H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: SVETONIO

 M.: Grice, open your Suetonius and do not look as if the Caesars have already won. G.: Yes, sir. M.: We begin with Julius. State, without embroidery, his relation to the crossing of the Rubicon. G.: He crossed it, sir, thereby converting decision into civil war and geography into constitutional argument. M.: Better than most politicians. Shropshire, what is Suetonius’s implicature behind Julius? S.: That brilliance in public achievement does not exonerate appetite in private conduct, sir, and that republican forms are not improved merely because a genius breaks them efficiently. M.: Hm. Efficiently is the adverb of your generation. Grice, two salient features of Suetonius on Julius apart from the Rubicon. G.: His clemency and his vanity, sir. Also his relation to kingship by denial and attraction. M.: Quite. The bald man and the crown. Shropshire, the implicature of the baldness anecdotes? S.: That the public man is to be cut to mortal proportions, sir. Suetonius reduces majesty to grooming and thereby restores aristocratic revenge in miniature. M.: Good. Augustus next. Grice, what is his official relation to monarchy? G.: He disclaims it, sir, while arranging everything so that it becomes permanent. M.: Very Roman. Shropshire? S.: The implicature is that the best tyrant is the one who understands the grammar of modesty, sir. Augustus means “princeps” while saying “citizen.” M.: Better. Grice, one virtue and one vice of Augustus in Suetonius. G.: Administrative restraint and calculated theatre, sir. M.: Theatre is not a vice until you perform it badly. Tiberius. Grice, where does Suetonius place him morally? G.: In suspicion, reserve, and eventual obscenity, sir. M.: A promising civil servant, then. Shropshire, what is implied by the withdrawal to Capri? S.: That absence is itself a form of rule, sir. Tiberius governs by making others guess at his intention and by letting distance become fear. M.: Very good. That, Grice, is called politics before it is called psychology. Caligula. Grice, one sentence. G.: Power without measure passing into theatrical cruelty, sir. M.: A concise disaster. Shropshire, the implicature of Caligula’s horse? S.: That institutions are humiliated not only by open violence but by ridicule, sir. To threaten an office by a horse is to imply that office itself has become decorative. M.: Excellent. Claudius. Grice, what does Suetonius do with the stammer, the limp, and the family underestimation? G.: He makes bodily defect the screen behind which an emperor appears unexpectedly effective, sir. M.: Unexpectedly is doing too much work. Shropshire, the implicature? S.: That contempt misreads power, sir. The ridiculous man may rule competently, which embarrasses all physiognomists and many senators. M.: You are improving. Nero. Grice, no musicological indulgence. G.: Artistic vanity elevated above political responsibility, sir, with cruelty increasingly aestheticised. M.: Yes. He fiddles, if not literally then morally. Shropshire, what is Suetonius doing with the stage obsession? S.: He implies that when the ruler confuses audience with people, sir, government becomes performance and applause becomes policy. M.: Good. Galba. Grice, why does he fail? G.: Severity without tact, sir; old-fashioned austerity applied without regard to the new economy of expectation. M.: The new economy of expectation. Nasty phrase, accurate thought. Shropshire? S.: The implicature is that virtue unguided by timing becomes vice in office, sir. A ruler may be respectable and still politically tone-deaf. M.: Otho. Grice, one distinguishing fact. G.: He is morally compromised in formation yet dies with a degree of dignity, sir. M.: Yes. A borrowed robe and a decent death. Shropshire, what is implied? S.: That last acts revise earlier judgments without erasing them, sir. Suetonius lets the manner of dying become a corrective gloss, not a total acquittal. M.: Vitellius. Grice, what vice dominates? G.: Gluttony, sir, joined to inertia and incapacity. M.: Joined, indeed. Shropshire, the implicature of the eating? S.: That appetite is politically legible, sir. Excess at table implies incapacity in rule because self-government is the first test of public government. M.: You have read your Stoics without being asked. Vespasian. Grice, why does Suetonius like him? G.: Practicality, economy, humour, and relative proportion, sir. M.: A headmaster’s emperor. Shropshire? S.: The implicature is that ordinariness can itself be restorative, sir. After flamboyant monsters, competence looks almost philosophical. M.: Tito. Grice, famous sobriquet? G.: Deliciae humani generis, sir. M.: Which means? G.: The darling of the human race, sir. M.: Sentimental rubbish, but classical rubbish. Shropshire, what lies under the charm? S.: That benevolence may itself be politically staged, sir, but in Tito the staging is effective because it remains within Roman expectations of liberality and measure. M.: Domitian. Grice, what is the problem? G.: Surveillance, cruelty, self-divinisation, and the senatorial memory that follows him, sir. M.: Yes. One must never forget that Suetonius inherits judgments as well as records them. Shropshire, the implicature of Domitian’s damnatio? S.: That moral biography is written by survivors, sir. Suetonius means not only that Domitian was bad, but that a Roman elite required him to remain readable as bad. M.: Excellent. You are both nearly tolerable. Now back to Julius. Grice, why does Suetonius prefer anecdote to constitutional theory? G.: Because anecdote lets moral character do explanatory work without erecting a formal political science, sir. M.: Which is a sentence you may keep if you learn to write less like a clerk. Shropshire, what is implied by arrangement in Suetonius? S.: That sequence itself judges, sir. He need not say “this made him unfit”; he places the detail so that the Roman reader supplies the verdict. M.: Good. That is very nearly literature. Grice, what would you call the system of virtues and vices at work? G.: A rubric of Roman aristocratic evaluation, sir: justice, self-command, generosity against cruelty, sexual excess, greed, and theatricality. M.: Reasonably put. Shropshire, why does this interest you? S.: Because Suetonius says comparatively little in explicit theory and means a great deal by selection, sir. M.: Ah. You have both smuggled philosophy back in through the servants’ entrance. G.: Only slightly, sir. M.: Slightly is how decay begins. Julius again. What is implied by the crown refusals? G.: That denial may itself advertise desire, sir. M.: Yes. English boys can understand that if they ever attend dances. Shropshire, Tiberius again. What is implied by reserve? S.: That opacity itself becomes a political instrument, sir. Silence is no less legible than proclamation when the hearers are frightened enough. M.: Good. Caligula. Why does Suetonius collect the grotesque? G.: To make moral madness visible through memorable particulars, sir. M.: And because Roman readers enjoy scandal with principle. Shropshire, Nero’s singing: what does it imply beyond bad taste? S.: That the ruler no longer distinguishes between judgment and applause, sir. M.: Very good. Claudius. Is Suetonius kind? G.: Relatively, sir, but only because the contrast with expectation and with worse successors assists the portrait. M.: Never trust relative kindness in a biographer. Otho. Why does a compromised life earn a partially noble close? G.: Because Roman judgment remains responsive to final bearing, sir. M.: Bearing. Better than redemption. Shropshire, why do meals matter with Vitellius? S.: Because table conduct stands as the domestic form of rule, sir. Disorder there is taken as evidence of disorder elsewhere. M.: Exactly. The pudding is constitutional. Vespasian. Why the jokes? G.: They humanise him, sir, but also imply mastery. A ruler at ease with laughter is not terrified by his office. M.: Better. Tito. Why the tears? G.: They furnish moral spectacle, sir, but of a tolerable kind. M.: Tolerable tears are the most Roman kind. Domitian. Why the fear of informers? G.: Because speech itself becomes precarious under suspicion, sir. M.: Ah. Now perhaps philosophy may enter by warrant. Shropshire, what is the implicature of informer culture? S.: That public language has been corrupted, sir. Men say less, imply more, and trust neither words nor hearers. M.: Good. That would have pleased Tacitus, though he would have said it more darkly. Grice, compare Suetonius and Tacitus in one sentence. G.: Tacitus gives political tragedy in compressed moral psychology; Suetonius gives moral judgment by curated disclosure, sir. M.: Curated disclosure. Monstrous phrase. Accurate enough. Shropshire, why is Suetonius so interested in bodies? S.: Because bodies are where aristocratic evaluation becomes legible without theory, sir. Diet, sleep, sex, grooming, gait: all imply character and therefore fitness to rule. M.: Very good. The body is the republic in shorthand. Grice, does Suetonius have a philosophy? G.: Not in the explicit systematic sense, sir, but he operates under a stable framework of Roman moral expectations. M.: Exactly. Which is what most boys miss because they prefer the dirt. Shropshire, why are the dirty stories not merely dirty? S.: Because in Suetonius scandal is evidential, sir. It is selected to show whether private appetite subverts public office. M.: Excellent. Julius and Augustus together now. What is the chief contrast? G.: Julius is dazzling overreach; Augustus is successful management under a mask of restraint, sir. M.: Very sound. Tiberius and Domitian? G.: Suspicion in one becomes system in the other, sir. M.: Nero and Caligula? G.: Theatricality in both, but Nero aestheticises while Caligula deranges, sir. M.: Vespasian and Claudius? G.: Both show that the unglamorous ruler may govern better than the splendid one, sir. M.: Good. Shropshire, what is the implicature behind the whole Twelve Caesars? S.: That empire cannot abolish the need for moral judgment, sir. Since constitutional liberty is damaged, character becomes the aristocratic substitute for lost political argument. M.: That is almost too good for Clifton. G.: Only almost, sir. M.: Do not become insolent by approximation. Now, Suetonius on Augustus again. Why the underinformativeness? G.: Because he trusts the reader to infer the balance of praise and reservation from placement rather than from a frontal thesis, sir. M.: Exactly. And what do we call that, Shropshire? S.: In another century, perhaps implicature, sir. M.: Do not be anachronistic before lunch. S.: No, sir. M.: You may be anachronistic after lunch if you cite your sources. Grice, why does Suetonius cut emperors down to size? G.: So that Roman readers may cope with absolute power by seeing rulers as morally intelligible and bodily finite, sir. M.: Very good. Nothing calms aristocrats like discovering that Caesar snores. Shropshire, what is implied by that reduction? S.: That divinised office remains inhabited by mortal absurdity, sir. M.: Better and better. Perhaps there is hope for the lower forms after all. Now tell me, Grice, what is the date of Suetonius in relation to the emperors he describes? G.: He writes later, under the Flavians and Hadrianic world, sir, and inherits senatorial judgments not innocent of politics. M.: Quite so. A biography is never merely backward-looking. Shropshire, what follows? S.: That even selection is historical, sir. He means through arrangement what his own age permits and prefers. M.: Yes. History school is not a morgue if properly taught. Grice, why would a philosopher care for Suetonius at all? G.: Because he shows how evaluative meaning may be communicated without explicit theory, sir. M.: Hm. That is nearly a confession. Shropshire, and why would a historian care? S.: Because moral anecdote is part of political understanding, sir, not merely embroidery upon it. M.: Good. We shall not despise embroidery if it does constitutional work. Now, one last round. Give me, Grice, one word for each emperor. Julius. G.: Ambition, sir. M.: Augustus. G.: Management, sir. M.: Tiberius. G.: Reserve, sir. M.: Caligula. G.: Derangement, sir. M.: Claudius. G.: Misprision, sir. M.: Nero. G.: Performance, sir. M.: Galba. G.: Severity, sir. M.: Otho. G.: Revision, sir. M.: Vitellius. G.: Appetite, sir. M.: Vespasian. G.: Restoration, sir. M.: Titus. G.: Charm, sir. M.: Domitian. G.: Fear, sir. M.: Shropshire, now the implicatures in one word each. Julius. S.: Overreach, sir. M.: Augustus. S.: Disguise, sir. M.: Tiberius. S.: Opaqueness, sir. M.: Caligula. S.: Humiliation, sir. M.: Claudius. S.: Misreading, sir. M.: Nero. S.: Applause, sir. M.: Galba. S.: Untimeliness, sir. M.: Otho. S.: Correction, sir. M.: Vitellius. S.: Incontinence, sir. M.: Vespasian. S.: Sufficiency, sir. M.: Titus. S.: Display, sir. M.: Domitian. S.: Constriction, sir. M.: Very well. Now close the book. Grice, what have you learned? G.: That Suetonius says less than he means, sir. M.: And you, Shropshire? S.: That Roman history is a set of questions asked by anecdotes, sir. M.: Excellent. Then you may both go to lunch, where I expect you to remember that gluttony is constitutional, reserve is political, applause is dangerous, and handwriting, Grice, is not yet a philosophy.