Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Family Law

interested in maintaining the father’s ownership rights and the children’s inheritance rights than in the day-to-day mainte nance of the children. So, for instance, there does not seem to have been a strong mechanism for recovering a child who had run away on her own. The children we have been speaking of were normally the biological offspring of the parents in question, but in principle one could gain or lose parents by purely legal acts. Roman law recognized adoptions, and in practice they seem to have been accepted without the social ambivalence sometimes shown today. Romans typically adopted to provide an heir for the family. Hence, they adopted adults (safer in a world of high infant mortality) and males only (women would not continue the family name). At least among the elite, the adoptees were typically of similar status; there was no element of charity involved in this practice, except on the part of the “donating” family, whose own prospects of succession were at least a little harmed. The adopted child was entirely severed from his origi nal family in terms of patria potestas , inheritance, and the rest (though some symbolic traces of the old family were generally retained, such as part of his old name). His rights and respon sibilities in his new family were precisely those of a biological child. The other major motivation for adoption was one that no longer exists. A child born into slavery was not legally part of his biological family, even if subsequently freed. This situation could be (partially) corrected if the father went on to adopt the child; for technical reasons, however, this could be done only for a son. Daughters remained legal orphans. Moreover,

183