Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/126

120 the rights of an administrator, but of an owner. Whatever the wife might have acquired during her marriage fell into the hands of her husband. She did not ever recover her dower on becoming a widow.

The son was in the same condition as the wife; he owned nothing. No donation made by him was valid, since he had nothing of his own. He could acquire nothing; the fruits of his labor, the profits of his trade, were his father's. If a will was made in his favor by a stranger, his father, not himself, received the legacy. This explains the provision of the Koman law which forbade all contracts of sale between father and son. If the father sold to the son, he sold to himself, as the son acquired only for the father.

We see in the Roman laws, and we find also in the laws of Athens, that a father could sell his son. This was because the father might dispose of all the property of the family, and the son might be looked upon as property, since his labor was a source of income. The father might, therefore, according to choice, keep this instrument of labor, or resign it to another. To resign it was called selling the son. The texts of the Roman law that we have do not inform us clearly as to the nature of this contract of sale, nor on the reservations that might have been contained in it. It appears certain that the son thus sold did not become the slave of the purchaser. His liberty was not sold; only his labor.