Decemvirs, the ten men appointed to codify the law, both public and private, at Rome. Commissioners were first sent to Greece to study the
Greek statute law, and on their return (451 B.C.) all the magistracies were suspended, and a commission of ten patricians (decemviri legibus scribendis) appointed with consular powers to reduce the laws to writing. By the end of the next year the code was finished, and after being ratified by the comitia of the centuries, was erected in the Forum inscribed on ten tables of wood. Next year the decemvirate was renewed, and the result of their deliberations was to add two other supplemental tables, from which the whole code bore its official title of the laws of the Twelve Tables (q.v.). The president of both the decemvirates was the notorious Appius Claudius (q.v.).