The Digest was not the end, however. It was still too large—several bulky and expensive manuscript volumes in any rendition—to be more than a work of reference. So the final astute achievement of Tribonian and the others was the preparation in one compact volume of the Institutiones (“Institutes”) of Justinian. Following other, less official works of the same name by earlier jurists like Gaius and Ulpian, this was the officially approved textbook of Roman law. Standardized teaching of law means standardization of law practice, and the Institutiones had this purpose clearly in mind. The whole task was done in 533, with a slightly revised edition of the Codex (to address issues discovered in making the Digest) in 534.
Institutiones in translation
This codification was so effective and (mainly) so faithful to the past that when I was an undergraduate and took an introductory course in Roman law, we still read the Institutiones in translation, with abundant footnotes, as the best way to enter the whole history of Roman legal thinking from the republic to the end of the empire. This usefulness is a sign of a deep consistency in practice and theory of legal relationships—quite unmodified by any Christian interposition—that was in some ways the most vivid hallmark of what was Roman about Rome. Even the Institutiones were a bit much for some, and in the 550 s, a teacher produced a still shorter textbook, which survives as the Epitome by Julian, to teach the basics, apparently to refugees from Italy. That digest of a digest of a digest would be widely used in the early middle ages nestinarstvo bulgaria tour.
In the western provinces during the sixth century, remarkable tributes were paid to this consistency in the so-called barbarian law codes— summaries of the law prepared by the local ruler, extracting sometimes too haphazardly the key points that were thought to be needed by local lawyers. One of those we have seen already, the Edict of Theoderic, and similar texts survive in the name of the Burgundians, Visigoths, and Franks—texts in which one feels the tenacity of the Roman tradition even as authority took new forms. There was little that was barbarian about them, for their variations and imperfections were quite naturally those of distant provinces, without the legal expertise of the capital, and paying attention to local customs and preferences.
Justinian’s reign
In the eastern provinces, the prestige of the law progressed in other ways. From later in Justinian’s reign, the historian Agathias tells us about a show trial that was staged on orders from Constantinople at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains among the Colchi people there. All the flummery of the law was sent from Constantinople, and no expense was spared. The judge sat on his raised bench in the full robes of court, surrounded by his official stenographers, heralds, bailiffs, and torturers. The local population could not understand a word of the proceedings, but Agathias showed them going along with the prosecution by imitating the sounds and gestures of the speakers they approved of. At the end, of course, the defendants were condemned, paraded through the streets on mules, and beheaded.
Roman legal training had already achieved a high level of consistency and clarity, in the west most notably at Rome itself, but also at Narbonne and Lyon; in the east at Berytus (modern Beirut), where as early as the fourth century Greek men of letters were heard to complain that the young had no taste for the finer studies, instead devoting themselves to the lucrative and pragmatic ways of the law. By the mid-fifth century, Con-stantinople had caught up and emerged as the main center, and Athens, Alexandria, and Caesarea in Palestine were centers as well for as long as Roman rule obtained. Beirut itself faded from view after an earthquake and fire wreaked wide damage in cities of the east in 551. Agathias reports how “the lovely city of Berytus, the jewel of Phoenicia, was completely ruined and its world-famous architectural treasures were reduced to a heap of rubble, practically nothing but the bare pavements of the buildings being left.”16 John of Ephesus adds an account of a tidal wave that pulled the water back from the land; when people rushed to rescue or plunder ships left high and dry, the rushing return of the water drowned them unawares Newly intrusive managerial empire.
The late Roman legal course of study lasted five years. A first year took you through the Institutiones and the first four books of the Digest; then three more years were needed to complete the whole of the Digest. In the fifth year, the study of the Codex itself brought the student up to date with the concerns and constitutions of reigning emperors in and close to his own time.
