Dictionary
INHERITANCE	100.00%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Roman. If a man died intestate leaving a wife and children of his body or adopted, they were his heirs (sui heredes). But this did not apply to married daughters who had passed into the manus of their husbands, or the children who had been freed by emancipation from the potestas of their father. If the man left no wife or children, the agnati, or relations in the male line, inherited, according to the degree of their kinship. If there were no agnati, and the man was a patrician, the property went to his gens. The cognati, or relations in the female line, were originally not entitled to inherit by the civil law. But, as time went on, their claim was gradually recognised more and more to the exclusion of the agnati, until at last Justinian entirely abolished the privilege of the latter, and substituted the principle of blood-relationships for that of the civil law. Vestal Virgins were regarded as entirely cut off from the family union, and therefore could not inherit from an intestate, nor, in case of their dying intestate, did the property go to their family, but to the state. But, unlike other women, they had unlimited right of testamentary disposition. If a freedman died intestate and childless, the patronus and his wife had the first claim to inherit, then their children, then their agnati, and (if the patronus was a patrician) then his gens. In later times, even if a freedman, dying childless, left a will, the patronus and his sons had claim to half the property. Augustus made a number of provisions in the matter of freedmen's inheritance. The civil law made it compulsory on a man's sui heredes to accept an inheritance whether left by will or not. But as the debts were taken over with the property, the edictum of the praetor allowed the heirs to decline it. A fortiori, no other persons named in the will could be compelled to accept the legacy. (See WILL.)
INHERITANCE	100.00%
Greek (Athens). If a person died intestate, leaving sons, all of equal birthright, and none of them disinherited, the sons inherited the property in equal parts, the eldest probably receiving the same share as the rest. If there were daughters, they were provided for by dowries, which, in case they were divorced or childless after marriage, went back to the remaining heirs. If a man had no sons of his own, be usually adopted a son to continue the family and the religious worship connected with it. If he had daughters he would marry one of them to, the adopted son; in this case the chief share of the inheritance would fall to this married daughter and her husband, the rest receiving dowries. If there were only daughters surviving, the succession passed to them. In such a case the next of kin had a legal right to one of the heiresses, (epicleros) and could claim to marry her, even if she had married some one else before receiving the inheritance. And poor heiresses, on the other hand, had a legal claim on their nearest of kin either for marriage, or for a provision suitable to their circumstances. If a man had married an heiress, be was bound by custom and tradition, if he had sons, to name one as heir to the property which had come with is wife, and thus to restore the house of the maternal grandfather. Children born out of wedlock were illegitimate, and had no claim on the father's estate. If a man died intestate, leaving no heirs either, of his body or adopted, his nearest relations in the male line inherited, and in default of these, those in the female line as far as the children of first cousins. Any one thinking he had a legal claim to the inheritance made an application to the archon to hand it over to him. The application was posted up in public, and read out in the following, ecclesia. The question was then asked whether any one disputed the claim, or raised a counter-claim. If not, the archon assigned the inheritance to the claimant; otherwise the matter was decided by a law-suit. Even after the assignment of an inheritance, it might be disputed in the lifetime of the holder, and for five years, after his death. The claim of the nearest relation to an heiress was in the same way lodged with the archon and ratified before the assembly.
COMMERCIUM	63.72%
A legal relation existing between two Italian states, according to which the citizens of each had the same right of acquiring property, especially landed property, in the territory of the other. Commercium also included the powers of inheriting legacies and contracting obligations.
MANUS	48.32%
in its wider sense, is the name given by the Romans to the power of the chief of a family over the whole of that family, especially the power of the husband over his wife, whose person and property were so completely his own, that he was legally responsible for her actions, but at the same time had the right to kill, punish, or sell her. As in this respect, so also with respect to the right of inheritance, the wife was placed on a level with the children, as she obtained the same share as they. For marriages without manus, see MARRIAGE.
THEOCLYMENUS	45.97%
Son of the soothsayer Polyphides , grandson of Melampus. When a fugitive from Argos, for a murder which he had committed, he met with Telemachus in Pylus, who succoured him and brought him to Ithaca. By means of his inherited gift of prophecy, he here made known to Penelope the presence of Odysseus in the island, and warned the suitors of their fate.
AUTOLYCUS	45.38%
Son of Hermes and Chione, or (according to another account) Philonis, father of Anticleia, the mother of Odysseus. In Greek mythology he figured as the prince of thieves. From his father he inherited the gift of making himself and all his stolen goods invisible, or changing them so as to preclude the possibility of recognition. He was an accomplished wrestler, and was said to have given Heracles instruction in the art.
HIPPOCOON	41.89%
Son of (Ebalus of Sparta and of the Nymph Bateia, drove his brothers Tyndareos and Icarius from home. Afterwards, in consequence of his slaying the young (Eonus, a kinsman of Heracles, he himself, with his twenty sons, was slain by Heracles in alliance with king Cepheus of Tegea. Tyndareos was thereby restored to the inheritance of his father's kingdom.
AS	41.07%
PANDION	37.38%
Son of Cecrops and Metiadusa, grandson of Erechtheus, king of Athens. Driven into exile by the sons of his brother Metion, he went to Megara, where he married Pylia, the daughter of king Pylas, and inherited the kingdom. His sons, Aegeus, Lycus, Pallas, and Nisus, regained Attica from the Metionidae, and the first three shared it among themselves, while Nisus (q.v.) received Megara.
WILLS	37.18%
HIPPOTHOON	35.29%
Son of Poseidon and Alope, the daughter of Cercyon of Eleusis. After his birth he was exposed by his mother and suckled by a mare, until some shepherds found him and reared him. Alope (who had been imprisoned for life by her father), was transformed into a spring bearing her own name at Eleusis. When Theseus (q.v.) overcame Cercyon in wrestling, and killed him, he restored to Hippothoon the inheritance of his grandfather. He was afterwards honoured as the hero of the Attic tribe that bore his name.
ADOPTION	34.77%
At Athens adoption took place either in the adopter's lifetime or by will; or again, if a man died childless and intestate, the State interfered to bring into his house the man next entitled by the Attic law of inheritance asheir and adoptive-son, so that the race and the religious rites peculiar to it might not die out. None but the independent citizen of respectable character could adopt, and he only while he was as yet without male heirs. If there were daughters, one of them was usually betrothed to the adopted son, and the rest portioned off with dowries. If after that a male heir was born, he and the adopted had equal rights.
AGNATIO	34.75%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Latin name for the relationship of real or adoptive descent from one father, which was necessarily expressed by identity of clan-name (see NAME, 2.) A brother and sister were agnati, but her children were no longer agnati to his. At first agnati alone were entitled to inherit property or act as guardians; it was but gradually that the cognati (q.v.) came to have a place by their side, till Justinian abolished the right of agnates, and brought that of cognates to complete recognition.
ISAEUS	34.46%
The fifth of the Ten Attic Orators, a pupil of Isocrates; born before B.C. 400 at Chalcis in Euboea. He lived to the middle of the 4th century at Athens, probably as a resident alien (metoikos), writing forensic speeches for other people and giving instruction in rhetoric. Demosthenes was for several years his pupil. Of the sixty-four speeches attributed to him by antiquity, we have (besides some not unimportant fragments) eleven speeches dealing with matters relating to inheritance, and therefore of great importance as throwing light upon Attic private, law. In his style he most closely resembles Lysias, to whom he is inferior in natural elegance, while he surpasses him in oratorical skill.
CENTUMVIRI	26.69%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 This was the title of the single jury for the trial of civil causes at Rome. In the republican age it consisted of 105 members, chosen from the tribes (three from each of the thirty-five). Under the Empire its number was increased to 180. It was divided into four sections (consilia), and exercised its jurisdiction in the name of the people, partly in sections, partly as a single collegium. It had to deal with questions of property, and particularly with those of inheritance. In the later years of the Republic it was presided over by men of quaestorian rank; but from the time of Augustus by a commission of ten (decem viri litibus iudicandis). The pleadings were oral, and the proceedings public. In earlier times they took place in the forum; under the Empire in a basilica. In the imperial age the centumviral courts were the only sphere in which an ambitious orator or lawyer could win distinction. The last mention of them is in 395 A.D. The peculiar symbol of the centumviral court was a hasta or spear (see HASTA).
PHILOCTETES	25.43%
The son of Posas, king of the Malians in OEta. He inherited the bow and arrows of Heracles (q.v.). He was leader of seven ships in the expedition against Troy; but, on the way out, was bitten by a snake at Lemnos, or the small island of Chryse near Lemnos, and, on account of the intolerable stench caused by the wound, was abandoned at Lemnos on the advice of Odysseus. Here in his sickness he dragged out a miserable life till the tenth year of the war. Then, however, on account of Helenus' prophecy that Troy could only be conquered by the arrows of Heracles, Odysseus and Diomedes went to fetch him, and he was healed by Machaon. After he had slain Paris, Troy was conquered. He was one, of the heroes who came safe home again. [The story of Philoctetes was dramatized by Aeschylus and Euripides (B.C. 431), as well as by Sophocles (409). It is also the theme of numerous monuments of ancient art. See Jebb's introduction to Soph. Phil., P. xxxvii.]
EMANCIPATIO	25.04%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The formal liberation of a son from the control (manus) of his father. If the son were sold three times over, all the rights of his father came to an end. If then a father wished to make a son his own master (sui iuris), he made him over three times by mancipatio or a fictitious sale to a third person. The third person emancipated him the first and second time, so that he came again into the control of his father. After purchasing him a third time he either emancipated him himself, and thus became his patronus, or he sold him back to his father, to whom he now stood, not in the relation of a son, but in mancipio, so that the father could liberate him without more ado. In this case the father remained patronus of the son. The emancipated son did not, as in the case of adoption (see ADOPTION), Pass into the patria potestas of another, and therefore retained his father's family name. But he lost his right to inherit in default of a will.
GORTYN	24.59%
[An archaic Greek inscription discovered in 1884 by Halbherr, in the bed of a mill-stream at Hagios Deka in Crete, the site of the Greek city of Gortyn. After many difficulties, the whole of it was copied and published at the end of the year. It was found to be inscribed in 12 columns on the inside wall of a circular building about 100 feet in diameter, which was probably a theatre, and covers a space of about 30 feet in length, to a height of between 5 and 6 feet from the ground. The lines are written alternately from left to right and from right to left. Two fragments of it had been discovered before, one of them being in the Louvre at Paris, and with the addition of these fragments the inscription was found to be practically complete. It contains a collection of laws regulating the private relations of the inhabitants of Gortyn. These laws deal chiefly with such subjects as Inheritance, Adoption, Heiresses, Marriage and Divorce, and incidentally afford much information on the slave system, the tenure of land and property, the organization of the courts, and other matters of interest. Its chief value is perhaps as throwing light upon the laws of the earlier Athenian legislators. The inscription is probably to be dated a few years before 400 B.C.]- C. A. M.Pond.
ATTICUS	23.98%
T. Pomponius. A Roman of an old and wealthy equestrian family, born 109 B.C. He received a good education in boyhood and youth, and went in the year 88 B.C. to Athens, where he lived until 65, devoting himself entirely to study, and much respected by the citizens for his generosity and cultivated refinement. In 65 he returned to Rome, to take possession of the inheritance left him by his uncle and adoptive father, Q. Caecilius. He now became Q. Caecilius Pomponianus. From this time onward he lived on terms of intimacy with men like Cicero, Hortensius, and Cornelius Nepos, who wrote a life of him which we still possess. He avoided public life and the strife of parties. This fact, in addition to his general amiability and good nature, enabled him during the civil wars to keep on the best of terms with the leaders of the conflicting parties, Cicero, Brutus, and Antonius. He died after a painful illness, of voluntary starvation, in the year 32 B.C. Atticus was the author of several works, the most considerable of which was a history (liber annalis) dedicated to Cicero. This gave a short epitome of the bare events of Roman history down to B.C. 54, arranged according to the series of consuls and other magistrates, with contemporaneous notices. But his most important contribution to Latin literature was his edition of the letters which he had received from Cicero. He also did great service by setting his numerous slaves to work at copying the writings of his contemporaries.
HERODES ATTICUS	22.24%
(the name in full is Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes). A celebrated Greek rhetorician, born about A.D. 101, at Marathon. He belonged to a very ancient family, and received a careful education in rhetoric and philosophy from the leading teachers of his day. His talents and his eloquence won him the favour of the emperor Hadrian, who, in A.D. 125, appointed him prefect over the free towns of the Province of Asia. On his return to Athens, about 129, he attained a most exalted position, not only as a teacher of oratory, but also as the owner of immense wealth, which he had inherited from his father. This he most liberally devoted to the support of his fellow citizens, and to the erection of splendid public buildings in various parts of Greece. He had just been archon, when in 140 he was summoned to Rome by Antoninus Pius, to instruct the imperial princes, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, in Greek oratory. Amongst other marks of distinction given him for this was the consulship in 143. His old age was saddened by misunderstandings with his fellow citizens and heavy family calamities. He died at Marathon in 177. His pre-eminence as an orator was universally acknowledged by his contemporaries; he was called the king of orators, and was placed on a level with the great masters of antiquity. His reputation is hardly borne out by an unimportant rhetorical exercise (On the Constitution) calling on the Thebans to join the Peloponnesians against Archelaus, king of Macedonia. This has come down to us under his name, but its genuineness is not free from doubt. Numerous inscriptions still remain to attest his ancient renown; and out of the number of his public buildings, there is still standing at Athens the Odeum, a theatre erected in memory of his wife Regilla.