This is a general introduction to Roman law for American undergraduates. They will have no prior knowledge of Roman law, and they may be attending the course less than willingly. This is because many American universities require students to study a handful of subjects outside of their area of concentration. This is important for understanding both the merits and shortcomings of this book.

In design the book most closely resembles John Crook's Law and Life of Rome and David Johnston's Roman Law in Context: Roman institutions and Roman law discussed with emphasis on daily realities. The main difference is that where Crook and Johnston regularly quote law, documents and ancient literature, the author of this book gives a straight narrative, indeed without notes. He was perhaps worried that students would be put off by original sources (documents are in an appendix), and admittedly this is a difficult choice for a book like this. Roman sources are immediate to those who understand them but mysterious to a beginner. The author avoids mystery by entrusting everything to his own powers of description, synthesis, and simplification. This approach distinguishes this book from virtually every other introductory book on Roman law. In places the approach works well. The chapters on the legal profession and legal education are clear and interesting. The chapter on sources for Roman law offers a common-sense division, ‘technical’ (for or by lawyers) and ‘non-technical’; this is an improvement on the traditional division of ‘legal’ and ‘non-legal’, which tends to elide our evidence for law with the Romans' sources of law, with artificial results (e.g., Gaius regarded as a lesser source). The chapter on social control brings together diverse institutions of private law and shows their public function. This is novel, and a good way to encourage students to think broadly about the law without having to engage with the law itself too closely. Finally, the chapter on law in the provinces brings to the students' attention several of the basic problems affecting the administration of justice outside Italy. Here it is very welcome to see the author pointing up the discrepancies between legal and documentary sources.

On the other hand, the author's straight-and-simple narrative is often overly reassuring. Telling students repeatedly to ignore some difficulty or detail is a lesson they may learn for all time. Apologizing for the unfairness of Roman society makes the Romans seem less deserving of study. Assimilating Roman institutions to modern ones discourages deeper thinking. The author clearly does not want to confuse the students, but is this really the best approach? A gentle tour without too much confrontation? Other introductory books allow students to be confused for a short time. They give them difficult sources and difficult ideas. They then gently reduce the distance until the law, though still unfamiliar, is no longer confusing. This is really how it ought to be done.

The chapters on substantive law suffer the most. It is difficult to introduce the rules of Roman law without going into some of the smaller points and providing texts and fact-based illustrations. This is not simply a lawyer's love of detail: the Romans' achievement in law-making is only apparent in the deeper regions of the law. For example, the author compares the character of the old formal contract and the newer informal contract, and prefers the latter for its flexibility. But this is an old trap. The formal contract is not ‘a type of contract’ but ‘a way of making a contract’, and there were virtually no limits to what could be done with it. You could use it to create sale or hire; to secure insurance from your neighbour from damage by his property; to settle a case; to forgive all debts and real claims in a single transaction; to litigate on any foolish or outlandish wager. In comparison, the purpose-bound informal contract was a straitjacket. Another example: the Lex Aquilia. This delict allowed liability for harm that was less than intentional, and causation, which had never been a problem before, suddenly demanded expert attention. The jurists' efforts to mark off remote, unactionable harm are found in a series of famous and stimulating texts. Past students of Roman law remember the barber and the muleteers even when they have forgotten everything else. But in the five hundred words which the author of this book has given to the Lex Aquilia, none of this achievement is apparent. In its place is a potted statement (‘The person doing the damage had only to exercise a “reasonable” level of care in protecting others’ property from foreseeable harm to avoid a charge’), which is not even Roman law but Palsgraf vs Long Island Railroad. In short, students learning from this book may not understand why one studies Roman law, and this is something an introductory book should avoid, even when the students are reading the book reluctantly.