Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/99

 ■CHAP. VII. THE RIGHT OF SUCCESSION. 93 CHAPTER VII. The Right of Succession. 1. Nature and Principle of the Right of /Succession among the Ancients. The right of property having been established for the accomplishment of an hereditary worship, it was not possible that this riglit should fail after the short life of tin individual. The man dies, the worship remains; the fire must not be extinguished, nor the tomb aban- doned. So long as the domestic religion continued, the right of property had to continue with it. Two things are closely allied in the creeds as well as in the laws of the ancients — the family worship niul its ])roperty. It was therefore a rule without exception, in both Greek and Roman law, that a prop- erty could not be acquired without the worship, or the worship without the property. "Religion prescribes," says Cicero, "that the property and the worship of a ciary mancipation, and ofpignus, vrere, before the introduction of the Servian action, tlxe means employed to insure to the cred- itor the payment of the debt; these prove indirectly that the seizure of property for debt was not practised. Later, when they suppressed corporal servitude, it was necessary that there should be some claim on the property of a debtor. The change was not without difficulty; but the distinction which was made between property and possession offered a resource. The creditor obtained of the prjetor the right to sell, not the prop- erty, dominium, but the goods of the debtor, bona. Then only, by a disguised seizure, the debtor lost the enjoyment of his property.