This celebrated code, after its compilation by a commission of ten men (decemviri), who composed in 451 B.C. ten sections and two sections in 450 B.C., and after its ratification by the (then) principal assembly (comitia centuriata) of the State in 449 B.C., was engraved on twelve bronze[3] tablets (whence the name Twelve Tables), which were attached to the Rostra before the Curia in the Forum of Rome. Though this important witness of the national progress probably was destroyed during the Gallic occupation of Rome in 387 B.C., yet copies must have been extant, since Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.) says that in his boyhood schoolboys memorized these laws "as a required formula."[4] However, now no part of the Twelve Tables either in its original form or in its copies exists.
The surviving fragments of the Twelve Tables come from the writings of late Latin writers and fall into these four types:
(1) Fragments which seem to contain the original words (or nearly so) of a law, "modernized" in spelling and to some extent in formation;
(2) Fragments which are fused with the context of the quoter, but which otherwise exhibit little distortion;
(3) Fragments which not only are fused with the sentences of the citer but also are much distorted, although these preserve in paraphrase the purport of the provisions of a law;
(4) Passages which present only an interpretation (or an opinion based on interpretation) or a title or a convenient designation of a law.
Only in very few cases do we know or can we conjecture the number of the tablet whereon any law appeared. Consequently of the arrangement very little is ascertainable and the attribution of some items to certain tablets is debatable. The probable order of the fragments, which total over 115, has been inferred from various statements and from other indications of ancient authors.
The amount of detail apparently varies either with the importance of the matter or with the degree of general or particular knowledge of the subject supposed by the commissioners to be held commonly by the citizens. The style is characterized by such simplicity and by such brevity that the meaning in some instances borders upon obscurity,—at least so far as modern interpretation is concerned.
The value of the Twelve Tables consists not in any approach to symmetrical classification or even to terse clarity of expression, but in the publication of the method of procedure to be adopted, especially in civil cases, in the knowledge furnished to every Roman of high or low degree as to what were both his legal rights and his legal duties, in the political victory won by the plebeians, who compelled the codification and the promulgation of what had been largely customary law interpreted and administered by the patricians primarily in their own interests.