since then
pursued. The brief span of Roman literature, strictly so called, was
suddenly closed under a variety of influences, which though they may
partially be traced it would be improper in this place to analyse.
Ancient intellect was forcibly thrust back into its old courses, and
law again became no less exclusively the proper sphere for talent than
it had been in the days when the Romans despised philosophy and poetry
as the toys of a childish race. Of what nature were the external
inducements which, during the Imperial period, tended to draw a man of
inherent capacity to the pursuits of the jurisconsult may best be
understood by considering the option which was practically before him
in his choice of a profession. He might become a teacher of rhetoric,
a commander of frontier-posts, or a professional writer of panegyrics.
The only other walk of active life which was open to him was the
practice of the law. Through _that_ lay the approach to wealth, to
fame, to office, to the council-chamber of the monarch--it may be to
the very throne itself."

The premium on the study of jurisprudence was so enormous that there
were schools of law in every part of the Empire, even in the very
domain of Metaphysics. But, though the transfer of the seat of empire
to Byzantium gave a perceptible impetus to its cultivation in the
East, jurisprudence never dethroned the pursuits which there competed
with it. Its language was Latin, an exotic dialect in the Eastern half
of the Empire. It is only of the West that we can lay down that law
was not only the mental food of the ambitious and aspiring, but the
sole aliment of all intellectual activity. Greek philosophy had never
been more than a transient fashionable taste with the educated class
of Rome itself, and when the new Eastern capital had been created, and
the Empire subsequently divided into two, the divorce of the Western
provinces from Greek speculation, and their exclusive devotion to
jurisprudence, became more decided than ever. As soon then as they
ceased to sit at the feet of the Greeks and began to ponder out a
theology of their own, the theology proved to be permeated with
forensic ideas and couched in a forensic phraseology. It is certain
that this substratum of law in Western theology lies exceedingly deep.
A new set of Greek theories, the Aristotelian philosophy, made
their way afterwards into the West and almost entirely buried its
indigenous doctrines. But when at the