摘要
What is Byzantine law?There is no standard definition.After all,the term“Byzantine”is a 16th-century neologism implying the later(or Eastern)Roman Empire with its capital at Constantinople,1 hence,Byzantine law is a modern designation for the laws promulgated in the later Roman Empire,namely the Byzantine Empire.There is no question about the end of the period,but there is a great deal of confusion about its starting point.Contemporary historians of Byzantine law tend to set the starting point of Byzantine law at AD 534,by which time the Justinian codification had been completed and the first Greek novels were published.2 This shows that scholars tend to distinguish studies on Byzantine law from those on Roman law.
