ABSTRACT
Hugo Grotius is famous for his precocity, erudition, and omnicompet-ence. Grotius, when aged fifteen, travelled with Oldenbarnevelt on his mission to Henry IV in 1598, and Henry is reputed to have said of him, 'Behold the miracle of Holland.' One of the main difficulties in studying Grotius is his ambiguity, and this stems not least from his inaccessibility. De Jure Belli ac Pads is a very difficult book. One consequence of this ambiguity is that Grotius can be posthumously all things to all men; he is interpretable in various ways. Such ambiguity is not due just too methodological confusion, but to a richness and complexity that reflects international politics themselves. Grotius reflects more accurately this morally multidimensional character of our experience than, arguably, any other writer on the subject. Another aspect of the Grotian genius is the golden mean, or Aristotelian moderation.
