For example, the Roman law ordained that
only relatives on the male side should be heirs; the praetor summoned
the relatives on the female side also to participate in the
succession.
The old law required that a man to become a proprietor must perform a
complicated ceremony of sale; the praetor recognized that it was
sufficient to have paid the price of the sale and to be in possession
of the property. Thus the Law of Nations invaded and gradually
superseded the Civil Law.
="Written Reason."=--It was especially under the emperors that the new
Roman law took its form. The Antonines issued many ordinances (edicts)
and re-scripts (letters in which the emperor replied to those who
consulted him). Jurisconsults who surrounded them assisted them in
their reforms. Later, at the beginning of the third century, under the
bad emperors as under the good, others continued to state new rules
and to rectify the old. Papinian, Ulpian, Modestinus, and Paullus were
the most noted of these lawyers; their works definitively fixed the
Roman law.
This law of the third century has little resemblance to the old Roman
law, so severe on the weak.
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