Edward Gibbon, an English historian, published The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. This is Chapter 44 of that work. He follows Rome from the prosperous age of Trajan and the Antonines, around the year 100, through the fall of the West and on to the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453.

Chapter 44: Idea of the Roman jurisprudence—The laws of the Kings—The Twelve of the Decemvirs—The laws of the People—The decrees of the Senate—The edicts of the magistrates and emperors—Authority of the civilians—Code, Pandects, Novels, and Institutes of Justinian:—I. Rights of persons—II. Rights of things—III. Private injuries and actions—IV. Crimes and punishments. The footnotes — Gibbon’s famous asides — are not in this reading. What you have is the narrative, in his own eighteenth-century English.