Lysias was famed as a great winner of causes and did an enormous practice, as many as four hundred and twenty-five speeches having been preserved and attributed to him, of which only thirty-five have come down to us. When Socrates was arraigned before the Heliastic Court on the charge of impiety and corrupting the youth, Lysias volunteered to prepare a speech for his defense. Had the philosopher accepted this offer no doubt his condemnation might have been averted; but his heroic spirit scorned the arts of professional defense, and boldly confronting and defying his accusers, he spoke as if he were judging the dicasts rather than they him, and paid, with his life, the penalty of his boldness. Isæus was the pupil of Lysias, and perhaps even excelled him as a technical lawyer, particularly in the law of inheritance, of which he was a master and a specialist. To his many titles to fame he adds that of having been the instructor of Demosthenes in law and oratory.

Dyonysius of Halicarnassus has left us an elaborate comparative criticism of the speeches of Lysias and Isæus, in which he awarded to Lysias the palm for simplicity, grace and naturalness, and to Isæus that for art, elaboration and subtlety.

I must pass without particular comment the illustrious names of Isocrates, Lycurgus, Eschines and Hyperides, all of whom were lawyers and spoke in public or in private causes.

No lawyer can repress a thrill of pride and exultation at the thought that Demosthenes was also a conspicuous member of the Athenian bar. Having studied under Isocrates and Isæus he diligently practiced his profession before the Heliastic courts where his eloquence and skill first brought him into public notice, and where he plumed his wings for those lofty flights into the larger spaces of political and public oratory, in which he soared to heights never attained by any rival. The brilliancy of his public utterances and services have obscured the distinction of his legal forensic achievements, but we may well imagine that the same qualities which enabled him to sway and dominate the Athenian Senate and populace must have made him irresistible as an advocate before the courts. Indeed, perhaps the greatest of his orations, that against the law of the Leptines and the oration on the Crown, were purely forensic, delivered before the courts as counsel for persons who were prosecuted for the crime of proposing unconstitutional laws.

The glory of the Greek bar, as well as the glory of Greece herself, culminated in Demosthenes. The cursory description I have given of

the judicial organization, of the methods of legal procedure, of the manner in which lawyers discharged their functions, and of the illustrious advocates who adorned the profession, must suffice for the purpose of this occasion. They exhibit the lawyer, in that age as in every other, as a central factor in the advance of civilization, in the establishment and vindication of justice, and in the championing of popular liberty and enlightenment.

Let every lawyer reverently uncover and bow his head in presence of imperial Rome, the true mother, the veritable fons et origo, of law and lawyers.

While the Romans halted after the Greeks, haud æquo pede, sed longo intervallo, in poetry, eloquence, philosophy and art, they surpassed and utterly eclipsed their rivals in the art and science of law and jurisprudence.

The lawyer or jurisconsult is the most peculiar and original figure in Roman history. When you reflect that the Roman jurisprudence embodies the most vast, exact, complete and elaborate system of law ever invented, that it owes its origin, in very slight degree, to direct legislation, and that the judges who administered it were not, necessarily or even usually, lawyers, our modern ideas would be at a loss to conceive how such a system could have been created and developed. This phenomenal creation is due almost exclusively to the Roman lawyer, acting, not in the capacity of legislator or judge, but simply as a counsellor-at-law or jurisconsult. A brief statement of the functions which he performed, of the methods which he pursued, together with slight references to a few of the most illustrious members of the profession will not, I trust, prove uninteresting.

In the earlier days of Rome, the laws, the methods of procedure and the forms of contract were all secluded from the mass of the people, and were consigned as a sacred deposit in the hands of the priests and nobles, who were both legislators and judges. The Twelve Tables were adopted as a concession to the demand of the people for a system of published laws which all might see and know, according to which they might guide their transactions and which the judges should be required to observe. These public laws failed, however, to reveal the sacramental forms of action and of contract, without the strictest observance of which no legal relief could be obtained, and which still remained in the sacred deposit inaccessible to any but the same privileged classes. It was more than a century after the adoption of the

Twelve Tables when Lucius Flavius, a secretary to Appius Claudius, the Censor, surreptitiously gained access to these secluded portions of the law and published them to the world. Thereupon, it is said, the priests and patricians framed new rules which were held secret for another century, when they were again divulged by one Sextus Ælius Catus. A reference to these familiar facts was necessary to understand the beginnings of the legal profession.

The Roman lawyer had his origin in the relations of the patrician and plebeian, and of patron and client. The first duty of the patron to his client, in return for numerous privileges, was to advise his client as to his legal rights and proceedings and to stand by and defend him before the courts. It was therefore a necessity, as well as a matter of pride with him, that he should study and know the law. Whether he sat leisurely at home or walked in public places, he was at all times liable to be called on for legal advice and assistance by his clients, or by others, and his dignity and influence as a citizen depended on his ability to answer promptly and wisely. We can well understand what an incentive to diligent study of the laws such conditions offered. At a later period the patricians established certain hours during which they sat in solemn state at the portals of their houses and gave free counsel to all comers. Gradually these sessions acquired increased dignity and importance. Points and cases, carefully prepared, were submitted to them, sometimes in advance, oftener during the period of session, and they dispensed weighty and authoritative opinions. Of course some patricians greatly excelled others in their diligence in the study of the law and in capacity to understand and expound it. The houses of these became the great centers of attraction for those who wished legal advice, who would throng the audiences of those who thus distinguished themselves to the neglect and desertion of others. And thus it soon came about that the function of jurisconsult was no longer exercised by the mass of patricians, but became confined to those who earned distinction and made a profession of it.

It is difficult to conceive of a more honorable and dignified position than that filled by the eminent jurisconsult of early Rome. When, at the hour of his audience, he stepped out upon the portico of his house and took his seat in state, he encountered a multitude of litigants or clients, who eagerly sought advice and hung upon his lips as on those of an oracle; while crowds of the younger patricians stood around, with their note-books in hand, jotting down his opinions and decisions

as authorities for their future guidance, and as a means of preparing themselves for like honorable employment.

Although consultations were open to all and given without fee or reward, no doubt rich honoraria flowed in from grateful clients, and, indeed, in course of time it was found necessary to restrain, by the Cincian law, the extravagant bounty of rich clients to their legal advisers. But these pecuniary rewards were of trifling value in comparison with the universal honor they received. When they walked in public they passed amidst the acclamations and plaudits of an admiring people, and the highest dignities of the State clamored for their acceptance.

The peculiar jurisdiction of the Roman magistrates added largely to the importance and dignity of the jurisconsults. This jurisdiction was mainly confided to the Prætors and Ædiles, who were political officers, requiring, and usually possessing, no peculiar qualifications as lawyers. Before them the pleadings were made and the issues framed. Unless the case could be decided on the face of the papers or statements, they sometimes proceeded to hear the parties and decide the cause; but more usually and almost universally they referred the case to a judge or judges selected by themselves from the body of the citizens, with a brief statement defining the issues of fact and law between the parties and directing the judge to hear them, to decide between them, and to award the appropriate relief. These entirely unprofessional judges had jurisdiction both of the law and the facts, and they naturally required to be enlightened on the law. As the parties were for a long time required to plead their own causes and were not represented in court by professional advocates, they had recourse to the advice and opinions of the jurisconsults. These sometimes appeared before the judges in the capacity of expert witnesses and gave their opinions of the law ore tenus; but more generally the judge or the parties sent to them a brief of the points and invited their written opinions, which were received and read before the court, and were accorded great and generally conclusive authority on the questions of law involved.

It is a significant tribute to the integrity and uprightness of the Roman jurisconsult that these responsa prudentum, as they were called, were characterized by perfectly judicial fairness and sincerity, unprejudiced by any bias in favor of the parties. In these days I very much. fear that each party would present an opinion from the most eminent

jurisconsult entirely sustaining his side of the case and so utterly in conflict with each other that the unhappy judge, after hearing both, would be quite as much at sea as he was at first. But we discover no traces of such conflicts before the Roman courts, and down to a late period the responsa prudentum were clothed with all the characteristics. of judicial exposition and had the same kind of authority which we, in modern times, attach to judicial precedents or to the text of great writers upon law. Indeed, in the time of Augustus, a certain number of privileged jurisconsults were designated, whose responses on questions of law were made binding and conclusive on the judges; but the Emperor Adrian abolished this distinction and reopened the privilege to all jurisconsults.

The Prætors were invested, moreover, with a certain kind of legislative authority. The meagerness of the written law and the strict forms of action proved utterly inadequate to meet the multiplying complexities of the litigation which arose before the courts. The Prætors found it necessary to extend the laws and enlarge the remedies. Each Prætor, at the beginning of his term of office, published an edict in which he set forth the rules which he proposed to follow in the decision of doubtful cases and the relief which his equity would afford from the precision of the statutes. These edicts were improved and developed, as these officers succeeded each other, retaining what in the past had proved beneficial, rejecting the prejudicial, and instituting new rules as they were found desirable.

Numerous texts of the Pandects illustrate this growing power of the Prætor. Prætor est lex loquens; Lex, mutus prætor. (The Prætor is the Law speaking; the Law is the Praætor mute.) Prætor vivum jus civile est, viva lex, seu loquens. (The Prætor is the animated Civil Law-the Law living or speaking.) Prætor, quod loquitur utcumque, jus civile loquitur. (When the Prætor speaks, whatever he says, the Law is speaking.) Prætor semper sequitur æquitatem cujus sacerdos est. (The Prætor always administers Equity, whose priest he is.) Prætor corriget asperitatem juris civilis, et quod deest, implet. (The Prætor corrects the harshness of the written law, and what is wanting therein he supplies.)

These ample and elastic powers opened to the jurisconsults the whole field of the Natural Law.

Meanwhile the extensive conquests of the Roman arms brought under her jurisdiction numerous foreign countries, whose peculiar and vary