Marcus Antistius Labeo

The leading jurist in the time of Augustus was Labeo, who was born about 50 bce into a plebeian family of Samnite origin. His father, Pacuvius, also a lawyer, was killed in 42 bce defending republican principles and ideals.

A pupil of Trebatius, but also instructed by his father and other jurists, Labeo was a virtuoso not only in law but also in many other areas: grammar, literature, history, dialectic, and language. He applied his broad learning and original mind to solving the most intricate cases (Aulus Gelius, Noctes Attticae 13.10.1). Labeo divided his year fifty-fifty between teaching his students and giving answers (responsa) one semester in Rome, and writing in the country the other semester. He wrote about four hundred books (scrolls), among them a commentary on the Twelve Tables; a large commentary on the praetorian edict with an appendix to the peregrine edict; Pithana (Probabilia), which was a collection of decisions of cases that Paul had summarized in the third century; and a posthumous collection of cases in forty books that Javolenus Priscus had summarized (Libri posteriores). More than five hundred citations of Labeo’s works have survived.

Labeo’s originality was legendary. He was intrigued with legal definitions and distinctions among legal concepts. For instance, he recognized that the constitutive element of the private offense of injury (iniuria) was the insult (contumelia) (D. 47.10.15.46). Labeo probably introduced the technique of analogy into legal argumentation, and the idea of regula (rules) into legal discourse. Labeo thought that the law, like language, was inherently ordered and governed by rules. Rules promoted systematization, consistency, and cer­tainty in the Roman legal system. In textual interpretation, he identified and separated cases affecting the interpretation of a concrete legal text (statute, will, contract, legal action) from those affecting unwritten law. He was rigorous in the application of the law. He favored confining legal concepts and tools to the spheres in which they should be applied, and avoiding strained or unjustified extensions.