Lex Duodecim Tabularum

Reading notes

• On the Laws §1.17 Twelve Tables

  Rome's foundational law-code (451-450 BC), drawn up by the board of ten and learned by heart by Roman schoolboys. Cicero quotes its clauses on burial, funeral expense, and tombs throughout book 2 as the oldest layer of written Roman law.

• On the Laws §2.59 lessus

  An obscure word in the Twelve Tables' funeral law; the old jurists Sextus Aelius and Lucius Acilius could not explain it, while Lucius Aelius took it for a kind of mournful wailing. The clause forbade women to tear their cheeks or hold a lessus at funerals.

• On the Laws §2.64 the Tenth Table

  The tenth of the Twelve Tables, on funerals and burial. Cicero observes that the decemvirs cast Solon's Athenian funeral law into it almost verbatim, including the ban on women lacerating their cheeks.

• On Duties §1.37 The Twelve Tables bear witness

  Rome's earliest law-code (451-450 BC), memorized by schoolboys and quoted as the oldest layer of Roman law. Cicero cites its archaic use of hostis for foreigner to show the ancestors' mildness toward enemies.

• On Duties §3.61 guardianship under the Twelve Tables

  Rome's earliest law-code (451-450 BC). It already penalised fraud in guardianship, as the later Lex Plaetoria did fraud against the young, providing legal precedent for Aquilius's general action on dolus malus.

• On the Orator §1.193 Twelve Tables

  Rome's first written law (450 BC), still memorised by schoolboys in Cicero's day; Crassus's hyperbolic claim that the little book of the XII Tables surpasses the libraries of all the philosophers is one of the work's most-quoted lines.

• Second Philippic §69 by the Twelve Tables

  The Twelve Tables, Rome's earliest law code (c. 451 BC), prescribed the formula by which a husband divorced a wife ("take your things and go"); Cicero mockingly applies it to Antony's divorce of his mime-mistress.

• Tusculan Disputations §2.55 the Twelve Tables forbade to be used at funerals

  The Twelve Tables, Rome's earliest written law code (c. 451-450 BC), included sumptuary restrictions on funerals, among them a ban on excessive ritual wailing (lessus). Cicero invokes it to support his point that loud lamentation is unmanly.

• Tusculan Disputations §3.11 the Twelve Tables forbid to be master of his own affairs

  The Twelve Tables (c. 451-450 BC), Rome's earliest codified law. Cicero cites their provision placing a furiosus (frenzied person) under guardianship as evidence that early Romans distinguished frenzy (furor) from ordinary madness (insania).

• Tusculan Disputations §4.4 the Twelve Tables

  The earliest codification of Roman law (c. 450 BC), inscribed on twelve bronze tablets. Cicero cites their prohibition of malicious verse as proof that verse-making was already customary.