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Chap. XLIV] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 493 the people; but the quaestor was speedily restored, and till the hour of his death he possessed, above twenty years, the favour and confidence of the emperor. His passive and dutiful submission has been honoured with the praise of Justinian himself, whose vanity was incapable of discerning how often that submission degenerated into the grossest adulation. Tri- bonian adored the virtues of his gracious master : the earth was unworthy of such a prince ; and he affected a pious fear that Justinian, like Elijah or Romulus, would be snatched into the air and translated alive to the mansions of celestial glory. 75 If Caesar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, The code his creative genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would f a n. u x.d. have given to the world a pure and original system of juris- -A.p.529, prudence. Whatever flattery might suggest, the emperor of Apn17 the East was afraid to establish his private judgment as the standard of equity : in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion; and his laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislators of past times. Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works of Justinian represent a tesselated pavement of antique and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first year of his reign, he directed the faithful Tribonian and nine learned associates to revise the ordinances of his predecessors, as they were contained, since the time of Hadrian, in the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian codes ; to purge the errors and contradictions, to retrench whatever was obsolete or superfluous, and to select the wise and salutary laws best adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use of his subjects. The work was accom- plished in fourteen months ; and the twelve books or tables, which the new decemvirs produced, might be designed to imi- tate the labours of their Roman predecessors. The new code of Justinian was honoured with his name, and confirmed by his royal signature; authentic transcripts were multiplied by 75 ThiB Btory is related by Hesychius ([pseudo-Hesychius] de Viris Illustribus), Procopius (Anecdot. c. 13), and Suidas (torn. iii. p. 501). Such flattery is incredible ! Nihil est quod credere de se Non possit, cum laudatur Dis aequa potestas. Fontenelle (torn. i. p. 32-39) has ridiculed the impudence of the modest Virgil. But the same Fontenelle places his king above the divine Augustus ; and the sage Boileau has not blushed to say, " Le destin a ses yeux n'oseroit balancer ". Yet neither Augustus nor Louis XIV. were fools.