which had never been dreamed of by the
compilers of the Twelve Tables and which were in truth rarely or never
to be found there. All these treatises of the jurisconsults claimed
respect on the ground of their assumed conformity with the Code, but
their comparative authority depended on the reputation of the
particular jurisconsults who gave them to the world. Any name of
universally acknowledged greatness clothed a Book of Responses with a
binding force hardly less than that which belonged to enactments of
the legislature; and such a book in its turn constituted a new
foundation on which a further body of jurisprudence might rest. The
Responses of the early lawyers were not however published, in the
modern sense, by their author. They were recorded and edited by his
pupils, and were not therefore in all probability arranged according
to any scheme of classification. The part of the students in these
publications must be carefully noted, because the service they
rendered to their teacher seems to have been generally repaid by his
sedulous attention to the pupils' education. The educational treatises
called Institutes or Commentaries, which are a later fruit of the duty
then recognised, are among the most remarkable features of the Roman
system. It was apparently in these Institutional works, and not in the
books intended for trained lawyers, that the jurisconsults gave to the
public their classifications and their proposals for modifying and
improving the technical phraseology.

In comparing the Roman Responsa Prudentum with their nearest English
counterpart, it must be carefully borne in mind that the authority by
which this part of the Roman jurisprudence was expounded was not the
_bench_, but the _bar_. The decision of a Roman tribunal, though
conclusive in the particular case, had no ulterior authority except
such as was given by the professional repute of the magistrate who
happened to be in office for the time. Properly speaking, there was no
institution at Rome during the republic analogous to the English
Bench, the Chambers of Imperial Germany, or the Parliaments of
Monarchical France. There were magistrates indeed, invested with
momentous judicial functions in their several departments, but the
tenure of the magistracies was but for a single year, so that they are
much less aptly compared to a permanent judicature than to a cycle of
offices briskly circulating among the leaders of the bar. Much might
be said on