that they had reasonable hopes of ultimately satisfying their creditors;[1] it therefore abolished most contracts on the security of the person; although the addictio and imprisonment of debtors by order of the court continued through the Republic and into the Empire. But if the harshness of the law was one evil, ignorance of its forms was another almost equally great. An accident supplied the remedy. The pontiff Appius Claudius had reduced the forms of action to writing; but the book meant for the guidance of the pontiffs was immediately revealed to the profane eyes of the people by his clerk, one Cn. Flavius, a freedman's son. The fraudulent secretary also posted up a tablet containing a list of court days (dies fasti) on which the legis actio was possible.[2] The penetralia of the pontifical college had now become the property of the masses, and although the chief pontiffs still furnished for centuries the highest names to Roman law, they professed the science openly,[3] and secular teaching soon tore the veil from the hidden features of jurisprudence.
But, apart from these minor benefits, the mass of the Plebeians did not share to any very large extent in the triumph of their order. The true reason of the individual Roman being thus thrust into the background can only be given by a review of the causes, soon to be treated, which moulded both the theory and practice of the developed Roman constitution. It must suffice here to trace the painfully inadequate results which were secured by these centuries of agitation by a glance at the distribution of power in the Roman state, at the date of the war with Pyrrhus, or the outbreak of the struggle with Carthage.
The old nobility had relaxed its exclusive hold of office, but
- ↑ Varro L.L. viii. 105 "Hoc (the condition of nexum) C. Poetilio Libone Visolo dictatore (313 B.C.) sublatum ne fieret; et omnes, qui bonam copiam jurarunt, ne essent nexi dissoluti." Livy (viii. 28), who attributes the measure to 326 B.C., makes it a universal release of nexi: "jussique consoles ferre ad populum, ne quis, nisi qui noxam meruisset, donec poenam lueret, in compedibus aut in nervo teneretur: pecuniae creditae bona debitoris, non corpus obnoxium esset."
- ↑ Liv. ix. 46 "Cn. Flavius . . . patre libertino . . . civile jus, repositum in penetralibus pontificum, evulgavit, fastosque circa forum in albo proposuit, ut quando lege agi posset, sciretur"; Pompon. in Dig. 1, 2, 2, 7 "postea cum Appius Claudius composuisset (for "proposuisset") et ad formam redegisset has actiones, Cn. Flavius scriba ejus libertini filius subreptum librum populo tradidit . . . hic liber, qui actiones continet, appellator jus civile Flavianum."
- ↑ Pompon. l.c. §§ 37, 38. Gaius Scipio Nasica was given a house for consultations. The first professor, Ti. Coruncanius ("qui primus profiteri coepit," circ. 280 B.C.), was also the first plebeian pontifex maximus.
