In 462 BCE the plebian Terentilius proposed that the laws of Rome be publicly posted as it had been the custom of the patricians, who enforced the law, to keep the law secret, and often exploited their power with arbitrary, unjust enforcement. Pressured by the plebeians and fearing a revolt the patricians finally relented first in 450 and then 449, summoning an assembly of ten wise and virtuous men to travel abroad in the Greek world in hopes of finding the inspiration needed to create their own constitution by studying Hellenic law. The first of these assemblies drafted ten laws (which would come to be tables) and the second assembly would draft two more.  This latter assembly also penned, according to Livy, a secessio plebes which compelled the senate to consider the legislation now known formally as the “Law of the Twelve Tables.” Soon the laws were imprinted on bronze and posted in the public forum within Rome, bringing an end to the perceived injustices of the patricians and restoring social cohesion to the powder keg which Rome had become.

The Twelve Tables was instrumental in reinforcing the roman preconceptions about how a society should be structured. Men were by custom considered to have absolute authority within the household and this notion is reflected in the Twelve Tables. The tables are in essence a proto-Bill of Rights in that they were not a complete listing of the law but rather a publicly accountable enumeration of private rights and civic expectations. Sadly for the women, at least as far as the Twelve Tables is concerned, they have no public rights; there is simply no notable mention of women in the text, all rights being granted to the male. The only mention of women is to curtail their rights, as in Table 10 in which women are commanded not to express sorrow in public or presumably be subject to punishment. In Table 5 we are told that if a husband dies the estate does not pass to the wife, but to the nearest in kin. Even if next of kin does not exist, the estate passes to the clan, not the wife.

The omission of universal rights in the Twelve Tables is not a mistake: the Romans did not consider women to have a civic body and they were interpreted as being under the ultimate authority of the husband, or if she was unmarried, eldest male relative. The “law” which effected most women of Rome was the man’s whim, for the man was judge, jury and executioner within a household.

Although we might scoff at these seemingly anachronistic views of gender and relationships the Twelve Tables were nevertheless instrumental as a foundation for further Roman lawmaking which would evolve to inspire all modern republics and parliamentary governments. While the initial Twelve Tables were rudimentary, the legislation of classical Roman law hundreds of years later would inspire the modern court system, procedural justice and civil rights: the hallmarks of any healthy republic. In a republic the law, a universal law which all are bound to and expected to adhere to from consul to plebian, and the court system which enforces it, a rule by law and legislation in quest of greater social justice are all crucial aspects necessary for it’s operation. In the Twelve Tables and the law which it inspired we observe clearly the foundations of the modern state: a public trust ruled by law books rather than might, where the prestigious and the meek are expected to behave in the same way.