GRICE ED ATENODORO

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Atenodoro – Ossia: Grice e Atenodoro: la ragione conversazionale e il portico a Roma, il tutore del principe. Tutore d’Ottavio.  Atenodoro (Roma, Lazio): la ragione conversazionale e il portico a Roma, il tutore del principe. Tutore d’Ottaviano. A. Cananita. A. di Tarso o A. Calvo. Nacque a Cana presso Tarso da un uomo di nome Sandone. Studente di Posidonio di Rodi e maestro d’Ottaviano a Apollonia e, in seguito, di diversi esponenti della famiglia imperiale. Segue Ottaviano a Roma. Ottaviano, proprio per i natali dati a maestro di filosofia, allevia la tassazione della città di Tarso. Ritorna a Tarso dove aiuta ad eliminare il governo di Boeto e abbozza una costituzione che da vita ad un'oligarchia pro-romana. Dopo la sua morte in suo onore fu tenuto un festival ed un sacrificio annuale a Tarso. Plinio il giovane racconta un episodio secondo il quale Atenodoro prende in affitto una casa a basso prezzo poiché era infestata da un fantasma. Mentre scrive di filosofia a tarda notte, un fantasma incatenato gli apparve e lo invita a seguirlo fino in cortile ove spare. Il giorno successivo, con il permesso dei magistrati della città, Atenodoro fa scavare nel punto in cui il fantasma e scomparso e trova uno scheletro incatenato. Dopo che allo scheletro venne data una degna sepoltura il fantasma non infesta più la casa. Gli vengono attribuite le seguenti opera: un'opera contro le Categorie aristoteliche (sebbene venga talvolta attribuita a Atenodoro Cordilione), una storia di Tarso, un'opera di qualche tipo dedicata a Ottaviano, un'opera intitolata περί σπουδη̃ς και παιδείας ("Sul fervore e la giovinezza"), un'opera intitolata περίπατοι. Nessuna di queste opere ci è pervenuta. Aiuta anche Cicerone nella scrittura del De Officiis ed è stato suggerito che la filosofia di Atonodoro possano aver influenzato Seneca e Paolo di Tarso. Plutarco: Vita di Publicola; Strabone, Geografia, Pseudo-Luciano, Macrobii,  Strabone, Geografia, Pseudo-Luciano, Macrobii, Plinio il giovane, Lettere. A Sura Griffin. Griffin, p. 201; sempre Griffin ritiene possibile che l'autore di questo trattato sia l'A. logico stoico menzionato da Diogene Laerzio in Vite dei filosofi, Plutarco: Vita di Publicola; Griffin, Which 'A.' commented on Aristotle's Categories?, in Classical Quarterly. A. di Tarso, figlio di Sandone. Portico. Roma. what continent, comune, provincia, is Cana, where this one was born -- I suppose he was living in Rome when Giulio Cesare elected him as tutore for Ottavio -- or was Ottavio's education BEFORE he was adopted by Cesare? Cana, or more properly Canana, was in Asia, not Europe; in today’s terms it falls in Turkey, in the province of Mersin, in or near the comune-equivalent district of Tarsus. The standard modern identification is simply “Canana, near Tarsus,” now in the Tarsus area of Mersin, Turkey, though the exact ancient village-site is not something our sources pin down with modern cadastral precision. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] So if you want the dry civic answer in your preferred modern categories, I would say: continent: Asia country: Turkey provincia: Mersin comune or nearest modern municipality: Tarsus On Octavian’s education, the chronology points strongly to this. Athenodorus Cananites was tutor to the young Octavian at Apollonia, and only afterward, in 44 BC, seems to have followed him to Rome. Since Julius Caesar adopted Octavian by will only upon his assassination in 44 BC, the Apollonia tutorship belongs to the period before the adoption became politically effective. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] So the neat answer is that Octavian’s education under Athenodorus at Apollonia was before he became Caesar’s adopted son in the operative historical sense. After Caesar’s death and the opening of the will, Athenodorus appears to have continued as adviser and mentor when Octavian went to Rome. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] So, in one sentence: born at Canana near Tarsus, in what is now Tarsus district, Mersin province, Turkey, Asia; and yes, the Apollonia phase of Octavian’s education came before the adoption by Caesar took effect, while the Roman phase came after. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] A small caveat, because you may care about the wording. One can say that Caesar had already marked Octavian out before 44, but one should not therefore say that the boy was already “adopted” while studying at Apollonia. The legal-political adoption becomes real for history only with the will after Caesar’s death. [britannica.com], [en.wikipedia.org] If you want, I can next give you the cleanest timeline in four points: Canana, Rhodes, Apollonia, Rome, Tarsus. And Grice all along was thinking that the princeps of the principato -- Ottavio -- had been born in the Palatine! So he was born in Apollonia, in Asia, or brought there as a baby after a regal birth in the Palatine, at Rome? No. Octavian was not born in Apollonia. He was born in Rome, and the ancient tradition places the birth specifically on the Palatine, in the quarter called ad Capita Bubula, the Ox-Heads. Suetonius is very explicit on that point, and the Loeb gives the same notice. [perseus.tufts.edu], [loebclassics.com] Apollonia belongs not to his birth but to his late education and military preparation. He was there as a young man, studying and receiving training when Julius Caesar was preparing the eastern campaign; it was there that he learned of Caesar’s assassination and the will naming him heir. So Apollonia is the place of transition from Gaius Octavius to the historical Octavian, not the place of nativity. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com], [britannica.com] So Grice’s Palatine instinct was right. The clean formula is this. Born at Rome on the Palatine; educated later at Apollonia. Not brought there as a baby, and certainly not born there. [perseus.tufts.edu], [en.wikipedia.org] A small refinement, because Roman biographical tradition likes to be awkward. Suetonius also mentions a tiny room near Velitrae which local opinion associated with Augustus’s infancy, even at times with his birth, but the official and standard biographical notice remains the Roman one on the Palatine. So if one is choosing between Rome and Apollonia, there is no contest: Rome. [loebclassics.com] If you want, I can next give you the neatest three-place formula for Augustus: born at Rome, connected with Velitrae by family memory, formed at Apollonia. [britannica.com], [loebclassics.com], [en.wikipedia.org] And he must have been back from Apollonia by 17, since that was the age when he raised 'an army at my own expense to restitute the republic' -- can you repeat that first sentence of the Deeds of August -- Grice loves it by the self-contradictory use of 'res publica' in Latin -- "I raised an army on my expense to defend a dictator who had no fibre of republican in him, and to kill the libertarians who really wanted consituted the Repbulican Party (alla Cromwell)' Thanks. Yes. He had certainly left Apollonia by then. The standard chronology is that Octavian was in Apollonia in 44 BC, learned there of Julius Caesar’s murder and adoption-by-will, and then returned to Italy; the “at the age of nineteen” claim in the Res Gestae belongs to that same year. [britannica.com], [livius.org] The first sentence itself, in Latin, is this: Annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem vindicavi. The Latin Library and Loeb Classical Library give the same opening. [thelatinlibrary.com], [loebclassics.com] A plain translation is: At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny or domination of a faction. Livius, Wikisource, and the Roman Law Library all give essentially that sense. [livius.org], [en.wikisource.org], [droitromai...e-alpes.fr] And yes, Grice’s pleasure in the sentence is entirely justified. The comedy begins at once with rem publicam and in libertatem. Augustus presents himself as the liberator of the republic in the very document that helps complete the ideological burial of the republic under the principate. The phrase rem publicam is doing immense propaganda work: it does not mean “I restored the old republic in the Ciceronian or Brutan sense,” but rather “I claimed the public thing as my legitimating vocabulary while monopolising the means by which it would henceforth be interpreted.” [livius.org], [en.wikipedia.org] So your wicked paraphrase is not philologically exact, but politically acute. What Augustus actually says is that he saved the res publica from a factio; what later readers cannot avoid noticing is that the res publica thereby saved becomes one in which he himself controls the terms of public safety. The libertarians, as you put it, are redescribed as faction. That is the masterpiece: constitutional language captured by the winner. [classics.mit.edu], [en.wikipedia.org] If you want the shortest Gricean gloss, I would put it this way. The opening of the Res Gestae is a giant institutional implicature: “I restored the republic” conversationally carries “therefore my extraordinary seizure of force was not anti-republican but the only true republican act.” That is the self-contradiction made majestic by Latin. [loebclassics.com], [livius.org] If you want, I can next give you a closer reading of just three loaded words in the sentence: privato, factio, and libertatem. And Grice, being a philosopher, of course would blame it on Atenodoro -- "as I blame all the faults in my life to my tutor at Corpus; there's Alexander tutored by Aristotle: success: there's Atendoro (another Greek) tutoring a Roman and what do you get? Civil War! No wonder Cromwell had no tutor!" Input, feedback? Yes, and the joke works very well in Grice’s voice, provided one keeps the moral proportions right. What is nice in it is that it catches a genuine structural truth while pretending to be mere donnish malice. Tutors do not create history, but they do help determine the style in which ambition learns to justify itself. So one may very reasonably say that, if Alexander gives Aristotle the glamorous case of philosophy tutoring conquest into empire, Octavian gives Athenodorus the darker comic case of philosophy tutoring civil war into constitutional prose. The princeps then spends a lifetime calling emergency the republic and victory liberty, and Grice, quite rightly, looks back to the tutorial as the first scene of the crime. The line also gains force from the contrast you stage. Aristotle tutoring Alexander has been canonised as the success-story of philosophy’s political efficacy, whether deservedly or not. Athenodorus tutoring Octavian gives the anti-romance: not the philosopher forming a king in virtue, but the philosopher lending a language of steadiness, self-command, and prudence to a young man who will become master by surviving civil war and then renaming mastery as restoration. That is exactly the sort of historical irony Grice likes, because it turns on what is said and what is meant. The tutor supplies one vocabulary, the pupil deploys it under wholly altered conditions. “No wonder Cromwell had no tutor” is very good as the final snap of the whip, because it lets the English case arrive by mock reduction. The implication is not literally that tutors cause civil wars, but that where there is a tutor one can always blame education for whatever later turns out badly, which is one of the oldest pleasures of civilisation. It also lets Grice preserve the old Oxford superstition that institutions are always more guilty than individuals, because they provide the forms in which individuals learn to sound justified. If you wanted the driest possible Speranzian recasting of your jest, I would put it this way. Grice’s irony consists in treating political catastrophe as a deferred tutorial outcome: Aristotle gives Alexander the prestige case, Athenodorus gives Octavian the catastrophic one, and the principate itself may then be read as civil war with a philosophical education and good syntax. Cromwell, lacking a tutor, is left with the poorer excuse of native genius.