Roman Law
Early Roman History

To place the Twelve Tables in the context of early Roman history, we first need a sense of early Roman history. This is easier said than gained. The city of Rome is said to have been founded by two divinely begotten twins, Romulus and Remus, who were suckled by a wolf. This none too probable event is placed at c0900 (Ennius), 0814, 0753 (Varro, which became the official date), 0751, 0748 (Fabius, later supported by Cato and Polybius), and 0729 (Cincius Alimentus), a range of almost two centuries. The legend itself is along Greek rather than Italian lines, and is not known before 0296, when the Ogulnii dedicated a statue of the wolf and the twins (see OCD2 sv Romulus). Nor was the wolf story was alone in the field: competing myths (including one of Trojan descent) also existed, and commanded some acceptance. Archaeological evidence (Cary History 36-38) gives a piture of gradual rather than instantaneous foundation, and puts the creation of the City of the Four Regions "not far from 0600."

Between this myth and the Republic, with which we are here concerned, comes a line of six Etruscan Kings. With the expulsion (traditional date 0510) of the last of these, Tarquinius Superbus, the history of Republican Rome begins: an acephalous state whose chief power was its great families, consulting together in the Senate. But if we dismiss Romulus and shrug off the Etruscan Kings so as to get at the early Republic, we find ourselves still in the dark. The Twelve Tables, if correctly dated to 0451-0450, is the only document preserved from the 05th century. The following 04c is also insecurely known. We must thus pause to consider the informational basics.

Early Records

As we move backward in the Roman record, there seems to be some sort of cutoff point at c0300, beyond which reliable documentation fades out and invention increasingly dominates. The following overview of sources is based on Cary History 41f, and material in quotes is taken directly from Cary:

• 1. The Twelve Tables itself (traditional date 0451-0450).
• 2. Statutes of the Popular Assemblies (acta populi) were engraved on tablets and kept in the Temple of Saturn (supposedly built in 0498), where custody "was notoriously lax." In any case, "it is probable that little or no legislation was passed by the people before the fourth century."
• 3. Resolutions of the Senate (senatus consulta). In the last two centuries of the Republic, these too were kept in the Temple of Saturn, "but this custom probably did not arise before they had acquired quasi-legal force, which they did not attain before the third century."
• 4. Executive Records. "The memoranda of transactions and rules of procedure (commentarii) which Roman magistrates and priests drew up for reference were collected on rolls (libri magistratum pontificum) and preserved in the offices of the respective boards." The most important of these are:
  • 4a. Census Returns. May have been kept from the early Republic. Figures quoted by later writers are credible and consistent, but the authenticity of records before 0300 is disputed.
  • 4b. Year-Lists of Consuls. Each board of magistrates at Rome kept a running list of its members from year to year (fasti magistratuum). The lists of consuls (fasti consulares) were of special interest since they provided a continuous chronology. From the surviving texts, catalogues of the head magistrates from the beginning of the Republic have been drawn up. "In addition, we possess considerable fragments of a register of consuls and triumphators engraved towards the end of the 01c on the inner walls of the Arch of Augustus in the Forum, but these are secondhand compilations from literary sources and have no independent documentary value." The dates of early Republican history, as fixed by the consular fasti, agree fairly well "with the authentic chronology of the Greek historians. The discrepancy never exceeds eight years, and at points is narrowed down to two or three years. Yet the inconsistencies in the registers for the fifth and the fourth centuries are so numerous as to suggest that the Roman annalists from whom these lists are derived had no official and strictly accurate documents at hand for the period preceding 0300."
  • 4c. The Annales Maximi. At the beginning of the Republic, the Pontifex Maximus took over from the king "the duty of drawing up the calendar of religious festivals and of court days for the ensuing year (also, and more correctly, called fasti). At some point he adopted the practice of filling in the spaces of the calendar with notices of the principal events of the current year, and of adding the list of the year's magistrates at the foot." In short, the ritual calendar developed into a secular chronicle. The annales maximi were discontinued, and the previous ones published, by Mucius Scaevola in c0125. As published, they provided dates going back to the foundation of the city, but inspection shows that dates of events were not included in the annales "before the end of the fourth century." The first eclipse observed and not computed was that of 0288, and the lists of prodigies transcribed by Livy began only at 0296. "Our surviving records of triumphs, which come ultimately from the same source, have been proved seriously defective for the period preceding 0300: of the numerous entries under dates 0326-0301, no less than half have been discredited. It is plain therefore that the notices in the annales maximi relating to the fourth and earlier centuries were based on memory or mere imagination, and are accordingly devoid of documentary value."
• 5. Family Genealogies were in principle accurate as to the basic facts, but "unfortunately, this authentic material was subsequently overlaid with a tissue of deliberate fiction, when upstart families . . . set the example of adorning their pedigree with dubious titles of honor."
• 6. Literary Sources begin at the end of the 03c, or a century after the inception of something like historical records, at which time "the conventional story of Rome's past began to receive definite shape." In the absence of fact for the early years of the Republic, and in the presence of civic pride, exaggeration and invention are to be expected.

All this suggests something of a vacuum before c0300, into which later mythographers would have been relatively free to insert or invent material suitable to their own conception. Roman self-consciousness presently created a demand for an account of its foundation years, and accounts were accordingly produced. The first seems to have been the one written in Greek by Fabius Pictor in c0200, to explain Rome to a Greek audience; it placed the founding of Rome at 0748 and continued to the writer's own time. It was used as a source by the later historians Polybius (who criticized its Roman bias), Dionysius, and Livy.

As is detailed on a separate page, we are not too much better off in putting the mythographers aside and trying to read between the lines of the preserved Roman Laws.

22 Feb 2006 / Contact The Project / Exit to Comparative History Page