dexterity cannot have greatly abated from the real power of the speakers. The subject which the Romans wrought out for themselves with the least assistance from Greek thought, was Jurisprudence. In this they surpassed not only the Greeks, but all nations ancient and modern. From the early formulae, mostly of a religious character, which existed in the regal period, until the publication of the Decemviral code, conservatism and progress went hand in hand. [27] After that epoch elementary legal knowledge began to be diffused, though the interpretation of the Twelve Tables was exclusively in the hands of the Patricians. But the limitation of the judicial power by the establishment of a fixed code, and the obligation of the magistrate to decide according to the written letter, naturally encouraged a keen study of the sources which in later times expanded into the splendid developments of Roman legal science. The first institution of the table of _legis actiones_, attributed to Appius Claudius (304 B.C.), must be considered as the commencement of judicial knowledge proper. The _responsa prudentium_, at the giving of which younger men were present as listeners, must have contributed to form a legal habit of thought among the citizens, and prepared a vast mass of material for the labours of the philosophic jurists of a later age. But inasmuch as neither speeches nor legal decisions were generally committed to writing, except in the bare form of registers, we do not find that there was any growth of regular prose composition. The rule that prose is posterior to poetry holds good in Rome, in spite of the essentially prosaic character of the people. It has been already said that religious, legal, and other formulae were arranged in rhythmical fashion, so as to be known by the name of _carmina_. And conformably to this we see that the earliest composers of history, who are in point of time the first prose writers of Rome, did not write in Latin at all, but in Greek. The history of Latin prose begins with Cato. He gave it that peculiar colouring which it never afterwards entirely lost. Having now completed our preliminary remarks, we shall proceed to a more detailed account of the earliest writers whose names or works have come down to us. CHAPTER III. THE INTRODUCTION OF GREEK LITERATURE--LIVIUS AND NAEVIUS (240-204 B.C.).