When Justinian ascended the throne, the reformation of the Roman
jurisprudence was an arduous but indispensable task. In the space of ten
centuries, 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 subjects of the Greek provinces were ignorant of the
language that disposed of their lives and properties; and the
_barbarous_ dialect of the Latins was imperfectly studied in the
academies of Berytus and Constantinople. As an Illyrian soldier, that
idiom was familiar to the infancy of Justinian; his youth had been
instructed by the lessons of jurisprudence, and his imperial choice
selected the most learned civilians of the East, to labor with their
sovereign in the work of reformation. The theory of professors was
assisted by the practice of advocates and the experience of magistrates,
and the whole undertaking was animated by the spirit of Tribonian.
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