Roman Law-Not as Archaic as you may Think (Except Sometimes)

Originally (according to a semi-mythical history by Livy), Roman law was kept secret by the patrician class, not allowing the lower class of plebeians the benefit of knowing what laws bound their lives. In 462 BC, the plebeian class began putting pressure on the patricians to codify the law and make it transparent to the lower class. According to tradition, envoys were sent to Greece to study law before drafting the tables.

These tables, displayed in the Roman forum, were the basis of Roman law for the next thousand years, and indeed have affected our own criminal and civil law even today; these laws codified all laws pertaining to rights and duties of Roman citizens as well as criminal procedure and other laws necessary to the running of government. Like many ancient codes, they specify harsh punishment and strict procedural forms.

Written by the Decemviri, literally “ten men,” who were given unprecedented power to draft laws for the Roman nation, it is the oldest piece of Roman literature that survives today. Though they were later superseded by other laws, they were often cited by Romans as a prime legal document and also established the important principle of a written legal code.

 Cicero says of the Twelve Tables:

Twelve Tables of the Law: Lex Duodecim Tabularum (circa 450 B.C.)

Table I.

1.) If anyone summons a man before the magistrate, he must go. If the man summoned does not go, let the one summoning him call the bystanders to witness and then take him by force.

2.) If he shirks or runs away, let the summoner lay hands on him.

3.) If disease or old age is the hindrance, let the summoner provide a team. He need not provide a covered carriage with a pallet unless he chooses.

4.) Let the protector of a landholder be a landholder; for one of the proletariat, let anyone that cares, be protector.

6-9.) When the litigants settle their case by compromise, let the magistrate announce it. If they do not compromise, let them state each his own side of the case, in the comitium of the forum before noon. Afterwards let them talk it out together, while both are present. After noon, in case either party has failed to appear, let the magistrate pronounce judgment in favor of the one who is present. If both are present the trial may last until sunset but no later.

Table II.

2.) He whose witness has failed to appear may summon him by loud calls before his house every third day.

Table III.

1-6.) One who has confessed a debt, or against whom judgment has been pronounced, shall have thirty days to pay it in. After that forcible seizure of his person is allowed. The creditor shall bring him before the magistrate. Unless he pays the amount of the judgment or some one in the presence of the magistrate interferes in his behalf as protector the creditor so shall take him home and fasten him in stocks or fetters. He shall fasten him with not less than fifteen pounds of weight or, if he choose, with more. If the prisoner choose, he may furnish his own food. If he does not, the creditor must give him a pound of meal daily; if he choose he may give him more.

2.) On the third market day let them divide his body among them. If they cut more or less than each one's share it shall be no crime

3.) Against a foreigner the right in property shall be valid forever.

Table IV.

1.) A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly killed.

2.) If a father sell his son three times, the son shall be free from his father.

3.) As a man has provided in his will in regard to his money and the care of his property, so let it be binding. If he has no heir and dies intestate, let the nearest agnate have the inheritance. If there is no agnate, let the members of his gens have the inheritance.

4.) If one is mad but has no guardian, the power over him and his money shall belong to his agnates and the members of his gens.

5.) A child born after ten months since the father's death will not be admitted into a legal inheritance.

Table V.

1.) Females should remain in guardianship even when they have attained their majority.

Table VI.

1.) When one makes a bond and a conveyance of property, as he has made formal declaration so let it be binding.

3.) A beam that is built into a house or a vineyard trellis one may not take from its place.

5.) Usucapio of movable things requires one year's possession for its completion; but usucapio of an estate and buildings two years.

6.) Any woman who does not wish to be subjected in this manner to the hand of her husband should be absent three nights in succession every year, and so interrupt the usucapio of each year.

Table VII.

1.) Let them keep the road in order. If they have not paved it, a man may drive his team where he likes.

9.) Should a tree on a neighbor's farm be bend crooked by the wind and lean over your farm, you may take legal action for removal of that tree.

10.) A man might gather up fruit that was falling down onto another man's farm.

Table VIII.

2.) If one has maimed a limb and does not compromise with the injured person, let there be retaliation. 23.) If one has broken a bone of a freeman with his hand or with a cudgel, let him pay a penalty of three hundred coins If he has broken the bone of a slave, let him have one hundred and fifty coins. If one is guilty of insult, the penalty shall be twenty-five coins.

3.) If one is slain while committing theft by night, he is rightly slain.

4.) If a patron shall have devised any deceit against his client, let him be accursed.

5.) If one shall permit himself to be summoned as a witness, or has been a weigher, if he does not give his testimony, let him be noted as dishonest and incapable of acting again as witness.

10.) Any person who destroys by burning any building or heap of corn deposited alongside a house shall be bound, scourged, and put to death by burning at the stake provided that he has committed the said misdeed with malice aforethought; but if he shall have committed it by accident, that is, by negligence, it is ordained that he repair the damage or, if he be too poor to be competent for such punishment, he shall receive a lighter punishment.

12.) If the theft has been done by night, if the owner kills the thief, the thief shall be held to be lawfully killed.

13.) (It is unlawful for a thief) to be killed by day....unless he defends himself with a weapon; even though he has come with a weapon, unless he shall use the weapon and fight back, you shall not kill him. And even if he resists, first call out (so that someone may hear and come up.)

23.) A person who had been found guilty of giving false witness shall be hurled down from the Tarpeian Rock.

26.) No person shall hold meetings by night in the city.

Table IX.

4.) The penalty shall be capital for a judge or arbiter legally appointed who has been found guilty of receiving a bribe for giving a decision.

5.) Treason: he who shall have roused up a public enemy or handed over a citizen to a public enemy must suffer capital punishment.

6.) Putting to death of any man, whosoever he might be unconvicted is forbidden.

Table X.

1.) None is to bury or burn a corpse in the city.

3.) The women shall not tear their faces nor wail on account of the funeral.

5.) If one obtains a crown himself, or if his chattel does so because of his honor and valor, if it is placed on his head, or the head of his parents, it shall be no crime.

Table XI.

1.) Marriages should not take place between plebeians and patricians.

Table XII.

2.) If a slave shall have committed theft or done damage with his master's knowledge, the action for damages is in the slave's name.

5.) Whatever the people had last ordained should be held as binding by law.

An Estate Owner's Will (8 B.C.)

Gaius Isidorus

           Gaius Caecilius Claudius Isidorus in the consulship of Gaius Asinius Gallus and Gaius Marcius Censorinus upon the sixth day before the kalends of February declared by his will, that though he had suffered great losses by the civil wars he was still able to leave behind him 4,116 slaves, 3,600 yoke of oxen, and 257,000 head of cattle of other kinds, besides in ready money 60,000,000 sesterces. Upon his funeral he ordered 1,100,000 sesterces to be expended.

Some Laws of the Road (Circa 100 A.D.)

VI.) The width of a road is 2 metres on the straight and 4 metres on a bend.

VII.) Roads must be kept in good repair. If the road is not laid with stones, anyone may drive his beasts where he likes.

Petty Crimes in Roman Egypt (Circa 100 A.D.)

Various

Aurelius Nilus: To Flavius Thennyras, logistes of the Oxyrhynchite district, from Aurelius Nilus, son of Didymus, of the illustrious and most illustrious city of Oxyrhynchos, and egg seller by trade. I here by agree on the august, divine oath by our lord the Emperor and the Caesars to offer my eggs in the market place publicly for sale, and to supply the said city, every day without interruption; and I acknowledge that it shall b unlawful for me in the future to sell secretly or in my house. If I am detected in so doing, I shall be liable to be punished.

Syrus: I married a woman of my own tribe. . . a free-born woman, of free parents, and have children by her. Now Tabes, daughter of Ammonios and her husband Laloi, and Psenesis and Straton their sons, have committed an act that disgraces all of the chiefs of the town, and shows their recklessness; they carried off my wife and children to their own house, calling them their slaves, although they were free, and my wife has brothers living who are free. When I remonstrated, the seized me and beat me shamefully.

Tarmouthis: On the fourth of this month, Taorsenouphis, wife of Ammonios Phimon, an elder of the village Bacchias although she had no occasion against me, came to my house and made herself most unpleasantly to me. Besides tearing my tunic and cloak, she carried off sixteen drachmae that I had put, by the price of vegetables I had sold. And on the fifth her husband, Ammonios Phimon came to my house,  pretending he was looking for my husband, and took my lamp and went up into the house, and he went off with a pair of silver armlets weighing fort drachmae, while my husband was away from home.

A Flute-Player's Contract in Egypt (322 A.D.)

Aurelius Psenymis

           In the consulship of our lords Licinius Augustus (sixth time) and Licinius Caesar (second time). To Aurelius Eugenius, gymnasiarch and senator of Hermopolis, greetings from Aurelius Psenymis, son of Kollouthos and Melitene, a flute-player from Hermopolis. I agree that I have contracted and pledged myself to you, the squire, to present myself a the village at vintage-time in the vineyards with the appointed grape-treaders and others with my flute-playing. I promise not to leave the grape-treaders 'till the end of the vintage in the coming prosperous tenth special fiscal year. For the flute-playing and the pleasure I give, I shall receive the agreed sum from the contracting party.

           Signed the twenty-fourth of Choiak in the above-named consulship,

                                                                                                        Aurelius Psenymis

           I will fulfill the conditions as stated.

           I, Aurelius Pinoution, his assistant, have written for Anicetus, since he is illiterate.