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The tinge received through contact with legal conceptions is perfectly perceptible in the earliest ethical literature of the modern world, and it is evident, I think, that the Law of Contract, based as it is on the complete reciprocity and indissoluble connection of rights and duties, has acted as a wholesome corrective to the predispositions of writers who, if left to themselves, might have exclusively viewed a moral obligation as the public duty of a citizen in the Civitas Dei.
From the time when Julius Cæsar addressed his legions on the little island of Lutetia Civitas Parisiorum to the present day, two millenniums of history have been enacted there, and few spots are to be found in Europe where so many associations are crowded together.
Consequently it is in the matter of tenure that I think is to be found the difference in power between the two officers. In addition to his official authority, the dux was possessed of a power and an influence entirely his own, derived quite as much from the number of his vassals and his position in the civitas as from the grant he received from the king.
Of Campanella's "Civitas Solis," which has not hitherto been translated into English, the translation here given, with one or two omissions of detail which can well be spared, has been made for me by my old pupil and friend, Mr. Thomas W. Halliday.
"For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE, in Latin CIVITAS, which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended, and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment, by which, fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty, are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi, the people's safety, its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death."
There are numerous figures of towns, animals, birds, and fish, with grotesque customs, such as the mediæval geographers believed to exist in different parts of the world; Babylon with its famous tower; Rome, the capital of the world, bearing the inscription—’Roma, caput mundi, tenet orbis frena rotundi’; and Troy as ’civitas bellicosissima.’ In Great Britain most of the cathedrals are mentioned; but of Ireland the author seems to have known very little.
Vere Ierusalem est illa civitas Cuius pax iugis et summa iucunditas; Ubi non praevenit rem desiderium, Nec desiderio minus est praemium. A great joy has come to me; one of those unexpected gifts which life loves to bestow after we have learnt to loose our grip of her.
The most important of the functions of the dux as judex was holding the Curtis Regia or Curtis Ducalis, in the largest city or "urbs" of every civitas. Here, in conjunction with his subordinates, he heard all cases which did not go up to the king for judgment, and here was centered the fiscal administration of the civitas.
About thirty miles southeast of Naples lay Salernum, which for centuries kept alight the lamp of the old learning, and became the centre of medical studies in the Middle Ages; well deserving its name of "Civitas Hippocratica."
Quomodo sedet sola civitas! Meanwhile, close to one of those city gates, is a poster announcing lectures "Sur le costume des Premiers Chrétiens!" But not less incongruous, behind those walls of Rome, are all of us, bringing our absurd modernnesses, our far-fetched things of civilisation into the solemn, starved, lousy, silent Past! I went into the vigna of S. Cesario for the key of the church.
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