This code moreover corresponded in matter to the wants of the time, in so far as it furnished the more convenient forms required by the increase of intercourse for legal procedure, for acquisition of property, and for conclusion of contracts. Lastly, it had already in the main become subsidiary law throughout the compass of the Roman empire, inasmuch as-- while the manifold local statutes were retained for those legal relations which were not directly commercial, as well as for local transactions between members of the same legal district--dealings relating to property between subjects of the empire belonging to different legal districts were regulated throughout after the model of the urban edict, though not applicable de jure to these cases, both in Italy and in the provinces. The law of the urban edict had thus essentially the same position in that age which the Roman law has occupied in our political development; this also is, so far as such opposites can be combined, at once abstract and positive; this also recommended itself by its (compared with the earlier legal code) flexible forms of intercourse, and took its place by the side of the local statutes as universal subsidiary law. But the Roman legal development had an essential advantage over ours in this, that the denationalized legislation appeared not, as with us, prematurely and by artificial birth, but at the right time and agreeably to nature.
Caesar's Project Of Codification
Such was the state of the law as Caesar found it. If he projected the plan for a new code, it is not difficult to say what were his intentions. This code could only comprehend the law of Roman burgesses, and could be a general code for the empire merely so far as a code of the ruling nation suitable to the times could not but of itself become general subsidiary law throughout the compass of the empire. In criminal law, if the plan embraced this at all, there was needed only a revision and adjustment of the Sullan ordinances. In civil law, for a state whose nationality was properly humanity, the necessary and only possible formal shape was to invest that urban edict, which had already spontaneously grown out of lawful commerce, with the security and precision of statute-law. The first step towards this had been taken by the Cornelian law of 687, when it enjoined the judge to keep to the maxims set forth at the beginning of his magistracy and not arbitrarily to administer other law (108)--a regulation, which may well be compared with the law of the Twelve Tables, and which became almost as significant for the fixing of the later urban law as that collection for the fixing of the earlier. But although after the Cornelian decree of the people the edict was no longer subordinate to the judge, but the judge was by law subject to the edict; and though the new code had practically dispossessed the old urban law in judicial usage as in legal instruction--every urban judge was still free at his entrance on office absolutely and arbitrarily to alter the edict, and the law of the Twelve Tables with its additions still always outweighed formally the urban edict, so that in each individual case of collision the antiquated rule had to be set aside by arbitrary interference of the magistrates, and therefore, strictly speaking, by violation of formal law. The subsidiary application of the urban edict in the court of the -praetor peregrinus- at Rome and in the different provincial judicatures was entirely subject to the arbitrary pleasure of the individual presiding magistrates. It was evidently necessary to set aside definitely the old urban law, so far as it had not been transferred to the newer, and in the case of the latter to set suitable limits to its arbitrary alteration by each individual urban judge, possibly also to regulate its subsidiary application by the side of the local statutes. This was Caesars design, when he projected the plan for his code; for it could not have been otherwise. The plan was not executed; and thus that troublesome state of transition in Roman jurisprudence was perpetuated till this necessary reform was accomplished six centuries afterwards, and then but imperfectly, by one of the successors of Caesar, the Emperor Justinian.
Lastly, in money, measures, and weights the substantial equalization of the Latin and Hellenic systems had long been in progress. It was very ancient so far as concerned the definitions of weight and the measures of capacity and of length indispensable for trade and commerce,(109) and in the monetary system little more recent than the introduction of the silver coinage.(110) But these older equations were not sufficient, because in the Hellenic world itself the most varied metrical and monetary systems subsisted side by side; it was necessary, and formed part doubtless of Caesar's plan, now to introduce everywhere in the new united empire, so far as this had not been done already, Roman money, Roman measures, and Roman weights in such a manner that they alone should be reckoned by in official intercourse, and that the non-Roman systems should be restricted to local currency or placed in a--once for all regulated--ratio to the Roman.(111) The action of Caesar, however, can only be pointed out in two of the most important of these departments, the monetary system and the calendar.
Gold Coin As Imperial Currency
The Roman monetary system was based on the two precious metals circulating side by side and in a fixed relation to each other, gold being given and taken according to weight,(112) silver in the form of coin; but practically in consequence of the extensive transmarine intercourse the gold far preponderated over the silver. Whether the acceptance of Roman silver money was not even at an earlier period obligatory throughout the empire, is uncertain; at any rate uncoined gold essentially supplied the place of imperial money throughout the Roman territory, the more so as the Romans had prohibited the coining of gold in all the provinces and client- states, and the -denarius- had, in addition to Italy, de jure or de facto naturalized itself in Cisalpine Gaul, in Sicily, in Spain and various other places, especially in the west.(113) but the imperial coinage begins with Caesar.