s the _comitia_, or popular
assemblies, disappeared, and the senate passed decrees which had the
force of laws, subject to the veto of the Emperor. It was not until the
time of Septimus Severus and Caracalla (second century A.D.) that the
legislative action of the senate ceased, and the edicts and rescripts of
emperors took the place of all legislation.

The golden age of Roman jurisprudence was from the birth of Cicero to
the reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus, 222 A.D.; before this period
it was an occult science, confined to praetors, pontiffs, and patrician
lawyers. But in the latter days of the republic law became the
fashionable study of Roman youth, and eminent masters arose. The first
great lawyer who left behind him important works was Q. Mucius Scaevola,
who wrote a treatise in eighteen books on the civil law. "He was," says
Cicero, "the most eloquent of jurists and the most learned of orators."
This work, George Long thinks, had a great influence on contemporaries
and on subsequent jurists, who followed it as a model. It is the oldest
work from which there are any excerpts in the Digest.

Servius Sulpicius, the friend of Cicero and his fellow-student in
oratory, surpassed his teachers Balbus and Gallus, and was the equal in
reputation of the great Mucius Scaevola, the Pontifex Maximus, who said
it was disgraceful for a patrician and a noble to be ignorant of the law
with which he had to do. Cicero ascribes the great superiority of
Servius as a lawyer to the study of philosophy, which disciplined and
developed his mind, and enabled him to deduce his conclusions from his
premises with logical precision. He left behind him one hundred and
eighty treatises, and had numerous pupils, among whom A. Ofilius and
Alfenus Varus, Cato, Julius Caesar, Antony, and Cicero were great
lawyers. Labeo, in the time of Augustus, wrote four hundred books on
jurisprudence, spending six months in the year in giving instruction to
his pupils and in answering legal questions, and the other six months in
the country in writing books. Like all the great Roman jurists, he was
versed in literature and philosophy, and so devoted to his profession
that he refused political office. His rival Capito was equally learned
in all departments of the law, and left behind him as many treatises as
Labeo. These two jurists were the founders of celebrated schools, like
the ancient philosophers, and each had distinguished followers. Gaius,
who flou