ABSTRACT
The period of the Dominate completes the history of Roman law in the ancient world. The history ends where it begins, with a text. Through the edictum perpetuum and the codes of the Dominate to the Corpus Iuris of Justinian, there is a constant need to reduce law to a written form. Justinian's compilations raise the status of the text to be the only source of law; it is the first manifestation of the belief that a ruler can produce a code which will provide the only source of law needed by a society, a law which does not need interpretation or commentary. The Dominate also sees the emergence of the Christian Church as a force in the legal firmament, and the development of a hierarchical courts system which was to prove vastly influential in the future development of civil law.
