lain. It ceased to be extended by annual additions, and
henceforward the equity jurisprudence of Rome was developed by the
labours of a succession of great jurisconsults who fill with their
writings the interval between the reign of Hadrian and the reign of
Alexander Severus. A fragment of the wonderful system which they built
up survives in the Pandects of Justinian, and supplies evidence that
their works took the form of treatises on all parts of Roman Law, but
chiefly that of commentaries on the Edict. Indeed, whatever be the
immediate subject of a jurisconsult of this epoch, he may always be
called an expositor of Equity. The principles of the Edict had, before
the epoch of its cessation, made their way into every part of Roman
jurisprudence. The Equity of Rome, it should be understood, even when
most distinct from the Civil Law, was always administered by the same
tribunals. The Praetor was the chief equity judge as well as the great
common law magistrate, and as soon as the Edict had evolved an
equitable rule the Praetor's court began to apply it in place of or by
the side of the old rule of the Civil Law, which was thus directly or
indirectly repealed without any express enactment of the legislature.
The result, of course, fell considerably short of a complete fusion of
law and equity, which was not carried out till the reforms of
Justinian. The technical severance of the two elements of
jurisprudence entailed some confusion and some inconvenience, and
there were certain of the stubborner doctrines of the Civil Law with
which neither the authors nor the expositors of the Edict had ventured
to interfere. But at the same time there was no corner of the field of
jurisprudence which was not more or less swept over by the influence
of Equity. It supplied the jurist with all his materials for
generalisation, with all his methods of interpretation, with his
elucidations of first principles, and with that great mass of limiting
rules which are rarely interfered with by the legislator, but which
seriously control the application of every legislative act.

The period of jurists ends with Alexander Severus. From Hadrian to
that emperor the improvement of law was carried on, as it is at the
present moment in most continental countries, partly by approved
commentaries and partly by direct legislation. But in the reign of
Alexander Severus the power of growth in Roman Equity seems to be
exhausted, and the succession of jurisco