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7 A special enactment in favour of children in power is found in the senatusconsult of Macedo, which has prohibited the giving of loans of money to such persons, and refused an action to the lender both against the child, whether he be still in power, or has become independent by death of the ancestor or emancipation, and against the parent, whether he still retains the child in his power, or has emancipated him.
After the passing of this senatusconsult the heir, wherever it came into operation, was sole administrator, and the transferee of the residue was in the position of a partiary legatee, that is, of a legatee of a certain specified portion of the estate under the kind of bequest called participation, so that the stipulations which had been usual between an heir and a partiary legatee were now entered into by the heir and transferee, in order to secure a rateable division of the gains and losses arising out of the inheritance.
4 But during the reign of Nero, in the consulate of Trebellius Maximus and Annaeus Seneca, a senatusconsult was passed providing that, when an inheritance is transferred in pursuance of a trust, all the actions which the civil law allows to be brought by or against the heir shall be maintainable by and against the transferee: and after this enactment the praetor used to give indirect or fictitious actions to and against the transferee as quasiheir.
8 The seventh, which follows them, was introduced with most excellent reason by the praetors, whose Edict finally promised the possession of goods to those persons expressly entitled to it by any statute, senatusconsult, or imperial constitution; but this was not permanently incorporated by the praetor with either the intestate or the testamentary kinds of possession, but was accorded by him, as circumstances demanded, as an extreme and extraordinary remedy to those persons who claim, either under a will or on an intestacy, under statutes, senatusconsults, or the more recent legislation of the emperors.
After the passing, however, of the statute called the lex Hortensia, plebiscites acquired for the first time the force of statutes. 5 A senatusconsult is a command and ordinance of the senate, for when the Roman people had been so increased that it was difficult to assemble it together for the purpose of enacting statutes, it seemed right that the senate should be consulted instead of the people.
There is, however, some difference between the two cases; for in the first, where the inheritance is transferred after deducting or reserving some specific thing, the senatusconsult has the effect of making the transferee the only person who can sue or be sued in respect of the inheritance, and the part retained by the heir is free from all encumbrances, exactly as if he had received it under a legacy; whereas in the second, where the heir, after retaining a fourth part of the inheritance, transfers the rest as requested, the actions are divided, the transferee being able to sue and be sued in respect of threefourths of the inheritance, and the heir in respect of the rest.
3 It is immaterial whether the assignment is made in a testament or not, and indeed patrons are enabled to exercise this power in any terms whatsoever, as is provided by the senatusconsult passed in the time of Claudius, when Suillus Rufus and Ostorius Scapula were consuls.
1 As, however, grandsons were not called by this senatusconsult with a statutory title to the succession of their grandmothers, 2 this was subsequently amended by imperial constitutions, providing that grandchildren should be called to inherit exactly like children. 3 and finally that under the latter of these two enactments even illegitimate children are admitted to their mother's inheritance.
1 There was too a miserable form of universal acquisition under the SC. Claudianum, when a free woman, through indulgence of her passion for a slave, lost her freedom by the senatusconsult, and with her freedom her property. But this enactment we deemed unworthy of our times, and have ordered its abolition in our Empire, nor allowed it to be inserted in our Digest.
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