TITLE XVII. OF THE STATUTORY GUARDIANSHIP OF PATRONS
The same statute of the Twelve Tables assigns the guardianship of freedmen and freedwomen to the patron and his children, and this guardianship, like that of agnates, is called statutory guardianship; not that it is anywhere expressly enacted in that statute, but because its interpretation by the jurists has procured for it as much reception as it could have obtained from express enactment: the fact that the inheritance of a freedman or freedwoman, when they die intestate, was given by the statute to the patron and his children, being deemed a proof that they were intended to have the guardianship also, partly because in dealing with agnates the statute coupled guardianship with succession, and partly on the principle that where the advantage of the succession is, there, as a rule, ought too to be the burden of the guardianship. We say 'as a rule,' because if a slave below the age of puberty is manumitted by a woman, though she is entitled, as patroness, to the succession, another person is guardian.