Twelve Tables
[3] Cicero scarcely exaggerated; the Twelve Tables formed the basis of Roman law for a thousand years.
[4] The Twelve Tables are sufficiently comprehensive that their substance has been described as a 'code',[5] although modern scholars consider this characterization exaggerated.
Sextus Aelius Paetus Catus (consul in 198 BC) in his work on jurisprudence called Tripartita included a version of the laws of the Twelve Tables, his commentary on them and the legal formulas (legis actiones) to use them in trials.
[12] According to Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the laws of the Twelve Tables have come about as a result of the long social struggle between patricians and plebeians, in modern scholarship known as the conflict of the orders.
Here is how Livy describes their creation: "...every citizen should quietly consider each point, then talk it over with his friends, and, finally, bring forward for public discussion any additions or subtractions which seemed desirable."
III.34) In 449 BC, the second decemvirate completed the last two codes, and after a secessio plebis (secession of the plebes, a plebeian protest) to force the Senate to consider them, the Law of the Twelve Tables was formally promulgated.
By revealing the unwritten rules of society to the public, the Twelve Tables provided a means of safeguard for Plebeians allowing them the opportunity to avoid financial exploitation and added balance to the Roman economy.
[21] It also deals with: Table II sets the amount of financial stake for each party depending on the source of litigation, what to do in case of impairment of the judge, and rules of who must present evidence.
In the book, The Twelve Tables, written by an anonymous source due to its origins being collaborated through a series of translations of tablets and ancient references, P.R.
Coleman-Norton arranged and translated many of the significant features of debt that the Twelve Tables enacted into law during the 5th century.
Of debt acknowledged and for matters judged in court (in iure) thirty days shall be allowed by law [for payment or for satisfaction].
During those days they shall be brought to [the magistrate] into the comitia (meeting-place) on three successive markets […]”[21] The five mandates of the Twelve Tables encompassing debt created a new understanding within social classes in ancient Rome that ensured financial exploitation would be limited within legal business transactions.
If a husband no longer wants to be married to his wife he can remove her from their household and "order her to mind her own affairs"[22] Not all of the codes of table IV are to the benefit of only the patriarch.
[22] This section of the tables makes it illegal for anyone to define what a citizen of Rome is with the exception of the greatest assembly, or maximus comitatus.
[24] Although legal reform occurred soon after the implementation of the Twelve Tables, these ancient laws provided social protection and civil rights for both the patricians and plebeians.
While the existing laws had major flaws that were in need of reform, the Twelve Tables eased the civil tension and violence between the plebeians and patricians.
Political theorists, such as James Madison have highlighted the importance of the Twelve Tables in crafting the United States Bill of Rights.
Some countries including South Africa and San Marino still base their current legal system on aspects of jus commune.
[28] The Twelve Tables are no longer extant: although they remained an important source through the Republic, they gradually became obsolete, eventually being only of historical interest.
[29] Since the early second century BC, Roman Republican scholars wrote commentaries upon the Twelve Tables, such as Lucius Aelius Stilo,[30] teacher of both Varro and Cicero.
[31] Parts of the text of the Twelve Tables were preserved in the brief excerpts and quotations from the original laws in other ancient authors.
It is believed that the process of this interlingual translation began at some point during the third or second century BC when the text of the Twelve Tables was no longer understandable in its entirety.
One of those rules, Cicero explains, was subject to various interpretations because of the difficulty to understand the archaic Latin term of lessus: After limiting the expense, then, to three veils, a small purple tunic, and ten pipers, the law [of the Twelve Tables] goes on to do away with lamentation: ‘Women shall not scratch their cheeks or have a lessus on the occasion of a funeral’.
[38] In the ancient world, the laws inscribed on bronze were often not easy to read but tended to serve a symbolic and religious purpose.
Scholars have guessed where surviving fragments belong by comparing them with the few known attributions and records, many of which do not include the original lines, but paraphrases.
[2] In Roman historical and legal sources, ancient writers referenced and discussed the laws of the Twelve Tables in numerous fragments.
[42] The first attempt of the recovery of the laws was made by the French legal historian Aymar du Rivail in his Libri de Historia Juris Civilis et Pontificii (1515).
[46] The first full English publication of the Dirksen's reconstruction was prepared and translated by Eric Herbert Warmington in the Remains of Old Latin, Volume III: Lucilius.
[47] In the last couple of decades, one of the most prominent reconstructions of the law of the Twelve Tables was Michael H. Crawford's work of Roman Statutes, vol.
