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also Philo the Jew, in different places, where they point out
that it is so ancient that the very name of law was only known by the oldest
nation more than a thousand years afterwards; so that Homer, who has written
the history of so many states, has never used the term. And it is easy to
judge of its perfection by simply reading it; for we see that it has
provided for all things with so great wisdom, equity, and judgement, that
the most ancient legislators, Greek and Roman, having had some knowledge of
it, have borrowed from it their principal laws; this is evident from what
are called the Twelve Tables, and from the other proofs which Josephus
gives.
But this law is at the same time the severest and strictest of all in
respect to their religious worship, imposing on this people, in order to
keep them to their duty, a thousand peculiar and painful observances, on
pain of death. Whence it is very astonishing that it has been constantly
preserved during many centuries by a people, rebellious and impatient as
this one was; while all other states have changed their laws from time to
time, although these were far more lenient.
The book which contains this law, the first of all, is itself the most
ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod, and others, being six or
seven hundred years later.
621. The creation of the deluge being past, and God n
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