Abstract
Although the law often refers to pecuniary transactions, it also distances itself from money. The main difficulty with legal sources viewed from an economic history perspective lies precisely in this separation from actual events. The legal regime does not depend, for example, on the amounts involved in a transaction. More often than not, when a case is put down in writing by a jurist and then recorded in Justinian's Digest, it's because of its legal difficulty, not because of the patrimonial stakes involved. The documentary dimension of these sources must therefore be qualified. It is necessary to question the value of imperial constitutions, which often tend to refer to an idealized situation, and in which the details of the case have not been preserved in favor of the principle that is drawn from them, and of the works of jurists, which deal instead with individual cases. Even in fragments such as Paul's from his Answers (D. 39.92.pr.), which on the surface contain a wealth of details concerning farms, the contribution to economic history may remain limited. What is described here merely confirms information known from other literary, epistolary and archaeological sources. Although the legal sources lack geographical and quantitative elements - which limits their interest for a socio-economic history - their lexicon can nevertheless shed considerable light on the categories of Roman economic life. Fragments by jurists from both the Republic (Alfenus, Book VIII of the Digests abridged by Paul, D. 32.61) and the Empire (Marcian, Book VII of the Institutes, D. 32.65.1), dealing with testamentary issues, reveal reflections on the vocabulary of trades and, consequently, on ancient categorizations of work. The hierarchy of functions and the distinction between specialized trades and those of simple execution, dealt with in several fragments by jurisconsults, sketch out a form of sociology of work. From the point of view of economic history, legal texts must therefore be handled with caution, but they can provide very useful information.
