e of the age.
Tribonian composed, both in prose and verse, on a strange diversity of
curious and abstruse subjects: a double panegyric of Justinian and
the life of the philosopher Theodotus; the nature of happiness and the
duties of government; Homer's catalogue and the four-and-twenty sorts of
metre; the astronomical canon of Ptolemy; the changes of the months;
the houses of the planets; and the harmonic system of the world. To the
literature of Greece he added the use of the Latin tongue; the Roman
civilians were deposited in his library and in his mind; and he most
assiduously cultivated those arts which opened the road of wealth and
preferment. From the bar of the Praetorian praefects, he raised himself
to the honors of quaestor, of consul, and of master of the offices: the
council of Justinian listened to his eloquence and wisdom; and envy
was mitigated by the gentleness and affability of his manners. The
reproaches of impiety and avarice have stained the virtue or the
reputation of Tribonian. In a bigoted and persecuting court, the
principal minister was accused of a secret aversion to the Christian
faith, and was supposed to entertain the sentiments of an Atheist and
a Pagan, which have been imputed, inconsistently enough, to the last
philosophers of Greece. His avarice was more clearly proved and more
sensibly felt. If he were swayed by gifts in the administration of
justice, the example of Bacon will again occur; nor can the merit of
Tribonian atone for his baseness, if he degraded the sanctity of his
profession; and if laws were every day enacted, modified, or repealed,
for the base consideration of his private emolument. In the sedition of
Constantinople, his removal was granted to the clamors, perhaps to the
just indignation, of the people: but the quaestor was speedily restored,
and, till the hour of his death, he possessed, above twenty years, the
favor and confidence of the emperor. His passive and dutiful submission
had been honored with the praise of Justinian himself, whose vanity was
incapable of discerning how often that submission degenerated into the
grossest adulation. Tribonian adored the virtues of his gracious of
his gracious master; the earth was unworthy of such a prince; and he
affected a pious fear, that Justinian, like Elijah or Romulus, would be
snatched into the air, and translated alive to the mansions of celestial
glory.

If Caesar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his cre