Note 28 — Chapter VI · THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
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[The Twelve Tables were considered as the foundation of all law, and Cicero always mentions them with the utmost reverence. But only fragments remain, and those who have bestowed the greatest labour in examining these can give but an imperfect account of their original form and contents. A few provisions only can be noticed here.
(1) The patricians and their clients should be included in the plebeian tribes. And when we speak of clients, we must now comprehend also the freedmen (libertini), who were a large and increasing class. Further, the three old patrician tribes now, or before this, became obsolete; and henceforth a patrician was known not as a Ramnian, a Titian, or a Lucerian, but as a burgess of the Pollian, Papirian, or some other local tribe.
(2) The law of debt was left in its former state of severity. But the condition of borrowing money was made easier; for it was made illegal to exact higher interest than 10 per cent. For this is the meaning of fœnus unciarium. Uncia (derived from unus) is one of the twelve units into which the as was divided, each being one-twelfth part of the whole. Now ⅟₁₂ of the capital is 8⅓ per cent.; but as the old Roman year was only ten months, we must add two months’ interest at the same rate; and this amounts to 10 per cent. for the year of twelve months.
(3) No private law or privilegium—that is a law to impose any penalty or disability on a single citizen, similar in character to our bills of attainder—was to be made.
(4) There was to be an appeal to the people from the sentence of every magistrate; and no citizen was to be tried for his life except before the centuriate assembly.
(5) The old law or custom prohibiting all intermarriage (connubium) between the two orders was now formally confirmed, and thus a positive bar was put to any equalisation of the two orders. No such consummation could be looked for, when the code of national law proclaimed them to be of different races, unfit to mingle one with the other.
(6) To this may be added the celebrated law by which any one who wrote lampoons or libels on his neighbours was liable to be deprived of civil rights (diminutio capitis). By this law the poet Nævius was punished when he assailed the great family of the Metelli.c]