the Graeco-Roman JURIST. A Latin Epitome of the Novells of Justinian is extant under this name. In one MS. the work is attributed to Joannes, a citizen of Constantinople; in some, no author is named; but in several the translation and abridgment are ascribed to Julianus, a professor (antecessor) at Constantinople. It is remarkable that no jurist of the name is recorded among the compilers employed by Justinian, and no professor of the name occurs in the inscription of the Const. Omnem addressed by Justinian in A. D. 533 to the professors of law at Constantinople and Berytus. Among the extracts from contemporaries of Justinian, which were originally appended to the text of the Basilica, there is not one that bears the name of Julianus. In Basil. 16. tit. 1. s. 6.2 (vol. ii. p. 180, ed. Heimbach), a Julianus is named as putting a question to Stephanus, one of the eminent jurists of Justinian's time, and hence it has been supposed that the author of the Epitome of the Novells was a disciple of Stephanus. That a Julianus, however, attained such legal celebrity in the reign of Justinian as to be complimented with the phrase " The luminary of the law," may be inferred from the epigram [*](* In this epigram, by Ῥώμη we are probably to understand Constantinople, which was New Rome. Perhaps Ἰουλιανόν is to be pronounced as a trisyllable, Youlyhnon. In the epigram prefixed to the Digest in the Florentine manuscript, we find the name Τριβωνιανός admitted into an hexameter line :-- Βίβλον Ἰουστινανὸς ἄναξ τεχνήσατο τήνδεἣν ῥα Τριβωνιανὸς μεγάλῳ κάμε Παμβάσιλῆι of his contemporary Theaetetus Scholasticus preserved in the Anthologia Graeca (vol. iii. p. 216, ed. Jacobs), among other epigrams addressed to the statues of eminent men:-- τοῦτον Ἰουλιανόν, νομικὸν φάος, εἶπον ιδοῦσαιῬώμη καὶ Βερόη, πάντα φύσις δύναται.)
- Hunc videntes Julianum, splendidum juris decus,
- Roma Berytusque, Nil non, inquiunt, natura quit.
Alciatus (Parery. 2.46) calls Julianus patricius and exconsul, but without sufficient authority; and Huher Goltzius, in his preface to the edition of the Epitome of the Novells, which was published at Bruges in 1565, thinks it likely that the author of the Epitome was identical with the consul Julianus, to whom Priscian dedicates his grammar.
That the author of the Epitome was a professor is shown by various forms of expression occurring in that work which are known to have been usual among the professors of the Lower Empire; as, for example, the word didicimus, at the beginning of the 67th constitution of the Epitome. It is also clear, from internal evidence, that the author was a resident in Constantinople, which in 100.216 and 358 he calls haec civitas, although in neither case does the Novell of Justinian which he is abstracting contain a parallel expression.
The collection of Novells translated and abridged by Julianus is referred by Fréherus, in his Chronologia prefixed to the Jus Graeco-Romanum, to the year A. D. 570, and this date has been followed by the majority of legal historians; but there is every reason to believe that the Epitome was completed during the life of Justinian, in A. D. 556. In it Justinian is uniformly called noster imperator, while preceding emperors, as Leo and Justinus, are called Divus Leo and Divus Justinus. In the abstracts of Novells 117 and 134 there is no allusion to the subsequent legislation of Justinian, which again permitted divortium bona gratia. In the original collection, also, no Novell of later date than the year A. D. 556 is abstracted.
[J.T.G]