We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Chapter I dealt with the main sources of Roman private law, in the sense of the formal sources which created it. This chapter is concerned with the use of Roman legal sources by the modern student or scholar. It gives an account of those sources and problems that arise in using them. Nearly all the surviving material of Roman law is transmitted in one or other of the emperor Justinian's compilations. The chapter begins with an account of the sources which survive independently of Justinian; it then moves on to the Digest and (very briefly) other parts of the Justinianic compilations. It concludes with a general discussion of the difficulties of trying to write history based on legal sources.
The emphasis throughout is on questions peculiar to the legal sources. No detail, for example, is given about problems relating to the transmission of texts, since this is not specifically a problem of the legal sources but one which affects all ancient literature.
SOURCES INDEPENDENT OF JUSTINIAN
Legal writings
The most important of the works which survive independently of the Justinianic compilations is the Institutes of Gaius, an elementary introduction to Roman law dating from about AD 160, and still the best introduction to the subject ever written. It contains a clear account of classical law and procedure, and also some valuable historical material of which the Digest preserves no record. It is preserved in a palimpsest discovered in Verona in 1816. It raises essentially the same textual critical problems as any other ancient work, and nothing in particular turns on the fact that it is a work about law.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
