LONDON

PRINTED BY SPOTTIS WOODE AND CO.

NEW-STREET SQUARE

ANCIENT LAW:

ITS CONNECTION

WITH THE EARLY HISTORY OF SOCIETY, AND ITS RELATION TO

MODERN IDEAS.

BY HENRY SUMNER MAINE,

MEMBER OF THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF INDIA:

FORMERLY READER ON JURISPRUDENCE AND THE CIVIL LAW AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE,
AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF THE CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

Second Edition.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1863.

The right of translation is reserved.

PREFACE.

THE chief object of the following pages is to indicate some of the earliest ideas of mankind, as they are reflected in Ancient Law, and to point out the relation of those ideas to modern thought. Much of the inquiry attempted could not have been prosecuted with the slightest hope of a useful result if there had not existed a body of law, like that of the Romans, bearing in its earliest portions the traces of the most remote antiquity and supplying from its later rules the staple of the civil institutions by which modern society is even now controlled. The necessity of taking the Roman law as a typical system, has compelled the Author to draw from it what may appear a disproportionate number of his illustrations; but it has not been his intention to write a treatise on Roman jurisprudence, and he has as much as possible avoided all discussions which might give that appearance to his work. The space allotted in the Third