I would like to thank you for your time and the information you have made available to the viewers. It is a great opportunity for others to take the references and statements you have made and see for themselves where it leads. There is definately enough information from your responses, enough to give them a very good start. Thank you for making it simple enough for even us non scholars, and as for me just a nobody, to be able to gain further understanding with the tools you have offered. That is not saying one would have to take your position in order to use the tools, but it is like a non believer bringing a bible to the attention of someone else. Even with dishonorable motives at least the opportunity exists for both to behold the truth. It leaves no excuses. Thanks again
The Riley Family
www.newhopeforall.info (in the preparation stages)
www.backsideoftheedge.com (I am employed as an unskilled laborer. Here is a website with some insight)
PS angellous_evangellous I was curious about The Paterfamilias
Pater familias
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The
pater familias (plural:
patres familias) was the highest ranking family status (
status familiae) in an
Ancient Roman household,
always a male position. The term is
Latin, literally, for "father of the family". The form is irregular and
archaic in Latin, preserving the old
genitive ending in -as (see
Latin declension).
The Roman
pater was not a
father in the
modern, mostly
western, sense of the concept, but a chief of the
family domus (house).
Pater is thus a distinct concept for that of the
biological father, which was called the
Genitor. The power held by the
pater familias was called
patria potestas (paternal power)."
Potestas is distinct from
auctoritas, also held by the
pater. The power of the
pater was over his
familia iure proprio (not necessarely kin-based, but a political, economical and religious unit) and his
familia domestica (based on kinship and co-residence).
Patria potestas
Under the laws of the
Twelve Tables, the
pater familias had
vitae necisque potestas - the "power of life and death" - over his children, his wife (in some cases), and his slaves, all of whom were said to be
sub manu, "under his hand". For a slave to become a
freedman (someone with
status libertatis), he would have to be delivered "out of the hand" of the
pater familias, hence the terms
manumissio and
emancipatio. At law, at any rate, his word was absolute and final. If a child was unwanted, under the
Roman Republic the
pater familias had the power to order the
child put to death by
exposure.
He had the power to sell his children into
slavery;
Roman law provided, however, that if a child has been sold as a slave three times, he is no longer subject to the
patria potestas. The
pater familias had the power to approve or reject
marriages of his sons and daughters; however, an edict of the
Emperor Caesar Augustus provided that the
pater familias could not withold that permission lightly.
One should notice that the
pater's children, the
filii familias, could be other than biological offspring, such as brothers, nephews or
adoptive sons and daughters. In Ancient Rome, the family household was, therefore, conceived as a economical and juridical unit subordinated to a single person, with a great deal of authority (the
potestas and
auctoritas) over all its members - in fact, the Latin word
familia (which is the etymological origin for the English word "family"), originally meant the group of the
famuli (
servus or
serfs and slaves) living under the same roof. And the
familia was considered the basic social unit, more primordial, for instances, than the
gens (clan, caste, or group of families).
Besides being a chief, the
pater familias was the only person endowed with
legal capacity, or
sui iuris. Women (in most but not all cases), the
filii, slaves and foreigners had a
capitis deminutio (literally, a "diminished head", meaning diminished capacity), that is, they could not celebrate
valid contracts, nor did they posses, by rule, personal property. All assets and contracts belonged, in principle, to the
pater. A
capitis deminutio meant a tendencial lack of
legal personality, even if there were some restrictions: there were laws protecting the slaves, and the incapable (everyone with a
capitis deminutio) could, in some circunstances, posses a quasi- personal property, the
peculium.
As such, the
patres familias were the only full legal persons, but, because of their extended rights (their
longa manus, literally "long hand"), they also had a series of extra duties: duties towards the women, the
filii and the slaves (though some of these duties were not recognized by the original
ius civile, but only by the
ius gentium, specially directed to foreigners, or by the
ius honorarium, the law of the
Magistratus, specially the
Praetor, which emerges in a latter period of
Roman law).
Only a
Roman citizen, someone with
status civitatis, could enjoy the
status of
pater familias. There could only be one holder of the office within a household. Even male adult
filii remained under the authority of their
pater while he still lived, and could not acquire the rights of a
pater familias while he was yet alive; at least in legal theory, all their
property was acquired on behalf of their father, and he, not they, had ultimate authority to dispose of it. Those who lived in their own households at the time of the
pater's death succeeded to the status of
pater familias over their respective households (
pater familias sui iuris), even if they were just in their teens. Women were always under the control (
sub manu) of a
pater familias, either their original
pater, or the
pater of their husband's family once married.
Over time, the absolute authority of the
pater familias tended to be weakened, and rights that theoretically existed were no longer enforced or insisted upon.
