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 of Pandects,
[75] 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: [76] two thousand treatises
were comprised in an abridgment of fifty books; and it has been
carefully recorded, that three millions of lines or sentences, [77] were
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; and the
text was abandoned, as a useless, though venerable, relic of antiquity.
The Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, were declared to be the
legitimate system of civil jurisprudence; they alone were admitted into
the tribunals, and they alone were taught in the academies of Rome,
Constantinople, and Berytus. Justinian addressed to the senate and
provinces his eternal oracles; and his pride, under the mask of piety,
ascribed the consummation of this great design to the support and
inspiration of the Deity.

[Footnote 75: General receivers was a common title of the Greek
miscellanies, (Plin. Praefat. ad Hist. Natur.) The Digesta of Scaevola,
Marcellinus, Celsus, were already familiar to the civilians: but
Justinian was in the wrong when he used the two appellations as
synonymous. Is the word Pandects Greek or Latin--masculine or feminine?
The diligent Brenckman will not presume to decide these momentous
controversies, (Hist. Pandect. Florentine. p. 200--304.) Note: The word
was formerly in common use. See the preface is Aulus Gellius--W]

[Footnote 76: Angelus P