Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/104

 98 THE FAMILY. BOOK II. receive a thirrl or half of this patrimony, it was necessary that the father should make a will in her favor ; the daughter had nothing of full right.' Finally, a century and a half before Cicero, Cato, wishing to revive an- cient manners, proposed and carried the Voconian law, which forbade, — 1. Making a woman an heiress, even if she was an only child, married or unmarried. 2. The willing to a woman of more than a fourth part of the patrimony." The Voconian law merely renewed laws of an earlier date ; for we cannot suppose it would have been accepted by the contemporaries of the Scipios if it had not been 8uj)ported upon old principles which they still respected. It re-established what time had changed. Let us add that it contained nothing regard- ing heirship, ah intestate probably because on this point the old law was still in force, and there was nothing to repair on the subject. At Rome, as in Greece, the primitive law excluded the daughter from the heritage ; and this was only a natural and inevitable consequence of the principles which religion had established. It is true men soon found out a way of reconciling the religious prescription which forbade the daugliter to inherit with the natural sentiment which would have her enjoy the fortune of her father. The law decided that the daugliter should marry the heir. Athenian legislation carried this principle to its ulti- mate consequences. If the deceased left a son and a daughter, the son alone inherited and endowed his sister; if they were not both children of the same mother, he had his choice to marry her or to endow ' Cicero, D" Rep., III. 7. City of God, III. 21.
 * Cicero, in Verr., I. 42. Livy, XLI. 4. St. Augustine,