In 451 BC, ancient Rome elected 10 people to form a "Ten-Member Legislative Council" and formulated the first written legal code in the history of Western law, the Twelve Tables Law.
In 449 BC, the power-hungry "Council of Ten" intended to be despotic, and its leader Claudius claimed to be the "King of the Ten", gradually revealing his ambition to overthrow the republic and replace it with a monarchy, resulting in the overthrow of the "Council of Ten" by the commoners.
The trigger was the famous Virginia Women's Affair.
Claudius has a crush on a woman named Virginia and attempts to commit violence against her.
Virginia, the daughter of Lucius Verginius, the leader of the Hundred, was engaged to Lucius Iquilius, who was beloved by civilians and had served as a protector.
After tempting Virginia with gifts and promises to no avail, Claudius took advantage of his father and fiancé's outing to fight, instigating his protégé Marcus to go around proclaiming Virginia as a descendant of his slave girl, and attempting to forcibly take the girl away when she appeared in the square.
Virginia's helpless cries brought together the people of the square, and those who knew or heard of Virginia's father and fiancé spontaneously stood up to protect the young girl.
Claudie's protégé Marcus had to take Virginia to court and ask for a trial, presiding over the trial by claudius, who had been premeditated.
Claudie, in his capacity as magistrate, announced that the woman should be owned by Marcus.
Virginia's father rushed back to Rome as soon as he learned of this, and in order to save Virginia from humiliation, he took out a dagger and stabbed his daughter in the chest.
The old tearful Virginius said to his daughter sadly: "Only in this way can we give you freedom."
The incident quickly spread throughout Rome, the land of the Seven Hills, and the anger of the crowd reached the ears of civilian warriors on the battlefield ahead.
In protest against the barbarism of the nobles, civilian fighters laid down their arms and evacuated to the vicinity of Monte Sacro, the Holy Mountain.
The nobles accompanied Claudius to the people, and Verginius demanded that he be imprisoned.
Claudius began to shout and complain to the people, but Verginius refused his request, saying, "Do you still want to treat the people you have violated as protectors?" You don't deserve this right of complaint that you've ever broken! ”
Claudius retorted: "You cannot undermine this right of complaint, which has been reapplied in Rome because of our insistence!" ”
However, Claudy's request was not satisfied, and he finally became unable to bear this dishonorability and committed suicide the night before his trial.
The plebeians overthrew the "Council of Ten" after Claudius' death, and Rome returned to the constitutional period, stipulating that from then on no judge could execute a Roman citizen without going through a complaint to the people.
In 449 BC, Valery and Oraz were appointed new consuls, and new protectors were appointed.
They carved the Law of the Twelve Tables on wooden planks and published them in the Roman Forum, a milestone in the history of Roman legislation and the only large-scale legislation in the entire development of the ancient Roman state before the time of Eustini.
The Romans' praise for the Twelve Tables is self-evident and proud of it.
Li Wei believes that the law is "the source of all public and private law".
Cicero once said, "Its practicality and power are superior to the libraries of all philosophers." ”
The philosopher Favornino claimed: "I am more interested in reading it than in Plato's Laws." ”
As the Compendium of Doctrines says, "The origin is always the most important part of all things." The Twelve Tables are considered to be the origin of Roman law.
Law represents the foundation and composition at the decisive moment of the development of the city-state.
The fact that laws are written and made public means that all laws are known, stable and certain to all people, including all strata. Because this means that arbitrariness can be excluded, both in the legal norms themselves and in the process of law implementation.
In his book Since the Founding of the City, Li Wei gave the highest evaluation of the law: "The law is deaf and unsympathetic, and it is more beneficial to the weak than to the strong." ”
The law is deaf and therefore impartial.
It is precisely because of this that it is more beneficial to the weak than to the strong.
To this day, Sophocles's Antigone is still performed in theaters around the world, and this story has been discussed for more than 2,500 years.
The woman Antigone's brother, Porunix, launched a war against his city-state of Thebes, where she was defeated and died.
Theban law stipulates that treasons cannot be buried.
Antigone went against the wishes of the Thebes king Creon and buried the body of his brother.
At trial, she invoked an unwritten law that said relatives should be buried for those living together.
Antigone's act of burying her brother violated the law and she was put to death.
Antigone argued that man's decrees (i.e., laws, nomos) could not fail to obey natural law (i.e., divine law).
Rather, Creon's ban is merely a will expressed by legislators and cannot override the principles of the supreme law.
Dr. Huang Meiling said that the emergence of statutory law was a hard and great conquest. In this process, of course, it is impossible to avoid the fierce resistance of conservatives.
Today, we sympathize, like, and even admire Antigone, because every people who decide to lay down the law is in fact a descendant of Creon.
Laws make society fairer, even if there are more or less unfair provisions in them.