529 to 534 · Early law

Corpus Juris Civilis (Justinian's Code)

Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire

The Emperor Justinian ordered Roman law to be gathered and organised into the Code, the Digest, the Institutes and later laws.

Why it matters

When European scholars rediscovered it in the Middle Ages, it became the root of the civil-law tradition. Almost every civil code since draws on it, directly or indirectly.

Built on

c. 450 BCE

The Twelve Tables

Rome

gathered and reworked the whole inheritance of Roman law

c. 161 CE

Institutes of Gaius

Rome

the Institutes part was based on Gaius's textbook

Went on to shape

1804

French Civil Code (Napoleonic Code)

France

drew on Roman law for its structure and many rules

1811

Austrian General Civil Code (ABGB)

Austria

built on Roman law and natural-law ideas

1855 (in force 1857)

Chilean Civil Code (Andrés Bello)

Chile

built on Roman-law foundations

1896 (in force 1900)

German Civil Code (BGB)

Germany

built on the 19th-century scholarship of Roman law (the 'pandectists')

Counting texts that borrowed from the texts that borrowed from this one, 39 later texts on this timeline trace back to it.

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TheLawToKnow Tools’s timeline lists links of influence only where the borrowing is widely documented. Historians sometimes disagree about how much one text shaped another. It is an educational overview, not legal advice.