Dorotheus (Jurist)

Dorotheus was a professor of Roman law at the law school of Berytus in Phoenicia, active in the sixth century and dead by 542. He was one of three commissioners, alongside Tribonian and Theophilus, appointed by the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I to compile the Institutes as an introduction to the Digest, completing the work in 533 and receiving the title quaestor sacri palatii illustris. He took part in compiling all of Justinian's codes except the first code of 529, including the Digest and the second edition of the Codex Constitutionum. As one of the antecessores, the ancient law professors, he wrote Greek-language commentaries on Justinian's Latin law for students who could no longer read Latin easily, and fragments of his commentary on the Digest survive in the Scholia appended to the ninth-century Basilica compiled under emperors Basil the Macedonian and Leo the Wise.