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

Verbali: Ottaviano  M.: Today, boys, we begin the first emperor where he wished to begin himself. G.: Not in a cradle. Shropshire.: Nor at school, sir. M.: No. The text opens as though infancy were an indiscretion. Grice, the Latin. G.: Annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem vindicavi. M.: Shropshire, the English. Shropshire.: “At nineteen year old, I raised an army on me own say-so and out o’ me own pocket, and by means of it I restored the republic, oppressed by a faction’s domination, to liberty.” G.: “Me own say-so” is better than he deserves. M.: It is better than some politicians deserve. Still, we shall keep it for the moment. Grice? G.: The first amusement is exercitum comparavi. Shropshire says “an army,” and the English article makes it sound almost casual, as if he were ordering boots. But the Latin does not say merely some army happened into existence. It is his army by initiative, expense, and subsequent narrative possession. Shropshire.: I did say “me own pocket.” G.: Yes, but not “my own army.” M.: Latin often leaves the possessive to good sense and circumstance. Comparavi already has a proprietor’s air. Shropshire.: So not “I found an army,” but “I got one together.” M.: Better. G.: And already the utterer wishes the addressee to hear proprietorship without the vulgarity of saying meum. M.: Good. Utterer, addressee, explicitum, implicitum. Keep all three in view. Shropshire.: He’s the utterer, we’re the addressees, and the significatio is “I were only nineteen and already up to state-saving.” G.: Very nearly. M.: More carefully. G.: The significatum explicitum is that at nineteen he raised an army by private decision and private expense, and by means of it restored the republic to liberty. Shropshire.: And the significatum implicitum is that it all came off rather well. M.: Exactly. Nobody reading the opening is meant to wonder whether the next clause will be “whereupon I was promptly killed.” G.: That is the first point of rhetorical structure. The army is introduced only under the victorious description. It is not “I rashly assembled some armed men and the thing went badly.” The army enters already teleologically, per quem. Shropshire.: “By means of which.” M.: Yes. Instrumentality with a destination attached. G.: It is almost indecently compressed. The phrase builds success into the grammar. Shropshire.: So if I say, “At nineteen I raised a farm on me own initiative, by means of which I restored my grandfather’s business,” that sounds factive too. M.: Good. Explain. Shropshire.: Because if I say “by means of which I restored,” I don’t leave open whether the farm actually did the restoring. I present the restoration as accomplished. G.: Strictly, one should be careful with “factive.” But as a schoolroom point, yes: the clause presents the restoration as achieved, not merely intended. M.: Quite. The content of vindicavi is asserted, not floated as a possibility. G.: And more than asserted. It is made to look as though the army were the sufficient instrument. M.: There you may sharpen. G.: He says per quem, “by means of which,” without adding “among many other useful contingencies, favourable winds, money, defections, assassinations, and luck.” Shropshire.: Nor “with a bit o’ help from friends and dead uncles.” M.: The dead uncle is not wholly absent from the scene, however. G.: Precisely why privato consilio is amusing. Shropshire.: “On my own initiative.” M.: Translate it, then. Shropshire.: “By me own decision,” “off me own bat,” if one wants it flatter. G.: “Off me own bat” is vulgar enough for public school truth. M.: But now the difficulty. G.: Yes. “On my own initiative” sounds morally splendid until one remembers he was nineteen and recently adopted by Julius Caesar’s papers, clients, name, fortune, and corpse. Shropshire.: So not exactly a chap from nowhere. M.: Quite. The phrase invites autonomy while standing in a web of inheritance. G.: It reminds one of Ryle’s sort of sentence: “I sat on the chair on my own initiative.” As if the point of sitting were moral self-legislation. M.: And as if there were some risk that one had been sat by another. Shropshire.: At nineteen, one often is. G.: Indeed. “Privato consilio” leaves out every uncle, patron, veteran, creditor, and conspirator who might diminish the heroism of youth. M.: Yet it is not false. G.: Worse. It is adroit. Shropshire.: So the emissum is tidy and the implicatum grand. M.: Good. Define your terms. Shropshire.: The emissum is the sentence as uttered. The significatum explicitum is what the Latin says. The significatum implicitum is what it leads us to gather. G.: And the implicatum here is not only “I succeeded,” but “I succeeded by precocious independent virtue.” M.: Very good. Shropshire.: Also “look what sort of nineteen-year-old I was.” G.: Yes, the age does not diminish responsibility; it magnifies distinction. M.: Annos undeviginti natus. Why put the age first? Shropshire.: To make it sound all the more startling. G.: Exactly. It is youth as credential, not excuse. M.: Would a common soldier hearing it think, “Poor lad”? Shropshire.: No, sir. More like, “Well, he were summat special.” G.: Or “special by advertisement.” M.: Dry enough. Now, rem publicam. Shropshire.: “The republic.” G.: Here the English is almost too obedient. M.: Explain. G.: Because “the republic” in English invites constitutional naïveté. Augustus says rem publicam without quotation marks, as though the thing restored were exactly the old free commonwealth. Shropshire.: Which it weren’t. M.: Grammatically, of course, res publica means the public thing, the commonwealth, the state in public aspect. G.: Yes, and that is precisely why he prefers it. It lets him occupy Roman political language without saying “I restored the old republican constitution, clause by clause, untouched.” Shropshire.: He says the republic were oppressed, not dead. M.: Good. Oppressam. G.: That is the next cunning adjective. If it is oppressed, it still exists. One cannot restore a corpse to liberty in the same way. One can only revive it, resurrect it, or replace it. Shropshire.: So he don’t say he brought the republic back from the dead. He says he got it out from under. M.: Exactly. G.: Which is why “restored” in English needs care. To restore may suggest replacement of a lost state. Here the republic is represented as continuing under pressure. M.: Hence in libertatem vindicavi. Shropshire.: “I vindicated it into liberty.” G.: A barbarous but useful literalism. M.: Continue with the thought. G.: He does not say simply rem publicam vindicavi. He says in libertatem vindicavi. The republic was there, but not free. His claim is not resurrection simpliciter, but liberation. Shropshire.: Like moving summat from one condition into another. M.: Yes. The preposition matters. G.: And it helps him avoid an obvious contradiction. If the republic still stood, though oppressed, he need not explain how his later arrangements ceased to be republican in the stricter sense. He only says he moved the existing public thing from oppression to liberty. Shropshire.: While standing on it rather heavily himself. M.: That is the commoner’s afterthought, and not an unimportant one. G.: Then a further implicatum: if I restored the republic to liberty, anyone opposing me belongs with oppression. M.: Quite. Political morals by grammar. Shropshire.: And “dominatione factionis.” G.: There the sentence grows delicious. M.: Translate first. Shropshire.: “From the domination of a faction.” G.: Singular, observe. Shropshire.: Aye, one faction. M.: Does singular simplify too much? G.: Entirely. Civil war is reduced to one oppressive faction, as though there were only one culprit and not a field of mutually armed Roman aristocrats, many of them Stoics, anti-Stoics, opportunists, debtors, patriots, and murderers. Shropshire.: So at least two factions if there’s a civil war worth the name. M.: Or more. But the singular lets him moralise asymmetrically. G.: Yes. “Faction” becomes the bad collective noun into which all his enemies may be poured. Shropshire.: And his own side isn’t a faction? M.: Not in his prose. G.: In his prose his side is instrumentum libertatis. Shropshire.: An army, by means of which. M.: There, exactly. One side gets to be a faction, the other a means of liberty. G.: The implicature is clear: force on their side is domination, force on mine is rescue. Shropshire.: Same swords, different nouns. M.: Very good. G.: This is where conversational analysis becomes useful. The utterer gives the addressee the explicit wording, but expects him to accept a whole political arrangement of descriptions. M.: Put it more formally. G.: The emissor, Augustus, offers an explicit significatum: at nineteen I raised an army and freed the republic from factional domination. The implicatum is that my force was uniquely legitimate, that the republic was worth preserving as then described, that my enemies were merely factional, and that success vindicates initiative. Shropshire.: Also that dead Romans don’t count in the opening sentence. M.: Yes, Shropshire, the Great War again. Shropshire.: Well, sir, “by means of which” is rather clean. Armies tend to mean widows as well. G.: Quite. The contextual indeterminacy is not innocent. We are expected to know enough of the history to be impressed, but not so much as to begin counting corpses. M.: And are we told what battle? Shropshire.: No, sir. M.: Then what does “by means of which” conceal? G.: A whole stretch of violence, alliances, payments, defections, propaganda, fear, and good fortune, compressed into one instrumental relative clause. Shropshire.: Like saying, “By means of which I sorted out the estate,” when what happened were three lawsuits, two bankrupt cousins, and a barn fire. M.: A useful domestic analogy. G.: And one sees why the sentence wants us to forget contingency. Instrumentality is represented as direct and singular. M.: Give me a non-factive contrast, Grice. G.: “At nineteen I tried to raise an army, hoping by means of it to restore the republic.” There the outcome is left open. M.: Good. Shropshire.: Or “At nineteen I raised an army, intending to restore the republic,” which leaves room for being flattened. G.: Exactly. Augustus gives us neither hoping nor intending. He gives us comparavi … vindicavi. M.: Verbs of act and accomplished result. Shropshire.: No scare quotes round republic either. G.: A pity for truth, a triumph for style. M.: Dryly. G.: “Rem publicam” is one of those expressions which do better without punctuation and worse with history. Shropshire.: So when he says republic, the addressee is meant to hear “our proper commonwealth,” not “the constitutional form now being delicately repurposed.” M.: Precisely. G.: And “oppressam” helps. If the republic is oppressed, then one may rescue it without defining it too tightly. Shropshire.: Oppressed is convenient. Dead would be harder. M.: Yes. Oppression is a figurative condition that may be relieved by the right victor. G.: While “restored to liberty” lets him seem conservative and heroic at once. Shropshire.: Conservative in the object, heroic in the motion. M.: Better than some printed histories. G.: The sentence is a masterpiece of managed explicitness. What is said is compact and apparently transparent. What is meant is larger, more flattering, and dependent on the addressee’s willingness to supply the right politics. Shropshire.: Which is why we’re made to translate it into English and not merely salute it in Latin. M.: Though one might wonder whether English improves it. G.: It exposes him a little. Latin smooths the joints. “By means of which I vindicated the republic into liberty” sounds foreign enough to make one look again. Shropshire.: And “on my own initiative” sounds like a prefect reporting chapel attendance. M.: Yet we must not make it too ridiculous. The sentence works. G.: Oh, magnificently. That is precisely why it deserves suspicion. M.: Now, second sentence, if only briefly. G.: Qui parentem meum trucidaverunt, eos in exilium expuli iudiciis legitimis ultus eorum facinus, et postea bellum inferentis rei publicae vici bis acie. Shropshire.: “Those who murdered my father, I drove into exile by lawful judgments, avenging their crime, and afterwards, when they made war on the republic, I beat them twice in battle.” M.: Again, the order. G.: Yes. “My father,” not “my adoptive father whose murder proved politically useful to me.” The lawful judgments come wonderfully before the battles. Shropshire.: As if first it were all proper legal business, and only then proper slaughter. M.: Good. G.: The pattern repeats: explicit legality, implicit necessity, suppressed mess. Shropshire.: And always the republic in the background, being harmed by the wrong people and helped by the right one. M.: Which is why this is excellent material for a lesson on explicitum and implicatum. G.: Indeed. Augustus writes as utterer to a very broad addressee and expects Rome, and then empire, to complete the significance correctly. Shropshire.: Or obediently. M.: Or both. G.: The explicitum is scarcely enough to explain the success of the text. Its power lies in what a trained addressee is expected to gather: youth, legitimacy, necessity, singular agency, public-mindedness, legality, and victory. Shropshire.: Also “Don’t ask how many of your countrymen died while I was restoring liberty.” M.: Yes. G.: There is a final joke in this. The republic oppressed by factional domination is restored to liberty by means of an army. One almost hears a schoolboy ask whether liberty commonly arrives under military escort. Shropshire.: At C., sir, mostly with canes. M.: Outrageous, but not wholly false. Now write this down: explicit wording, implicit political arrangement, instrumental clause as narrative compression, and oppressed as the adjective that saves the constitution from having died too early. Shropshire.: In English, sir? M.: In English, since I have suffered enough good Latin for one period. G.: That is rather like Augustus himself. M.: Meaning? G.: He too preferred the effect in Latin and the consequences in everything else. Shropshire.: Dry enough? M.: For Somerset, barely.