Papinianus

• a celebrated Roman jurist under Septimius Severus, beheaded at the command of Caracalla, Spart. Sever. 21; Caracall. 4; 8.—Hence,
• II Pā-pĭnĭānista, ae, m., a follower or admirer of Papinian, Just. in Ep. praef. Dig. 2.

Aemilius. The most important among the Roman jurists; born about A.D. 140, a contemporary and friend of the emperor Septimius Severus, whom he accompanied on his expedition to Britain in the capacity of praefectus praetorio. Severus, on his death-bed at York, left to him the guardianship of his sons Geta and Caracalla; yet the latter caused Papinianus to be put to death in the next year, 212, on the day after the murder of his brother Geta (Spart. Sev. 21, 8). Of all his works, the thirty-seven books of Quaestiones (legal questions) and the nineteen books of Responsa (legal decisions) were considered the most important. Till the time of Justinian these formed the nucleus of that part of jurisprudence which was connected with the explanation of the original authorities on Roman law. We possess only fragments of them, in the form of numerous excerpts in the Digest; and lately a few have been discovered belonging to the fifth and ninth books of the Responsa, on a few leaves of a MS. written in uncials in the fifth (?) century. See Brinz, Die Berlin. Frag. vorjustinianischer Rechtsquellen (Munich, 1884), and the article Corpus Iuris Civilis.