The earliest Roman laws were the _Leges Regiæ_, which were collected and codified by Sextus Papirius, and were hence called the Papirian Code. But these were rude and unconnected—simply a collection of isolated enactments. The laws of the Twelve Tables stand next in point of antiquity. They exhibited the first attempts at regular system, and imbodied not only legislative enactments but legal principles.[424] So popular were they, that when Cicero was a child every Roman boy committed them to memory as our children learn their catechism,[425] and the great orator laments that in the course of his lifetime this practice had become obsolete. The explanation of these laws was a privilege confined to the pontifical college. This body alone prescribed the form of pleading, and published the days on which the courts were held. Hence, not only the whole practice and exposition of the law was in the hands of the patricians, but they had also the power of obstructing at their pleasure all legal business. But in the censorship of Appius Claudius, his secretary, Cn. Flavius, set up, at the suggestion of Appius, a Calendar in the Forum, which made known to the public the days on which legal business could be transacted. In vain the patricians endeavoured to maintain their monopoly by the invention of new formulæ, called Notes, for Tiberius Coruncanius, the first plebeian Pontifex Maximus, who was consul A. U. C. 474, opened a public school of jurisprudence, and in the middle of the next century[426] the “Notes” were published by Sextus Ælius Catus. The oral traditional expositions of these laws formed the groundwork of the Roman civil law. To these were added from time to time the decrees of the people (plebiscita,) the acts of the senate (senatus-consulta,) and the prætorian edicts, which announced the principles on which each successive prætor purposed to administer the statute law. Such were the various elements out of which the whole body of Roman law was composed; and in such early times was the subject diligently studied and expounded that the latter half of the sixth century A. U. C. was rich in jurists whose powers are celebrated in history. Besides S. Ælius Catus, already mentioned, P. Licinius Crassus, surnamed “the rich,” who was consul A. U. C. 549, is mentioned by Livy[427] as learned in the pontifical law, the canon law of the ancient Romans. L. Acilius also wrote commentaries on the laws of the Twelve Tables; and to these may be added T. Manlius Torquatus, consul A. U. C. 589, S. Fabius Pictor, and another member of the same distinguished family, Q. Fabius Labeo, Cato the censor and his son Porcius Cato Licinianus, and lastly P. Cornelius Nasica, whose services as a jurist were recognised by the grant of a house at the public expense.