Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/103

 CHAP. VIl. THE EIGHT OF SUCCESSIOX. 97 know, from his own writings, that he was the sole heii to the estate; his father had reserved only the seventh part to endow the daughter. As to Rome, the provisions of primitive law which excluded the daughters from the inheritance are not known to us from any formal and precise text ; but they have left profound traces in the laws of later ages. The Institutes of Juslinian still excluded the daughter from the number of natural heirs, if she was no longer under the power of the father; and she was no longer under the power of the father after she had been mar- ried according to the religious lites.' From this it follows that, if the daughter before marriage could share the inlieritance with her brother, she had not this right alter marriage had attached her to another religion and another family. And, if this was still the oase in the time of Justinian, we may suppose that in primitive law, this principle was applied in all its rigor, and that the daughter not yet married, but who would one day marry, had no right to inherit the estate. The Institutes also mention the old principle, then obsolete, but not forgotten, which prescribed that an inheritance always descended to the males.* It was clearly as a vestige of this old rule, that, according to the civil law, a woman could never be constituted an heiress. The farther we ascend from the Institutes of Justinian towards earlier times, the nearer we approach the rule that woman could not inherit. In Cicero's time, if a lather left a son and a daughter, he could will to his daughter only one third of his fortune ; if there was only a daughter, she could still have but half. We must also note that, to enable this daughter to > Institutes, II. 9. 2. ^ Ibid., III. 1, 15; III. 2, 3. 7