u law agrees with the
best authority that it was not founded on writing but "upon immemorial
customs which existed prior to and independent of Brahminism."[119] In
Greece the very nature of the _themistes_ shows that they were
judgments dependent upon traditional custom. In Rome it is the subject
of definite research that the "greater part of Roman law was founded
on the _mores majorum_."[120] In Scandinavia the law speaker was
obliged to recite the whole law within the period to which the tenure
of his office was limited.[121] The Celtic laws are based upon customs
handed down from remote antiquity,[122] and late down in English law
it was admitted as a principle that if oral declarations came into
conflict with written instruments the former had the more binding
authority.[123]

One of the means by which this sacred tradition was preserved was
through the medium of rhythm and verse. Thus, as Sir Henry Maine
explains,

"The law book of Manu is in verse, and verse is one of
the expedients for lessening the burden which the
memory has to bear when writing is unknown or very
little used. But there is another expedient which
serves the same object. This is Aphorism or Proverb.
Even now in our own country much of popular wisdom is
preserved either in old rhymes or in old proverbs, and
it is well ascertained that during the middle ages
much of law, and not a little of medicine, was
preserved among professions, not necessarily clerkly,
by these two agencies."[124]

In Greece the same word, [Greek: nomos], was used for custom and law
as for song. The [Greek: rhetra] (declared law) of Sparta and Taras
was in verse; the laws of Charondas were sung as [Greek: skolia] at
Athens,[125] and Strabo refers to the Mazacenes of Cappadocia as using
the laws of Charondas and appointing some person to be their
law-singer ([Greek: nomodos]), who is among them the declarer of the
laws.[126]

Sir Francis Palgrave, noticing the same characteristic of Teutonic
law, says:--

"It cannot be ascertained that any of the Teutonic
nations reduced their customs into writing, until the
influence of increasing civilisation rendered it
expedient to depart from their primeval usages; but an
aid to the recollection was often afforded as amongst
the Britons, by poetry or by the condensation of the
maxim or principle in proverbial or antithetic