To
maintain the text of the _Pandects_, the _Institutes,_ and the _Code_,
the use of ciphers and abbreviations was rigorously proscribed; and as
Justinian recollected, that the perpetual edict had been buried under
the weight of commentators, he denounced the punishment of forgery
against the rash civilians who should presume to interpret or pervert
the will of their sovereign. The scholars of Accursius, of Bartolus, of
Cujacius, should blush for their accumulated guilt, unless they dare to
dispute his right of binding the authority of his successors and the
native freedom of the mind. But the Emperor was unable to fix his own
inconstancy; and while he boasted of renewing the exchange of Diomede,
of transmuting brass into gold, discovered the necessity of purifying
his gold from the mixture of baser alloy. Six years had not elapsed from
the publication of the _Code_ before he condemned the imperfect attempt
by a new and more accurate edition of the same work, which he enriched
with two hundred of his own laws and fifty decisions of the darkest and
most intricate points of jurisprudence.
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