[289] Quid enim in re est aliud, si plebeiam patricius duxerit, si patriciam plebeius? Quid juris tandem mutatur? nempe patrem sequuntur liberi.—Livy, lib. iv, cap. 4.
[290] “When there was only one daughter in a family, she used to be called from the name of the gens; thus, Tullia, the daughter of Cicero, Julia, the daughter of Caesar; Octavia, the sister of Augustus, etc.; and they retained the same name after they were married. When there were two daughters, the one was called Major and the other Minor. If there were more than two, they were distinguished by their number: thus, Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta, etc.; or more softly, Tertulla, Quartilla, Quintilla, etc.... During the flourishing state of the republic, the names of the gentes, and surnames of the familiæ, always remained fixed and certain. They were common to all the children of the family, and descended to their posterity. But after the subversion of liberty they were changed and confounded.”—Adams’s Roman Antiquities, Glasgow ed., 1825, p. 27.
[291] Suetonius, Vit. Octavianus, c. 3 and 4.
[292] Gaius, Institutes, lib. iii, 1 and 2. The wife was a co-heiress with the children.
[293] Ib., lib. iii, 9.
[294] Gaius, Inst., lib. iii, 17.
[295] A singular question arose between the Marcelli and Claudii, two families of the Claudian gens, with respect to the estate of the son of a freedman of the Marcelli; the former claiming by right of family, and the latter by right of gens. The law of the Twelve Tables gave the estate of a freedman to his former master, who by the act of manumission became his patron, provided he died intestate, and without sui heredes; but it did not reach the case of the son of a freedman. The fact that the Claudii were a patrician family, and the Marcelli were not, could not affect the question. The freedman did not acquire gentile rights in his master’s gens by his manumission, although he was allowed to adopt the gentile name of his patron; as Cicero’s freedman, Tyro, was called M. Tullius Tyro. It is not known how the case, which is mentioned by Cicero (De Oratore, i, 39), and commented upon by Long (Smith’s Dic. Gk. & Rom. Antiq., Art. Gens), and Niebuhr, was decided; but the latter suggests that it was probably against the Claudii (Hist. of Rome, i, 245, note). It is difficult to discover how any claim whatever could be urged by the Claudii; or any by the Marcelli, except through an extension of the patronal right by judicial construction. It is a noteworthy case, because it shows how strongly the mutual rights with respect to the inheritance of property were intrenched in the gens.
[296] History of Rome, i, 242
[297] Patricia gens Claudia ... agrum insuper trans Anienem clientibus locumque sibi ad sepulturam sub capitolio, publice accepit.—Suet., Vit. Tiberius, cap. 1.
[298] Vari corpus semiustum hostilis laceraverat feritas; caput ejus abscisum, latumque ad Maroboduum, et ab eo missum ad Caesarem, gentilitii tumuli sepultura honoratum est.—Velleius Paterculus, ii, 119.