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Description - The Life of Alexander Severus by Richard Valentine Nind Hopkins

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. THE GENERAL ADMINISTRATION. INTEGRITY and precision in the administration of justice had always been the pride of Rome, but at no time more so than in the century which followed the reign of Trajan. That period represents the zenith of Roman jurisprudence and the perfection of that code which in later times became the basis of most systems of European law. Hadrian was largely responsible for the great impetus which jurisprudence received in his time. His reforms introduced something of bureaucracy and militarism into the state. New wants arose and the older fashions fell into disrepute, and men who had previously engaged in the pursuits of literature and art found more profit in administrative posts and in the study of the law. From Julian to Paulus juristic work was continually progressing; after Paulus little remained beyond the work of codification. Ulpian and his colleagues in the consilium were in fact the last of a long line of jurists whose works form the most prominent feature of literature and thought in Rome and who save the age from the accusation of intellectual mediocrity or worse. Julian, Pomponius, Caius and the Antoninian Jurists strictly so called were followed by Cervidius Scaevola, who still exercised his profession under Septimius, in his turn to be followed by Papinian, Ulpian, and Paulus. Papinian is perhaps most famed in modern times for his high principles and his integrity: the words ascribed to him in his answer to Caracalla, --"that to defend the murder of the innocent is to slay him again,"--are epigrammatically characteristic of Papinian the man. But he was more than a man of high principles; the spirit of equity, the clearness and perspicuity, the keenness and depth of insight with which he wrote...

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