,
nor the honors of a triumph, could exempt the most illustrious citizen
from the bonds of filial subjection: [107] his own descendants were
included in the family of their common ancestor; and the claims of
adoption were not less sacred or less rigorous than those of nature.
Without fear, though not without danger of abuse, the Roman legislators
had reposed an unbounded confidence in the sentiments of paternal love;
and the oppression was tempered by the assurance that each generation
must succeed in its turn to the awful dignity of parent and master.
[Footnote 102: See the patria potestas in the Institutes, (l. i. tit.
ix.,) the Pandects, (l. i. tit. vi. vii.,) and the Code, (l. viii. tit.
xlvii. xlviii. xlix.) Jus potestatis quod in liberos habemus proprium
est civium Romanorum. Nulli enim alii sunt homines, qui talem in liberos
habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus. * Note: The newly-discovered
Institutes of Gaius name one nation in which the same power was vested
in the parent. Nec me praeterit Galatarum gentem credere, in potestate
parentum liberos esse. Gaii Instit. edit. 1824, p. 257.--M.]

[Footnote 103: Dionysius Hal. l. ii. p. 94, 95. Gravina (Opp. p. 286)
produces the words of the xii. tables. Papinian (in Collatione Legum
Roman et Mosaicarum, tit. iv. p. 204) styles this patria potestas, lex
regia: Ulpian (ad Sabin. l. xxvi. in Pandect. l. i. tit. vi. leg. 8)
says, jus potestatis moribus receptum; and furiosus filium in potestate
habebit How sacred--or rather, how absurd! * Note: All this is in strict
accordance with the Roman character.--W.]

[Footnote 1031: This parental power was strictly confined to the Roman
citizen. The foreigner, or he who had only jus Latii, did not possess
it. If a Roman citizen unknowingly married a Latin or a foreign wife, he
did not possess this power over his son, because the son, following the
legal condition of the mother, was not a Roman citizen. A man, however,
alleging sufficient cause for his ignorance, might raise both mother and
child to the rights of citizenship. Gaius. p. 30.--M.]

[Footnote 104: Pandect. l. xlvii. tit. ii. leg. 14, No. 13, leg. 38, No.
1. Such was the decision of Ulpian and Paul.]

[Footnote 105: The trina mancipatio is most clearly defined by Ulpian,
(Fragment. x. p. 591, 592, edit. Schulting;) and best illustrated in
the Antiquities of Heineccius. * Note: The son of a family sold by his
father did not become in every respect a slave, he was stat