about two centuries after the conquests of Justinian, and
from his reign we may date the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue.
That legislator had composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects,
in a language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of
the Roman government, the consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of
Constantinople, of the campus and tribunals of the East. [97] But this
foreign dialect was unknown to the people and soldiers of the Asiatic
provinces, it was imperfectly understood by the greater part of the
interpreters of the laws and the ministers of the state. After a short
conflict, nature and habit prevailed over the obsolete institutions
of human power: for the general benefit of his subjects, Justinian
promulgated his novels in the two languages: the several parts of his
voluminous jurisprudence were successively translated; [98] the original
was forgotten, the version was studied, and the Greek, whose intrinsic
merit deserved indeed the preference, obtained a legal, as well as
popular establishment in the Byzantine monarchy. The birth and residence
of succeeding princes estranged them from the Roman idiom: Tiberius by
the Arabs, [99] and Maurice by the Italians, [100] are distinguished
as the first of the Greek Caesars, as the founders of a new dynasty
and empire: the silent revolution was accomplished before the death of
Heraclius; and the ruins of the Latin speech were darkly preserved in
the terms of jurisprudence and the acclamations of the palace. After
the restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne and the Othos, the
names of Franks and Latins acquired an equal signification and extent;
and these haughty Barbarians asserted, with some justice, their superior
claim to the language and dominion of Rome. They insulted the alien
of the East who had renounced the dress and idiom of Romans; and their
reasonable practice will justify the frequent appellation of Greeks.
[101] But this contemptuous appellation was indignantly rejected by the
prince and people to whom it was applied. Whatsoever changes had been
introduced by the lapse of ages, they alleged a lineal and unbroken
succession from Augustus and Constantine; and, in the lowest period of
degeneracy and decay, the name of Romans adhered to the last fragments
of the empire of Constantinople. [102]

[Footnote 94: Justinian, says the historian Agathias, (l. v. p.
157,). Yet the specific title of Emperor of the Romans w