User:Wikibiohistory/Patrilineality in Ancient Rome


 * See the parent article at Patrilineality

In Roman law, agnati were  persons related through males only, as opposed to cognati. Agnation was founded on the idea of the family held together by the patria potestas; cognatio involves simply the modern idea of kindred.

In Roman times, all citizens were divided by gens (clan) and familia (sept), determined on a purely patrilineal basis, in the same way as the modern inheritance of surnames. (The gens was the larger unit, and was divided into several familiae: a person called "Gaius Iulius Caesar" belonged to the Julian gens and the Caesar family.)

In the early Republic, inheritance could only occur within the family, and was therefore purely agnatic. Women were largely excluded from inheritance until the Middle Republic, but suffered a legal setback in the passage of the Lex Voconia in 169 BC. This was however evaded by careful planning, and by 42 BC, many women had inherited large wealth.

Early Republic
In the early Republic, inheritance could only occur within the family, and was therefore purely agnatic. Males inherited from other male relatives and from their mothers. It is not clear whether men could inherit from maternal kinsmen without adoption.

Women who were not Vestal Virgins were apparently unable to make wills without special exemptions. A woman's property went to her husband on her marriage. Any property inherited from her husband or from relatives as a widow went to her sons, and not to her daughters. (See the case of Aemilia Paulla below).

Middle Republic and the Late Republic
During the Middle Republic, three Punic Wars meant that men often faced their sons, grandsons, brothers, and nephews dying successively in battle. Some adopted their sisters's sons (as did at least one Licinius Crassus, whose adoptive son was a consul and Pontifex Maximus in 132 BC). Others may have adopted their daughter's sons, as did another Licinius Crassus (consul of 95 BC). Scipio Africanus's own elder son adopted his own cousin (mother's brother's second son) Scipio Aemilianus as his son. Adoptions outside the gens became more and more common, but there was often a blood connection as described or one by marriage (as when Metellus Pius, Pontifex Maximus, adopted his wife's nephew Metellus Scipio). Thus, inheritances ceased to be patrilineal biologically (allowing property and wealth to pass out of the gens), but were often tied to full adoption or at least testamentary adoption (by the Late Republic). Examples of men inheriting from other male relatives outside the clan are apparently rare.

By the Middle Republic, probably due to the Second Punic War (218-201 BC), enough women were inheriting substantial fortunes that a new law the Lex Voconia was passed in 169 BC, forbidding women to inherit fortunes by will from male relatives who owned property valued at 100,000 asses (or perhaps sesterces) from making a woman their heir. (Roman men could leave fortunes to their female relatives only by dying intestate, or by creating a fideicommissum (possibly as early as 200 BC when the institution is mentioned by Terence), by applying for a senatorial exemption as did Cornelia Africana in 121 BC, or more daringly, by avoiding registration in the census which entailed loss of some civic rights). All these methods required either substantial and careful planning, or total lack of planning (i.e. the absence of a will).

In the Middle Republic, Aemilia Paulla, widow of Scipio Africanus, died circa 162 BC. Her heir at her death was her adoptive grandson Scipio Aemilianus and not her two daughters Cornelia Africana Major and Cornelia Africana Minor, Mother of the Gracchi (who famously claimed her children were her jewels, perhaps in reaction to her failure to inherit her mother's extensive jewelry). Her jewelry went to her grandson, who in turn gave it not to his adoptive aunts but to his own birth mother Papiria.

The law was apparently still operational circa 67 BC, when Cato the Younger's half-brother Quintus Servilius Caepio died, adopting his nephew Brutus as his testamentary heir, which adoption while preserving the family line legally, excluded his own widow Hortensia and daughter Servilia from inheriting anything. The Lex Voconia was partly invalidated by the Lex Papia Poppaea in 9 AD which allowed certain married women with three children (if born free) and four (if a freedwoman) to inherit property. In practice, by 42 AD, at least 1400 Roman women had inherited enough substantial property, and the Second Triumvirate unsuccessfully attempted to tax women for the first time in Roman history.

Imperial Rome
In Imperial times, the system favoring patrilineal inheritance was changed by the Praetorian edict, giving paternal and maternal relatives equal rights.