legal literature
legal literaturerefers to those works of Roman lawyers which in their treatment of legal matters went beyond mere collections of laws and formulae. Legal literature was the most specifically Roman branch of Latin literature, and until the Byzantine age nearly all works on law were in Latin, which remained the language of legislation in the east until AD 535. But they can only be understood in the light of those Greek genres which were imitated in Rome. They were for the most part written in plain but technically accurate language. They consisted of one or more books (libri), generally of 10,000–15,000 words each, divided into titles each with a rubric and often numbered. We depend for their early history mainly on the account given by Sextus Pomponius (2nd cent. ad). About 300 BC Appius Claudius Caecus is said to have written a book De usurpationibus (‘On Interruption of Title’). A century later Sextus Aelius...
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