Étienne Clavier (26 December 1762 in
Lyon
Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...
– 18 November 1817 in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
) was a French
Hellenist and magistrate.
The son of a wealthy merchant of Lyon, he made early studies of the Classical languages, followed by studies of law in Paris. In 1788 he purchased a commission as ''conseiller au Châtelet'' of which he was soon deprived during the
French Revolution. He entered the magistracy under the
Directoire, serving as a judge in the criminal tribunal of the
Seine
The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...
, where he made himself prominent by the independence of his character in the trial of
General Moreau. Pressured by
Joachim Murat, who urged him to pronounce the capital sentence, with the assurance that Napoleon would grant clemency, he made the famous reply, "Et à nous, qui nous la fera?" He was finally discharged from his post in the reorganization of the tribunals of 1811.
In 1809 he was elected member of the ''
Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
The () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the . The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions (epigraphy) and historical literature (see Belles-lettres).
History ...
''. He was appointed to the chair in history and ethics at the
Collège de France in 1812 and was named ''censeur royal'' at the
Bourbon Restoration.
Étienne Clavier contributed several memoirs to the ''Académie des inscriptions''. In one on the Oracles of the Ancients, he asserted that the priesthood of Antiquity were under no necessity of fraud in producing their miracles, which were easily explained by the confidence and credulity of the people. As a Hellenist, his work has lost its value, his translations, such as the ''
Bibliotheke'' attributed to Apollodorus (Paris, 1805), lacking the accuracy demanded by later generations, and his erudition, such as his corrections to
Jacques Amyot's translation of
Plutarch
Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
, ill-directed. His principal merit, according to
Pierre Larousse, is to have pursued classical studies during a period that lacked classicists of the first order.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clavier, Etienne
Academic staff of the Collège de France
Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
1762 births
1817 deaths
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
18th-century French jurists
19th-century French jurists