SYSTEMS  OF LAW	23
source of law was declared to he (not legislation enacted by the Roman
People but) revelation vouchsafed by God, and the sanction of law to be
(not human enforcement but) divine retribution.
'Our God who in the lord and maker of all things, the creator of Man
who has vndowi'd Mun with the privilege of free will, has (in the language
of prophecy) given Man, to help him, a law in which God has made known
to Mun everything that Man ought to do and to shun. The conduct pre-
scribed by the lu\v in to be adopted because it is a passport to salvation
(<&.<? fwmmtrts w>ra yrpttft w); the conduct prohibited by the law is to be
esduwtui beetuise it brings punishment on the transgressor. No one who
keeps these commandments or who—save the mark—disregards them
will fail to receive the appropriate recompense for his deeds of whatever
character, For it is God who has proclaimed both the positive and the
negative commandments in advance [of the human legislator]; and the
power of God's words—a power that knows no variation and that rewards
every mtm'a works according to their deserts—-shall (in gospel language)
not prow away.1
This pascuigc and its sequel drew the following pertinent comment
from a Modern Western historian who was equally conversant with an
East Roman and an Hellenic mental environment:
'What especially strikes one who is accustomed to the language of
Gaius or Tribonian is the ecclesiastical note which characterises both the
preface and other parta of the ftchga. The point of view of the old Roman
jurists had been almost completely lost, and the spirit of Roman Law had
been transformed in the religious atmosphere of Christendom. Men tried
now to base jurisdiction on Revelation, and to justify laws by verses of
Scripture, **
A ^Modern Western student of the Edoga* if asked how far, in his
opinion, its authors were justified in their claim to have humanized the
Justinianean Law, would perhaps pjacc his finger first on the mitiga-
tion, here at last, of the barbaric native Roman institution of the Patria
Potestas? after thia enormity had successfully resisted all the expur-
gatory efforts of cultivated jurisconsults, steeped in the humane atmo-
sphere of the Hellenic schools of philosophy, who had laboured, over a
span of four centuries or more encling in the Beyeran Age,3 to render an
archaic Roman Law worthy of a post-Alexandrine Hellenic Civilization
that had been constrained to receive this antiquated legal dispensation as
1 Bury, J, B.: A ffistory of titt Later Roman Empire from Arcadiw to Inn* (395 A.D,
to Son A,l>,)t i»t cd. (London x8Ug, MacmUlan, a vote,), vol. ii, p, 414.
* The Patria Potestas atill holds an important place in the Juatinianean Law, tlthouoh
the ritfhttt which it «ave the father over the children were umall indeed compared with
the abaolute control which had been enjoyed in ancient timed. The tendency wa» to
dimininh these rights and to modify the utern conception of Patria Potestas by sub-
stituting the conception of a natural guardianship: ft change eorrenponding to the change
(promoted by Christianity) in the conception of the family, as held together by the dutiei
of aifc*t'ti«n rnthcr than by Iceal obliKfttuma, The two most important point» in the later
tmmformtttinn of the Patrfa Putettas were (r) it» conversion into a parental pottstas, the
mother hcintf reeofjniised as having the same rights and dutie* ta the father (thu* her
consent, n» well hh the ftithttrX in neceiwary for the contraction of a mama^e), and (a)
the ineretticd facilities for emancipation when the child came to yearn of dwcretion;
emancipation neem* to have been effected by the act of netting up a separate e»tabli»h-
ment. Thotto principled were entahliahed by the Iconoclunts' (Bury, J. Ai.( Appendix 11 to
hi* minor edition of Gibbon's Hiatory, voU v, p, sa8).
3 See VI. vii, 465-3 and »Ss-8,