Twelve Tables

The Twelve Tables were Rome’s earliest known written law, traditionally dated to the mid-fifth century BCE. Their rules addressed civil procedure, family authority, property, debt, and penalties.

Roman Republic: The period of Roman government before the establishment of the Roman Empire, traditionally dated from 509 to 27 BCE. The Twelve Tables were produced during the Republic’s early years.
Decemviri: A board of ten officials appointed in the early Roman Republic to draft laws. The decemviri compiled the rules that became the Twelve Tables.
Conflict of the Orders: The long political struggle between patricians and plebeians in the Roman Republic. Plebeian demands for accessible law formed the political setting for the tables.
Jurisprudence: The theory, interpretation, and study of law. Roman jurists later treated the tables as a foundational source for legal reasoning.
Patricians: The hereditary elite class of ancient Rome, especially prominent in the early Republic. Patrician control of legal knowledge helped drive demands for written rules.
Roman civil procedure: The formal procedures through which private legal disputes were brought and resolved in ancient Rome. Several tables prescribed how parties initiated and conducted legal claims.
Roman customary law: Unwritten legal practices and norms transmitted through Roman tradition. The tables gave written form to rules previously preserved largely through custom.
Roman jurists: Legal experts in ancient Rome who interpreted law and advised on legal questions. Their commentary preserved and developed the tables’ authority.
Plebeians: The common citizens of ancient Rome, distinct from the patrician elite. Plebeian political pressure helped secure the publication of law.
Manus: In Roman law, a form of marital authority placing a wife under her husband's power. Rules concerning family authority reflected the tables’ regulation of household status.

Linked from 7 pages