Justinian's Digest: The Distribution of Authors and Works to the Three Committees

Abstract:     
This essay addresses a set of related problems about the compilation of Justinian's Digest. Suppose that, as scholars have long believed, Bluhme was right in detecting the existence of three separate masses of works to be read and excerpted by the Digest commissioners and of three separate committees (the Sabinian, the Papinian and the edictal) to read them. How, then, was it decided which works to allot to each mass, and which works should be read together? The allocation was crucial, because Tribonian could not personally supervise the selection of texts made by the committees, at any rate those on which he did not himself serve. How did he ensure that the best texts would be chosen?

Number of Pages in PDF File: 42

working papers series