Ancient Greek law had been chaotic and random, dominated by family feuds that allowed family members to mete out their own justice against those who had harmed or offended them. In order to tame this, the Greek lawmakers of Athens codified laws in written form, Draco doing so in 620 BCE and Solon in c. 590 BCE. The laws generally covered personal harm, marriage, inheritance and land use, and the penalties were mainly monetary.
For the most part, these laws were more concerned with the procedures of administering justice and the punishments to be handed down for various offenses rather than specifically spelling out what constituted offending actions. These issues were decided by juries made up of 201–501 men. They had to decide whether an offense had been committed and what the punishment should be, and their opinions were often based on the speeches presented to them by orators who often appealed to them on the emotional level.
In Rome in 540 BCE, lawmakers not only codified laws but imprinted them on publicly displayed bronze tablets known as the Twelve Tables of Roman Law. This allowed everyone to know what constituted offenses and what the consequences would be, thereby affording equal treatment to all citizens no matter what their position in the Roman hierarchy. The laws dealt mainly with offenses perpetrated by individuals against other individuals, such as bodily harm, property damage, arson, and theft. The punishments were specific for each offense and included death, banishment, relinquishment of property, and payments made by the offender to the plaintiff. Other laws concerned such areas as marriage, inheritance, and land use. The cases were heard by judges, with the accused in attendance.
These Twelve Tables, which spelled out what all citizens could expect in the realm of offenses and their punishments and which also allowed for modification over time, have been a basis for codified law worldwide.
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