266 PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



actions used were superposed. For of the judges, who &quot; sat 

 only on days fixed by the secret calendar of the Pontiffs,&quot; it 

 is said that &quot; they did not admit the litigants to set forth 

 simply the matters in dispute; mysterious formulae, gest 

 ures, and actions were necessary.&quot; In further evidence of 

 this priestly character of the judicial administration is the 

 following statement of Professor &quot;W. A. Hunter : 



u Pomponius, in his brief account of the history of Roman Law, 

 informs us that the custody of the XII Tables, the exclusive knowl 

 edge of the forms of procedure (legis actiones), and the right of inter 

 preting the law, belonged to the College of Pontiffs.&quot; 

 And Mommsen tells us in other w r ords the same thing. 



But while we here see, as we saw in the cases of other 

 early peoples, that the priest, intimately acquainted with the 

 injunctions of the god, and able to get further intimations 

 of his will, consequently became the fountain of law, and 

 therefore the judge respecting breaches of law, we do not 

 find evidence that in ancient Rome, any more than in 

 Greece, Egypt, or Palestine, the advocate was of priestly 

 origin. Contrariwise we find evidence that among these 

 early civilized peoples, as at the present time among some 

 peoples who have become civilized enough to have legal 

 procedures, the advocate is of lay origin. Marsden says that 

 in Sumatra 



&quot;the plaintiff and defendant usually plead their own cause, but if 

 circumstances render them unequal to it, they are allowed to pinjam 

 mulut (borrow a mouth). Their advocate may be a proattin, or other 

 person indifferently; nor is there any stated compensation for the as 

 sistance, though, if the cause be gained, a gratuity is generally given.&quot; 

 So, too, from Parkyns we learn that the Abyssinians have a 

 sort of lawyer merely &quot; an ordinary man, with an extra 

 ordinary gift of the gab. These men are sometimes em 

 ployed by the disputants in serious cases, but not invari 

 ably.&quot; Indeed it must everywhere have happened in early 

 stages when litigants usually stated their respective cases, 

 that sometimes one or other of them asked a friend to state 

 his case for him; and a spokesman who became noted for 



