The Twelve Tables

The Twelve Tables, by
Anonymous

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Title: The Twelve Tables
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: January 24, 2005 [EBook #14783]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE TWELVE TABLES

prefaced, arranged, translated, annotated
BY P.R. COLEMAN-NORTON
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

INTRODUCTION
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.

THE TWELVE TABLES[5]
TABLE I. PROCEEDINGS PRELIMINARY TO TRIAL
1. If he (the plaintiff) summon [the defendant] to court (in ius), he (the
defendant) shall go. If he (the defendant) go not, he (the plaintiff) shall
call a witness thereto. Then only he (the plaintiff) shall take [the
defendant] by force.
2. If he (the defendant) attempt evasion or take to flight, he (the