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Externos, sc. reges, viz. the kings of the Hermunduri. Ann. 2, 62. Potentia. Power irrespective of right. Potestas is lawful authority. See note, 7 Nec minus valent, sc. being aided by our money, than they would be if they were reinforced by our arms. This clause in some copies stands at the beginning of 43. XLIII. Retro. Back from the Danube and the Roman border. Referunt. Resemble.
All the Germanic immigrants seem to have recognised a corporate union of the family under the mund, or authority of a patriarchal chief; but his powers are obviously only the relics of a decayed Patria Potestas, and fell far short of those enjoyed by the Roman father.
This absolute power, which was known in the early Roman family as the "patria potestas," could not, however, be exercised arbitrarily. The house father, as representative of the departed ancestors, was necessarily controlled by religious scruples and traditions. It was impossible for him to act other than for what he believed to be the will of the ancestors.
At different epochs limits were placed to the exercise of this power, in the case of the ordinary people; but in the military class, the patria potestas was almost unrestricted.
Its coins were inscribed not only 'Romae Aeternae', but also 'Herculi Deusoniensi' and 'Herculi Magusano'. It not only claimed independence of Rome or perhaps equality with it, but it aspired to be the Empire. It had its own senate, copied from that of Rome; tribunicia potestas was conferred on its ruler and the title princeps iuventutis on its heir apparent.
The point for recollection is that there must anciently have been a time at which the rules of the Civil Law determined the scheme of Intestate Succession exclusively, and at which the arrangements of the Edict were non-existent, or not consistently carried out. We cannot doubt that, in its infancy, the Prætorian jurisprudence had to contend with formidable obstructions, and it is more than probable that, long after popular sentiment and legal opinion had acquiesced in it, the modifications which it periodically introduced were governed by no certain principles, and fluctuated with the varying bias of successive magistrates. The rules of Intestate Succession, which the Romans must at this period have practised, account, I think and more than account for that vehement distaste for an Intestacy to which Roman society during so many ages remained constant. The order of succession was this: on the death of a citizen, having no will or no valid will, his Unemancipated children became his Heirs. His emancipated sons had no share in the inheritance. If he left no direct descendants living at his death, the nearest grade of the Agnatic kindred succeeded, but no part of the inheritance was given to any relative united (however closely) with the dead man through female descents. All the other branches of the family were excluded, and the inheritance escheated to the Gentiles, or entire body of Roman citizens bearing the same name with the deceased. So that on failing to execute an operative Testament, a Roman of the era under examination left his emancipated children absolutely without provision, while, on the assumption that he died childless, there was imminent risk that his possessions would escape from the family altogether, and devolve on a number of persons with whom he was merely connected by the sacerdotal fiction that assumed all members of the same gens to be descended from a common ancestor. The prospect of such an issue is in itself a nearly sufficient explanation of the popular sentiment; but, in point of fact, we shall only half understand it, if we forget that the state of things I have been describing is likely to have existed at the very moment when Roman society was in the first stage of its transition from its primitive organisation in detached families. The empire of the father had indeed received one of the earliest blows directed at it through the recognition of Emancipation as a legitimate usage, but the law, still considering the Patria Potestas to be the root of family connection, persevered in looking on the emancipated children as strangers to the rights of Kinship and aliens from the blood. We cannot, however, for a moment suppose that the limitations of the family imposed by legal pedantry had their counterpart in the natural affection of parents. Family attachments must still have retained that nearly inconceivable sanctity and intensity which belonged to them under the Patriarchal system; and, so little are they likely to have been extinguished by the act of emancipation, that the probabilities are altogether the other way. It may be unhesitatingly taken for granted that enfranchisement from the father's power was a demonstration, rather than a severance, of affection a mark of grace and favour accorded to the best-beloved and most esteemed of the children. If sons thus honoured above the rest were absolutely deprived of their heritage by an Intestacy, the reluctance to incur it requires no farther explanation. We might have assumed
Goldwin Smith declares that woman suffrage aims at such a 'sexual revolution' as must cause the 'dissolution of the family. The Suffrage claim does not aim at this; it seeks only to formulate, recognize, and define the revolution already effected, yet which leaves the family intact. The Patria Potestas is gone.
The means were to be found in the prohibitive power of the tribunes, that right, which flowed from their major potestas, of forbidding under threat of penalties the action of all other magistrates. It was now rarely used except at the bidding of the senate and for certain specified purposes.
When a Roman citizen adrogated a son, i.e. took a man, not already under Patria Potestas, as his adoptive child, he succeeded universally to the adoptive child's estate, i.e. he took all the property and became liable for all the obligations.
On the island was the palace, glittering with gilt and marble, gay with colored awnings, where kings had lived magnificently until Romans saved the city from them, substituting a proconsular paternal kind of tyranny originating in the Roman patria potestas. There was not much sentiment about it. Rome became the foster-parent, the possessor of authority.
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