"The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another"
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The subtext is methodological—and political. Maine, writing in the high Victorian age, is helping invent a way of thinking that treats institutions like artifacts you can date, map, and correlate across cultures. His phrase "civilised nation" carries the period’s smug taxonomy, but it also signals his argument’s leverage: if you want to understand Roman law, don’t just read it; situate it among parallel codes and ask what stage of development they represent. Rome becomes legible through analogy, not reverence.
The line about diffusion across the "Roman and Hellenic worlds" matters because it suggests circulation rather than isolated invention. Legal ideas travel with empire, trade, bureaucracy, conquest, education. The timing "at epochs not widely distant" hints at synchrony: different societies, encountering comparable constraints, generate comparable solutions or readily adopt them. Maine is nudging readers toward a modern thesis: legal history is less a story of great texts than of networks, transmission, and the slow standardization of power.
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Maine, Henry James Sumner. (2026, January 16). The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-ancient-roman-code-belongs-to-a-class-of-112570/
Chicago Style
Maine, Henry James Sumner. "The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-ancient-roman-code-belongs-to-a-class-of-112570/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-ancient-roman-code-belongs-to-a-class-of-112570/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
