parenthesis in the life of man appears to have been lived, and all its painful experiences endured, not only without any adequate result, but with an almost total loss to posterity.

This misfortune is to be attributed partly to the despotism which immediately succeeded the rule of the consuls. The great deeds done in their day, and in the olden time before them, had not yet passed into history. The days of restriction followed, and, as might have been expected, the glories of consular freedom remained unsung in the hall of Augustus. More potent far than all the eloquence of the Ciceros and Catos of the republic, were the prætorian guards of the empire.

In the next place the lines of distinction between the bar and the forum were indistinct, and the dazzling displays in the latter left the more grave and sober ministrations of the former comparatively unnoticed. Hence contemporaneous history teaches us of the bar and its state only by implication, while the annalists of the empire were rather paid to forget than to remember, and were little disposed to peril their security by a very enthusiastic commemoration of men and measures with which the imperial despotism had so little sympathy.

So far as we can at present judge, the Roman bar appears to have been based originally upon the theory of dependence, not like ours upon the division of labor. As in the patriarchal state, the father was the patron and protector of his offspring, as in the feudal state the lord was protector of his vassal, so at Rome the patrician protected the plebeian, the patron his client.

The Roman society was divided into patricians and plebeians at the very outset of its history. The patricians were probably heads of families, under whom were formed the plebs, composed principally of their descendants and freed slaves. So that the titles "majores et minores gentes," would be synonymous with "old and new families." It is not improbable, also, that the patres, or fathers, coming from Etruria, here united with the plebs, or people of the country, into one people, but preserving or transmitting this original distinction by the aid of their political institutions.* The senators and officers of government, who till the revolt of the

Hugo, Hist. du droit Romain, xlii. See also Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. 1, p. 317; and Die Etrusker, von Karl Otfried Muller, etc.

people and appointment of tribunes to represent them, were elected entirely from the patricians, by their most unjustifiable monopolies, by exciting frequent wars to enhance the price of land-produce as well as money, got the plebeians deeply in their debt. The unnatural severity of the Roman law on the subject of violated contracts, and the enormous advantages enjoyed by the patricians over the plebeians, before the court, made it impossible for the latter unassisted to avoid absolute servitude. But it so happened that there were certain services performed by the plebeians, for which the patricians were very much beholden. When the government became more popular, this dependence was increased, by virtue of which circumstances the plebeians were enabled to secure the protection of the wealthier patricians, who sometimes, through honesty, often through jealousy of rival families, and more often through ambition, assumed the obligation of asserting and defending their rights.

It was partly owing to this connate dependence of the client upon his patrons, that we find the Roman lawyers almost exclusively of noble or gentle families, a fact to which we shall have occasion to allude hereafter. But soon after the promulgation of the laws of the Twelve Tables, a law against the intermarriage of the two classes above mentioned was abrogated, continual wars were thinning the ranks of the nobility, whose dissolute and licentious successors, preferring the freedom of the rake to the temperate pleasures dispensed by a rigid marriage code, were eventually to leave the places thus vacated unsupplied. At the same time the rights of citizens were coming more frequently into question, and laws were consequently becoming daily more nutnerous and complicated. Beside these gradual changes, the plebs were advancing to the privileges, no less than to the duties of their patrician predecessors. Ministers and interpreters of the law were more frequently required. Those who were skilful at the bar and eloquent of speech were naturally preferred. Hence originated the lawyers by profession.t But this result was not very perceptible until the later years of the republic. The Mucian family was its archetype.‡ There were very few plebeian lawyers even in the age of Cicero.

Tac. An. ii. 25.

+ Heinec. Antiq. Rom. Lib. i, Tit. 2. 29. One of the three brothers was preceptor of Cicero.

There were other guarantees or privileges, which protected this system of exclusiveness, besides the constitutional one already mentioned.

By the laws of the Twelve Tables, there were certain days called fasti, on which it was proper for the people to institute and defend legal prosecutions, and others called nefasti, when such transactions were forbidden. Beside which there were certain others called intercisi, when such business was proper, part of the day only. The frequent intercalary days in the Roman calendar made these qualified days come round at irregular intervals. Their number in process of time increased to such an extent that special officers were appointed to inform him "qui reum in jus vocabat," when it would be proper to commence his suit; and any proceeding instituted in violation of such officer's authority was voidable. As the pontifical college was filled almost exclusively by patricians till A. U. 454,* and until the expiration of the republic was under their control, it is apparent that the latter here retained a very great advantage over the plebeians, and of course on any occasion where their respective prerogatives came in question, were pretty sure to take the lion's share.t

In the next place, the mode of practice, or civil procedure, was buried under a set of absurd and intricate formulas, which were artfully and for state purposes kept carefully concealed from the plebeians. They consisted chiefly of certain symbolical gestures, adapted to a legal claim or defence, and prepared by Claudius Cocus, about the middle of the fifth century of Rome. Though afterwards privately published to the world, yet, to understand them always, required special preparation. These, or worse forms, were in existence and subjects of ridicule in the time of the empire.||

Such were, first, the principles of dependence in which the

* Livy, 10. 6.

The calendar of these days was afterwards discovered and published by an obscure plebeian, to the great relief of the people, who had endured so long. "Faslos publicavit, et actiones primum edidit." Liv. 9. 46. Hugo, Hist. du Droit, clxxxii. A. Gellius, 6. 9. Plin. 33. 186.

Sunt jura, sunt.

Formulæ de omnibus rebus constitutæ.-Cic. pro Quin. Rosc. com., 8. Cic. pro Muræna, 11. Suet. Aug. 88.

§ Gravina de ortu et progressu juris civilis, xl.

Absurd as these forms appear to us, they are quite as rational as many of our own legal fictions. Instances of Roman forms are collected in Gibbon, vol. iv. p. 158; Michelet's Hist. of Rome, in Appendix; Aulus Gellius, 20, 10; and Cic. pro Muræna, 12.

Roman bar originated, and such, secondly, the spirit to which its subsequent modifications were exposed. Composed mostly of the noble and the wealthy, its members were then, as every where and at all times, the conservatives of their age; but there they were also, as no where else and at no other time, a body of the most eloquent orators and accomplished gentlemen that the world has ever seen.

Of the mode of educating the Roman law students we know little, except by inference. During their first years they were kept usually under the charge of Greek masters, by whom they were instructed in grammar and rhetoric. Plotius opened the first Latin school of rhetoric, during the last half century preceding the birth of our Saviour. Cicero, yet in his youth, was very desirous of attending, but was overruled by his friends and advisers, who thought Greek instructors preferable for an aspirant to the bar, for which he was destined.* Greek instruction was almost universal. Scarcely a man is to be found in the age of Augustus who was not instructed by Greeks, abroad or at home. "At nunc infans delegatur Græcula alicui ancilla, etc.,"t is the language by which Tacitus publishes his contempt for the custom to bis contemporaries, and verifies the fact to his posterity.

At the age of about seventeen, they took the toga virilis, or, in other words, became of age.‡ This was an occasion of great joy to the candidates, and, among the wealthy, was accompanied with considerable display. Oftentimes divine rites were performed in the capitol, at which all the friends and relatives of the family assisted.

At this stage of their education they were usually placed under the charge of some distinguished lawyer, by whom they were introduced to the forum, where all the judicial proceedings were transacted, and under whose direction they prosecuted their professional studies. One must not imagine, however, from this, that they entered upon any such course. of legal study as awaits the almost desperate student of legal science in our day. In the time of Cicero, we presume, all the law which was worth the reading might have been comprised in any two volumes of Blackstone.

• Suetonius "De Claris Rhetoribus," c. 2.

+ Tac. de Causis, etc., 29.

Cicero took it at that age. Tacitus says, Nero received it from Claudius when he had just entered upon his fourteenth year, but before he was entitled to An. 12. 41.

it.

§ Cic. de Amicitiâ, 1. Gravina de ortu, etc., lix.

The leges regia, or earliest laws of Rome, which, fortunately, were nearly all burnt or lost; the laws of the twelve tables, the few senatus-consulta, a few plebiscita, and fewer responsa prudentum, of any authority, constituted the whole professional library of a Roman jurisconsult.

To achieve a complete mastery of this law was considered a trifling labor. Cicero professed himself, when only about twenty years of age, so well acquainted with its mysteries as to be able to sustain a dispute on any legal question with the greatest lawyers of his age.*

Antony, says he, never studied the civil law, nor was he sensible of any loss for not knowing it, although he was doing a very large business. He thought all the useful parts of the civil law, applicable to any one case, might be comprehended in a very short time. We may infer these facts substantially from the very early age at which the lawyer appeared at the bar, and sometimes, too, in suits of vast importance.

Caius Gracchus, before he was twenty, had completely established his reputation by his skilful defence of Vettius. Crassus distinguished himself by his prosecution of Carbo when he was only nineteen. Hortensius, who, for thirteen years, was, longo intervallo, at the head of the Roman bar and the successful rival of Cicero, appeared for one of the Roman provinces of Africa against its governors, at the age of nineteen. The cause was tried before Scævola and Crassus, as judges, the first of whom Cicero calls the most accomplished orator among lawyers, and the other, the most accomplished lawyer among orators. They quoted the conduct of Hortensius on that occasion many years afterwards with very marked approbation. His excellence, says Cicero, was im

Epis. ad fam., 7. 22. "Sed, O Dii immortales, non dicerem hoc, audiente Scævola, nisi ipse dicere voleret, nullius artis faciliorem sibi cognitionem videri." -Cic. de Orat. 1. 41. And again: Omnia (jura) enim sunt posita ante oculos, collocata in usu quotidiano, in congressione hominum atque in foro, et neque ita multis literis aut voluminibus magnis continentur."-Cic. de Orat. 1. 43.

+ Cic. de Orat. 1. 58.

* Ibid, 59.

Nono decimo ætatis anno L. Crassus C. Carbonem, uno et vicesimo Cæsar Dolabellam, altero et vicesimo Asinius Pollio C. Catonem, non multo ætate antecedens, Calvus Vatinium iis orationibus insequuti sunt quas hodieque cum admiratione legimus. Dialogus de Causis Corruptæ Eloquentiæ, 34.

#Ut eloquentium juris peritissimus Crassus, juris peritorum eloquentissimus Scævola putaretur.Cic. De Claris Orator. 39.