The Renaissance Reconstruction of Ancient Athenian Law, 1546–1650

Abstract In 1540, European scholars had no coherent understanding of the content or history of Athenian law. In contrast to Roman law, which had been preserved in the Justinianic Corpus juris civilis , Athenian law survived in fragments scattered across ancient literature. By 1650, European scholars had painstakingly reconstructed the laws of Athens and then put that law to use in debates about theology, natural jurisprudence, politics, and economics. This article tells the unknown story of the European reception of Athenian law in three main phases: foundation, consolidation, and fracture. In the first phase, the works of Philip Melanchthon (1546), Pardoux Duprat (1559), and Carlo Sigonio (1564) established the foundations of Athenian law and procedures. In the second phase, the field consolidated around the quest for a comprehensive overview of Athenian jurisprudence. This phase began around the end of the sixteenth century with an unpublished manuscript by Joseph Scaliger and ended in 1635 with Samuel Petit’s magisterial Leges Atticae. Finally, the field reached its zenith with the dispute between Claudius Salmasius and Desiderius Heraldus in the 1640s, but the acrimony of the feud caused the study of Athenian law to fracture and fade from prominence for the rest of the century.