…in a book review I read this morning just cries out for quotation. The book is:
Callie Williamson, The Laws of the Roman People. Public Law in the Expansion and Decline of the Roman Republic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Pp. xxvii, 506; 39 tables, 4 maps. ISBN 0-472-11053-5. $75.00.
and the reviewer’s contention is that the thesis of the book is at the end not proven.
“In the end, this book has all the gory fascination of a terrible train wreck, but one in which the broken cars have split open to reveal interesting and thought-provoking contents, and the fate of the entirety in its jackknifed agony provokes very large thoughts about why the cars of the train locked together and moved at high speed in the first place — and what, in the end, causes a train to jump its tracks.”