128 



became daily more iuconvenient and unfit for tlie more 

 complicated affairs. Then arose at the side of the old 

 law a new one -with more liberal principles, and the 

 whole juridical world was divided into two. The jm 

 honorarium was then created, and the principles of \hejus 

 gentium gained daily more ground from the stiff and cere- 

 monious jus civile. This division goes through all the 

 branches of the law, and established especially two 

 almost antagonistic principles for the two great pillars of 

 society — property and family. At the side of a quiritian 

 property a honitarian property arose, and the old marriage 

 by confarreatio, with its manus and patria potestas, was op- 

 posed by more libei'al forms of matrimony. Whether these 

 two principles, the struggle of which formed the history 

 of the Roman laws down to Justinian, germinated already 

 in the composition of the Roman community, so that the 

 Sabiuians introduced the grave, ceremonious, and religi- 

 ous element, and the livelier Latins brought the liberal, 

 progressing, and rational part with themselves ; or 

 whether the enlargement of the town and the immigra- 

 tion of foreigners alone originated the liberal principles, 

 which are already visible in the earliest days of Rome, is 

 now impossible to decide. Both these powers were very 

 likely at work to free Roman jurispi-udence from all nar- 

 row national forms, and make it the foundation of the 

 jurisprudence of the world. The more wrong Gibbon is, 

 Avhen he ascribes the change in the fomidation of the 

 Roman private law to the will of some Emperors. The 

 public law was, of course, changed and moulded by the 

 ■u^ll of the Emperors, who placed gradually despotic 

 institutions on the ruins of the republic ; but this change 

 was already, though cautiously, commenced by Augustus. 

 The private jurispriidence, on the contrary, imderwent a 

 gradual development, especially since the Twelve Tables 

 down to the great Justinian code ; and whatever change 



