672),( 40) in whose family jurisprudence was, like the supreme priesthood, hereditary.

His eighteen books on the -Ius Civile-, which embraced the positive materials of jurisprudence--legislative enactments, judicial precedents, and authorities--partly from the older collections, partly from oral tradition in as great completeness as possible, formed the starting- point and the model of the detailed systems of Roman law; in like manner his compendious treatise of "Definitions" (-- oroi--) became the basis of juristic summaries and particularly of the books of Rules.

Although this development of law proceeded of course in the main independently of Hellenism, yet an acquaintance with the philosophico-practical scheme-making of the Greeks beyond doubt gave a general impulse to the more systematic treatment of jurisprudence, as in fact the Greek influence is in the case of the last-mentioned treatise apparent in the very title.

We have already remarked that in several more external matters Roman jurisprudence was influenced by the Stoa.( 41) Art exhibits still less pleasing results.

In architecture, sculpture, and painting there was, no doubt, a more and more general diffusion of a dilettante interest, but the exercise of native art retrograded rather than advanced.