REGAL See also:

• PERIOD
• PERIOD (Gr. irepioSos, a going or way round, circuit, aepi, round, and &Sis, way, road)

The plebeians were thereby made constitutionally part of the populus See also:

• ROMANUS

Rechtswissenschaft, 6th ed. i. 90 nn. 1, 2, and authorities there cited), must be decidedly negatived. Not only does it render the whole tradition about the Servian reforms untrustworthy, but the accounts of the struggles between patricians and plebs in the early See also:

• REPUBLIC (Lat. respublica, a commonweal or common-wealth)

See also:

• HUSBAND

Strictly the word familia meant the See also:

• HOUSEHOLD, ROYAL

With the early Romans, as with the See also:

• HINDUS

In fact, so far as her patrimonial interests were concerned, she was in much the same position as her children; and on her husband's death she had a share with them in his See also:

• INHERITANCE

They could have nothing of their own: all they earned was his; and, though it was quite common when they See also:

• GREW, NEHEMIAH (1641-1712)

The adopting parent acquired potestas over the adopted child exactly as if he were the issue of his body; while the latter enjoyed in his new family the same rights exactly that he would have had if he had been born in it. The manus and the patria potestas represent the masterful aspects of the patrician's domestic establishment. Its conjugal. and parental ones, however, though not so prominent in the pages of the jurists, are not to be lost sight of. t)omeoatns. tc The patrician family in the early history of the law was retatt governed as much by fas as by jus. The husband was See also:

• PRIEST (Ger. Priester, Fr. pretre)

On the contrary, his wife passed on marriage into the power of her father-in-law, and their children as they were born See also:

• FELL
• FELL, JOHN (1625-1686)

Some writers hold that neither of these modes was legally recognized See also:

• PRIOR (from Lat. prior—former, and hence superior, through O. Fr. priour)
• PRIOR, MATTHEW (1664-1721)

Some writers, however, think it older than coemptio, and as a de facto relation prolonged cohabitation as man and wife must have existed from very early times. Comparative historians with good reason trace in usus the See also:

• RELICS (Lat, reliquiae, the equivalent of the English " remains " in the sense of a dead body)

This can only be accepted as a partially correct account of what may have taken place at some early period during the kingly regime. There can be little doubt that a portion of the Roman territory, gradually augmented through new conquests, was early reserved by the state as ager publicus; that is sufficiently attested by the complaints made for centuries by the plebeians of its monopolization by the patricians. It is also probable that heredia (i.e. plots of land within the city) may have been granted to the heads of the gentile families, many of whom would be living in pagi on their respective gentile lands outside the city. Such heredia became family property, administered . as such by the paterfamilias, but inalienable by him. In this respect the position would be very similar to what existed among the See also:

• ANCIENT
• ANCIENT (also spelt ANTIENT; derived, through the Fr. ancien, old, from the late Lat. antianum, from ante, before)

15o, gives a probable explanation of the See also:

• MISTAKE (i.e. take amiss)

The heredia were small; even during the Republic there is some evidence (e.g. the traditional See also:

• STORY, JOHN (c. 1510-1571)
• STORY, JOSEPH (1779-1845)
• STORY, ROBERT HERBERT (1835-1907)
• STORY, WILLIAM WETMORE (1819—1895)

This proposiable& tion can at most be accepted only in a qualified sense. If it be meant that movables generally were not then recognized as See also:

• OBJECTS

The principal variation when it was an immovable that was being transferred was that the mancipation did not require to be on the spot: 'the land was simply described by its known name in the valuation See also:

• ROLL (O. Fr. rolle, roulle, mod. role, Lat. rotulus, dim. of rota, wheel)
• ROLL, ALFRED PHILIPPE (1846– )

Whether they were intended as representatives of the five classes in which Servius had distributed the population, and thus virtually of the state, is disputed, though the fact that, when the parties appealed to them for their testimony, they were addressed not as testes but as Quirites lends some See also:

• COLOUR (Lat. color, connected with celare, to hide, the root meaning, therefore, being that of a covering)

§ 104. usually supposed to have been intended to take the place of the raw metal (aes See also:

• RUDE, FRANCOIS (1784–1855)

Under the arrangement of Servius, what was to determine the nature and extent of a citizen's political qualifications, military duties and See also:

• FINANCIAL

§§ 173, 174. There were some debts from which a man could be effectually discharged only by See also:

• PAYMENT (Fr. paiement, from payer, to pay; Lat. pacare, to appease, pax, peace)

A daughter who had passed into the hand of a husband during her father's lifetime of course could have no share in the latter's inheritance, for she had ceased to be a member of his family. One who was in potestate at his death, and thereby became sui juris, did become his See also:

• HEIR (Lat. heres, from a root meaning to grasp, seen in heres or erus, master of a house, Gr. xeip, hand, Sans. hat ana, hand)

Tables, the curies may have become merely the recipients of the oral See also:

• DECLARATION (from Lat. declarare, to make fully clear, clams)

816. It may safely be assumed that by custom at all events the children of a plebeian usually took his estate on his death in-testate. But, as he was not a member of a gens, there was no See also:

• PROVISION (Lat. provisio)

The transaction took the form of an See also:

• ABSOLUTE (Lat. absolvere, to loose, set free)

See also:

• MAINE
• MAINE, ANNE LOUISE BENEDICTE DE BOURBON
• MAINE, SIR HENRY JAMES SUMNER (1822–1888)

Apparently the result of the Servian reforms was the regulating and ensuring the publicity of the See also:

• CON

687) say that the seat of Fides was in the right hand, and that to give it (promittere dextram—is this the origin of the word " promise ",?) in making an engagement was emphatically a pledge of faith. See a variety of texts illustrating the significance of the practice, and testifying to the regard paid to Fides before foreign influences and example had begun to corrupt men's probity and trustworthiness, in See also:

• LASAULX, ARNOLD CONSTANTIN PETER FRANZ VON (1839—1886)

cause communities are slow to realize the conception of convey- private testaments, and the plebeians could not at ante by this period make a public one either calatis comitiis mancipa- or in procinctu. But not long after their See also:

• ADMISSION

551), which was not abolished until the 5th century of the city, may not unfittingly, in view of the cruelties that too often attended it, be said to have savoured more of private vengeance than either punishment or procedure in reparation. Expiatio, supplicium, sacratio capitis, all suggest offences against the gods rather than against either an individual or the state. But it is difficult to draw the line between different classes of offences, and predicate of one that it was a See also:

• SIN
• SIN (O. Eng. syn: a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch zonde, Ger. Siinde)

The XII. Tables contained numerous provisions in reference to them; but it is extremely probable that, down at least to the time of Servius Tullius, the manner of dealing with them rested on custom, and was in the main self-redress, restrained by the intervention of the king when it appeared to him that the injured party was going beyond the bounds of fair reprisal, and frequently bought ' See See also:

• REIN

He alone was competent in any See also:

• CHARGE
• CHARGE (through the Fr. from the Late Lat. carricare, to load in a carrus or wagon; cf. " cargo ")

How far the kings exercised jurisdiction in questions of quiritarian right, such as disputes about property or inheritance, is by no means obvious. Within the family, of course, such questions were impossible, though between clansmen they may have been settled by the gens or its chief. The words of style used in the sacramental real action (infra, p. 548) suggest that there must have been a time when the See also:

• SPEAR (O. Eng. spere, O. H. Ger. sper, mod. Ger. speer, &c., cf. Lat. sparrs; probably related to " spar, " a beam)

Servian reforms. those who were to enjoy in future the privileges of quiritarian right, —and multiplying the See also:

• SOURCES

There was a court at Rome during the Republic called the Decemviri stlitibus judicandis.3 These decemvirs in historic times Dim_ constituted a quasi-corporate body of judicial magistrates, viral whose duty it was to try certain kinds of actions, especially court. those See also:

• RELATING

Tables) than with either of the collegiate courts. If we believe that in the early regal period the king acting with the pontiffs kept all jurisdiction in his own hands, it is See also:

• PLAIN (O. Fr. plain, from Lat. plenum)

23 re; See also:

• MARTIN (Martinus)
• MARTIN, BON LOUIS HENRI (1810-1883)
• MARTIN, CLAUD (1735-1800)
• MARTIN, FRANCOIS XAVIER (1762-1846)
• MARTIN, HOMER DODGE (1836-1897)
• MARTIN, JOHN (1789-1854)
• MARTIN, LUTHER (1748-1826)
• MARTIN, SIR THEODORE (1816-1909)
• MARTIN, SIR WILLIAM FANSHAWE (1801–1895)
• MARTIN, ST (c. 316-400)
• MARTIN, WILLIAM (1767-1810)

Under the kings it is not improbable that several of the legis actiones, more or less undeveloped, were already in use, civil pro-but the nature of these actions will be more conveni- cedure. ently considered later on (infra, p. 566). II. THE JUS CIVILE (From the establishment of the Republic until the subjugation of central and See also:

• SOUTHERN

In the classical law the term jus Quiritium seems to be used principally in formulae framed in accordance with old custom. Though our See also:

• INFORMATION (from Lat. informare, to give shape or form to, to represent, describe)

About 471 B.C. the concilium plebis became legislatively recognized, the tribunes were elected in it, and its resolutions (plebiscita) became directly binding on plebeians. The XII. Tables, twenty years later, were the fruit of the agitation of the plebeians for a revision and written embodiment of the law. In 449 plebiscita were—subject presumably to auctoritas patrum—declared by the lex Valeria-Horatia binding on the whole populus, while about the same time, or perhaps a little earlier, the patrician-plebeian comitia of the tribes was instituted.' By the lex Canuleia of 445 B.C. intermarriage between patricians and plebeians was sanctioned. Repeated protests by the plebeians against the monopolization of the public domain land by members of the higher order resulted in the definite admission of their right to participate in its occupation by one of the Licinian laws of 367 B.C. The long course of cruel oppression of insolvents (mainly plebeians) by their patrician creditors was put an end to by the Poetilian law about 326 B.C., depriving nexal contract of its privileges and generally prohibiting the use of chains and fetters on persons incarcerated for purely civil See also:

• DEBT (Lat. debitum, a thing owed)

Tables were enacted by it) with questions affecting public and constitutional rather than private interests. It could be convened only by a magistrate having military imperium, i.e. at first only the consuls, for the reason that it was theoretically a military assembly met for civil purposes (exercitus See also:

• CIVILIS, CLAUDIUS

Tables, and that the lex Valeria.Horatia applied to it. See next note. 2 Mommsen, Rom. Forschungen, i. 177 seq.; Rom. Staatsrecht, iii. 322 seq. J Livy, iii. 55, 3 ; viii. 12, 14.ii. The XII. Tables.

Causes of their Enactment.—The See also:

• CHANGE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. cambium, cambiare, to barter; the ultimate derivation is probably from the root which appears in the Gr. «a urmu', to bend)

Tabularum. The foregoing account of the enactment of the Tables is an attempt to summarize what is stated by Livy and other Roman writers on the subject. Though inconsistent and sometimes even contradictory about details, these tithenclry. writers are on the main facts in See also:

• CONCORDANCE (Late Lat. concordantia, harmony, from cum, with, and car, heart)

149 seq.; Revue generak du droit, nos. 5 et 6; Melanges, See also:

• APPLETON
• APPLETON, NATHAN (1779-1861)

They were embodied, as above mentioned, in the Tripertita of Sextus Aelius Paetus in the year 197 B.c., who probably republished them in somewhat modernized language and from whose work, it is thought, all later writers took their contents. They must have formed the basis of all the writings on the jus civile down to the time of Servius Sulpicius See also:

• RUFUS, GAIUS VALGIUS
• RUFUS, LUCIUS VARIUS (c 74—14 B.c.)

Say. See also:

• STILT

Schoell, in his Legis XIL Tab. reliquiae (See also:

• BERLIN
• BERLIN, CONGRESS AND TREATY OF
• BERLIN, ISAIAH (1725–1799)

Against a thief taken in the act the same procedure seems to have been sanctioned; it was lawful to kill him on the spot if the theft was nocturnal, or even when it was committed during the day if he used arms in resisting his apprehension. According to Cicero there was a provision in these words: " si telum manu fugit magis quam jecit, arietem subicito ": this is perhaps just a re-enactment in illustrative language of the law attributed to Numa, that for homicide by misadventure—" if the weapon have sped from the hand rather than been aimed "—a ram was to be tendered as a See also:

• PEACE
• PEACE, BREACH OF THE

Tafeln nebst deren Fragmenten (Leipzig, 1883), contain an exposition of the whole of the earlier jus civile, whether embodied in the Tables or not. The history of them occupies the first See also:

• HUNDRED

An event that did much to diminish the influence of the pontiffs in connexion with it was the divulgement in the year 304 B.c., as already mentioned, by Cn. Flavius, of a formulary of actions and a calendar of lawful and unlawful days, which got the name of Jus Flavianum. The practice adopted in the beginning of the 6th century by Tiberius Coruncanius, the first plebeian chief pontiff, of giving advice in law in public had a still greater effect in popularizing it; and the Tripertita or Jus Aelianum, some fifty years later—a collection that included the Tables, the inter pretatio and the current styles of actions—made it as much the heritage of the laity as of the pontifical college. Subsequent Legislation.—Of legislation during the 4th and 5th centuries that affected the private law we have but scanty Subse- record. The best-known enactments are the Canuleian quent law of 445 B.C. above mentioned; the Genucian, iegisia- See also:

• MARCIAN (c. 390-457)

A citizen's civil See also:

• PERSONALITY (from Lat. persona, originally an actor's mask, from personare,1 to sound through)

It was immaterial whether the change was from a higher family position to a See also:

• LOWER

Mommsen's theory, above adopted, seems to present fewest difficulties. See the subject discussed and authorities cited by Goudy in 2nd edition of Muirhead's Historical Introduction, pp. 422-27. giving the creditors a praetorian action in which the minutio was held as rescinded, and which the new paterfamilias was bound to defend on See also:

• PAIN (from Lat. poena, Gr. robin, penalty, that which must be paid: O. Fr. peine)
• PAIN, BARRY (1867– )

Amongst the fragments of the Tables so industriously collected there is none that refers to a wife's marriage portion (dos) ; but it is hardly conceivable that it was as yet unknown. Justinian says that in ancient times it was regarded as a donation to the husband with his wife, rather than as a separate estate that was to be used by him while the marriage lasted but to revert to her or her representatives on its See also:

• DISSOLUTION (from Lat. dissolvere, to break up into parts)

May not its object have been to restrain the practice, which did not wholly disappear even in the late Empire, of men selling their sons or giving them to their creditors in See also:

• SECURITY (Lat. securus, free from care, safe)

The provision about noxal surrender was not limited to a slave; it was apparently to the effect that, if a member of a man's family (familiaris, i.e. a son or a daughter in potestate or a slave) committed a theft of, or did mischief to, property belonging to a third party, or a domestic See also:

• ANIMAL
• ANIMAL (Lat. animalis, from anima, breath, soul)

Tabularum introducuntur Guard- ... agnati " is the very notable language of Ulpian. ianship And his words are very similar in speaking of their °i right of succession; for, while he says of testamentary agnates, inheritances no more than that they were confirmed by the XII. Tables, he explains that the legitimae hereditates of agnates and patrons were derived from them.' The phrases legitima cognatio, legitima hereditas, legitimi heredes, tutela legitima, tutores legitimi themselves proclaim the origin of ag- nation, agnatic inheritance and agnatic tutory; for, though the word legitimus might be applied to any institution based on statute, yet in the ordinary case it indicated one introduced by the XII. Tables, the law of laws. A man's agnates, in the strict sense, were those of his See also:

• COLLATERAL (from Med. Lat. collateralis,—cum, with, and latus, lateris, side,—side by side, hence parallel or additional)

And so with agnates of the fourth and remoter degrees? Failing agnates who could demonstrate their propinquity, the tutory passed to the gens when the ward happened to belong to one. This is nowhere expressly stated; but Cicero gives what he represents to be an enactment of the Tables, making the fellow-gentiles of a lunatic his guardians on failure of agnates; and See also:

• ANALOGY (Gr. avaXo-yLa, proportion)

Consequently brothers were related in the second degree, See also:

• UNCLE

The most important were mancipation, surrender in court, usucapion and See also:

• BEQUEST (from 0. Eng. becwethan, to declare or express in words; cf. " quoth ")

Jurid. and ed. i. gI n.; and on tignum junctum in general, Girard, Manuel de droil romain, 4th ed. p. 330. ' Our only authority for attributing this fundamental rule to the XII. Tables is Justinian's Institutes, ii. 1, § 41, where there is clear evidence of a Tribonianism. The rule undoubtedly must have been applied to res mancipatae in the Tables, and possibly its extension to tradition of res nec mancipi may have been due to interpretation. See Girard, ut supra, p. 288; cf. Cuq, Institutions Jurid. i. p. 87. 6 Literature: Leist, Mancipation and Eigenthumstradition (Jena, 1865); See also:

• JHERING, RUDOLF VON (1818-1892)

§ 46; Bechmann, Der Kau nach gemeinem Recht (See also:

• ERLANGEN

In the absence of either payment or sureties for it, the title still remained with the vendor, so that it was in his power, by means of a real action, to get back what had been mancipated, even though it had passed into the possession of the vendee. The vendor's liability to the vendee in the event of eviction is usually supposed to have arisen ipso jure—that is to say, without anything expressly said about it; the See also:

• ACCEPTANCE (Lat. acceptare, frequentative form of accipere, to receive)

Some writers, e.g. Girard, Manuel de droit roman, p. 550, n. 5, take the view that, apart from the actin auctoritatis, it was only where the extent of the land was misstated (See also:

• ATTIC (i.e. "in the Attic style ")

It was probably more resorted to for the constitution of servitudes, both real and personal, and transfer of such rights as pairia potestas, tutory-at-law of a woman, or an agnatic inheritance that had already opened, than for conveyance of property. For it was not only inconvenient, inasmuch as it required the parties to appear before the supreme magistrate in Rome, and could not be carried through by any one under power (as mancipation might), but it had also the serious disadvantage that it did not ipso jure imply any warranty of title by the cedent in the event of eviction or give rise to an action de modo agri. Nor did it, like mancipation and tradition, make payment of the price a condition precedent of the transfer of property. The reason was that in form the right of the cessionary flowed from the magisterial decree: " Since you say the thing is yours, and the cedent does not say it is his, I declare it yours," and not from any act or word of the cedent's, who was passive in the matter. Usucapion,3 regulated by the XII. Tables, but not improbably recognized previously in a vague and uncertain way, converted uninterrupted possession (usus) into quiritary property usu- by efflux of time. The provision in the Tables, as capion. given by Cicero, was to this effect: " usus auctoritas fundi biennium est, ceterarum rerum omnium annuus est." The relation in which the words usus and auctoritas stand to each other has been a subject of much discussion: the prevailing opinion amongst modern civilians is that the two words should be taken disjunctively, the first alone referring to usucapion, and the second to the warranty of title incumbent on the vendor in a mancipation, and that both were limited to two years in the case of lands (and, by extensive interpretation, houses), and to one year in the case of anything else. In the later jurisprudence the possession required to be based on a sufficient title and the possessor to be in good faith. But the decemviral code, as is now generally admitted, contained no such requirements; any citizen occupying immovables or holding movables as his own, provided they were usucaptible and he had not taken them theftuously, acquired a quiritary. right in two years or one, as the case might be, simply on the strength of his possession. Originally, therefore, it was simply the See also:

• CONVERSION (Lat. conversio, from convertere, to turn or ,change)

Privatrecht (Berlin, 189o) ; Girard, Manuel, 4th ed. pp. 519–23; Sohm, Institutionen (Eng. trans., 2nd ed.), pp. 63–65. ' Literature: Stintzing, Das Wesen von bona fides and titulus in d. ram. Usucapionslehre (See also:

• HEIDELBERG

R.G. ii. 387 seq. ; Esmein, " Sur 1'histoire de 1'usucapion,' Melanges (1886), pp. 171 seq. jurisprudence it developed into the carefully regulated positive See also:

• PRESCRIPTION

Changes in the Law of Succession.—The two forms of testament of the regal period, viz., that made in the comitia of Forms of the curies and that by soldiers on the eve of battle, testa- still remained in use in the early Republic; though IDeaa. before the end of the Republic they were displaced by the general adoption of that executed with the copper and scales (testamentum per aes et libram). It seems to be the general opinion that it was to the first two alone that the words applied which stood in the forefront of the provisions of the XII. Tables about inheritance: "uti legassit suae rei, ita jus esto." Whether resort was to the comitia or to the army, the testator's own will in the matter was henceforth to be supreme. There was to be no more reference to the pontiffs as to the expediency of the testament in view of the interests of the family sacra and of creditors of the testator's; from legislators, sanctioning a departure from the ordinary rules of succession, the assembled Quirites became merely witnesses—recipients of the oral declaration of the testator's will in regard to his inheritance? The testament with the copper and the scales is depicted by Gaius as a written See also:

• INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

A testament was the nomination of a person as the testator's heir. It made the person instituted as fully the representative of the testator after his death as his heir-at-law would have been had he died Hypothecary rights were unknown until near the end of the Republic. But Festus (s.v. Nancitor "; see Bruns, Fontes, 6th ed., iii. 16) speaks of a provision in the Cassian See also:

• LEAGUE

§ 102), met only twice a year to sanction testaments. In Mommsen's view, Rom. Chronologie (1859), pp. 241 seq., these days were the 24th of See also:

• MARCH
• MARCH (1) (from Fr. marcher, to walk; the earliest sense in French appears to be " to trample," and the origin has usually been found in the Lat. marcus, hammer; Low Lat. marcare, to hammer; hence to beat the road with the regular tread of a soldier: cf.
• MARCH, AUZIAS (c. "1395-1458)
• MARCH, EARLS OF
• MARCH, FRANCIS ANDREW (1825– )

From the moment this view was adopted and put in practice the familiae mancipatio ceased to be a transfer of the testator's estate to the familiae emplor; the latter's purchase was now for form's See also:

• SAKE

§ 99. See also:

• JURA
• JURA (" deer island ")

To put the latter in exactly the same position as the former was beyond their power; for the fact had to be faced that the plebeians had no gentile institutions, and to create them was impossible. The difficulty was overcome by accepting the principle of agnation upon which the patrician gens was constructed, and establishing an agnatic circle of kinsmen (perhaps at first limited to the sixth degree) to which the gens as a collective body should be postponed in the case of the patricians, and which should come in place of it in the case of the plebeians. It was not perfect equalization, but the nearest approach to it that the circumstances permitted. The difference was that, when the agnates of a plebeian intestate failed, his inheritance was vacant; whereas, on failure of those of a patrician, there was devolution to his gens in its collective capacity. Two " interpretations " put upon the statute had an important bearing in this connexion, viz. (1) that, if the nearest agnates in existence declined the succession, those next in degree were not allowed to take it; and (2) that no female agnate could take it more remote than a sister of the deceased intestate. The division among two or more agnates was always per capita, not per stir pes. The order of intestate succession thus established by the XII. Tables, which prevailed until amended by the praetors probably in the 8th century of the city, was first to the sui heredes of the deceased, next to his nearest agnate or agnates, and finally, if the deceased was a patrician, to his gens.l His sui heredes, speaking broadly, were those of his descendants in his potestas when he died who by that event (or even after it, but before his intestacy became manifest) became sui juris, together with his wife in manu (who, as regarded his succession, was reckoned as a daughter); but they did not include children whom he had emancipated or daughters who had passed in manum of a husband. Emancipated children did not even come in as agnates on failure of sui; for emancipation severed the tie of agnation as well as that of potestas. For the same reason no kinsman who had been emancipated, and so cut off from the family See also:

• TREE (0. Eng. treo, treow, cf. Dan. tree, Swed. Odd, tree, trd, timber; allied forms are found in Russ. drevo, Gr. opus, oak, and 36pv, spear, Welsh derw, Irish darog, oak, and Skr. dare, wood)
• TREE, SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM (1853- )

No acceptance was necessary, nor, according to the rules of the jus civile, was any declinature competent. They 1 This was for freeborn citizens; for freedmen, the patron (or his children in potestate) took the place of the nearest agnates.had been all along in a manner joint owners with their parent of the family estate, which by his death had become, nominally at least, an inheritance; and, as he had not thought fit to terminate their interest in it by emancipating or disinheriting them, they were not now allowed to disown it. Hence they were spoken of as necessary heirs (heredes sui et necessarii). A slave, too whom his owner had instituted in his testament with gift of liberty was a necessary heir: he could not decline, and was invested with the character of heir the moment the testator died. Not so with stranger institutes or agnates taking on intestacy: they were free to take or reject the inheritance as they saw fit; consequently, an act of acceptance (aditio) was necessary on their part to make them heirs. This was a formal declaration before witnesses, which got the name of cretio.2 It was not unusual for a testator, in instituting an heir, to require that he should make a formal declaration of acceptance within a limited time, failing which his right should pass to a substitute, who in turn was required to enter within a certain time; and so on with any number of substitutes, the See also:

• SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

Where two or more strangers were instituted testamentarily, whether to equal or unequal shares, if one of them failed either by predecease or declinature his share accrued ipso lure to the others; for it was a rule that early became proverbial that a man could not die partly testate and partly in-testate. There was the same accrual among agnates on intestacy; and both they and stranger testamentary institutes had the same action for division of the inheritance that was made use of by sui heredes. According to Gaius it was as a stimulus to heirs to enter as soon as possible to an inheritance that had opened to them, and thus make early provision alike for satisfying the claims of Usucapio creditors of the deceased and attending to his family sacra, that the law came to recognize the somewhat re- here. markable institution of usucapion or prescriptive See also:

• ACQUI

164-193. ' Cie. de See also:

• LEG
• LEG (a word of Scandinavian origin, from the Old Norwegian leggr, cf. Swed. lagg, Dan. laeg; the O. Eng. word was sceanca, shank)

Agri-culture was the occupation of the great majority; of trade and commerce there was little; coined money had hardly begun to be used as a circulating medium. Lastly, the safe-See also:

• GUARDS, AND HOUSEHOLD TROOPS

Was that obligation enforceable by the civil tribunals? Some jurists hold that it was—that at no time were the jus gentium contracts outside the protection of judicial remedies, although by a simpler procedure than that resorted to for enforcement of the contracts of the jus civile. But two provisions in the XII. Tables seem to prove that it was not so enforceable when they were See also:

• DRAWN