Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/236

212 They never, indeed, wholly ignored it; but they had also the true legal instinct of adapting their forms and methods to new circumstances, or of inventing new ones while they still retained the old. This is the other secret of the stability of their legal masonry. The jus civile, as expressed in the Twelve Tables, and even as expanded by their interpretation, could hardly have been made to suit the needs of the empire that the Romans were to acquire in the next three centuries and a half; even to have made the attempt would have violated their legal sensitiveness, and broken the traditions of the City-State. But they were not at a loss; they had now in the Twelve Tables the means of rudimentary legal training, and they had constant practice in adjustment and interpretation; and these, together with their clear conception of magisterial power, carried them in due time safely over the difficulty. We shall return to this subject at the end of the next chapter; this further development of the Roman legal instinct was the work of the two centuries which followed the equalisation of the orders, and the result of the wholly new conditions of life under which the State was brought by ever-increasing conquest and commerce.