Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/116

 110 THE FAMILY. EOOII 11. powerful, was corrected by several of their customs. Sometimes the younger son was adopted into a family, and inherited property there ; sometimes he married an only daughter; sometimes, in fine, he received some extinct family's lot of land. When all these resources failed, younger sons were sent out to join a colony. ' As to Rome, we find no law that relates to the right of primogeniture ; but we are not to conclude from this that the right was unknown in ancient Italy. It might have disappeared, and even its traces have been effaced. What leads us to believe that before the ages known to us it was in force is, that the existence of the Roman and Sabine gens cannot be explained without it. How could a family reach the number of several thousand free persons, like the Claudian family, or several hundred combatants, all patricians, like the Fabian family, if the right of primogeniture had not maintained its unity during a long series of generations, and had not increased its numbers from age to age by preventing its dismembeiment ? This ancient right of primogeniture is proved by its consequences, and, so to speak, by its works.' ' The old Latin language, moreover, has preserved a vestige which, feeble as it is, deserves to be pointed out. A lot of land, the domain of a family, was called sors ; sors patrimonium sig- nificat, Kays Festus. The word consories was applied then to those who had among them only a single lot of land, and lived on the same domain. Now, the old language designated by this word brothers, and even those quite distantly related. This bears witness to a time when the patrimony and the family were indivisible. (Festus, v. Sors. Cicero, in Vcrrem, II. 323. Livy, XLI. 27. Vellems, I. 10. Lucretius, III. 772; VI. 1280).