Gaius (jurist)

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Roman jurist Gaius or Caius

Gaius (

Roman jurist. Little is known about his personal life, including his name (Gaius or Caius being merely his personal name (praenomen)).[1]
It is also difficult to ascertain the span of his life, but it is assumed he lived from AD 110 to at least AD 179, as he wrote on legislation passed within that time.

From internal evidence in his works it may be gathered that he flourished in the reigns of the emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. His works were thus composed between the years 130 and 180. After his death, however, his writings were recognized as of great authority, and the emperor Theodosius II named him in the Law of Citations, along with Papinian, Ulpian, Modestinus and Paulus, as one of the five jurists whose opinions were to be followed by judicial officers in deciding cases. The works of these jurists accordingly became most important sources of Roman law.[1]

Besides the

Institutes of Justinian with those of Gaius shows that the whole method and arrangement of the later work were copied from that of the earlier, and very numerous passages are word for word the same. The Digest and the Institutes of Justinian are part of the Corpus Juris Civilis. Probably, for the greater part of the period of three centuries which elapsed between Gaius and Justinian, his Institutes had been the familiar textbook for all students of Roman law.[1]

The Institutes

Main article:
Institutes of Gaius

The

wills; the third of intestate succession and of obligations; and the fourth of actions and their forms.[1]

Another circumstance which renders the work of Gaius more interesting to the historical student than that of Justinian, is that Gaius lived at a time when actions were tried by the system of formulae, or formal directions given by the

formulary system had disappeared.[1]

The work was lost to modern scholars, until, in 1816, a palimpsest was discovered by

St. Jerome were written over some earlier writings, which proved to be the lost work of Gaius. The greater part of the palimpsest has, however, been deciphered with the help of August von Bethmann-Hollweg, and the text is now fairly complete. More recently, two sets of papyrus fragments have been found.[3] The discovery of Gaius' work has thrown a flood of light on portions of the history of Roman law which had previously been most obscure. Much of the historical information given by Gaius is wanting in the compilations of Justinian, and, in particular, the account of the ancient forms of procedure in actions. In these forms can be traced "survivals" from the most primitive times, which provide the science of comparative law with valuable illustrations, which may explain the strange forms of legal procedure found in other early systems.[1]

There are several editions of the Institutes, beginning with the

Henry Maine's Early Institutions, chapter 9. For further information see M. Glasson, Étude sur Gaius et sur le jus respondendi.[1]

Relief

U.S. House of Representatives
.

In the 1950s, the Polish-American sculptor Joseph Kiselewski was commissioned to create four marble reliefs located over the gallery doorway at the Chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington D.C. They are each 28" in diameter. The relief of Gaius is one of the four.[7]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Chisholm 1911.
  2. ^ Berger, Adolph. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law. The American Philosophical Society. September 1953. p 504
  3. ^ Details on these manuscripts are provided in L.D. Reynolds (editor), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 174.
  4. ^ This translation is available online Archived 23 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine as a PDF at the "Online Library Of Liberty" website
  5. ^ de Zulueta, Francis (1946). The Institutes of Gaius. Oxford: Clarendon P. 2 vols
  6. ^ Gordon, W. M.; Robinson, O.F. (1988). The Institutes of Gaius. London: Duckworth.
  7. ^ "United States House of Representatives". Joseph Kiselewski. Archived from the original on 10 January 2023. Retrieved 20 April 2023.

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External links

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gaius". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 391.

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