The consuls, the new civil executive, were still in no sense necessarily skilled in such matters, and were without the prestige of the former executive, the Rex; they were also doubtless busy with other work, especially in the field. Nothing could be more natural than that the pontifices should continue to provide the procedure for the now written law, just as they had formerly supplied it for the unwritten.[569] So, too, with the _interpretation_ of the Tables; this was the second part of the work that still remained to them. Writing was in that age a mystery to the mass of the population, and doubtless the idea was still in their minds that there was something supernatural about it. Writing, in fact, as well as formularised action and speech, may have had the flavour of magic about it. However that may be, there can be no doubt that the interpretation of a legal document was in those days a much more serious, if a less arduous business, than it is now. Here again, then, it seems perfectly natural that there should be no rapid or violent change in the _personnel_ of those deemed capable of such interpretation; there was no other body of experts capable of the work; the pontifices remained _iuris-consulti_, _i.e._ interpreters and advisers, and in the course of two and a half centuries accumulated an amount of material that formed a basis for the first published system of Roman law, the _ius Aelianum_ or _tripartita_ of 200 B.C. It is most useful to remember, as proof of this, that one member of the college was selected every year for the special purpose of helping the people with advice in matters of civil law, both in regard to interpretation and the choice of _legis actiones_; so we are expressly told by Pomponius, who adds that this practice continued for about a hundred years after the publication of the Tables, _i.e._ till the election of the first praetor in 366.[570] After that date the _ius civile_ emerges more distinctly from the old body of law, which included also the _ius divinum_, and its interpretation was no longer a matter purely for religious experts. In 337 we hear of the first _plebeian_ praetor--truly a momentous event, showing that the old profound belief is dying out, which demanded a religious and patrician qualification for all legal work. And at the end of the fourth century comes the publication, not only of the _legis actiones_, but of the Fasti, _i.e._ even of that most vital part of the _ius divinum_, which distinguished the times and seasons belonging to the numina from those belonging to the human citizens.[571] One might well suppose that the power of the pontifices was on the wane, for they had lost another monopoly.