Thus Shall A Great Glory Follow You

Part of his Corpus Juris Civilis was Justinian's firm belief in a strong school of Roman law.

In fact, he prescribed several of them which each contributed to a slow wave of civil law which poured over Europe and eventually influencing the law of many nations in America and Asia..

Justinian's attention to detail included an invocation to his prospective professors of Roman law of The Iliad by Homer.

This is what Justinian wanted law professors to use as a guide in the teachings of the law:

"Begin, then, to instruct with the guidance of God, your scholars in the science of the law, and guide them in the way we have opened, to the end that they may be made worthy ministers of justice and of the Republic. Thus shall a great glory follow you to all posterity, because in your time such a change has been made in the law as Homer, father of every virtue, declares to have been wrought by Glaucus and Diomed, acquiring gold for brass, a hundred oxen's worth for that of nine."

REFERENCES:

• Howe, W., Studies in the Civil Law (Boston: Little Brown, 1905), page 34.