Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/122

 102 THE DECLINE AND FALL was accomplished about two centuries after the conquests of Justinian, and from his reign we may date the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue. That legislator had composed his In- stitutes, his Code, and his Pandects, in a language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of the Roman govern- ment, the consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of Con- stantinople, of the camps and tribunals of the East.^"^ But this foreign dialect was unknown to the people and soldiers of the Asiatic provinces, it was imperfectly understood by the greater part of the interpreters of the laws and the ministers of the state. After a short conflict, nature and habit prevailed over the obsolete institutions of human power : for the general benefit of his subjects, Justinian promulgated his novels in the two languages ; the several parts of his voluminous jurisprudence were successively translated ; ^'^* the original was forgotten, the version was studied, and the Greek, whose intrinsic merit de- served indeed the preference, obtained a legal as well as popular establishment in the Byzantine monarchy. The birth and residence of succeeding princes estranged them from the Roman idiom : Tiberius by the Arabs,^"*" and Maurice by the Italians,^^'' are distinguished as the first of the Greek Caesars, as the founders of a new dynasty and empire ; the silent revolution was accomplished before the death of Heraclius ; and the ruins of the Latin speech were darkly preserved in the terms of juris- prudence and the acclamations of the palace. After the restoration "'•' Consult the preface of Ducange (ad Gloss. Grasc. medii Mri) and the Novels of Justinian (vii. Ixvi.). The Greek language was koivos, the Latin was Trarpios to himself, Kupiwraros to the n-oAiTotaj (rxrina, the System of government. ^^ O: fiiqi' aWa Km Aarii'iitt) Ae'fit xai pd<ri^ rlareTi toij? i'd^oi'9 [<cpujrTO«;<ra] Toii? trvrcicoi Taii-njr ^^i Jui'a^eiovs l(rxvpaii o-fTfi'xi^f (Matth. Blastares, Hist. Juris. apud Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. torn. xii. p. 369). The Code and Pandects (the latter by Thalelreus) were translated in the time of Justinian (p. 358, 366). Theophilus, one of the original triumvirs, has left an elegant, though diffuse, paraphrase of the Institutes. On the other hand, Julian, antecessor of Constantinople (a.d. 570), cxx. Novellas Grascas eleganti Latinitate donavit (Heineccius, Hist. J. R. p. 396), for the use of Italy and Africa. i^ Abulpharagius assigns the viith Dynasty to the Franks or Romans, the viiith to the Greeks, the i.xth to the Arabs. A tempore Augusti Cresaris donee imperaret Tiberius Csesar spatio circiter annorum 600 fuerunt Imperatores C. P. Patricii, et praecipua pars exercitus Romani ; extra quod, consiliarii, scribae et populus, omnes Graeci fuerunt ; deinde regnum etiam Graecanicum factum est (p. 96, vers. Pocock). The Christian and ecclesiastical studies of Abulpharagius gave him some advantage over the more ignorant Moslems. 106 Primus ex GrEPcorum genere in Iniperio confirmatus est [the right reading] ; or, according to another Ms. of Paulus Diaconus (1. iii. c. 15, p. 443), in Grajcorum Imperio.