Home > Justinian I
2 Legal Activities
Justinian achieved lasting fame for his judicial revolution, which organized Roman law in a form and organic scheme that remains the basis of law in a number of countries today. His authorities issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis on April 7, 529 in three parts: Digesto (or Pandectae), Institutiones, and the Codex. A group of commissioners headed by the quaestor Tribonian drafted the Corpus in Latin, the traditional language of the Roman Empire which most citizens of the Eastern Empire understood but poorly. The Authenticum or Novellae Constitutiones, a collection of new laws issued during Justinian's reign, later supplemented the Corpus. The Novellae appeared in Greek, the common language of the Empire.
The Corpus forms the basis of Latin jurisprudence (including ecclesiastical Canon law: ecclesia vivit lege romana) and, for historians, provides a valuable insight into the concerns and activities of the remains of the Roman Empire. As a collection it gathers together the many sources in which the leges (laws) and the other rules were expressed or published: proper laws, senatorial consults (senatusconsulta), imperial decrees, case law, and jurists' opinions and interpretations (responsa prudentum).
3 Military activities and the campaigns of Belisarius
Like his Roman predecessors and Byzantine successors, Justinian engaged in war against Sassanid dynasty Persia. However, his primary military ambitions focused on the western Mediterranean, where his general Belisarius spearheaded the reconquest of parts of the territory of the old Roman Empire. Belisarius gained this task as a reward after successfully putting down the Nika riots in Constantinople in January of 532, in which chariot racing fanatics had forced Justinian to dismiss the unpopular Tribonian, and had then attempted to overthrow Justinian himself. Justinian considered fleeing the capital, but remained in the city on the advice of Theodora, and Belisarius arrived to crush the rebellion a few days later.
In 533 Belisarius reconquered North Africa from the Vandals after the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage. Belisarius then advanced into Sicily and Italy, recapturing Rome (536) and the Ostrogoth capital at Ravenna (540).
Belisarius disagreed with Justinian over what to do with the reconquered land; Justinian wanted to let the Ostrogoths rule a tributary state, but Belisarius preferred to make Italy an Imperial Roman territory. Unhappy with Belisarius, Justinian dispatched him to the East to defend against renewed attacks by the Persians. After establishing a new peace in the East in 545, Belisarius returned to Italy, where the Ostrogoths had since recaptured Rome. The eunuch general Narses took over Belisarius' command, and the historian Procopius, a former officer in Belisarius' army, accused Narses of treason. Belisarius briefly suffered imprisonment, but Justinian later pardoned him and he defeated the Bulgars when they appeared on the Danube for the first time in 559. In 551, Byzantine forces conquered part of southern Spain from the Visigoths. Narses failed to defend Italy against either the Ostrogoths or the Lombards. Nevertheless, under Justinian, the empire's territory expanded greatly, if only for a short time.
