Henry Sumner Maine’s Ancient Law was a shot out of the dark that overturned the fields of law and Indo-European studies. It made Maine one of the foremost legal scholars of the 19th century, and one of the greatest in English history.

By a brilliant excavation of Roman, Vedic, and Germanic tribal history, we discover that ancient law was not really law as we know it, but codified tradition. Law begins as the absolute command of the Indo-European House Father, and by a fascinating historical progression, develops into the juristic law of the centralized state.

This is much more than a work of legal history, but an indispensable account of how we got to where we are. In Maine’s celebrated phrase, the history of civilization moves “from status to contract”—social relationships are inherited and rigidly defined by birth, and then develop into a voluntaristic asociality where man is free to define himself. Without understanding this change, it is impossible to understand modernity.

Ancient Law was influential on such disparate thinkers as Sir James George Frazer, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Fustel de Coulanges. The Imperium Press edition includes an extensive introduction, footnotes, and translation of the copious Latin and Greek.