If Caesar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his creative genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have given to the world a pure and original system of jurisprudence.  Whatever flattery might suggest, the Emperor of the East was afraid to establish his private judgment as the standard of equity; in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion; and his laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislators of past times.  Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement of antique and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments.  In the first year of his reign he directed the faithful Tribonian and nine learned associates to revise the ordinances of his predecessors, as they were contained, since the time of Adrian, in the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian codes; to purge the errors and contradictions, to retrench whatever was obsolete or superfluous, and to select the wise and salutary laws best adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use of his subjects.  The work was accomplished in fourteen months; and the Twelve books or Tables, which the new decemvirs produced, might be designed to imitate the labors of their Roman predecessors.

The new Code of Justinian was honored with his name and confirmed by his royal signature:  authentic transcripts were multiplied by the pens of notaries and scribes; they were transmitted to the magistrates of the European, the Asiatic, and afterward the African provinces; and the law of the empire was proclaimed on solemn festivals at the doors of churches.  A more arduous operation was still behind—­to extract the spirit of jurisprudence from the decisions and conjectures, the questions and disputes of the Roman civilians.  Seventeen lawyers, with Tribonian at their head, were appointed by the Emperor to exercise an absolute jurisdiction over the works of their predecessors.  If they had obeyed his commands in ten years, Justinian would have been satisfied with their diligence; and the rapid composition of the Digest or Pandects in three years will deserve praise or censure, according to the merit of the execution.

From the library of Tribonian they chose forty, the most eminent civilians of former times:  two thousand treatises were comprised in an abridgment of fifty books; and it has been carefully re-reduced in this abstract to the moderate number of one hundred and fifty thousand.  The edition of this great work was delayed a month after that of the Institutes, and it seemed reasonable that the elements should precede the digest of the Roman law.  As soon as the Emperor had approved their labors, he ratified by his legislative power the speculations of these private citizens:  their commentaries on the Twelve Tables, the perpetual edict, the laws of the people, and the decrees of the senate succeeded to the authority of the text;