Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
In the opening fragment of Digest 18.1, Paul tells us that Sabinus and Cassius had not required a money price in sale. So long as you could distinguish buyer and seller, they had contended, the mere fact that the buyer paid with goods made no difference, but such a permutatio was sale. Sabinus had appealed to the authority of Homer, who says: ‘From there (i.e., from the ships sent by Euneus from Lemnos) the long-haired Achaeans procured wine, some for bronze, some for gleaming iron, some for hides, some for whole cattle and some for slaves’.
As these verses do not contain the term ‘sale’ at all, they are generally regarded as pointless; and it is held that all Sabinus can have meant to prove by them was that other things than money might be used for trading—a platitude for which he need not have-searched the ancient books. This, however, is doing him an injustice. As a matter of fact, he knew very well why he adduced just this passage. The word χαλκῷ here rendered as ‘for bronze’ was rendered as ‘aere’ by the Romans. Paul, in the very fragment under discussion, says that the Greeks obtained wine ‘aere ferrohominibusque’ One of the meanings of ‘aes’, as indeed of χαλκóς, was ‘money’. (One may think, for example, of ‘aes alienum’.) It was, therefore, possible to ascribe to χαλκῷ in the passage quoted the sense of ‘for money’, instead of ‘for bronze’. Sabinus translated: ‘They procured wine, some for money, some for gleaming iron,’ etc.
1 Iliad 7.472 ff.
2 See von Glück, C. P., Pandecten, Pt. 16, 2nd ed., 1868, pp. 4 f.Google Scholar The view was shared by Professor Buckland in his lectures.
3 The same rendering may be found in the stereotype edition of the Corpus Juris Civilis by T. Mommsen and P. Krueger, vol. 1, 1928, p. 263 n. 2. See also Cyrilli, Philoxeni aliorumque veterum auctorum Glossaria, ed. by Carolus, Labbaeus (1679), 1816–26, pp. 181 f., 194Google Scholar; and for various other examples of the identification, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, vol. 1, 1900, cols. 1071 ff.
4 6.234 f.
5 In Gaius 3.141, the Veronese text as usual omits the Greek quotation, Iliad 7.472 ff. (extant in Justinian's Institutes 3.23.2). But even in the MS. which the scribe had before him, only the beginning seems to have been given, since he still puts ‘et reliqua’. See Kniep, P., Gai Institutionum Commentarius Tertius, §§ 88–225, 1917, p. 27 n. 9 and p. 28 n. 1.Google Scholar
6 Odyssey 1.430, 14.115, 452.
7 1.430 f.
8 Topica 20.78, Institutio Oratorio. 5.11.36 f.
9 See the writer's discussion of Schulz's, F.Roman Legal Science, in Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 38, 1948, pp. 115 ff.Google Scholar