The sixth-century Codex of Justinian is one of the most important legal works in the history of western law. Much like the group of experts directed by the emperor to create the Code itself, general editor F. and his team of savvy Roman legal experts personify what can be done when great minds work together for a common goal. The first part of the three-volume set pays tribute to the history of the translation itself; the first reliable English translation made from the standard Latin edition of the Codex of Justinian.Footnote ¹ This impressive publication is based on the early twentieth-century translations of Friedrich Heinrich Blume, a Wyoming Supreme Court judge. Blume had immigrated from Germany at the age of twelve and later graduated from the State University of Iowa (later called the University of Iowa) in 1898. After moving to Wyoming, beginning to practice law and losing steam in the political arena, he turned to a productive period of otium by annotating and translating Justinian's famed legal codex. Blume also corresponded regularly with Clyde Pharr, a professor of Greek and Latin at Vanderbilt University, who was working on the translation of legal texts. As L. Jones Hall has remarked (‘Clyde Pharr, the Women of Vanderbilt, and the Wyoming Judge: the Story behind the Translation of the Theodosian Code in Mid-Century America’, Roman Legal Tradition 8 [2012], 1–42), Pharr was notorious for appropriating and often taking credit for the translations of graduate students, female research assistants and even his spouse. While Pharr wished to publish translations for the entirety of Roman law, his consortium produced only the Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions (1952) and Ancient Roman Statutes (1961) before his death. However, Blume's translation did not go unnoticed. After the death of the judge in 1971, University of Wyoming law professor and Director of the Law Library Timothy Kearley took up the reins. In 1993, he published the judge's translation online, much to the benefit of thousands of Classicists, juris doctorate candidates and scholars of Roman law across the country and indeed the world (‘Annotated Justinian Code’, College of Law: George William Hopper Law Library: https://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/).

Moving beyond the rich backstory of the translation, a chapter contributed by S. Corcoran explores the biography of the texts that make up the Codex of Justinian, situating its formation into the overarching programme of harmonising actions instituted by the emperor Justinian (r. 527–565 ce). Corcoran not only illustrates the role that the Codex and the Corpus Iuris Civilis more generally played in the propaganda of Justinian, he also shows their profound impact on legal education under the emperor. From there, the history of the text is followed through the East and the early medieval West, before exploring the revivification of the Codex in the eleventh century and then the pivotal establishment of the Reichskammergericht in 1495. There is learned discussion of the formation and nature of the Krüger editions of the Corpus Iuris Civilis (1868–1895), of which the Codex editions were completed in 1877. Throughout Corcoran's chapter and the rest of the three volumes, the Codex's current editors rightfully underscore how essential it is to understand the sometimes ‘shifting and changeable nature’ of various editions of the Codex, in order to recognise that a complete text does not survive intact. This also allows the reader to appreciate the pattern of manuscript survival.

With sufficient prefacing, the reader is thus equipped to receive the text and translation of the Codex of Justinian. The Latin and Greek appear on the left side and the English translation on the right, so that readers can easily compare the two in the Loeb format many have become accustomed to in Classics. The introductory constitutions are edited by J.N. Dillon and F., and provide much insight into the framing of the Codex as a whole. With legal rhetoric akin to Theodosius II, Justinian notes the monumental undertaking of bringing the Codex together, a task only accomplished with the aid of Almighty God (and many legal experts), of course. The stated reasons for the Codex enumerated in this preface and given to the Senate on 16 November 534 ce, are similarly telling, as is Justinian's belief that this ‘supreme work’ served to preserve the res publica itself (p. 3).

The First Book is edited by J.N. Dillon and focuses predominantly on jurisdictional and ecclesiastical law. Dates are written for an English-speaking audience and frequently correct the Scott translation. Whereas Scott's reading often simply translated the Latin dates both incorrectly and correctly into English (e.g. CJ 1.9.1 [213 ce]: ‘Given on the day before the Kalends of July’), F., Dillon and the rest of the editors are careful to convert the Roman calendrical vocabulary into our own dating system (e.g. CJ 1.9.1: ‘Given June 30’) allowing for more comprehension for readers unfamiliar with Roman dating. This system is usefully explained by N. Lenski (pp. xciv–xcvi). Moreover, by reconstructing both the Latin and the Greek text, many new provisions are presented to the reader that are missing from Scott altogether. As one example, we can look to the widely-cited CJ 1.10 (339 ce) on the ownership of Christian slaves. Not only do we get a clearer and more direct translation of the Latin for 1.10.1, but the reader now receives the Greek reconstruction and translation for CJ 1.10.2, altogether absent from Scott. Additionally, footnotes reconcile laws from the Codex with their citation in the Theodosian Code and other legal works, and frequently note alternate dating in earlier editions. Editors often provide helpful notice of lacunae and cite any surviving epigraphic or archaeological evidence that may provide further support for the wording of a specific law.

The Second Book is edited by F. and concerns civil law and procedure. It addresses notices of impending actions, summoning individuals to court, pleading in court, reasons for applying the stigma of infamia and a number of conditional situations. The Third Book is edited by S. Connolly and is again carefully and consistently translated. The parallel translations allow students to see the crossover between Greek and Latin, and the annotations within the footnotes provide helpful concordances while also pointing out any uncertainty. This fact is exemplified in a title concerning dice and dice players (CJ 3.43.1.4). In 529 ce, in an apparent attempt to get workers to stop playing dice during working hours and descending into debt, Justinian deputises bishops (along with help from the governor) to permit only certain types of dice games to be undertaken with small amounts of gold at stake: ton monobolon, ton condomonobolon ke kondacca ke repon ke perichyten (‘long jump, pole vault, javelin toss, horse racing, and wrestling’). Readers quickly recognise through the presented parallel text that the original Greek names for these dice games have been transliterated into Latin for the Codex. Connolly is also quick to remark that ‘the text and the identity of the games are both highly uncertain’ (p. 785 n. 179). Like much of the legislation in the Codex, the dice laws are not as trivial as it may at first seem. Justinian provides a telling justification for such laws: non solum enim bella bene ordinamus et res sacras, sed et ista (‘For not only do We regulate wars and sacred things well, but these matters also’). To the emperor's mind, the reach of Roman law extended even into a quotidian dice game played at noon on a Constantinople street corner.

In Volume 2, each editor is again matched with his or her specialty within Roman law; a practice that allows for editing and translation rooted in thematic and bibliographic expertise. Economic historian D. Kehoe thus provides a faithful edition and translation of the financial legislation predominantly concerned with credit, claims, loans and debt within the Fourth Book of the Code, while T.A.J. McGinn takes on the Fifth Book's social legislation, which predominantly concerns gifts, marriage, dowries and tutelage. A mixture of experts edit the Sixth Book – Corcoran, M. Crawford, B. Salway, F., Kehoe and McGinn. Finally, Lenski addresses the Seventh Book, which principally focuses on issues of slavery, manumission, usucapion and the right to appeal.

The third and final volume covers books eight to twelve. The Eighth Book is edited by F., the Ninth by McGinn, and the Tenth and Eleventh by Kehoe. There are times where the chronological movement within a specific title requires a moment for pause and reflection. The edition's set-up allows the reader to see, for instance, the late-antique reception of the Julian marriage laws instated during the Augustan period and addressed by a number of later emperors from Constantine to Justinian. Clearly, Augustus’ legislation did not remain etched in bronze for the entirety of the Roman empire; like many laws, they were mutable and changed over the course of centuries. In the Twelfth Book, C.F. Pazdernik successfully addresses a complex section on military and administrative posts, bureaucrats, imperial ranks and offices. What might be termed an early precursor to the emoluments clause (CJ 12.34) attempts to separate negotiatores (‘businessmen’) from the imperial service in one of many laws that help us to understand complex issues in our own time. As elsewhere, specialised titles for officials and the like are often placed in the Latin nominative within parentheses in the translation to the right.

Two exceptional appendices end the third volume. The first is a glossary of the Roman legal terms referenced within the work. This appendix supplements and at times fully excerpts from Adolf Berger's famed Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (1953), complete with helpful references back to the place in the Codex where each term is used. A second appendix provides a chronological list of the dated constitutions in the Codex as first provided by Krüger (1914). It ends with a supplement to his list provided predominantly by the work of Corcoran. This new dating information derives from manuscript evidence and once again reveals that the palaeographical study of the Code remains imperative to understanding our modern reconstruction of it. Just as the Code is itself a rich stratigraphy of Roman law title by title, so are the manuscripts used by the editors to produce a new version of it for a modern audience.

Early on in this massive undertaking, F. notes the utility of the Codex to historians today: ‘the Codex offers an entirely unparalleled depiction of Roman law as a lived reality during the later Empire’ (p. lxxix). While one might argue – as J. Harries and others have – that late Roman law provides us more with the time-sensitive rhetoric of power and imperial ideals than a social reality per se, the Codex does enable an unmatched look into the day-to-day issues addressed by the emperor, his officials, soldiers, ecclesiastical officials and the Roman people. Beyond the legal content of this massive translation, the work reveals the necessary art of translation and the need to admit to the uncertainty inherent in this art. In poet Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces, she describes the act of translation thus: ‘The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications’ (Fugitive Pieces [1996], p. 109). We are all ourselves immigrants to the late-antique world of Latin and Greek inhabited by the emperor Justinian and the compilers of the Codex of Justinian; however, the efforts of Blume, F., Connolly, Corcoran, Crawford, Dillon, Kearley, Kehoe, Lenski, McGinn, Pazdernik and Salway have brought the context and content of the Codex of Justinian back to life for a new generation of visitors in a work sure to be the standard going forward. Whereas Pharr and others in his day were known for overlooking or perhaps not recognising all participants on a project, this new annotated translation and text of the Codex demonstrates what can be achieved when a group of academics come together with generosity, humility and expertise in order to provide a great resource to the public – and in the process recognise the work of an earnest Wyoming judge who, much like them, just wanted to guide new readers through the legal world of the past.