rhoso three parrs ot Justinian's eodit'ication of Roman law were thus put together haphazardh’, with no coherent o\ erall plan. Rut we can go much turther. Neither the (.Wenor the Digrsr \\i\s intentled to reform the law, and their compilers were nowhere given authority to bring the law up-to-date.' Justinian's instructions lead to some very odd residts, especiallv in the Digt’sr. d hiis, hv Dr ('oi/ct'prioi/r Digtyronini § y the compilers were not to include anything that was already set out, i.e., in the ('(u/r. 1 lence, the should give us a very incomplete picture ot the juristic law. Not only that, hut the Roman jurists had stopped writing hooks around And few alterations were made to their te.xts beforeJustinian.’ Of course, the compilers of the Diprxr\cti: out law that had become obsolete, such as transfer of propertv' by the formal ceremony cti manciputio^ but the D/^c.tY presents a skewed picture of the law ofJustinian's era. One detail is enough at this stage, .\part from(iaius and Romponius, the Roman jurists were little interested in legal historv’. D. i.z, Dr originr inris rt omnium magistratuumrt surrrssiotir pnidrntiiim^ 'The origin of the law and of all the magistracies and the succession of the jurists,' contains one shortish te.xt from (laius and one very long one from Pomponius. jurists died some years after the mid-second century. So be it then. For the Digrst Roman legal history stopped around 160; thus, before the time of the great jurists, Llpian, Paul and Papinian! Both 5 This statement is contrary to common wisdom, but for the Code see instructions in the De novo codice componendo §2; for the Digest De conceptione Digestorum §§ 6,7,9: cf. Watson, Out of Context, pp. iiff. Law reformwas reserved for the Quinquaginta Decisiones, The Fifty Decisions, which has not survived as a separate work, but much of it will have been included in the second Code of 534. 6 See now Alan Watson, 'The End of Roman Juristic Writing,' 29 Israel Law /?ev/ew(1995), pp. 228ff. 7 See now for the argument Watson, Out of Context, pp 4ff. 47
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