it brings
us nearer the ideas of the modern world, must obviously have altered
fundamentally the characteristics of the legal profession and the
nature of its influence on Roman law. At a later period another
school of jurisconsults arose, the great lights of jurisprudence for
all time. But Ulpian and Paulus, Gaius and Papinian, were not authors
of Responses. Their works were regular treatises on particular
departments of the law, more especially on the Praetor's Edict.

The _Equity_ of the Romans and the Praetorian Edict by which it was
worked into their system, will be considered in the next chapter. Of
the Statute Law it is only necessary to say that it was scanty during
the republic, but became very voluminous under the empire. In the
youth and infancy of a nation it is a rare thing for the legislature
to be called into action for the general reform of private law. The
cry of the people is not for change in the laws, which are usually
valued above their real worth, but solely for their pure, complete,
and easy administration; and recourse to the legislative body is
generally directed to the removal of some great abuse, or the decision
of some incurable quarrel between classes and dynasties. There seems
in the minds of the Romans to have been some association between the
enactment of a large body of statutes and the settlement of society
after a great civil commotion. Sylla signalised his reconstitution of
the republic by the Leges Corneliae; Julius Caesar contemplated vast
additions to the Statute Law; Augustus caused to be passed the
all-important group of Leges Juliae; and among later emperors the most
active promulgators of constitutions are princes who, like
Constantine, have the concerns of the world to readjust. The true
period of Roman Statute Law does not begin till the establishment of
the empire. The enactments of the emperors, clothed at first in the
pretence of popular sanction, but afterwards emanating undisguisedly
from the imperial prerogative, extend in increasing massiveness from
the consolidation of Augustus's power to the publication of the Code
of Justinian. It will be seen that even in the reign of the second
emperor a considerable approximation is made to that condition of the
law and that mode of administering it with which we are all familiar.
A statute law and a limited board of expositors have risen into being;
a permanent court of appeal and a collection of approved commentaries
will very