Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Decemviri

DECEMVIRI (i.e., the ten men), ten magistrates of absolute authority among the Romans. Their appointment, according to Roman tradition, was due to plebeian dissatisfaction with the capricious administration of justice by the patricians, who had no written law to direct them. On the representation to the senate of the popular grievances by the tribunes, commissioners were sent to Greece to collect the laws of Solon and of the other celebrated legislators of Greece. On the return of these commissioners it was agreed, after much discussion, that ten new magistrates, called decemviri, should be elected from the senate to draw up a body of laws. Their election involved the abdication of all other magistrates ; they were invested with supreme power, and presided over the city with regal authority. They were, each in turn, clothed with the badges of the consulship, and the one so distinguished had the power of assembling the senate and confirming its decrees. The first decemvirs were chosen in the year 302 a.u.c. (451 B.C.) They arranged the laws by which their government was to be regulated in ten divisions, submitted them to the senate and comitia for their approbation, and, after the code was recognized as constitutional, administered it with so much moderation and efficiency that the continuance of the decemviral office for another year was unanimously voted. The second body of decemvirs included one member of the first Appius Claudius and, according to Niebuhr, five plebeians. The new magistrates added to the laws which had already been enacted, and thus completed the celebrated leges duodedm tabularum, on which all Roman law, in future ages, was founded. Their administration, however, was as unpopular as that of their predecessors had been the reverse ; and, by its partiality and injustice, which reached a climax in the flagitious pursuit of Virginia by Appius Claudius, it so roused the popular fury that the abolition of the office was effected. But, as Sir G. Cornewall Lewis has shown in his work on the Credibility of Early Roman History, it is difficult to write with scientific accuracy about this episode in Roman history. There were other magistrates in Rome, called decemvirs, in regard to whose appointment and jurisdiction information is scanty. Scholars differ concerning the date of their institution, and the special functions of their office. There is evidence, however, that such a court existed during the empire ; but it is uncertain whether the jurisdiction of the later coincided with that of the earlier magistrates bearing the same name, and connected by some scholars, not only with the republic, but with the kings. There were also the Decemviri Sacrorum, who were custodians of the Sibylline books. Their number, which originally consisted of two, and after wards of ten, at last reached fifteen. It devolved on these functionaries not only to guard the Sibylline books, and to consult them on all emergencies of state, but also to take a prominent part in the celebration of the games of Apollo.