ABSTRACT
In 477, Euric, king of the Visigoths, completed his campaign to consolidate his kingdom in central and southern Gaul. That the Code was in Latin was an important statement. Euric was ostentatious in his refusal to employ the language of the Roman enemy, acting in public always through an interpreter. The language and approach of Euric's Code reflect a distinctive legislative culture. Emperors, as the contents of the imperial Codes reveal, had become accustomed to prescribing rules for subjects to observe, often accompanied with moral homilies. Emperors, whose laws are unlikely to have applied to federates, were wiped from the record, and a replacement legislative dynasty came into being. Under Roman rule, kings who, as federate allies of the Romans, might have legislated for their own people, could not, officially, have done so for neighboring Romans. Euric also retained the Roman notion that slaves should suffer worse penalties for delicts such as the damaging of boundary-markers.
