A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

A jurist, named Laelius, flourished in the time of Hadrian; for it appears from a fragment of Paulus, in Dig. 5. tit. 4. s 3, that Laelius, in one of his works, mentions having seen in the palace a free woman, who was brought from Alexandria, in Egypt, in order to be exhibited to Hadrian, with five children, four of whom were brought into the world at one birth, and the fifth forty days afterwards. Gaius (Dig. 34. tit. 5. s. 7) tells the same story, without mentioning the interval of forty days; and we find from him that the name of the woman was Serapia. (Compare also Julianus, in Dig. 46. tit. 3. s. 36; Capitolin. Anton. Pins, 9; Phlegon, de Rebus Mirab. 29.) Indeed, the learned Ant. Augustinus, without sufficient reason, suspects that Gains was no other than Laelius, designated by his praenomen. Laelius is cited by Paulus in another passage (Dig. 5. tit. 3 s. 43), which also relates to the law of hereditas.

The Laelius of the Digest is. by most writers upon the subject (e. g. . Guil. Grotius, Heineccius, and Bach), identified with Laelius Felix, who wrote notes upon Q. Mucius Scaevola (librum ad Q. Mucium,), from which Gellius (15.27) makes

some interesting extracts, explaining the distinctions between the different kinds of comitin. In this work Felix cites Labeo. Zimmern (R. R. G. 1.89), after Conradi and Bynkerschoek, moved by the archaic style of the extracts in Gellius, thinks it not improbable that the Laelius Felix of that author was more ancient than the Laelius of the Digest, and that he may even be the same person with the preceptor of Varro. If this be the case, the Labeo he cites must be Q. Antistius Labeo, the father. The preceptor of Vario, however, who is stated by Gellius (16.8) to have written an essay on oratorical introductions (Commentarium de Proloquiis), is, according to a different reading, not Laelius, but L. Aelius, and was perhaps the grammarian, L. Aelius Stilo. In Pliny (Plin. Nat. 14.13) it is doubtful whether the name mentioned in connection with Scaevola and Capito should be read Laelius, or L. Aelius. (Dirksen, Bruchstücke aus den Schriften der Römischen Juristen, p. 101 ; Maiansius, ad , XXX. Ictorum Fragm. Comment. vol. ii. p. 208-217.)

[J.T.G]