A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

the son of a freedman, who is called by Livy Cneius, by Gellius and Pliny Annius, was born in humble circumstances, but became secretary to App. Claudius Caecus [CLAUDIUS, No. 10], and, in consequence of this connection, together with his own shrewdness and eloquence, attained distinguished honours in the commonwealth. He is celebrated in the annals of Roman law for having been the first to divulge certain technicalities of procedure, which previously had been kept secret as the exclusive patrimony of the pontiffs and the patricians. The relative share which the pontiffs, as such, and the patricians, who were not pontiffs, possessed in the administration and interpretation of early Roman law, cannot now be accurately determined. Among the portions of law which were kept in the knowledge of a few, were the greater part of the actus legitimi and the actiones legis. These appear to have included the whole of legal practice, the actus legitimi ordinarily designating the technicalities of private legal transactions, and the actiones legis the ceremonies of judicial procedure, although this distinction is not always observed. To the hidden law of practice belonged the rules of the Kalendar (Fasti), and the greater part of the Formulae. The rules of the Kalendar determined what legal acts were to be done, and what omitted, on particular days. The Formulae related chiefly to technical pleading, or, in other words, to that part of forensic practice which determined the mode of stating a claim and making a defence; but there were also formulae for acts not connected with litigation, as mancipatio, sponsio, adoptio, and formulae of this latter kind cannot be supposed to have been so little known to the people at large as forms of pleading, whether oral or written, may have been. Flavius made himself master of the rules of the Kalendar and the Formulae, either by stealing a book in which they had been laid down and reduced to order by App. Claudius (Dig. 1. tit. 2. s. 2.7), or by frequently consulting those who were able to give advice upon the subject, by noting down their answers, and by applying his sagacious intellect to discover the system from which such detached answers proceeded. Pliny (H.N. 33.1) says that Flavius pursued the latter course, at the recommendation of App. Claudius (ejus hortatu exceperat eos dies, consultando assidue sagaci ingenio). He thus picked the brains of the jurists he consulted (ab ipsis cautis jurisconsultis eorum sapientiam compilavit, Cic. pro Mur. 11). The expressions of some writers who mention the publication of Flavius seem to confine his discoveries to the rules of the Kalendar; but there are other passages which make it likely that he published other rules connected with the legis actiones, especially the formulae of pleading. (Compare Liv. 9.46; Macr. 1.15; Cic. de Fin. 4.27,

ad Att. 6.1, de Orat. 1.41.)

[J.T.G]