Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/420

 414 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. than three times, and that after the third sale, the son shall be free.' This is the first blow struck by Roman law at the paternal authority. Another change still more important was that which gave a man the right to transmit his property by will. Before this period the son was a self-successor and a necessary : in default of sonr., the nearest agnate in- lierited ; in default of agnates, the property returned to the gens, a trace of the time when the gens, still undivided, was sole proprietor of the domain, which afterwards had been divided. The Twelve Tables threw aside those old principles ; they treated property as belonging, not to the gens, but to the individual ; they therefore recognized in man the right of disposing of his property by will. Still the will was not entirely unknown in primitive law. Even then a man might choose a legatee outside the gens, but on the condition that his choice should be ratified by the assembly of the curies; so that noth- ing less than the entire city could change the order which religion had formerly established. The new legislation freed the will from this vexatious rule, and gave it a more convenient form — that of a pretended sale. Tiie man feigned to sell his property to the one whom he had chosen as heir; in reality, he made a will ; in this case he had no need of appearing before the assembly of the people. This form of will had the great advantage of being permitted to the plebeians. He who had nothing in common with the curies, had, up to that time, found no means of making a will.* But now he could employ ' Digest, X. tit. 2, 1.
 * There was, indeed, the testament in procinciit, but we arq