r than 443 B.C., if we can believe Livy's account
of its institution (op. cit., IV. 8. 2-7). Before that time the
consuls superintended the lists of citizens.

[59] The first provision doubtlessly descends from a primitive tribal
tabu. Cicero supposes that the second provision is due to danger from
fire (De Legibus, II. 23. 58).

[60] In view of the simplicity enjoined in some of the following
statutes of this Table, for the decemvirs apparently took a dim view
of extravagant funerals, this statute seems to mean that a rough-hewn
pyre without elaborate smoothness of its wooden material suffices for
the cremation-couch of a citizen.

[61] Cicero says that some older interpreters suspected that some kind
of mourning-garment was meant by _lessus_, but that he inclines to the
interpretation that it signifies a sort of sorrowful wailing (De
Legibus, II.23.59)

[62] This provision is aimed at the common custom of prolonging
mourning by gathering and preserving unburied some part of the corpse.
When this part (_os resectum_) later had been buried, then only
mourning ceased. It is possible that some Romans may have thought that
cremation might be wrong or that its ceremony was inadequate.

[63] That is, in such a case a limb could be carried to Rome and then
buried.

[64] That is, a garland or a chaplet or a wreath as a prize of
achievement.

[65] A chattel, for example, is a slave or a horse who wins a wreath
for the owner.

[66] Cicero says that this statute seems to suggest fear of disastrous
fire (_De Legibus_, II. 24. 61).

[67] In the burning-mound also ashes were buried.

[68] This statute proved so unpopular that it soon was repealed by the
Lex Canuleia in 445 B.C.

[69] This process of "taking a pledge" is the seizure and the
detention of a debtor's property or part thereof to induce the debtor
to pay the debt before any other legal action will be taken.

It will be noticed that the two instances given in this statute
concern Sacred Law, with which by anticipation the fourth statute of
this Table likewise is concerned. Modern scholars place these two
provisions among the Supplementary Laws despite the temptation to set
these among the statutes of Table X, of which all but one item come
from Cicero's discussion of Sacred Law in his _De Legibus_, II. 23.
58-24. 61, in the concluding portion of which Cicero seems to speak
with some finality that he has given all the regulations regarding
religion found in