Étienne Clavier
Encyclopedia
Étienne Clavier was a French Hellenist
Hellenism (Academia)
Academics who study ancient or modern Greece may be referred to as Hellenists, and thus the study of Greece may be referred to as Hellenism. This should not be confused with the use of Hellenism to mean the spread of Greek culture, nor to describe the neoclassic Hellenism movement....

 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
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

. He entered the magistracy under the Directoire
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...

, serving as a judge in the criminal tribunal of the Seine, where he made himself prominent by the independence of his character in the trial of General Moreau
Jean Victor Marie Moreau
Jean Victor Marie Moreau was a French general who helped Napoleon Bonaparte to power, but later became a rival and was banished to the United States.- Early life :Moreau was born at Morlaix in Brittany...

 Pressured by Joachim Murat
Joachim Murat
Joachim-Napoléon Murat , Marshal of France and Grand Admiral or Admiral of France, 1st Prince Murat, was Grand Duke of Berg from 1806 to 1808 and then King of Naples from 1808 to 1815...

, 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
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...

. He was appointed to the chair in history and ethics at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...

 in 1812 and was named censeur royal at the Bourbon Restoration
Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon  – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...

.

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
Jacques Amyot
Jacques Amyot , French Renaissance writer and translator, was born of poor parents, at Melun.He found his way to the University of Paris, where he supported himself by serving some of the richer students. He was nineteen when he became M.A. at Paris, and later he graduated doctor of civil law at...

's translation of Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

, ill-directed. His principal merit, according to Pierre Larousse
Pierre Larousse
Pierre Athanase Larousse was a French grammarian, lexicographer and encyclopaedist. He published many of the outstanding educational and reference works of 19th-century France, including the 15 volume Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle.-Early life:Pierre Larousse was born in Toucy, where...

, is to have pursued classical studies during a period that lacked classicists of the first order.
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