Abstract
How did the Ancients imagine the beginning of law ? The depiction of the origin of law is part of a more general representation of the evolution of human society, which is either meliorative (from a state of life similar to that of wild beasts, which gradually improves, to the city and " civilization "), or regressive (from a golden age to a state of suffering and injustice). The premises are to be found in Greek thought, notably in poetry.
Hesiod wrote The Labors and the Days after losing a lawsuit (real or fictitious) brought by his brother Perses over the division of his father's inheritance, and being threatened with a new lawsuit by this brother who had squandered everything he had obtained : he features Dikè, Justice, who appears frequently (about every thirty lines). She is opposed tohybris, excess. Daughter of Zeus, she sits beside him to denounce human injustice. " Dikè " means sticking to one's own, without harming others, the balanced attitude to which everyone's judgments must conform. This distributive attitude promotes prosperity for the whole community. Aratos of Soles, in the 3rd century BC, took up this vision when, at the request of the Macedonian king Antigone Gonatas, he wrote Les Phénomènes célestes, in which he recounts Dikè's catasterization, her transformation into a star, in this case into the constellation Virgo. Dikè has abandoned the earth, disgusted by the injustice of mankind. As with Hesiod, Dikè, in Aratos' eyes, represents not external standards, but balanced behavior.
This myth of a golden age brought to an end by the fall of mankind and the flight of Astraea (the Virgin Justice) has been depicted in the arts from Roman to modern times. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, which allude to this story, a dichotomy emerges between the idea of justice as a measured attitude, expressed by equity, and external norms to compel men to be just, the laws. One of the most famous reuses of the myth of the Golden Age and the Virgin Justice can be found in Virgil's Georgics (2, 458-460), which praises the sober and pious life of the peasants, and a land that distributes to all - with justice - what it produces. Peasants are the last to see Justice, who leaves his vestigium, his imprint, on the fields before abandoning the land. Now vestigium is the word also used by Nerva the Younger in the passage read during lecture 1(D., 41, 2, 1 pr.) : property acquired through hunting and fishing is the imprint left on the law of the present by a precivil (and imaginary) stage in human life, almost a golden age. The fact that the jurist had this passage from Virgil in mind reveals a whole cultural background to these multiple births of law.
