“All the judicial learning of former times was laid under contribution by Tribonian and his colleagues.  Selections from the works of thirty-nine of the ablest lawyers, scattered over two thousand separate treatises, were collected in one volume; and care was taken to inform posterity that three millions of lines were abridged and reduced in these extracts to the modest number of one hundred and fifty thousand.  Among the selected jurists only three names belonged to the age of the republic,—­the civilians who flourished under the first emperors are seldom appealed to; so that most of the writers whose works have contributed to the Pandects lived within a period of one hundred years.  More than a third of the whole Pandects is from Ulpian, and next to him the principal writers are Paulus, Papinian, Salvius Julianus, Pomponius, Q. Cervidius Scaevola, and Gaius.  Though the variety of subjects is immense, the Digest has no claims to scientific arrangement.  It is a vast cyclopedia of heterogeneous law badly arranged; everything is there, but everything is not in its proper place.”

Neither the Digest nor the Code was adapted to elementary instruction; it was therefore necessary to prepare a treatise on the principles of Roman law.  This was intrusted to Tribonian and two professors, Theophilus and Dorotheus.  It is probable that Tribonian merely superintended the work, which was founded chiefly on the Institutes of Gaius, divided into four books.  It has been universally admired for its method and elegant precision.  It was intended merely as an introduction to the Pandects and the Code, and was entitled the Institutes.

The Novels, or New Constitutions, of Justinian were subsequently published, being the new ordinances of the Emperor and the changes he thought proper to make, and were therefore of high authority.  The Code, Pandects, Institutes, and Novels of Justinian comprise the Roman law as received in Europe, in the form given by the school of Bologna, and is called the “Corpus Juris Civilis.”  Savigny says:—­

“It was in that form that the Roman law became the common law of Europe; and when, four centuries later, other sources came to be added to it, the Corpus Juris of the school of Bologna had been so universally received, and so long established as a basis of practice, that the new discoveries remained in the domain of science, and served only for the theory of the law.  For the same reason, the Ante-Justinian law is excluded from practice.”

After Justinian the old texts were left to moulder as useless though venerable, and they have nearly all disappeared.  The Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes were declared to be the only legitimate authority, and alone were admitted to the tribunals or taught in the schools.  The rescripts of the early emperors recognized too many popular rights to suit the despotic character of Justinian; and the older jurists, like the Scaevolas, Sulpicius, and Labeo,