Gaius

Gaius (second century AD), one of the most distinguished Roman jurists, who lived in Rome and wrote extensively but whose full name and origins are unknown; he was never quoted by contemporary or near-contemporary jurists. It is likely therefore that he was a teacher rather than a practical jurist, and did not in his lifetime have ius respondendi, ‘the right to give a legal opinion’, i.e. his opinions could not be cited as authority for subsequent legal decisions. This prerogative was granted posthumously in AD 426 when his writings were given equal authority with those of Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian. His best-known, though perhaps not wholly original, work is the Institutionēs (‘institutes’), which was taken by Justinian, the Roman emperor at Constantinople, as the basis of his own Institutiones in AD 533 and thereby exerted immense influence on later legal thought. This work was known only in an abbreviated version until its discovery on a palimpsest at Verona in 1816, the Letters of St Jerome having been written over it. It is the only classical legal work to have come down to us in substantially its original form.