GRICE ED ARISTENETO

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.) H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: Aristeneto – Ossia: Grice ed Aristeneto – Roma – filosofia italiana –  (Nizza). Filosofo italiano. A pupil of Plutarco.  Grice: Aristeneto, sei davvero una via di mezzo tra Roma e Nizza – e un filosofo italiano che ha persino studiato con Plutarco! Dimmi, le lezioni erano più filosofiche o più “nice”? Aristeneto: Caro Grice, a Nizza si filosofeggia anche sulla qualità del sole! Plutarco diceva: “La saggezza è come il clima, va colta quando c’è bel tempo”. A Roma invece… preferite il ragionamento nuvoloso? Grice: Che bello, filosofia mediterranea! Ma dimmi, Aristeneto, in classe a Plutarco, c’era mai qualcun altro che si metteva a discutere sulle implicature del pranzo? Aristeneto: Oh, spesso! Con Plutarco il pranzo era sempre questione filosofica: “Mangia, ma pensa!” diceva. Da allora ho imparato che ogni insalata ha la sua ragione… e anche le olive, se ben interrogate, rispondono. Here Grice has an Aristenetus, a disciple of Plutarco at Nizza that's Nicaea in Asia? Most likely, yes: this “Nizza” is again not Nice on the Riviera, but Nicaea in Bithynia. The main clue is the name itself. Aristaenetus is regularly transmitted with the ethnic Nicaenus, and Italian cataloguing tradition explicitly preserves that form. The BeWeB entry for the Italian translation of his letters lists him as Aristaenetus : Nicaenus, which is exactly the sort of evidence one wants here. That points to Nicaea in Asia Minor, not to Nice near Ventimiglia. [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] So Grice’s instinct is very probably right again: “Nizza” in the Speranza file is best understood as an Italianised modern rendering standing in for ancient Nicaea, that is modern İznik in Turkey. [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] I should, however, separate two questions. On the place-name, the case is fairly strong: Aristaenetus is indeed associated with Nicaea by the ethnic Nicaenus. [beweb.chie...ttolica.it] On the claim that he was a pupil of Plutarch, I do not have a solid confirming source from this pass. What I do find is that modern scholarship and academic notices treat Aristaenetus as a late antique Greek epistolographer, probably of the fifth or sixth century, closely engaged with Platonic eros and classical literary material, but not in the material I found securely as a documented direct pupil of Plutarch. [sns.it], [fondation-...lenique.fr], [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] That chronological point matters, because if the intended Plutarch is the famous Chaeronean Plutarch of the first–second century, the dates sit very badly with the usual placing of Aristaenetus in late antiquity. One could imagine confusion with another later Plutarch, such as Plutarch of Athens, but I do not yet have evidence that this is what Speranza meant. [sns.it], [fondation-...lenique.fr], [britannica.com], [handwiki.org] So the dry answer is this. Yes, “Nizza” here is very likely Nicaea in Asia Minor, not Nice in the old county of Nice. But the second half of the entry, the direct discipleship to Plutarch, remains unverified on the present evidence and may rest on a conflation or a loose secondary tradition. [beweb.chie...ttolica.it], [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] If you want, I can do one more narrow pass specifically on whether any source explicitly says Aristaenetus studied under Plutarch of Athens, because that is the only version that looks chronologically even remotely salvageable. [fondation-...lenique.fr], [britannica.com], [handwiki.org]