an himself, whose vanity was
incapable of discerning how often that submission degenerated into the
grossest adulation. Tribonian adored the virtues 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 creative
genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have given to the
world a pure and original system of jurisprudence. Whatever flattery
might suggest, the Emperor of the East was afraid to establish his
private judgment as the standard of equity; in the possession of
legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion; and his
laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislators of past
times. Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an
artist, the works of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement of
antique and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first
year of his reign he directed the faithful Tribonian and nine learned
associates to revise the ordinances of his predecessors, as they were
contained, since the time of Adrian, in the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and
Theodosian codes; to purge the errors and contradictions, to retrench
whatever was obsolete or superfluous, and to select the wise and
salutary laws best adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use
of his subjects. The work was accomplished in fourteen months; and the
_Twelve_ books or _Tables_, which the new decemvirs produced, might be
designed to imitate the labors of their Roman predecessors.

The new _Code_ of Justinian was honored with his name and confirmed by
his royal signature: authentic transcripts were multiplied by the pens
of notaries and scribes; they were transmitted to the magistrates of the
European, the Asiatic, and afterward the African provinces; and the law
of the empire was proclaimed on solemn festivals at the doors of
churches. 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 d