LABEO, MARCUS ANTISTIUS (c. 50 B.C.—A.D. 18), Roman jurist, was the son of Pacuvius Antistius Labeo, also a jurist. A member of the plebeian nobility, and in easy circum stances, the younger Labeo early entered public life, and soon rose to the praetorship; but his undisguised republican sympathies, somewhat brusquely confessed, led to the promotion of his rival Capito to the consulate over his head by Augustus. Labeo there upon declined the office when subsequently offered to him and devoted himself to jurisprudence. His training in the science had been derived principally from Trebatius Testa. To his knowledge of the law he added a wide general culture, devoting his attention specially to dialectics, philology (grammatica), and antiquities, as valuable aids in the exposition, expansion, and appli cation of legal doctrine (Gell. xiii. io). Down to the time of Hadrian his was probably the name of greatest authority; and several of his works were abridged and annotated by later hands. While Capito is hardly ever referred to, the dicta of Labeo are of constant recurrence in the writings of the classical jurists, such as Gaius, Ulpian and Paul and many of them are preserved in Justinian's Digest. Labeo gets the credit of being the founder
of the Proculian sect or school, while Capito is spoken of as the founder of the rival Sabinian one (Pomponius in fr. 47, Dig. i. 2); but it is probable that the real founders of the two scholae were Proculus and Sabinus, followers respectively of the methods of Labeo and Capito.
Labeo's most important literary work was the Libri Posteriorum. It contained a systematic exposition of the common law. His Libri ad Edictum was a commentary on the edicts of both prae tors and the curule aediles. His Probabilium tOavCov) lib. VIII., a collection of definitions and axiomatic legal propositions, seems to have been one of his most characteristic productions. See van Eck, "De vita, moribus, et studiis M. Ant. Labeonis" (Franeker, 1692), in Oelrichs's Thes. nov., vol. i.; Mascovius, De sectis Sabinianor. et Proculianor. (1728) ; Pernice, M. Antistius Labeo. Das Privatrecht im ersten Jahrhunderte der Kaizerzeit (Halle, 1873-92).