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III. THE ROMAN JUS GENTIUM AND MEDIEVAL LAW: RESPONSIBILITY OF THE COLLECTIVE In Roman law and other ancient legal systems, the relation between human beings and a state was very different. In his classic work on ancient law, Sir Henry Maine points out that the smallest unit of ancient society was the family and not the individual.59 Inside the family unit, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant, the individual was assigned a fixed status. From these basic units the state evolved in what Maine describes as “a system of concentric circles.”60 The elementary group is the Family, its aggregation forms the House, the aggregation of Houses evolves into Tribes, and the Tribes collectively form the Commonwealth.61 Thus, the entire society of the state was conceived of as a single unit when it interacted with another entity. It was not a collection of individuals living in a state, as the contemporary state is. This thinking is reflected in Roman thought about state responsibility that can be found in the Roman legal order dealing with international affairs—the jus gentium. The Romans never precisely defined the term jus gentium but referred to it as “the law observed by all mankind.”62 In fact, the term was used in different times to describe two distinct systems of law.63 On the one hand there is the jus gentium that Roman jurists developed since the early days of the Republic. It characterizes a branch of private law separate from the Roman jus civile. This naturalist legal order, which the Romans believed to emanate from natural reason present in every human being, was applied to determine the legal affairs involving both Romans and non-Romans.64 On the other hand, Roman writers, mainly historians, used the term jus gen