Commentaries on the Last Two Titles of the Digest

2. The law is not taken from the rule: but the rule is made from the law. In this Law 1. Contrariwise, the Responses of the ancient Jurisconsults constitute a part of Civil Law, Law 7, in the beginning, Digest, On Justice and Law. But Rules are the responses of the Jurisconsults. And they are brought forward everywhere to discuss controversies, the said Law 13, paragraph 1, On the liberated and posthumous heir; Law, final, Code, On acquiring possession; Law 1, and the whole title, Digest, On the Rule of Cato. How, therefore, is it defended that which Paulus denies here, that the law is taken from the Rule? Hotomannus answers in the said place: If ever a Rule is cited in place of law and statute, this is not done because the law is taken from it as if from the very source and head: but as if from a lake, which, having been drawn far from various sources, has been prepared and derived for daily use; since Rules are conceived from various and multiple law, i.e., from several chapters of laws. Decius, Ferrarius, Cagnolus, and Maynerius answer otherwise in this place. Raevardus answers otherwise in this place.

3. Through a rule, a brief narration of matters is handed down, and it is as it were a gathering of the case, in this law. A forensic word, to gather the case: i.e., to expose summarily to the judge, before whom the case is to be conducted, the argument and state of the case; the case to be gathered, i.e., by an index, summarily, briefly. Asconius Paedianus, In the 3rd Verrine Oration. Which gathering of the case takes its origin from the Law of the Twelve Tables. For thus the Decemvirs proclaimed: In the forum or in the comitium before midday, gather the case. See Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Book 5, 10, and Book 17, chapter 5. Duarenus, 1, Disputations 46, and Law 7, paragraph 4, at the end, Digest, On Pacts. Alciatus, 5, Parerga 1. P. Fab. in this place, number 6, and following. Just as, therefore, the gathering of the case contracts all the rights of the litigant into some sum, and, as Asconius says, forces it into a brief, so the Rule encompasses the chapters of many laws strictly and briefly. The Latin and Greek Interpreters are mistaken who read conjunction of the case, a brief narration and concatenation of the matter.