Ecloga

The Ecloga, known in Greek as the Ekloge ton nomon, is an eighth century Byzantine legal code compiled under the Isaurian dynasty. Scholars have dated its issuance to either 726, under Emperor Leo III, or 741, under his son Constantine V, with recent scholarship favoring March 741. Organized by Leo III and Constantine into eighteen chapters, it adapted Justinian's sixth century laws to contemporary Byzantine circumstances and blended them with canon law and the common legal practice that had developed since the seventh century, and it was written in Greek, unlike Justinian's Latin codes, specifically to make it usable by ordinary judges and citizens. Its first sixteen chapters cover civil law such as marriage, inheritance and obligations, the seventeenth covers criminal law, and the eighteenth covers the division of war spoils; among its notable reforms were expanded rights for women and children, restriction of capital punishment to a narrower set of crimes, and equal punishment regardless of social class. Despite originating under an iconoclast emperor, it remained in force until superseded by the Epanagoge of the Macedonian dynasty in 886, and it went on to influence a number of Slavic legal codes.