Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/215

Rh GAIUS. Codex xiii., and by means of the infusion of nut- galls, was able to decipher the 97th leaf of the ob- literated writing, which he at once recognised as an important work of a most ancient jurist, whom he at first supposed to be Ulpian. The fruits of his researches he communicated by letter to Savigny, by whom they were printed in the third volume of the Zeilschrifi. Savigny added a learned and acute commentary of his own, and put forward the feli- citous conjecture, amply verified in the sequel, that the ancient text of codex xiii. contained the genuine Institutes of Gaius, and that the fragment concerning Prescriptions and Interdicts had for- merly been a part of that codex. The fame of this discovery was soon diffused among the jurists of the continent. In May, 1817, the Royal Academy of Berlin despatched to Verona Giischen and Bekker, charged with the task of transcribing the manuscript, and the place of Bek- ker was shortly afterwards supplied by Bethmann Hollweg. With scrupulous accuracy did Gbschen, assisted by Hollweg, fulfil his difficult commission. The original manuscript, in the opinion of the palaeographer Kopp (Savigny's Zeitschrift, vol. iv. p. 475), was anterior to Justinian's legal reforms. The scribe, like the majority of legal writers in our own country at the present day, employed a great variety of contractions, and whole words were often expressed by initial letters. The old order of the leaves was much deranged. There were very few pages where the parchment had not been entirely written over, and, in more than 60 pages, it was bis rescriptus. The new writing Avas in general di- rectly over the old. In order to prepare the parch- ment, it had been washed, apparently bleached in the sun, and in some places scraped by a knife. Notwithstanding these difficulties, by far the greater portion of the Institutes of Gaius has been preserved to us. Probably not one tenth of the whole work is wanting. It is true that certain parts of the extant leaves resisted all attempts at decyphering, and that three leaves, namely, the leaf following p. 80, the leaf following p. 126, and the leaf following p. 194, are missing. The argu- ment of tlie first missing leaf may be collected from the West Gothic Epitome^ and the whole contents of the second missing leaf have been luckily pre- served in an ancient extract, made by the author of the Collatio Legum Rom. et Mos., but the loss of the third missing leaf is very tantalizing, for it doubtless contained some particulars relative to the old legis adiones, which we are left without any means of supplying. A few of the gaps which are occasioned by the impossibility of decyphering are also very lamentable, for they occur in the most obscure parts of the work, — in parts where the curiosity of the antiquary is raised highest, and all the inge- nuity of conjecture possessed by the ablest critics has been unable satisfactorily to fill them up. The decyphered volume was anxiously looked for. In 1819, the first printed sheet of it ap- peared, but not until 1821 was the first complete edition of the work brought out by Gbschen. Its publication excited an unusual sensation among the jurists of the continent. It was considered to form an era in the study of Roman Law. It was found to elucidate doubts, and clear up difficulties, before regarded as hopeless. By the true explana- tion it afforded, many an ingeniously constructed theory was demolished. Modern jurists were thus 6iddenly placed upon a vantcige ground, from which GAIUS. 201 they looked down upon their less fortunate prede- cessors. The authenticity of the discovered Insti- tutes was beyond dispute. This was clear from internal evidence, which would prove a forger to have possessed miraculous knowledge and sagacity. The work was found to agree with the Institutes of Justinian, which were derived from it. It was the manifest source of the Gothic Epitome. It con- tained all the passages cited from the Institutes of Gaius in the Digest, in the Collatio, by Bbethius (Ad Cic. Topica, iii. 5. sub fin.), and by Priscian {Ars Gram. vi. sub fin.). The Institutes of Gaius are thought to have been the first work of the kind, not a compilation from previous sources. As they became a popular manual at Rome, so are they perhaps to the mo- dern student the best initiation into the Roman law, especially if they are read along with the Institutes of Justinian and the Faraphrasis of Theophilus. They .are composed in a clear and terse style, which is well suited to a technical treatise, and does not often fail to satisfy the re- quisitions of pure Latinity. The author always has a meaning, and seldom expresses his meaning badly. The difficulties which occur in his Insti- tutes usually depend either on our ignorance of collateral facts and legal rules, or upon a train of reasoning which demands attention, or upon dis- tinctions which the intellect cannot comprehend without effort. Gaius is not a learned historian ; he seeks not the merit of a critical philologer, and does not push his logic so inconveniently as to assail the latent flav/s of established law ; but his history, his etymologies, and his logic bear a cer- tain stamp of technical propriety They are good enough for their purpose of assisting the memory, and facilitating the understanding of legal doctrine. He does not exhibit the details of refined philoso- phical analysis, and pursue with lucid order the prescriptions of scientific method ; but j'et the uasis of his arrangement will appear, upon exami- nation, to be solid and profound ; and the sequence in which his subjects are treated has been found so practically satisfactory, that it has been received, with little alteration and improvement, by the majority of those who have followed in his track. " Omne jus quo utimur, vel ad personas pertinet, vel ad res, vel ad actiones." This celebrated divi- sion rests on the notion of a subject, an object, and a copula, connecting the suljject with the object. Thinkers had not failed to dwell on the elementary distinction between a man and all that was not himself. They had seen that the relations between a man and the rest of the universe were changed and modified by his own acts and by external events. In the schools of philosophy, these con- siderations had led to divisions of human know- ledge, analogous to the threefold division of law laid down by Gaius. Our author, however, seems to have contented himself with general notions, and not to have formed in his own mind any precise definition of the boundaries between the law relating to persons, the law relating to things and the law relating to actions. The order of his Institutes may be accounted for by some such analysis as the following: — Law treats of rights. Difterences of rights result from permanent differ- ences in those who possess rights — the subject of right— persons ; and also from differences in that over which rights are exercised — the objects of right— things. Besides the varieties of rights attri-