[566] See, _e.g._ Launspach, _State and Family in Early Rome_, p. 256 foll. The last three chapters of this little book, on Patria potestas, Marriage, and Succession, will be found useful by those who cannot enter into the many disputes and difficulties which have arisen out of the attempts of writers on Roman law to adjust legal ideas to the dim early history of Rome. Binder, in his work _Die Plebs_, starts from the improbable hypothesis that the plebs was the population of the Latin part of the city as distinct from that Sabine part on the Quirinal, which he believes to have been the only patrician body; and he further believes that the plebs lived originally under "Mutterrecht," the patres under "Vaterrecht." Such a condition of society would, of course, have greatly added to the pontifical work of religious adjustment; it would have been more than even the pontifices could have successfully achieved. [567] See above, note 7. Binder, _Die Plebs_, p. 488 foll., discusses, and in the main rejects, the arguments of Pais and Lambert. [568] So Huvelin, in a paper in _L'Annee sociologique_, 1905-6, p. 1 foll., criticised by Hubert et Mauss, _Melanges d'histoire des religions_, p. xxiii. foll. [569] From the religious point of view the _legis actiones_ are best explained in Marquardt, 318 foll. Cp. Muirhead, _Roman Law_, ed. 1899, pp. 246-7; Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, index _s.v._ "legis actio," and especially p. 87. [570] The famous passage of Pomponius is in the _Digest_, i. 2. 2, sec. 6 (for the work of Aelius, see _Dig._ i. 2. 2, 38) "ex his legibus ... actiones compositae sunt, quibus inter se homines disceptarent: quas actiones ne populus prout vellet institueret, certas sollemnesque esse voluerunt.... Omnium tamen harum et interpretandi scientia et actiones apud collegium pontificum erant, ex quibus constituebatur, quis quoquo anno praeesset privatis." [571] Livy ix. 46 "civile ius, repositum in penetralibus pontificum, evulgavit (Cn. Flavius), fastosque circa forum in albo proponit, ut quando lege agi posset sciretur." Cp. Val. Max. ii. 5. 2. _Civile ius_ is here usually taken as meaning the procedure; but this is a passage which may give some countenance to those who would put the publication of the XII. Tables later than the traditional date. [572] For the relation of the Flamines, Vestals, and Rex sacrorum to the pontifex maximus, see Wissowa, _R.K._ 432 foll. [573] See above, p. 283. For the eclipse, Cic. _Rep._ i. 16. 25; and for the various scientific determinations of its exact date, Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Lit._ vol. i. (ed. 2) p. 37. "Ex hoc die," writes Cicero, "quem apud Ennium et in maximis annalibus consignatum videmus, superiores solis defectiones reputatae sunt."