Of the statutes of the Twelve Tables concerning the civil law, there has hardly any thing been preserved. Among the little that we know, is a decree, which was on one of the two last Tables, that there should not be any _connubium_ between the _Plebes_ and the _Patres_. This principle is fraught with such consequences, that the spirit of the whole legislation may be judged from it. The ordinance is generally looked upon as an innovation, for instance, by Dionysius, and by Cicero in the books _De Republica_; but this is all grounded upon the mistaken belief that this body of laws was entirely new, as if the Romans before that time had either had no laws at all, or altogether different ones. No one in the ancient world took it into his head to make quite a new system of laws; they merely amended those which they had inherited. As it was now intended to bring the orders nearer to each other, and to equalise their rights, they surely could not have established such a separation between them as a new institution. In the middle ages also, a legislation merely sprung from the will of the lawgiver is scarcely to be traced anywhere: it is to be found in the laws of the emperor Frederic II. only, as Savigny has observed. The opinion of the above mentioned writers is therefore based on nothing but their own fancy; so that there is no authority for it, but on the contrary its extreme improbability in every respect is against it. New, however, is another and most important point, the unlimited right of disposing by will which was granted by the _leges XII. tabularum_. This right was bestowed upon every _pater familias_, and it gave to the later jurists occasion for most important changes: it cannot have existed from the earlier ages. The consequence of it was a double form of will, before the curies and _in procinctu_, that is, before the symbol of the centuries, these representing the _exercitus vocatus_. Before these the testator declared his will: if it was on the eve of a battle, the soldier made his declaration before the army itself; if a patrician wished to dispose of his fortune, the Pontifex maximus summoned the curies, and these were first to confirm the dispositions of the will. The reason of this was founded on the respective position of the parties. If a person left children, then in the earliest times it may only have been rarely that a will was made; if he remained childless and there were cousins, the latter inherited, otherwise the clans; but, if the clan was quite extinct, the cury inherited. Now, when Plautus says in the Aulularia,[103] _Nam noster nostræ qui est magister curiæ,_ _Dividere argenti dixit nummos in viros_,