Institutes of Justinian

Justinian I

Translated by J. B. Moyle

99 chapters · about 6 h

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The opening

OF JUSTICE AND LAW

OF JUSTICE AND LAW

JUSTICE is the set and constant purpose which gives to every man his due. Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of the just and the unjust.

Having laid down these general definitions, and our object being the exposition of the law of the Roman people, we think that the most advantageous plan will be to commence with an easy and simple path, and then to proceed to details with a most careful and scrupulous exactness of interpretation. Otherwise, if we begin by burdening the student’s memory, as yet weak and untrained, with a multitude and variety of matters, one of two things will happen: either we shall cause him wholly to desert the study of law, or else we shall bring him at last, after great labour, and often, too, distrustful of his own powers (the commonest cause, among the young, of ill-success), to a point which he might have reached earlier, without such labour and confident in himself, had he been led along a smoother path.

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About this edition

The words
J. B. Moyle's English translation, copied word for word.
Left out
  • Page numbers and running heads from the printed pages, in 5 places
  • A bookplate on the scanned copy (“Grom the Library uf ©. A. Whyte”, as the OCR reads it)
  • The title page and opening pages before chapter 1, in 2 places
  • A preface, foreword or afterword
  • Notes and pages added by translators, editors or publishers, in 2 places
  • The printer's imprint (“Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press…”)
  • The Clarendon Press's advertisements (lists of its books) (430 blocks)
  • Scan specks on the end leaves and cover, read as characters by the OCR (5 blocks)
  • A margin number or speck beside the text, as the OCR reads it (66 blocks)
  • A section number printed in the margin (37 blocks)
  • The marker of a left-out footnote, read by the OCR as “!”
  • The marker of a left-out footnote, read by the OCR as “?”
  • A stray mark the OCR read from a speck (an underscore; the print sets none)
  • Section numbers printed in the margin (the modern numbering of the Institutes' sections)

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