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Twelve Tables

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The Laws of the Twelve Tables (Latin: lex duodecim tabularum) was the legislation that stood at the foundation of Roman law. Formally promulgated in 449 BC, the Tables consolidated earlier traditions into an enduring set of laws.[1][2]

In the Forum, "The Twelve Tables" stated the rights and duties of the Roman citizen. Their formulation was the result of considerable agitation by the plebeian class, who had hitherto been excluded from the higher benefits of the Republic. The law had previously been unwritten and exclusively interpreted by upper-class priests, the pontifices. Something of the regard with which later Romans came to view the Twelve Tables is captured in the remark of Cicero (106–43 BC) that the "Twelve Tables...seems to me, assuredly to surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, both in weight of authority, and in plenitude of utility".[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.[2] The Tables are a sequence of definitions of various private rights and procedures. They generally took for granted such things as the institutions of the family and various rituals for formal transactions. The provisions were often highly specific and diverse.[6]

  1. ^ Jolowicz, H.F. Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law (Cambridge, 1952), 108
  2. ^ a b Crawford, M.H. 'Twelve Tables' in Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow (eds.) Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th ed.)
  3. ^ "Internet History Sourcebooks Project: Ancient History". Fordham University.
  4. ^ Book: "The Age of Classical Civilization"; Chapter "The Twelve Tables c. 450 BC"; p. 27
  5. ^ Mommsen, T. The History of Rome trans. W.P. Dickson (London, 1864) 290
  6. ^ Steinberg, S. 'The Twelve Tables and Their Origins: An Eighteenth-Century Debate' Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 43, No. 3 (1982) 379–396, 381