73: I apply the two passages of Suidas to the same man; every
circumstance so exactly tallies. Yet the lawyers appear ignorant; and
Fabricius is inclined to separate the two characters, (Bibliot. Grae.
tom. i. p. 341, ii. p. 518, iii. p. 418, xii. p. 346, 353, 474.)]

[Footnote 74: This story is related by Hesychius, (de Viris
Illustribus,) Procopius, (Anecdot. c. 13,) and Suidas, (tom. iii. p.
501.) Such flattery is incredible! --Nihil est quod credere de se Non
possit, cum laudatur Diis aequa potestas. Fontenelle (tom. i. p.
32--39) has ridiculed the impudence of the modest Virgil. But the same
Fontenelle places his king above the divine Augustus; and the sage
Boileau has not blushed to say, "Le destin a ses yeux n'oseroit
balancer" Yet neither Augustus nor Louis XIV. were fools.]

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 legislature 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 afterwards the African provinces; and the law of the
empire was proclaimed on solemn festivals at the doors of churches.