With the rise of private property and the right of inheritance connected with it, class distinctions and class antagonism came into existence. In the course of time the propertied members made common cause against the propertyless ones. The former sought to gain control of the administrative positions and to make them hereditary. Finance had become a necessity and entailed conditions of indebtedness that had previously been unknown. Struggles against external enemies, internal conflicts of interest, and the varied interests and relations created by agriculture, industry and trade, necessitated a complicated system of laws and the formation of public bodies destined to keep the social machine in orderly motion and to settle disputes. The same was true concerning the relations of masters and slaves, debtors and creditors. Thus a power was needed to control all these relations, to conduct, regulate, arbitrate, protect and punish. ~The state came into existence as a necessary product of the new social order based on conflicting interests.~ Its direction naturally was assumed by those who had the greatest interest in its founding and who, thanks to their social power, were most influential: ~the propertied classes~. Thus aristocracy of wealth and democracy opposed one another, even where complete equality of political rights was maintained. During the old matriarchal system no written law existed. Conditions were simple and custom was hallowed. In the new, far more complicated order, written law became one of the urgent necessities and special officials were needed for its administration. But as the legal relations became more and more complicated, a special class of persons arose, devoted exclusively to the study of law and having a special interest in still further complicating them. The jurists, the lawyers, came into existence, and owing to the importance of the law to the body social, they soon became one of the most influential estates. The new civic jurisprudence in the course of time found its most classic expression in the Roman state, that explains the influence exerted by Roman law down to the present time.