Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

40 Ius applicationis . This was a right which a Roman quasi-patronus had to the estate of a foreign client dying intestate. He was called quasi-patronus, because none but Roman citizens could have patrons. The difficulty in this cause proceeded from the obscurity of the law on which this kind of right was founded.

41The services of city estates are those which appertain to buildings. It is required by city services that neighbours should bear the burdens of neighbours; and, by such services, one neighbour may be permitted to place a beam upon the wall of another; may be compelled to receive the droppings and currents from the gutter-pipes of another man's house upon his own house, area, or sewer; or may be exempted from receiving them; or may be restrained from raising his house in height, lest he should darken the habitation of his neighbour. Harris's Justinian, ii. 3.

42There is a more particular statement of this cause between Gratidianus and rata in Cicero's De Off., iii. 16. The Roman law, in that particular founded on the law of nature, ordained, to avoid deceit in bargain and sale, that the seller should give notice of all the bad qualities in the thing sold which he knew of, or pay damages to the purchaser for his silence; to which law Horace alludes, Sat. iii. 2: Mentem nisi litigiosus Exciperet dominus cum venderet. But if he told the faults, or they were such as must be seen by a person using common care, the buyer suffered for his negligence, as Horace again indicates, Epist ii. 2: Ille feret pretium poenae securus opinor: Prudens emisti vitiosum. Dicta tibi est Lex. See also Grotius, ii. 12, and Puffendorf, v. 3. s. 4, 5. B.

43The mistake of Bucculeius seems to have consisted in this; he meant to restrain Fufius from raising the house in height, which might darken, or making any new windows which might overlook, some neighbouring habitation which belonged to him; but by the use of words adapted by law for another purpose, he restrained himself from building within the prospect of those windows already made in the house which Fufius purchased. B.

44In the consulship.

45This celebrated case is so clearly stated by Cicero as to require no explanation. It was gained by Crassus, the evident intention of the testator prevailing over the letter of the will. It is quoted as a precedent by Cicero, pro Caecina, c. 18.

46See Florus, ii. 18; Vell. Pat. ii. 1.

47See Cic. Topic. c. 8; Gaius, i. 129; Aul. Gell. vii. 18.

"Since I have spoken of the audacity, let me also censure the indolence and inertness of mankind. For if the study of the law were illimitable and arduous, yet the greatness of the advantage ought to impel men to undergo the labour of learning it; but, by the immortal gods, I would not say this in the hearing of Scaevola, unless he himself were accustomed to say it, namely, that there is no science whose attainment seems to him more easy than this . It is, indeed, for certain reasons, thought otherwise by most people, first, because those of old, who were at the head of this science, would not, for the sake of securing and extending their own influence, allow their art to be made public; in the next place, when it was published, the forms of actions at law being first set forth by Gnaeus Flavius, there were none who could compose a general system of those matters arranged under regular heads. For nothing can be reduced into a science, unless he who understands the matters of which he would form a science, has previously gained such knowledge as to enable him to constitute a science out of subjects in which there has never yet been any science. I perceive that, from desire to express this briefly, I have expressed it rather obscurely; but I will make an effort to explain myself, if possible, with more clarity.

"All things which are now comprised in sciences, were formerly unconnected, and in a state, as it were, of dispersion; as in music, numbers, sounds, and measures; in geometry, lines, figures, spaces, magnitudes; in astronomy, the revolution of the heavens, the rising, setting, and other motions of the stars; in grammar, the study of the poets, the knowledge of history, the interpretation of words, the peculiar tone of pronunciation; and finally, in this very art of oratory, invention, embellishment, arrangement, memory, delivery, seemed of old not to be fully understood by any, and to be wholly unconnected. A certain extraneous art was therefore applied, adopted from another department of knowledge, 1which the philosophers wholly claim to themselves, an art which might serve to cement things previously separate and uncombined, and unite them in a kind of system.

"Let then the end proposed in civil law be the preservation of legitimate and practical equity in the affairs and lawsuits of the citizens. The general heads of it are then to be noted, and reduced to a certain number, as few as may be. A general head is that which comprehends two or more particulars, similar to one another by having something in common, but differing in species. Particulars are included under the general heads from which they spring. All names, which are given either to general heads, or particulars, must be limited by definitions, showing what exact meaning they have. A definition is a short and concise specification of whatever properly belongs to the thing which we would define. I should add examples on these points, were I not sensible to whom my discourse is addressed. I will now comprise what I proposed in a short space. For if I should have leisure to do what I have long meditated, or if any other person should undertake the task while I am occupied or accomplish it after my death, (I mean, to digest, first of all, the whole civil law under general heads, which are very few; next, to branch out those general heads, as it were, into members; then to explain the peculiar nature of each by a definition;) you will have a complete system of civil law, large and full indeed, but neither difficult nor obscure. In the meantime, while what is unconnected is being combined, a person may, even by gathering here and there, and collecting from all parts, be furnished with a competent knowledge of the civil law.

"Do you not observe that Gaius Aculeo, 2a Roman knight, a man of the most acute genius in the world, but of little learning in other sciences, who now lives, and has always lived with me, understands the civil law so well, that none even of the most skilful, if you except my friend Scaevola here, can be preferred to him? Everything in it, indeed, is set plainly before our eyes, connected with our daily habits, with our intercourse among men, and with the forum, and is not contained in a vast quantity of writing, or many large volumes; for the elements that were at first published by several writers are the same; and the same things, with the change of a few words, have been repeatedly written by the same authors. Added to this, that the civil law may be more readily learned and understood, there is (what most people little imagine) a wonderful pleasure and delight in acquiring a knowledge of it. For, whether any person is attracted by the study of antiquity, 3there is, in every part of the civil law, in the pontifical books, and in the Twelve Tables, abundance of instruction as to ancient matters, since not only the original sense of words is thence understood, but certain kinds of law proceedings illustrate the customs and lives of our ancestors; or if he has a view to the science of government (which Scaevola judges not to belong to the orator, but to science of another sort), he will find it all comprised in the Twelve Tables, every advantage of civil government, and every part of it being there described; or if authoritative and vaunting philosophy delight him, (I will speak very boldly,) he will find there the sources of all the philosophers' disputations, which lie in civil laws and enactments; for from these we perceive that virtue is above all things desirable, since honest, just, and conscientious industry is ennobled with honours, rewards, and distinctions; but the vices and frauds of mankind are punished by fines, ignominy, imprisonment, stripes, banishment, and death; and we are taught, not by disputations endless and full of discord, but by the authority and mandate of the laws, to hold our appetites in subjection, to restrain all our passions, to defend our own property, and to keep our thoughts, eyes, and hands, from that of others.