Gaius

The Commentaries of Gaius are referred to by numbers indicating the book and the paragraph:

It had not been closed even by the time of Gaius, about the middle of the second century a.

The text of Gaius adopted is that of the last edition of Krueger and Studemund, which its German proprietors have again most kindly allowed us to use.

But Ulpian and Paulus, Gaius and Papinian, were not authors of Responses.

An unfortunate attempt to discriminate them was made by the jurisconsult Ulpian, with the propensity to distinguish characteristic of a lawyer, but the language of Gaius, a much higher authority, and the passage quoted before from the Institutes, leave no room for doubt that the expressions were practically convertible The difference between them was entirely historical, and no distinction in esse …

Gaius, writing under the Antonines, describes the institution as distinctively Roman.

Caius and Lawyer says, natural reason permits us to defend ourselves against dangers.

Now the term weapon comprehends not only an instrument of iron, but as Caius interprets this law, a club, or a stone.

Letting and hiring, as Caius has justly said, come nearest to selling and buying, and are regulated by the same principles.

Gaius, speaking of the Legis Actiones generally, observes that ‘they fell into discredit, because through the excessive subtlety of the ancient lawyers, things came to such a pass that he who committed the smallest error failed altogether.

Gaius, leaving the Condictio, proceeds to discuss two of the Legis Actiones, the Manus Injectio and the Pignoris Capio, which cannot be made to square in any way with our modern conception of an action.

At the head of the passages in the work of Gaius which allow the mind’s eye to penetrate some little way into the chaos out of which social order sprang, I place the fragmentary and imperfect account, given near the commencement of the Fourth Book, of the old Legis Actiones, which in the age of Gaius himself had ceased to have more than an historical and antiquarian interest.

Its revival may be said to be owing to Niebuhr’s discovery of the ‘Commentaries of Gaius,’ which, though not directly treating of ancient Roman law, enabled us to divide it into successive stages or strata, and gave us a singularly complete view of the earliest among them.

But on the whole the arrangement in which the compilers of Justinian’s ‘Institutes’ followed Gaius, distributing law in Law of Persons, Law of Things, and Law of Actions, became the point of departure for theories of legal classification.

Alexander, Gaius, and Pompey — what are they beside Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates?

When Gaius—his old kinsman, his new host—threw open Caesar's house to him only to mock his own, Pompey lacked bread and water!

Julius Canus, a man great above all others—whose claim to our admiration is not lessened even by the fact that he was born in our own age—after a long altercation with Gaius, was told by that Phalaris, as he was leaving:

We have seen Ptolemy, king of Africa, and Mithridates of Armenia among the guards of Gaius;

“Inpunitus est qui sine culpa et dolo malo casu quodam damnum committit.

though it could never have for Gaius or Ulpian the wide meaning of “harm [of any kind] which gives no cause of action.

“Nullus videtur dolo facere, qui suo iure utitur.

Such useful fables—that Marcus or Gaius, in this flesh, bearded and with all these things, a stern husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather—certainly, what is enough, a male—should, in the bridal chamber of the Pleroma, by an angel—I have said it already by keeping silent—and perhaps you may bear some Aeon Onesimus!