Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/108

 102 THE FAMILY. BOOK 11. without children, the heir is the brotlier of the deccaserl, provided he is a consanguineous brotlier; in default of ])im, the son of the brotlier; for the succession always passes to the males, and to the descendants of malesP ' They still cited tliis old law in the time of Demosthenes, although it had already been modified, and they had Commenced at this epoch to admit relationship through women. In the same way, the Twelve Tables ordained that, if a man died without his heir, the succession belonged to the nearest agnate. Now, we have seen that one was never an agnate through females. The ancient Roman law also specified that the nephew inherited from tQ patruus, — that is to say, from his father's brother, — and did not inherit from the avwiculus, his mother's brother.^ By retiirning to the table which wc have traced of the family of the Scipios, it will be seen that, Scipio ^milianus, having died without children, liis estate could not pass eitlier to Cornelia, jiis aunt, or to C. Gracchus, who, according to our modern ideas, was his cousin -german, but to Scipio Asiaticus, who was really his nearest of kin. In the time of Justinian, the legislator no longer understood these old laws; they appeared unjust to him, and he complained of the excessive rigor of the laws of the Twelve Tables, "which always accorded the preference to the masculine posterity, and excluded from the inheritance those Miio were related to the de- ceased only through females."^ Unjust laws, if you will, for they made no account of natural aflEection ; » Institutes, III. 2, 4. » Ibid. HI. 8.
 * Demosthenes, in Macart. ; in Leoch. Isaeus, VII. 20.