In the Babylonian, King Hammurabi fashioned a compendium of 282 laws that set the standards of conduct and justice for his empire in ancient Mesopotamia. The commands covered everything from property rights and criminal behavior to slavery and divorce and promised brutal punishments. The code included more bizarre and gruesome forms of punishment. Under this system, if a man broke the bone of one of his equals, his own bone was broken in return. Capital crimes were dealt with their own unique and grisly death penalties. If a son and mother were caught committing incest, they were burned to death; if a pair of scheming lovers conspired to murder their spouse, both were impaled. Even relatively minor crimes could earn the offender a horrific fate. Such as, a child hitting their parent could be grounds to have their hand cut off. Hammurabi's code is one of the most famous examples of the law of retribution, a form of retaliatory justice commonly associated with the saying "an eye for an eye" The punishments were also different for those of varying wealth classes. The wealthy were usually just give...