The subject of this chapter poses a number of problems. The first is a methodological one. The sources for law in the ancient Mediterranean world, and for general social history, are far richer than those from early China, and thus there is an imbalance in the sources available for comparison of the two cultures.1 Second, the attitude toward law, especially in Rome, was far different from that in the Chinese tradition. The Romans were proud of their laws and their legal tradition, and they provided, in their various expressions and promulgations, the foundation of much Western European law, though, of course, not of common law. The Chinese Confucian tradition, on the other hand, denigrated law, if not outright despised it, associating it with the tradition of the so-called “legalists” or fajia, who they thought had assisted the First Emperor of China, Qin Shihuangdi, in unifying the East Asian subcontinent in 221 bce and founding the first Chinese empire. This emperor was long considered to be the epitome of a “bad ruler,” having authorized the “Burning of the Books” and the “Burial of the Scholars,” and his name was notorious throughout the imperial period, only being rehabilitated by Chairman Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution.