pervaded the whole of Roman life.  Every ordinary man was morally bound to keep an account-book of his income and expenditure—­in every well-arranged house, accordingly, there was a separate account-chamber (-tablinum-)—­and every one took care that he should not leave the world without having made his will:  it was one of the three matters in his life which Cato declares that he regretted, that he had been a single day without a testament.  Those household books were universally by Roman usage admitted as valid evidence in a court of justice, nearly in the same way as we admit the evidence of a merchant’s ledger.  The word of a man of unstained repute was admissible not merely against himself, but also in his own favour; nothing was more common than to settle differences between persons of integrity by means of an oath demanded by the one party and taken by the other—­a mode of settlement which was reckoned valid even in law; and a traditional rule enjoined the jury, in the absence of evidence, to give their verdict in the first instance for the man of unstained character when opposed to one who was less reputable, and only in the event of both parties being of equal repute to give it in favour of the defendant.(25) The conventional respectability of the Romans was especially apparent in the more and more strict enforcement of the rule, that no respectable man should allow himself to be paid for the performance of personal services.  Accordingly, magistrates, officers, jurymen, guardians, and generally all respectable men entrusted with public functions, received no other recompense for the services which they rendered than, at most, compensation for their outlays; and not only so, but the services which acquaintances (-amici-) rendered to each other—­such as giving security, representation in lawsuits, custody (-depositum-), lending the use of objects not intended to be let on hire (-commodatum-), the managing and attending to business in general (-procuratio-)—­were treated according to the same principle, so that it was unseemly to receive any compensation for them and an action was not allowable even where a compensation had been promised.  How entirely the man was merged in the merchant, appears most distinctly perhaps in the substitution of a money-payment and an action at law for the duel —­even for the political duel—­in the Roman life of this period.  The usual form of settling questions of personal honour was this:  a wager was laid between the offender and the party offended as to the truth or falsehood of the offensive assertion, and under the shape of an action for the stake the question of fact was submitted in due form of law to a jury; the acceptance of such a wager when offered by the offended or offending party was, just like the acceptance of a challenge to a duel at the present day, left open in law, but was often in point of honour not to be avoided.

Associations