This collective volume, the first of its kind, offers comparative insights into the structure and evolution of ancient laws from Europe to Asia, spanning civilisations in present-day China, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Italy over a long period from approximately 3000 bce to 650 ce. Coordinated by highly distinguished scholars in Roman law, ancient history and Indian law, it represents the outcome of a major collaborative research endeavour initiated about fifteen years ago and bringing together more than twenty experts in fields as diverse as Assyriology, Buddhism, Old Testament studies and Greek papyrology. As befits scholars familiar with Aristotle’s insight that all science begins in wonder, the project arose from intellectual curiosity and the hope – expressed by Humfress in the concluding chapter – that the volume might ‘open the way for a broadening of specific geo-temporal horizons’ in ancient legal history and foster ‘a more global conception of ancient law’ (p. 614). This aspiration sits comfortably within the methodology of global legal history developed by T. Duve at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Theory in Frankfurt. In the first chapter, which provides the general orientation, Duve is explicitly cited by Ibbetson, co-editor of the volume. In this reviewer’s view, the desire for a global historical approach to ancient law has been fully realised by the contributors. Nevertheless, critics may contend that – beyond the intellectual pleasure of acquiring knowledge of different ancient legal cultures (which, in this reviewer’s opinion, is a legitimate aim in itself) – it remains to be seen what additional insights are gained by comparing, for example, criminal law under Justinian with the doctrine of ‘abominations’ in Tang China, at least insofar as each legal tradition is understood on its own terms. For the legal theorist or anthropologist the benefits of such a global legal-historical perspective are likely to be more immediate and apparent.
An ambitious project of this scale risks overwhelming readers, who cannot possibly be experts in every legal tradition surveyed. The volume necessarily engages with hundreds of concepts, names and events that no one could be expected to know exhaustively from the outset. Fortunately, the contributors have made a clear effort to present their specialised knowledge in accessible prose. The chapters are remarkably coherent and well written; despite its breadth and occasional technicality, the volume reads smoothly and, at times, even elegantly. To take one example, many students of Roman law will appreciate the didactic exposition of the evolution of procedural forms from the Republic to late antiquity, while also discovering the Indian system of the ‘four feet of legal procedure’ (vyavahāra) (Chapter 7). Likewise, a lucid introduction to the stipulatio is paired with compelling observations on contractual practices involving the solemn drinking of blood or wine as analogues to the creation of kinship (Chapter 11). Given its geographical reach and chronological scope, it is also no small achievement that the volume remains contained to roughly 600 pages of text, excluding bibliography and index. Of further note are the very useful maps and comparative timeline placed at the front.
The innovative character of the book lies as much in its methodology as in the thematic breadth of its comparative inquiry. The volume is organised around ten core topics, providing a structured guide through material drawn from widely separated periods and regions. For each topic, teams of five to ten experts selected the relevant material under the guidance of a lead author, who coordinated and harmonised the final chapter. Although lead authors typically specialise in only one legal tradition, the chapters handle the traditions in a notably balanced manner. Thereby the editors have successfully developed a method that avoids the biases of earlier comparative endeavours, particularly those of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when idealised models of rational law derived from Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis, often reinforced by colonial frameworks, strongly shaped works such as H.S. Maine’s Ancient Law (1861). Thus, for example, Chapter 4 (‘War, Peace and Interstate Relations’), coordinated by K. Vandorpe, begins with material from the Near East, Egypt and India before introducing concepts familiar to Romanists, such as xenia and hospitium. Similarly, Chapter 7 (‘Legal Procedure’), led by Olivelle, puts the Roman emphasis on procedure into perspective by highlighting the procedural sophistication of ancient Indian law and of legal systems under the Qin, Han and Tang dynasties.
All chapters reflect scholarship of the highest standard and offer engaging comparative perspectives on a wealth of material. Even readers not specialising in ancient law or history will profit from them, as many chapters invoke broader conceptual frameworks and legal-theoretical tools that enable meaningful comparison. In Chapter 3 (‘Legal Science’), for example, D. Mantovani draws upon the notion of ‘epistemic communities’ to examine networks of learned jurists across cultures. In Chapter 5 (‘Law and the State’) M. McClish questions the usefulness of ‘legal centralism’, as defined by J. Griffiths, for understanding the multi-layered realities of ancient law. Chapter 6 (‘Law and Religion’), coordinated by B. Wells, engages with E. Durkheim and C. Geertz in order to clarify the category of religion. Chapter 7 begins with H.L.A. Hart’s concept of law to justify the distinction – found in many ancient systems – between substantive and adjectival law. Chapter 2 opens with M. Gagarin’s valuable overview of terminology for ‘law’ across ancient cultures. T. Lubin, lead author of Chapter 8 (‘Status and Family’), critically re-examines the work of H.S. Maine. In Chapter 9 (‘Crime, Redress, and Social Control’) A.Z. Bryen develops an imaginative and original framework for analysing the origins of social stratification and the relationship between power and punishment.
Measured against its own ambitious objectives – aims not necessarily embraced by all scholars in ancient law, some of whom may take a more instrumental approach to the study especially of Roman law – the volume has few shortcomings. Scholars from non-anglophone traditions may nevertheless regret the relative paucity of references to research in other languages. Greater engagement with French, German or Italian scholarship, especially regarding Roman law, would not have altered the book’s substantive conclusions but would have enriched its bibliography and further internationalised its outlook. To cite only a few examples, Y. Berthelet’s Gouverner avec les dieux: Autorité, auspices et pouvoir sous la République romaine et sous Auguste (2015) is absent from the discussion of the role of religion in procedures of decision-making, for instance about foreign policy, in Republican Rome. References to Konfliktlösung in der Antike (2021), a monumental, multi-author volume edited by N. Grotkamp and A. Seelentag, would have been welcome on many occasions, and more sustained engagement with Italian scholarship – such as E. Conte’s Diritto comune. Storia e storiografia di un sistema dinamico (2009) – could have yielded a more nuanced account of the ius commune in the concluding section; at the very least, it can no longer be portrayed solely as a ‘learned law’ detached from practice.
The editors’ most daunting task, and perhaps the least enviable, was to write a concluding chapter. With such diversity so skilfully described across several hundred pages, identifying common patterns in ancient legal traditions is no small undertaking. I am not certain that all legal historians will be persuaded by the answer offered to the question, raised at the end of the concluding section, ‘what is ancient about ancient law’. According to Humfress, ancient laws share a ‘common ideology of law and justice’, namely that the strong (e.g. the king) ought to protect the weak and that the ‘haves’ should contribute to the welfare of the ‘have-nots’. Allied to this is the presence of a concept of the legal subject in which unfreedom is a constant. Even if this is found to be true, this reasoning could lead medievalists and early-modernists to argue – indeed some, such as S. Piron, a medievalist at the EHESS in Paris, already have – that medieval and ancien régime legal systems belong to the same continuum of ancient laws. Moreover, the postulated ideology may strike some readers as overly idealised or insufficiently distinctive of antiquity. One might even posit that the duty of the powerful to protect the vulnerable was articulated more fully in late medieval and early modern canon law – both within Europe and globally – and that modern social security systems, redistributive taxation and consumer law, particularly since 1945, express an even more explicit legal and ideological commitment to supporting the ‘have-nots’.
To avoid the difficulty of having to identify the essence of ‘ancient law’, the editors might have chosen a title that more readily signalled plurality – The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Laws (plural noun) rather than Ancient Law (singular). In fact, the editors conclude that the chapters reveal ‘some basic shared ideas, principles and procedures … but not enough to warrant approaching “ancient law” as a unified subject for either historical or legal inquiry’ (p. 603). In this reviewer’s opinion it would have been easier to highlight the universal co-existence, in ancient legal traditions, of legal and religious symbolism (the omnipresence of oath-taking in both public and private affairs being just one example). Nonetheless, the volume succeeds in its almost improbable aim of integrating scholarly traditions that too often remain isolated within their disciplinary boundaries. It will undoubtedly stimulate new comparative research – for instance, this reviewer would look forward to further analysis of shared patterns between ancient Indian law and medieval canon law. For Romanists, in particular, the book represents a refreshing attempt to break with overly self-referential or one-sidedly dogmatic approaches to ancient Roman law. Equally commendable is the collaborative research methodology underpinning the project and the focus on scholarly exchange and intellectual curiosity. The result is a lasting contribution to global legal-historical scholarship and a work that deserves a place on the shelves of every scholar of ancient law, particularly those specialising in Roman law.
