It had its roots in the English struggle when Englishmen shed their blood at the point of a sword in their efforts to wrest from tyrannical monarchs the power of the purse. So there it is. That little document is all we got out of it. More than the Magna Carta. This is a remarkable document.
Every schoolchild ought to study it, and every schoolchild ought to be required to memorize it.
They inscribed these laws on tables, and those tables were destroyed in the year 390 B.C. by Brennus and the Gauls. The Gauls conquered Rome and destroyed much of it and, along with it, destroyed the Law of the Twelve Tables. Cicero said that the young people had been required to memorize the Law of the Twelve Tables, and therefore, even though the Gauls destroyed the Twelve Tables, the Law of the Twelve Tables lived on in the memories of the schoolchildren. Hence, the Romans hadn't lost the Law of the Twelve Tables. The Schoolchildren had been required to memorize the Law of the Twelve Tables.