Page:Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law.djvu/12

 enemy, with regard to whom the whole Fetial Law was in force, and there were many duties and rights in common.

“Cum justo enim et legitimo hoste res gerebatur, adversus quem et totum jus fetiale, et multa sunt jura communia. Quod ni ita esset, nunquam claros viros senatus vinctos hostibus dedidisset.”—Off. 1. III. c. 29.

The institution, however, of the Fetiales naturally fell into decay with the rapid extension of the Roman dominion. Rules of international conduct based upon reciprocity, had been lost sight of by the Roman people long before the Republic had established its supremacy throughout the Italian peninsula, and the universal empire of the Caesars left no place, as it furnished no occasion, for the application of any such rules.

When the Roman laws, therefore, such as they subsisted at the dismemberment of the Western Empire in the fifth century, were received in the several kingdoms of the Gothic, Lombard, and Carlovingian dynasties, they did not supply them with any explicit rules for the adjudication of questions of right between independent states or nations. Theological casuistry, however, was from time to time applied to the duties of the sovereigns; analogies of positive law were frequently invoked; and the Civilians, as being conversant with the most widely diffused system, took into their hands the adjudication of questions of public law. The doctors, for instance, of the famous school of Bologna had been called upon, from a very early period, to furnish arbitrators in the ever recurring disputes of the Italian Republics, and to supply jurists to direct the diplomacy of the Lombard cities in their contests with the German