: my father stands in the first
degree, my brother in the second, his children in the third, and the
remainder of the series may be conceived by a fancy, or pictured in
a genealogical table. In this computation, a distinction was made,
essential to the laws and even the constitution of Rome; the agnats, or
persons connected by a line of males, were called, as they stood in the
nearest degree, to an equal partition; but a female was incapable of
transmitting any legal claims; and the cognats of every rank, without
excepting the dear relation of a mother and a son, were disinherited by
the Twelve Tables, as strangers and aliens. Among the Romans agens or
lineage was united by a common name and domestic rites; the various
cognomens or surnames of Scipio, or Marcellus, distinguished from each
other the subordinate branches or families of the Cornelian or Claudian
race: the default of the agnats, of the same surname, was supplied
by the larger denomination of gentiles; and the vigilance of the laws
maintained, in the same name, the perpetual descent of religion and
property. A similar principle dictated the Voconian law, [147] which
abolished the right of female inheritance. As long as virgins were given
or sold in marriage, the adoption of the wife extinguished the hopes of
the daughter. But the equal succession of independent matrons supported
their pride and luxury, and might transport into a foreign house the
riches of their fathers.

While the maxims of Cato [148] were revered, they tended to perpetuate
in each family a just and virtuous mediocrity: till female blandishments
insensibly triumphed; and every salutary restraint was lost in the
dissolute greatness of the republic. The rigor of the decemvirs was
tempered by the equity of the praetors. Their edicts restored and
emancipated posthumous children to the rights of nature; and upon the
failure of the agnats, they preferred the blood of the cognats to the
name of the gentiles whose title and character were insensibly covered
with oblivion. The reciprocal inheritance of mothers and sons was
established in the Tertullian and Orphitian decrees by the humanity of
the senate. A new and more impartial order was introduced by the Novels
of Justinian, who affected to revive the jurisprudence of the Twelve
Tables. The lines of masculine and female kindred were confounded: the
descending, ascending, and collateral series was accurately defined;
and each degree, according tot