Marcus Antistius Labeo

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Marcus Antistius Labeo (d. 10 or 11 AD) was a prominent jurist of ancient Rome.

He was the son of Pacuvius Antistius Labeo, a jurist who caused himself to be slain after the defeat of his party at Philippi. A member of the plebeian nobility, and in easy circumstances, the younger Labeo early entered public life, and soon rose to the praetorship; but his undisguised antipathy to the new regime, and the somewhat brusque manner in which in the Senate he occasionally gave expression to his republican sympathies--what Tacitus (Ann. iii. 75) calls his incorrupta libertas--proved an obstacle to his advancement, and his rival, Ateius Capito, who had unreservedly given in his adhesion to the ruling powers, was promoted by Caesar Augustus to the consulate, when the appointment should have fallen to Labeo; smarting under the wrong done him, Labeo declined the office when it was offered to him in a subsequent year (Tac. Ann. iii. 75; Pomponius in fr. 47, Dig. i. 2).

From this time he seems to have devoted his whole time to jurisprudence. His training in the science had been derived principally from Trebatius Testa. To his knowledge of the law he added a wide general culture, devoting his attention specially to dialectics, philology (grammatica), and antiquities, as valuable aids in the exposition, expansion, and application of legal doctrine (Geil. Xiii. 10). Down to the time of Hadrian his was probably the name of greatest authority; and several of his works were abridged and annotated by later hands.

While Capito is hardly ever referred to, the dicta of Labeo are of constant recurrence in the writings of the classical jurists, such as Gaius, Ulpian and Iulius Paulus; and no inconsiderable number of them were thought worthy of preservation in Justinian's Digest. Labeo gets the credit of being the founder of the Proculian sect or school, while Capito is spoken of as the founder of the rival Sabinian one (Pomponius in fr. 47, Dig. i. 2); but it is probable that the real founders of the two scholae were Proculus and Sabinus, followers respectively of the methods of Labeo and Capito.

Labeo's most important literary work was the Libri posteriores, so called because published only after his death. It contained a systematic exposition of the common law. His Libri ad Edictuni embraced a commentary, not only on the edicts of the urban and peregrine praetors, but also on that of the curule aediles. His Probabilium lib. VIII., a collection of definitions and axiomatic legal propositions, seems to have been one of his most characteristic productions.

[edit] References

• Johann Maier Eck, De vita, moribus, et studiis M. Ant. Labeonis (Franeker, 1692), in Oelrichss Thes. nov., vol. i.
• Johannes Jacobus Mascovius, De sectis Sabinianor et Proculianor (1728)
• Lothar Anton Alfred Pernice, Marcus Antistius Labeo. Das römische Privatrecht im 1. Jahrhundert der Kaiserzeit (Halle, 1873-1892)
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.