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THE DECLINE AND FALL
colours of their temper and principles. Labeo was attached to the form of the old republic; his rival embraced the more profitable substance of the rising monarchy. But the disposition of a courtier is tame and submissive; and Capito seldom presumed to deviate from the sentiments, or at least from the words, of his predecessors; while the bold republican pursued his independent ideas without fear of paradox or innovations. The freedom of Labeo was enslaved, however, by the rigour of his own conclusions, and he decided according to the letter of the law the same questions which his indulgent competitor resolved with a latitude of equity more suitable to the common sense and feelings of mankind. If a fair exchange had been substituted to the payment of money, Capito still considered the transaction as a legal sale;[1] and he consulted nature for the age of puberty, without confining his definition to the precise period of twelve or fourteen years.[2] This opposition of sentiments was propagated in the writings and lessons of the two founders; the schools of Capito and Labeo maintained their inveterate conflict from the age of Augustus to that of Hadrian;[3] and the two sects derived their appellations from Sabinus and Proculus, their most celebrated teachers. The names of Cassians and Pegasians were likewise applied to the same parties; but, by a strange reverse, the popular cause was in the hands of Pegasus,[4] a timid slave of Domitian, while the favourite of the Cæsars was represented by Cassius,[5] who gloried in his descent from the patriot
- ↑ Justinian (Institut. l. iii. tit. xxiii. and Theophil. Vers. Græc. p. 677, 680) has commemorated this weighty dispute, and the verses of Homer that were alleged on either side as legal authorities. It was decided by Paul (leg. 33. ad Edict. in Pandect. l. xviii. tit. 1, leg. i.), since in a simple exchange the buyer could not be discriminated from the seller.
- ↑ This controversy was likewise given for the Proculians, to supersede the indecency of a search, and to comply with the aphorism of Hippocrates, who was attached to the septenary number of two weeks of years, or 700 of days (Institut. l. i. tit. xxii.). Plutarch and the stoics (de Placit. Philosoph. l. v. c. 24) assign a more natural reason. Fourteen years is the age — περὶ ἢν ὁ σπερματικὸς κρίνεται ὀῤῥός. See the vestigia of the sects in Mascou, c. ix. p. 145-276.
- ↑ The series and conclusion of the sects are described by Mascou (c. ii.-vii. p. 24-120), and it would be almost ridiculous to praise his equal justice to these obsolete sects.
- ↑ At the first summons he flies to the turbot-council; yet Juvenal (Satir. iv. 75-81) styles the præfect or bailiff of Rome sanctissimus legum interpres. From his science, says the old scholiast, he was called, not a man, but a book. He derived the singular name of Pegasus from the galley which his father commanded. [There seems to be no ancient authority for the title Pegasians.]
- ↑ Tacit. Annal. xvi. 7. Sueton. in Nerone, c. xxxvii.
