heir paramount influence by having a quantity of new and difficult work
forced upon them, and it is not part of my plan to explain the early
history of adoptions and wills; but I may give a single concrete
illustration for the benefit of those who are not versed in Roman law.
It must constantly have happened, in that disturbed period which brought
the kingship to an end, that by death or capture in war a family was
left without male heirs. Daughters could not take their place, because
the _sacra_ of a family could not be maintained by daughters, who would,
in the natural order of things, be sooner or later married and so become
members of other families. Hence the expedient was adopted of making a
_filius familias_ of another family a member of your own; and this, like
marriage, involved a straining of the relations between the human and
divine members of your family, and was thus a matter for the religious
authorities to contrive in such a manner as to preserve the _pax_
between them. The difficulty was overcome by the practical wisdom of the
pontifical college, which held a solemn inquiry into the case before
submitting it to the people in specially summoned assembly (_comitia
calata_);[565] and thus the new _filius familias_ was enabled not only
to renounce his own _sacra_ (_detestatio sacrorum_), but to pass into
the guardianship of another set of _sacra_, without incurring the anger
of the _numina_ concerned with the welfare of either.

Such difficult matters as these, and many more connected directly or
indirectly with the devolution of property, such as the guardianship of
women and of the incapable, the power to dispose of property otherwise
than by the original rules of succession, the law of burial and the care
of the dead,--all these, at the time of which I am speaking, must have
been among the secrets of the pontifices; and we can also suspect,
though without being sure of our facts, that the great increase of the
importance of the _plebs_ under the Etruscan dynasty offered further
opportunities for the growth alike of the work and influence of the
college.[566] Above all, we must remember that this work was done in
secret, that the mysteries of adjustment were unknown to the people when
once they had passed out of the ken of family and gens, and that there
could have been no appeal from the pontifices to any other body. Nay,
more, we must also bear in mind that this body of religious experts was
_self-electi