This is a thorough and scholarly treatment of a subject which owes much of its difficulty and at the same time of its interest to the fact that it lies upon the by no means scientific frontier between law and morality. The question as to the period at which informal transactions became actionable at Borne may, perhaps, always remain a debatable one, but whether we incline to an early or a relatively late date - and at the moment the current of opinion seems in favor of the latter - the subject of "infamia" will always be of interest in the history of Roman private law; for, as regulated by the censor, it seems to have been in many cases a substitute for and a precursor of a definite legal sanction. Its interest for the student of public law is even greater. -The English Historical Review