Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

urgundian and gothic law 285
himself and is even liable to offer lofty justifications for particular
decrees. 115 He has no doubt that his decrees have the status of lex; they
were not mere edicts. 116
The laws ascribed to the Visigothic king Euric, and by modern scholars
called after him the Codex Euricianus, are preserved only in part. 117 Enough
survives, however, to show that they have a very different character from
the Burgundian Liber Constitutionum. They consist of a series of numbered
sections broken up by titles which are, however, not themselves numbered.
118 The title thus has a less central position then it does in the structure
of the Theodosian Code and the Liber Constitutionum. There is little
self-referential language and no lofty justifications. 119 In formal terms the
Codex Euricianus is closer to the Ostrogothic Edictum Theodorici than to the
Burgundian Liber Constitutionum. On the other hand, it does seem to conceive
of itself as lex rather than as edict. 120 This is not surprising: Theoderic
the Ostrogoth needed to take up an ambiguous stance allowing him to
appear to be part of the empire; for that reason it was politic for him to
issue an edict like a magistrate of the past. The Visigoths, on other hand,
had not been formally attached to the empire since the beginning of Euric’s
reign in 466. 121 The promulgation of the Breviarium Alarici at the end of the
reign of Euric’s son, Alaric II, demonstrates that Roman law had remained
in force for the Roman subjects of the Visigoths. Euric’s legislation thus
served to give Gothic law the dignity of a written form in good legal Latin,
while it also expressed the authority of an independent monarch.
According to Levy, ‘it may safely be called the best legislative work of the
fifth century . . . superior to the Code of Theodosius, which was a mere
anthology, superior to the contemporary imperial decrees with their
obscure verbosity’. 122
Yet although Euric intended his rules to have the full status and title of
law, the substance of the law holds a balance between Roman and barbarian.
We have already seen that, when it comes to confirmation of a donation, the
115 Liber Constitutionum 52.2; 53.1; 54.1; 74.1; 75.1.
116 For example, Liber Constitutionum Pref. cc. 9–11; Sigismund talks of nostra lex as well as of praesentia
edicta in Constitutiones Extravagantes 20 (ed. de Salis, Leg. Burg. 119).
117 Codex Euricianus ed. d’Ors (1960), and in Zeumer (1902) 3–32. Nehlsen (1972) 155–6 n. 18 places
it between 469 and 476/7 on the basis of Sid. Ap. Epp. ii.1.3; viii.3.2. A useful survey with bibliography
is Nehlsen (1984). I do not understand H. Wolfram’s argument in favour of attributing the Codex
to Alaric: Wolfram (1988) 196. 118 Thus Tit. De Venditionibus is prefixed to cclxxxvi.
119 In cclxxvii Euric refers to himself and to his father: ‘Antiquos vero terminos [sic] stare iubemus,
sicut et bonae mem[ori]ae pater noster in alia lege praecepi[t].’ Cf. Levy (1963b).
120 cclxxvii, cccxxvii (ed. Zeumer (1902) pp. 5, 6, 25).
121 Sid. Ap. Ep. viii.3, to Leo of Narbonne, associating military prowess and legal achievement:
‘Sepone pauxillulum conclamatissimas declamationes, quas oris regii uice conficis, quibus ipse rex inclitus
. . . modo per promotae limitem sortis ut populos sub armis, sic frenat arma sub legibus.’ This
passage has given rise to the suggestion that Leo participated in the redaction of the Codex Euricianus.
122 Levy (1963b) 209.
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