JUDGE AND LAWYER. 265 



called themistes, or utterances of the goddess Themis as the 

 mouthpiece of Zeus, shows that among the early Greeks, 

 as among other peoples, a law and a divine fiat were the 

 same thing. That systems of law were regarded as of super 

 natural origin, is also evidenced by the code of Lycurgus. 

 According to Ilase, the origin of his code was religious. &quot; A 

 declaration of the Delphic god contains the fundamental 

 principles of the measures by which he reconciled the rival 

 claims &quot; of the Spartans. That the non-development of a 

 legal class out of a priestly class followed from the lack of 

 development of the priestly class itself, seems in some meas 

 ure implied by the following extract from Thirlwall: 



The priestly office in itself involved no civil exemptions or disa 

 bilities, and was not thought to unfit the person who filled it for dis 

 charging the duties of a senator, a judge, or a warrior . . . But the 

 care of a temple often required the continual residence and presence 

 of its ministers.&quot; 



Possibly the rise of priest-lawyers, impeded by this local 

 fixity and by want of cooperative organization among priests, 

 may have been also impeded by the independence of the 

 Greek nature, which, unlike Oriental natures, did not read 

 ily submit to the extension of sacerdotal control over civil 

 affairs. 



How priestly and legal functions w T ere mingled among 

 the early Romans is shown by the two following extracts 

 from Duruy: 



The patricians &quot;held the priesthood and the auspices; they were 

 priests, augurs and judges, and they carefully hid from the eyes of the 

 people the mysterious formula of public worship and of jurisprudence.&quot; 



The &quot;servile attachment to legal forms [which characterized the 

 early Romans] came from the religious character of the law and from 

 the belief imposed by the doctrine of augury, that the least inad 

 vertence in the accomplishment of rites was sufficient to alienate the 

 goodwill of the gods!&quot; 



It seems probable, indeed, that legal procedure consisted in 

 part of ceremonies originally devotional, by which the god 

 Numa was to be propitiated, and that the complex symbolic 



