goods were given to the _gentiles_, male relatives of the clan bearing
the same name. In fact, under this régime we may say that of the female
line the daughter alone was sure of inheriting something.

In the days of the Empire some attempts were made to be more just. It
was enacted[174] that all the children should be called to the estate,
whether they had been under the power of the testator at the time of his
death or not; and female relatives were now allowed to come in for
their share "in the third degree," that is, if there was neither a child
or an agnate surviving. This was not much of an improvement; and the
principle of agnate succession is the only point in which Roman law
failed to give to women those equal rights which it allowed them in
other cases.

[Sidenote: Protection of property of children.]

There is no point on which Roman law laid more stress than that the
children, both male and female, were to be constantly protected and must
receive their legal share of their father's or mother's goods. After a
husband's divorce or death his wife could, indeed, enjoy possession of
the property and the usufruct; but the principal had to be conserved
intact for the children until they arrived at maturity. In the same way
a father was obliged to keep untouched for the children whatever had
been left them by the mother on her decease[175]; and he must also leave
them that part, at least, of his own property prescribed by the
Falcidian Law. A case--and it was common enough in real life--such as
that described by Dickens in _David Copperfield_, where, by the English
law, a second husband acquired absolute right over his wife's property
and shut out her son, would have been impossible under Roman law.
Neither husband nor wife could succeed to one another's intestate estate