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Today's episode Just Measures, Law, Money and war in Byzantium.

The welfare of the state springs from two sources, weapons and laws.

With these words, the sixth century Emperor Justinian put before his people the fruits of a remarkable undertaking.

At his behest, a team of jurists led by the indefatigable Trebonian had gathered together centuries worth of Roman law.

The result was a legal codification in three parts, the Digest, Codex, and Institutes, followed

later by the so-called novels, that is new laws devised in Justinian's own reign.

We've looked recently at other works that were basically compilations or presentations of earlier material, like Fodius's library or the Suda, and hopefully

we've learned to take such works of scholarship seriously, but none of them can match Justinian's

legal corpus for influence.

Written in Latin, it became the crucial source for Western medieval law when it was taken

up by the juris of 12th century Italy.

And it was crucial in the East too, effectively supplanting previous Roman law and setting

down rules that would be invoked in courtrooms throughout Byzantine history.

This is exactly what Justinian had in mind.

Any laws that failed to make it into his codification were rendered obsolete, effectively

repealed by omission.

This made it the point of reference for future generations of lawyers and judges, which had its downsides.

We're talking here about a massive body of technical writing and it was written in Latin, which was not the working language of the Eastern Empire.

No wonder then that future emperors commissioned further legal works in Greek.

Under the iconoclast Isarian dynasty, a selection of laws entitled the Ecloga, and under the Macedonian dynasty

...