Note 2 — PART 1. MARITIME CODES.

For brief discussion of many of the Maritime Codes see E. C. Benedict, The American Admiralty, 4th Edition, Albany, 1910. The so-called Rhodian Sea Laws are thought by Ashburner to date from the seventh or eighth century A. D. Other writers place them later. The earliest manuscript apparently dates from the fifteenth century. It is well established that they have no connection with the ancient sea laws of Rhodes but possibly they were authorized by the Byzantine Caesars and undoubtedly they consist of laws recognized in the Eastern Mediterranean in the middle ages. These laws relate only to civil matters at sea and have no provisions dealing with prize but in their general provisions they may have furnished a basis for the maritime codes of a few centuries later, see Ashburner, The Rhodian Sea Law, Oxford, 1909.