profuse use of wine, his heir found ten thousand casks in his cellar after his death.* Cicero is said to have had eighteen villas in different parts of Italy, besides numerous bathing-places which he had built for his convenience when travelling. And yet neither Cicero nor Hortensius were very notorious for their wealth at that time. The latter appears to have drawn considerable attention to the extravagance of his expenditures, not the amount of his possessions. Almost every governor of a province having the slightest pretence, would get permission from the senate for a triumph, on which occasion his expenses were seldom under ten, and often over one hundred thousand pounds. The philosopher may regret, but cannot be surprised, that the liens of a harassing and badly paid profession should be sundered by such substantial temptations as these. Further, none but men of very distinguished abilities could hope to receive presents sufficiently large to supply the place of a regular income. But such men would not wish to incur the penalty of a violated law, much less the risk of detection in an act which would generally have been considered undignified, if not disreputable,† for such trifling pay as the creditor of a protested note could afford for its collection. Consequently we are forced to the further inference, that the mediatorial aid of the court was invoked only in cases of deep importance that lawyers of distinction (who only were likely to receive retainers in such cases) were the only ones liberally paid, while all that humble but useful class of the profession, who, with us, for a small compensation, care for the comparatively unimportant interests of the lower classes, must have been exceedingly limited. The innumerable cases of domestic oppression, of this unnatural restriction begotten, are they not written in the books of the chronicles of Rome? But of their existence no room is left in the mind of the philosophic historian to doubt. It must not be imagined that these evils, which operated as a partial disfranchisement of the poor, were confined to that class alone. As in some trades the good debts are intended to cover the bad, so the rich clients in Rome were * Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. 14. c. 14. His numerous fish-ponds, and other instances of his extravagance, are mentioned by Varro, De Re Rusticâ, 1. 3. c. 3, c. 17, and Bayle, tit. Hortensius. A line from Ovid will suffice, if authorities are required, to show the low estimation in which paid advocates were held by the Romans. "Turpe reos emptâ miseros defendere linguâ." Ovid, Amor. 1. 10. 39. generally compelled to pay for any services, if rendered to their less fortunate neighbors. When some subject-king, or provincial prefect, or wealthy criminal of another kind, became seriously dependent upon the services of his counsel, he was not long in learning that the hardest debts to pay are those of gratitude, and that there are impulses to give as strong from without as within the human breast. If by the absolute counting out of the money the danger of violating the law appeared too serious, or if the present exigencies were not sufficiently great to overcome the prudence of the counsel, his preliminary professional service was usually to draw the will of his client elect, or at least so much of it as would settle upon himself a comfortable retainer. Thus the law was avoided, and the client seduced into an enormous mortgage upon his estate, by the length of the credit, and the inevitable transfer of the obligation to his heirs.* We have already seen that none but men of established reputation would be likely to receive briefs in such cases, and as such alone were liberally paid, none but the distinguished could presume to live by their profession at all. Hence it is that we hear or know of so few Roman lawyers. Cicero, in a sketch intended to cover both the bar and the forum, enumerates only about a dozen men as prominent at any one time, and that, too, in a city more than ten times as large as New York. Thus it appears that the legalized restrictions which we have above been considering, drove the ambition of the country into political life, left a large portion of the poor population unprotected, before the law exhausted the wealth of the rich, and fed the pride and vices of the tens at the expense of the thousands. Of the Roman mode of procuring and waiting upon clients a few more notices may be interesting. The custom of "drumming," in mercantile phrase, is by no means of recent origin, nor an exclusively mercantile usage. On the contrary, in this branch of the arts the Romans appear to have been over all other nations facile principes. That the burden of the Cincian law pressed in this direction is apparent in the nature of things, and is further attested by the author of the Dialogue on the Corruptions of Eloquence, who, after quoting with approbation Virgil's prayer for the society of the sweet muses, determines " nec insanum ultra et lubricum forum famamque pallentem trepidus experiar, non me fremitus salutantium nec anhelans libertus excitet: nec, incertus futuri, testamentum pro pignore scribam, nec plus habeam, quam quod possim, cui velim, relinquere quandocunque fatalis et meus dies veniet." Chap. 13. The professional prospects of lawyers depend much upon the extent of their personal acquaintance, which, therefore, they are always anxious to enlarge. They are more properly citizens of the world, and have usually possessed, we think, more symmetry and completeness of character, in all the great eras of civil society, than the incumbents of any of the other practical professions. The extent and causes of these characteristics would be an interesting subject of inquiry, in which we dare not at present indulge. Great as this natural tendency undoubtedly is, we find in the almost universal political aspirations of the Roman lawyers an additional incentive to the enlargement of their personal acquaintance. Nearly all the magistrates under the republic were elected by the people—hence not only the candidates the natio officiosissima wanted clients in presenti but voters in futuro. Electioneering for both purposes was reduced to a science.t To flatter strangers and to avoid offending forgotten acquaintances, was the first lesson learned and the last habit surrendered by the candidate for public consideration. The lawyers and the politicians were daily accustomed to take with them, when they went into the street, a slave or two, who knew every man of distinction in Rome, and whose duty it was to whisper to his master the name of any such who happened to approach them, in order that an old friend might be greeted with adequate familiarity. These slaves were called Nomenclators, a somewhat expensive but invaluable Directory, particularly, if, as might be expected from the education of many of that class at Rome, some illustrative anecdotes or historical incidents had become associated in their minds with the crowds which thronged her streets, who had both lived and acted history.§ *Cic. in Piso, 23. Popularem vero auram, quæ præcipue erat opus, captabant nomenclatione, blanditiis, assiduitate et benignitate. - Hein. Ant. Rom. 1. iv. tit. 18, 98. "Mercemur servum, qui dictet nomina, lævum § These servants were also sometimes called monitors, Cic. pro Murana, 36, and at other times stuffers, if we may be allowed to coin a noun from our verb to stuff-in somewhat common use in this connection, and which alone conveys the meaning of the Latin farcio. Dicti etiam sunt fartores, qui veluti in aures infarciebant civium nomina. - Hein. Ant. Rom. 1. 4, p. 18, sec. 78. Plutarch says that the use of the nomenclators was illegal, and that Cato for that reason in sueing for public offices refused to use them. But that does not agree with the negative pregnant of Cicero in his oration for Muræna, in which he rallies Cato for his stoical rigor and inconsistency. "Why do you keep a nomenclator? the thing is a mere cheat, for if it be your duty to call the citizens by their names, it is a shame for your slave to know them better than yourself. Why do you not speak to them before he has whispered you, or after he has whispered you, why do you not salute them as if you knew them yourself, or when you are elected, why do you grow careless of saluting them at all. This is all very good social but very bad stoical philosophy."* Cicero appears to have been provided thus on all public occasions. Of the manner in which clients were usually received and waited upon, little can be added to the rich and imaginative description of Gibbon; albeit that illustrious historian has clearly taken advantage of the indistinctness of history to idealize the profession of the law and its heroes at Rome.t The probability is, that the manner of the Roman lawyer was always respectful to his political peers, and, upon occasion, sufficiently tinctured with hauteur to his inferiors. One's birth, or station in life, was a legitimate subject of sarcasm in the forum ; and, though the lawyer of distinction, who had acquired by his profession, if he had not inherited by birth, the feelings of a patrician, was ever ready to extend the utmost courtesy to his plebeian friends, and even slaves, as a favor, yet he could become indefinitely saucy when that courtesy was claimed as a right. The democracy of Rome, in its organized and united state, was feared, and its asserted claims respected by the * Pro Muræna, 36. Ad Att., 4. 1. Hein. Ant. Rom. 1. 4. p. 18. + Decline and Fall, c. 44. p. 757. Neither Cicero, the statesman, nor Cicero, the orator, could protect Cicero, the man, from utter ruin, if he were to make a remark in our day like the following, applied to one L. Cæsulanus, a plebeian lawyer: "I, myself, heard him, in his old age, when he endeavored, by the Aquilian law, to subject L. Labellius to a fine for a breach of justice, but I should not have taken any notice of such a low born wretch if I had not thought that no person I had ever heard could give a more suspicious turn to the cause of the defendant." Cic. De Claris Orat. p. 75. § Witness Cicero's conduct to his slave Tiro, who collected and edited a volume of his sayings, and afterwards, his very fascinating correspondence, a service, on the part of the slave, for which posterity should ever hold him in grateful remembrance. nobility, while its individual representatives were despised. Any principle which united the people, made them paramount and sovereign; but when separated, the rights of an individual were but as a reed, which the noblemen might break and trample under their feet with impunity. The Christian religion had not yet taught the equal value and accountability of every human soul, nor had modern democracy established men's equal rights before the laws. The undisguised contempt with which Horace visited the profane vulgar, was the common sentiment of all that aristocratic clique of which he was a most successful toady. The plebeian had no recognized points of equality with the patrician, save physical strength. His deficiency in blood qualifications could be only imperfectly supplied by multiplication of numbers, in the same way that animals, in their contests with men, repair the inferiority of their intellectual powers. It was only the aggregate Roman people that was feared. History corroborates our inferences from such a state of facts. The plebeian's suits, if at all, were taken up for the glory of the orator, not the protection of the injured. In his business intercourse, the lawyer seems never to have forgotten his professional privileges. A kind of state was kept up while receiving his clients. He gave his opinions usually from an elevated seat. The venue of his inspiration appears to have been, as in respect to personal position, almost as local as that of the Pythoness. The custom of prefixing preambles to statutes, in modern times, has been considered a very significant manifestation of the progress of popular sovereignty. The right to know the reason for the passage of a law is not far removed from the right to dispute it, if it appears unreasonable. This was a principle of deference, however, to which the Roman lawyers very seldom yielded. It was optional with them, and not customary to accompany their opinions with reasons, as if their dictum placed the question beyond dispute. And, indeed, these opinions were of great authority; they were "re "Ex solio tanquam ex tripodo."- Cic. de leg. 1. 3. Orat. ii. 33, iii. 33. Non immerito jurisconsulti domus totius oraculum civitatis videretur Ciceroni." Cic. de Orat. 1. 45.- Hein, Ant. Rom. lib. i. tit. ii. 33. +"Quid ? quod etiam sine probationibus monentis auctoritas prodest, sic, quo modo jurisconsultorum valent responsa etiamsi ratio non redditur." - Seneca Epis. xciv. |