The origins of law coincide with the origins of language, as both Plato and Horace highlight. Thus, a systematic attempt to discover the etymological roots of words simultaneously reveals the source of legality. The article examines the etymological doctrina (‘learning’) of poets vis-à-vis the etymological reasoning of learned jurists. The Twelve Tables, Catullus, and Labeo engage in similar etymological pursuits. Ovid’s Byblis responds to Labeo’s etymologies. The jurist Ulpian echoes the poetics of Latin love elegy. Lawyers and poets meet on the common ground of etymology in their attempts to lay down the law.
