(contracted Ictus) amongst the Romans, was a person learned in the law, 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 fifty books of the Digest were compiled wholly from the answers or reports of the ancient jurisconsults; and Tribonian, in destroying the two thousand volumes from which the Code and Digest were compiled, has deprived the public of a world of things which would have thrown light upon the ancient office of the jurisconsults. We should scarcely have known anything beyond their bare names, had not Pomponius, who lived in the second century, taken care to preserve some circumstances illustrative of their office. The Roman jurisconsults seem to have been nearly the same with our chamber counsellors, who arrived at the honour of being consulted through age and experience, but never pleaded at the bar. The pleading advocates or lawyers never became jurisconsults. In the times of the commonwealth, the advocates had by much the more honourable employment, as being in the ready way to attain the highest preferments. They then despised the jurisconsults, calling them in derision formularii and legulari, 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 the latter became so much esteemed that they were called prudentes and sapientes; the judges were appointed to follow their advice; and Augustus advanced them to be public officers of the empire. Rutilius has written the lives of the most famous jurisconsults.