The purpose of this essay is to explain what crime and punishment was like in the ancient world. First, what must be clarified before progressing into the various types of crime and punishment in the ancient worlds, is the definitions of crime and punishment. In the historical time period punishment was defined according to Mitchel P. Roth, the author of An Eye For An Eye, as “a penalty imposed, usually by a state, on a offender who has violated a law.” On the other hand, there is no clear-cut definition to the term crime. Roth defines crime as a “legal concept, that is, what is or is not against the law.”
Why there is no clear definition for the term crime is because there were numerous societies and cultures that used crime and punishment in various ways such as by their cultural beliefs, a
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Another key point is that the Code not only introduces a set of punishments but for each of the three classes in Babylonian society. The seriousness of the punishment depend on the class of the victim and the offender. Babylonia was not the only society to give punishment by status, ancient Indian, Law of Manu, punished those in way of caste system. The Brahmins who were the upper-caste were normally fined for punishment and even escaped from it. On the opposite end of the caste system the Shudra, who are the lower-caste, would have harsher punishments for the simplest offenses. For instance, if a Shudra was to have injured a Brahmin, then the Shudra would have the limb used to assault the Brahmin amputated off. Throughout Asian culture the Tang dynasty was another who practice crime and punishment according to status. It seems that according to Roth that an abounding number of ancient civilizations used status quote as a way to determine which group of people should have extreme punishment or only having to compensate instead of facing physical