[13] Some scholars suggest that the Latin represented by the words
"and for matters in court" should be omitted and that the passage
should open "For persons judged liable for acknowledged debt", thus
restricting the period of thirty days' grace only to matters of debt.
Even if this view be correct, it disproves not the probability that
the thirty days applied to various kinds of cases.

[14] "Shall cut pieces" (_partes secanto_) is explained variously: "to
divide the debtor's functions or capabilities", "to claim shares in
the debtor's property", "to divide the price obtained for the sale of
the debtor's person", "to divide the debtor's family and goods", "to
announce to the magistrate their shares of the debtor's estate"; the
old Roman writers, however, understand by the phrase that the
creditors can cut their several shares of the debtor's body!

[15] In primitive times a father can sell his son into slavery. If the
buyer free the son, the son reënters his father's control (_patria
potestas_).

Here apparently we have an old _formula_ surviving in a sham triple
sale, whereby a descendant is liberated from the authority of an
ascendant, or after a triple transfer and a triple manumission the son
is freed from his father and stands in his own right (_sui iuris_).

[16] Otherwise (an interpretation probably, perhaps not a paraphrase):
"After ten months from [the father's] death a child born shall not be
admitted into a legal inheritance."

[17] "Full age" for females is 25 years. For keeping women of full age
under a guardian almost no reason of any worth can be urged. The