ly saw; the material acts served to represent to them the right
that could not be seen.

=The Formalism of Roman Law.=--The Romans scrupulously respected their
ancient forms. In justice, as in religion, they obeyed the letter of
the law, caring nothing for its sense. For them every form was sacred
and ought to be strictly applied. In cases before the courts their
maxim was: "What has already been pronounced ought to be the law." If
an advocate made a mistake in one word in reciting the formula, his
case was lost. A man entered a case against his neighbor for having
cut down his vines: the formula that he ought to use contained the
word "arbor," he replaced it with the word "vinea," and could not win
his case.

This absolute reverence for the form allowed the Romans some strange
accommodations. The law said that if a father sold his son three
times, the son should be freed from the power of the father; when,
therefore, a Roman wished to emancipate his son, he sold him three
times in succession, and this comedy of sale sufficed to emancipate
him.

The law required that before beginning war a herald should be sent to
declare it at the frontier of the enemy. When Rome wished to make war
on Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who had his kingdom on the other side of
the Adriatic, they were much embarrassed to execute this formality.
They hit on the following: a subject of Pyrrhus, perhaps a deserter,
bought a field in Rome; they then assumed that this territory had
become territory of Epirus, and the herald threw his javelin on this
land and made his solemn declaration. Like all other immature peoples,
the Romans believed that consecrated formulas had a magical virtue.

=Jurisprudence.=--The Law of the Twelve Tables and the laws made after
them were brief and incomplete. But many questions presented
themselves that had no law for their solution. In these embarrassing
cases it was the custom at Rome to consult certain persons who were of
high reputation for their knowledge of questions of law. These were
men of eminence, often old consuls or pontiffs; they gave their advice
in writing, and their replies were called the Responses of the Wise.
Usually these responses were authoritative according to the respect
had for the sages. The emperor Augustus went further: he named some of
them whose responses should have the force of law. Thus Law began to
be a science and the men versed in law formulated new rules which
became obligatory. Th