INTRODUCTION

Existing knowledge of the so-called leges regiae and of the political and institutional profiles of the regnum in general is based on information subjected to a complex literary tradition as well as pieced together from isolated references in Roman legal sources. First-hand evidence is in fact rather limited. Although the Cippus Antiquissimus found in the Roman Forum, dating from between 575 and 565 BCE and considered by some to be a lex regia, is currently the object of some renewed scholarly interest, so far it has offered little clarification with regard to the substantive legal aspects of Rome during the period of the Monarchy.

The collective examination of these sources must be undertaken through an interdisciplinary approach and a careful and critical reading of the information available. In this way, the long and multilayered process of the formation and transmission of historical memory can be understood. In addition, the different forms and varying contents in which such information was received and sometimes reworked by historians, scholars, grammarians, writers, and jurists, from the late Republican Age onwards, can then be assessed.

This methodology also requires a re-examination of the relationship between royal laws and the ius civile Papirianum. The latter is represented as a collection of leges, and certain sources date the collection to the end of the sixth century BCE, having seemingly been created at the initiative of a member of the gens Papiria. On the other hand, the dissemination of the ius civile Papirianum in Roman ‘cultural circles’ is only evident from the first century BCE onwards, which raises the problem of its dating. From the verbatim quotes of royal laws, the only example available to us that seems to have a relationship with this collection and with its commentary, the liber de iure Papiriano, is the lex of the paelex, attributed to King Numa by Festus and Aulus Gellius. A philological analysis of the law suggests that it is substantially authentic, even if we are not able to assert that this was actually drawn up by the king to whom it has been ascribed by tradition.