The visionary zeal of the man of letters was seconded by the more sober devotion of the lawyer. Conqueror, theologian, and jurist, Justinian is a hero greater than either Julius or Constantine, for his enduring work bears him witness. Absolutism was the civilian's creed[297]: the phrases 'legibus solutus,' 'lex regia,' whatever else tended in the same direction, were taken to express the prerogative of him whose official style of Augustus, as well as the vernacular name of 'Kaiser,' designated the legitimate successor of the compiler of the Corpus Juris. Since it was upon that legitimacy that his claim to be the fountain of law rested, no pains were spared to seek out and observe every custom and precedent by which old Rome seemed to be connected with her representative. [Sidenote: Imitations of old Rome.] Of the many instances that might be collected, it would be tedious to enumerate more than a few. The offices of the imperial household, instituted by Constantine the Great, were attached to the noblest families of Germany. The Emperor and Empress, before their coronation at Rome, were lodged in the chambers called those of Augustus and Livia[298]; a bare sword was borne before them by the prætorian prefect; their processions were adorned by the standards, eagles, wolves and dragons, which had figured in the train of Hadrian or Theodosius[299]. The constant title of the Emperor himself, according to the style introduced by Probus, was 'semper Augustus,' or 'perpetuus Augustus,' which erring etymology translated 'at all times increaser of the Empire[300].' Edicts issued by a Franconian or Swabian sovereign were inserted as Novels[301] in the Corpus Juris, in the latest editions of which custom still allows them a place. The _pontificatus maximus_ of his pagan predecessors was supposed to be preserved by the admission of each Emperor as a canon of St. Peter's at Rome and St. Mary's at Aachen[302]. Sometimes we even find him talking of his consulship[303]. Annalists invariably number the place of each sovereign from Augustus downwards[304]. The notion of an uninterrupted succession, which moves the stranger's wondering smile as he sees ranged round the magnificent Golden Hall of Augsburg the portraits of the Cæsars, laurelled, helmeted, and periwigged, from Julius the conqueror of Gaul to Joseph the partitioner of Poland, was to those generations not an article of faith only because its denial was inconceivable. [Sidenote: Reverence for ancient forms and phrases in the Middle Ages.] [Sidenote: Absence of the idea of change or progress.]