Disappeared Females?－Pomponius and His Narrative of the Legal History of Rome－

The jurist Sextus Pomponius presents in his “handbook” (enchiridium) a unique narrative of the legal development of Rome from the Kings to the Principate. By re-arranging and re-structuring well-known exemplary stories, he achieves his aim to bring in law and the jurisprudents as the decisive factors of the improvement of the “commonwealth” (res publica). This can be shown convincingly in his narration of the episode of Verginia, Appius Claudius and the Law of the Twelve Tables, whence the peculiar omission of the elsewhere prominent women of early Rome can be explained for functional reasons.