Ancient Law Quotes

The common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or that such a character existed.

Medieval justice was a quaint thing.

Of the ten crimes which Biblical Hebrew law punished by stoning, nine have ceased to be offenses in modern society.

A twice-born man who has intentionally drunk, through delusion of mind, the spirituous liquor called Sura shall drink that liquor boiling-hot; when his body has been completely scalded by that, he is freed from his guilt; Or he may drink cow's urine, water, milk, clarified butter or liquid cow dung boiling-hot, until he dies; When the Brahman [the highest caste] the Veda which dwells in his body is even once deluged with spirituous liquor, his Brahmanhood forsakes him and he becomes a Sudra [the lowest caste.]

Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .

If any person has sung or composed against another person a SONG (carmen) such as was causing slander or insult.... he shall be clubbed to death.

At first, laws evolved out of religious doctrines. It followed that they were recognized only when advantageous to those who practiced the same religion and who appeared equals under the protection of the same gods. For the members of all other cults, there was neither law nor mercy.

The code of Manu differs from the bible. By means of it the nobles, the philosophers, and the warriors keep the whip hand over the majority. It is full of noble valuations; it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life.

The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother...all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die...

If anyone plows up a boundary stone both he and his oxen should be dedicated as a sacrifice to the gods.

In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under-estimated.

Biblical law permits voluntary slavery because it recognizes that some people are not able to maintain a position of independence . . . The law is humane and also unsentimental. It recognizes that some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.

With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.

The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another.

Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.

A Brahmana who knows the law need not bring any offence to the notice of the king; by his own power alone be can punish those men who injure him.

Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.

If a man has knocked out the teeth of a man of the same rank, his own teeth shall be knocked out.

If a man strike the daughter of a man and cause her to miscarry, they shall prosecute him, they shall convict him, two talents and thirty manas of lead shall he pay, fifty blows they shall inflict on him, one month shall he toil…. If a man strike a harlot and cause her to miscarry blows for blows they shall lay upon him; he shall make restitution for a life

The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any set of human institutions.

The Elephantine papyri - written as some of the books of the Bible are being written - is true social and legal documentation, and to historians overwhelmingly powerful and moving, even when ostensibly about trivial things.

Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest know set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.

"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor's." Your neighbor is clearly a male, and the woman, the ox and the ass are property of the male. That's not morality I will salute today.