e Imperial Guard. He was adopted,
educated, and trained by Justin I, whom he succeeded as emperor.
His long reign (527-565) was disturbed by the sanguinary factions
of the Circus--the Greens and the Blues, so named from the colors
of the competing charioteers in the games--the suppression of the
schools of philosophy at Athens, and by various wars. Nevertheless
it was marked by magnificent works, the administrative organization
of the empire, and the great buildings at Constantinople. The
Church of Santa-Sophia, the first great Christian church, although
used as a Mahometan mosque since 1459, still stands at
Constantinople, with its plain exterior but impressive interior, a
monument of Justinian's reign.

His two great masters of war, foreigners in origin like himself,
were Belisarius the Thracian and Narses the Armenian. Africa was
wrested from the Vandals; Italy from the successors of Theodoric;
and much of Spain from the Western Goths. Under Justinian the
Byzantine or Eastern Empire resumed much of the majesty and power
of ancient Rome. But the crowning glory of his career was the
Code. One of the greatest historians says of his reign: "Its most
instructive lesson has been drawn from the influence which its
legislation has exercised on foreign nations. The unerring instinct
of mankind has fixed on this period as one of the greatest eras in
man's annals."

The Code was a digest of the whole mass of Roman law literature,
compiled and annotated at the command of Justinian, under the
supervision of the great lawyer Tribonian, who, with his helpers,
reduced the chaotic mass to a logical system containing the essence
of Roman law. The first part of the _Codex Constitutionem_,
prepared in less than a year, was published in April, 529. The
second part, the _Digest_ or _Pandects,_ appeared in December, 533.
To insure conformity, both were revised and issued in November,
534, the Institutiones, an _elementary_ text-book, founded on the
_Institutiones_ of Gaius, who lived A.D. 110-180, being added, and
the whole, as a complete body of law, given to the law schools at
Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Berytus, and Caesarea, for use in
their graduate course. Later the _Novellae Constitutione_, or
_Novels,_ most of them in Greek, comprising statutes of