Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper aims at to identify the different historical-linguistic layers in the fragmentary texts of the ancient Roman Law of the Twelve Tables. We show that the language of the Twelve Tables - despite some philological questions about their transmission during the last centuries of the Roman Republic - displays chronological strata. A thorough analysis of the phonological and morphological features and of the archaisms preserved by the written tradition here allows us to show the presence of three distinct layers, which can be ascribed to the three different linguistic periods of the 5th, 3rd and 1st centuries BC