The discovery of fragments of the lost Codex Gregorianus, one of the oldest known law books, was announced this week:

Part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever has been discovered by researchers at UCL’s Department of History. Simon Corcoran and Benet Salway made the breakthrough after piecing together 17 fragments of previously incomprehensible parchment. The fragments were being studied at UCL as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded “Projet Volterra” – a ten year study of Roman law in its full social, legal and political context.

Corcoran and Salway found that the text belonged to the Codex Gregorianus, or Gregorian Code, a collection of laws by emperors from Hadrian (AD 117-138) to Diocletian (AD 284-305), which was published circa AD 300. Little was known about the codex’s original form and there were, until now, no known copies in existence.

This Codex Gregorianus has had a significant, albeit indirectly, influence on the formation of the civil law codes in the West.