(Icitus), among the Romans, was a person learned in the laws; a master of the Roman jurisprudence; who was consulted on the interpretation of the laws and customs, and on the difficult points in law suits. The fifteen books of the Digests were compiled wholly from the answers or reports of the ancient jurisconsulti. Tribonianus, in destroying the 2000 volumes from whence the Code and Digest were taken, has deprived the public of a world of things which would have given them light into the ancient office of the jurisconsulti. We should scarcely have known any thing beyond their bare names, had not Pomponius, who lived in the second century, taken care to preserve some circumstances of their office.

The Roman jurisconsulti seem to have been the same with our chamber counsellors, who arrived at the honour of being consulted through age and experience, but never pleaded at the bar. Their pleading advocates or lawyers never became jurisconsulti. See Advocate.

In the times of the commonwealth, the advocati had by much the more honourable employment, as being in the ready way to attain the highest preferments. They then despised the jurisconsulti, calling them in derision formularii and leguleii, as having invented certain forms and monosyllables, in order to give their answers the greater appearance of gravity and mystery. But in process of time they became so much esteemed, that they were called prudentes et sapientes, and the emperors appointed the judges to follow their advice. Augustus advanced them to be public officers of the empire; so that they were no longer confined to the petty councils of private persons.—Bern. Rutilius has written the lives of the most famous jurisconsulti who have lived within these 2000 years.