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\\nThe Twelve Tables are a landmark moment of early Republican Roman history. The lex duodecim tabularum see the codification of Rome\'s laws!
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\\nThe name \'The Twelve Tables\' is derived from the idea that these laws were inscribed on to twelve oak tablets. We happen to know quite a lot about the content of the tables, even though they have not survived in epigraphic form. The evidence for the tables comes from extant literature.
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\\nSpecial Episode - The Twelve Tables
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\\nThe main literary sources that we\'re reading at the moment, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, place the landmark moment of the codification around 450 BCE. The process is not a smooth one from their perspective! Normal magistracies are suspended in favour of a specially selected cohort of ten men who are granted authority to put together the law code.
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\\nBelieve us when we tell you that the drama associated with the decemvirate has only just begun to be revealed in Episode 109.
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\\nThe End of Long Struggle?
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\\nAccording to our literary sources, both of whom are writing hundreds of years after the events they describe, the Twelve Tables are the result of the Struggle of the Orders.
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\\nThis ongoing rift between sections of the Roman population is contentious in its own ways, so it is worth considering the content of the Tables as a point of comparison. The difference between what we might expect of a law code that is the result of a class struggle and the laws themselves is quite something.
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\\nSo that\'s just what we\'re going to do in this special mini-episode! Join as we dip into the details of the law code and some of the fascinating details we learn from this document
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\\nRoman civilians examining the Twelve Tables after they were first implemented. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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\\nLooking to explore the Twelve Tables in more detail? You can read them all here!
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\\nOther readings to consider:
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\\n* Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War. University of California Press - contains a chapter on the Twelve Tables and how the politics unfolds
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\\n* Bell, S., du Plessis, P. (eds.) 2020. Roman Law Before the Twelve Tables: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Edinburgh University Press - this one is hot off the press and we\'re super excited to jump in and read it soon!
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\\nThis shows the forum in ruins, but it is in this space that the Twelve Tables would have been present to the populace. Image curtesy of Wikimedia Commons, by Kimberlym21
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