Saturninus, Claudius
a jurist from whose Liber Singularis de Poenis Paganorum there is a single excerpt in the Digest (50. tit. 19. s. 16). In the Florentine Index the work is attributed to Venuleius Saturninus, an error which, as it has been observed, has manifestly originated in the title to the fifteenth excerpt of lib. 50. tit. 19. Two rescripts of Antoninus Pins are addressed to Claudius Saturninus (Dig. 20. tit. 3. s. 1.2, 50. tit. 7. s. 4). Saturninus was praetor under the Divi Fratres (Dig. 17. tit. 1. s. 6.7). A rescript of Hadrian on the excusatio of a minor annis xxv. who had been appointed (datus) tutor to an adfinis, is addressed to Claudius Saturninus, legatus Belgicae; and there is no chronological impossibility in assuming him to be the jurist.
Grotius maintains that the Q. Saturninus who wrote, at least, ten books Ad Edictum (Dig. 34. tit. 2. s. 19.7), is a different person from the author of the treatise De Poenis Paganorum. A Saturninus is again mentioned in an excerpt from Ulpian (Dig. 12. tit. 2. s. 13.5). But this Quintus may be Venuleins Saturninus. (Zimmern, Geschichte des Röm. Privatrechts, i. p. 354.)
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.