§ 21.: The Life and Works of Gaius.

Of the life of Gaius we know little. Even his full name has been lost; for, if ‘Gaius’ is the familiar Roman praenomen, he must have had a family or gentile name as well. It is probable that he was a foreigner by birth—a Greek or a Hellenised Asiatic; but it is also probable that he was a Roman citizen, and possible that he taught at Rome. It is not likely that he belonged to the class of patented jurisconsults; for his opinions are not quoted by the subsequent jurists whose fragments are preserved in the Digest; it has even been Edition: current; Page: [liv] inferred that he was not a practising lawyer; for amidst his voluminous writings there is no trace of any work on Quaestiones. His treatises may all have been of a professorial kind. They included, beside the Institutions, Commentaries on the Provincial Edict and the Urban Edict; a work on the Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea; a Commentary on the Twelve Tables; a book called Aurea or Res Quotidianae, treating of legal doctrines of general application and utility in every-day life; a book on Cases (apparently of a hypothetical character); one on Rules of Law (Regulae); and special treatises on Verbal Obligations, Manumissions, Fideicommissa, Dowries, and Hypotheca. He also wrote on the Tertullian and Orphitian Senatusconsults. Gaius’s Commentary on the Provincial Edict is the only work of the kind known to us. It is not necessary to believe that this Provincial Edict was the edict of the particular province (perhaps Asia) of which he was a native. It may have been a redaction of the elements common to all Provincial Edicts.

The value attached to Gaius’s powers of theoretical exposition, and to the admirable clearness and method which made his Institutions the basis of all future teaching in Roman law, must have been great; for, in spite of the fact that he was not a patented jurisconsult, he appears by the side of Papinian, Paulus, Ulpian, and Modestinus, in the ‘Law of Citations’ issued by Theodosius II and Valentinian III in 426 a. d. The beginning of this enactment runs: ‘We accord our approval to all the writings of Papinian, Paulus, Gaius, Ulpian, and Modestinus, granting to Gaius the same authority that is enjoyed by Paulus, Ulpian and the others, and sanctioning the citation of all his works.’

Although so little is known of Gaius, yet his date can be approximately determined from the internal evidence of his works. ‘We know that he flourished under the Emperors Hadrian (117-138 a. d.), Antoninus Pius (138-161 a. d.) and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (161-180 a. d.). Gaius himself mentions that he was a contemporary of Hadrian, Dig. 34, 5, 7 pr. He apparently wrote the First Book of his Institutions under Antoninus Pius, whom he mentions, § 53, § 74, § 102, without the epithet Divus (of divine or venerable memory), a term only applied to emperors after their decease, but in the Second Book, § 195, with this epithet. The Antoninus mentioned, § 126, is either Pius or Marcus Aurelius Philosophus. Respecting the rules of Cretio, 2. § 177 Gaius appears not to be cognizant of a Constitution of Marcus Aurelius mentioned by Ulpian, 22, 34. That he survived to the time of Commodus appears from his having written a treatise on the Sc. Orphitianum (178 a. d.), an enactment Edition: current; Page: [lv] passed under that emperor’ during his joint rule with his father Marcus Aurelius (177-180 a. d.). This is the latest date which is traceable in the life of Gaius.

Gaius was thus an elder contemporary of Papinian, who had already entered active life in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; and he stands at the threshold of that brilliant period of the close of Roman Jurisprudence which contains the names of Scaevola, Papinian, Ulpian and Paulus, and extends from the reign of Marcus Aurelius to that of Severus Alexander (180-235 a. d.).