confine within narrow limits the science of the
Roman law. On the public days of market or assembly, the masters of the
art were seen walking in the forum ready to impart the needful advice
to the meanest of their fellow-citizens, from whose votes, on a future
occasion, they might solicit a grateful return. As their years and
honors increased, they seated themselves at home on a chair or throne,
to expect with patient gravity the visits of their clients, who at the
dawn of day, from the town and country, began to thunder at their door.
The duties of social life, and the incidents of judicial proceeding,
were the ordinary subject of these consultations, and the verbal or
written opinion of the juris-consults was framed according to the rules
of prudence and law. The youths of their own order and family were
permitted to listen; their children enjoyed the benefit of more private
lessons, and the Mucian race was long renowned for the hereditary
knowledge of the civil law. The second period, the learned and splendid
age of jurisprudence, may be extended from the birth of Cicero to
the reign of Severus Alexander. A system was formed, schools were
instituted, books were composed, and both the living and the dead became
subservient to the instruction of the student. The tripartite of Aelius
Paetus, surnamed Catus, or the Cunning, was preserved as the oldest work
of Jurisprudence. Cato the censor derived some additional fame from his
legal studies, and those of his son: the kindred appellation of Mucius
Scaevola was illustrated by three sages of the law; but the perfection
of the science was ascribed to Servius Sulpicius, their disciple, and
the friend of Tully; and the long succession, which shone with equal
lustre under the republic and under the Caesars, is finally closed by
the respectable characters of Papinian, of Paul, and of Ulpian. Their
names, and the various titles of their productions, have been minutely
preserved, and the example of Labeo may suggest some idea of their
diligence and fecundity. That eminent lawyer of the Augustan age divided
the year between the city and country, between business and composition;
and four hundred books are enumerated as the fruit of his retirement. Of
the collection of his rival Capito, the two hundred and fifty-ninth book
is expressly quoted; and few teachers could deliver their opinions in
less than a century of volumes. In the third period, between the reigns
of Alexander and Justi