Juris civilis initia et progressus. Ad leges XII. Tabularum brevis commentatio. Ex Ulpiani Fragmentorum Tituli XXIX. selectis notis illustrati. Gaii ex veteris jurisprudentiae Fragmentis Institutionu

The custom of Rome, that adolescents should learn the XII. Tables by heart.

considers civil science, you will see that this whole thing, with all the utilities and parts of the state described, is contained in the XII. tables: or if that powerful and glorious philosophy delights someone, I will speak more boldly, he has these as the fountains of all his disputes, which are contained in civil law and the laws. Let all rage as they please: I will say what I feel, that the little book of the XII. tables seems to me, by Hercules, to surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, if one sees the fountains and sources of the laws, both in the weight of its authority and in the richness of its utility. The same author in book 2 of On Laws: We used to learn the Twelve, he says, as boys, as a necessary song: which now no one learns, etc.

We have inserted into this Handbook the fragments of these twelve Tables, which are scattered in many ways among various authors, taking them from the best writers of our age, especially those which seem to pertain primarily to the explanation of the Institutes and the true knowledge of ancient Law and unknown Antiquities.

Ausonius, however, in a famous distich, indicated that there was a threefold division of these twelve Tables: for in the first part that law which pertained to sacred rites was contained: in the second, public law: in the third, private:

* He names private law in the second place, for the sake of the verse.

The three-fold law, which the four times three Tables sanctioned,
Sacred, Private, and that which is common to the People everywhere.