eminent jurists, and from whose writings there are 345 extracts in the Digest, was a pupil of Ulpian Modestinus, whom he cities as egregius," one of the mem- A.D. 180–245. bers of Alexander Severus' council, and a L. 2, § 5, D. (xxvi. 6). teacher of law to the younger Macrinus. The five jurists of whom a brief account has just been given have been selected out of a long list, solely to exhibit characteristic specimens of the sort of influences under which Roman law was moulded into its most complete shape. The fact that the writings of these jurists alone contributed the larger portion of Justinian's Digest and were the basis of his Institutes is, of itself, sufficient to arrest attention on behalf of their names and biographies. The biographical incidents, which have been above recited in the lives of each of them, help to throw a great deal of light on the sort and direction of the forces which, in their day, were operating on Roman law. All but Gaius held high offices in the State, and generally enjoyed the personal confidence of the reigning emperor and his family. They are all represented as either professional teachers of law, or they published treatises of a strictly educational character. They are generally described as men of great moral worth as well as intellectual eminence, and some facts in their lives as well as their surviving works certainly justify this description. Lastly, they combined all the qualifications needed. to construct a dominant and lasting school of legal thought. They were in active intellectual sympathy with each other; they were historical without being antiquarian in their conceptions; they were severely logical without being unaware of the limits within which formal logic is alone applicable to legal and ethical notions; and they were never indifferent to the claims of abstract justice, even when those claims had, for the moment, to give way to the demands of positive legislation, inveterate usage, or voluntary agreement. Thus the great race of jurists, of which the five commemorated are the most notable members, had all the capacity, in their personal endowments, needed for build D Pr. D. ad ing up a comprehensive, exact, and skilfully adjusted, legal system as writers, they had all the disposition to communicate their ideal not only to their own generation, but to the next; and as active statesmen, in the constant employ of a government which reposed complete confidence in them, they had all the opportunity as well as the impulse to impress their conceptions on the law of the empire. Thus, when we are told in Justinian's preface to his Digest that, in the great legal schools of the Antecessores. empire, it was, in his day, the fashion to devote out of the five years' course the greater part of one (the third) year to the study of the writings of Papinian, and of another (the fourth) year to those of Paulus, while the Institutes of Gaius formed the subject of the first year, we are rather interested to discover the eagerness with which the influence of the great masters of law was perpetuated and economized for more than three hundred years than surprised at the otherwise remarkable continuity which Roman law exhibited during that long period. § 3-The Period from the Era of Modestinus (A.D. 245) to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 563). During the three hundred years which intervened be tween the era of Modestinus, who is usually reckoned as the latest of the great race of jurists, and that of Justinian, the main influences which directly affected the formation of the "common law" of Rome were those due, first to systematic legal education; and, secondly, to the public authorization given by the government from time to time to the writings of former jurists. Heinecc. L. 1, § 361, Hist. Jur. Rom. Before the end of the third century the school at Berytus, in Syria, was already celebrated, and though it was more than once destroyed by an earthquake and the school dispersed, yet it survived till the time of Justinian as one of the three great legal schools of the empire. Rome and Constantinople are specially mentioned as con L. I, Cod. Th. (xiv. 9). taining academies for the pursuit of "liberal studies" in a But it is from the remarkable preface (already cited) which Justinian addresses, at the commencement of his Digest, to the legal professors of his day that the state of legal education then and previously can best be understood. In criticising the subjects and mode of teaching in the five years' legal course, Justinian chiefly complains of the partial, irregular, and unsystematic training that was given in the successive years; and he evidently considers (what is obvious enough from other indications) that one use which his Institutes, Digest and Code will serve will be that of supplying, each in its turn, the special sort of instruction needed at the corresponding stage. He clearly is of opinion, also, that legal education was suffering from a too narrow-minded adhesion to a very few popular models, and that this fault would be corrected by the wider view of legal writers which his Digest had opened out. It is thus plain that, during the previous three hundred years, all that a highly organized legal education could do, in the chief capital cities, to advance the strict logical progress of law in the grooves which the Antonine jurists had prescribed for it, was abundantly done-even in excess. Justinian, indeed, in confining the public teaching of law ᄂ to the cities of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus, and disallowing such teaching in Alexandria and Cæsarea, assigns, as grounds for his protective policy, reasons which had no doubt silently operated long before his time. He alleges that in Alexandria and Cæsarea, and other cities incompetent persons were dispersed about, and communicated "adulterated doctrines" to their disciples. Should they repeat their offence, they are threatened with the penalty of a fine and of being ejected from the Antecess. § 7. city in which "they do not teach but break the laws." Con. ad. With respect to the methods of legal education as bearing on the progress of law, it is observable that (as appears from Justinian's preface) a considerable part of it consisted in committing the very words of eminent legal writers to heart. The lecturer seems, in fact, to have dealt out from time to time particular parts of the written law (as of the Prætor's "Perpetual Edict") or of the treatise of a wellknown writer, selecting always the parts which were neither obsolete nor unsuited for students. The want of printed books rendered this course necessary; and the habit of thus learning law largely by rote no doubt had its influence on the mind of lawyers and on the form of the law as they cited and argued from it. It would always have a tendency to become neat and aphoristic, and even what is called sing-song" and alliterative. The vast quantity of brief legal maxims existing in Roman law, as well as the extraordinary condensation of style in which it is always expressed, give considerable colour to this theory of the influence of recitative exercises. " During the period now under review, we are able to trace in the constitutions of the emperors the influence they exercised, by interposing their personal authority, in determining the measure of judicial credit which should be accorded to the writings of deceased jurists. The early constitution of Hadrian, already alluded to, by Gaius. 1, § 7. which he accorded the force of law to the opinions of publicly qualified lawyers may or may not have extended to the writings of lawyers who were deceased; but, any way, it was a precedent for applying, was not to be held to be qualified by the notes with which This class of imperial legislation, in which Papinian The actual mode in which the opinions of deceased jurists were worked into the legal system of the day, and qualified by the constantly appearing imperial constitutions, し |