ng_. Until the lex Domitia of 104 B.C. both pontifices and
augurs filled up their own colleges with persons whom they believed
qualified both by knowledge and disposition. Thus it would seem that
there was every chance that in that early Rome, where neither in family
nor State could anything be undertaken without some reference to the
religious authority, where the _pax deorum_ was the one essential object
of public and private life, a power might be developed apt one day not
only to petrify religion and stultify its worshippers, but thereby also
to cramp the energies of the community, acting as an obstacle to its
development within its walls and without. Had Roman law remained
entirely in the hands of this self-electing college, one of two things
must have happened: either that college would have become purely secular
in character, or the wonderful legal system that we still enjoy would
never have had space to grow up. But this was not to be; with the
publication of the XII. Tables a new era opens.

If we reject, as we conscientiously may, the latest attempts of
criticism to post-date the drawing up of the Tables,[567] and in fact to
destroy their historical value for us, what is their significance for
our present purpose? It is simply that in the middle of the fifth
century B.C. the pontifices lost a monopoly--ceased to be the sole
depositaries of the rules of law affecting the _pax deorum_, and that
new rules are being set down in writing, on the basis of old custom,
which more especially affect the relations between the human citizens.
For both the _ius divinum_ and the _ius civile_ are to be found in this
collection, but the latter is beginning to assert its independence. I
think we may say, without much hesitation, that this event, however
doubtful its traditional details, did actually save Rome from either of
the two consequences to which I alluded just now. The constitution
developed itself on lay and not on ecclesiastical lines, leaving the
pontifices other work to do, and Roman civil law was eventually able to
free itself from the trammels of the _ius divinum_.

But for another century the college still found abundant legal work to
do, for it was not likely that at Rome, the most conservative of all
city-states, it could be quickly set aside, or that the old ideas of law
could so speedily disappear. What then was this work?

When rules of civil law were written down, it was still necessary to
deal with them