GRICE E PREPONE

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Prepone: la ragione conversazionale e il principio conversazionale – Roma – filosofia italiana  Prepone (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il principio conversazionale. According to Ippolito di Roma, a pupil of Marzione. He argues that, in addition to there being a principle of good and a principle of evil, there is a third intermediate principle of justice. Grice: “Only I don’t multiply principles beyond necessity, since ‘principle’ means ‘1’!”   GRICEVS: PREPONE, audivi te discipulum Marcionis fuisse (saltem apud Hippolytum): duo iam ponis principia, boni et mali—noli, quaeso, principia multiplicare praeter necessitatem; “principium” enim unum sonat! PREPON: Ego vero, Grice, non multiplico, sed ordino: est bonum, est malum, et est tertium medium—iustitia—ne utrumque in eodem triclinio rixetur. GRICEVS: Lepide; sed hoc quoque habet rationem conversazionalem: cum dicas “tertium est iustitia”, non solum rem adds, sed implicas Deum ipsum quasi arbitrum esse—ne Marcionis duo principes inter se clamore vincant. PREPON: Et tu, cum dicas “unum sonat”, non solum grammaticam doces, sed implicas hoc: philosophia tua tam parcit numeris quam hospes sobrius vino—quod Romae, ut scis, est iam miraculum. do we have info on Prepo, pupil of Martio, according to Ippolito di Roma, such as ethnicity what language would be his mother tongue, etc? What we have is very little, but one point is unusually clear: according to Hippolytus, Prepon was “an Assyrian.” That is the one concrete ethnogeographical description attached to him in the source tradition I found. So no, on present evidence he should not be treated as Roman in origin; the safest label is an Assyrian Marcionite known from Hippolytus’s report. [biblehub.com], [ccel.org] That in turn gives you a cautious answer on language. If he was indeed an Assyrian Christian from the eastern Roman or adjacent Syriac world, his mother tongue was more likely some Aramaic/Syriac variety than Latin. But that is an inference, not something Hippolytus explicitly states. Since the only direct evidence says “Assyrian,” not “Syriac-speaking” or “Greek-speaking,” the careful formulation is: probably an eastern Semitic vernacular in the Syriac/Aramaic zone, while any written doctrinal exchange known to Hippolytus may well have circulated in Greek. [biblehub.com], [ccel.org] Why Greek? Because the report comes through Hippolytus’s Greek heresiological tradition, and Prepon is said to have written a work “inscribed to Bardesanes, an Armenian.” That sort of intellectual exchange in the eastern Christian world could certainly have happened in Greek, though one must not rule out Syriac in the wider background. What I cannot honestly do is prove the original language of Prepon’s own work from the evidence here. [biblehub.com], [en.wikipedia.org] So the safest summary is this. Prepon: identified by Hippolytus as an Assyrian. [biblehub.com], [ccel.org] Ethnicity or regional identity: eastern, Assyrian/Syrian rather than Roman-Italic. [biblehub.com], [bibleportal.com] Likely mother tongue: probably a Syriac/Aramaic vernacular, but this is inference, not direct attestation. [biblehub.com] Language of the surviving report: Greek tradition via Hippolytus. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikisource.org] Known doctrine: besides the good and the evil principles, he posited a third intermediate principle of justice. [biblehub.com], [en.wikisource.org] If you want, I can next give you the stricter philological note on whether “Assyrian” in Hippolytus should be read ethnically, geographically, or simply as a broad eastern label.