onquerors of the empire, and notably the nations of Sclavonic origin,
which exhibited a Patria Potestas at all resembling that which was
described in the Pandects and the Code. All the Germanic immigrants
seem to have recognised a corporate union of the family under the
_mund_, or authority of a patriarchal chief; but his powers are
obviously only the relics of a decayed Patria Potestas, and fell far
short of those enjoyed by the Roman father. The Franks are
particularly mentioned as not having the Roman Institution, and
accordingly the old French lawyers, even when most busily engaged in
filling the interstices of barbarous custom with rules of Roman law,
were obliged to protect themselves against the intrusion of the
Potestas by the express maxim, _Puyssance de pere en France n'a lieu_.
The tenacity of the Romans in maintaining this relic of their most
ancient condition is in itself remarkable, but it is less remarkable
than the diffusion of the Potestas over the whole of a civilisation
from which it had once disappeared. While the Castrense Peculium
constituted as yet the sole exception to the father's power over
property, and while his power over his children's persons was still
extensive, the Roman citizenship, and with it the Patria Potestas,
were spreading into every corner of the empire. Every African or
Spaniard, every Gaul, Briton, or Jew, who received this honour by
gift, purchase, or inheritance, placed himself under the Roman Law of
Persons, and, though our authorities intimate that children born
before the acquisition of citizenship could not be brought under Power
against their will, children born after it and all ulterior
descendants were on the ordinary footing of a Roman _filius familias_.
It does not fall within the province of this treatise to examine the
mechanism of the later Roman society, but I may be permitted to remark
that there is little foundation for the opinion which represents the
constitution of Antoninus Caracalla conferring Roman citizenship on
the whole of his subjects as a measure of small importance. However we
may interpret it, it must have enormously enlarged the sphere of the
Patria Potestas, and it seems to me that the tightening of family
relations which it effected is an agency which ought to be kept in
view more than it has been, in accounting for the great moral
revolution which was transforming the world.

Before this branch of our subject is dismissed, it should be observe