riminal offence
involving good morals, was particularly accepted in the case of women
"on account of the weakness of the sex."[150] A typical instance of the
growth of the desire to help women, protect them as much as possible,
and stretch the laws in their favour, may be taken from the senatorial
decree known as the Senatus Consultum Velleianum.[151] This was an order
forbidding females to become sureties or defendants for any one in a
contract. But at the end of the first century of our era the Senate
voted that the law be emended to help women and to give them special
privileges in every class of contract. "We must praise the
farsightedness of that illustrious order," comments the great jurist
Ulpian,[152] "because it brought aid to women on account of the weakness
of the sex, exposed, as it is, to many mishaps of this sort."

[Sidenote: Rights of women to inherit.]

The rights of women to inherit under Roman law deserve some mention.
Here again we may note a steady growth of justice. Some general examples
will make this clearer, before I treat of the specific powers of
inheritance. I.--In the year 169 B.C. the Tribune Quintus Voconius Saxa
had a law passed which restricted greatly the rights of women to
inherit.[153] According to Dio[154] no woman was, by this statute,
permitted to receive more than 25,000 sesterces--1250 dollars. In the
second century after Christ, this law had fallen into complete
desuetude.[155] II.--By the Falcidian Law, passed in the latter part of
the first century B.C., no citizen was allowed to divert more than three
fourths of his estate from his natural heirs.[156] The Romans felt
strongly against any man who disinherited his children without very good
reason; the will of such a parent was called _inofficiosum_, "made
without a proper feeling of duty," and the disinherited children had an
action at law to recover their proper share.[157] A daughter was
considered a natural heir no less than a son and had equal privileges in
succession[158]; and so women were bound to receive some inheritance at
least. III.--It is a sad commentary on Christian rulers that for many
ages they allowed the crimes of the father to be visited upon his
children and by their bills of attainder confiscated to the state the
goods of condemned offenders. Now, the Roman law stated positively that
"the crime or punishment of a father can inflict no stigma on his
child."[159] So far as the goods of the father were conce