Page:Historical introduction to the private law of Rome (IA historicalintrod00muiriala).pdf/471



in the pages of the lay writers to the action of the and  must be received with caution. For instance, in their accounts of the or, an annual festival that immediately followed the  and the , and at which all the members of a family assembled to renew the bonds of goodwill and affection over a common repast in presence of the domestic , Ovid (Fast., ii. 617 sq.) and Valerius Maximus (ii. 1, § 8) speak of it as a reunion of the  and  generally, to the exclusion of all third parties. But as the feast was held everywhere one the same day and was kept up till night, and as both men and women might be nearly connected by blood or marriage with half-a-dozen families or more, it is clear that the cognation and affinity that qualified for participation in it must have stopped short of that sixth degree to which they usually extended. It is only by assuming that the gathering was exclusively of wife, sons, unmarried daughters, and wives and children of sons, around the table of the head of the house, that the account of it becomes comprehensible. His sons and their children and his unmarried daughters were undoubtedly cognates of his, and his wife and daughters-in-law in the wider sense of the word; but what a small portion probably of those entitled to those designations. It may be that in other cases in which and  are spoken of a similar limitation is necessary.

Gauis (i. 113) described as an imaginary sale and purchase, in presence of a  and five citizen witnesses; but unfortunately the final words in the MS. —  — do not indicate with certainty which of the parties was the nominal seller and which was nominal purchaser. Comparative jurisprudence shows so many examples of bride-capture developing into bride-purchase, that many jurists rush to