How Tribonian Organized the Compilation of Justinian’s Digest1

Abstract

In 1970 the author of this book and Alan Rodger published an article on how Justinian's commissioners read books and excerpted texts for the Digest. It attracted controversy. They dealt with the reading and excerpting of the classical literature rather than the later phase of the Digest project in which the texts were edited and put together in titles and books. They were concerned with how Tribonian organized the project rather than with identifying his interventions in the Digest texts. Their thesis was that the key to the completion of the Digest in three years was that the task of reading and excerpting classical texts was delegated according to a timetable to six senior commissioners organized in the three committees conventionally called the Sabinian, edictal, and Papinian committees. This chapter reviews the theory in the light of recent scholarship.