TWELVE TABLES. The Roman writers speak of the Twelve Tables under various names : they call them Leges Deceinvimles, Leges XII. Tabularum, sometimes simply Lex, the Law, as being pre eminently the foundation of Roman Law ; and by other names. After some struggle between the patricians and the plebs, the story runs that a plebiscitum was passed (n.c. 454) with the assent of the senate, in pursuance of which three commissioners were sent to Athens and other Greek states to inquire about their legislation, that the commis. goners returned in n.c.452,and that in the following year ten patricians (Decemviri) were appointed to draw up a code of laws, whence the name Legea Docernvirales. The Decemviri, at the head of whom was Appius Claudius, formed a code of Ten Tables, which were approved by the senate, and received the final sanction of the Comitia Curiata. The code being considered defective, Decemviri were again elected (s.o. 450), and two more tables were added, whence the name Twelve Tables. , The laws were cut on tablets of bronze and sot up in a public place : they were not promulgated till B.C. 449, after the overthrow of the Deeeraviri, who had attempted to perpetuate their power against the terms of their appointment.
It is impossible to ascertain from the scanty history of the Decem viral legislation how far the story of this mission to Greece is true. It is very doubtful whether the codes of the Greeks at all affected this the first Roman attempt to form a system of law, but it may safely be assumed that the basis of the Deoemviral code rested on the cue tornary law of the ltomaus, and that except in those few general features in which all early codes of law bear resemblance to one another, the Roman Deceinviral code is one and distinct. It is said that the Twelve Tables perished iu the destruction of the city by the Gaula, but there appears to have been no difficulty in reconstruct ing the tables. No Roman writer suggests any doubt of their genuineness.
The Twelve Tables are called by Livy 31), "Foes publics privatique juris "—the source of Public and Private Law,—aceording to a division of the matter of law which was familiar to the Roman,. That part which concerned the Jua Publicum, which bears some analogy to our term constitutional law, was changed in the course of time; but the Jus Privatum, which determined the rights and duties of the citizens, was never formally repealed, and only so far modified ae it was affected by the changes in circumstances by which some of the laws of the Twelve Tables fell into desuetude, and by the gradual growth of the Jw Priastorium. In course of time the language of the tables became obscure, and this, with the great change of must have rendered many of their provisions inapplicable. In the later times of the republic, Cicero observes that since his boyhood the practice of learning the Twelve Tables had been superseded by the growing importance of the Edict.
The Roman jurists made commentaries on the Twelve Tables. Six books of a commentary by Gains are mentioned, which shows that at least as late as the time of Antoninus Pius the decemviral law was in substance still in force, that is, that the fundamental principles of Roman law (the Jus Privatum) were still to be sought in the then antiquated language of the Decemviri.
Much has been written on the subject of the Twelve Tables. The last and most complete history of the labours of modern critics on the Twelve Tables is by Dirksen, in his Uebersicht der bisherigen Ver suche zur Kritik and Herstellung des Textes der Zwolf-tafel Frag mente,' Leipzig, 1824. The fragments of the Twelve Tables appear in the several parts of the work, and are also collected at the end.
For an excellent dissertation upon the Twelve Tables as illustrative of the archaic form of the Latin language, the reader is referred to an able article in the late Dr. Donaldson's Varronianus.'