Latin
Ancient Law
Roman Law and Society, Useful Links to Roman Law Materials. 2.1.183
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Before this branch of our subject is dismissed, it should be observed that the Paterfamilias was answerable for the delicts (or torts) of his Sons under Power. He was similarly liable for the torts of his slaves; but in both cases he originally possessed the singular privilege of tendering the delinquent's person in full satisfaction of the damage. The responsibility thus incurred on behalf of sons, coupled with the mutual incapacity of parent and Child under Power to sue one another, has seemed to some jurists to be best explained by the assumption of a "unity of person" between the Paterfamilias and the Filius-familias. In the chapter on Successions I shall attempt to show in what sense, and to what extent, this "unity" can be accepted as a reality. I can only say at present that these responsibilities of the Paterfamilias, and other legal phenomena which will be discussed hereafter, appear to me to point at certain duties of the primitive Patriarchal chieftain which balanced his rights. I conceive that, if he disposed absolutely of the persons and fortune of his clansmen, this representative ownership was coextensive with a liability to provide for all members of the brotherhood out of the common fund. The difficulty is to throw ourselves out of our habitual associations sufficiently for conceiving the nature of his obligation. It was not a legal duty, for law had not yet penetrated into the precinct of the Family. To call it moral is perhaps to anticipate the ideas belonging to a later stage of mental development; but the expression "moral obligation" is significant enough for our purpose, if we understand by it a duty semi-consciously followed and enforced rather by instinct and habit than by definite sanctions.