of the legal and the moral in
juristic thinking which was characteristic of the classical Roman law.
But the strict law obviously was indifferent to morals and in many
vital points was quite at variance with the moral ideas of the time.
The Greek distinction of just by nature and just by convention or
enactment was suggested at once by such a situation. Moreover the
forms of law at the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the
Empire invited a theory of law as something composite, made up of more
than one type of precept and resting immediately on more than one
basis of authority.

Cicero enumerates seven forms of law. Three of these are not heard of
thereafter in Roman juristic writing. Evidently already in Cicero's
time they belonged to the past and had ceased to be effective forms of
the actual law. The four remaining, namely, statutes, resolutions of
the senate, edicts of the magistrates, and the authority of those
learned in the law, come to three--legislation, administrative edicts,
and juristic reasoning on the basis of the legal tradition. And these
correspond to the three elements which made up the law. First, there
was the _ius ciuile_: the Twelve Tables, subsequent legislation,
interpretation of both, and the traditional law of the city. Second,
there was the mass of rules, in form largely procedural, which was
contained in the edicts. The growing point of the law had been here
and to some extent growth was still going on through this means.
Indeed this part of the law reached its final form under Hadrian.
Third, there were the writings of the jurisconsults. The growing point
of the law had begun to be here and this was the most important form
of law in the classical period from Augustus to the third century.
This part of the law got its final form in the Digest of Justinian.
Of the three elements, the first was thought of originally as declared
and published custom. Later it was thought of as resting on the
authority of the state. It was obviously local and peculiar to Rome.
In form it rested on the legislative power of the Roman people,
supplemented by a mere interpretation of the legislative command with
only the authority of customary acceptance. In Greek phrase it rested
on convention and enactment. The second purported to be the rules
observed by civilized peoples, and on points of commercial law may
well have been an approximation thereto. Apart from this, however,
according to ancient ideas of