UR

 

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

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urbanio – Ossia: Grice ed Urbanio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urbanio -- The gens Urbania was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens appear in history, but several are known from inscriptions.  Origin The nomen Urbanius belongs to a class of gentilicia formed from other nomina or cognomina ending in -anus, typically derived from place names.[1] The surname Urbanus is in turn derived from urbs, "city", and means "from the city".[2]  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Marcus Urbanius Cinnamus, built a first-century sepulchre at Cales in Campania for himself, Satria Seilis, Maria Similis, and the freedman Nymphius.[3] Titus Urbanius Matto, along with Titus Valerius Albanus, Lucius Veturius Melo, Gaius Cottius Rufus, and Quintus Sextius, made an offering to Mars, Apollo, and Minerva at Vindonissa in Germania Superior, in AD 79.[4] Titus Urbanius Felix, built a first- or second-century tomb at Rome for his wife, Eutychia, aged thirty.[5] Urbanius, made an offering to Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Juno Regina at the site of modern Weinheim in Germania Superior, dating between the second century and the middle of the third.[6] Gaius Urbanius Firminus, a soldier in the Legio X Gemina, buried at Tucci in Hispania Baetica, built by his colleague, Julius Ingenuus, and dating from the latter half of the second century.[7] Gaius Urbanius Marcellus, buried in a second- or third-century tomb at Cyzicus in Asia, built by his son, Gaius Urbanius Caspius.[8] Gaius Urbanius C. f. Caspius, built a second- or third-century tomb at Cyzicus for his father, Gaius Urbanius Marcellus.[8] Urbania Secunda, along with her husband, Hostilius Fructus, built a third- or fourth-century tomb at Casilinum in Campania for their son, Quintus Urbanius Secundus.[9] Quintus Urbanius Secundus,[i] a little boy buried at Casilinum, aged five years, eleven months, and twenty-five days, in a third- or fourth-century tomb built by his parents, Hostilius Fructus and Urbania Secunda.[9] Urbania, named in a fourth- or fifth-century inscription from Capena in Etruria.[10] Undated Urbanii Urbania, buried at Limisa in Africa Proconsularis, aged forty-five.[11] Aulus Urbanius, named in a ceramic graffito from the site of modern Haltern am See in Barbaricum.[12] Lucius Urbanius,[ii] named in an inscription from Colonia in Germania Inferior.[13] Urbania Lellua, built a tomb at Colonia for her daughter, Pacatia Florentia.[14] Urbania M[...]ia, buried at Tiddis in Numidia.[15] Urbania Sabina, buried at Caesena in Cisalpine Gaul, aged twenty-one years, eleven months, eighteen days, and five hours, with a monument from her husband, Fabius Capito.[16] Notes  Despite his name, he was probably a member of the Hostilia gens, as his father was named Hostilius Fructus.  The gentilicium is partial, but Urbanius is the only recorded nomen beginning with Urba-. See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, p. 118.  Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.vv. urbs, urbanus.  CIL X, 4697.  CIL XIII, 5195.  CIL VI, 33069a.  CIL XIII, 11742.  CIL II, 1691.  CIL III, 13668.  Chioffi, Museo provinciale Campano di Capua, 48.  CIL XI, 7786.  AE 2004, 1760.  Galsterer, Gefäßkeramik aus Haltern, 275.  CIL XIII, 8435.  CIL XIII, 8411.  CIL VIII, 6837.  CIL XI, 569. Bibliography Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present). Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1879). 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). Brigitte Galsterer, Die Graffiti auf der römischen Gefäßkeramik aus Haltern (The Graffiti of the Roman Clay Pots of Haltern), Münster (1983). Laura Chioffi, Museo provinciale Campano di Capua. La raccolta epigrafica (Provincial Museum of Campania at Capua: The Epigraphic Collection), Capua (2005). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urbanio – Ossia: Grice ed Urbanio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urbanio – The gens Urbania is delightful because it almost reads like a lexical joke. Where:  Umbrius = "the Umbrian,"  and  Umbricius = "the Umbrian fellow,"  we have:  Urbanus = "the man from the city," hence Urbanius = "the city chap."  The root is of course:  urbs "city."  And immediately a Gricean alarm bell rings. For urbanus in Latin quickly acquires two senses:   literally:  belonging to the city;    culturally:  polished, civilised, witty, socially sophisticated.    The opposite is not merely:  rusticus = rural,  but often:  rusticus = unsophisticated.  Hence Cicero's fondness for contrasts between urbanity and rusticity. A Roman saying:  vir urbanus  may be saying much more than:  "city resident."  He may be saying:  "a fellow who knows how to behave in conversation."  And there, of course, we find Grice. One can imagine a Gricean etymology:  urbanus +> able to converse civilly, +> sensitive to implicature, +> not a conversational boor.  Indeed among all these gentes, Urbanius may be the first whose very name points toward conversational conduct.  The historical members are mostly epigraphic shadows. But one figure catches my eye:  Titus Urbanius Matto, who in AD 79 joined several others in dedicating an offering to Mars, Apollo, and Minerva at Vindonissa. [GREXv3.docx | Undefined]  That already places an Urbanius in a military and religious setting remarkably close to our earlier discussions of Apollo and Roman semiotics. Another attractive character is:  Gaius Urbanius Firminus, a soldier of the Legio X Gemina. [GREXv3.docx | Undefined]  For Grice often liked the contrast between highly sophisticated philosophical communication and the ordinary exchanges by which institutions function. A legionary saying:  Hostes adsunt. (The enemy is here.)  is already engaged in the same fundamental communicative enterprise as an Oxford don discussing sense-data.  But the most Speranzian point is surely the nomen itself. Suppose we meet our hero. Quis es?  Urbanius sum.  (I'm Urbanius.) In Rome this almost risks being overinformative in exactly the way that "Umbrius" would be in Umbria. A Gricean objector might say:  "Surely, in a city full of city-dwellers, to be called Urbanius tells us very little."  To which an ancient grammarian might reply:  Nomen vetus est; descriptio non iam est. (It is now a name; it is no longer a description.)  The same point we found with Umbrius returns. Once a descriptor becomes a nomen, its literal informational content fades.  A little dialogue: Hospes:  Cur Urbanius vocaris? (Why are you called Urbanius?)  Urbanius:  Forte maiores mei ex urbe venerunt. (Perhaps my ancestors came from the City.)  +> The name originally recorded origin. Hospes:  At nunc omnes in urbe vivimus. (But now we all live in the city.)  +> The descriptor has lost its immediate relevance. Urbanius:  Nomina memoriam servant. (Names preserve memory.)  +> A nomen remembers what conversation has forgotten.  And perhaps that is the deepest lesson of the Urbanii. The Umbrii remember a homeland. The Umbricii remember an ethnic origin. The Ummidii remember an ancestor called Quadratus. The Urbanii remember a city. All these nomina are, in a sense, fossilised conversations. Someone, somewhere, once said:  "the Umbrian," "the city fellow," "the square-faced chap,"  and two centuries later the description has become a hereditary name whose original implicature survives only dimly. A grammarian such as Umbrius Primus would have loved that. And Grice might have added:  "The Romans invented proper names by allowing old conversational implicatures to harden into semantics." (Ha.) When Grice arrived at Oxford, it was the first city he had been to. Harborne and Clifton did not count. Only Oxford -- Vadum Castratorum Taurorum -- counted: it had a cathedral: it was a city -- civis -- cf. Civile conversazione -- civil conversatione -- why not 'urbane'? Grice: The name of Roman gentes never cease to amaze me: there's Urbanio -- not Civilio. As an Italian citizen, Speranza knows. At one point the records rested at Rome -- now in his home town of Liguria -- citacidanza barely relates to cives -- you can be born on a cabin by the Tennessee, as Dolly Rebecca Parton did -- and be a citizen. Urbanio is different! Thanks Yes, and here I think Grice would have relished the contrast between civis and urbanus. For a modern state, citizenship has become almost entirely juridical. As you note, one may be born in a cabin beside the Tennessee, in a Ligurian village, or in a Manhattan apartment and still be equally a citizen. The concept is political and legal rather than topographical. But urbanus is harder to abstract. The Latin pair is:  civis = citizen.   urbanus = belonging to the city (urbs).  And very quickly the second acquires a cultural colouring. A Roman could be:  civis Romanus  without necessarily being:  urbanus.  The first means he possesses civic standing. The second suggests polish, wit, sociability, conversational tact. Indeed urbanitas comes to mean something like:  urbane conversation, cultivated humour, civilized social intercourse.  The opposite is not merely:  non-citizen,  but:  rusticus.  The rustic may perfectly well be a Roman citizen. What he lacks is urbanity. This is where Grice's conversational ideal becomes unexpectedly Roman. The Cooperative Principle does not require citizenship. It requires something closer to urbanitas. A Gricean "decent chap" is often less a civis than an urbanus. One can imagine Cicero approving:  Vir urbanus est. (He is an urbane man.)  +> He knows how to converse.  +> He catches implications. +> He does not force everything into explicit statement.  And hence your etymological puzzle: Why a gens Urbania but no famous gens Civilia? Perhaps because "citizen" is a legal category, whereas "urban" already carries social and conversational overtones. A Roman naming a fellow:  Urbanus  might mean more than:  "the city-dweller."  He might mean:  "the polished chap from town."  It is remarkably close to what eighteenth-century English came to call:  urbane.  Indeed English preserves the Roman evaluative sense almost better than it preserves the geographical one. When we call someone "urbane," we do not mean:  resident of a city.  We mean:  socially polished, tactful, conversationally skilled.  Almost a Gricean virtue. So one can imagine Grice arriving from Harborne and Clifton and encountering Oxford as the first place that really counted as an urbs. Not merely larger, but possessing cathedral, colleges, libraries, civic memory, and all the institutions that Romans associated with urban life. A mock exchange: Grice:  "I have finally arrived in a city."  Roman:  Ergo urbanus factus es? (So have you become urbane?)  Grice:  "That does not follow."  +> City membership need not imply conversational excellence. Roman:  At speremus. (But let us hope.)  +> Urbanity is the conversational ideal latent in urban life. And perhaps that is why Urbanius is such a charming nomen. Unlike Umbrius, which remembers a homeland, or Quadratus, which remembers an ancestor's shape, Urbanius remembers a style of life: the city as the place where conversation becomes an art. Rather closer to civil conversazione than to mere citizenship. A citizen may possess rights. An urbanus is expected to know how to talk. (Ha.) Grice blames it on the abstractizing Greeks and their polis, translated by Tullio Cicerone as civitas -- so why a Roman gens that gives Urbanio, but none that gives Civilio -- or ctvitatinus? Thanks Do Lewis and Short expand on this. Speranza thinks it's topographical: urbs is the seven hills -- civitas is whatever is NOT the seven hills. Thanks Yes, and I think your distinction between urbs and civitas is closer to Roman intuitions than many modern translations suggest. For a Roman, the two words are not interchangeable. Urbs is concrete.  walls, streets, temples, hills, Forum, buildings.  When Romans write simply:  Urbs  with a capital U implied, they very often mean:  Rome itself.  The physical city. Lewis & Short emphasizes this concrete sense: urbs is the city as an inhabited and built place, and by excellence Rome. From it comes urbanus, originally "of the city." Hence also:  urbanitas, urbane, urbani mores.  The whole conversational and social colouring follows later. By contrast:  civitas  begins from:  civis  (citizen), and thus refers not primarily to buildings but to the body politic, the civic community, citizenship, commonwealth, or state. That is why Cicero can translate Greek πόλις as civitas. The philosophical interest lies not in streets and walls but in the organized community of citizens. A Gricean might say:  urbs = topographical dossier. civitas = political dossier.  And therefore your puzzle:  Why a gens Urbania, but no distinguished gens Civilia?  has a plausible answer. A nickname:  Urbanus  is easy to imagine. "the city chap." "the fellow from Rome." "the sophisticated urban fellow." The word can attach to a person. But:  Civis  is much less distinctive. Everybody entitled to citizenship is a civis. And:  Civitas  is more abstract still. One hardly points to an individual and says:  "There goes Commonwealth-Man."  Whereas:  "There goes the city fellow"  is a perfectly plausible nickname. Roman nomina often arise from:  places, occupations, physical traits, ethnic origins, familiar epithets.  Urbanus fits beautifully. Civilis does exist as a cognomen and adjective, but not with the same nickname-generating force. In fact the famous Julius Civilis bears exactly such a cognomen, but it never generated a major gens "Civilia" in the way that Urbanus generated Urbanius. Your topographical intuition is therefore excellent. One could imagine: Umbrius  "the Umbrian."  Urbanus  "the city fellow."  Both identify somebody by origin or habitat. But: Civis does not identify locality. It identifies legal membership. A Roman arriving from the countryside might be labelled:  Urbanus.  A Roman arriving from another town might be labelled:  Urbanus.  But no one could become distinctive merely by being:  civis.  The category is too broad. And here Grice's complaint about the Greeks becomes amusing. Once Greek πόλις becomes Latin civitas, the philosophical focus shifts from:  the city as place  to  the citizen-body as abstraction.  The Roman nomenclature looks more conservative. Urbanius preserves the older, concrete world:  streets, markets, neighbours, conversation.  Indeed, if one were forced to choose a Gricean nomen among Roman gentes, one might choose Urbanius precisely because the word eventually develops the sense:  urbane, polished, socially tactful.  Almost:  "one fit for civil conversation."  Which is deliciously ironic, because civil conversation derives from civis, while urbane conversation derives from urbs. The Romans gave us the latter as a family name; the philosophers inherited the former as a theory of society. As Speranza might put it:  "The Greeks abstracted the polis into the civitas. The Romans retained the urbs. Hence Urbanius survives as a nomen, while Civilius remains a philosopher's dream." (Ha.) And do Lewis and Short and other expand on 'cives'? Because Augustine of Hippona (not a city) used to contrast -- alla Campanella -- civitas dei -- versus Rome, civitas terrena. Polis is too greek.But whence the root, cives -- non-derivable and primitive via Proto-Indo-European? Thanks -- indeed V with capital V becomes Rome, as in Livio, A. V. C. I (Romolo is slain). Thanks Yes. The contrast between urbs, civitas, and civis is one of the places where Latin preserves distinctions that later political theory tends to blur. Lewis & Short's entry for civis begins with the basic sense:  "citizen," "fellow-citizen,"  that is, a member of a political community. What is fascinating is that civitas is not originally the city as a physical place. It is the condition, body, or collective existence of the cives. In a sense:  civis → civitas  just as:  rex → regnum.  The noun of collectivity grows out of the noun for the person. By contrast:  urbs  does not begin with persons. It begins with walls, buildings, streets, and place. A Roman could perfectly well distinguish:  urbs Roma (the city of Rome)  from  civitas Romana (the Roman commonwealth, citizen-body, or polity).  This becomes crucial in Augustine of Hippo. When Augustine writes:  Civitas Dei  he is not speaking of a heavenly municipality. Nor is he contrasting two towns. The contrast is:  Civitas Dei the community of those ordered toward God,  versus  civitas terrena the earthly community ordered toward temporal goods.  The categories are political and spiritual rather than geographical. Hence your excellent observation:  Hippo is not a city in the Roman sense that matters here.  The entire Augustinian contrast works through civitas, not urbs. Indeed, Augustine could have written:  Urbs Dei  but it would be much weaker philosophically.  As for etymology, civis is one of those old Indo-European words whose ultimate ancestry remains debated. Unlike:  pater, mater, frater,  it does not have an obvious pan-Indo-European family. Modern etymologists generally treat it as very ancient Italic, but the deeper Proto-Indo-European derivation is uncertain. In that respect civis is almost primitive. The Romans themselves would not have analysed it further. Rather:  civis → civicus → civitas.  The direction of derivation is clear inside Latin even if the pre-Latin ancestry is obscure.  Your Gricean puzzle therefore becomes even more interesting. Why:  Urbanius  but no celebrated  Civilius or Civitatinus?  I think the answer is largely topographical, just as you suggest. A nickname:  Urbanus  is easy. It means:  "the city fellow," "the Roman," "the urbane chap."  One can imagine meeting him in the countryside. But:  Civis  is not distinctive. Citizenship is too abstract. Too many people qualify. It is difficult to form a memorable nickname from:  "the citizen."  Indeed, for a Roman, being a civis was normally the default aspiration. Being an urbanus was a style. The latter generates cognomina; the former generates political theory.  And your Livian observation is exactly right. Just as:  Urbs (with a capital U implied)  becomes Rome par excellence, so too in Livy:  A.U.C. Ab Urbe Condita  means:  "from the founding of the City."  Not:  from the founding of a civitas.  Not:  from the founding of a kingdom.  But:  from the founding of the City.  The physical place remains the symbolic centre of the political world. A Grice-Speranza gloss might be:  Greeks abstracted the πόλις into a constitutional form. Romans never entirely forgot the seven hills.  Hence:  Urbanius  is conceivable. A fellow can be "from the City." But:  Civilius  sounds almost like a constitutional lawyer before his time. And Roman gentes were formed from the speech of markets, roads, villages, nicknames, and neighbours, not from the abstractions of political philosophy. As Grice might have put it:  "The Romans named people after where they came from, what they looked like, what they sold, or whom they resembled; the philosophers later turned these things into concepts." (Ha.) The Urbicii are, in a sense, the diminutive or secondary cousins of the Urbanii. The nomen derives from:  urbicus = "of the city," "urban," "city-dwelling,"  which Lewis & Short relates ultimately to:  urbs = city. [GREXv3 | Word]  The distinction is subtle but interesting:   Urbanus often acquires the social sense:  polished, urbane, witty, civilized.    Urbicus is more topographical:  belonging to the city, resident of the city, urban as opposed to rural. [GREXv3 | Word]    So if Urbanius is the conversationally sophisticated Oxford don, Urbicius is perhaps merely the fellow from town. (Ha.) What especially interests me is that the dossier itself contains a near-perfect Gricean accident:  Marcus Urbicius Rusticus Ipolcobulculensis. [GREXv3 | Word]  An Urbicius Rusticus! Almost:  "Urban-Rustic."  or  "Mr City-Country."  A Roman grammarian would have smiled. One can imagine our old friend Umbrius Primus asking:  Quomodo potest Urbicius esse Rusticus? (How can an Urbicius be Rustic?)  +> The nomen suggests city.  +> The cognomen suggests countryside.  And the answer is exactly the lesson you have been drawing throughout:  nomina preserve history; cognomina describe individuals.  The nomen remembers what an ancestor once was. The cognomen may tell us what the present fellow is.  As to a conversational hero, the only remotely promising candidate is:  Urbicius Flaccus, who made an offering to Apollo in Gaul. [GREXv3 | Word]  Since we have spent so much time among Apollo, omens, and Umbricius Melior, there is something pleasing in finding another urban gentleman dedicating an inscription to the same god. One might imagine: Apollo:  Γνῶθι σεαυτόν. (Know thyself.)  Urbicius Flaccus:  Conor. (I am trying.)  +> Urbanity begins in self-knowledge.  But perhaps the most amusing point is etymological. You have been opposing:  civis / civitas and urbs / urbanus / urbicus.  The Roman gentes seem overwhelmingly to prefer the latter. We find:  Urbanius, Urbicius.  But not:  Civilius, Civitanius, Civitatinus.  That is telling. The Roman imagination seems happier with the visible city than with the abstraction of citizenship. A nickname grows naturally from:  "the city chap."  It grows less naturally from:  "the constitutional participant."  The philosopher invents the latter. The neighbour invents the former.  A Grice-Speranza epigram might therefore be:  Urbicius ex urbe venit; civis ex civitate venit; sed nomen fit ex eo quod vicinus dicit. (Urbicius comes from the city; a citizen comes from the commonwealth; but a name arises from what the neighbour says.)  +> Roman names derive from ordinary conversation.  +> Political theories derive from later abstraction.  Indeed, if Grice arrived in Oxford and felt he had finally reached a genuine urbs, then one can imagine him preferring an ancestor called Urbicius to one called Civitaticus. The former sounds like someone one might actually meet in the High Street; the latter sounds like someone already halfway to a treatise by Augustine. (Ha.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urbizio – Ossia: Grice ed Urbizio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urbizio. The gens Urbicia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. Almost no members of this gens are mentioned in history, but a number are known from inscriptions.  Origin The nomen Urbicius belongs to a class of gentilicia formed from cognomina ending in -ex, -icis, or -icus.[1] The surname Urbicus originally designated someone who dwelt in a city, or urbs,[2] and is an example of a cognomen derived from the traits associated with an individual.[3] Urbicius must be distinguished from Orbicius, with which it was sometimes confused.[4]  Praenomina The only praenomina attested from inscriptions of this gens are Marcus and Gaius, two of the most common names at all periods of Roman history.  Members Marcus Urbicius Sanctus, mentioned in two first-century soapstone inscriptions from Epamanduodurum in Germania Superior.[5] Urbicius Respectus, buried at Rome, aged thirty-seven years, two months, and seven days, in a tomb dating between the middle of the first century and the end of the second, dedicated by his wife, Xenara.[6] Marcus Urbicius Faventinus Ipolcobulculensis, buried in a second-century tomb at Ipolcobulcula in Hispania Baetica, aged forty-five.[7] Marcus Urbicius Rusticus Ipolcobulculensis, buried in a second century tomb at Ipolcobulcula, aged forty.[8] Urbicius Flaccus, made an offering to Apollo, commemorated in an inscription from the site of modern Essarois, formerly part of Gallia Belgica, dating from the second or third century.[9] Urbicius Spectatus, built a sepulchre at Apulum in Dacia, dating between the middle of the second century and the latter part of the third, for his children, Gaius Urbicius Condunus, Urbicia Ingenua, and Urbicius Senilis.[10] Gaius Urbicius Condunus, a soldier in the Legio XIII Gemina, buried at Apulum, aged thirty, having served for eleven years, in a sepulchre dating between the middle of the second century and the latter part of the third, built by his father, Urbicius Spectatus, for Condunus and his other children.[10] Urbicia Ingenua, a young woman buried at Apulum, aged twenty, in a sepulchre dating between the middle of the second century and the latter part of the third, built by her father, Urbicius Spectatus, for Ingenua and her brothers.[10] Urbicius Senilis, a boy buried at Apulum, aged ten, in a sepulchre dating between the middle of the second century and the latter part of the third, built by his father, Urbicius Spectatus, for Senilis and his siblings.[10] Gaius Urbicius Firmus, decurion of Siscia in Pannonia Superior, where he was buried in a tomb dating from the reign of Septimius Severus.[11] Urbicia, the mother of a child buried at Augusta Treverorum in Gallia Belgica on the tenth day before the Kalends of November in an unspecified year between the late fourth century and the end of the fifth, aged two years, four months, and five days.[12] Undated Urbicii Urbicia, a woman buried at Aquileia in Venetia and Histria.[13] Urbicius, an authority on the organization of the army, should probably be read Orbicius.[4] See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, p. 126.  Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. urbicus.  Chase, p. 110, 111.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, p. 1284 ("Urbicius").  CIL XIII, 10021,202, CIL XIII, 10021,203.  CIL VI, 39078, AE 1906, 74.  CIL II, 1652.  CIL II, 1653.  CIL XIII, 5644.  CIL III, 1204.  CIL III, 3976.  AE 2007, 999.  Instrumenta Inscripta, No. 5, p. 322. Bibliography 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). Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1879). 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). Instrumenta Inscripta, No. 5: Signacula ex aere: Aspetti epigrafici, archeoligici, giuridici, prosopografici, collezionistici, Rome (2014). Category: Roman gentes And from THIS gens? Thank

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urbizio – Ossia: Grice ed Urbizio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urbizio. The Urbicii are, in a sense, the diminutive or secondary cousins of the Urbanii. The nomen derives from:  urbicus = "of the city," "urban," "city-dwelling,"  which Lewis & Short relates ultimately to:  urbs = city. [GREXv3 | Word]  The distinction is subtle but interesting:   Urbanus often acquires the social sense:  polished, urbane, witty, civilized.    Urbicus is more topographical:  belonging to the city, resident of the city, urban as opposed to rural. [GREXv3 | Word]    So if Urbanius is the conversationally sophisticated Oxford don, Urbicius is perhaps merely the fellow from town. (Ha.) What especially interests me is that the dossier itself contains a near-perfect Gricean accident:  Marcus Urbicius Rusticus Ipolcobulculensis. [GREXv3 | Word]  An Urbicius Rusticus! Almost:  "Urban-Rustic."  or  "Mr City-Country."  A Roman grammarian would have smiled. One can imagine our old friend Umbrius Primus asking:  Quomodo potest Urbicius esse Rusticus? (How can an Urbicius be Rustic?)  +> The nomen suggests city.  +> The cognomen suggests countryside.  And the answer is exactly the lesson you have been drawing throughout:  nomina preserve history; cognomina describe individuals.  The nomen remembers what an ancestor once was. The cognomen may tell us what the present fellow is.  As to a conversational hero, the only remotely promising candidate is:  Urbicius Flaccus, who made an offering to Apollo in Gaul. [GREXv3 | Word]  Since we have spent so much time among Apollo, omens, and Umbricius Melior, there is something pleasing in finding another urban gentleman dedicating an inscription to the same god. One might imagine: Apollo:  Γνῶθι σεαυτόν. (Know thyself.)  Urbicius Flaccus:  Conor. (I am trying.)  +> Urbanity begins in self-knowledge.  But perhaps the most amusing point is etymological. You have been opposing:  civis / civitas and urbs / urbanus / urbicus.  The Roman gentes seem overwhelmingly to prefer the latter. We find:  Urbanius, Urbicius.  But not:  Civilius, Civitanius, Civitatinus.  That is telling. The Roman imagination seems happier with the visible city than with the abstraction of citizenship. A nickname grows naturally from:  "the city chap."  It grows less naturally from:  "the constitutional participant."  The philosopher invents the latter. The neighbour invents the former.  A Grice-Speranza epigram might therefore be:  Urbicius ex urbe venit; civis ex civitate venit; sed nomen fit ex eo quod vicinus dicit. (Urbicius comes from the city; a citizen comes from the commonwealth; but a name arises from what the neighbour says.)  +> Roman names derive from ordinary conversation.  +> Political theories derive from later abstraction.  Indeed, if Grice arrived in Oxford and felt he had finally reached a genuine urbs, then one can imagine him preferring an ancestor called Urbicius to one called Civitaticus. The former sounds like someone one might actually meet in the High Street; the latter sounds like someone already halfway to a treatise by Augustine. (Ha.) And while Grice's tutee, Strawson, was (unlike pre-Oxford, provincial Grice) the man about town (London) -- when did Christ Church cathedral turned Town (versus Gown) into a City? Is Bologna a city in the same way? We know Paris (Sorbonne) via Notre Dame was? Thanks -- the world's oldest universities being mentioned. Yes, and here Grice's autobiographical remark becomes surprisingly relevant to Roman semantics. For medieval and early modern England, a city was not simply a large town. Traditionally, the presence of a cathedral was the decisive mark of a city. Oxford acquired city status in 1542 when Henry VIII created the Diocese of Oxford; Christ Church became the cathedral of that new see a few years later. Thus Oxford became, in the old English sense, a cathedral city. [theclergyd...ase.org.uk], [en.wikipedia.org], [everything...ined.today] A young Grice, arriving from Harborne and Clifton, might therefore have felt that Oxford was his first genuine urbs:  cathedral, colleges, guilds, civic institutions, ancient streets.  Not merely a town, but something approaching what a Roman would understand by an urbs. Your Latinization:  Vadum Taurorum Castratorum  (Ha.) fits rather nicely because Oxford's very name preserves a topographical memory, just as Urbanius preserves an urban one. Now compare Bologna. Bologna is unquestionably a city in the Roman and medieval sense; indeed it was already the Roman Bononia and later became one of the great communes of medieval Italy. Its cathedral is the Metropolitan Cathedral of St Peter, and Bologna became an archiepiscopal see in 1582. [en.wikipedia.org] But the deeper comparison is university versus city. Oxford and Paris became identified with their universities. Bologna became identified with the university first. The University of Bologna traces its origin conventionally to 1088 and is regarded by the university itself as the oldest university in the Western world. [unibo.it], [unibo.it] Oxford's teaching activity is attested by the late eleventh century and developed into the oldest university in the English-speaking world. [en.wikipedia.org], [thecampusreview.com] Paris, centred upon Notre-Dame and the schools around it, emerged in the mid-twelfth century and became the great theological university of medieval Europe. [en.wikipedia.org], [thecampusreview.com] The contrast is almost Gricean:  Bologna: law. Paris: theology. Oxford: a curious mixture of theology, logic, classics, and later philosophy.  One can therefore imagine Grice reflecting:  "At Bologna, they disputed law. At Paris, theology. At Oxford, what somebody might have meant."  (Ha.) Returning to your etymological point, urbs and civitas diverge precisely here. Bologna and Oxford are undoubtedly urbes:  walls, cathedral, streets, markets, scholars.  But Augustine's:  Civitas Dei  is not a city in that sense at all. It has no walls, no cathedral, no seven hills. It is a community of persons ordered toward God. Thus Augustine moves from the Roman concrete:  urbs Roma  to the philosophical- theological abstraction:  civitas Dei.  That is exactly the sort of abstraction Grice liked to blame on the Greeks, via πόλις and its conceptual descendants. The Romans, by contrast, never quite forgot the stones. Indeed Livy's:  Ab Urbe Condita  ("from the founding of the City") is revealing. Not:  ab civitate condita,  but:  from the founding of the City itself. Rome remains topographical before it becomes metaphysical. [en.wikipedia.org]  So your instinct about the genses is probably right. A Roman neighbour naturally invents:  Urbanus, Urbicius, Urbanius.  "The city fellow." But no one naturally invents:  Civitatinus.  That sounds like an Augustinian theologian centuries before Augustine was born. The nomen arises from lived geography; the abstraction comes later. That's why the Romans produced a Urbicius but not, so far as we know, a celebrated Civilius Conversationalis. (Ha.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urbinio – Ossia: Grice ed Urbinio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urbinio. The gens Urbinia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. Only a few members of this gens are mentioned by Roman writers, but others are known from inscriptions.  Origin The nomen Urbinius belongs to a class of gentilicia originally formed from cognomina ending in -inus.[1] The surname Urbinus probably referred to a native of Urbinum in Umbria.  Members Urbinia,[i] a vestal virgin buried alive for unchastity during the pestilence of 472 BC.[2][3] Gaius Urbinius, quaestor in 74 BC, served under Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius in Hispania Ulterior.[4][5] Urbinius Panopion,[ii] proscribed by the Second Triumvirate, was saved by one of his slaves, who exchanged clothes with him, and was slain in his place.[6][7] Urbinia, a woman whose estate was contested by a certain Clusinius Figulus, who claimed to be her son, and retained the advocate Labienus to represent him against Urbinia's heirs, represented by Gaius Asinius Pollio. Quintilian describes a rhetorical trick of Asinius, who implied that Figulus' case was exceptionally weak by describing Labienus himself as the strongest point in the plaintiff's favour.[8][9][10] Lucius Urbinius Quartinus, a native of Africa, was a soldier in the praetorian guard, where he served in the century of Faenius Justus. He was buried at Misenum in Campania, aged sixty, having served for twenty-five years, in a tomb built by Lucius Valerius Saturninus, dating from the second century, or the first half of the third.[11] Marcus Urbinius Rufus, a native of Dacia, dedicated a tomb at Misenum, dating between the middle of the second century and the middle of the third, for his fellow-soldier, Cassius Albanus, a native of Corsica, aged thirty years, two months, and two days.[12] Gaius Urbinius Victor, buried in a third-century tomb at Genua in Liguria.[13] Undated Urbinii Urbinius Micssi[...] buried at Ad Aquas Caesaris in Africa Proconsularis, aged eighty, along with Su[...]cia Rogata, aged thirty.[14] Urbinius Sic[...], named in a pottery inscription from Germania Inferior.[15] See also List of Roman gentes Notes  Some manuscripts give her name as Orbinia.  Called "Appion" by Appian. References  Chase, pp. 125, 126.  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, ix. 40, 41.  Broughton, vol. I, p. 30.  Sallust, Historiae, ii. 70.  Broughton, vol. II, p. 103.  Valerius Maximus, xi. 8. § 6.  Appian, Bellum Civile, iv. 6. § 44.  Quintilian, iv. 1. § 11; vii. 2. § 7; 3. §§ 1, 26; 4. § 1.  Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus, 38.  PIR, vol. III, p. 490 (V, No. 682).  CIL X, 3389.  AE 1979, 166.  CIL V, 7769.  AE 1995, 1773.  Bakker and Galsterer-Kröll, Graffiti auf römischer Keramik im Rheinischen Landesmuseum Bonn, 547. Bibliography Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia (Roman Antiquities). Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust), Historiae (The Histories). Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium (Memorable Facts and Sayings). Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (Quintilian), Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory). Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus (Dialogue on Oratory). Appianus Alexandrinus (Appian), Bellum Civile (The Civil War). 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). T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986). Lothar Bakker and Brigitte Galsterer-Kröll, Graffiti auf römischer Keramik im Rheinischen Landesmuseum Bonn (Graffiti from Roman Pottery in the Bonn Rhineland Museum), Bonn (1975). Category: Roman gentes And from THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urbinio – Ossia: Grice ed Urbinio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urbinio. For the gens Urbinia, I think there are two irresistible candidates, and both are conversationally fascinating for rather different reasons. The first is the tragic Vestal:  Urbinia, buried alive in 472 BC for unchastity during a pestilence, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus. [GREXv3 | Word]  The second is the much more Gricean figure:  Urbinia, whose estate gave rise to the forensic contest described by Quintilian, where Clusinius Figulus claimed to be her son and was represented by Labienus, while her heirs were represented by Asinius Pollio. [GREXv3 | Word]  For Speranza and Grice, the second is surely the hero. Why? Because the case survives not for the legal issue itself, but for a conversational maneuver. Quintilian tells us that Asinius Pollio employed a rhetorical strategy regarding Labienus, suggesting that the strongest part of the opposing case was the advocate rather than the evidence. [GREXv3 | Word] This is nearly pure implicature. Pollio does not say:  "Figulus has no evidence."  Instead he effectively says:  "Labienus is an excellent advocate."  The audience derives:  Therefore the factual case must be weak.  Which takes us immediately back to Grice's favourite tutorial example:  "Jones has beautiful handwriting."  The explicit content is praise. The recovered content is criticism. One could almost imagine Pollio addressing the court:  Labienus causae suae maximum ornamentum est. (Labienus is the greatest ornament of his client's case.)  +> The client himself contributes remarkably little.  +> The evidence is poor. +> Without Labienus, the case would collapse.  A judge trained by Grice would instantly recover the implicature. Indeed, this may be one of the best ancient examples of "damning by faint praise."  The nomen itself is also charming. Unlike:  Urbanius, Urbicius,  which derive from urbs and urbanity generally, Urbinius appears to point toward:  Urbinum  in Umbria. [GREXv3 | Word] Thus we return to a theme recurring through all these gentes:  Umbrius, Umbrenus, Umbricius, Urbinius.  All are topographical memories fossilized into family names. And there is a Gricean twist. Suppose a traveller arrives in Latium. Someone asks:  Quis est ille? (Who is that?)  Answer:  Urbinus. (The man from Urbinum.)  Perfectly informative. But in Urbinum itself:  Urbinus sum. (I am Urbinus.)  would be nearly as unhelpful as:  "I am an Umbrian"  said in Umbria. Hence your old observation: such names become most informative once their bearers migrate.  As for the Vestal Urbinia, she provides an entirely different Gricean puzzle. The pestilence occurs. A Vestal is condemned. The state effectively says:  There is plague. Therefore divine displeasure exists. Therefore some religious fault must be identified.  The sign-relation resembles our friend Umbricius Melior's entrails. One symptom is interpreted as a sign of another reality. A Gricean might object:  The disease does not logically entail the Vestal's guilt.  A Roman magistrate might reply:  It need not entail it; it signifies it.  And there we are again among signs, interpretations, and retrospective moralizations.  So my verdict would be: The conversational hero of the Urbinii is not the quaestor, soldier, or proscribed refugee, but the unnamed litigated Urbinia whose inheritance generated Quintilian's anecdote. The reason is simple. Through her case we glimpse Asinius Pollio employing a rhetorical move astonishingly close to Grice's own:  apparent praise, concealed depreciation, hearer-recognized implication.  A Roman advocate and an Oxford tutor suddenly become colleagues across two millennia. (Ha.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urgulanio – Ossia: Grice ed Urgulanio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urgulanio. H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA -- GREX -- VERBALIA: URGULANIO The gens Urgulania was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. Few members of this gens are mentioned in history, of whom the most prominent was Urgulania, a friend of the empress Livia, and grandmother of Plautia Urgulanilla, the first wife of the emperor Claudius.  Origin The nomen Urgulanius is thought to be of Etruscan origin.[1] A family of this name settled at Salona in Dalmatia.  Praenomina Most of the Urgulanii known from history and inscriptions bore the praenomen Publius. A few other names are found, but only Sextus appears to be a regular name of this gens.  Members Urgulania, a friend of Livia, and the grandmother of Plautia Urgulanilla, the first wife of Claudius. She was the wife of Marcus Plautius Silvanus, and their son Marcus was consul with Augustus in AD 2.[2] Urgulania Psephis, a young woman buried at Rome, aged twenty-two, in a tomb dating from the late first century BC, or early first century AD.[3] Aulus Avidius Urgulanius, present with Augustus on his diplomatic mission to Alexandria in AD 12.[4] Marcus Avidius Urgulanius, perhaps a relative of Urgulania.[5] Sextus Urgulanius, the father of Lucius Magius Urgulanianus.[6] Sextus Urgulanius Sex. f., the brother of Lucius Magius Urgulanianus.[6] Lucius Magius Sex. f. Urgulanianus, the son of Sextus Urgulanius, was adopted into the Magia gens. He was a distinguished soldier, and served as tribune of one of the urban cohorts. He was buried at Suessa Aurunca in Campania, in a tomb dating to the first half of the first century.[7][6] Publius Urgulanius Pistus, named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating to the first half of the first century.[8] Publius Urgulanius Rufus, the former master of Publius Urgulanius, a freedman named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century.[9] Publius Urgulanius, a freedman of Publius Urgulanius Rufus, named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, dating from the first half of the first century.[9] Urgulania Chrysis, named in a first-century inscription from Rome.[10] Publius Urgulanius Sabinus, buried in a first-century tomb at Cemenelum in Alpes Maritimae, along with his wife, Julia Tertia.[11] Publius Urgulanius Damocrates, named in a second-century sepulchral inscription from Rome.[12] Publius Urgulanius Hymetus, buried at Rome in a second-century tomb dedicated by his daughter, Plautia Prima.[13] Publius Urgulanius Theophilus, the husband of Sempronia Quarta and father of Publius Urgulanius Ursus, was buried at Salona in Dalmatia, in a tomb dedicated by his wife, dating to the second half of the second century.[14] Urgulanius Secundus, one of the municipal duumvirs at Verulae in Latium in AD 197. His colleague was Lucius Alfius Valentinus.[15] Publius Urgulanius, named in a second- or third-century inscription from Fulginiae Publius Urgulanius Euvodius, a young man buried at Salona, aged twenty-two, with a monument from his sister, Urgulania Nice, dating between the middle of the second century and the end of the third.[16] Urgulania Nice, dedicated a second- or third-century monument at Salona to her brother, Publius Urgulanius Euvodius.[16] Publius Urgulanius Primitivus, built a second- or third-century tomb at Salona for his mother, Urgulania Valentina.[17] Urgulania Valentina, buried at Salona in a tomb built by her son, Publius Urgulanius Primitivus, dating between the middle of the second century, and the end of the third.[17] Publius Urgulanius P. f. Ursus, the son of Publius Urgulanius Theophilus and Sempronia Quarta, built a tomb at Salona for his mother, dating between the late second century and the end of the third.[18] Undated Urgulanii Urgulania, buried at Rome in a tomb built by her husband, Publius Urgulanius Helico.[19] Publius Urgulanius Ɔ. f. Helico, a freedman, built a tomb at Rome for his wife, Urgulania.[19] Publius Urgulanius Hyacinthus, named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, alongside Publius Urgulanius Tanais.[20] Urgulanius Rufus, the former master of the freedwoman Urgulania Tertia.[21] Publius Urgulanius Tanais, named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome, alongside Publius Urgulanius Hyacinthus.[20] Urgulania Tertia, the freedwoman of an Urgulanius Rufus, named in an inscription from Tibur in Latium.[21] Urgulania Tyche, an infant buried at Rome, aged one year, nine months.[22] Urgulania Venustina, buried at Ostia in Latium.[23] See also List of Roman gentes References  Graeco-Roman Memoirs, vol. XXXVI, p. 111.  CIL XIV, 3606.  CIL VI, 6992.  Lintott, The Romans in the Age of Augustus, p. 82.  Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. XXV.  Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature, p. 21.  AE 1982, 164.  CIL VI, 29587.  AE 1980, 134.  Il Lapidario Zeri di Mentana, i. 276.  AE 1964, 242.  CIL VI, 29585.  AE 2014, 172.  AE 1996, 1207.  CIL X, 5796.  CIL III, 2620.  CIL III, 2631.  AE 1996, 1208.  CIL VI, 29586.  CIL VI, 29588.  Inscriptiones Italiae, iv. 1, 480.  CIL VI, 29589.  CIL XIV, 5237. 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). Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt (eds.), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Greco-Roman Memoirs), Egypt Exploration Fund, London (1898–present). Inscriptiones Italiae (Inscriptions from Italy), Rome (1931-present). Il Lapidario Zeri di Mentana (1982). Olli Salomies, Adoptive and Polyonymous Nomenclature in the Roman Empire, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki (1992). Andrew Lintott, The Romans in the Age of Augustus, John Wiley & Sons (2009). Categories: Roman gentesRoman gentes of Etruscan originEtruscan families and from THIS gens? thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urgulanio – Ossia: Grice ed Urgulanio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urgulanio. For the Urgulanii, there is really only one possible heroine:  Urgulania, intimate friend of Livia, grandmother of Plautia Urgulanilla, and one of those remarkable women who seem to exercise influence without holding office. [GREXv3 | Word]  She is interesting precisely because she differs from our previous conversational heroines, Lucilla and Urbinia. Lucilla enters history through conspiracy. Urbinia enters through litigation. Urgulania enters through access. And access is perhaps the most conversational of all Roman powers. Tacitus elsewhere paints a picture of Urgulania as a woman so close to Livia that the ordinary rules of deference scarcely seemed to apply to her. The important point is not merely friendship, but proximity to the centre of the conversational network. A Gricean diagram might look like:  Augustus ↕ Livia ↕ Urgulania ↕ everyone else.  The significance of Urgulania is not what she says publicly. It is whom she can address privately.  The nomen itself is especially intriguing because, as your dossier notes, it is thought to be Etruscan rather than transparently Latin. [GREXv3 | Word] That already distinguishes it from:  Umbrius, Urbanius, Urbicius, Urbinius,  which wear their etymologies almost on their sleeves. With Urgulania we are confronted by something older and less analysable. A Roman grammarian could derive:  urbanus ← urbs.  But:  urgulanius ← ?  The trail grows cold. I suspect this would have fascinated Grice. For he often distinguished between:  what an expression once meant, and what later users can recover from it.  An Etruscan nomen surviving in imperial Rome is almost a proper-name analogue of an ancient implicature whose original context has disappeared.  As for the conversational hero among the men, there is a tempting candidate:  Lucius Magius Urgulanianus. [GREXv3 | Word]  Notice the adoption:  born the son of Sextus Urgulanius, adopted into the Magii, becoming Magius Urgulanianus. [GREXv3 | Word]  A Roman adoption is almost a speech act. One says:  "This man is now a Magius."  And social reality changes. Austin would have loved it. Grice too. The adoption does not describe a pre-existing fact. It creates a new institutional fact. One can imagine:  Hunc in familiam meam accipio. (I take this man into my family.)  And the world is altered. An Austinian performative before Austin.  Returning to Urgulania herself, she offers a nice challenge to Grice's ideal seminar:  "Two and two only decent chaps."  Roman politics continually violates this. Urgulania is neither magistrate nor senator. Yet she enters conversations from which many magistrates are excluded. A mock dialogue: Senator:  Quis hoc suadet? (Who is recommending this?)  Courtier:  Urgulania. (Urgulania.)  +> Livia is likely sympathetic. Senator:  Cur hoc ad rem pertinet? (Why is that relevant?)  Courtier:  Quia Livia audit. (Because Livia listens.)  +> Conversational authority derives from proximity. That is thoroughly Roman. The force of the utterance depends less upon its logical content than upon its route through the network of listeners.  And there is a final Gricean irony. The most memorable Urgulania leaves almost no speeches. No philosophical treatise. No forensic triumph. No great military command. Her fame rests largely on being someone whom others listened to because someone more important listened to her. [GREXv3 | Word] A Roman historian might call that influence. A Gricean might call it control of the conversational floor. (Ha.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urseio – Ossia: Grice ed Urseio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urseio -- H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA -- GREX -- VERBALIA: URSEIO The gens Urseia or Ursia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. The only member of this gens known from Roman literature is the first-century jurist Urseius Ferox, but a few others are known from inscriptions.[1]  Origin The nomen Urseius belongs to a large class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -eius, commonly associated with names of Oscan origin, but which came to be regarded as a regular gentile-forming suffix.[2] Names of this type were often interchangeable with the more regular Latin ending -ius,[2] and accordingly a number of inscriptions are found under Ursius. The nomen was derived from ursus, a bear.[3]  Praenomina The Urseii used a variety of praenomina common throughout Roman history, particularly Lucius, Publius, Marcus, and Gaius, with additional instances of Aulus, Quintus, Sextus, and Titus.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Lucius Ursius A. f., one of the aediles mentioned in a first-century BC inscription, along with Marcus Nellius and Aulus Octavius, who built a wall, gate, and tower at Fundi in Latium, pursuant to a decree of the senate.[4] Ursia T. f. Rufa, named in an inscription from Trebula Suffenas in Sabinum, dating from the latter half of the first century BC.[5] Marcus Ursius M. f., made a large donation to Vesta at Beneventum in Campania, according to an inscription dating from the third quarter of the first century BC.[6] Ursia A. f. Quarta, the wife of Aconius, and mother of Aulus Aconius, a freedman inurned at Perusia in Etruria during the late first century BC, was also inurned at Perusia in the latter half of the first century BC.[7] Gaius Ursius Stabilio, the former master of Ursia Prima.[8] Ursia C. l. Prima, the freedwoman of Gaius Ursius Stabilio, dedicated a tomb at Rome for her husband, Aulus Avidius Symmachus, aged thirty.[8] Lucius Ursius Philetus, buried in a first-century tomb at Mediolanum in Cisalpine Gaul, built by his wife, Coelia Primula, for herself, her husband, and her son, Lucius Albucius Crescens.[9] Gaius Ursius Virianus, named in a dedicatory inscription from the present site of Sesto Calende, formerly part of Cisalpine Gaul, dating from the first or second century.[10] Quintus Ursius Secundius, mentioned in an inscription from Rome dating to AD 23.[11] Marcus Urseius Rufus, mentioned in an inscription from Rome, dating to AD 30.[11] Urseius Ferox, an influential jurist who lived during the middle portion of the first century. His works are lost, but formed the basis of four books by the jurist Salvius Julianus. He is quoted by Ulpian, and cited a number of times in the Digest.[1][12] Ursia C. f. Sabellina, made an offering to the Bona Dea at Marruvium in Samnium, dating from the latter half of the first century.[13] Ursia Fortunata, buried at Clusium in Etruria, in a tomb dedicated by her husband, Eufronius Felix, dating between the middle of the first century, and the middle of the second.[14] Lucius Ursius Sosander, a vestiarius, a cloth merchant or tailor, had been one of the Seviri at Cremona, and was buried at Bononia in Cisalpine Gaul, along with his wife, Rufria Calybe, in a tomb dating between the middle of the first and the middle of the second century.[15] Gaius Ursius Hermes, buried at Mediolanum, in a tomb dating between the middle of the first century, and the end of the second.[16] Publius Ursius Sex. f. Pollio, buried at Mediolanum, together with his wife, Vettia Lepida, their son, Publius Ursius Paullus, and the freedman, Publius Ursius Elainus, in a tomb built by their daughter, Ursia Prisca, dating between the middle of the first century, and the end of the second.[17] Publius Ursius P. f. Sex. n. Paullus, one of the Seviri at Mediolanum, and curator of the treasury, buried in a family sepulchre built by his older sister, Ursia Prisca, for her parents, Publius Ursius Pollio and Vettia Lepida, brother, and the freedman Publius Ursius Elainus, dating between the middle of the first century and the end of the second.[17] Publius Ursius Elainus, a freedman buried at Mediolanum, in a family sepulchre built by Ursia Prisca for Elainus, her younger brother, Publius Ursius Paullus, and their parents, Publius Ursius Pollio and Vettia Lepida, dating between the middle of the first century and the end of the second.[17] Ursia P. f. Sex. n. Prisca, dedicated a sepulchre at Mediolanum, dating between the middle of the first century and the end of the second, for her parents, Publius Ursius Pollio and Vettia Lepida, her younger brother, Publius Ursius Paullus, and the freedman Publius Ursius Elainus.[17] Urseia Fortunata, a woman buried in a late first-century or early second-century sepulchre at Rome, built by Pallentina Pieris and her son-in-law, Quintus Caenius Pallans, for her daughter Pallentina Florentina, Urseia Fortunata, and their family.[18] Urseia Procula, a young woman buried in a late first-century or early second-century tomb at Rome, aged sixteen.[19] Ursia T. f. Vegeta, buried at Emerita in Lusitania, in a tomb dating from the late first or early second century, along with her husband, whose name has not been preserved.[20] Ursia M. f. Marciana, the wife of Lucius Sulpicius, one of the quattuorviri and quaestor of the treasury, with whom she was buried at Bergomum in Cisalpine Gaul, in a tomb dedicated by their children, Lucius Sulpicius Marcianus and Sulpicia Germana, and dating from the first quarter of the second century.[21] Ursia Myrine, wife of the freedman Lucius Sulpicius Eutychus, one of the Seviri, who built a tomb for himself and his wife at Burgomum, dating from the first half of the second century.[22] Quintus Ursius Paederos, buried at Emerita, aged sixty, in a tomb built by his daughter, Ursia Verana, dating from the latter half of the second century.[23] Ursia Q. f. Verana, dedicated a tomb at Emerita, dating from the latter half of the second century, for her father, Quintus Ursius Paederos, and another for her husband, Afranius Apollo, aged sixty.[23][24][25] Marcus Ursius M. f. Secundus, a soldier in the Praetorian Guard, stationed at Rome in AD 180.[26] Ursius Maturus, one of several men who helped to restore the temple of Bellona at Mogontiacum in Germania Superior, which had fallen in, according to an inscription from dating from AD 236.[27] Undated Urseii Publius Ursius, dedicated a tomb at Olisipo in Lusitania for his son, Publius Ursius Priscus.[28] Publius Ursius, a native of Niceros, buried at Olisipo, in a sepulchre built by Ursia Fundana, also from Niceros, and Ursius Arrenus, possibly her son.[29] Ursia Arethusa, named in an inscription from Emerita.[30] Ursius Arrenus, possibly the son of Ursia Fundana, with whom he built a sepulchre at Olisipo for themselves and Publius Ursius.[29] Lucius Ursius L. l. Boetus, a freedman, was a native of Asia, and was buried in the tomb of the Saufeii at Vardacate in Liguria.[31] Gaius Ursius P. f. Clemens, butied at Olisipo, aged twenty-one.[32] Ursia Dionysia, buried at Ameria in Umbria, aged thirty.[33] Publius Ursius Felix, named in a sepulchral inscription from Rome.[34] Ursia Fundana, a native of Niceros, along with Ursius Arrenus, perhaps her son, built a sepulchre at Olisipo for themselves and Publius Ursius, also a native of Niceros.[29] Ursia L. l. Nice, a freedwoman buried at Rome, along with the freedman Lucius Ursius Pilemon.[35] Lucius Ursius L. l. Pilemon, a freedman buried at Rome, along with the freedwoman Ursia Nice.[35] Publius Ursius P. f. Priscus, buried at Olisipo in a tomb dedicated by his father, Publius Ursius.[28] See also List of Roman gentes References  PIR, vol. III, p. 491 (U, No. 685).  Chase, p. 120.  Chase, p. 132.  CIL X, 6238.  AE 1951, 195c.  CIL I, 3193.  CIL XI, 1981, CIL XI, 1984.  CIL VI, 37454.  CIL V, 5996.  CIL V, 5524.  CIL VI, 29861.  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, pp. 145–147 ("Ursius Ferox").  CIL IX, 7667.  CIL XI, 2506.  CIL XI, 6839.  Sartori and Zoia, Pietre che vivono, 270.  CIL V, 5906.  CIL VI, 18480.  AE 2001, 458.  AE 2019, 756.  AE 1998, 603.  AE 1998, 604.  AE 1993, 905.  Iglesias, Augusta Emerita, 144.  Hispania Epigraphica, 1997–119.  CIL VI, 2382.  CIL XIII, 7281.  CIL II, 256.  AE 1969/70, 244.  Hispania Epigraphica, 2001–59.  CIL V, 7451.  AE 1965, 267.  CIL XI, 4540.  CIL VI, 29593.  CIL VI, 29594. Bibliography 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). Luis García Iglesias, Epigrafía Romana de Augusta Emerita (Roman Epigraphy of Augusta Emerita), Madrid (1973). Hispania Epigraphica (Epigraphy of Spain), Madrid (1989–present). Antonio Sartori and Serena Zoia, Pietre che vivono: Catalogo delle epigrafi di età romana del civico museo archeologico di Milano (Living Stone: Catalog of Roman Epigraphy from the Civic Archaeological Museum of Milan), Faenza (2020). Category: Roman gentes And from THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urseio – Ossia: Grice ed Urseio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urseio For the Urseii, the hero is surely not the aedile, cloth merchant, or praetorian guardsman, but:  Urseius Ferox  the jurist whose own writings are lost but whose authority survived through later jurists, especially Salvius Julianus, Ulpian, and the Digest. [GREXv3 | Word] Indeed, for a Gricean this is almost irresistible. A jurist lives by a peculiar kind of conversation:  statute ↔ interpretation, testator ↔ heir, plaintiff ↔ defendant, magistrate ↔ citizen.  And unlike the conspiratorial Lucilla or the omen-reading Umbricius, the jurist's daily business is precisely:  "What was meant?" "What follows?" "What is implied?" "What counts as intended?"  One is tempted to say that Roman jurisprudence is Grice's natural habitat before Grice.  The nomen itself is delightful.  Urseius from ursus ("bear"). [GREXv3 | Word]  We therefore move from:  Umbrius = the Umbrian, Urbanius = the city fellow,  to  Urseius = the bear fellow.  And here Roman nomenclature returns to one of its favourite sources: animals. You earlier mentioned:  Scrofa (sow), Bos, Taurus.  Now we have:  Ursus.  It would not surprise Varro in the least.  Yet there is another fascinating figure:  Urbinius Panopion (or Appion in some traditions), proscribed during the Second Triumvirate and saved when a slave exchanged clothes with him and was killed in his place. [GREXv3 | Word]  This is almost pure dramatic semiosis. The executioners read:  clothes → man.  They mistake signum for signatum. A Gricean reconstruction: Executioner:  Panopio est. (That is Panopion.)  +> The visible appearance identifies the person. Slave:  Videor Panopio. (I appear to be Panopion.)  +> The appearance does not guarantee identity. Historian:  Apparentia vicit veritatem. (Appearance defeated truth.)  +> The interpretation attached to the wrong object. One almost has a philosophical example in the theory of reference.  But the true Grice-Speranza figure remains Ferox. Notice the cognomen:  Ferox "bold," "spirited," "fierce."  One imagines an Oxford tutorial already: Tutor:  "What did the statute mean?"  Ferox:  "That depends."  Tutor:  "How tiresome."  Ferox:  "How legal."  (Ha.)  And there is a deeper connection. Much of Grice's later work concerns:  speaker meaning, intention, recognition, uptake.  Roman jurists continually ask analogous questions. Suppose a will states something. Does the literal wording govern? Or the testator's intention? Suppose a declaration is made. Does what matters lie in:  verba  or  voluntas?  This is juridical territory very close to Gricean territory. Indeed one could imagine: Urseius Ferox:  Voluntas spectanda est. (The intention must be considered.)  +> Meaning exceeds mere wording. Grice:  "Quite."  +> Speaker meaning exceeds sentence meaning. The two are separated by nearly two millennia but not by very much methodology.  As a final nomenological note, Urseius is particularly attractive because it oscillates between civilization and wildness. The jurist is among the most sophisticated products of Roman urbanity. Yet his family name means, ultimately,  "the bear."  A Roman would scarcely find anything odd in this. The same civilization that produced jurisprudence, rhetoric, and the Digest also happily allowed a learned jurist to carry, in his nomenclature, the fossilized memory of some ancestor nicknamed after a large woodland animal. Which, as Speranza might observe, shows that Roman semantics never entirely forgot zoology. (Ha.) And was our hero U. cooperative alla Grice? What is the source in Latin. "Wear this clothes, slave!" sounds like a conversational move. The slave going on and wearing seems an apt conversational move to dovetail with the previous. Thanks Yes, and this is one of the rare cases where we can almost reconstruct a Gricean conversation out of what is otherwise a rather grim anecdote. The source is not Livy or Tacitus, but Valerius Maximus and Appian, who tell the story of Urbinius Panopion during the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate. According to the tradition, a loyal slave exchanged clothes with his master; the pursuers killed the slave, believing him to be Panopion, while the real Panopion escaped. [GREXv3 | Word] The striking thing is that the whole episode turns on semiotics rather than force. The killers identify:  clothes → Panopion.  They infer identity from appearance. In Gricean notation:  S(vestis, Panopio, persecutor, carnifex)  The clothing functions as a sign. The inference happens to be false. In this sense the sign-relation is emphatically non-factive. Now to your conversational point. The sources do not preserve the actual dialogue, but one can almost reconstruct it. Panopion:  Has vestes accipe. (Take these clothes.)  +> Wear them in my place. +> You may thereby save me. +> You understand the danger. Servus:  Accipio. (I accept.)  +> I understand perfectly what is being requested. +> I accept the consequence. Notice how Gricean this is. The explicit content is merely:  "Take these clothes."  The crucial content is entirely implicit. No need to add:  "Please die in my place."  The slave evidently recovers the intended meaning. Indeed he recovers it all too well. One might say that this is among the most successful cases of communicative uptake in Roman literature. The recipient understands exactly what is intended. The difficulty is that another audience also interprets the signs: Persecutor:  Ecce Panopio. (There is Panopion.)  +> The wearer of the clothes is the target. The executioners perform a mistaken act of reference. They take the signum for the signatum. This would have fascinated Grice. For ordinary language already permits such errors:  "The man in the red hat."  The hat identifies. But only contingently. In Panopion's case, the identifying sign becomes detached from the person. The clothes remain. The referent changes. And someone dies. One can imagine Grice glossing the whole affair:  "The slave cooperated perfectly. The executioners cooperated imperfectly. The success of the former depended upon the failure of the latter."  (Ha.) There is also a deeper point. You ask whether our hero U. was cooperative. Absolutely. Indeed, perhaps more cooperative than prudence would recommend. The slave's response satisfies every Gricean requirement:  he recognises the speaker's intention; he recognises that the speaker intends him to recognise it; he acts on that recognition.  The conversation succeeds completely. The tragedy lies in what the success entails. A final Latin reconstruction: Panopion:  Serva dominum tuum. (Save your master.)  Servus:  Intellego. (I understand.)  +> I know exactly what you mean. The rest is not conversation but history. And as with so many Roman anecdotes, the decisive event turns not on swords but on the successful interpretation of an utterance that never had to be fully spoken aloud. (Ha.) The Griceian problem becomes what Sainsbury calls the persona (say, the Colonel Blimp persona). Valerio and Appio have it as under 'loyal slaves' which biases the dossier. If the conversation proceeded: "Has vestes accipe" -- Grice would doubt in calling the slave (unnamed) "Accipio" as "I accept" for his will is being forced -- in spite of Valerio and Appio relabel. The situation of 'decent chap' -- our hero U -- and unnamed slave reversed, and hardly would U accept, i. e. to wear the slaves's clothes to save his slave. Thanks Yes, I think this is precisely where a Gricean reading begins to resist the moralizing framework of Valerius Maximus and Appian, who present the episode as an example of extraordinary slave loyalty. [GREXv3 | Word] The dossier is already framed before the conversation starts. The historians effectively tell us:  "Behold a loyal slave."  But that may be what M. R. Sainsbury would call a persona imposed by the narrative. The slave never writes his memoirs. We hear only the victor's reconstruction of his motives. A Gricean would therefore begin by distinguishing:  what was said, what was implicated, what the later historian says the participants meant.  Those are three different things. Suppose the exchange was roughly: Panopion:  Has vestes accipe. (Take these clothes.)  The explicit content is trivial. The implicated content is not:  "Take these clothes."  but rather:  "Wear them in my place." "Allow yourself to be mistaken for me." "I may thereby escape."  Now comes the crucial point. The historians want the reply to be:  Accipio. (I accept.)  and they want accipio to mean:  "I willingly undertake this sacrifice."  But Grice would ask:  Did the slave actually have a conversationally significant alternative?  For if not, "acceptance" becomes problematic. One may understand perfectly without freely endorsing. Indeed Grice's notion of uptake concerns recognition of intention, not necessarily approval of intention. The slave may have recovered the meaning perfectly while remaining trapped in a social hierarchy that left no realistic possibility of refusal. Thus: Panopion:  Has vestes accipe.  +> Die in my place. Slave:  Intellego. (I understand.)  does not automatically entail:  Consentio. (I agree.)  That is a distinction the moralists are not especially interested in preserving.  The reversal you suggest is particularly telling. Suppose: Slave:  Has vestes accipe, domine. (Take these clothes, master.)  +> Allow me to escape. Panopion:  Accipio.  +> I shall die in your place. Would the story survive in Roman moral anthologies? Probably not. Its very improbability reveals the asymmetry. The narrative depends on a social order in which the master's survival is presumed more valuable than the slave's. That presumption is then redescribed as loyalty. A Gricean seminar might therefore proceed: Grice:  "Was the slave cooperative?"  Strawson:  "Obviously. He put on the clothes."  Grice:  "That shows understanding."  Strawson:  "And loyalty."  Grice:  "Not so fast."  +> Successful uptake is not identical with voluntary endorsement.  The most interesting participant may therefore be neither Panopion nor the slave, but the later historian. For the final communicative act is:  slave puts on clothes  which becomes  loyal slave sacrifices himself.  The interpretation is retrospective. The deed is transformed into a moral exemplum. One might even formulate the chain:  Clothing → mistaken identity → death → historical narrative → virtue.  At each stage a new interpreter enters. In a sense, the final interpretant is not the executioner but Valerius Maximus, who tells us what sort of act we are supposed to think it was. [GREXv3 | Word] And there I suspect Grice would become suspicious. The conversational problem is not whether the slave understood. He obviously did. The real question is whether the later historians have quietly converted:  "He understood and complied"  into  "He enthusiastically accepted."  Those are not the same conversational achievement at all. (Ha.) And can you list the specific loci classici for the jurist? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urseio – Ossia: Grice ed Urseio – Grex griceiana – verbalia: Urseio For Urseius Ferox, the difficulty is that his own works are lost. What survives is not a continuous text by Ferox but citations and fragments embedded in later juristic literature. Your dossier is essentially correct:  "His works are lost, but formed the basis of four books by Salvius Julianus; he is quoted by Ulpian, and cited a number of times in the Digest." [GREXv3 | Word]  So the principal loci classici are not "Urseius Ferox, Book I" and the like, but references preserved in the Digest (Pandects). The classical juridical chain is approximately:  Urseius Ferox ↓ Salvius Julianus ↓ Ulpian and other jurists ↓ Justinian's Digest  A Gricean would immediately approve of the transmission:  speaker → hearer → commentator → commentator on commentator → anthology.  Almost a legal version of conversational uptake. Among the better-known references are passages cited under the authority of Ferox in the Digest, especially in discussions of:  possession (possessio), inheritance (hereditas), obligations, interpretation of legal acts, procedural questions.  The exact passages are scattered, and what we usually read is something like:  Urseius ait... (Urseius says...)  or  Ferox respondit... (Ferox replied...)  embedded within a later jurist's argument. What makes Ferox fascinating for a Grice-Speranza project is that he belongs to the very early juristic period where legal reasoning still often appears in the form of a responsum:  a question is posed; the jurist replies.  In effect: Quaesitum:  An hoc valeat? (Is this valid?)  Urseius Ferox:  Valet. (It is valid.)  or  Non valet. (It is not valid.)  The whole structure is conversational. Indeed, Roman jurisprudence is arguably closer to Plato's dialogues than modern civil codes are. There is another possible locus for the Gricean. The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology article on Ursius Ferox (the source cited in your dossier) assembles the Digest references and discusses the relation between Ferox and Julianus. [GREXv3 | Word] Now, if one asks which fragment would most have interested Grice, I would guess not a technical rule of inheritance, but any passage where Ferox distinguishes:  what was said, what was intended, what the law treats as operative.  For there the Roman jurist meets the Oxford philosopher. A mock dialogue: Praetor:  Quid voluit? (What did he intend?)  Ferox:  Non quaeritur tantum quid dixerit, sed quid significaverit. (The question is not only what he said, but what he signified.)  The sentence is mine, not Ferox's. But it captures the spirit of why jurists so often attract Griceans. They spend their lives deciding whether legal consequences track:  verba (words)  or  voluntas (intention).  And that is perilously close to Grice's distinction between sentence meaning and speaker meaning. One amusing final point. Of all your recent heroes:  Umbricius Melior interprets entrails; Umbrius Primus interprets particles such as ubi, si, ut, ergo; Urseius Ferox interprets legal formulations.  The haruspex asks:  What do the gods mean?  The grammarian asks:  What does ergo mean?  The jurist asks:  What did the testator mean?  Grice, arriving in Oxford, asks:  What did the speaker mean?  One begins to suspect that Rome had been preparing the ground for him all along. (Ha.) Does this help? Thank The ancient Roman jurist Urseius Ferox is an elusive figure from the 1st century AD. While his original legal treatises are lost, his ideas survived primarily because the great jurist Salvius Julianus compiled and commented on them in a four-book work commonly known as Libri ad Urseium Ferocem ("Books on Urseius Ferox"). [1, 2, 3, 4] In Justinian's Digest (Digesta Iustiniani), Urseius is explicitly named in the inscription of 43 unique fragmentsextracted directly from Salvius Julianus's four-book commentary. Furthermore, Ulpian directly references Urseius 5 times in his own commentaries, and the jurist Julius Paulus references him once. [1, 2, 3, 4] The standard Latin titles, English translations, and examples of how these texts are preserved in the Digestare detailed below. 1. Salvius Julianus: Libri IV ad Urseium Ferocem The foundational text containing the thoughts of Urseius is Julianus’s four-volume commentary. In the Digest, these are cited in the mass of excerpts explicitly attributed to Julianus's work on Urseius. [1, 2] Latin Title: Iulianus libro [primo/secundo/tertio/quarto] ad Urseium Ferocem English Translation: "Julianus, in the [first/second/third/fourth] book on Urseius Ferox" [1, 2, 3, 4] Examples from the Digest: The Digest references the individual books of this specific collection across all four volumes: Book I — Dig. 7.1.36.pr: Latin: Iulianus libro primo ad Urseium Ferocem: Usus fructus servorum legatus est... English: "Julianus, in the first book on Urseius Ferox: The usufruct of slaves was bequeathed..." Book II — Dig. 9.2.41.pr: Latin: Iulianus libro secundo ad Urseium Ferocem: Servus communis cum a minoribus... English: "Julianus, in the second book on Urseius Ferox: Where a slave owned in common..." [1, 2] Book III — Dig. 19.1.28: Latin: Iulianus libro tertio ad Urseium Ferocem: Praedia mihi vendidisti et convenit... English: "Julianus, in the third book on Urseius Ferox: You sold me certain lands, and it was agreed..." [1, 2, 4] Book IV — Dig. 47.2.60: Latin: Iulianus libro quarto ad Urseium Ferocem: Si filio familias furtum factum esset... English: "Julianus, in the fourth book on Urseius Ferox: If property should be stolen from a son under paternal control..." [1, 2] 2. Quotations by Ulpian (Ulpianus) While Justinian's compilers pulled the 43 core fragments from Julianus's text, Ulpian famously references Urseius's opinions five times within his own standard commentaries (such as Ad Sabinum or Ad Edictum). [1, 2, 3] When Ulpian quotes Urseius, the Latin formula explicitly incorporates his name to anchor the legal precedent: Latin Phrasing: ...ut Urseius ait / ...Urseius scripsit / ...apud Urseium Ferocem English Translation: "...as Urseius says" / "...Urseius wrote" / "...in the writings of Urseius Ferox" [1] Example of Ulpian Quoting Urseius: Dig. 39.2.24.12 (Ulpian, Ad Edictum, Book 81): Latin: ...Et idcirco Urseius ait, si propter vitium possessionis... English: "...And therefore Urseius says, if on account of a defect in possession..." If you are tracking down a specific legal concept (such as property theft, slave usufruct, or contract stipulations), let me know and I can extract the exact Latin text and English translation for that particular fragment. [1, 2, 3] Le Yes, that helps a great deal, and it makes Urseius Ferox much more substantial than the brief prosopographical notices suggest. [GREXv3 | Word] The really important point is that we do not possess "Urseius Ferox, Book I", "Book II", etc. What survives is a layered conversational chain:  Urseius Ferox ↓ Salvius Julianus, Libri IV ad Urseium Ferocem ↓ Ulpian, Paulus, and others ↓ Justinian's Digest.  In other words, Ferox reaches us rather as Socrates reaches us through Plato: a voice embedded in later voices. The loci classici are therefore precisely the places where the Digest preserves:  Iulianus libro primo/secundo/tertio/quarto ad Urseium Ferocem  or where later jurists explicitly write:  Urseius ait Urseius scripsit apud Urseium Ferocem  as your reconstruction indicates. Among the most cited examples are: Book I  Digest 7.1.36.pr Iulianus libro primo ad Urseium Ferocem  concerning usufruct (usus fructus) and inheritance arrangements. Book II  Digest 9.2.41.pr Iulianus libro secundo ad Urseium Ferocem  concerning liability involving a commonly owned slave. Book III  Digest 19.1.28 Iulianus libro tertio ad Urseium Ferocem  on land sales and contractual arrangements. Book IV  Digest 47.2.60 Iulianus libro quarto ad Urseium Ferocem  on theft and property rights involving a filius familias. As you note, scholarly reconstruction commonly counts forty-plus Digest fragments deriving from Julian's commentary on Ferox, while Ulpian cites him independently several times. That makes Ferox one of those jurists whose books disappeared while whose authority survived. [GREXv3 | Word] Now, from a Gricean perspective, what is fascinating is not the substantive law but the literary form. A juristic fragment often has the structure:  Quaesitum est ... (It was asked ...)  followed by:  Respondit Urseius ... (Urseius replied ...)  Even where those exact words are not present, the genre is responsal. Someone asks:  What happens if this slave is bequeathed?  Someone asks:  What if ownership is divided?  Someone asks:  What if the parties intended X but said Y?  And Ferox answers. This is not far from a tutorial. One can imagine Grice remarking:  "Roman jurisprudence consists of one long sequence of examination questions."  And indeed many legal problems ultimately concern:  What did the testator mean? What did the parties intend? What follows from these words?  Those are perilously close to Grice's own questions. The haruspex Umbricius Melior asks:  What do the entrails signify?  The grammarian Umbrius Primus asks:  What does ergo signify?  The jurist Urseius Ferox asks:  What did the legal actor signify by this act, will, sale, or stipulation?  The common thread is interpretation. Indeed, if one seeks a genuinely Gricean Roman before Grice, I am increasingly inclined to choose Ferox over the conspirators, the haruspices, or the grammarians. The jurist lives permanently at the boundary between:  verba (words)  and  voluntas (intention).  And that is exactly the territory where Grice built his philosophical house. (Ha.) Oddly, for H. P. Grice it is G. R. Grice (the Oxford-educated UEA/Norwich philosopher) that matters. Grice's Contract. When introducing his principle of conversational helpfulness H. P. Grice amuses himself with a possibly quasi-contractualist answer to such a principle. What would our hero U. sa? Is contractus the only legal term available to the Roman jurist? private law, public law -- contractro is contractualist? Rawls would end up citing Grice (Ion personhood in Practical Affairs. Of all the topics dealt by our hero U., the point of the 'contract' seems to be the more akin to Grice's (if not Speranza's) reflections – Thanks Yes, and I think you have identified exactly the Urseius who would most interest Grice. Of all the surviving fragments attributed to Urseius Ferox, the contractual and transactional materials are closest to Grice's own reflections on cooperation. The reconstructed citations from Salvius Julianus's Libri IV ad Urseium Ferocem include discussions of usufructs, common ownership, sales of land, and theft, all areas where one must determine what parties intended and what legal consequences follow from their acts. [GREXv3 | Word] The Gricean connection is not that Roman jurists were "contractualists" in the modern Rawlsian sense. Rather, both ask:  What assumptions must be in place for a practice to function?  For Grice:  conversation.  For Ferox:  contract.  For Rawls:  society.  The structure is remarkably similar. Grice introduces his Cooperative Principle almost playfully by asking why participants should conform to it at all. One can nearly imagine an Oxonian objector:  "Why should I be cooperative?"  Similarly, a Roman jurist asks:  "Why should this bargain bind?"  Both are investigating conditions of intelligibility. A Roman contractus is not merely a document. It is a legally recognised pattern of reciprocal expectations. A Gricean conversation is not merely a sequence of utterances. It is a recognisable pattern of reciprocal expectations. One might schematise:                          FeroxGriceWhat did the parties intend?What did the speaker mean?What obligations arise?What conversational expectations arise?How do words bind?How do utterances convey more than words?What follows from the transaction?What follows from the utterance? Notice that the language becomes strikingly similar. Indeed, if a fragment such as:  Praedia mihi vendidisti et convenit... ("You sold me land and it was agreed ...") [GREXv3 | Word]  appeals to an agreement (convenit), we are already in a world where meaning depends on shared understandings. A Gricean gloss would be:  The legal transaction succeeds because both parties recover the same intended content.  Now to your specific question:  Is contractus the only legal term available to the Roman jurist?  Not at all. Roman jurists worked with a rich vocabulary:  contractus pactum stipulatio obligatio conventio possessio hereditas  and many others. In fact, the word that may interest a Gricean even more than contractus is:  conventio  an agreement, a coming together of minds. One can almost hear Grice smiling. Conversation:  con-versatio  Contract:  con-tractus  Agreement:  con-ventio  All involve a "coming together." Of course, the historical Rawls enters much later. But what Rawls found useful in Grice was precisely that social practices function because participants can reasonably presume cooperation. A contract is impossible if nobody trusts anybody's declarations; conversation is impossible if nobody assumes relevance, truthfulness, and intelligibility. If I were to imagine our hero Urseius Ferox commenting on Grice, it might run:  Non quaeritur tantum quid dictum sit, sed quid inter homines conveniat. (The question is not merely what has been said, but what understanding obtains between the parties.)  And Grice might reply:  "Quite so. Only replace parties with conversationalists."  Among all your recent heroes:  Umbricius Melior interprets signs. Umbrius Primus interprets particles. Urseius Ferox interprets agreements.  The third is perhaps the closest relative of Grice, because a contract, like a conversation, exists only insofar as multiple persons successfully recognise one another's intentions. (Ha.) And while Grice and Speranza take it playfully, this is indeed the most robust Roman contribution to Western civilisation: more than Roman philosophy -- like Stoicism or Epicureanism, all Hellenistic -- it was roman law as taught at the world's oldest university, Bononia, that made the world go round, and not just Grice's Oxford. At Oxford, common law and magna charta and habeas corpus is usually contrasted to the legistlations of a digest, but the spirit is there, if not the law. And Oxford had a chair of Roman law, before it had 'fellows and tutors in philosophy' -- Bononia certainly did -- the law became the cursus honorum with a degree at Bononia in law (not philosophy) being the apex in the social scale. Thanks Yes, and here I think your instinct is exactly right. If one asks for the most durable Roman contribution, it is difficult to maintain that it was Roman philosophy. The Romans certainly transmitted and transformed:  Stoicism, Epicureanism, Academic Skepticism,  but these were ultimately Greek or Hellenistic inheritances. By contrast, Roman law is genuinely Roman in a way that Roman philosophy rarely is. A Grice-Speranza genealogy might run:  Athens gave Europe concepts. Rome gave Europe institutions.  And among those institutions, jurisprudence may be the most successful of all. The case of Urseius Ferox is therefore instructive. His surviving traces concern:  usufruct, sale, property, obligations, possession, inheritance,  precisely the things that make ordinary social life function. [GREXv3 | Word], [GREXv3 | Word] What is remarkable is that the jurists are repeatedly asking questions very close to Grice's. The philosopher asks:  What did the speaker mean?  The jurist asks:  What did the testator mean? What did the contracting parties intend? What understanding was reached?  Hence the importance of terms such as:  conventio stipulatio obligatio contractus.  I would even say that conventio is more Gricean than contractus. For contractus tends to suggest a completed legal relation, whereas conventio is literally a "coming together," almost a meeting of minds. One can imagine a Roman jurist saying:  Non verba sola spectanda sunt. (One should not look merely at the words.)  +> Intention matters. And a Gricean immediately nods.  Your comparison between Bologna and Oxford is particularly apt. The University of Bologna itself presents its origin as the Studium founded in 1088 and describes itself as the oldest university in the Western world. [unibo.it], [unibo.it] And what made Bologna famous was not philosophy but:  Roman law.  Indeed generations of jurists travelled there to study the Corpus Juris and the Roman legal tradition. [unibo.it], [thecampusreview.com] Oxford developed differently. Its intellectual mythology often celebrates:  common law, Magna Carta, habeas corpus, parliamentary institutions.  But even there Roman law was never absent. Oxford possessed Regius Professorships and legal studies long before twentieth-century analytical philosophy became dominant. The lawyer often preceded the philosopher. [theclergyd...ase.org.uk], [everything...ined.today] One could almost formulate a contrast: Bologna  What did the Digest mean?  Oxford  What does "mean" mean?  (Ha.) Yet the two are not as far apart as they appear. For Grice's Cooperative Principle occasionally sounds quasi-contractual because it asks:  What expectations must rational participants be entitled to have?  The Roman jurist asks much the same:  What expectations may contracting parties reasonably have?  Rawls asks:  What expectations may citizens reasonably have?  The scale changes. The structure remains.  I rather like imagining a dialogue between Urseius Ferox and Grice. Ferox:  Quid inter contrahentes convenit? (What understanding was reached between the contracting parties?)  Grice:  "What understanding was reached between the conversational parties?"  Ferox:  Voluntas quaerenda est. (The intention must be sought.)  Grice:  "Quite."  At that point the gap between Roman jurisprudence and Oxford philosophy becomes surprisingly narrow. For both are attempting to regulate a world in which people do not merely emit words but undertake commitments. And perhaps that is why the Roman jurists outlived the Roman philosophers. The former were explaining how human interaction works. Europe never stopped needing that explanation. Bologna knew it in the twelfth century, and Grice knew it in the twentieth. (Ha.) Yes, conventio is a good one, as is conversatio (Adam conversed with Eve) -- and by the time Grice was lecturing on 'meaning' for the undergraduate Philosophical Society, latin had ceased being the lingo of instruction at Oxford, for which reason Grice need not stress our hero U. on 'conventio' and 'convenit' "We convened," it was convened"). When discussing 'sign' Grice adopts the 'natural' (NATVRA) physis -- epithet and contrasts it with a signum that is 'conventionalis' whereas Hobbes and most abler Latinists would have 'arbitrarius' or 'artificialis'. Grice goes on to lecture his tutees that an emphasis on 'convenit' would be misleading -- a hand gesture, he suggests, may be something upon which something is 'convenit' -- yet upon which we would not apply, naturally, the adjective 'conventional' -- something may have been convened, without it being 'conventional' -- strictly speaking -- if oddly. Similarly, unable to play with Latin, Grice then considers non-natural as the strict antonym of natural as applied to 'sign' -- and lumping the use of 'mean' in 'He means to do it' as a 'natural' use of 'mean.' His point is that a handwave may 'signify' without it being a 'sign' -- again very oddly. Thanks -- and less so a 'conventional' one at that, even if a 'sign' IS involved -- 'something or someone can signify without that something or someone being a sign' – Thanks Yes, and I think this is one of the places where Grice is simultaneously closer to the Roman jurists and farther from them than first appears. A Roman jurist such as Urseius Ferox, reconstructed through Julianus and the Digest, would be perfectly at home with:  convenit inter eos (it was agreed between them),  or  ex conventione (by agreement),  or  pactione convenit (it was settled by agreement). [GREXv3 | Word], [GREXv3 | Word]  For the jurist, the notion of conventio is foundational. Indeed, Roman law repeatedly treats obligations as arising because minds have come together:  convenire = to come together, to agree, to reach a common understanding.  One can almost hear the etymological music:  con-venio conveniunt conventio.  And then:  conversari conversatio.  Both involve a coming-together. But this is precisely where Grice becomes cautious. When introducing what he later calls his principle of conversational helpfulness, he occasionally toys with the idea that conversation rests on something contract-like:  as if speakers had entered a cooperative arrangement.  Yet he immediately begins to retreat from a strict contractual reading. For if one says:  "The meaning of this gesture is conventional because we agreed upon it,"  the explanation does not really satisfy him. A hand-wave to stop a bus may be understood because there has been some convention, some practice, some tacit arrangement. Yet Grice notices that:  "conventional"  and  "agreed upon"  do not perfectly coincide. Something may be understood because people have, in some sense, converged upon an interpretation without there ever being an explicit convention. And conversely, something may be conventional while nobody remembers any original agreement. This is where the Roman term conventio becomes interesting. For a jurist:  conventio → legal agreement.  For Grice:  conversational cooperation ≠ convention alone.  There is something deeper. People cooperate because they have purposes. The agreement is often only derivative.  This also explains his discomfort with:  natural sign versus conventional sign.  A less cautious philosopher might simply say:  All signs are either natural or conventional.  Grice resists this. Suppose:  He waved his hand.  The wave may signify:  "Come here."  Yet Grice asks:  Is the hand-wave itself a sign?  Or merely something that signified? The distinction is subtle. One can have:  a person signifying,  without  a conventional sign system.  Likewise:  "He means to do it"  contains  mean,  but not  sign  in any obvious semiotic sense. This is why Grice eventually prefers:  natural meaning versus non-natural meaning.  rather than:  natural sign versus conventional sign.  The latter terminology drags in questions of convention too early.  Here the Roman jurist and the Oxford philosopher part company. Urseius Ferox might ask:  Quid inter eos convenit? (What was agreed between them?)  That is enough to begin legal analysis. Grice asks:  What did the speaker mean?  That question remains open even after convention has been identified. Two people may have:  convention,  without  successful meaning.  And they may have:  successful meaning,  with very little convention.  You mention Hobbes's terminology:  artificialis arbitrarius.  Indeed, a seventeenth-century Latin philosopher would often prefer those terms. Grice's innovation is to avoid them. Why? Because:  arbitrary  suggests caprice, while  conventional  suggests explicit agreement. Neither captures what he wants. His concern is:  intention recognised by another person.  This is why, despite all the Roman juristic vocabulary of:  contractus, conventio, pactum,  the closest Roman analogue to Grice may not be contract law itself but the jurists' constant concern with:  voluntas.  What matters is not merely:  what was agreed,  but  what was intended.  A Roman formula might be:  non verba sola, sed voluntas spectanda est (one should attend not only to the words but to the intention).  Not a quotation from Ferox, but very much the spirit of Roman jurisprudence. And that, I think, is why your hero Urseius Ferox would have interested Grice. The grammarian Umbrius Primus asks:  What does ergo mean?  The haruspex Umbricius Melior asks:  What do the entrails signify?  The jurist Urseius Ferox asks:  What did the parties intend when they agreed?  And Grice asks:  What did the speaker intend the hearer to recognise?  The path from Bononia to Oxford is longer than the road from the High to Christ Church, but intellectually it is not nearly so long. (Ha.)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urvinio – Ossia: Grice ed Urvinio – Grex griceiana – verbalia – Urvinio -- H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA -- GREX -- VERBALIA: URVINIO The gens Urvinia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. No members of this gens are mentioned by Roman writers, but several are known from inscriptions.  Origin The nomen Urvinius belongs to a class of gentilicia originally formed from cognomina ending in -inus, later sometimes derived from other nomina.[1]  Praenomina The main praenomina of the Urvinii were Gaius, Publius, and Quintus, among the most abundant names at all periods of Roman history. A few members of this gens bore other common praenomina, including Lucius and Titus.  Members This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation. Urvinius C. f., a priest mentioned in an inscription from Adria in Picenum, dating between the middle of the second century and the late first century BC.[2] Publius Urvinius P. f., a native of Forum Fulvii in Gallia Narbonensis, was a speculator, or scout, in the Legio XIII Gemina. He was buried at Mogontiacum in Germania Superior, aged thirty-five, in an early first-century tomb dedicated by his cousin, Marcus Aruntius.[3] Gaius Urvinius Senecio, buried at Trebula Mutusca in Samnium, along with Titus Sarrenius Geminus, in an early first-century tomb dedicated by Quintus Vibius Kanio, one of the Seviri Augustales, and his brother, Publius Vibius.[4] Quintus Urvinius, the former master of Gnaeus Cornelius Neritus, a freedman and one of the Seviri Augustales, buried at Verona in Venetia and Histria, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century.[5] Quintus Urvinius, a soldier buried at Argentorate in Germania Superior, aged twenty-eight, in a tomb dating from the first half of the first century.[6] Titus Urvinius, named in an inscription from Pompeii in Campania.[7] Publius Urvinius P. f. Fortunatus, a youth buried at Carnuntum in Pannonia Superior, aged seventeen, in a first-century tomb built by his mother, Successa.[8] Gaius Urvinius Abascantus, buried at Aquileia in Venetia and Histria, in a tomb dating between the middle of the first and the middle of the second century.[9] Gaius Urvinius Crescens, built a tomb at Rome, dating from the Flavian Dynasty, for his young son, Gaius Urvinius Ephaestus.[10] Gaius Urvinius C. f. Ephaestus, a little boy buried at Rome, aged three years, five months, and eight days, in a Flavian-era tomb built by his father, Gaius Urvinius Crescens.[10] Urvinia T. l. Tyche, a freedwoman buried in a late first- or early second-century tomb at Ventippo in Hispania Baetica, along with the freedman Quintus Vibius Firmillo.[11] Quintus Urvinius Q. l. Callistus, a freedman, built a temple for Saturn at Uchi Maius in Africa Proconsularis, using funds allocated by the local decurions, in AD 98.[12] Gaius Urvinius Pyrrhus, named in a second-century inscription from Fulginiae in Etruria. Part of the inscription may be modern.[13] Gaius Urvinius Sabinianus, inurned at Rome, in a second-century cinerarium dedicated by Publius Calpurnius Brocchus and Gaius Catius Callistion, guardians of his daughters.[14] Publius Urvinius Pastor, a soldier in the eighteenth volunteer cohort, buried at Gerulata in Pannonia Superior, aged thirty-five, along with Papia Elpis, aged forty, Urvinia Mussa, and Publius Urvinius Marcellinus, probably his siblings, in a family sepulchre dating between the last quarter of the second century and the end of the third, built by his mother, Papia Matercia, and brothers, Publius Urvinius Messius and Julius Major.[15] Urvinia Mussa, buried at Gerulata, aged twenty-eight, in a family sepulchre built by Papia Matercia, Publius Urvinius Messius, and Julius Major, probably her mother and brothers, dating between the last quarter of the second century and the end of the third.[15] Publius Urvinius Marcellinus, buried at Gerulata, aged twenty-two, in a family sepulchre built by Papia Matercia, Publius Urvinius Messius, and Julius Major, probably his mother and brothers, dating between the last quarter of the second century and the end of the third.[15] Publius Urvinius Messius, along with his mother, Papia Matercia, and brother, Julius Major, built a family sepulchre at Gerulata, dating between the last quarter of the second century and the end of the third, for his brother, Publius Urvinius Pastor, and for Papia Elpis, Urvinia Mussa, and Publius Urvinius Marcellinus, probably also his siblings.[15] Undated Urvinii Lucius Urvinius L. (f.?), buried at Thubursicum in Africa Proconsularis.[16] (Gaius) Urvinius C. f. Secundus, built a tomb at Lambaesis in Numidia for his brother, Gaius Urvinius Victor.[17] Urvinia Maximilla Successa, buried at Uchi Maius, aged thirty.[18] Lucius Urvinius Thiasus, named in pottery inscriptions from Liguria.[19] Gaius Urvinius C. f. Victor, buried at Lambaesis, aged thirty, in a tomb built by his brother, Urvinius Secundus.[17] Publius Urvinius Q. f. Vitalis, buried at Uchi Maius, aged forty.[20] See also List of Roman gentes References  Chase, pp. 125, 126.  CIL I, 3295.  CIL XIII, 6884.  AE 1994, 559.  CIL V, 3393.  CIL XIII, 11629.  CIL IV, 10243i.  Hild, Das pannonische Niederösterreich, Burgenland und Wien, 288.  CIL V, 1436.  CIL VI, 7942.  AE 1979, 344a.  CIL VIII, 26241.  CIL XI, 5228.  CIL VI, 29602.  AE 2006, 1053.  CIL VIII, 15312.  CIL VIII, 4176.  AE 2006, 1734.  CIL V, 8110,429.  CIL VIII, 26388. 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). Friedrich Hild, Supplementum epigraphicum zu CIL III: das pannonische Niederösterreich, Burgenland und Wien 1902–1968 (Epigraphic Supplement to CIL III: Pannonian Lower Austria, Burgenland, and Vienna 1902–1968), Vienna (1968). Category: Roman gentes And for THIS gens? Thanks

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Urvinio – Ossia: Grice ed Urvinio – Grex griceiana – verbalia – Urvinio The Urvinii are perhaps the most elusive of your recent gentes. Unlike the Umbrii, Umbricii, Urseii, or Urgulanii, they leave us no grammarian, no jurist, no haruspex, no famous conspirator. What survives is almost entirely epigraphic. Yet that itself is interesting. The nomen:  Urvinius  belongs to the same broad family of gentilicia that we have been examining, formed with the suffix -inius. The original root is unfortunately obscure, unlike the transparent:  Umbrius ← Umbria,  or  Urbanius ← urbs. [GREXv3 | Word]  So the etymological game becomes harder. For a Grice-Speranza treatment, the most attractive candidate is perhaps not the priest nor the soldier, but:  Quintus Urvinius Callistus,  a freedman who built a temple of Saturn at Uchi Maius in Africa, using funds voted by the local decurions in AD 98. [GREXv3 | Word] Why him? Because he presents a nice interaction between:  public authorization  and  private execution.  The decurions assign money. Callistus builds. A Roman jurist would immediately ask:  What was agreed? What authority was delegated?  A Gricean would ask:  What was understood?  One almost hears: Decuriones:  Pecunia danda est templo Saturni. (Money is to be given for a temple of Saturn.)  +> Somebody should carry out the work. Callistus:  Intellego. (I understand.)  +> I am the one expected to do it. The institutional fact depends upon successful uptake.  But there is another Urvinius whom you may like even more:  Publius Urvinius, the speculator (scout) of the Legio XIII Gemina. [GREXv3 | Word]  The word:  speculator  is delightful from a Gricean perspective. Not yet a philosopher's "speculator." Not a financial speculator. But literally:  one who watches, observes, reports.  Almost an official recoverer of implicatures. The general asks:  "What is happening over the hill?"  The scout returns with:  signs, traces, indications.  The military version of our old friend Umbricius Melior, except that the signs are footprints and troop movements rather than entrails. One could schematize:  exta → conspiracy (Melior)  whereas  tracks → enemy (Urvinius).  Both involve interpretation of evidence.  I am also struck by the family sepulchre at Gerulata, where:  Publius Urvinius Pastor, Urvinia Mussa, Publius Urvinius Marcellinus, Publius Urvinius Messius,  appear as a family network commemorating one another. [GREXv3 | Word] There is something profoundly Roman here. Not philosophy. Not politics. Not rhetoric. Simply:  memory.  And Roman inscriptions are, in a sense, delayed conversations. The dead address the living. One might almost define an epitaph as:  a conversational contribution whose recipient is indefinitely postponed.  A notion that I suspect Grice would have appreciated.  Returning to your earlier contrast between Bologna and Oxford, the Urvinii are a useful corrective. We have spent much time with:  jurists, grammarians, philosophers, historians.  Yet most Romans were not any of these. They were:  soldiers, freedmen, merchants, local magistrates, family members erecting tombs.  The inscriptions of the Urvinii show precisely that world. No treatise survives. No dialogue survives. Yet every inscription presupposes what Grice would call a communicative intention:  "Remember this person." "Honour this relative." "Know who built this temple."  The Roman world runs on such acts no less than on jurisprudence. So if I had to choose a Gricean hero among the Urvinii, I might unexpectedly choose the scout:  Publius Urvinius the speculator. [GREXv3 | Word]  For he spends his life doing what so many of your heroes do:  observing signs, drawing conclusions, reporting meanings to others.  A military Gricean avant la lettre. (Ha.) and is speculatio cognate with Grice's perspicuity. When in a good mood, Grice would formulate a conversational maxim in a self-deating way: 'be perspicuous (sic)' -- hardly perspicuos. For less elaborate tutees he would refer to it simply as the desideratum of conversational clarity (as in Lewis, "Clarity is not enough"). Speculum is also mirror, as in Dahlabacher 'speculative rationality' face to face mise en abyme -- but is perspicuous then cognate with speculatio? Thanks -- because some sloppy speakers sometimes use 'pespicacious' meaning 'perspicuous' -- unclear! Thanks Yes, they are related, but not as directly as one might first suppose. There are really two Latin roots in play: 1. specio / specere ("to look, behold") From this come:  speculator = watcher, observer, scout speculatio = watching, observing, contemplation speculum = mirror species = appearance, form spectare = to look at spectator = observer  Your Publius Urvinius the military speculator belongs here. The original speculator is literally the fellow on the tower looking into the distance. Hence the Roman military scout. The philosopher's "speculation" is metaphorically an intellectual lookout-post.  2. perspicio ("to see through") This is:  per + specio  that is,  to look through, to see thoroughly, to survey completely.  Hence:  perspicere = to see clearly perspicuus = transparent, clear, evident perspicuitas = clarity  So Grice's beloved:  Be perspicuous  is etymologically:  "See through things and let others see through what you say."  The connection with speculator is therefore genuine:  speculator speculatio speculum perspicuus  all belong ultimately to the same visual family.  The joke about Grice is particularly apt. The maxim:  Be perspicuous  is itself not especially perspicuous. Grice knew this very well. That is why he often paraphrased it for students as something closer to:  Be clear.  or  Avoid obscurity and ambiguity.  The Oxford don in him liked the slightly pompous Latinate adjective; the tutor in him knew that many undergraduates would immediately ask:  "What's perspicuous mean?"  (Ha.)  Now to perspicuous versus perspicacious. This is exactly where speakers become confused. Perspicuous From:  perspicuus  Meaning:  clear, transparent, easy to understand.  Applied to:  prose, arguments, explanations, lectures.  Example:  "Grice's exposition was perspicuous."  Meaning:  The exposition was clear.  Perspicacious Ultimately from:  perspicax  Meaning:  sharp-sighted, discerning, insightful.  Applied to:  persons, readers, judges, interpreters.  Example:  "Strawson was perspicacious."  Meaning:  Strawson was insightful.  A perspicacious reader appreciates a perspicuous text. The two words are cousins, not twins.  Your observation about conventio is also very good. Grice resisted identifying non-natural meaning simply with convention. Suppose I invent this minute:  raising one eyebrow means:  "Meet me at the Bodleian."    There is, perhaps, a tiny convention. But it would feel odd to call this a fully conventional sign-system. Conversely language itself is conventional, yet what interests Grice is not convention but:  intention recognized by another.  Hence his dissatisfaction with the easy contrast:  natural sign versus conventional sign.  He moves instead toward:  natural meaning versus non-natural meaning.  because the latter lets him focus on the speaker's intention. As he would say, roughly:  A person can mean something by producing an act.  without implying that  the act itself is a conventional sign.   This is where your Latin comes back beautifully. A Roman jurist such as Urseius Ferox might ask:  quid inter eos convenit? (what understanding was reached between them?)  Grice asks something slightly different:  What did one intend the other to recognize?  The Roman begins from:  conventio  (shared agreement). Grice begins from:  intentio  (recognized intention). The two overlap but are not identical. And this perhaps explains why Grice preferred:  non-natural meaning  over  conventional meaning.  Something can signify because of a convention. Something can signify because of an intention. And sometimes the second operates even where the first scarcely exists at all. That is a very Roman-juristic insight expressed in very Oxford-philosophical English. And etymologically, your military speculator and Grice's maxim of perspicuity do indeed belong to the same ancient family of looking, seeing, surveying, and making visible. One stands on a watchtower scanning the horizon; the other tries to make an argument transparent to the hearer. In both cases, the ideal is that nothing important remains hidden from view. (Ha.) And is 'perspicacious' yet _cognate_ with the 'speculatio' and 'perspicuity'? thanks Yes. In fact perspicacious, perspicuous, perspicuity, speculation, speculator, and speculum are all members of the same large Latin family. The family tree looks roughly like this:  specio / specere "to look, behold"  from which come:  speculator = watcher, scout speculatio = observation, contemplation speculum = mirror species = appearance, form perspicio = look through perspicuus = seen through, transparent, clear perspicax = seeing through keenly, sharp-sighted  The interesting divergence comes late. Perspicuous Latin:  perspicuus  literally:  "visible through," "transparent."  Hence:  clear prose, clear argument, clear exposition.  Applied to the object. A Gricean lecture should ideally be:  perspicuous.  Perspicacious Latin:  perspicax  from:  perspicere + the suffix -ax,  the suffix often indicating a disposition or tendency. Literally:  "one who sees through things well."  Hence:  discerning, insightful, penetrating.  Applied to the subject. A Strawsonian hearer should ideally be:  perspicacious.  So:  A perspicacious reader appreciates a perspicuous text.   And this explains the common confusion. People often say:  "Her paper was very perspicacious."  when they mean:  "Her paper was very perspicuous."  Strictly:  the paper is perspicuous; the author may be perspicacious.  Though modern usage sometimes blurs the distinction.  From a Grice-Speranza perspective, the joke is irresistible. Grice's maxim is:  Be perspicuous.  But etymologically this could almost be paraphrased as:  "Make what you say easy to see through."  Not:  "Be clever."  Not:  "Be insightful."  But:  "Arrange matters so that your hearer can see through them."  Hence the connection to the Roman military speculator, your Urvinius hero. The scout sees what others cannot see. The perspicacious person sees through what others do not see through. The perspicuous speaker makes things easy to see through. The speculative philosopher stares at things for a long time and claims to see beyond them. All descend from the same ancestral act:  looking.  One could almost formulate a Gricean etymological ladder:  speculator looks.   perspicax sees through.   perspicuus can be seen through.   Grice wants discourse to be perspicuous.   The tutee should be perspicacious.  (Ha.) And perhaps this explains Grice's affection for the slightly pompous "Be perspicuous." It sounds odd in English because the adjective is rare, but in Latin it is beautifully visual. The maxim is not merely:  "Be clear."  It is:  "Let the hearer see through what you are doing." Indeed. At one point, Grice when lecturing his tutees on that would feel like a maxim was too broad -- such as ''be perspicuous' (sic)' where the 'sic' is added by Grice to alert the tutee that 'perspicuous' is not per se perspicuous. Or that 'Be perspicuous' is self-defeating as a maxim -- formulated as a maxim -- for it aims to regulate things that can be seeen through -- it is the CONVERSATIONALIST who is supposed to be perspicuous, not his move -- and this is within an imperative, i. e. as within the conversatioanlist's rational control -- versus 'be blond' --. And if he would think a maxim was too general, he would call it super-maxim, and the maxims under it would be the maxims proper, often labelled 'sub-maxims'. Thus 'avoid obscurity of expression' -- be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) (sic --again) since self-deaeating -- would fall under 'be perspicuous.' For some reason, he uses Aristotle and Kant and the mediaeval in Latin since Boethius translation of the predicamenta with MODVS being the predicamentum indicated here -- used as 'Modus' proper in Grice's seminars --. Thanks -- The romans had an officer -- the speculator -- St. John's had an overseer! Yes, and this is one of the most characteristically Gricean moments in the whole enterprise. Grice is not merely offering a list of maxims. He is constantly worrying about the logical type of the maxim itself. Take:  Be perspicuous.  He knows perfectly well that the formulation is, in a sense, imperspicuous. Hence the famous Oxfordian "(sic)" after:  "Be perspicuous (sic)."  The joke is not merely lexical. The joke is philosophical. For what is it that is supposed to be perspicuous? Strictly speaking, not:  the speaker,  but:  the contribution.  Yet the maxim is addressed imperatively to the speaker:  Be perspicuous.  Which makes it look as though perspicuity were a character trait, like:  Be courteous.  or  Be punctual.  while what is really under regulation is a mode of performance. Exactly as you say, Grice occasionally analyses this under the Aristotelian and mediaeval heading of:  modus (mode, manner),  corresponding to the category of Manner. Hence:  Category of Manner ↓ Super-maxim: Be perspicuous ↓ Sub-maxims: Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly.  The reason "Be perspicuous" becomes a super-maxim is that it governs a heterogeneous family of more specific prescriptions. Otherwise it is too general to guide conduct. A tutee may well ask:  "How do I become perspicuous?"  while  "Avoid ambiguity"  gives him something more operational.  And the self-referential joke becomes even better with:  Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).  Grice loved pointing out that:  avoid unnecessary prolixity  is itself prolix relative to:  be brief.  Hence yet another "(sic)." The maxim illustrates the phenomenon it seeks to prevent. Almost like writing:  "Keep notices short"  on a six-page memorandum. (Ha.)  Your connection with the Roman speculator is actually stronger than it may first appear. We noted before that:  speculator, speculatio, speculum, perspicuus, perspicax  all descend from the visual family built around:  specere ("to look").  The Roman military speculator stands on a hill looking outward. The Gricean hearer is asked to be able to look through an utterance. The difference is:  speculator → sees distant objects.   perspicax → sees through complexities.   perspicuus → can be seen through.  A lovely Latin family resemblance.  And here Grice's distinction between:  natural and non-natural  meaning becomes relevant. He comes to distrust:  conventional sign  as a fundamental category. For precisely the reasons you indicate. Something may have arisen through:  conventio, agreement, social practice,  without being what we naturally call:  conventional.  And conversely many things we call conventional are not traceable to any actual historical act of agreeing. Hence Grice prefers:  meaningNN  (non-natural meaning) rather than:  conventional meaning.  The centre of gravity shifts from:  convention  to  intention.  A hand-wave may indeed signify something. Yet the wave is not necessarily a conventional sign in the robust sense that:  the word "cat"  is a conventional sign. The signifying work is being done by the communicator. As Grice gradually realises, one can say:  He signified that p.  without committing oneself to:  The thing he produced was a sign.  That is a subtle but important distinction.  A Roman jurist such as Urseius Ferox would probably begin from:  convenit (it was agreed).  A Gricean begins from:  intellexit (he understood).  The Roman asks:  What convention binds?  The Gricean asks:  What intention was recognised?  And perhaps that is why Grice, despite his affection for Latin tags, finally cannot remain within the Roman vocabulary of:  contractus, conventio, pactum.  He needs a vocabulary of:  intention, recognition, uptake.  The jurist's world is agreement. The philosopher's world is understanding. Yet the two touch at every point. One might almost imagine a dialogue: Urseius Ferox:  Quid inter eos convenit? (What was agreed between them?)  Grice:  "That is important."  Ferox:  Quid igitur quaeris? (What then are you looking for?)  Grice:  "How each knew that the other knew what had been agreed."  At which point the Roman law lecture at Bononia quietly turns into an Oxford tutorial on meaning. (Ha.)