D. 9,2,51, in which a slave is slain twice and dies, and where Julian considers both assailants equally liable for killing, has been interpreted in the context of causa superveniens. In that case Julian’s opinion becomes contradictory. It is argued that the text should be read in the context of the Stoic theories on causality as current among the jurists in the first centuries AD. In these theories there existed no causa superveniens as of the modern causality theory. As such its application is ill at place here. Instead, in applying these Stoic theories Julian’s view can be explained as his attributing a causa antecedens to the first assailant, with full imputation of the effect of the subsequent causa principalis to him, and attributing a causa adiuvans to the second assailant, while valuing at the same time the latter not just as a reinforcing cause but also as a causa mortis and a full effective cause. For other jurists the latter evidently went too far.

The suppositions and method of Seeck in his ‘Regesten der Kaiser und Päpste’ (1919). – In his article of 1889, Die Zeitfolge der Gesetze Constantins, on the dating of imperial constitutions, Seeck boldly assumed that the central imperial archives up till ca. 390 had been lost when the Theodosian Code was compiled and that therefore the compilers were forced to resort to provincial archives for the period 311 – ca. 390. This assumption was squarely denied by Bresslau in 1912 in his Handbuch der Urkundenlehre. In the introductory chapter of his Regesten der Kaiser und Päpste of 1919, dealing with his methodology, Seeck suggests that he has corrected the errors he made. However, upon closer analysis it appears that he did not react at all to the substantial criticism of Bresslau, but kept to his original (and still unacceptable) assumption, obscuring his methodology on top of this. As a result his data in the Regesten are less precise than they should have been if a proper and rigorous methodology had been applied. As an example of the advantages of a proper methodology the case of the Gesta Senatus is cited. Here proceeding methodologically generates an interpretation of the events which might have satisfied the contemporaneous requirements for confirmation of the Theodosian Code in the West in 438 and therefore would be an acceptable explanation.

Abstract: It is argued that precarium was not developed as instrument to grant common land.