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Rh occasionally this or that extract might be moved to some other place, sometimes to form an apt commencement for the title, in one case (Book xx, title 1) by way of honour to Papinian.

Justinian's work was thus not a codification, as we understand the word, but a consolidation of the law, both of the jus and the leges, as it may be called, of the Common and the Statute Law. It was consolidation combined with amendment. The removal of obsolete law and of consequent reference led necessarily to innumerable corrections both of substance and of wording. Whatever criticism this mode of solving the problem may justly receive, it had two great merits. It gave the Roman world within a short time a practical statement of the law in use, cleared of what was obsolete and disputable, full in detail, terse in expression, familiar in language, and of unquestionable and exclusive authority. And it has preserved for the civilised world in all ages a large amount of the jurisprudence of the best trained Roman lawyers of the best age, which but for Tribonian would in all probability have been wholly lost.

But Tribonian was not satisfied with this achievement. In preparing the Digest it was found desirable formally to repeal parts of the old law, and for this purpose fifty constitutions were issued. On this and other accounts Justinian directed him with the aid of Dorotheus, a professor at Berytus, and of three eminent lawyers in the Courts at Constantinople to take the Code in hand, to insert the new matter, to omit what were repetitions, and thoroughly to revise the whole. This second or revised Code is what we have. It took effect from 29 December 534. The earliest constitution in it is one of Hadrian's and there are few before Severus, the jurists' writings having embodied earlier ones so far as they were of general and permanent application. Many rescripts of Diocletian are given, but none of subsequent Emperors. Many constitutions are much abridged or altered from the form in which they appear in the Theodosian Code, which itself contained often only an abridgment of the originals.

A manual for students (the Institutes) founded largely on Gaius' Institutes (which have come down to us in a palimpsest luckily discovered at Verona by Niebuhr in 1816) was also sanctioned by Justinian, and took effect as law from the same day as the Digest. An authoritative course of study was ordained at the same time, and law schools were sanctioned, but only in Constantinople, Rome, and Berytus, those existing in Alexandria, Caesarea, and elsewhere being suppressed, under the penalty for any teacher of a fine of 10 lbs. gold and banishment from the town.

Justinian did not end here his legislative activity, but issued from time to time, as cases brought before him or other circumstances suggested, new constitutions for the amendment of the law or regulation of the imperial or local administration. Of these 174 are still extant, about half relating to administration and half to private law and