248 HISTORY OF LAW 



a divine source, but no recognition of any connection between 

 the written command and a preexisting body of customary law to 

 which the written law was added. There is lacking also any con- 

 ception of law as the basis for subsequent development by inter- 

 pretation and exposition. 



Within the following three centuries, however, or at least before 

 the end of the Roman Republic, all of these elements of a system 

 Beginning f 1& W na d been added. The law became the subject of 

 of System methodical discussion by learned men who made it a spe- 

 among cial study. It was administered by praetors who an- 

 Romans. nounced in their annual edicts rules and principles not 

 directly derived from the written law, and which they would observe 

 in their administration of justice during their respective terms of 

 office. The praetor peregrinus was determining rights and obligations 

 of those not subject to the civil law which governed Roman citizens, 

 assuming the existence of customs and usages binding upon them 

 without any express enactment, and a method of trial had been 

 developed in which the rules of law applicable to the case were 

 expounded and a judicial determination of the facts was secured. 

 Whether we accept as satisfactory evidence of the existence of 

 scientific jurisprudence the republication from year to year by the 

 praetors in their annual edicts of the substantial portions of the 

 edicts of their predecessors, thus establishing the existence of what 

 may not improperly be termed judge-made law, or their propounding 

 by formulae to the judex of the question of fact to be ascertained in 

 order to determine the application in the particular case of rules of 

 law previously announced by a jurisconsult, or the compilation by 

 Sextus Aelius Paetus, Consul B. c. 197, of his Tripartita embodying 

 the Twelve Tables, the interpretation thereof by the Sacerdotal Col- 

 lege, and the forms of action appropriate for seeking legal remedies, 

 as the final evidence of the existence and recognition of a system 

 of law, we shall bring the starting-point of such a system within 

 the two centuries before the Christian era, and probably within the 

 earlier of these two centuries. 



It is not within the province of the present discussion to elaborate 

 the details of Roman jurisprudence, nor to comment upon the 

 Two Char- characteristics of property and personal rights which 

 acteristics. were recognized. But something ought to be said of cer- 

 tain legal conceptions peculiar to the Romans which have profoundly 

 influenced the historical development of law since their time. Of 

 these, two may be selected as of special importance: first, that the 

 Roman law was applicable only to Roman citizens, and second, that 

 there was a system of law described by them as the law of nature 

 furnishing a philosophical explanation for all human laws. The two 

 conceptions are related apparently only in this, that the recognition 



