om we have enumerated, and particularly of
children in power who are soldiers, and who are permitted by imperial
constitution to dispose by will of all they may acquire while on actual
service. This was allowed at first only to soldiers on active service,
by the authority of the Emperors Augustus and Nerva, and of the
illustrious Emperor Trajan; afterwards, it was extended by an enactment
of the Emperor Hadrian to veterans, that is, soldiers who had received
their discharge. Accordingly, if a son in power makes a will of his
military peculium, it will belong to the person whom he institutes
as heir: but if he dies intestate, leaving no children or brothers
surviving him, it will go to the parent in whose power he is, according
to the ordinary rule. From this it can be understood that a parent
has no power to deprive a son in his power of what he has acquired on
service, nor can the parent's creditors sell or otherwise touch it; and
when the parent dies it is not shared between the soldier's son and
his brothers, but belongs to him alone, although by the civil law the
peculium of a person in power is always reckoned as part of the property
of the parent, exactly as that of a slave is deemed part of the property
of his master, except of course such property of the son as by imperial
constitutions, and especially our own, the parent is unable to acquire
in absolute ownership. Consequently, if a son in power, not having a
military or quasimilitary peculium, makes a will, it is invalid, even
though he is released from power before his decease.

1 Again, a person under the age of puberty is incapable of making a
will, because he has no judgement, and so too is a lunatic, because he
has lost his reason; and it is immaterial that the one reaches the age
of puberty, and the other recovers his faculties, before his decease.
If, however, a lunatic makes a will during a lucid interval, the will
is deemed valid, and one is certainly valid which he made before he
lost his reason: for subsequent insanity never avoids a duly executed
testament or any other disposition validly made.

2 So too a spendthrift, who is interdicted from the management of his
own affairs, is incapable of making a valid will, though one made by him
before being so interdicted holds good.

3 The deaf, again, and the dumb cannot always make a will, though here
we are speaking not of persons merely hard of hearing, but of total
deafness, and similarly by a dumb