Studi sui commentarii 'istituzionali' di Gaio: formazione e natura del testo, vol. 01

Abstract

The only classical jurisprudential text to have come down to us, in its entirety, without the mediation and filter of the Justinian Digest, Gaius's commentaries from the famous Codex Veronensis no. 13 - commonly referred to as institutiones, but perhaps not by their author - present such characters and writing techniques as to be recognised as an isagogical text that the jurist-teacher must have composed (around the middle of the 2nd century AD, reigning Antoninus Pius) as a teaching aid intended to circulate exclusively among the circle of his students. The peculiarities of the compositional strategy suggest an original and direct Gaian authorship, freeing the work from a consolidated consideration as a remake of an older model and, on the other hand, enrich the evaluation of the text in the background of the relationships with pre-existing traditions or individual initiatives of transmission of legal knowledge.