The Twelve Tables Essay

The Twelve Tables are laws of Rome that can tell us about its people views and how they lived in the times of 450 B.C.E.. In Roman tradition laws were not written down and was only fully know and interpreted by patricians ( upper-class ) and priests, which was a disadvantage to plebeians ( lower-class ) due them being at the will of patricians who did know the law and could charge them with anything and they would not know if they were in the right or wrong. The Twelve Tables laws will show the Romans’ views it what they considered to be right and wrong such as : imperfect children being killed, class division, and cleanliness is the city of Rome. There is an impression of Rome that a child born with a birth defect was not worthy to live, we understand this by the law that Rome has in place “ A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly killed.” (Pg.118) This law gives us an inside …show more content…
The law is that “Marriages should not take place between plebeians and patricians.” (Pg.120) This law gives us a better understanding to how valued class division was to Roman’s people and how they wanted to strongly keep the royal bloodline pure and also can show that marriage was not always about love but more for gaining power and/or a political negotiations. Another law for the Twelve Tables that can gives us a better inside look into Rome’s living and surrounding areas is in the law of discarding a corpse and the law goes “None is to bury or burn a corpse in the city.” (Pg.120) this law shows us a little into the system Rome has placed on cleanliness and avoidance to spreading diseases. This also gives the impression that the Romans seemed to know that corpse were not healthy for the people living in the city and to avoid any more diseases to spread, bodies were to be discarded away from the populated city