GRICE E FEDRO

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Fedro: la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica Fedro: la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica -- Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Abstract. Grice: “Hardie, my tutor at Corpus, never displayed his philosophical views to me – which was a shame – but then he said he was following Fedro’s advice in teaching Cicero!” Fedro. Keywords: pupil-tutor. Filosofo italiano. The philosophy teacher of Cicerone at Rome. F. follows the doctrines of The Garden, and succeeds Zenone as the head of the school. Grice: O Phædre, audivi te Cicerōni hortum docuisse; num Hardie quoque, me docente, eodem horto latuit quasi apis in rosā? PHÆDRVS: Ita prorsus, nam magister prudens doctrīnam suam non ostendit, sed discipulum facit eam sponte colligere—quod est hortulanī opus, non præconis. GRICEVS: At tu Zenonem secutus scholarchēs factus es; ego vero vix scholæ caput sum, quia caput meum semper in implicaturīs est. PHÆDRVS: Noli metuere, Grice: in Horto etiam caput in nubibus licet, modo pedes in terrā et vinum in poculō maneant. While this PHAEDRUS was at Rome, we don't think he was Italy-born, right? Right: we do not normally take Phaedrus, the Epicurean teacher of Cicero at Rome, to have been Italy-born. The safest identification is the Epicurean Phaedrus who was head of the school at Athens and later associated with Rome in Cicero’s education. In that profile, he is a Greek philosopher working in the Greek school tradition, not a native Italian who merely happened to adopt Epicureanism. His very name points in the same direction: Phaedrus is a thoroughly Greek name, and his institutional role belongs to the Athenian Garden. So the dry answer is: No, we would not normally suppose he was Italy-born. He is best understood as a Greek Epicurean philosopher, active at Athens and later teaching in Rome. That does not mean he could not speak Latin at all. A Greek philosopher long resident in Rome might have acquired some Latin, at least conversationally or for ordinary dealings. But the intellectual language of his philosophy would have been Greek, and Cicero’s own relation to such teachers presupposes that Greek philosophical culture was coming into Rome through Greeks, not chiefly through Italian-born Latins in disguise. So the neat formulation would be: Phaedrus at Rome was very likely not an Italy-born Latin speaker by origin. He was almost certainly Greek by cultural and linguistic formation. If he used Latin at all, that would be secondary to Greek, not primary. And one small correction to the note you quoted. “Succeeds Zenone as head of the school” needs caution, because the Epicurean succession is not to be phrased too loosely in the way one phrases Stoic scholarchs. If the point is simply that he was an important Epicurean scholarch in Athens before teaching Romans, that is fine; but one should not casually let Zenone there create confusion with the Stoic Zeno. If you like, I can next sort out which Phaedrus this is in strict school genealogy, and whether Cicero’s evidence lets us say anything more precise about his movement from Athens to Rome.