iligence; and the rapid composition of the _Digest_ or
_Pandects_ in three years will deserve praise or censure, according to
the merit of the execution.

From the library of Tribonian they chose forty, the most eminent
civilians of former times: two thousand treatises were comprised in an
abridgment of fifty books; and it has been carefully re-reduced in this
abstract to the moderate number of one hundred and fifty thousand. The
edition of this great work was delayed a month after that of the
_Institutes_, and it seemed reasonable that the elements should precede
the digest of the Roman law. As soon as the Emperor had approved their
labors, he ratified by his legislative power the speculations of these
private citizens: their commentaries on the _Twelve Tables_, the
perpetual edict, the laws of the people, and the decrees of the senate
succeeded to the authority of the text; and the text was abandoned as a
useless, though venerable, relic of antiquity. The _Code_, the
_Pandects_, and the _Institutes_ were declared to be the legitimate
system of civil jurisprudence; they alone were admitted in the
tribunals, and they alone were taught in the academies of Rome,
Constantinople, and Berytus. Justinian addressed to the senate and
provinces his _eternal oracles_; and his pride, under the mask of piety,
ascribed the consummation of this great design to the support and
inspiration of the Deity.

Since the Emperor declined the fame and envy of original composition,
we can only require at his hands method, choice, and fidelity, the
humble, though indispensable, virtues of a compiler. Among the various
combinations of ideas it is difficult to assign any reasonable
preference; but as the order of Justinian is different in his three
works, it is possible that all may be wrong; and it is certain that two
cannot be right. In the selection of ancient laws he seems to have
viewed his predecessors without jealousy and with equal regard: the
series could not ascend above the reign of Adrian; and the narrow
distinction of paganism and Christianity, introduced by the superstition
of Theodosius, had been abolished by the consent of mankind. But the
jurisprudence of the _Pandects_ is circumscribed within a period of a
hundred years, from the perpetual edict to the death of Severus
Alexander: the civilians who lived under the first Caesars are seldom
permitted to speak, and only three names can be attributed to the age of
the republic. The