On the whole, the Decemvirs appear to have been very well versed in the science of legislation. Those who, like Cicero(297) and Tacitus, possessed the Twelve Tables complete, and who were the most competent judges of how far they were adapted to the circumstances and manners of the people, have highly commended the wisdom of these laws. Modern detractors have chiefly objected to the sanguinary punishments they inflicted, the principles of the law of retaliation which they recognized, and the barbarous privileges permitted to creditors on the persons of their debtors. The severer enactments, however, of the Twelve Tables, were evidently never put in force, or so soon became obsolete, that the Roman laws were at length esteemed remarkable for the mildness of their punishments—the penalties of scourging, or death, being scarcely in any case inflicted on a Roman citizen. The tables on which the Decemviral Code had been inscribed, were destroyed by the Gauls at the sack of the city; but such pains were taken in recovering copies, or making them out from recollection, that the laws themselves were almost completely re-established. It might reasonably have been expected that a system of jurisprudence, carefully extracted from the whole legislative wisdom of Italy and Greece, should have restored in the commonwealth that good order and security which had been overthrown by the uncertainty of the laws, and the disputes of the patricians and plebeians. But the event did not justify the well-founded expectation. The ambition and lawless passions of the chief Decemvir had rendered it necessary for him and his colleagues to abdicate their authority before they had settled with sufficient precision how their enactments were to be put in practice or enforced. It thus became essential to introduce certain _formulæ_, called _Legis Actiones_, in order that the mode of procedure might not remain arbitrary and uncertain. These, consisting chiefly of certain symbolical gestures, adapted to a legal claim or defence, were prepared by Claudius Cœcus about the middle of the fifth century of Rome, but were intended to be kept private among the pontiffs and patrician Jurisconsults, that the people might not have the benefit of the law without their assistance. Cl. Flavius, however, a secretary of Claudius, having access to these formularies, transcribed and communicated them to the people about the middle of the fifth century of Rome. From this circumstance they were called the _Jus civile Flavianum_. This discovery was so disagreeable to the patricians, that they devised new legal forms, which they kept secret with still more care than the others. But in 553, Sextus Ælius Catus divulged them again, and in consequence, these last prescripts obtained the name of _Jus Ælium_, which may be regarded as the last part and completion of the Decemviral laws; and it continued to be employed as the form of process during the whole