Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/417

 ■CHAP. VIII. CHAXGKS IX PRIVATE LAW. 411 They found it unjust, and from that time it became ■impossible for the law to maintain its ground. If we place ourselves back to the time when the plebs had increased and entered the body politic, and compare the law of this epoch with primitive law, grave changes appear at the first glance. The first and most salient is, that the law has been rendered public, and is known to all. It is no longer that sa- cred and mysterious chant which meu repeated, with pious respect, from age to age; which priests alone wrote, and which men of the religious families alone could know. The law has left the rituals and the books of the priests ; it has lost its religious mystery ; it is a language which each one can read and speak. Something still more important is manifest in these codes. The nature of the law and its foundation are no longer the same as in the preceding period. For- merly th6 law was a religious decii«ion ; it passed for a revelation made by the gods to the ancestois, to the divine founder, to the sacred kings, to the magistrate- priests. In the new code, on the contrary, the legisla- tor no longer speaks in the name of the gods. The decemvirs of Rome receive their powers from the peo- ple. The people also invested Solon with the right to make laws. The legislator, therefore, no longer repre- sents religious tradition, but the popular will. The principle of the law, henceforth, is the interest of men, and its foundation, the consent of the greatest num- ber. Two consequences flow from this fact. The first is, that the law is no longer presented as an immutable and undisputable formula. As it becomes a human work, it is ackowledged to be subject to change. The Twelve Tables say, " What the votes of the people have