yed over and through the family; his property, his slaves, and
all his ancestral privileges, together, on the other hand, with all
his duties and obligations.

With these data before us, we are able to note several remarkable
points in which the Mancipatory Testament, as it may be called,
differed in its primitive form from a modern will. As it amounted to a
conveyance _out-and-out_ of the Testator's estate, it was not
_revocable_. There could be no new exercise of a power which had been
exhausted.

Again, it was not secret. The Familiae Emptor, being himself the Heir,
knew exactly what his rights were, and was aware that he was
irreversibly entitled to the inheritance; a knowledge which the
violences inseparable from the best-ordered ancient society rendered
extremely dangerous. But perhaps the most surprising consequence of
this relation of Testaments to Conveyances was the immediate vesting
of the inheritance in the Heir. This has seemed so incredible to not a
few civilians, that they have spoken of the Testator's estate as
vesting conditionally on the Testator's death or as granted to him
from a time uncertain, _i.e._ the death of the grantor. But down to
the latest period of Roman jurisprudence there was a certain class of
transactions which never admitted of being directly modified by a
condition, or of being limited to or from a point of time. In
technical language they did not admit _conditio_ or _dies_.
Mancipation was one of them, and therefore, strange as it may seem, we
are forced to conclude that the primitive Roman Will took effect at
once, even though the Testator survived his act of Testation. It is
indeed likely that Roman citizens originally made their Wills only in
the article of death, and that a provision for the continuance of the
Family effected by a man in the flower of life would take the form
rather of an Adoption than of a Will. Still we must believe that, if
the Testator did recover, he could only continue to govern his
household by the sufferance of his Heir.

Two or three remarks should be made before I explain how these
inconveniences were remedied, and how Testaments came to be invested
with the characteristics now universally associated with them. The
Testament was not necessarily written: at first, it seems to have been
invariably oral, and, even in later times, the instrument declaratory
of the bequests was only incidentally connected with the Will and
formed no essential part of i