The most eminent jurists who adorned the next century were the Scævolæ. In their family the profession of the jurisconsult seems to have been hereditary; of so many bearing that distinguished name, it might have been said that their house was the oracle of the whole state; “Domus jurisconsulti totius oraculum civitatis.”[428] Quintus, the augur, was Cicero’s first instructor in the science of the law: his cousin Publius enjoyed also a high reputation; and Quintus, the son of Publius, who became Cicero’s tutor after the death of his elder kinsman, combined the genius of an orator with the erudition of a jurist, and was called by his distinguished pupil “the greatest orator among jurists, and the greatest jurist among orators.” The compiler of the digest also quotes as authorities M. Manilius and M. Junius Brutus.[429] Manilius is one of the characters introduced in Cicero’s dialogue _de Republica_: he was consul A. U. C. 604, and is said to have been the author of seven legal treatises; but of all these, except three, Cicero denies the authority. Brutus was the son of the ambassador of that name who was employed in the war with Perseus, and left a treatise in three books on the civil law.[430] In the next century flourished one Ælius Gallus, who was somewhat senior to Cicero, and was the author of a treatise on the signification of law terms. Several of his definitions are given by Festus, and fragments are preserved by A. Gellius,[431] and in the Digest. By some he has been considered identical with Ælius Gallus, the prefect of Egypt in the reign of Augustus,[432] who was the friend of the geographer Strabo; but as there is little doubt that he is quoted by Varro,[433] such identity is impossible, since Varro died B. C. 28, and yet he speaks of Gallus as an aged man. Another distinguished jurist of this era was his namesake C. Aquilius Gallus. He was a pupil of Q. Mucius Scævola, and surpassed all his contemporaries in that black-letter knowledge of law, which in olden time was more highly valued than in the more brilliant days of Cicero. Learning then began to be ridiculed and lightly esteemed, and oratorical powers were more admired in proportion as the Roman mind became more alive to the refinements and beauties of language. But Gallus was most eminent as a law reformer. The written law of Rome presented by its technicality the greatest impediments to actions on the unwritten principle of common right and equity. To obviate this he invented legal fictions, _i. e._ formulæ by which the effects of the statute could be annulled without the necessity of abrogating the statute itself. His practice must have been large, for Pliny mentions that he was the owner of a splendid palace on the Viminal Hill.[434] In B. C. 67, he served the office of prætor together with Cicero, and both before and after that he frequently sat as one of the judices. Cicero pleaded before him in the defence both of Cæcina and Cluentius.