members, called the village panchayat, was in charge of deal-
ing with criminals. Th e Laws of Manu had a lasting infl uence
on India and were even revived during the modern British
colonial era.
Little is known about ancient principles of crime and
punishment in other parts of Asia and the Pacifi c. For ex-
ample, Japan was sparsely populated prior to 200 b.c.e., when
a culture that used iron tools began to replace the hunters
and gatherers who populated the island. According to ancient
Chinese records, the people who lived in what is now Japan
did not commit theft , and violations of the law or customs
were handled by a family member. Th is authority fi gure was
ultimately responsible for establishing retribution against a
family for crimes committed by any of its members. In some
cases the off ender’s entire family was executed as a strong sig-
nal to others not to commit crimes. Interaction with China
and its peoples probably infl uenced Japan’s early approaches
to crime and punishment.
EUROPE
BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL
As is commonly the case, historians have little direct evidence
about crime and how it was punished in ancient Europe. Th e
primary obstacle is the absence of written records. In some
cases, archaeologists have found inscriptions on monuments
that deal with matters of law, crime, and punishment, but
these inscriptions tend to be fragmentary and of little help.
In Scandinavia rock carvings have been found that shed faint
light on ancient Scandinavian law, but historians are uncer-
tain about their meaning.
Missing from the record of ancient Europe is any kind
of systematic legal code. Th rough most of the ancient period
crime and punishment were matters dealt with through custom
rat her t han any prescribed body of law. While loca l custom dif-
fered from region to region, early European societies operated
under similar principles, suggesting that the various branches
of local law descended from a common Indo-European source.
Some ancient European legal principles, particularly those of
the Celts, probably date back to the Early Bronze Age (roughly
1800–1600 b.c.e.) and perhaps even earlier. Others date to later
periods, primarily as a result of trade and cultural contact with
the Greeks and, later, the early Romans.
An overarching principle of ancient European law was
the preeminence of the family, with the senior male at its
head. Prior to the development of nation-states and the rise
of empires and ruling dynasties, legal traditions were a mat-
ter of family ties. A person’s identity was taken from the clan
to which he belonged. Th e head of the family had absolute
sway over the individuals belonging to it. In this respect, a
family was a bit like a corporation, with its own rules and
procedures and an ongoing existence aft er the death of its
head. Crime, then, was a breach of the rights and privileges
not just of the individual victim but of the family as well. Ac-
cordingly, it was common for the family to impose its own
brand of “frontier justice” on off enders, for the concept of a
legal code, police forces, jails, courts of law, procedures for
conducting trials, and the like were unknown. Th e result was
oft en blood feuds.
Th e written record becomes more complete aft er the
spread of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire in the
centuries before the start of the Common Era. Such classical
fi gures as Caesar, Tacitus, and Pliny wrote about aspects of
law in some of the far-fl ung areas of the empire, including
Gaul (modern-day France), Spain, and later England. Julius
Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.), for example, wrote extensively about
legal matters in Gaul, which he learned about fi rsthand be-
cause of his participation in the Gallic wars beginning in 58
b.c.e. In time, as the Romans imposed their legal system on
their colonies, legal codes developed that represented a blend
of Roman and local law. Aft er the advent of the Common Era
and the beginning of the spread of Christianity, ecclesiastical
law became a third ingredient that infl uenced the legal prac-
tices of the European nations.
According to Caesar, the ancient Celts recognized such
crimes as murder, robbery, and theft , as well as other, more
specifi c laws, such as usurping the authority of a king. A prin-
ciple that ran through ancient European law was the distinc-
tion between public crimes and private crimes. Public crimes
were those committed against the state; the victims of private
crimes were individuals. While the state prosecuted crimes
against the state, individual victims, or their families, had to
pursue legal remedies on their own if they were victims of a
crime. Th e process began with a plaintiff making an appeal
to whoever was responsible for enforcing the law. Among the
Celts, this person would oft en have been a Druid, a priestlike
fi gure who was believed to have legal wisdom. In others, it
may have been a public offi cial or a noble whose patronage the
injured party enjoyed. Oft en it became the obligation of the
injured party to “distrain,” or seize, the off ender. Th e parties
then assembled to swear oaths that they would give truthful
accounts of the events in question. Witnesses, kinsmen, and
other supporters of each party swore similar oaths. Monetary
pledges were frequently given to ensure that the parties would
appear for the hearing.
At the hearing, a judgment was rendered. If the accused
was found guilty, punishment was imposed. Because there
were no prisons in ancient Europe, other means of punish-
ment had to be used. One of the most common was the mon-
etary fi ne. Sometimes fi nes were simply a form of restitution
to the victim or his family. Other fi nes were regarded as more
of an “honor price,” a way of restoring the honor of the vic-
tim. Th e amount of these fi nes oft en diff ered depending on
the rank of the victim. Another common form of punishment
was banishment from religious sites and rituals, a punish-
ment the ancient Celts and Germanic tribes found particu-
larly severe. In some cases the death penalty was invoked, but
death was not a common form of punishment.
Th e Germanic tribes of northern Europe used the ordeal
as a way of determining the guilt or innocence of an accusedcrime and punishment: Europe 301