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Updated: May 20, 2025
It is the oldest work from which there are any excerpts in the Digest. Servius Sulpicius, the friend of Cicero and his fellow-student in oratory, surpassed his teachers Balbus and Gallus, and was the equal in reputation of the great Mucius Scaevola, the Pontifex Maximus, who said it was disgraceful for a patrician and a noble to be ignorant of the law with which he had to do.
But since you have mentioned the word friendship, and we are at leisure, you would be doing me a great kindness, and I expect Scaevola also, if you would do as it is your habit to do when asked questions on other subjects, and tell us your sentiments about friendship, its nature, and the rules to be observed in regard to it. Scaevola. I shall of course be delighted.
More than a third of the whole Pandects is from Ulpian, and next to him the principal writers are Paulus, Papinian, Salvius Julianus, Pomponius, Q. Cervidius Scaevola, and Gaius. Though the variety of subjects is immense, the Digest has no claims to scientific arrangement. It is a vast cyclopedia of heterogeneous law badly arranged; everything is there, but everything is not in its proper place."
There were no books nor schools to teach its principles. But in the latter days of the republic law became the fashionable study of Roman youth, and eminent masters arose. The first great lawyer who left behind him important works, was the teacher of Cicero, Q. Mucius Scaevola, who wrote a treatise in eighteen books on the civil law.
In regard to the "three religions," therefore, he agreed with Scaevola in casting out entirely the religion of the poets, and in accepting both the others, but he differed from Scaevola in that he denied the contradiction between them and asserted that they were not two truths but two forms of the same truth.
One Scaevola was Pontifex Maximus, another was Augur; Cicero himself was Augur, so was Caesar. The two things were kept quite distinct. Philosophy did not influence political action in any way. It was simply a refuge for the mind, such as all thinking men must have, and which if not supplied by a true creed, will inevitably be sought in a false or imperfect one.
This may suffice for the origin of friendship, unless you have, perchance, some objection to what I have said. FANNIUS. Go on, Laelius. I answer by the right of seniority for Scaevola who is younger than I am. SCAEVOLA. I am of the same mind with you. Let us then, hear farther.
There was perhaps a sublatent irony in making Philus play this part; for he was an eminently upright man. FANNIUS. It was indeed easy for the man pre-eminently just to defend justice. SCAEVOLA. As to friendship, then, is not its defence easy for him who has won the highest celebrity on the ground of friendship maintained with pre-eminent faithfulness, consistency, and probity?
Even at this time a tradition may have existed that a magic formula by which the senate advised the magistrates "to see to it that the State took no harm," could justify any act of violence in an emergency. The sense of the house was with Nasica, but a resolution could not be framed unless the consul put the question. The answer of Scaevola was that of a lawyer.
Law he learned by attaching himself, by becoming the pupil, as we should say, of some great man that was famed for his knowledge. Cicero relates to us his own experience: "My father introduced me to the Augur Scaevola; and the result was that, as far as possible and permissible, I never left the old man's side.
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