chap, xliv] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 497 Pandects still exercise the patience and subtlety of modern civilians. 83 A rumour devoid of evidence has been propagated by the Loss of the enemies of Justinian : that the jurisprudence of ancient Rome jurispru- was reduced to ashes by the author of the Pandects, from the vain persuasion that it was now either false or superfluous. Without usurping an office so invidious, the emperor might safely commit to ignorance and time the accomplishment of this destructive wish. Before the invention of printing and paper, the labour and the materials of writing could be pur- chased only by the rich ; and it may reasonably be computed that the price of books was an hundredfold their present value. 84 Copies were slowly multiplied and cautiously renewed ; the hopes of profit tempted the sacrilegious scribes to eraze the characters of antiquity ; and Sophocles or Tacitus were obliged to resign the parchment to missals, homilies, and the golden legend. 85 If such was the fate of the most beautiful composi- tions of genius, what stability could be expected for the dull and barren works of an obsolete science? The books of juris- prudence were interesting to few and entertaining to none ; their value was connected with present use ; and they sunk for ever as soon as that use was superseded by the innovations of fashion, superior merit, or public authority. In the age of peace and learning, between Cicero and the last of the Antonines, many losses had been already sustained, and some luminaries of the school, or forum, were known only to the curious by tradi- tion and report. Three hundred and sixty years of disorder and decay accelerated the progress of oblivion; and it may fairly be presumed that of the writings which Justinian is 83 The antinomies, or opposite laws of the Code and Pandects, are sometimes the cause, and often the excuse, of the glorious uncertainty of the civil law, which so often affords what Montaigne calls " Questions pour l'Ami ". See a fine passage of Franciscus Balduinus in Justinian (1. ii. p. 259, &c. apud Ludewig, p. 305, 306). 84 When Fust, or Faustus, sold at Paris his first printed Bibles as manuscripts, the price of a parchment copy was reduced from four or five hundred to sixty, fifty, and forty crowns. The public was at first pleased with the cheapness, and at length provoked by the discovery of the fraud (Mattaire, Annal. Typograph. torn. i. p. 12 ; first edition). 83 This execrable practice prevailed from the viiith, and more especially from the xiith, century, when it became almost universal (Montfaucon, in the Memoires de l'Academie, torn. vi. p. 606, &c. Bibliotheque Raisonn^e de la Diplomatique, torn. i. p. 176). vol. iv. — 32
