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In spite of the exceptional importance of his figure, we
know very few things about Zaleukos.
Born in the Locri Epizephyrii colony, he was doubtless the
first legislator of the western world and, chronologically,
EUSEBIO put him between the 663 and the 662 b.C.
His figure is wrapped in the myth (it's handed down that he
was instructed by Athena) and often the story of his life
changes into legend, and that's happened so many times in
the past that, during the course of the ages, someone tried
to assert (and, particularly, Timaeus) that in spite of the
sureness of the Locrians origin of the first written laws
codex of the western world, he never existed really.
Particularly, some modern historians and critics, such as
Bentley or Beloch, starting from an etymological analysys (a
bit questionable) of his name which would mean, more or
less, "the luminous" or "everything that
shines", supposed that with the name Zaleukos, the
people meant to speak about (as it was supposed has happened
for other legislators, such as Lycurgus "the source of
light") a sunny divinity who gave them the laws and
that only in a following age would have been identified with
a human being.
Now, this statement, a bit forced from the etymological
point of view, and absolutely devoid of historical proofs
(as a matter of fact there aren't references to the worship
of such divinity amongst the Locrians in the sources) is an
end to itself and is devoid of a true value from a practical
point of view.
Ciaceri himself (an Italian historian), in his work
about Magna Graecia's history, referring to the question,
defined devoid of foundation the objections about the real
existence of the legislator, noticing that even nowadays
live amongst us people having a name which remember the sky
(Celeste), the sun or something else (such as the light:
Luciano), and that this thing happened even in the ancient
ages.
Having said that, maybe the final word about the question
has already been said by Cicero in his work "De
Legibus" where he says:
"Quid, quod Zaleucum istum negat ullum fuisse Timaeus?"
(Who cares about the fact that Timaeus have denied the
existence of Zaleukos?); "[...]
Sive fuit, sive non fuit, nihil ad rem; loquimur quod
proditum est." ( - That Zaleukos -
existed or not doesn't concern the question; we hand down
what was handed down"). So Cicero doesn't attribute
any importance to the question and invite, then, to
concentrate on the facts which have been handed down:
Zaleukos' legislation and the fact that many sources refer
the name of the legislator as the name of a person really
existed.
Closed this dutiful parenthesis on the question of the
existence or not of Zaleukos, let's speak about his laws.
The importance of Zaleukos' laws (which, as it's handed
down, were admired by the whole Greek world) is exceptional
because, for the first time, the laws were written and so
they were took away from the arbitrary use which the judges
of the ancient ages made of them; and this fact was
underlined by Strabo who said that: "While once the
task to determine the punishment was entrusted to the
judges, Zaleukos determined that in the same laws".
Then, the punishment had to be the same for everyone and
noticed to everyone.
Unfortunately, the corpus of the laws hasn't reached our age
and, nowadays, we know only few of these laws, thanks to
their quotation in some works of the ancient writers, such
as CICERO, POLIBIO, STOBEO, etc.
These laws, which reached our days, are listed at the end of
this section.
Don't be stunned by their harshness, in any case these laws
are more than 25 centuries old, and for the age in which
they were issued, they were "modern" laws and, in
some cases (i.e. the prohibition to own slaves), they were
ahead of one's time of many centuries; besides the fact that
they were written was a better warranty for the people,
during an age in which the law was more an instrument in
favour
of the well-off classes than one of the basic and essential
principle of a society which today we could call civil.
The strongly conservative nature of these laws allowed the
city of Locri Epizephyrii to thrive for a long time and they
were enforced even for the centuries following the death of
their deviser: Zaleukos, the first western legislator. |
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