claimed the gratitude of his subjects for accelerating their departure by the threat of placing armed vessels in the Danube. This was the last campaign of Belisarius; he was soon after disgraced and imprisoned, under a false charge of treason: his innocence was sul sequently proved, and his freedom restored, but grief and resentment hurried him to the grave; and his treasures were seized by the rapacious emperor. Eight months afterward Justinian sunk into the tomb, scarcely regretted by his subjects. He was a pious and diligent sovereign, but he wanted energy to contend against the vices of his court and the age. His talents as a legislator and statesman were great; had he acted on his own principles, he would have surpassed Augustus, but he yielded his power to the infamous Theodora, and to unworthy ministers who abused his confidence, and oppressed the empire.

SECTION III.-The Establishment of the Orvil Law.

EARLY in his reign, Justinian directed his attention to the state of the law in his empire, and formed the useful project of digesting into a uniform code the vast mass of laws, rules, and judicial maxims, which the various interests of the Romans and Byzantines, their progress in civilization, and the inconstancy of their rulers, had produced, during the course of thirteen hundred years. He saw that the multitude of ordi nances occasioned confusion and disorder, and that the heap of incon sistent decisions and regulations, formed a labyrinth in which justice went astray, and iniquity found avenues for escape. The execution of this great plan was not worthy of the design. At the head of the commission appointed to prepare the code was Tribonian, a lawyer of great eminence, but unfortunately an interested flatterer and corrupt judge; accustomed to sell justice, he altered, perverted, or suppressed many excellent laws. He frequently persuaded the emperor to destroy, by supplementary edicts called Novels, the principles of right which had been previously established in the Code and the Digest.

Justinian commenced with the Code. In an edict, dated the 3d of February, A. D. 528, addressed to the senate of Constantinople, he declared his resolution of collecting into a single volume, not merely the laws in the three previous codes of Gregory, Hermogenianus, and Theodosius, but also the laws that had been published by imperial authority since the formation of the Theodosian code. A commission of ten eminent lawyers, with Tribonian at its head, was charged with the execution of this task. They were permitted to suppress repetitions, to remove contradictory or obsolete laws, to add what was necessary for exactness or explanation, and to unite, under one head, what was spread over a great variety of laws. The work went on so rapidly, that in little more than a year the new code, containing, in twelve books, ali the imperial laws from the accession of the Emperor Adrian was ready to appear. Justinian affixed the imperial seal to the new constitution (A. D. 529), and transmitted it, with a suitable edict, to Mennas, the prætorian præfect. In this edict he congratulates himself and the empire on having found commissioners possessing so much zeal, knowiedge, and probity; he gives the collection the force of law, ordaiuing

that the new code alone should be cited in courts of justice; and he commands the præfect to have this made known through the empire.

A more extensive and difficult work remained, to collect the scattered monuments of ancient jurisprudence. Justinian confided this task also to Tribonian, and gave him the power of nominating his fellow commissioners Tribonian chose one of the magistrates who had already aided in the formation of the Code, four professors of jurisprudence, and eleven advocates of high legal reputation. These seventeen com. missioners were instructed to search out, collect, and put in order, all that was really useful in the books of the juriconsults who had been authorized to make or interpret laws by preceding sovereigns; they were permitted, as in the case of the Code, to change, add, or retrench, and to fix doubtful cases by precise definitions. The emperor recommended them in settling any point, to regard neither the number nor the reputation of the juriconsults who had given opinions on the subject, but to be guided solely by reason and equity. Their collection was to be arranged in fifty books, having all the matter arranged under their respective titles, and was to be named the Digest, on account of its orderly classification, or the Pandects, because it was to contain all the ancient jurisprudence. But the commissioners seem to have executed their task with more zeal and speed than exactness. The emperor himself did not expect that the work could be completed in less than ten years. It was necessary to examine carefully more than two thousand volumes; to discuss, compare, and reduce into order, an innumerable number of decisions; to reform some of them, to reverse others, and to classify the whole. But Tribonian, who knew that in enterprises which engage the vanity of princes, the delay between the design and execution is borne with great impatience, hurried on the work so rapidly that it was completed in three years.

On the 16th of December, 533, Justinian invested this collection with the authority of law, by a constitution of state, addressed to the senate of Constantinople, and all his subjects. In this edict he states, that the enormous chaos of ancient decisions have been reduced to a twentieth part, without the omission of anything essential, so that the order and brevity of this body of jurisprudence, and the facility with which it could be learned, took away every excuse from negligence or ignorance. He declares, that though some errors may have crept into a work of such vast magnitude, their number is very limited; and he asserts, rather too hastily, that it contains none of those inconsistent decisions which lawyers call antinomies. Should any point be found deficient and obscure, he wills that recourse should be had to the imperial authority, which alone has the power to supply or interpret the laws. To prevent the recurrence of the ancient confusion, by diversity of sentiments, he forbids all commentary, permitting only the translation of the laws into Greek, with the addition of titles and paratitlesthat is to say, summaries of their contents. He forbids the use of abbreviations in transcribing them, declaring that the copy in which a

From Tav, all, and dexcobar, to contain. The fifty books of the Pandects are divided into four hundred and twenty-three titles, which contain nine thousand one hundred and twenty-three laws, each marked with the name of its author.

From avri, contrary to, and vopos, law.

contraction was found should be held of no authority, and that the transcriber should be purished for forgery. All other laws are declared to De abrogated, and are even forbidden to be cited In the tribunals; and the judges are ordered to conform in all things to the Digest from the day of the date of the edict. The emperor enjoins the three prætorian præfects to publish the Digest in their several governments, and concludes by stating that he was anxious to have this meritorious revolution effected during his third consulate, in order that a year, which heaven had blessed by a peace with Persia, and the conquest of Africa, should witness the completion of this great edifice of the laws, as a holy and august temple, in which justice should pronounce her oracles. While the commissioners labored at the Digest, the emperor charged Tribonian, and two eminent professors, to prepare an elementary work on jurisprudence, in four books, as an introduction to the study of law. This portion of Justinian's legislation is far the most valuable part; it was finished and published a little before the Digest, and was named the Institutes.

The whole system of ancient jurisprudence was thus simplified, reduced to its essentials, and arranged in the Institutes, the Pandects, and the Code. But, after their publication, Justinian published more than two hundred supplementary edicts; and when the great collections began to be used in the courts, several errors and imperfections were discovered as might reasonably be expected in a work of such magnitude, executed with such unnecessary speed. A new commission was appointed to revise the Code; the result of its labors was a second edition, which received the imperial sanction, November 16, 534, by an edict abrogating the former imperfect Code.

The emperor reserved to himself, in express terms, the right of adding, at a subsequent time, but separately, such constitutions as he should judge necessary. These were called Novels; they limit, extend, and in some instances repeal the Code; and it is this inconsistency that has led to the suspicion of Tribonian and the prince having occasionally been guided by interest and favor, rather than by reason and equity. These Novels are one hundred and sixty-eight in number, but only ninety-eight have the force of law, having been collected into a volume in the last year of Justinian's reign.

This code was supplanted in the east by the Basilica or Greek constitutions of later emperors. In the west, Illyria was the only province by which it was received, until the overthrow of the Gothic monarchy afforded an opportunity for its introduction into Italy. The Code, way however, superseded by the laws of the Lombards, when their hordes became master of Ravenna. After Charlemagne had overthrown the Lombard monarchy, he searched Italy in vain for a copy of Justinian's legislation; it remained concealed until the twelfth century, when a copy of the Digest was found on the capture of Amalfi by the troops of the emperor Lothaire II., and presented by him to the citizens of Pisa, who had aided the imperialists in this expedition. At a later pe riod, a copy of the Code was discovered at Ravenna, and a collection was made of the Novels which were dispersed throughout Italy. Such were the origin and revolutions of this celebrated body of legislation, the source of the civil law throughout Europe, and the great guide to

the most civilized nations in supplying the defects of their several legal systems.

SECTION IV.-History of the Silk Trade.—Introduction of the Silkworm into Europe.

SILK was known as an article of commerce, and extensively used in the western world long before the insect that produces this precious substance, and whose nature was unknown, was brought for the first time to Constantinople. No one before the age of Justinian had even contemplated such an enterprise. It was only by long and painful journeys through the dangerous and difficult wilds of central Asia, that a merchandise could be procured, which the progress of wealth and luxury rendered almost indispensable to the civilized nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, that surrounded the Mediterranean. The Assyrians and Medes, in the early ages, had long a monopoly of this commerce, and hence we find that garments of wrought silk are usually called Median robes by the ancient writers. In this traffic they were succeeded by the Persians, who attached great importance to the trade, and neglecting nothing that could keep it exclusively in their hands. From them the Greek and Syrian merchants of Asia purchased the silk which they transported into the western countries. Passing through such a number of hands, it was of course scarce and dear. During Justinian's reign, the Byzantines, or, as they still called themselves, the Romans, were eager to free themselves from their dependance on the Persians for the supply of this article. They tried to lower the price by purchasing from other Asiatic nations, and by making exertions to open a direct communication with the country in which the silk is produced. Their ignorance of geography was a great impediment to their success; they had very vague notions respecting the position of the regions where this desirable commodity was procured. They contented hemselves with loosely describing it as part of India, or some very remote country in eastern Asia.

A few modern writers have been misled by the inaccuracy of the Byzantine historians into the belief that the country which supplied the ancient world with silk was the Punjab, and the districts of northern India adjacent to Persia, regions where silk has never yet been produced in sufficient abundance to form an article of commerce. On the contrary, the circumstances related respecting Serica, the silkgrowing country, are manifestly applicable to no place but China, where silk is still produced more plentifully than in any other part of the world. Indeed the very name Seres appears to have been derived from. this commodity; for Se, or, as it is pronounced in the provincial dialects, Sēr, is the Chinese name for the silkworm. We also find the Sinæ identified with the Seres by the ancient geographers, and we know that Sín, or Chín, has been always the name given to China by the nations of western Asia. In the preceding pages mention has been made of the embassy sent from the Romans to the Chinese, in the age of the Antonines; and it is only necessary to add, in proof of the commercial relations between this ancient empire and the western

world, that a tolerably accurate account of the revolutions in the Persian and Parthian kingdoms may be found in Chinese histories.*

The silk was imported from China in packages, which caravans of merchants brought across the extreme breadth of Asia, in a journey of two hundred and forty-three days, to the seacoast of Syria. The Persians who supplied the Romans, usually made their purchases from the Sogdians, on the banks of the Oxus, and their traffic was liable to be interrupted by the White Huns and the Turks, who successively conquered that industrious people. But the difficulties of the road between the Sogdian capital, Maracanda (Samarcand), and the first Chinese city in the province of Shensí, led to frequent efforts for opening a new and less perilous route, which, however, proved unsuccessful. From the time they passed the Jaxartes, the enterprising Sogdians had to contend, not only with the dangers and difficulties of the intervening • deserts, but also against the wandering hordes, who have always considered the citizen and traveller as objects of lawful rapine.

It is recorded as a proof of the vast expense of the magnificent spectacles with which Julius Cæsar sought at once to dazzle and conciliate the populace, that he decorated the actors in his varied pageants with a profusion of silk dresses, which were viewed by the Italians with equal wonder and admiration. In consequence of the difficulties of transit, the vast length of desert which the caravans had to traverse and, probably, the limited supply of silk in China itself, this article bore a very high price in Rome, and was often sold for its weight in gold Silken dresses were esteemed too expensive and delicate for men, and were appropriated wholly to ladies of eminent rank and opulence. In the beginning of the reign of Tiberius, a law was passed enacting, that "no man should disgrace himself by wearing a silk dress." This might, however, have been a religious as well as a sumptuary ordinance, for it is a singular circumstance in the history of silk, that, on account of its being the excretion of a worm, several religious bodies in the East, but more especially the Mohammedans, consider it an unclean dress. Indeed, it has been decided by the unanimous consent of all the Sonnite doctors, that a person wearing a garment made entirely of silk, can not offer up the daily prayers enjoined by the Koran.

The profligate and effeminate Heliogabalus was the first of the Roman emperors who wore a garment entirely of silk; and, in consequence of his example, the custom of wearing silk soon became general among the wealthy citizens of Rome, and even extended to the provinces. It seems probable, also, that the price of the article had diminished in consequence of its beginning to be imported by the maritime route through Alexandria, instead of by caravans through the arid deserts of Tartary and Turkestan. Chinese histories inform us, that an

About

The Armenians call the Chinese Jenk, and China Jenistán. Their relations with this country ascend to the beginning of the third century of our era. that time a Chinese colony was established in Armenia. The chief of this colony was probably one of the imperial dynasty of the Huns: driven from his country by civil wars, he at first sought refuge at the court of Ardeshir, the founder of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia, thence he passed into Persia, where he was received about A. D. 260, by Tiridates, the Armenian sovereign, who gave him the province of Jaron. This personage, whose name was Mamkon, became the founder of the family of the Memigonians, who are justly celebrated in Armenian history.