Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/358

 344 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S Diocletian onwards, induced a great and sometimes indeed a hasty and feverish exuberance of legislation, which was now effected solely by imperial ordinances. Industrial decay seems to have been more rapid in Western than in the Eastern provinces, though palpable enough in such regions as Thrace and Greece. But everywhere there was an intellectual decline, which appeared not least in the sinking of the level of juristic ability and learning. The great race of jurists who adorned the first two and a half centuries of the Empire had long died out. We hear of no fertile legal minds, no law books of merit deserving to be remembered, during the fourth and fifth centuries of our era. The mass of law had however increased, and the judges and practising advocates were, except in the larger cities, less than ever capable of dealing with it. The substitution of Roman for provincial law effected by the Edict of the Emperor Antoninus Caracalla had introduced some confusion, especially in the Eastern provinces, where Greek or Oriental customs were deeply rooted, and did not readily give place to Roman rules. The emperors themselves deplore the ignorance of law among practitioners : and presently it was found necessary to prescribe an examination for advocates on their admission to the bar. Accordingly the necessity for collect- ing that which was binding law and for putting it into an accessible form became greater than ever. It had in earlier days been an ideal of perfection cherished by theorists ; it was now an urgent practical need. It was not the bloom and splendour but the decadence of legal study and science that ushered in the era of codification. A century after the death of Constantine, the Emperor Theodosius II, grandson of Theodosius the Great, reigning at Constantinople from a. d. 408 to A. D. 450, issued a complete edition of the imperial constitutions in force, beginning from the time of Con- stantine, those of earlier Emperors having been already gathered into two collections (compiled by two eminent ju- rists) in current use. Shortly before a statute had been issued giving full binding authority to all the writings (ex- cept the notes of Paul and Ulpian upon Papinian) of five specially famous jurists of the classical age (Papinian, Paul,