es of a pantomime; the words were
adapted to the gestures, and the slightest error or neglect in the
forms of proceeding was sufficient to annul the substance of the fairest
claim. The communion of the marriage-life was denoted by the necessary
elements of fire and water; [49] and the divorced wife resigned the
bunch of keys, by the delivery of which she had been invested with the
government of the family. The manumission of a son, or a slave, was
performed by turning him round with a gentle blow on the cheek; a work
was prohibited by the casting of a stone; prescription was interrupted
by the breaking of a branch; the clinched fist was the symbol of a
pledge or deposit; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence.
The indenture of covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were
introduced into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament was
sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments, and to
leap or dance with real or affected transport. [50] If a citizen pursued
any stolen goods into a neighbor's house, he concealed his nakedness
with a linen towel, and hid his face with a mask or basin, lest he
should encounter the eyes of a virgin or a matron. [51] In a civil
action the plaintiff touched the ear of his witness, seized his
reluctant adversary by the neck, and implored, in solemn lamentation,
the aid of his fellow-citizens. The two competitors grasped each other's
hand as if they stood prepared for combat before the tribunal of the
praetor; he commanded them to produce the object of the dispute; they
went, they returned with measured steps, and a clod of earth was cast
at his feet to represent the field for which they contended. This occult
science of the words and actions of law was the inheritance of the
pontiffs and patricians. Like the Chaldean astrologers, they announced
to their clients the days of business and repose; these important
trifles were interwoven with the religion of Numa; and after the
publication of the Twelve Tables, the Roman people was still enslaved
by the ignorance of judicial proceedings. The treachery of some
plebeian officers at length revealed the profitable mystery: in a more
enlightened age, the legal actions were derided and observed; and the
same antiquity which sanctified the practice, obliterated the use and
meaning of this primitive language. [52]

[Footnote 49: Scaevola, most probably Q. Cervidius Scaevola; the master
of Papinian consider