Ancient & Modern | 05 January 2008

One moment laws against ‘religious hatred’, the next against smoking in cars, now mobile phones. What next? But then, law-making has been expanding ever since the Romans drew up their XII Tables, c. 450 bc, which were themselves originally a mere X until they decided they needed II more. In ad 533, when the Roman empire in the West was no more, the eastern emperor Justinian published a Digest of Roman law. It was condensed from some 2,000 volumes.

Romans despaired of the problem. Julius Caesar decided to reduce the statute book to a manageable size but was assassinated in 44 bc before he could begin. The great Roman historian Tacitus took up the theme, commenting that there seemed to be no end to law-making, and with his usual sharpness put his finger on an exquisite paradox. Laws were made to be obeyed. If there were so many of them, why was society so corrupt? Or was it the other way round: that the more corrupt the society, the more laws were needed to try to control it?

Ancient Greeks were equally aware of the problem. The 5th-century bc Greek intellectual Critias speculated that religion was invented to solve it. He makes a character in a play say: ‘Then, when the laws prevented men from open violence, but they continued to act violently in secret, I believe that a shrewd and subtle man invented for men the fear of the gods. His aim was that there might be something to frighten the wicked even if they acted, spoke or thought in secret. For this reason he introduced the conception of divinity. There is, he said, a spirit enjoying endless life, hearing and seeing with his mind, exceedingly wise and all-observing, bearer of a divine nature.