While highest and lowest alike obtained from them this prompt
administration of justice, undefiled, as if from an oracle, at the
same time their attention was devoted to the framing of laws; and, the
ten tables being proposed amid the intense expectation of all, they
summoned the people to an assembly: and ordered them to go and read
the laws that were exhibited, [43] and Heaven grant it might prove
favourable, advantageous, and of happy result to the commonwealth,
themselves, and their children. That they had equalized the rights of
all, both the highest and the lowest, as far as could be devised by
the abilities of ten men: that the understanding and counsels of a
greater number had greater weight; let them turn over in their minds
each particular among themselves, discuss it in conversation, and
bring forward for public discussion whatever might be superfluous or
defective under each particular: that the Roman people should have
such laws only as the general consent might appear not so much to have
ratified when proposed as to have itself proposed. When they seemed
sufficiently corrected in accordance with public opinion regarding
each section of the laws as it was published, the laws of the ten
tables were passed at the assembly voting by centuries, which, even at
the present time, amid the immense heap of laws crowded one upon
the other, still remain the source of all public and private
jurisprudence. A rumour then spread that two tables were needed, on
the addition of which a digest, as it were, of the whole Roman law
could be completed. The desire for this gave rise, as the day of
election approached, to a request that decemvirs be appointed again.
The commons by this time, besides that they detested the name
of consuls no less than that of kings, did not even require the
tribunician aid, as the decemvirs in turn allowed an appeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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