sometimes
military. But when law became complicated, a class of men arose to
interpret it. These men were held in great honor, and reached by their
services the highest offices,--like Cicero and Hortensius. No
remuneration was given originally for forensic pleading beyond the
services which the client gave to a patron, but gradually the practice
of the law became lucrative. Hortensius, as well as Cicero, gained an
immense fortune; he had several villas, a gallery of paintings, a large
stock of wines, parks, fish-ponds, and aviaries. Cicero had villas in
all parts of Italy, a house on the Palatine with columns of Numidian
marble, and a fortune of twenty millions of sesterces, equal to eight
hundred thousand dollars. Most of the great statesmen of Rome in the
time of Cicero were either lawyers or generals. Crassus, Pompey, P.
Sextus, M. Marcellus, P. Clodius, Asinius Pollio, C. Cicero, M.
Antonius, Julius Caesar, Caelius, Brutus, Catullus, were all celebrated
for their forensic efforts. Candidates for the bar studied four years
under a distinguished jurist, and were required to pass a rigorous
examination. The judges were chosen from members of the bar, as well as
in later times the senators. The great lawyers were not only learned in
the law, but possessed great accomplishments. Varro was a lawyer, and
was the most learned man that Rome ever produced. But under the emperors
the lawyers were chiefly distinguished for their legal attainments, like
Paulus and Ulpian.

During this golden age of Roman jurisprudence many commentaries were
written on the Twelve Tables, the Perpetual Edict, the Laws of the
People, and the Decrees of the senate, as well as a vast mass of
treatises on every department of the law, most of which have perished.
The Institutes of Gaius, already mentioned, are the most valuable that
remain, and have thrown great light on some important branches
previously involved in obscurity. Their use in explaining the Institutes
of Justinian is spoken of very highly by Mackenzie, since the latter are
mainly founded on the long-lost work of Gaius. The great lawyers who
flourished from Trajan to Alexander Severus, like Gaius, Ulpian, Paulus,
Papinian, and Modestinus, had no successors who can be compared with
them, and their works became standard authorities in the courts of law.

After the death of Alexander Severus, 235 A.D., no great accession was
made to Roman law until Theodosius II., 438 A.D., caused the
con