Cyrillus,

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a Lawyer, legal prac ...

of the 5th century, was a professor in the ancient Law School of Berytus (present-day

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

), and one of the founders of the oecumenical school of jurists (τῆς οἰκουμένης διδάσκαλοι). This school preceded the succession of Anastasius to the

Eastern empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

(AD 491), and paved the way for

Justinian Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

legislation Legislation is the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred ...

. His reputation as a teacher of

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

was great; and from the fragments of his works which have been preserved it may be inferred that his merit as a teacher consisted in his direct use of ancient sources of law, and in interpreting the best writers, such as the commentary of

Ulpian Ulpian (; ; 223 or 228) was a Roman jurist born in Tyre in Roman Syria (modern Lebanon). He moved to Rome and rose to become considered one of the great legal authorities of his time. He was one of the five jurists upon whom decisions were to ...

on the edict and the ''Responsa Papiniani''. He wrote a treatise on definitions (υπομνημα των δεφινιτων), in which, according to a statement of his contemporary Patricius, the subject of contracts was treated with great precision, and which supplied the materials for many important ''scholia'' appended to the first and second titles of the eleventh book of the ''

Basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica (Greek Basiliké) was a large public building with multiple functions that was typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek Eas ...

''. He is generally styled "the great" to distinguish him from a more modern jurist of the same name, who lived after the reign of

, and who compiled an epitome of the ''Digest''.

References

* Ancient Roman jurists Roman-era Greeks 5th-century Byzantine writers People from Berytus {{AncientRome-law-bio-stub id:Cyrillus