delight to bestow on their municipal
institutions. The study is recommended by Cicero [21] as equally
pleasant and instructive. "They amuse the mind by the remembrance of old
words and the portrait of ancient manners; they inculcate the soundest
principles of government and morals; and I am not afraid to affirm, that
the brief composition of the Decemvirs surpasses in genuine value the
libraries of Grecian philosophy. How admirable," says Tully, with honest
or affected prejudice, "is the wisdom of our ancestors! We alone are the
masters of civil prudence, and our superiority is the more conspicuous,
if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ridiculous
jurisprudence of Draco, of Solon, and of Lycurgus." The twelve tables
were committed to the memory of the young and the meditation of the old;
they were transcribed and illustrated with learned diligence; they had
escaped the flames of the Gauls, they subsisted in the age of Justinian,
and their subsequent loss has been imperfectly restored by the labors
of modern critics. [22] But although these venerable monuments were
considered as the rule of right and the fountain of justice, [23] they
were overwhelmed by the weight and variety of new laws, which, at the
end of five centuries, became a grievance more intolerable than the
vices of the city. [24] Three thousand brass plates, the acts of the
senate of the people, were deposited in the Capitol: [25] and some of
the acts, as the Julian law against extortion, surpassed the number of
a hundred chapters. [26] The Decemvirs had neglected to import the
sanction of Zaleucus, which so long maintained the integrity of his
republic. A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the
assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was
rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.

[Footnote 20: It is the praise of Diodorus, (tom. i. l. xii. p. 494,)
which may be fairly translated by the eleganti atque absoluta brevitate
verborum of Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. xxi. 1.)]

[Footnote 21: Listen to Cicero (de Legibus, ii. 23) and his
representative Crassus, (de Oratore, i. 43, 44.)]

[Footnote 22: See Heineccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 29--33.) I have followed
the restoration of the xii. tables by Gravina (Origines J. C. p.
280--307) and Terrasson, (Hist. de la Jurisprudence Romaine, p.
94--205.) Note: The wish expressed by Warnkonig, that the text and the
conjectural emendations on the fragments of the x