The Twelve Tables | Page 9

citizen.
[61] Cicero says that some older interpreters suspected that some kind of mourning-garment was meant by lessus, but that he inclines to the interpretation that it signifies a sort of sorrowful wailing (De Legibus, II.23.59)
[62] This provision is aimed at the common custom of prolonging mourning by gathering and preserving unburied some part of the corpse. When this part (os resectum) later had been buried, then only mourning ceased. It is possible that some Romans may have thought that cremation might be wrong or that its ceremony was inadequate.
[63] That is, in such a case a limb could be carried to Rome and then buried.
[64] That is, a garland or a chaplet or a wreath as a prize of achievement.
[65] A chattel, for example, is a slave or a horse who wins a wreath for the owner.
[66] Cicero says that this statute seems to suggest fear of disastrous fire (De Legibus, II. 24. 61).
[67] In the burning-mound also ashes were buried.
[68] This statute proved so unpopular that it soon was repealed by the Lex Canuleia in 445 B.C.
[69] This process of "taking a pledge" is the seizure and the detention of a debtor's property or part thereof to induce the debtor to pay the debt before any other legal action will be taken.
It will be noticed that the two instances given in this statute concern Sacred Law, with which by anticipation the fourth statute of this Table likewise is concerned. Modern scholars place these two provisions among the Supplementary Laws despite the temptation to set these among the statutes of Table X, of which all but one item come from Cicero's discussion of Sacred Law in his De Legibus, II. 23. 58-24. 61, in the concluding portion of which Cicero seems to speak with some finality that he has given all the regulations regarding religion found in the Twelve Tables. Moreover these two rules come from Gaius, who flourished more than two centuries after Cicero. But if every Supplementary Law resembling the subject-matter of Tables I-X should be advanced to the appropriate position forward, few would be the statutes left in Tables XI-XII. It is merely coincidental that some of the statutes among the Supplementary Laws should concern topics already treated, for from the Romans we must not remove the faculty of aftersight.
[70] Some scholars seek to place this provision in Table VIII, where it seems properly to belong, despite its traditional position here.
This dislocation, coupled with that of the preceding provision, well illustrates how hopeless is our reconstruction of the order of the regulations of the Twelve Tables.
[71] That is, apparently, if a person with or without fraudulent intent had held and claimed as his a thing which a judicial court now decided belonged to another party.
[72] Retention of the article is deemed to have brought the defendant some profit; therefore he must pay double this profit.
[73] Cf. second paragraph in note [69] supra.
[74] That is, the most recent law repeals all previous laws which are inconsistent with it.
[75] Cicero says that many laws in the Twelve Tables exhibit this rule (De Re Publica, II. 31. 54).

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