paper, the labor and the materials of writing could be
purchased only by the rich; and it may reasonably be computed, that
the price of books was a hundred fold their present value. Copies were
slowly multiplied and cautiously renewed: the hopes of profit tempted
the sacrilegious scribes to erase the characters of antiquity, and
Sophocles or Tacitus were obliged to resign the parchment to missals,
homilies, and the golden legend. If such was the fate of the most
beautiful compositions of genius, what stability could be expected
for the dull and barren works of an obsolete science? The books of
jurisprudence were interesting to few, and entertaining to none: their
value was connected with present use, and they sunk forever as soon as
that use was superseded by the innovations of fashion, superior merit,
or public authority. In the age of peace and learning, between Cicero
and the last of the Antonines, many losses had been already sustained,
and some luminaries of the school, or forum, were known only to the
curious by tradition and report. Three hundred and sixty years of
disorder and decay accelerated the progress of oblivion; and it may
fairly be presumed, that of the writings, which Justinian is accused
of neglecting, many were no longer to be found in the libraries of
the East. The copies of Papinian, or Ulpian, which the reformer had
proscribed, were deemed unworthy of future notice: the Twelve Tables and
praetorian edicts insensibly vanished, and the monuments of ancient Rome
were neglected or destroyed by the envy and ignorance of the Greeks.
Even the Pandects themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger
from the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that _all_ the
editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from _one_ original.
It was transcribed at Constantinople in the beginning of the seventh
century, was successively transported by the accidents of war and
commerce to Amalphi, Pisa, and Florence, and is now deposited as a
sacred relic in the ancient palace of the republic.

It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation. To
maintain the text of the Pandects, the Institutes, and the Code, the use
of ciphers and abbreviations was rigorously proscribed; and as Justinian
recollected, that the perpetual edict had been buried under the weight
of commentators, he denounced the punishment of forgery against the rash
civilians who should presume to interpret or pervert the wil