Page:Early Roman Law, The Regal Period (Clark, 1872, earlyromanlawreg00claruoft).djvu/11



T is scarcely necessary to say that no original documents of legislation during the regal period at Rome have come down to us. Assuming that the early laws were reduced to writing and were even engraved on oak, as we are told by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, we could not expect that much surived the destruction of Rome by the Gauls. In fact, Livy expressly states that the military tribunes of the following ( 365) ordered all the treaties and laws which were in existence to be sought out, and that these last were the Twelve Tables and some laws of the kings

Nor are we more fortunate in the possession of copies, at least in any regular and perfect form. What seems to have been the only collection of regal law known to Romans of the literary period was mythical in its origin and perhaps also limited in its scope. Sextus Pomponius asserts all the laws introduced by the kings to have been extant at the time when he wrote, in a collection made by Papirius, a contemporary of the last king. Pomponius, R. L.