The Law of the Twelve Tables
Rome's first written law is put up in the Forum for all to read
Pressed by the plebeians, who could not know laws kept by the patricians, in 451–450 BC a board of ten men (decemvirs) wrote Roman law down on twelve tablets, which were enacted in 449 BC. Cicero ranked them above the libraries of all the philosophers, and for a thousand years they remained the basis of Roman law.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 5th century BC
Alive at the time
- Socrates (aged 20)
- Sophocles (aged 47)
- Pericles (aged 45)
- Herodotus (aged 34)
- Phidias (aged 30)
- Hippocrates (aged 10)
- Democritus (aged 10)
- Zeno of Elea (aged 40)
- Protagoras (aged 40)
- Aspasia (aged 20)