y receiving
less by onethird than their mother or grandmother would have taken,
or than their father or grandfather, paternal or maternal, when the
deceased, whose inheritance was in question, was a woman; and they
excluded the agnates, if such descendants claimed the inheritance, even
though they stood alone. Thus, exactly as the statute of the Twelve
Tables calls the grandchildren and greatgrandchildren to represent their
deceased father in the succession to their grandfather, so the imperial
legislation substitutes them for their deceased mother or grandmother,
subject to the aforesaid deduction of a third part of the share which
she personally would have taken.

16 As, however, there was still some question as to the relative rights
of such grandchildren and of the agnates, who on the authority of a
certain constitution claimed a fourth part of the deceased's estate, we
have repealed the said enactment, and not permitted its insertion in
our Code from that of Theodosius. By the constitution which we have
published, and by which we have altogether deprived it of validity,
we have provided that in case of the survival of grandchildren by
a daughter, greatgrandchildren by a granddaughter, or more remote
descendants related through a female, the agnates shall have no claim to
any part of the estate of the deceased, that collaterals may no longer
be preferred to lineal descendants; which constitution we hereby reenact
with all its force from the date originally determined: provided always,
as we direct, that the inheritance shall be divided between sons and
grandchildren by a daughter, or between all the grandchildren, and other
more remote descendants, according to stocks, and not by counting heads,
on the principle observed by the ancient law in dividing an inheritance
between sons and grandchildren by a son, the issue obtaining without
any diminution the portion which would have belonged to their mother or
father, grandmother or grandfather: so that if, for instance, there be
one or two children by one stock, and three or four by another, the
one or two, and the three or four, shall together take respectively one
moiety of the inheritance.

TITLE II. OF THE STATUTORY SUCCESSION OF AGNATES

If there is no family heir, nor any of those persons called to the
succession along with family heirs by the praetor or the imperial
legislation, to take the inheritance in any way, it devolves, by the
statute of the Twelve