The Justinian Code

As the Roman Empire fell the first emperor of the Byzantine Empire was a man named Justinian.  He realized that one problem was that Roman Law had become an enormousness mess and needed to be fixed.  So he ordered the creation of the Justinian Code to help people understand the law.

To help you understand how he was able to simplify the law into his new codes, here are some interesting stats:

• The United States code is always growing and stands at over 200,000 pages

• The Ohio Revised code has 3601 chapters

• The Roman Empire had over 1,600 books with various laws in them that Justinian cut down to about 4,000 laws.  This seems like a big number but is small in comparison to the data provided here.

The Four Parts of the Justinian Code

The Justinian Code was divided into four parts to help citizens direct their attention to the information that they seek about the law.  Today you will investigate The Code as it is the most relevant and readable part of the Justinian Code.

Remember, when reading an ancient primary source the goal is not to understand everything you read, but rather to extract meaning where you can!