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1

When Diphilus was archon in Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Marcus Horatius and Lucius Valerius Turpinus. In Rome during this year, since the legislation remained unfinished because of the civil discord, the consuls brought it to conclusion; that is, of the Twelve Tables, as they are called, ten had been drawn up, and the consuls wrote into law the two remaining. After the legislation they had undertaken had been concluded, the consuls engraved the laws on twelve bronze tablets and affixed them to the Rostra before the Senate-house. And the legislation as it was drawn up, since it is couched in such brief and pithy language, has continued to be admired by men down to our own day. [2]

While the events we have described were taking place, the greater number of the nations of the inhabited world were quiet, practically all of them being at peace. For the Persians had two treaties with the Greeks, one with the Athenians and their allies according to which the Greek cities of Asia were to live under laws of their own making,2 and they also concluded one later with the Lacedaemonians, in which exactly the opposite terms had been incorporated, whereby the Greek cities of Asia were to be subject to the Persians. Likewise, the Greeks were at peace with one another, the Athenians and Lacedaemonians having concluded a truce of thirty years. [3] Affairs likewise in Sicily also were in a peaceful state, since the Carthaginians had made a treaty with Gelon, the Greek cities of Sicily had voluntarily conceded the hegemony to the Syracusans, and the Acragantini, after their defeat at the river Himera, had come to terms with the Syracusans. [4] There was quiet also among the peoples of Italy and Celtice, as well as over Iberia and almost all the rest of the inhabited world. Consequently no deed of arms worthy of mention was accomplished in this period, a single peace prevailed, and festive gatherings, games, sacrificial festivals of the gods, and everything else which accompanies a life of felicity prevailed among all mankind.

1 442 B.C.

2 This is the treaty given in chap. 4.5.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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