The legal history of Rome begins properly with the Twelve Tables. It
is strictly the first and the only Roman code,[1] collecting the
earliest known laws of the Roman people and forming the foundation of
the whole fabric of Roman Law. Its importance lies in the fact that by
its promulgation was substituted for an unwritten usage, of which the
knowledge had been confined to some citizens of the community, a
public and written body of laws, which were easily accessible to and
strictly binding on all citizens of Rome.
Till the close of the republican period (509 B.C.-27 B.C.) the Twelve
Tables were regarded as a great legal charter. The historian Livy (59
B.C.-A.D. 17) records: "Even in the present immense mass of
legislation, where laws are piled on laws, the Twelve Tables still
form the fount of all public and private jurisprudence."[2]
This celebrated code, after its compilation by a commission of ten men
(_decemviri_), who composed in 451 B.C. ten sections and two sections
in 450 B.C., and after its ratification by the (then) principal
assembly (_comitia centuriata_) of the State in 449 B.C., was engraved
on twelve bronze[3] tablets (whence the name Twelve Tables), which
were attached to the Rostra before the Curia in the Forum of Rome.
Though this important witness of the national progress probably was
destroyed during the Gallic occupation of Rome in 387 B.C., yet copies
must have been extant, since Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.) says that in
his boyhood schoolboys memorized these laws "as a required
formula."[4] However, now no part of the Twelve Tables either in its
original form or in its copies exists.
The surviving fragments of the Twelve Tables come from the writings of
late Latin writers and fall into these four types:
(1) Fragments which seem to contain the original words (or nearly so)
of a law, "modernized" in spelling and to some extent in formation;
(2) Fragments which are fused with the context of the quoter, but
which otherwise exhibit little distortion;
(3) Fragments which not only are fused with the sentences of the citer
but also are much distorted, although these preserve in paraphrase the
purport of the provisions of a law;
(4) Passages which present only an interpretation (or an opinion based
on interpretation) or a title or a convenient designation of a law.
Only in very few cases do we know or can we conjecture the number of
the tablet whereon any law appeared. Consequently of the arrangement
very little is ascertainable and the attribution of some items to
certain tablets is debatable. The probable order of the fragments,
which total over 115, has been inferred from various statements and
from other indications of ancient authors.
The amount of detail apparently varies either with the importance of
the matter or with the degree of general or particular knowledge of
the subject supposed by the commissioners to be held commonly by the
citizens. The style is characterized by such simplicity and by such
brevity that the meaning in some instances borders upon obscurity,--at
least so far as modern interpretation is concerned.
The value of the Twelve Tables consists not in any approach to
symmetrical classification or even to terse clarity of expression, but
in the publication of the method of procedure to be adopted,
especially in civil cases, in the knowledge furnished to every Roman
of high or low degree as to what were both his legal rights and his
legal duties, in the political victory won by the plebeians, who
compelled the codification and the promulgation of what had been
largely customary law interpreted and administered by the patricians
primarily in their own interests.