TWELVE TABLES, LAW OF THE. The ear lier systematic written statement, or code, of Roman law'. According to the Roman tradition, this code was drawn up to appease the plebeians, who complained that the unwritten customary law', as interpreted by patrician priests and ap plied by patrician judges, gave no adequate pro tection to their In n.c. 452 ten magis trates were elected 'to write laws" (decenirirt lcyibus scribendis), and before the end of the following year ten tables of laws were sub mitted to and accepted by the popular assem bly. In B.C. 450 two supplementary tables were similarly adopted. The decemvirs claimed that they had made the law equal for all, high and low; and there is no doubt that the Roman people regarded the XII. Tables with great veneration, as a Milwark of personal liberty.
This code seems to have introduced little if any new law, being substantially a re-statement of the older custom. Its rules were simple, and were tersely and clearly expressed. it contained no constitutional law, and it dealt mainly with the law of family, property, crimes, torts, and civil procedure. It did not state the law fully even in these matters, for (as in other early codes) rules that were so well settled as to be indis putable were not included.
The X] I. Tables have come down to us in frag ments only. In Roman legal, historical, and gra in matieal writings, a couple of score of passages are directly cited, and it is sometimes stated in which of the tables the rule stood. Other rules are paraphrased o• indicated by allusions. At tempts to reconstruct the code have been made by Gothofredus (1616) , Dirksen (1S24), Sehoell (1866), and Voigt (1S83). The text commonly given in works on Roman law is that of &hod], and citations of table and law by number are regularly based on his reconstruction.
The credibility of the Roman tradition concern ing the origin of the XII. Tables has been ener getically attacked by recent writers, who assert that the tradition is of late origin and that the Xtl. Tables are a private compilation made, probably, in the third century B.C.
Consult: Voigt, Gesehiehty and System des Rcchts der XII Taleln (Leipzig. 1883) : Apple ton. Le testament romain et Panthenticit, des Tables (Paris, 1903) ; Lambert. L'Ilistoire traditioucI1e des XlI Tables (Lyons, 1903). See Civit, LAW.