Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/376

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

out the work of the class-rooms for legal education, in which the new law books were to supersede all texts previously placed before the student during his five years' course. The first year was to be devoted to the Institutes, the next three to Pandects, and the last to the Code. He also directed that the freshmen were henceforward to discard their ridiculous cognomen of Dupondii, and enter on their career under the dignified title of "New Justinians." He also sternly prohibited the rough games which students had been wont to play off on one another, on rude novices, and even on professors, such reckless proceedings having sometimes eventuated in actual crimes. Finally he decreed the abolition of the law schools of Alexandria, Caesarea, and elsewhere, since he had heard that in those places unskilful men with insufficient licence had been engaged in imbuing their disciples with adulterated doctrine. For the future, as previously, Berytus was to be the chief academy of jurisprudence, but the Royal Cities of Rome and Constantinople were also sanctioned to continue as centres of legal instruction.[1]

No sooner had Justinian completed his reintegration of the legal profession than he entered on an active career of new legislation which rendered much of his former work obsolete. The close attention paid to law during the preparation of the Digest had revealed a number of disputed questions, and these the Emperor determined to decide once for all by virtue of his own Imperial inspiration. When they had accumulated to the number of fifty the list seemed to be exhausted, and thereupon a fasciculus of "Fifty Decisions" was published to settle the law on these moot points. This supplement seemed to antiquate the Code,

  1. Pand., præf. (Omnem). See p. 219.