Background

I spent six weeks in Italy researching ancient Roman Law. I stayed mainly in Rome, and I visited the archives and the National Library to research and translate. The last two weeks in Italy I reserved to travel around the country and the city of Rome, to look at important historical sites (such as Pompeii) and to visit other libraries and museums.

I am currently in the middle of writing a thirty page paper concerning a certain section of the Twelve Tables. The XII Tables are the earliest written form of law in Roman history. Since most of Western Law is based on Roman Law, we must consider the impact of the Twelve Tables on our own legal history. These Tables, also known as Tabulae, were written by the Decemvir, a board of ten men. Written in 450 BCE, they were carved upon tablets and placed in public, so that every Roman citizen may view them. Unfortunately, the exact text of the Twelve Tables have been lost to history, and we only have fragments repeated by ancient authors.

For a brief and slightly inaccurate description, please refer to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tables

There are several prominent authors that dedicated much of their writing to the Twelve Tables. They include: Cicero, Livy, and my personal favorite, Gellius. They did not necessarily rewrite the laws on the Tables, but rather produced commentary on the laws. By extrapolating from their writings, we can piece together much of what was once on the tablets.

A good summary of the laws included in the Twelve Tables that we have been able to extract from ancient texts is on this website:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/12tables.html

There have been books written on the subject of the Twelve Tables. My topic is much more limited. Specifically, I am researching marriage laws in Ancient Rome and in Medieval Europe, and how those applied to the concept of usucapio. In Latin, usucapio means "to seize by use." There is a special law that forbade a woman from being usucapated by her husband, assuming she spent three nights away from him. There are many interesting concepts introduced by this law. First, it places women in the same category as common chattel or land, which are typically what usucapio laws refer to. Second, it gives women a certain amount of legal power, to refuse their husbands on a certain level. One can see how these two principles are conflicting in nature.

Through my research, I explored these two seemingly paradoxical ideas. Most of my time was spent in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma, translating texts from Cicero and Gellius. I also conducted secondary research with the materials available there. I had planned on using archival data from the Archivio Nazionale, but unfortunately, nearly all of the materials there were from the Renaissance or later.

I chose this particular experience and this particular project for a variety of reasons. First, I plan on traveling abroad to London this fall semester to take classes at University College London. For this reason, I am unable to write a senior research thesis. I couldn't bear the idea of graduating from college without writing an important research paper. Second of all, researching Roman Law seemed a perfect blend of my two academic passions: law and classics. Third, there is no better place for a Classics student to research or visit than Italy, or more specifically, the Eternal City. Finally, ever since I had first learned of the Twelve Tables, I was intrigued by the concept of usucapio. To finally be able to delve into the subject and research it more thoroughly, especially in Rome, was very exciting.