Republican Law and Legislation

      Rome was among the very few societies in the ancient world to develop laws that were codified (officially written down) and analyzed in detail by professional jurists. The history of Roman law begins very early in the Republic, with the Twelve Tables in 450 BCE (which consisted of only a few sentences), and reaches its maturity with the legislation of the Emperor Justinian in 528-534 CE, the Corpus Juris Civilis, with over a million words! Latin was the language of law throughout the Roman world, even in the Greek-speaking east. The judicial history of the Republic can be divided into two periods: a relatively primitive period ending in the third century BCe, and the later Republican period when a legal profession evolved, beginning around 200 BCE and ending with the victory of Augustus in 31 CE. Similarly, historians of Roman law identify two major legal divisions, not originally distinguishable: civil law and criminal law. To a great degree, Roman criminal law, in which the community acted for the sake of the public interest, sprung from an original tradition of the taking of private revenge. Theft, for example, was originally a private matter for civil action and only much later became the subject of criminal prosecution. Also, whereas in our society the law does not distinguish between the status of the individuals (rich or poor, male or female), a fundamental aspect of Roman law made that distinction. For example, there was not only a distinction between free people and slaves, there were also categories of free people, who were treated differently according to their status.

The Twelve Tables

      According to tradition, pressure by the ordinary people led to the appointment of a board of ten men with consular power in 451 BCE, established for the writing down of statutes. This was to break the monopolization of the law by the patricians and priestly elite. Ten tables were compiled, with two added the following year. The tables originally included a law banning marriage between patricians and plebeians, but it was quickly struck down in 445 BCE. Most of the contents of the Twelve Tables, not formally abolished until the sixth century CE, were related to civil matters. Essentially, the Twelve Tables formed a list of basic legal procedures and appropriate punishments.

Writing: ECHOES from the past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.