The Roman law, the _Romana lex_, was as gigantic, as original, and as comprehensive a structure as was the empire which gave to it expression. Modern European law is but a dilution thereof. The Roman law attained perfection, as I conceive, about the time of the Antonines, through the great jurists who then flourished. If one might name a particular moment at which so vast and complex a movement culminated, one would be tempted to suggest the reign of Hadrian, who appointed Salvius Julianus to draw up the _edictum perpetuum_, or permanent edict, in the year 132 A.D. Thenceforward the magistrate had to use his discretion only when the edict of Julianus did not apply. I am not aware that any capital principle of municipal law has been evolved since that time, and the astonishing power of the Roman mind can only be appreciated when it is remembered that the whole of this colossal fabric was original. Modern European law has been only a servile copy. But, regard being had to the position of the emperor in relation to the people, and more especially in relation to the vast bureaucracy of Rome, which was the embodiment of the vested interest which was Rome itself, the adherence of Roman thought to the path of least resistance was absolute. “So far as the cravings of Stoicism found historical and political fulfilment, they did so in the sixty years of Hadrian and the Antonines, and so far again as an individual can embody the spirit of an age, its highest and most representative impersonation is unquestionably to be found in the person of Marcus Antoninus.... Stoicism faced the whole problem of existence, and devoted as searching an investigation to processes of being and of thought, to physics and to dialectic, as to the moral problems presented by the emotions and the will.” [Footnote: _Marcus Aurelius Antoninus_, in English, by Gerald H. Rendall, Introduction, xxvii.]