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CHAPTER 7
The Law
Sean LaffertyIntroduction
While the focus of this study is naturally the law and legal administration of
Ostrogothic Italy, the implications engage the much wider issue of how the
Roman world came to an end. Once considered a catastrophic event that
marked a decisive break from the classical past and ushered in the Dark Ages,
current scholarship tends to view the ‘fall’ of Rome as a gradual—and sur-
prisingly peaceful—process of transition wherein the fundamental elements
of classical civilization survived more or less unchanged in the aftermath of
Rome’s political demise. Instead of words like ‘decline’ and ‘crisis’ to account
for all of the complex and contested changes taking place in this time, we now
have ‘continuity’ and ‘transformation’. In the context of law and legal admin-
istration, Theoderic and his successors (like most of the barbarian kings who
assumed authority in the West following the break-up of the empire) appro-
priated several key elements of the Roman legal tradition and administration.
But they also introduced important innovations that reflect significant cultural
and institutional changes in Italian society between the 4th and 6th centuries.
Indeed this is not a straightforward case of continuity. Nor is it simply a matter
of decline and ruin. Rather, the history of Ostrogothic law and legal adminis-
tration is a history of evolution—an evolution towards the simplification and
popularization of the traditions and institutions of classical jurisprudence and
imperial bureaucracy.
A great deal of what we think we know about the laws and legal admin-
istration of Ostrogothic Italy comes to us from Cassiodorus’ Variae, a collec-
tion in twelve books of 468 letters, proclamations, formulae for appointments,
and edicts related to the Ostrogothic regime, and in particular the reign of
Theoderic the Great (r. 493–526). To judge by this text alone, the administrative
bureaucracy of Ostrogothic Italy was a highly differentiated and specialized
one comprising civil and military officers with clearly defined and separate
functions along similar lines as the late imperial administration. The provin-
cial governor or his deputy functioned as the judge of first instance in serious
cases. His decision could be appealed to the vicar and in some circumstances,
for those with enough time and money, to the praetorian prefect or even