ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, when it has been necessary to treat the Greeks and the Romans separately, the Greeks have come first, since the high point of their culture preceded that of the Romans, and the Romans in many respects learned from the Greeks and copied them. In law, however, I shall treat the Romans first, because their law was much closer to what we take the law to be: a matter for professionals, based upon legislation but also upon a body of legal scholarship, with basic principles, constantly developing through interpretation and through new cases. Since classical Greek law was much less elaborate, and as such will be less familiar to us, I will leave it for the later part of the chapter.
