LABEO, MARCUS ANTISTIUS. - Roman jurist, born perhaps in 43 BC, died between AD 10 and 22.
Son of a jurist who had been a follower of Pompey and Brutus, he held republican sentiments. He pursued a political career up to the praetorship, but it seems he refused the consulship, retiring to private life and spending six months of the year in the city giving legal opinions and teaching, and the other six months in the countryside composing his scholarly works. According to the account of Pomponius, reported in D. 1, 2, 2, 47, L. would be the founder of one of the two schools into which, in the first century of the principate, Roman jurists divided, namely that which, from Proculus, was to take the name of the Proculian school.
Of great genius and fecundity, he left, according to tradition, 400 books. At least fifteen books of pontifical works are known, some epistulae, fifteen books of responsa, a work, probably similar to the preceding, entitled Pythana (Πυθανα), and finally commentaries on the Twelve Tables in two books, on the edict of the urban praetor, and on the edict of the peregrine praetor (in at least thirty books). A posthumous work of his in forty books, the Posteriores, a collection of responsa according to the system of ius civile, enjoyed great fame and diffusion.