Ethnos et droit dans le monde protobyzantin, Ve-VIe siècle: fédérés, paysans et provinciaux à lumière d'une scholie juridique de l'époque de Justinien

"The subject of this monograph is an anonymous sixth-century marginal note whose author probably was Stephanus Antecessor, a teacher of law in Constantinople in the early 540s. This marginal note deals with a fragment of the classical jurist Papinian, according to which, whenever a question is raised with reference to the genus (family) or to the gens of a person, he must prove whether he belongs to it or not. The author of the marginal note translates gens by ethnos, and provides his students with three case studies--all related to early Byzantine public law--in which individuals are required to prove their relationship to an ethnos. The first one deals with the phoiderator, a group of Gothic allies who, upon becoming full-fledged soldiers in the early sixth century, were considered for a while both foreigners and privileged, which could encourage attempts to usurp their status. According to the second one, a colonus who reclaims tax exemption has to prove that he is entitled to them by his fiscal origo. According to the last one, individuals who are arrested by mysterious "Egyptian-catchers" or "Syrian-catchers" are required to prove that they are not Egyptians or Syrians. This marginal note, which is studied here in detail for the first time, is of considerable interest for the administrative, military, and social history of early Byzantium"--Publisher's website.