legislation, where laws are piled on laws, the Twelve Tables still
form the fount of all public and private jurisprudence."[2]

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