INTRODUCTION
(i)
Passing over the question whether the Twelve Tables are to be attributed, as tradition has it, to the fifth century or only to the fourth,2 we begin with the period immediately following them.
Nothing is known about any earlier Roman jurisprudence; it cannot even be determined how far the Twelve Tables themselves were Greek or Roman work, though a strong Greek influence is undeniable.3 In the period following the Twelve Tables the Roman jurisprudence we know so well, the jurisprudence which reached adolescence in the last century of the Republic and maturity in the age of Hadrian, was still in its infancy. It is therefore proper to begin with this period and to describe it as archaic (άρχη = beginning).*(ii)
The period ends at the close of the third century b.c., that is about the end of the Second Punic War, when a mighty flood of Hellenism carried jurisprudence into a new phase.
1 ‘ Here, as always, a correct view will be obtained if we consider the growth of things from their beginning.’
2 Cf. Taubler, Untersuchungen z. Gesch. des Dezemoirats und d. Zwolftafeln, 127 ff.; Berger, PW iv A. 1900 ff.; Tenney Frank, An Economic Survey, 1, 13.
3 Schulz, 124, 5. Ed. Norden, Aus altrom. Priesterbiichern (Acta reg. soc. human, litt. Lundinensis, xxix, 1939), 254 ff.; G. Devoto, * I problemi del piii antico vocabolario giur. Rom.’, Annali della R. Scuola Normale Sup. di Pisa, ser. 2, vol. ii (1933), 225 ff. ACI, Roma 1, 15; Storia (1940) 72.
4 Cicero several times (p. Mur. 12. 26: ‘ haec iam turn apud illos barbatos ridicula ’; p. Sest. 8. 19; p. Caelio 14. 33; De fin. 4. 23,62) ridicules this period as the age of the longbeards. But the civilization of the period, which as regards jurisprudence is the archaic period, was in fact anything but primitive (Tenney Frank, Economic Survey, 2 ff.). Knowledge of reading was common in Rome at least by the end of the sixth century: Ed. Fraenkel, Rome, 7. If, as Mommsen said (Schr. iii. 598), all science is a luxury, this is specially true of legal science, without which a high degree of civilization can exist.
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