Maximus, Q. Cornelius
a Roman jurist, a contemporary of Servius Sulpicius, and the teacher of C. Trebatius Testa, who was the friend of Cicero. (Dig. 1. tit. 2. s. 2.45; Cic. Fam. 7.8 and 17.) He is once quoted in the Digest and by Alfenus (33. tit. 7. s. 16), as having given an opinion on the meaning of the word "instrumentum," in a legacy of "a vineyard and the instruinentum thereof." Servius considered that the word instrumentum had here no meaning. Maximus said that the term included the stakes, poles, rakes, and spades; which Alfenus considers to be the better opinion, and so in fact it seems to be.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.