The Romans always prided themselves on being ruled by laws, not by men, and even though that wasn't actually the case after the 2nd century BCE, there's no question that the Eastern Roman Empire's codification of Roman laws was one of its great achievements. And much of the credit for that goes to the most famous Byzantine emperor, at least after Constantine, Justinian. I like your brooch, sir. In 533, Justinian published the Digest, an 800,000-word condensation of 1,528 Latin law books. And to go along with this, he published the Institutes, which was like a curriculum for the Roman law schools that existed all through the empire. Justinian, incidentally, was by far the most awesome of the Byzantine emperors. He was like the David Tennant of doctors.