Matt Meier
Professor Rabii-Rakin
History 101
10/26/2016
The Twelve Tables of Rome In the year 449 B.C. the Roman Empire established their first set of written rules that would be enforced as far as the empire stretched. These rules were put together by a committee consisting of ten patricians and was called a Decemviri. It is believed that this document was constructed because of the conflicts between the plebeians and patricians. Patricians were members of a long established wealthy families that ruled Rome at this time. Plebeians were the commoners or your basic civilians at this time. The Twelve Tables of Rome is what this document was called and it is believed that they were inscribed onto bronze tablets. Not all aspects of the tables are
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At first only ten tables were drafted. About one year later on two more tables were supplemented in making a total of twelve tables instead of the original ten. The tables acted as a basic law code for the citizens of ancient Rome, before the Twelve Tables citizens had to abide by unwritten rules and customs according to the patrician judges. Roman law before the Twelve Tables was heavily influenced by religion. The tables did not only have rules, it also had protocols for certain situations and even people certain rights. One right that it gave to plebeians, was the right to summon a man before the magistrate which is a legal judge or civil officer. This would make it vary hard to know when you are actually committing a crime or doing something illegal. This also created many discrepancies in the legal system of this time. The Twelve Tables gave the plebeians of Rome there first guaranteed rights. These tables can be compared to something like the ten commandments which was a set of 10 rules given to Moses on Mount Sinai by the Christian God or the United States Bill of Rights which gave U.S citizens the basic rights of life. Although the twelve tables were a step in