Aurelius Hermogenianus

Aurelius Hermogenianus, or Hermogenian, was an eminent Ancient Roman jurist and public servant of the age of Diocletian (245–311) and his fellow tetrarchs.

The compiler of the eponymous Codex Hermogenianus, which collects imperial laws of the years AD 293-94, has long been identified with Hermogenianus, author of the six-book Iuris epitomae (Summaries of the law), a synopsis of classical legal thought. This manual, which followed the arrangement of the Praetor's Edict, survives in 106 excerpts in Justinian's Digest or Pandects. The excerpts are reassembled according to an approximation of their original order in Otto Lenel's Palingenesia and an English translation can be constructed by reference to Watson's edition of the Digest. It is clear from his last place in the index to the Florentine Digest, that Hermogenian belonged to the last generation of jurists exploited by Justinian's compilers. References to plural principes and imperatores in several Digest extracts from the Iuris epitomae are certainly consistent with a tetrarchic date. It is probably on this work that his subsequent high reputation was based; the fifth-century author Coelius Sedulius calls Hermogenian a doctissimus iurislator ('most learned relator of the law') and it is probably of the Iuris epitomae (rather than the Codex) that the same author claims that he produced three editions. By analysing the style of the surviving extracts of the Iuris epitomae Tony Honoré has identified Hermogenian also as the drafter of the emperor Diocletian's rescripts (replies to petitions) from the beginning of AD 293 to the end of 294, a task that would have been the job of the emperor's (procurator) a libellis or magister libellorum (master of petitions). These rescripts formed the core of his compilation of imperial laws, the single-book codex that bore his name, which was perhaps designed to function as a supplement to the Codex Gregorianus that itself had gathered up material from as far back as the emperor Hadrian. Certainly, the two works are closely linked in subsequent citations, the Hermogenian always after the Gregorian.

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