77 This book is primarily concerned with the development of the classical law, more specifically, with the sources from which that law derives and with the forces which were instrumental in its development.

It is proposed to deal separately with those sources and forces which the Romans themselves looked upon as the font of their law. The sequence in which the individual topics is presented is arbitrary, roughly that which is given in the first excerpt which follows.

Pomponius, Libro singulari enchiridii (D. 1.2.2.12)

Hence in our stale a rule depends either on law, that is, upon a statute, or there is our own ius civile which consists without writing in the mere interpretation of the learned (prudentes), or the legis actiones which give the forms for pleading, or plebiscite enacted without the authorization of the senate, or the edict of the magistrates whence the ius honorarium derives, or the senatus consultum which takes effect on the mere resolution of the senate without statute, or the imperial constitution, that is, what the emperor himself decrees and is observed as a statute.

Papinianus, Libro [//] definitionum (D. 1.1,7 pr.-l)

The ius civile is that which is derived from statutes, plebiscites, resolutions ofthe senate, decrees ofthe emperors, the authority ofthose learned (in the law). (1) Ius praetorium is that which the praetors have introduced for the purpose of aiding, supplementing or correcting the ius civile to the publicadvantage. Il is also called ius honorarium after the office (honos) of the praetors.

The chapters of this book (Book III) deal with Statute and Custom (chap. VII), The Jurists and Jurists’ Law (chap. VIII), The Praetor and the Edict (chap. IX), the Senate and senatus consulta (chap. X), The Emperor and constitutiones (chap. XI), with two further chapters: Classical Law in Practice (chap. XII), largely devoted to the effect of the expansion of city Rome law to the law of the Empire, and Theoretical Considerations in the Classical Law (chap. XIII).