nt to be his
heir. The strict rules of Roman law must always have permitted such an
alienation, but, when the transaction was intended to have a
posthumous effect, there may have been disputes whether it was valid
for Testamentary purposes without the formal assent of the Patrician
Parliament. If a difference of opinion existed on the point between
the two classes of the Roman population, it was extinguished, with
many other sources of heartburning, by the great Decemviral
compromise. The text of the Twelve Tables is still extant which says,
"_Pater familias uti de pecunia tutelave rei suae legassit, ita jus
esto_"--a law which can hardly have had any other object than the
legalisation of the Plebeian Will.

It is well known to scholars that, centuries after the Patrician
Assembly had ceased to be the legislature of the Roman State, it still
continued to hold formal sittings for the convenience of private
business. Consequently, at a period long subsequent to the publication
of the Decemviral Law, there is reason to believe that the Comitia
Calata still assembled for the validation of Testaments. Its probable
functions may be best indicated by saying that it was a Court of
Registration, with the understanding however that the Wills exhibited
were not _enrolled_, but simply recited to the members, who were
supposed to take note of their tenor and to commit them to memory. It
is very likely that this form of Testament was never reduced to
writing at all, but at all events if the Will had been originally
written, the office of the Comitia was certainly confined to hearing
it read aloud, the document being retained afterwards in the custody
of the Testator, or deposited under the safeguard of some religious
corporation. This publicity may have been one of the incidents of the
Testament executed in the Comitia Calata which brought it into popular
disfavour. In the early years of the Empire the Comitia still held its
meetings, but they seem to have lapsed into the merest form, and few
Wills, or none, were probably presented at the periodical sitting.

It is the ancient Plebeian Will--the alternative of the Testament just
described--which in its remote effects has deeply modified the
civilisation of the modern world. It acquired at Rome all the
popularity which the Testament submitted to the Calata Comitia appears
to have lost. The key to all its characteristics lies in its descent
from the _mancipium_, or ancient Roman conv