Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/112

 106 THE FAMILY. BOOK II, which certainly are not the primitive legislation of Home ; and of these only fragments remain. This code authorizes the will ; yet the fragment relating to the subject is too short, and too evidently incomplete to enable us to flatter ourselves that we know the exact provisions of the legislators in this matter. When they granted the power of devising property, we do not know what reserve and what conditions they placed upon it.' Wc have no legal text, earlier than the Twelve Tables, that either forbids or permits a will ; but the language preserved traces of a time when wills were not known ; for it called the son the self-successor and necessary — heres suus et necessarius. This formu- la, which Gaius and Justinian still emj^loyed, but which was no longer in accord with the legislation of their time, came, without doubt, from a distant epoch, when the son could not be disinherited or refuse the heritage. The father had not then the free disposition of his fortune. In default of sons, and if the deceased had only collateral relatives, the will Avas not absolutely un- known, but was not easily made valid. Important for- malities were necessary. First, secrecy was not allowed to the testator during life ; the man Avho disinherited his family, and violated the law that leligion had estab- lished, had to do this publicly, in broad daylight, and take upon himself, during his lifetime, all the odium attached to such an act. This was not all ; it was also necessary that the will of the testator should receive the approbation of the sovereign authority — that is to say, of the people assembled by curies, under the presi- ' Uti legassit, ita jus esio. If we had of Solon's law only the words SiL^tn&ai urcwg uv idD.ti, wc should also suppose that the will was permitted in all possible cases; but the law adds, a fii^ 71 at it g u>ai.