,
dealings that were free from every formula, from every national
prejudice, and were slowly developed and tried by the experience of
several centuries. And so it may be seen how contrary to reason the
ancient law was. "Strict law is the highest injustice," is a Roman
proverb. The praetors of the city set themselves to correct the ancient
law and to judge according to equity or justice. They came gradually
to apply to citizens the same rules that the praetor of the aliens
followed in his tribunal. For example, the Roman law ordained that
only relatives on the male side should be heirs; the praetor summoned
the relatives on the female side also to participate in the
succession.

The old law required that a man to become a proprietor must perform a
complicated ceremony of sale; the praetor recognized that it was
sufficient to have paid the price of the sale and to be in possession
of the property. Thus the Law of Nations invaded and gradually
superseded the Civil Law.

="Written Reason."=--It was especially under the emperors that the new
Roman law took its form. The Antonines issued many ordinances (edicts)
and re-scripts (letters in which the emperor replied to those who
consulted him). Jurisconsults who surrounded them assisted them in
their reforms. Later, at the beginning of the third century, under the
bad emperors as under the good, others continued to state new rules
and to rectify the old. Papinian, Ulpian, Modestinus, and Paullus were
the most noted of these lawyers; their works definitively fixed the
Roman law.

This law of the third century has little resemblance to the old Roman
law, so severe on the weak. The jurisconsults adopt the ideas of the
Greek philosophers, especially of the Stoics. They consider that all
men have the right of liberty: "By the law of nature all men are born
free," which is to say that slavery is contrary to nature. They also
admit that a slave could claim redress even against his master, and
that the master, if he killed his slave, should be punished as a
murderer. Likewise they protect the child against the tyranny of the
father.

It is this new law that was in later times called Written Reason. In
fact, it is a philosophical law such as reason can conceive for all
men. And so there remains no longer an atom of the strict and gross
law of the Twelve Tables. The Roman law which has for a long time
governed all Europe, and which today is preserved in part in the laws
of several