Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/541

 Chap, xliv] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 475 and the faintest evidence would have been explored and cele- brated by the curiosity of succeeding times. But the Athenian monuments are silent; nor will it seem credible that the patricians should undertake a long and perilous navigation to copy the purest model of a democracy. In the comparison of the tables of Solon with those of the Decemvirs, some casual resemblance may be found ; some rules which nature and reason have revealed to every society ; some proofs of a common descent from Egypt or Phoenicia. 16 But in all the great lines of public and private jurisprudence, the legislators of Borne and Athens appear to be strangers or adverse to each other. Whatever might be the origin or the merit of the twelve Their char- tables, 20 they obtained among the Komans that blind and partial influence reverence which the lawyers of every country delight to bestow on their municipal institutions. The study is recommended by Cicero 21 as equally pleasant and instructive. "They amuse the mind by the remembrance of old words and the portrait of ancient manners ; they inculcate the soundest principles of government and morals; and I am not afraid to affirm that the brief composition of the Decemvirs surpasses in genuine value the libraries of Grecian philosophy. How admirable," says Tully, with honest or affected prejudice, « is the wisdom of our ancestors ! We alone are the masters of civil prudence, and our superiority is the more conspicuous, if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ridiculous jurisprudence of Dracon, of Solon, and of Lycurgus." The Twelve Tables were committed to the memory of the young and the meditation of 480-500) scattered the first seed of a Trojan colony and the fable of the jEneid (Cassandra, 1226-1280) : rf/s Ka Qaa<r(T7)s cn<riTTpa. Kal /xovapxtav A bold prediction before the end of the first Punic war. 19 The tenth table, de modo sepultures, waB borrowed from Solon (Cicero de Legibus, ii. 23-26) : the furtum per lancem et liciurn conoeptum is derived by Heineccius from the manners of Athens (Antiquitat. Rom. torn. ii. p. 167-175). The right of killing a nocturnal thief was declared by Moses, Solon, and the Decemvirs (Exodus xxii. 3. Demosthenes contra Timocratem, torn. i. p. 736, edit. Reiske. Macrob. Saturnalia, 1. i. c. 4. Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum, tit. vii. No. 1, p. 218, edit. Cannegieter). 20 Bpaxeoos Ka aireplrTas is the praise of Diodorus (torn. i. 1. xii. p. 494 [o. 26]), which may be fairly translated by the eleganti atque absoluta brevitate verborum of Aulus Gellius (Noct. Attic, xxi. 1). 21 Listen to Cicero (de Legibus, ii. 23) and his representative Crassus (de Oratore, i. 43, 44).