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 Chap, xliv] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 483 Among savage nations, the want of letters is imperfectly Forms of supplied by the use of visible signs, which awaken attention, law and perpetuate the remembrance of any public or private transaction. The jurisprudence of the first Eomans exhibited the scenes of a pantomime : the words were adapted to the gestures, and the slightest error or neglect in the forms of pro- ceeding was sufficient to annul the substance of the fairest claim. The communion of the marriage-life was denoted by the neces- sary elements of fire and water ; t9 and the divorced wife resigned the bunch of keys, by the delivery of which she had been invested with the government of the family. The manumission of a son, or a slave, was performed by turning him round with a gentle blow on the cheek ; a work was prohibited by the casting of a stone ; prescription was interrupted by the breaking of a branch ; the clenched fist was the symbol of a pledge or deposit ; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of covenants was a broken straw ; weights and scales were in- troduced into every payment ; and the heir who accepted a testament was sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments, and to leap and dance with real or affected transport. 60 If a citizen pursued any stolen goods into a neigh- bour's house, he concealed his nakedness with a linen towel, and hid his face with a mask or bason, lest he should encounter the eyes of a virgin or a matron. 51 In a civil action, the plaintiff touched the ear of the witness, seized his reluctant adversary by labourer Hermogenes. This general division may be just ; but they often trespassed on each other's ground. [These two codes were non-official. That of Gregory was probably composed at the beginning of Constantine's reign ; that of Her- mogenes, which continued it, towards the end of the 4th century (as late, at least, as a.d. 365). The fragments of both are published by Haenel in his edition of : the Codex Theodosianus. For this code see above, vol. iii., Appendix 1, p. 519.] 49 Sceevola, most probably Q. Cervidius Scsevola the master of Papinian, con- siders this acceptance of fire and water as the essence of marriage. (Pandect. 1. xxiv. tit. i. leg. 66. See Heineccius, Hist. J. B. No. 317.) 80 Cicero (de Officiis, iii. 19) may state an ideal case, but St. Ambrose (de Officiis, iii. 2) appeals to the practice of his own times, which he understood as a lawyer and a magistrate (Schulting ad Ulpian. Fragment, tit. xxii. No. 28, p. 643, 644). [This interpretation of the passage of Cicero is obviously false. There is no evidence that such forms for accepting an inheritance were ever in use. The " broken straw " implies the derivation of stipulatio from stipula. Another etymology is stipes, small bronze coinB.] 51 The furtum lance licioque conceptum was no longer understood in the time of the Antonines (Aulus Gellius, xvi. 10). The Attic derivation of Heineccius (Antiquitat. Rom. 1. iv. tit. i. No. 13-21) is supported by the evidence of Aristo- phanes, his scholiast, and Pollux. [See Gaius, § 189. The meaning of the lanx is quite uncertain.]