Il diritto e la leggerezza : sulla prima delle Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino

How can we use the many definitions of “lightness” provided by Italo Calvino in the first of his Six Memos for the Next Millennium to describe ancient law? There are in fact several possible ways to assume that ancient law is “light”. As far as Roman law is concerned, for example, law can be described as “light” both because, in the classical age, it implies a consistent effort of abstraction, and also because, in the archaic period, it shows some clear connections with some “light” social phenomena such as magic and game. In Greek literature, moreover, there is at least one piece of important evidence – Sophocles’ Antigone – where divine and unwritten law, ie. law in its highest sense, is associated with lightness, whereas some human written laws are clearly unjust, hence “heavy”.