diously transfused into the domestic institutions of Europe,* and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or obedience of independent nations. Wise or fortunate is the prince who connects his own reputation with the honour and interest of a perpetual order of men. The defence of their founder is the first cause, which in every age has exercised the zeal and industry of the civilians. They piously commemorate his virtues; dissemble or deny his failings; and fiercely chastise the guilt or folly of the rebels who presume to sully the majesty of the purple. The idolatry of love has provoked, as it usually happens, the rancour of opposition; the character of Justinian has been exposed to the blind vehemence of flattery and invective, and the injustice of a sect (the Anti-Tribonians) has refused attention of German jurists. In 1789, Professor Hugo published a translation of it, with original notes, and in 1821 appeared another by Professor Warnkönig. Hugo says that Gibbon's form of quotation is most convenient for unprofessional men; but that for German lawyers, who must appear to know, at least, the Pandects and Institutes by heart, their mode of citing is the best.-ED.]

*

Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Scotland, have received them as common law or reason; in France, Italy, &c. they possess a direct or indirect influence; and they were respected in England, from Stephen to Edward I, our national Justinian, (Duck, de Usû et Auctcritate Juris Civilis, 1. 2, c. 1, 8-15. Heineccius, Hist. Juris Ger manici, c. 3, 4. No. 55-124) and the legal historians of each country. [It has been disputed in France, whether the Roman law was founded on positive edicts or only raison écrite. In Germany the latest of Justinian's enactments supersede the older.-HUGO.] [There were none but imperfect treatises on Roman law in Gibbon's time. That of Arthur Duck is very trifling. More light has been thrown on it by the interesting researches of Sarti, Tiraboschi, Fantuzzi, Savioli, and M. de Savigny. It was always preserved from the time of Justinian, but the Glossators, by their unwearied ardour, made it known throughout Europe.-WARNKÖNIG.] [The Italian jurists, who first wrote on Roman law, were called "Glossatores," Explainers or Interpreters, from the title of "Glossæ," which Bulgarus, the leader of them, gave to his book De Jure Civili. He, together with Jacobus Bononiensis, who had the cognomen of "the Old Glossator," and Ugolino à Porta, another of them, were employed by the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, as his legal advocates at Roncaglia in 1158, to support his claims on Italy. This gave them and their studies greater importance. Mr. Hallam informs us (Middle Ages, vol. iii, p. 513-520), that early in the twelfth century, Guarnarius opened a school of civil law at Bologna, and the Glossators were his pupils. But Mr. Hallam declined "to dwell on the forgotten teachers of a science that is likely soon to be farotten."-ED.]

all praise and merit to the prince, his ministers, and his laws. * Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and candour of history, and directed by the most temperate and skilful guides,† I enter with just diffidence on the subject of civil law, which has exhausted so many learned lives, and clothed the walls of such spacious libraries. In a single, if possible in a short chapter, I shall trace the Roman jurisprudence from Romulus to Justinian, appreciate the labours of that emperor, and pause to contemplate the principles of a science so important to the peace and happiness of society. The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history; and, although I have devoted myself to write the annals of a declining monarchy, I shall embrace the occasion to breathe the pure and invigorating air of the republic.

The primitive government of Rome§ was composed, with

* Francis Hotoman, a learned and acute lawyer of the sixteenth century, wished to mortify Cujacius, and to please the Chancellor de l'Hôpital. His Anti-Tribonianus (which I have never been able to procure), was published in French in 1609: and his sect was propagated in Germany. (Heineccius, Opp. tom. iii, sylloge 3, p. 171-183.)

+ At the head of these guides I shall respectfully place the learned and perspicuous Heineccius, a German professor, who died at Halle in the year 1741 (see his Eloge in the Nouvelle Bibliothèque Germanique, tom. ii, p. 51-64). His ample works have been collected in eight volumes in 4to. Geneva, 1743-1748. The treatises which I have separately used are, 1. Historia Juris Romani et Germanici, Lugd. Batav. 1740, in 8vo. 2. Syntagma Antiquatatum Romanam Jurisprudentiam Illustrantium, 2 vols. in 8vo. Traject. ad Rhenum. 3. Elementa Juris Civilis secundum Ordinem Institutionum, Lugd. Bat. 1751, in 8vo. 4. Elementa J. C. secundum Ordinem Pandectarum, Traject. 1772, in 8vo. 2 vols. [Heineccius had the merit of bringing into notice the works of French and Dutch jurists. Bach is excellent when he exposes prevailing errors.-HUGO.] [Not being himself a lawyer, Gibbon could only be guided by the opinions of the writers whose authority then stood the highest. Heineccius was reputed to have studied deeply the Roman law; but he knew nothing more of it than what he had gathered from the compilations of others. Gibbon was thus betrayed into errors, which we have now the means of correcting. Yet none but a pen like his can impart to those more accurate acquisitions, the lustre, force, and vivacity, with which he has invested the opinions of Heineccius and his contemporaries. -WARNKÖNIG.]

Our original text is a fragment de Origine Juris (Pandect. I. 1, tit. 2) of Pomponius, a Roman lawyer, who lived under the Antonines. (Heinecc. tom. iii, syll. 3, p. 66-126.) It has been abridged and probably corrupted, by Tribonian, and since restored by Bynkershoek. Opp. tom. i, p. 279-304.) § The constitutional

some political skill, of an elective king, a council of nobles, ana a general assembly of the people. War and religion were administered by the supreme magistrate: and he alone proposed the laws, which were debated in the senate, and finally ratified or rejected by a majority of votes in the thirty curiæ or parishes of the city. Romulus, Numa, and Servius Tullius, are celebrated as the most ancient legislators; and each of them claims his peculiar part in the threefold division of Jurisprudence. The laws of marriage, the education of children, and the authority of parents, which may seem to draw their origin from nature itself, are ascribed to the untutored wisdom of Romulus. The law of nations and of religious worship, which Numa introduced, was derived from his nocturnal converse with the nymph Egeria. The civil law is attributed to the experience of Servius; he balanced the rights and fortunes of the seven classes of citizens; and guarded, by fifty new regulations, the observ ance of contracts and the punishment of crimes. The state, which he had inclined towards a democracy, was changed by the last Tarquin into lawless despotism; and when the kingly office was abolished, the patricians engrossed the benefits of freedom. The royal laws became odious or obsolete; the mysterious deposit was silently preserved by the priests and nobles; and, at the end of sixty years, the citizens of Rome still complained that they were ruled by the arbitrary sentence of the magistrates. Yet the positive institutions of the kings had blended themselves with the public and private manners of the city; some fragments

history of the kings of Rome may be studied in the first book of Livy, and more copiously in Dionysius Halicarnassensis (1. 2, p. 83---96. 119 -130; 1. 4, p. 198-220), who sometimes betrays the character of a rhetorician and a Greek. [On this subject the writings of Beaufort, Niebuhr, and Wachsmuth should be consulted. WARNKÖNIG.] [Beaufort's "Dissertation sur l'Incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l'Histoire Romaine," came out in 1738, and his République Romaine, which was from the first highly appreciated, in 1766. They are both quoted by Gibbon. Niebuhr (Lectures, 1, p. 3 and 72) acknowledges Beaufort's work to be "the basis of all that has since been advanced on the same subject."-ED.]

* This threefold division of the law was applied to the three Roman kings by Justus Lipsius (Op. tom. iv, p. 279), is adopted by Gravina (Origines Juris Civilis, p. 28, edit. Lips. 1737), and is reluctantly admitted by Mascou, his German editor. [The Jus Gentium refers to the gentes of the Romans, who were divisions of their own people.

of that venerable jurisprudence were compiled by the diligence of antiquarians,† and above twenty texts still speak the rudeness of the Pelasgic idiom of the Latins.‡

See Niebuhr's Lectures, 1, p. 156-161. But Hugo objects to this classification of the Roman law, and says that it can scarcely be regarded as a serious suggestion.-ED.]

The most ancient code or digest was styled Jus Papirianum, from the first compiler, Papirius, who flourished somewhat before or after the Regifugium. (Pandect. 1. 1, tit. 2.) The best judicial critics, even Bynkershoek (tom. i, p. 284, 285) and Heineccius (Hist. J. C. R. 1. 1, c. 16, 17, and Op. tom. viii, sylloge 4, p. 1-8), give credit to this tale of Pomponius, without sufficiently adverting to the value and rarity of such a monument of the third century of the illiterate city. I much suspect that the Caius Papirius, the Pontifex Maximus, who revived the laws of Numa (Dionys. Hal. 1. 3, p. 171), left only an oral tradition; and that the Jus Papirianum of Granius Flaccus (Pandect. 1. 50, tit. 16, leg. 144), was not a commentary, but an original work, compiled in the time of Cæsar. (Censorin. de Die Natali, 1. 3, p. 13. Duker, de Latinitate J. C. p. 157.) [The unimportant fragments which we possess of the Jus Papirianum, as well as of the Commentary on it, cannot be made serious subjects of discussion. The latter, also, according to Censorinus, as above cited, treated chiefly "De Indigitamentis." Varro, as quoted by Servius in his note on Virgil (Georg. 1. 21), says that these were the Libri Pontificales in which were prescribed the forms of offering sacrifices and invoking the gods.-ED.]

A pompous, though feeble, attempt to restore the original, is made in the Histoire de la Jurisprudence Romaine of Terasson, p. 22-72. Paris, 1750, in folio; a work of more promise than performance.

In the year 1444, seven or eight tables of brass were dug up between Cortona and Gubio. A part of these, for the rest is Etruscan, represents the primitive state of the Pelasgic letters and language, which are ascribed by Herodotus to that district of Italy (1. 1, c. 56— 58), though this difficult passage may be explained of a Crestona in Thrace. (Notes de Larcher, tom. i, p. 256-261.) The savage dialect of the Eugubine tables has exercised, and may still elude, the divination of criticism; but the root is undoubtedly Latin, of the same age and character as the Saliare Carmen, which, in the time of Horace. none could understand. The Roman idiom, by an infusion of Doric and Aolic Greek, was gradually ripened into the style of the twelve tables, of the Duillian column, of Ennius, of Terence, and of Cicero. (Gruter, Inscript. tom. i, p. 142, Scipion Maffei, Istoria Diplomatica, p. 241-258. Bibliothèque Italique, tom. iii, p. 30-41. 174—205; tom. xiv, p. 1-52.) [Eugubium, or Iguvium, was an ancient town of the Umbri, who became subject to Rome, A. U. c. 434, or 320 B. C.; the modern Gubbio now occupies its site. It is called Ikovina and Jovina, in the celebrated tables, which were discovered in a subterranean vault, by a peasant of the neighbouring village of La Schioggia. They are made of the purest copper, of different dimensions, from 1 to 24 feet in height, and from 1 to 1 broad. The inscriptions are very

I shall not repeat the well-known story of the decemvirs,* who sullied by their actions the honour of inscribing on brass, or wood, or ivory, the TWELVE TABLES of the Roman

distinctly and legibly engraven. These were long a mystery to the most learned. But within the last twenty years, German industry and skill have succeeded in furnishing an interpretation. O. Müller's "Die Etrusker" led the way, in 1828, to the first correct view of them. He was followed by Dr. R. Lepsius, whose treatise "De Tabulis Eugubinis was published at Berlin in 1833. In the same year came out at Bonn, Professor Lasser's, "Beiträge zur Deutung der Eugubinischen Tafeln." Next appeared G. F. Grotefend's "Rudimenta Linguæ Umbricæ ex Inscriptionibus Antiquis enodata." Hanov. 1835-1839 (in eight parts). Two years later, issued from the press of Leipzig, another work of Dr. Lepsius, entitled "Inscriptiones Umbricæ et Oscæ, quotquot adhuc repertæ sunt omnes." This last mentioned writer, who during a visit to Italy had inspected and copied these monuments of antiquity, supplied professors Ersch and Gruber with the article on them, which is inserted in their work (Allgem. Encyc. Part 39, p. 49). This contains the latest and most authentic explanation of what Gibbon, although so imperfectly understood, considered to be worthy of this particular notice. The subject matter of these inscriptions scarcely remunerates the la our bestowed on deciphering them. They merely record sacrifices offered to different deities, and the forms of prayer used on those occasions, varied by a single contract for a division of lands between two colleges of priests. Still they illustrate the progress by which " a savage dialect" was refined into a polished and noble language. The first four are supposed to have been inscribed about 400 B. C., or nearly a century antecedent to the Roman conquest. The dialect is the old Umbrian or Oscan, in which there is some affinity to Latin, but the characters used are Pelasgic, derived from the Etruscans. The sixth and seventh are about two hundred years later, and approach much more nearly to the Latin, the letter r generally taking the place of 8, and a that of ai; the characters are also Roman. The fifth marks a more imperfect state of transition between the two periods. Niebuhr (Lectures, 1. 105) considers Latin to be a fusion of Oscan and Siculo-Pelasgic. The former had, perhaps, the same relation to the Celtic as the latter to the Greek, and each of them its provincial varieties, which, as Rome grew into importance, flowed into it as a common centre. In this investigation the Eugubian Tables are valuable aids.-ED.]

* Compare Livy (1. 3, &, 31—59) with Dionysius Halicarnassensis (1. 10, p. 644; 11, p. 691). How concise and animated is the Roman -how prolix and lifeless the Greek! Yet he has admirably judged the masters, and defined the rules, of historical composition. [Since Gibbon's days Dionysius has risen in the estimation of the best judges, and has been more largely and advantageously consulted. The masterly parallel drawn between him and Livy, in Niebuhr's Lectures (1, p. 38-40), is particularly worthy of attention as regards Dionysius.-ED.]