Livio Catullo Stecchini

Who was Livio Catullo Stecchini?

Livio Catullo Stecchini was a professor of ancient history at Paterson State Teachers College in New Jersey. He wrote on the history of science, ancient weights and measures, and the history of cartography in antiquity. He is best known as a defender of the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky and for his numerological theories about the dimensions of the Great Pyramids.

Originally a classicist, he became a student of Angelo Segre at the University of Freiburg, Germany where he studied the philosophy of Husserl, and attended the lectures of Heidegger and Oskar Becker. Eventually he focused on the work of Fritz Prinsheim which was concentrated on the contract of sale in ancient times. Had he known that in the hands of Kenneth Kitchen the sequence of blessings and curses in ancient contracts was eventually to become one of the most important dating tools of modern archaeology, Stecchini might not have focused on the clauses relating to measures. As it happened it was this focus that led Otto Lenel to allow him to read a paper on the length of miles in the Syro-Roman Law Book.

After the Freiburg group was disbanded by Hitler he returned to Italy where he received a doctorate in the field of Roman Law. He became assistant to the chair of history of Roman Law at the University of Rome and a member of the Institute of Roman and Oriental Law of that University where he was influenced by Edoardo Volterra holder of the chair of Oriental Law there.