Roman civil law
In order that their interpretation should not be at the fancy of patrician office-holders. The result was the so-called Twelve Tables (traditionally C.450BC), whose provisions still formed the basis of the Roman civil law in the age of Cicero. As a result of citations by writers of this and later periods, we have a fair idea of the original contents of the Twelve Tables; they reveal a society which is still that of a small agricultural community, but one in which the importance of the kin-group is already diminishing and in which there are already substantial numbers of slaves. (Boardman, 1986)