ΤΟ J. L. STRACHAN-DAVIDSON TO WHOSE INSTRUCTION AND ENCOURAGEMENT MY STUDIES IN ROMAN LAW ARE DUE THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED PREFACE THE leading design of this book is to furnish students of Cicero's writings with a clue to the chief legal difficulties which they will meet with in their reading. These difficulties are far more numerous in the sphere of procedure than in that of substantive law; and, as it was quite impossible to write a work of moderate compass which dealt with both branches of the subject, I have thought it better to confine my attention mainly to the former; although, as will easily be understood, it has proved impossible to deal thoroughly with the procedure of the period which I have treated, without touching on many questions of pure law; so intimately are these bound up with the forms in which they were presented to the courts. When I had chosen the procedure of the Ciceronian period as my subject, there were two methods of treatment which lay open before me. One was to write a series of brief commentaries on Cicero's speeches, either singly or in groups; the other was to adopt a systematic and historical treatment of the civil and criminal procedure of his time-to present as complete a picture as the material permitted of the courts of law of the later Republic, |