so evident in the seventh century of the city, that Q. Mucius Scaevola,
a great lawyer, when consul, published a scientific elaboration of the
civil law. Cicero studied law under him, and his contemporaries, Varus
and Aelius Gallus, wrote learned treatises, from which extracts appear
in the Digest made under the Emperor Justinian, 528 A.D. Julius Caesar
contemplated a complete revision of the laws, but did not live long
enough to carry out his intentions. His legislation, so far as he
directed his mind to it, was very just. Among other laws established by
him was one which ordained that creditors should accept lands as payment
for their outstanding debts, according to the value determined by
commissioners. In his time the relative value of money had changed, and
was greatly diminished. The most important law of Augustus, deserving of
all praise, was that which related to the manumission of slaves; but he
did not interfere with the social relations of the people after he had
deprived them of political liberty. He once attempted, by his _Lex
Julia_, to counteract the custom which then prevailed, of abstaining
from legal marriage and substituting concubinage instead, by which the
free population declined; but this attempt to improve the morals of the
people met with such opposition from the tribes and centuries that the
next emperor abolished popular assemblies altogether, which Augustus had
feared to do. The senate in the time of the emperors, composed chiefly
of lawyers and magistrates, and entirely dependent upon them, became the
great fountain of law. By the original constitution the people were the
source of power, and the senate merely gave or refused its approbation
to the laws proposed; but under the emperors the _comitia_, or popular
assemblies, disappeared, and the senate passed decrees which had the
force of laws, subject to the veto of the Emperor. It was not until the
time of Septimus Severus and Caracalla (second century A.D.) that the
legislative action of the senate ceased, and the edicts and rescripts of
emperors took the place of all legislation.