stitutions, from Constantine to his own time, to be collected and
arranged in sixteen books. This was called the Theodosian Code, which
in the West was held in high esteem. It was very influential among the
Germanic nations, serving as the chief basis of their early legislation;
it also paved the way for the more complete codification that followed
in the Justinian Code, which superseded it.

To Justinian belongs the immortal glory of reforming the jurisprudence
of the Romans. "In the space of ten centuries," says Gibbon, "the
infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled many thousand
volumes, which no fortune could purchase, and no capacity could digest.
Books could not easily be found, and the judges, poor in the midst of
riches, were reduced to the exercise of their illiterate discretion."
The emperors had very early begun to issue ordinances, under the
authority of the various offices gathered into their hands; and these,
together with the answers to appeals from the lower courts made to the
emperors directly, or to the sort of supreme court which they
established, were called _imperial constitutions_ and _rescripts_.
Justinian determined to unite in one body all the rules of law, whatever
may have been their origin; and in the year 528 appointed ten
jurisconsults, among whom was the celebrated Tribonian, to select and
arrange the imperial constitutions and rescripts, leaving out what was
obsolete or useless or contradictory, and to make such alterations as
the circumstances required. This was called the _Code_, divided into
twelve books, and comprising the constitutions from Hadrian to
Justinian. It was published in fourteen months after it was undertaken.

Justinian thereupon authorized Tribonian, then quaestor, _vir magnificus
magisteria dignitate inter agentes decoratus,_--"for great titles were
now given to the officers of the crown,"--to prepare, with the
assistance of sixteen associates, a collection of extracts from the
writings of the most eminent jurists, so as to form a body of law for
the government of the empire, with power to select and omit and alter;
and this immense work was done in three years, and published under the
title of Digest, or Pandects. Says Lord Mackenzie:

"All the judicial learning of former times was laid under contribution
by Tribonian and his colleagues. Selections from the works of
thirty-nine of the ablest lawyers, scattered over two thousand separate
treatises, were