Download PDF | Ernest Metzger, ed, A Companion to Justinian's Institutes, Cornell University Press, 1998.
306 Pages
Preface
A textbook of law is usually able to speak for itself without help from anyone. Even after so many centuries, Justinian’s Institutes can often still speak for itself. It has always been the best and clearest introduction to Roman law, and time and again it gives relief from the more difficult books that try to explain it. It remains the law student’s first textbook, as Justinian promised. Of course Justinian could not have known that his law would endure in so much of the modern world. He therefore could not have known that later generations would take such an interest in the classical sources of law he relied on, the methods of the classical jurists, and the development of the law in Rome over a thousand years. The Institutes is therefore still the law student’s first textbook, but the student now needs to know a great deal more than Justinian tells him.
This book is a companion to the translation of the Institutes prepared by Peter Birks and Grant McLeod, and published by Duckworth and Cornell in 1987. It addresses all the principal subjects discussed in the Institutes and gives a thorough description of the law relating to each subject. It is therefore in every respect a textbook of Roman law — a second textbook, after the Institutes itself. In presenting this book we note that the translators took enormous care both to produce a beautiful and accurate translation and to render the language as a whole as consistent as possible. Accordingly the present book hopes to be faithful not only in following Justinian’s treatment, but also in matching the translators’ care in presenting Justinian’s technical vocabulary. To help the reader follow the vocabulary of the two languages, the Glossary and the English-Latin Word List associate Latin terms with their adopted English equivalents, nearly all of which follow those the translators have established. Passages from the Institutes quoted in this book and citations to ancient works also follow, of course, the Birks and McLeod edition.
Each chapter is divided into sections. Where a passage in the Institutes is the principal source for discussion in a section, a citation to that passage is given in the section heading. Where the principal source is a passage from Gaius’ Institutes, a citation to Gaius is given instead. Each author has provided a Select Bibliography of works pertinent to his subject, to supplement the General Bibliography. Footnotes have been kept to a minimum, and cross-references within and among chapters are generous. Full tables of authorities are included at the end.
I am grateful to Jilly Arbuthnott, who did the initial editing, and to Lucy Metzger, who performed the first copy-edit on the manuscript. My thanks also go to Peter Birks and Robin Evans-Jones, who as my predecessors took great trouble to ensure that'this book would be produced.
Ernest Metzger University of Aberdeen
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