ABSTRACT
China and Rome were great and independent states at the turn of the era that began A.D. 1. Each pretended to be the world's sole sovereign. Empires and leagues have been blueprinted or created with image in mind, and hopes for future unity and harmony continue to issue from a nostalgia for the lost unity of civilization that was Rome. Some of the institutions that supported the Roman state as an international society resembled those of other comparable empires; others, however, were unique. The Roman jurists apparently were not prepared to abide by Marcus Tullius Cicero's doctrine that natural law is superior to civil law. Roman law commenced by giving all the wife's property to the husband, because she was assumed to be, in law, his daughter. The international authority of Christianity's canon law derived chiefly from concepts that had been previously clarified in Roman jurisprudence. Most of the elements of ius gentium were derived from Roman civil law.
