The Stanford Encyclopedia own Natural Law Theories entry, re-fetched 2026-09-11, names Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics as early sources and treats Aquinas as the tradition classical systematizer, but states no single founding moment or year for natural law theory as a named tradition.
What would resolve this A historiographical account defending one specific figure, text or period as the tradition actual point of origin, rather than treating natural law as a gradual convergence of independently argued classical and medieval sources.
OpenHistory of philosophyNatural Law Theories (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)