c. 450 BCE · Early law

The Twelve Tables

Rome

The first written statement of Roman law, displayed in public so that ordinary Romans could know the rules on debt, family, property and procedure.

Why it matters

Roman lawyers regarded it as the source of all later Roman law. The idea that law should be written, public and the same for everyone starts here.

Built on

No earlier text on this timeline is a documented model for it.

Went on to shape

c. 161 CE

Institutes of Gaius

Rome

systematised the older rules of Roman civil law

529 to 534

Corpus Juris Civilis (Justinian's Code)

Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire

gathered and reworked the whole inheritance of Roman law

Counting texts that borrowed from the texts that borrowed from this one, 41 later texts on this timeline trace back to it.

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TheLawToKnow Tools’s timeline lists links of influence only where the borrowing is widely documented. Historians sometimes disagree about how much one text shaped another. It is an educational overview, not legal advice.