d to the _leges populi_, or laws proposed by the consul and passed
by the centuries, the _plebiscita_, or laws proposed by the tribunes
and passed by the tribes, and the _senatus consulta,_ or decrees of the
senate, gradually swelled the laws to a great number. Three thousand
engraved plates of brass containing these various laws were deposited in
the capitol.

Subtleties and fictions were in the course of litigations introduced by
the lawyers to defeat the written statutes, and jurisprudence became
complicated as early as the time of Cicero. Even the opinions of eminent
lawyers were adopted by the legal profession as authoritative, and were
recognized by the courts. The evils of a complicated jurisprudence were
so evident in the seventh century of the city, that Q. Mucius Scaevola,
a great lawyer, when consul, published a scientific elaboration of the
civil law. Cicero studied law under him, and his contemporaries, Varus
and Aelius Gallus, wrote learned treatises, from which extracts appear
in the Digest made under the Emperor Justinian, 528 A.D. Julius Caesar
contemplated a complete revision of the laws, but did not live long
enough to carry out his intentions. His legislation, so far as he
directed his mind to it, was very just. Among other laws established by
him was one which ordained that creditors should accept lands as payment
for their outstanding debts, according to the value determined by
commissioners. In his time the relative value of money had changed, and
was greatly diminished. The most important law of Augustus, deserving of
all praise, was that which related to the manumission of slaves; but he
did not interfere with the social relations of the people after he had
deprived them of political liberty. He once attempted, by his _Lex
Julia_, to counteract the custom which then prevailed, of abstaining
from legal marriage and substituting concubinage instead, by which the
free population declined; but this attempt to improve the morals of the
people met with such opposition from the tribes and centuries that the
next emperor abolished popular assemblies altogether, which Augustus had
feared to do. The senate in the time of the emperors, composed chiefly
of lawyers and magistrates, and entirely dependent upon them, became the
great fountain of law. By the original constitution the people were the
source of power, and the senate merely gave or refused its approbation
to the laws proposed; but under the emperor