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In Ancient Law and Modern Understanding: At the Edges Alan Watson proposes that ancient law is relevant and important for understanding history, theology, sociology, and literature. "Law, though technical," he writes, "is not remote from scholarship on other matters, and law is a central element in society."

From Homeric Greece to present-day Armenia, Watson examines law's influence. Without a sensitivity to technical legal language, scholars of literature or history miss much: the use of puns in Plautus, Sulla's claim that Julius Caesar was descended from a slave, the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels. Legal history is an essential tool for understanding society, Watson argues, but it must be applied with knowledge of how law moves from one society to the next, legal reliance on authority, juristic concern with apparent trivia, and the impact on legal growth.

Alan Watson is the Ernest P. Rogers Professor of Law and University Research Professor at the University of Georgia in Athens. He is the author of several books, including The Spirit of Roman Law (Georgia).

ISBN 0820320315 cloth • $40.00

"The insights that Watson has into the workings of law and the legal mind are often brilliant, occasionally controversial, but never boring. It's a splendid book."
—M.H. Hoeflich, author of Roman and Civil Law and the Development of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth Century