“Origins of the Just War” reveals the incredible richness and complexity of ethical thought about war in the three millennia preceding the Greco-Roman period, establishing the extent to which ancient just war thought prefigured much of what we now consider to be the building blocks of the Western just war tradition. 

In this book, Rory Cox traces the earliest ideas concerning the complex relationship between war, ethics and justice. He shows that the history of the just war is considerably more ancient and geographically diffuse than previously assumed.