Definition
In Roman civil law, ergolabi (singular: ergolabus) were undertakers of work — that is, contractors who agreed to perform construction or labor projects, typically under a formal agreement with a principal. The term designates the party who takes on work for completion, as distinguished from those who merely supply materials or labor as subordinates. The concept corresponds broadly to what modern law would call a general contractor or principal contractor in a construction or works agreement.
Common Language
Omitted. Ergolabi is pure legal jargon derived from the civil law tradition and has no meaningful counterpart in ordinary English usage.
Why It Matters in Research
Ergolabi appears almost exclusively in treatises and digests dealing with Roman civil law and its reception into continental and ecclesiastical legal systems. Researchers encountering the term in historical sources — particularly those working through the Corpus Juris Civilis or commentaries derived from it — should understand that it refers to a specific contractual role, not merely to laborers or workmen generally. The distinction matters: ergolabi held the contract and bore responsibility for completion, whereas the workers under them occupied a different legal position with respect to liability and remedy.
The term surfaces most reliably in discussions of the locatio conductio operis (the contract for a completed work), one of the Roman law categories of hire. Researchers tracing the development of contractor liability, building contracts, or public works obligations in civil law jurisdictions should treat ergolabi as a pointer toward that body of doctrine, not as a standalone concept with a robust independent literature.
The citation Cod. 4, 59 — appearing consistently across all three source dictionaries — refers to Title 59 of Book 4 of the Codex Justinianus, which addresses locatio et conductio (hire and letting). Researchers consulting primary sources should go there first. The term will not be prominent in common law sources and should not be expected to appear in English reports or statutes except in antiquarian or comparative law contexts.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement: all define ergolabi as "undertakers of work" or "contractors" under the civil law, and all cite Cod. 4, 59 as the primary authority. There is no meaningful divergence among them on substance.
Burrill's Law Dictionary adds the most context, providing the Greek etymological roots (from ergon, work, and lambanō, to take) — which correctly describes the function: one who takes on work. Burrill's entry also demonstrates a common formatting feature of 19th-century legal dictionaries: the ergolabi entry bleeds directly into the adjacent entry for ERIACH (the Irish Brehon law term for a pecuniary recompense for murder), reflecting alphabetical proximity rather than any conceptual connection. Researchers scanning digitized or photographically reproduced dictionary pages should be alert to this kind of run-on formatting, which can cause confusion about where one definition ends and another begins.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any discussion of how ergolabi functioned within the broader structure of Roman contract law — their obligations, their remedies, or how disputes involving them were adjudicated. For that, researchers must go to the primary civil law sources and to commentators such as Gaius, Ulpian, and the Justinianic compilers directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Ergolabi is a term of Roman civil law with no direct application in common law jurisdictions. It may appear in civil law jurisdictions with Roman law roots — particularly in scholarly or historical legal writing from France, Spain, Italy, and Louisiana — but is not current legal terminology in any modern legal system. In Louisiana's civil law tradition, analogous contractor concepts are addressed through the Civil Code's provisions on contracts of enterprise (louage d'ouvrage), not under the Roman terminology.