BASILICS, in literary history, a name supposed to have been given by the emperor Leo to a collection of laws in honour of his father Basilus Macedo, who began it in the year 867, and in the execution chiefly made use of Sabbathius Protospatharius, who carried the work as far as 40 books. Leo added 20 books more, and published the work in 880. The whole, 30 years after, was corrected and improved by Constantin Porphyrogenitus, son of Leo; whence many have held him the author of the basilicae.—Six books of the basilicae were translated into Latin in 1557, by Gentian Hervetus. An edition of the Greek basilics, with a Latin version, has been since published at Paris, in 1647, by Annib. Fabrottus, in 7 volumes. There still want 19 books, which are supposed to be lost. Fabrottus has endeavoured to supply, in some measure, the defect from the synopsis of the basilicae, and the glosses; of which several had been made under the succeeding emperors, and contained the whole Justinian law, excepting the superfluities, in a new and more consistent order, together with the later constitutions of the emperors posterior to Justinian.