llections of augural decrees and responses; (c)
_Decemvirorum_; (d) _Fratrum Arvalium_. Like the priests, the
magistrates also had similar notes, partly written by themselves, and
partly records of which they formed the subject. But practically nothing
is known of these _Commentarii Magistratuum_. Mention should also be
made of the _Commentarii Regum_, containing decrees concerning the
functions and privileges of the kings, and forming a record of the acts
of the king in his capacity of priest. They were drawn up in historical
times like the so-called _leges regiae_ (_jus Papirianum_), supposed to
contain the decrees and decisions of the Roman kings.

See the exhaustive article by A. von Premerstein in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Realencyclopadie_ (1901); Teuffel-Schwabe, _Hist. of Roman Lit._
(Eng. trans.), pp. 72, 77-79; and the concise account by H. Thedenat
in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquites_.

COMMENTRY, a town of central France, in the department of Allier, 42 m.
S.W. of Moulins by the Orleans railway. Pop. (1906) 7581. Commentry
gives its name to a coalfield over 5000 acres in extent, and has
important foundries and forges.

COMMERCE (Lat. _commercium_, from _cum_, together, and _merx_,
merchandise), in its general acceptation, the international traffic in
goods, or what constitutes the foreign trade of all countries as
distinct from their domestic trade.

In tracing the history of such dealings we may go back to the early
records found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Such a transaction as that of
Abraham, for example, weighing down "four hundred shekels of silver,
_current with the merchant_," for the field of Ephron, is suggestive of
a group of facts and ideas indicating an advanced condition of
commercial intercourse,--property in land, sale of land, arts of mining
and purifying metals, the use of silver of recognized purity as a common
medium of exchange, and merchandise an established profession, or
division of labour. That other passage in which we read of Joseph being
sold by his brethren for twenty pieces of silver to "a company of
Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery and
balm and myrrh to Egypt," extends our vision still farther, and shows us
the populous and fertile Egypt in commercial relationship with Chaldaea,
and Arabians, foreign to both, as intermediaries in their traffic,
generations before the Hebrew commonwealth was founded.

The first for