The Twelve Tables

For years the plebeians demand one thing: that the law be written down, for otherwise the patrician judges interpret custom as suits them. A board of ten men appointed for the purpose compiles the code and posts it in the forum — by tradition, on twelve tablets. The text is brief and severe: terms for appearing in court, the liability of the debtor, inheritance, the boundaries of fields, a ban on mourning the dead beyond measure. The tablets themselves are long gone and their clauses survive as quotations in later authors, but Roman children were still learning them by heart centuries afterwards, and all Roman law grew from this root.