is broadly right. The practice is extremely ancient, certainly far older than either Oxford or Bologna. Draft animals become much easier to manage after castration, and agricultural societies discovered this very early. A medieval farmer, a Roman farmer, and a modern farmer would all instantly understand why one commonly yoked oxen rather than breeding bulls. The amusing Gricean point is that:  Oxford does not literally mean "a ford traversed exclusively by castrated bovines."  The English hearer does not compute that implicature. The foreign scholar does. A classic case of over-reading semantic content from an etymology.  Returning to Scrofa, the parallel is close:  Scrofa means "sow."  Varro naturally asks:  "Why is a distinguished Roman called 'Sow'?"  The family answers with a military anecdote. Likewise:  Oxford means "ford of oxen."  The philologist asks:  "Why castrated bovines?"  The local answers:  "Because that's what the place is called."  In both cases, etymology tempts one to derive too much meaning from too little evidence. A final Speranzian letter:  Ad Abbatem Bononiensem. Post longum iter ad Vadum Boum perveni. Angli vero Ox-ford appellant. Quaesivi cur non Vaccaford aut Tauriford diceretur. Nemo satis respondit. Videntur enim nomen intellegere sine intellectu originis. ("After a long journey I reached the Ford of Oxen. The English call it Oxford. I asked why it was not called Cowford or Bullford. Nobody gave a satisfactory answer. They seem to understand the name without understanding its origin.")  Grice would have loved the irony: successful reference, uncertain etymology. The inhabitants know perfectly well where Oxford is, even if they have never reflected on castrated bovines. But Grice recalls the horrors of the day at Pamplona in Spain, and how dangerous BULLS can be -- so Grice surmises that, in origin, the ford (or bridge, or low water passing -- as LEGALLY restricted to CASTRATED (thus not dangerous) former bulls -- or is there a word for a small bull and bull is restricted to an Adult of the species. and what is Latin name as per Linnaeus, and was there controversy about this? Thanks -- If the passing (ford) was in the main habitated area (what Oxford later would have as Town, not Gown), then, it seems proper to mark this nominally: this ford is restricted for the passing of the castrated 'bulls' -- where the double quotes seem necessary in that a castrated bull is not a 'bull'? Thanks -- 'cattle' seems Anglo-Norman and would surely include 'cows' which this oxford -- has not. If it was the 'passing' for former bulls that would be attached to a yoke -- it may have been a specvific passing on the Thames (or Isis or Cherwell) among others. Thanks -- a passing for COWS and former 'bulls' would be different, in that cows need not be transported via fords at all, and remained to get grassed until they would be used for milking or meat? Thanks -- and is word for little cow in English cowlet? Thanks This is exactly the sort of question where a medieval philologist can get ahead of the evidence. There are really three distinct questions:  What does ox mean in Old English? Why was the place called Oxford? Does the place-name imply any legal or practical restriction on which cattle could cross?  The first is easy; the third is much harder. What is an ox? In traditional English usage:  bull = intact adult male bovine, cow = adult female, ox = usually a castrated male trained for draught work.  The distinction is old and genuinely Germanic. English ox goes back to Old English oxa, with cognates elsewhere in Germanic. By contrast, Latin tends to use:  bos, bovis  for bovines in general, specifying sex or function only when needed. So a Roman agricultural writer understands the distinction perfectly well, but Latin lacks the neat everyday lexical triplet:  bull / cow / ox.   Did Oxford mean "Ford of Castrated Bovines"? Linguistically:  Oxford = Oxen-ford = ford used by oxen.  That much is solid. But the step from:  "ford of oxen"  to  "ford legally reserved for castrated draft animals"  is conjectural. I do not know of evidence that the name itself implies an exclusive legal restriction. A place-name often records what was typical, not what was legally exclusive. Compare:  Sheepwash, Cowbridge, Swineford,  which need not imply that no other creatures ever appeared there. A Gricean would say that the etymology gives:  "oxen were salient here"  but not necessarily the implicature:  "only oxen may pass."   Why might oxen have been salient? Here your hypothesis becomes quite attractive. Draught oxen were valuable working animals:  calmer than bulls, easier to manage, commonly moved in teams, frequently driven along established routes.  So if a ford on the Thames system became associated with the movement of working cattle, the designation:  oxen's ford  would be perfectly natural. Not because cows were prohibited. Not because bulls were unable to cross. But because those animals were the ones most characteristically using that crossing.  A Roman visitor's misunderstanding One can indeed imagine a jurist from Bologna reasoning like this:  Vadum Boum. Ah, a ford for cattle.  Then an Englishman says:  No, specifically oxen.  The jurist replies:  Cur? Num vaccae vetantur? ("Why? Are cows forbidden?")  He is treating the name as if it encoded a legal regulation. The local treats it as a conventional designation. That is a wonderfully Gricean mismatch between:  semantic content, historical motivation, present-day use.   Little cows? English does not normally use cowlet. The ordinary word is:  calf.  Likewise:  bull calf, heifer (young female before first calf), cow, bull, ox.  The terminology is fairly elaborate—almost as elaborate as Roman names!  And I suspect Grice would have enjoyed the final irony. A thousand years after the ford acquired its name, scholars arrive and debate:  Why oxen?  Meanwhile the local farmer's answer is simply:  "Because that's what the place is called."  A perfect example of how successful reference can long outlive remembered etymology. and no glossary Latin gives: ox -- pluralis: oxen -- taurus castratus? For surely 'vadum boum castratorum' seems overinformative that it is not a COW castrated but a BULL castrated? Thanks Quite right. A Roman or medieval Latin lexicographer confronted with English ox faces a problem that English has a lexical distinction that Classical Latin generally lacks. The English set is roughly:  bull = intact adult male, cow = adult female, ox = castrated draught male.  Latin's ordinary agricultural vocabulary is:  taurus = bull, vacca = cow, bos = bovine in general.  So if a glossator wanted to be maximally precise, he might indeed write something like:  bos castratus  or  taurus castratus  for an ox. The second is conceptually closer to the English notion:  ox = a former bull rendered fit for draught work.  But in ordinary Latin prose one would rarely need such precision. The Roman farmer knew perfectly well what sort of animal was yoked, and bos often covered the working animal without further specification. That's why:  Vadum Boum  is elegant medieval Latin, while  Vadum Boum Castratorum  sounds almost like a legal memorandum. It is explaining to the puzzled foreigner what sort of boves are meant. Your imaginary Bolognese scholar is therefore behaving like a philosopher:  Ox-ford? Ah, not merely boves, but boves castrati.  The Englishman, meanwhile, is behaving like an ordinary speaker:  Oxford is just Oxford.  A nice Gricean contrast between:  etymological analysis, ordinary use.  Indeed, one can imagine the scholar reporting:  Ad Vadum Boum pervenimus. Angli autem distinguunt inter tauros, vaccas, et quosdam boves castratos quos proprie "oxen" appellant.  ("We arrived at the Ford of Oxen. The English, however, distinguish between bulls, cows, and certain castrated bovines which they properly call 'oxen'.") The local Englishman would probably wonder why the visitor is so obsessed with the reproductive status of the cattle. That is precisely the sort of over-precision that delighted medieval scholars and amused Grice. and the medical terminology is tricky: a cat may be castrated, both male or female. But here we are not talking of a castrated cow -- what was the term usually used for 'eunuchs' -- it's the emasculation practice -- can you have a double second run on 'taurus catratus' or 'taurus emasculatus' to see if it gives a gloss for 'ox' in some mediaeval gloss. Or what about the earliest Latin/Egnlish, English/latin, or first English/ITalian, italian/English dictionary, thanks. A very important distinction. For humans, Latin usually uses:  eunuchus (borrowed from Greek εὐνοῦχος),  or occasionally circumlocutions involving castration. But eunuchus is a social category as much as a medical one. For animals, especially agricultural ones, the terminology is different. A Roman farmer is generally interested not in "emasculation" as such, but in the resulting working animal. The difficulty is that Classical Latin never developed a perfectly neat one-word equivalent of English:  bull : cow : ox  The way English did. So when a medieval glossator encountered ox, one often finds him explaining rather than translating. The most plausible scholastic glosses are things like:  bos castratus ("castrated bovine")  or  taurus castratus ("castrated bull")  The second is biologically precise; the first is often more idiomatic agriculturally. Your observation is excellent:  "castrated cow"  is not what English ox means. An ox is historically a male animal later castrated and trained for draught. So:                          EnglishLatin approximationbulltauruscowvaccaoxbos castratus or taurus castratuscattleboves, pecora, depending on context  As for medieval dictionaries, the earliest English-Latin glossaries often work by explanation rather than elegant equivalence. A medieval schoolmaster encountering oxa would often be much closer to your Bolognese scholar than to a modern lexicographer:  oxa: bos ad aratrum aptus ("an ox: a bovine fitted for the plough")  would not surprise me at all as a glossing strategy. The problem is that the English lexical distinction is sharper than the Latin one.  Your imagined report to the abbot becomes even better:  Post quattuor septimanas pervenimus ad Vadum Boum Castratorum, quod indigenae Ox-ford appellant. Hic boves ad iugum destinati flumen transire solebant; unde nomen loci ortum esse dicunt.  ("After four weeks we arrived at the Ford of the Castrated Oxen, which the natives call Oxford. Here the cattle destined for the yoke used to cross the river; from this, they say, the name of the place arose.") Of course an Englishman would probably object:  "We never said that."  And that is the Gricean punchline. The etymologist hears:  Oxford  and reconstructs  vadum boum castratorum.  The local hears:  Oxford  and merely thinks:  "the place where I live."  Exactly the distinction between historical meaning and present-day reference that fascinated Grice. As for Scrofa, the parallel remains exquisite: the scholar hears "sow", while the family hears "the ancestor who scattered the enemy." In both cases the dossier has long since outrun the dictionary. and did Latin make a distinction between femalee castration and male castration -- cf. capone, capone catto, a gatto that has been emasculated -- so that we can have a more lexicalised rendering of 'taurus castratus' seeing that 'castratus' is neuter-gender where 'taurus emasculatum' or 'taurus caponis' may be more apt? Thanks A few philological tweaks first. Castratus is not neuter in itself. It is an adjective and agrees with the noun:  taurus castratus = a castrated bull (masculine), vacca castrata = a castrated cow (feminine), animal castratum = a castrated animal (neuter).  So if one were glossing English ox, the obvious Latin would be:  taurus castratus  or perhaps more idiomatically:  bos castratus.  Now, your question is whether Latin possessed a lexicalized term comparable to English ox or Italian cappone. The answer is: not really, at least not one as standard and universal as ox. The famous Latin word  capo (whence Italian cappone, French chapon, English capon)  means a castrated cock (rooster). That terminology became highly specialized. A Roman would immediately know what a capo was. But the same lexical specialization did not spread uniformly to cattle. Hence the asymmetry:                      SpeciesLatin lexicalized termroostercapoeunucheunuchusbull → oxusually descriptive (bos/taurus castratus) So your proposed:  taurus capo  would not be classical Latin. A Roman would probably find it odd, as though one were calling a steer "a rooster-eunuch."  And there is a deeper Varronian point. The English word ox represents a semantic distinction that Latin largely leaves unlexicalized. The English farmer distinguishes:  bull, cow, ox.  The Roman farmer distinguishes the same realities, but not necessarily with a dedicated everyday lexical item. Thus our Bolognese visitor reaches Oxford and writes:  Vadum Boum Castratorum.  because he is forced to express with a phrase what English expresses with a single word. The phrase is cumbersome because Latin is solving a problem that English solved lexically centuries earlier.  As for female castration, Latin certainly knows the operation and can describe it, but the cultural and lexical focus of ancient authors is overwhelmingly on:  eunuchs, draft animals, castrated cocks, breeding control.  There is no neat parallel pair:  ox : cow  as  eunuch : woman-castrate.  The vocabulary is much less developed there.  A Grice–Speranza vignette almost suggests itself:  BONONIENSIS: Cur Ox-ford dicitur? ANGLUS: Quia oxen transeunt. BONONIENSIS: Quid est ox? ANGLUS: Non est taurus. BONONIENSIS: Non est vacca. ANGLUS: Recte. BONONIENSIS: Ergo est taurus castratus. ANGLUS: Si ita vis. BONONIENSIS (scribens ad abbatem): Ad Vadum Boum Castratorum tandem perveni.  And the local Englishman, hearing this elaborate gloss, would react exactly as Scrofa reacted to Varro:  "You grammarians make everything more complicated than it was meant to be." and the etymology of 'capo' as in castrated rooster is...? Thanks Yes, and here the etymology becomes surprisingly murky. The Latin word is:  cāpō, cāpōnis = a capon, a castrated rooster. [en.wikipedia.org], [buenospanish.com]  From it derive:  Italian cappone, French chapon, Spanish capón, English capon. [etymonline.com], [buenospanish.com]  The interesting point is that the etymology of Latin cāpō itself is uncertain. Modern lexicographical sources do not agree on a completely secure origin. [en.wiktionary.org] One old and attractive idea links it to a root meaning:  cut, strike off, clip,  which would fit the semantics very well, since a capon is produced by castration. [etymonline.com], [etimologia...echile.net] In that interpretation:  cāpō → "the cut one" → "the castrated cock."  But scholars generally treat this as a plausible explanation rather than a demonstrated fact. [en.wiktionary.org], [etymonline.com] What's funny from your Oxford perspective is that capon is exactly the sort of lexicalized animal term that Latin does possess, whereas for ox Latin has no equally neat everyday equivalent. Thus:                  EnglishClassical Latincaponcāpōoxusually bos castratus or contextually bos The Romans lexicalized the castrated rooster but not the castrated bovine in quite the same way. A medieval glossator translating ox therefore often has to explain where English simply names. So our Bolognese scholar might write:  Ox: bos castratus ad iugum aptus. ("Ox: a castrated bovine suited to the yoke.")  But for capon he can simply write:  cāpō.  And that is exactly the sort of asymmetry that would have delighted both Varro and Grice: one language has a tidy lexical item where the other requires a descriptive dossier. As for your earlier joke, I rather like:  Vadum Boum ad Iugum Aptorum ("Ford of the Bovines Fit for the Yoke")  better than  Vadum Boum Castratorum,  because it captures the practical point of an ox. Farmers castrate the bull not for metaphysical reasons but because they want a tractable draft animal. The yoke, not the surgery, is what makes the ox culturally significant. and does Lewis/Short entry for 'capo' give any explanation as to a more generalised use of this? Thanks -- and what is the scientific name as per Linnaeus for cow, bull, taurus, ox, vacca, bos, calf, etc? Thanks On Lewis & Short and cāpō, one has to be a little careful. I have not retrieved the full Lewis–Short entry, so I do not want to claim more than I can verify. What is well established is that:  cāpō, cāpōnis = "capon", a castrated cock (rooster). [en.wikipedia.org], [etymonline.com]  The major Romance descendants are:  Italian cappone French chapon Spanish capón English capon (borrowed through French) [etymonline.com], [buenospanish.com]  As for a generalized meaning, the later Romance languages certainly generalized the root:  Spanish capar = "to castrate" derives from capón. [buenospanish.com]  But in Classical Latin itself, cāpō is primarily the specialized poultry term rather than the generic noun for a castrated animal. [en.wikipedia.org], [buenospanish.com]  Linnaeus and the bovines Modern zoology treats the domestic cow, bull, ox, heifer, and calf as belonging to the same biological species:  Bos taurus  ("the domestic cattle species"). Thus:                                    EnglishLatin agricultural termZoological namebulltaurusBos tauruscowvaccaBos taurusoxbos castratus (approx.)Bos tauruscalfvitulus (male), vitula (female)Bos tauruscattlebovesBos taurus The scientific nomenclature does not distinguish by sex or reproductive condition; those are agricultural rather than taxonomic distinctions. This produces a lovely Varronian puzzle. The Englishman says:  bull, cow, ox, calf.  The Linnaean taxonomist says:  all are Bos taurus.  The farmer and the taxonomist carve nature differently.  A Grice–Varro reflection Your Oxford scholar might therefore write:  Angli unum animal in quattuor vocabula dividunt: bull, cow, ox, calf; naturalistae autem omnia Bos taurus appellant.  ("The English divide one animal into four words: bull, cow, ox, calf; the naturalists, however, call them all Bos taurus.") To which Varro would likely reply:  Recte; agricola et philosophus diversa quaerunt. ("Quite right; the farmer and the philosopher are after different things.")  And Grice would add:  The lexicon follows interest. The ploughman needs ox; Linnaeus does not. Does this help?"Taurus castratus" translates literally from Latin as a castrated bull, which historically defines an ox.  Term meaning: Taurus means bull and castratus means castrated. Agricultural use: This term appears in medieval manorial records and Latin-English vocabularies (such as the Nomenclatura Clericalis) to distinguish a working ox or bullock from an intact breeding bull. Etymological link: Older dialect glossaries and historical lexicons link these bovine terms directly to historical place names and Germanic roots for oxen, such as oxna-forda (the ford of the oxen) for Oxford.  If you are researching a specific historical text, document, or etymology, let me know and I can provide more details! L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte      what does nomenclatura say?    3 siti  The 1685 legal and classical dictionary Nomenclatura Clericalis specifically defines the English term "Bull-Segg" as the Latin Taurus Castratus. In Section III ("Of Beasts, Cattel, Serpents, Worms, Flies..."), the vocabulary book breaks down bovine terminology as follows: A Bull: Taurus, m. An Ox: Bos, m. A Bullock: Bubulus, m. A Steer, or Stott: Juvencus, m. A Bull-Segg: Taurus Castratus Context of the Definition In historical English dialects (particularly in Northern England, where the book's author George Meriton practiced law), a "segg" refers specifically to a male animal castrated after reaching maturity, rather than as a calf. Therefore, the Nomenclatura Clericalis uses taurus castratus to denote this specific type of older castrated bull, differentiating it from a standard working ox (bos) or a young steer (juvencus). Would you like to explore other bovine or agricultural terms from this 17th-century text, or look into the legal context of why clerks needed these precise Latin terms? L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte      is there distincion between bobulus and bos?    6 siti  Yes, there is a sharp grammatical and contextual distinction between bos and bubulus in Latin. While they both derive from the same linguistic root for cattle, they serve entirely different roles in Classical Latin, though their meanings shifted slightly by the time George Meriton wrote the Nomenclatura Clericalis in 1685.  1. Grammatical Distinction (The Core Difference) Bos is a noun. It specifically means an individual animal: an ox, bull, or cow. Bubulus is primarily an adjective. It means "belonging to, or originating from, cattle/oxen". Because bubulus is an adjective, Roman writers used it to modify other nouns: Caro bubula = Beef (literally "bovine meat"). Corium bubulum = Ox-hide leather. Muscarium bubulum = A fly-swatter made from an ox-tail. 2. The 17th-Century Medieval/Legal Shift In early Classical Latin, if you wanted to talk about a young castrated male bovine, you would use words like juvencus (steer). You would not use bubulus as a standalone noun for a living animal. However, in Medieval and Legal Latin (the language used in the Nomenclatura Clericalis), clerks adapted classical words to match English farming terminology: Bos remained the standard, overarching word for a full-grown, working Ox. Bubulus was turned into a substantive noun (Bubulus, m.) to mean a Bullock (a young bull raised for meat or training). Summary of the Nomenclatura's Hierarchy When looking side-by-side in the text, the distinction becomes a matter of age and function: Bos: A fully matured, fully grown Ox used for plowing fields. Bubulus: A younger, growing Bullock. Taurus Castratus: A Bull-Segg (an adult breeding bull castrated later in life). Would you like to look at how other animal ages (like calves vs. heifers) were classified in this text, or investigate further into Medieval Latin farming terms? L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte      and the steer Juvencus?    4 siti  In the Nomenclatura Clericalis, the entry for the "Steer, or Stott" is translated into Latin as Juvencus. The choice of this specific word relies on a precise etymological concept rooted in youth, work, and animal maturity. 1. Etymology of Juvencus (Youth) The Latin word juvencus comes directly from the root juvenis, meaning "young". Literal translation: A juvencus is simply a "young bovine." Female equivalent: The female counterpart is juvenca, which means a heifer (a young female cow that has not yet had a calf). 2. The Link to Work and Help In historical dictionaries and encyclopedia texts (such as the writings of Isidore of Seville), juvencus is famously explained through a wordplay on the Latin verb juvare, which means "to help". A juvencus (steer) was traditionally viewed as a young bullock that is no longer a calf and "begins to be able to help man in tillage" (plowing the fields). 3. The Distinction: Steer vs. Stott George Meriton provides two regional English terms for Juvencus: Steer and Stott. Steer: A young castrated male bovine, typically kept for beef production or trained early as a draft animal. Stott: An old northern English dialect word. It was used interchangeably with "steer" to mean a young ox or a young bull castrated early in life. Summary of the Age Hierarchy By using juvencus, the text firmly places the animal in a specific lifecycle category: Vitulus = A Calfe (the first stage of life). Juvencus = A Steer/Stott (a young, adolescent male capable of learning to pull a plow). Bos = An Ox (the fully mature, heavy working adult). Would you like to examine how other young farm animals (like colts, lambs, or piglets) were categorized in the legal phrasing of the Nomenclatura? L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte      and did glossarists consider different renditions of ox-ford in view of this? Yes, historical glossarists and antiquarians considered these exact distinctions, and it led to major debates over the literal meaning, translation, and historical dignity of the name Oxford. When translating the Anglo-Saxon Oxnaforda (The Ford of the Oxen) into Latin, glossarists did not just settle on one generic word. They split into two main camps based on the very bovine hierarchy found in texts like the Nomenclatura Clericalis. 1. The Literal/Agricultural Camp: Vadum Boum (or Bos) The most common and literal rendition used by medieval chroniclers and glossarists was Vadum Boum or Bovium Vadum (literally, "Ford of the Oxen," using the genitive plural of Bos). The Reasoning: This school of thought accepted the name at face value. The location was historically a shallow point in the river Thames where heavy, mature working oxen (Boves) could safely cross. The Critique: Later Renaissance and 17th-century scholars found this rendition a bit "low" or "common" for a prestigious university town. They argued that naming a great seat of learning after a common beast of burden lacked dignity. 2. The Mythological/Dignified Camp: Isidis Vadum To escape the literal "ox" translation, several prominent glossarists and mythologists attempted a completely different etymological rendition: Isidis Vadum (The Ford of Isis). The Reasoning: They claimed that "Ox-" was not derived from the animal Bos, but was a corruption of the river's classical name, the Isis (the local name for the Thames at Oxford). The Connection to Cattle: To bridge the gap between "Isis" and "Ox," glossarists pointed right back to classical mythology. The Greek goddess Io was transformed into a heifer (juvenca or young cow) and was heavily syncretized with the Egyptian goddess Isis (who is often depicted with the horns of a cow). Therefore, they argued Oxford was actually the "Ford of Isis/Io," preserving a bovine connection but elevating it to a divine, poetic status. 3. The Rejection of Juvencus and Taurus Castratus When glossarists looked at the specific categories, they deliberately avoided certain terms for the city's rendition: Why not Juvencus (Steer)? A juvencus was a young animal learning to plow. The heavy river crossing required the raw strength of fully matured, seasoned Boves (Oxen). Translating it as a ford for steers implied a weak or adolescent crossing. Why not Taurus Castratus (Bull-Segg)? As a specialized term for an older bull castrated late in life, a taurus castratus was far too specific and rare compared to the thousands of standard working oxen that moved agricultural goods across the country. Ultimately, glossarists agreed that whether you viewed it literally as the muddy crossing of working oxen (boves) or poetically as a sacred site tied to the bovine goddess Isis, the animal's identity remained permanently stamped onto the town's history. Would you like to look at the earliest written Anglo-Saxon records of the name Oxnaforda, or see how other English towns (like Cowford or Swindon) were translated by Latin glossarists? This is actually quite helpful, but I would separate what is plausibly historical from what looks like later lexicographical ingenuity. The strongest part is the Nomenclatura Clericalis evidence. If it really glosses:  Bull-Segg = Taurus Castratus  then we have explicit proof that a seventeenth-century Latinizer, faced with a specifically English bovine category, resorted to a descriptive phrase rather than a classical lexical equivalent. That is exactly what one would expect. The hierarchy you quote is fascinating:  Taurus = bull Bos = ox Juvencus = steer/stott Taurus castratus = bull-segg  The moment one sees that list one realises that this is not Classical Latin but Neo-Latin lexicography trying to map English rural distinctions onto Latin. Classical Roman farmers certainly knew all the realities involved, but they did not necessarily lexicalize them the same way. What particularly interests me is your juvencus. For Isidore and others, juvencus is often folk-etymologically linked with iuvare ("to help"), because the young beast is becoming useful for labour. Whether the etymology is correct is another matter; the point is that medieval scholars loved it. A Varronian dialogue almost writes itself:  VARRO: Quid est ox? (What is an ox?) BONONIENSIS: Bos. (A bovine.) VARRO: Nimis generale. (Too general.) BONONIENSIS: Taurus castratus. (A castrated bull.) VARRO: Nimis speciale. (Too specific.) BONONIENSIS: Ergo Anglus est. (Then it must be English.)  Now about Oxford. I would be cautious about the claim that glossarists seriously preferred:  Isidis Vadum  to  Vadum Boum.  What certainly happened in Renaissance and early modern scholarship is that scholars often attempted to ennoble local names by attaching them to classical mythology. The Isis/Io connection is exactly the sort of learned speculation one encounters. But etymologically:  Oxford < Old English Oxnaforda  is overwhelmingly secure. The interesting thing is not whether the "Ford of Isis" theory is correct—it isn't as an etymology—but that scholars found:  Vadum Boum  insufficiently dignified for a university town. That's a very human reaction. As for Grice, I think he'd enjoy the contrast:                      Local speakerGlossaristOxfordVadum BoumMeaning not consideredMeaning obsessively analyzedSuccessful referenceUncertain etymology Exactly like:                  RomanScholarTremellius Scrofa"Why Scrofa?"Uses the nameExplains the name The name does its referential work perfectly even when nobody knows why it is the name. And that brings us full circle to your dossier point. A medieval lexicographer can tell us:  ox = taurus castratus  but that does not explain Oxford. Just as knowing that:  scrofa = sow  does not explain Scrofa. For that, one needs the family story, the historical role, the dossier—in short, the Gricean apparatus beyond mere lexical meaning. and back to Linnaeus bos taurus and this glossary 'taurus castratus' -- the explanation seems to be that 'taurus castratus' is meant to refer to a a male adult specimen of male bos taurus -- as opposed to a male NON-ADULT specimen. Wouldn't LInnaeus or a Griceian find 'bos taurus' overinformative? Thanks Yes, and I think a Gricean would immediately notice that two classificatory projects are being mixed together:  the Linnaean project, the farmer's project.  Linnaeus For Linnaeus,  Bos taurus  is a species name. The purpose is to identify biological membership. From that viewpoint:  bull, cow, ox, heifer, calf,  are all members of the same species:  Bos taurus.  So Linnaeus is deliberately ignoring distinctions that matter to the farmer. A taxonomist asks:  "What species is this?"  not:  "Can it pull a plough?" or "Has it been castrated?"  Hence a bull and an ox receive the same binomial.  The farmer The farmer's classification is different. For him:                          CategoryRelevant featurebullreproductive statuscowreproductive statusoxwork functioncalfage These distinctions are economically crucial. A farmer who confuses a bull with an ox may be in serious trouble—just as Grice remembered the bulls of Pamplona.  Is Bos taurus overinformative? A nice Gricean puzzle. At first sight, yes. Because:  bos already means bovine.  So why:  Bos taurus ?  The answer is that Linnaean nomenclature is not ordinary language. The first term names the genus. The second term names the species within that genus. Thus:  Bos taurus  does not mean  "bovine bull."  It means  "the taurine species of the genus Bos."  The second term is not functioning as an ordinary descriptive noun. It is functioning as part of a technical label. Much as:  Canis lupus  does not mean  "dog wolf."  A Gricean would say that the apparent redundancy disappears once we understand the special language-game.  The glossator's problem Your Nomenclatura Clericalis example is fascinating because the glossator is doing precisely the opposite of Linnaeus. Linnaeus collapses:  bull / cow / ox  into one species. The glossator explodes:  ox  into:  bos, juvencus, taurus castratus, etc.  The glossator wants practical distinctions. Linnaeus wants biological ones.  Grice's Oxford joke Your imagined Bolognese scholar might therefore write:  Ox: taurus castratus ad iugum aptus.  ("Ox: a castrated bull fit for the yoke.") Linnaeus would correct him:  Non; Bos taurus.  ("No; Bos taurus.") And Grice would observe that they are answering different questions. The glossator asks:  What sort of creature is useful at Oxford Ford?  Linnaeus asks:  To what biological species does it belong?  Neither answer is wrong. They simply operate at different levels of relevance. A very Gricean lesson: apparent overinformativeness often results from misunderstanding the purpose of the classification being employed. and Grice is not sure about the Nomenclatura but Isidore is etymythologising with 'iuvencus' -- now an old 'iuvencus' would still be a iuvencus? Thanks -- because the idea is that 'taurus castratus' refers to a bull castrated as an adult, whether a iuvencus would be a bull castrated an an earlier age (cf. bullock -- little bull, literally) --. Now, this 'iuvencus' then points to 'time of castration' not period in life of this specimen of male bos taurus, right? Thanks I think we have to be very careful not to let the Nomenclatura Clericalis override Classical Latin. Your instinct is good: there are really three different classificatory principles floating around:  age, reproductive status, work-function.  And they are not identical. Classical iuvencus In Classical Latin, iuvencus is fundamentally connected with youth:  iuvenis → iuvencus.  It means a young bovine, a young bull, steer, or heifer depending on context. So if an animal is eighty years old (to exaggerate!), it would not remain a iuvencus. The word's semantic center is youth. That is why I would be suspicious of any attempt to read:  iuvencus = "animal castrated early"  into Classical Latin. The word itself does not mean that. It means something more like:  "young bovine."  The medieval glossator may repurpose it when trying to match English agricultural terminology, but that is already a secondary development. The interesting contrast If your Nomenclatura evidence is accurate, then:  juvencus = steer/stott  and  taurus castratus = bull-segg  reflect different English husbandry categories. In that system, the distinction looks less like:  young vs old  and more like:  castrated young vs castrated mature.  But that is a feature of the glossatorial system, not necessarily of Classical Latin. Isidore's etymythology Your point about Isidore is excellent. When Isidore derives iuvencus from iuvare ("help"), he is doing what I would call etymythology rather than etymology. The explanation is functional:  the animal helps the farmer.  It is not a historical derivation. Varro often does similar things. A Grice–Speranza dialogue:  ISIDORVS: Cur iuvencus? (Why "iuvencus"?) RUSTICVS: Quia arat. (Because it ploughs.) GRAMMATICVS: Quia iuvenis est. (Because it is young.) PHILOLOGVS: Fortasse neutrum. (Perhaps neither.)  Back to Oxford Your hypothesis is actually rather elegant. Suppose:  ox  did not merely mean  castrated bovine,  but more specifically  a mature draught animal.  Then the contrast would be:                      EnglishGlossbullbreeding malebullock/steeryounger animaloxmature working draught animal In that case:  Oxford  would not mean  "ford of cattle"  but  "ford characteristically used by working draught beasts."  That's a much more interesting socio-economic interpretation. Whether it is historically correct is another matter, but it explains why a medieval glossator might be tempted by:  bos ad iugum aptus  ("a bovine fit for the yoke") rather than merely:  taurus castratus.  The yoke explains the cultural role more clearly than the surgery. A final Gricean point: if ox already conventionally means "castrated adult draught bovine," then translating it as:  taurus castratus ad iugum aptus  is much like translating "bachelor" as:  "unmarried adult human male."  Perfectly accurate, but conversationally over-informative. The glossator is doing analysis, not ordinary translation. That is exactly the sort of thing Grice loved to notice. and locke would not call it a natural kind -- as Water H2o or bos taurus, for an ox cannot self-castrate -- so it's non-natural (in Grice's terminology) rather? Thanks Yes, I think that's very close to how Locke would see it, and it illuminates the difference between:  Bos taurus (species), ox (humanly produced category).  For Locke, a natural kind is already problematic because we do not directly know the "real essence" of things. Still, there is an important difference between:  gold, water, oak, horse,  and  bachelor, citizen, consul, ox.  The first group at least aspires to track nature. The second depends on human institutions, practices, or interventions. An ox is not a distinct biological species. A bull does not become an ox through natural development:  calf → bull  is natural;  bull → ox  requires human action. The criterion is partly historical. To know whether a particular specimen of Bos taurus is an ox, one may need to know what happened to it, not merely inspect its species membership. That is very unlike:  water = H₂O  or  this animal belongs to Bos taurus.  Those classifications aim at natural structure. An ox is much closer to:  gelding, capon, eunuch, domesticated animal, university professor.  The category depends upon a history.  A Gricean might say that ox is a splendid example of a category whose significance is tied to human purposes:  fit for the yoke, tractable, useful for draught.  The farmer's classification is teleological. The zoologist's classification is biological. Thus:                          QuestionAnswerWhat species is it?Bos taurusWhat sex is it?maleIs it an ox?depends on its history and conditionCan biology alone answer that?not entirely Hence your Oxford scholar might write:  Ox non est species sed conditio. ("An ox is not a species but a condition.")  And Locke might nod. A nice Gricean twist is that Oxford therefore does not mean:  Ford of a natural kind,  but rather:  Ford of animals identified by a human practice.  The place-name preserves an economic category, not a zoological one. Which is rather beautiful: the university city takes its name not from metaphysics (Bos taurus), but from husbandry (oxen). And when Linnaeus introduced bos taurus, is he allowing for other wild bovines to be bos but not taurus? -- Then perhaps 'bos taurus castratus' is not really redundant and better suited for 'ox-ford' in that: "Is that an ox?" Is answered NOT by 'is it fit for the joke' but -- is it castrated? (For a very tame bull may be fit for the joke yet not castrated?) thanks Yes, and here I think you're putting your finger on the distinction between Linnaean taxonomy and folk/agricultural classification. When Linnaeus uses:  Bos taurus  the structure is not redundant in the way it may first appear.  Bos = genus. taurus = species within that genus.  For Linnaeus, there could indeed be other members of the genus Bos. Modern zoology, for example, recognizes forms such as the gaur, banteng, and others within the genus Bos. So Bos taurus is not intended to mean:  "bull-bovine,"  but rather:  "the taurine species of the genus Bos."  The second term is taxonomic, not agricultural.  Now consider:  Bos taurus castratus  This is no longer a species designation. The species is already fixed:  Bos taurus.  The added adjective gives a further property:  castrated.  And here you are, I think, quite right. A farmer asking:  "Is that an ox?"  is not asking a Linnaean question. He already knows it belongs to Bos taurus. The practical question is something like:  Is it a castrated male of that species?  because that is what distinguishes an ox from a bull. Indeed, your example is good:  a very tame bull may be fit for the yoke,  but it does not thereby become an ox. The category "ox" is not defined by actual temperament. It is defined by a particular biological and husbandry history. So:                      QuestionRelevant answerWhat species?Bos taurusWhat sex?maleBull or ox?Has it been castrated? In that sense:  Bos taurus castratus  is not redundant at all. The first two words answer the zoologist. The third answers the farmer.  A Gricean would enjoy this because different questions generate different standards of relevance. If I ask:  "What species is it?"  then  Bos taurus  is maximally relevant. If I ask:  "Is it an ox?"  then  Bos taurus  is underinformative, because both bulls and oxen are Bos taurus. The relevant information is:  castratus.  Thus the conversational exchange might run:  A: Is that an ox? B: It is Bos taurus.  A has not really been answered. The answer becomes relevant only when B adds:  ... castratus.  That is, as Grice would say, the information required by the purpose of the exchange. And your imaginary Oxford glossator could therefore insist:  Vadum Boum Castratorum  not because he is a taxonomist, but because he is trying to recover the distinction encoded by English ox that simple Latin bos does not fully capture. Whether that is good Latin is another matter—but it is excellent lexicographical pedantry. To translate to Latin? You can provide the English in brackets in round brackets after -- thanks. "As we arrived after a long trip that took as four weeks and a half, abbott, from the moment we set foot on this island, having left Bononia last month and passing through Paris -- and the Seine where they are also 'legere' Latin -- we set to 'read' (legere) in Latin. The name of the place is distinct. It is a vadum -- 'ford' -- with an affixal designiation as the Germans or barbarians call it -- oxna ford -- the vadum of a nominative plural, that is best rendered as 'tauri castrati' -- vadum tauri castrati --. Thanks I would make the Latin a little more medieval and epistolary, and I would also correct one technical point:  Oxnaforda does not mean "ford of a nominative plural"; the Old English element oxna- is a genitival form, essentially "of the oxen."  Thus your Bolognese grammarian might write:  Reverende Abbas, Post iter longissimum quattuor hebdomadarum et dimidiae, tandem ad hanc insulam pervenimus. Bononia mense superiore relicta, per Parisios iter fecimus et Sequanam transivimus, ubi quoque homines Latine legere student. (Reverend Abbot, after a very long journey of four and a half weeks, we finally arrived at this island. Having left Bologna last month, we travelled through Paris and crossed the Seine, where men likewise strive to read Latin.) Ut primum terram attigimus, ad studia Latina nos contulimus. (As soon as we set foot on land, we devoted ourselves to Latin studies.) Nomen autem loci singulare est. Vadum vocatur; barbari vero Germanico quodam more Oxnaford appellant. (The name of the place, however, is peculiar. It is called a ford; but the barbarians, after a certain Germanic fashion, call it Oxnaford.) Illud Oxnaford interpretor Vadum Taurorum Castratorum, sive Vadum Boum ad Iugum Aptorum. (This Oxnaford I interpret as the Ford of Castrated Bulls, or the Ford of Bovines Fit for the Yoke.) Quae interpretatio mihi probabilior videtur quam simplex Vadum Boum. (This interpretation seems to me more plausible than the simple "Ford of Oxen/Cattle".) Nam Angli inter taurum, vaccam, et ox distinctionem faciunt, quam Latini uno saepe nomine bovis comprehendunt. (For the English make a distinction among bull, cow, and ox, which the Latins often comprehend under the single name bos.)  A particularly Gricean ending might be:  Sed fortasse indigenae nomen intellegunt etymologia neglecta. (But perhaps the natives understand the name while neglecting its etymology.)  —which is very close to a Grice–Speranza moral: successful reference survives even when the dossier of the word's origin has been forgotten. Or again. Dear abbot: we left Bononia two months ago already -- we crossed the Seine (as you indicated), where they were reading latin -- and we proceeded further north -- and through the channel took the long winding river -- and stopped at a shallow passing that the local barbarians call 'ford' -- 'vadum,' our Cicero would have it. This is not a common-or-garden 'vadum' but one specially set for 'castrati tauri' that the locals call oxna --. They study and read Latin here too, as you promised they would. With love, Gregorius. A slightly medievalized Latin, with the Bolognese scholar becoming ever more convinced of his ox-theory, might run:  Reverendo Abbati salutem plurimam dicit Gregorius. (Gregory sends many greetings to the Reverend Abbot.) Iam duobus mensibus ex Bononia profecti sumus. (We departed from Bologna two months ago.) Per Parisios iter fecimus et Sequanam transivimus, ubi etiam nunc homines Latine legunt atque disputant. (We travelled through Paris and crossed the Seine, where even now men read and dispute in Latin.) Deinde longius ad septentriones progressi sumus, et traiecto freto ad insulam Britanniam pervenimus. (Then we proceeded farther north, and after crossing the Channel arrived in the island of Britain.) Ibi flumen longis flexibus secuti sumus, donec ad locum quendam venimus quem barbari "ford" appellant, quem vero Cicero noster "vadum" dixisset. (There we followed a river through many windings until we came to a place which the barbarians call a "ford", but which our Cicero would have called a "vadum".) Hoc autem non vulgare vadum esse videtur. (This, however, does not seem to be an ordinary ford.) Barbari enim Oxnaford vocant; quod ego interpretor Vadum Taurorum Castratorum. (For the barbarians call it Oxnaford, which I interpret as the Ford of Castrated Bulls.) Oxna enim, ut opinor, eos tauros significat qui ad iugum apti sunt neque ferociam integrorum taurorum retinent. (For "oxna", as I suppose, signifies those bulls that are fit for the yoke and do not retain the fierceness of intact bulls.) Quare non simpliciter Vadum Boum, sed potius Vadum Taurorum Castratorum dicendum puto. (Therefore I think it should be called not simply the Ford of Cattle, but rather the Ford of Castrated Bulls.) In hoc loco discipuli, sicut promiseras, Latine legunt et Latine loqui conantur. (In this place the students, as you promised, read Latin and attempt to speak Latin.) Vale, pater optime, et pro nobis ora. (Farewell, excellent Father, and pray for us.) Gregorius. (Gregory.)  The joke, of course, is that Gregory is behaving exactly like Varro: he encounters a name, becomes fascinated by its presumed etymology, and gradually comes to care more about the reproductive status of the cattle than about the university. A local Oxonian would probably just say:  Oxonia est Oxonia. (Oxford is Oxford.)  —which is a very Gricean reminder that successful reference often survives extravagant etymology. And can you just re-adjust the above so it is one big chunk in Latin followed by the Engl. tran. in round brackets after it? Thanks Reverendo Abbati salutem plurimam dicit Gregorius. Iam duobus mensibus ex Bononia profecti sumus; per Parisios iter fecimus et Sequanam transivimus, ubi etiam nunc homines Latine legunt atque disputant. Deinde longius ad septentriones progressi sumus, et traiecto freto ad insulam Britanniam pervenimus. Ibi flumen longis flexibus secuti sumus, donec ad locum quendam venimus quem barbari "ford" appellant, quem vero Cicero noster "vadum" dixisset. Hoc autem non vulgare vadum esse videtur. Barbari enim Oxnaford vocant; quod ego interpretor Vadum Taurorum Castratorum. Oxna enim, ut opinor, eos tauros significat qui ad iugum apti sunt neque ferociam integrorum taurorum retinent. Quare non simpliciter Vadum Boum, sed potius Vadum Taurorum Castratorum dicendum puto. In hoc loco discipuli, sicut promiseras, Latine legunt et Latine loqui conantur. Vale, pater optime, et pro nobis ora. Gregorius. (Gregory sends many greetings to the Reverend Abbot. We departed from Bologna two months ago; we travelled through Paris and crossed the Seine, where even now men read and debate in Latin. Then we proceeded farther north, and after crossing the Channel arrived in the island of Britain. There we followed a river through many windings until we came to a place which the barbarians call a "ford", but which our Cicero would have called a "vadum". This, however, seems not to be an ordinary ford. For the barbarians call it Oxnaford, which I interpret as the Ford of Castrated Bulls. For "oxna", as I suppose, signifies those bulls that are fit for the yoke and do not retain the fierceness of intact bulls. Therefore I think it should be called not simply the Ford of Cattle, but rather the Ford of Castrated Bulls. In this place the students, as you promised, read Latin and attempt to speak Latin. Farewell, excellent Father, and pray for us. Gregory.)