Civil jurisdiction is said to have been based on the king’s judgment.[261] How far this royal jurisdiction was personal we cannot say, but under all circumstances the king was the chief source of the _jus privatum_, in so far as he and his pontiffs alone knew the formularies of action,[262] the most precise verbal accuracy in which was necessary for the successful conduct of a suit. It is probable that in many cases the king gave merely the formulary of action, that is, the ruling in law, and then sent the case before a private judge or arbitrator (_judex privatus, arbiter_), thus illustrating (although not, perhaps, on the scale recognised during the Republic) the fundamental division of judicial procedure into _jus_ and _judicium_. This division of jurisdiction is probably primitive and not, as has sometimes been thought, a modification introduced by the later monarchy.[263] Even in Republican times the _judex_ was chosen by consent of the parties.[264] He was an arbitrator between the litigants agreed to by a mutual compact,[265] and an outcome of the notion of self-help so prominent in early Greek and Roman law. But one who knows the forms of action has to stand by and see that the words of these forms are correctly repeated. This depositary of _jus_ is the king or one of his pontiffs. Hence eventually the public official comes to assist at the appointment of the judge. From this it is but a slight step to give the formula of action which settles the law of the case, and to leave it to the _judex_ to decide the question of fact. § 6. _The Servian Constitution_