The accomplishment of the Bologna school may be judged more fully from the works, still extant, of some of its chief representatives in the generations following Irnerius. A worthy one was Placentinus, a native of Piacenza. The year of his birth is unknown, but he died in 1192, after a presumably full span of life, passed chiefly as a student and teacher of the law. He taught in Mantua and Montpellier, as well as in Bologna. He was an accomplished jurist and a lover of the classic literature. His work entitled _De varietate actionum_ was apparently the first attempt to set forth the Roman law in an arrangement and form that did not follow the sources.[393] He opens his treatise with an allegory of a noble dame, hight Jurisprudentia, within the circle of whose sweet and honied utterances many eager youths were thronging. Placentinus drew near, and received from her the book which he now gives to others.[394] This little allegory savours of the _De consolatione_ of Boëthius, or, if one will, of Capella’s _De nuptiis Philologiae_. The most admirable surviving work of Placentinus is his Summa of the _Codex_ of Justinian. His autobiographical _proemium_ shows him not lacking in self-esteem, and tells why he undertook the work. He had thought at first to complete the Summa of Rogerius, an older glossator, but then decided to put that book to sleep, and compose a full Summa of the _Codex_ himself, from the beginning to the end. This by the favour of God he has done; it is the work of his own hands, from head to heel, and all the matter is his own--not borrowed. Next he wrote for beginners a Summa of the _Institutes_. After which he returned to his own town, and shortly proceeded thence to Bologna, whither he had been called. “There in the citadel (_in castello_) for two years I expounded the laws to students; I brought the other teachers to the threshold of envy; I emptied their benches of students. The hidden places of the law I laid open, I reconciled the conflicts of enactments, I unlocked the secrets most potently.” His success was great, and he was besought to continue his course of lectures. He complied, and remained two years more, and then returned to Montpellier, in order to compose a Summa of the _Digest_.[395] If indeed Placentinus speaks bombastically of his work, its excellence excuses him. His well-earned reputation as a jurist and scholar long endured.