present in force. But this work, executed in a narrow spirit of piety which decreed that only the enactments of Christian emperors should be included, was universally recognized as both redundant and insufficient. A still wider entanglement existed in the literature which had accumulated around the interpretation and application of the statutes; during the administration of justice a myriad of perplexing points had arisen to exercise the keenest forensic judgement in order to arrive at equitable decisions; and it was estimated that two thousand treatises, emanating from nearly forty authors, contained in scattered passages matter essential to a correct apprehension of the principles and practice of the law.[1] Such was the arduous prospect before a legal student who desired to win a position of repute in his profession.[2]
2. As Berytus had become famous for its law school, so Alexandria, and even some centuries earlier, had gained a noted pre-eminence as a centre of medical education;[3] but with respect to the course of study and the methods of in-*
- ↑ Pand., loc. cit. And many more were probably dragged up in court from time to time, which it would be the bent of despotism to taboo. Cod. Theod., I, iv, gives the rule as to deciding knotty points by the collation of legal experts.
- ↑ It was specially decreed by Diocletian that students might remain at B. to the age of twenty-five; Cod., X, xlix, 1. This law could doubtless be pleaded even against a call to their native Curia. We need not suppose that the periods allotted to the various branches of education were always rigidly adhered to in spite of circumstances. Thus Libanius complains that his pupils used to run off to the study of law before he had put them through the proper routine of rhetorical training, the moment they had mastered a little Latin in fact; iii, p. 441-2 (Reiske).
- ↑ Sufficiat medico ad commendandam artis auctoritatem, si Alexandriae se dixerit eruditum; Ammianus, xxii, 16. This celebrity was won c. 300 B.C. through the distinction acquired by Erasistratus and Herophilus. See Conringius, op. cit., i, 26.
