Lassa Oppenheim's Nine Lives

Oppenheim 's InternationalL aw. Edited by Sir Robert Jennings and Sir Arthur Watts. 9th ed. Vol. 1.

London: Longman, 1992. Pp. lxxxvi, 1333 (Cloth). Price: $617.00. Kazantzakis notwithstanding, there is something more than faintly incongruous in the very idea of "updating" Homer.

Or Hugo Grotius, for that matter. Great art endures for the ages. Great treatises, whether in law, medicine, or engineering, are distinctive because of the coherence of their organizing vision and the rigor and persuasiveness of the data they marshal. The data obsolesces, yet the power of the treatise's conception and the authority it comes to command impel others to attempt to bring the data up to date.