The compilers of the Digest were instructed not to repeat what was set out elsewhere which can only mean in theCode. Hence, although theDigest does not truly reflect Byzantine legal conditions, it also gives a very partial picture of Roman law even as set out by jurists. Much of what they wrote would be incorporated in rulings of the Emperors. A secondCode (which has survived) was issued in. Presumably the intention was to incorporate the Fifty Decisions, and this accounts for its loss. The final part of Justinian’s codification -- we need not here deal with the later Novellae - was the brilliant idea of an elementary firstyear students’ textbook with the force of statute. The conception was brilliant but the execution less so. The book was planned from but work on it began only when the Digest was completed, and both Digest and Institutes were to come into effect on the same day. Justi-nian would not want the enforcement of the Digest to be delayed, so the draftsmen of theInstitutes were under extreme time pressure. The model was to be the Institutes of Gaius written just after the middle of the second century. What is truly strange is that the draftsmen were not only in a rush but had in front of them as they worked only classical elementary textbooks: not even the Digest and the Code. When these institutional books were inadequate or inappropriate the draftsmen relied on their memory which was often faulty. Thus, on earnest money in sale they give different law from that in Justi-nian’s own ruling in the Code; the nature of liability for damages caused by animals is fundamentally different from the law in the Digest; and parts of real security law are garbled. Above all, the law of ac-tions which was very different from the procedure of classical Rome is largely incomprehensible. Not surprisingly, when the Institutes be-came the model for many writings on local law, especially in the th century, the law of procedure was typically omitted. Thus, Justinian’s famous codification is distinctly odd, a fact that
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