As we have seen, Roman law concentrated extensive legal power in the hands of pa­tres familiae, who constituted a relatively small portion of the citizen population.

For this reason, the death of a paterfamilias was frequently an event of singular im­portance, above all to the survivors within his household: a moment they antici­pated and experienced with hope, dread, or a dozen other emotions, but at the very least with anxiety about how the division of his estate would affect them.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the law of succession (which governs the process whereby heirs “succeed into the position” of a decedent) had an importance in Roman law considerably greater than in ours. Whether succession was regulated by a will or through the rules for intestacy, it was always a primary means whereby members of the elite acquired wealth and social position. Testamentary bequests, above all from relatives but also from friends, enabled upper-class Romans to main­tain or enhance the status enjoyed by previous generations, as well as to prepare to transmit this status to future ones. This process of intergenerational transmission soon acquired a moral aspect as well, as an expression of familial affection and duty (pietas) that transcended individuals and implicated broader social opinions.

The amount of space devoted to succession in surviving Roman juristic writ­ings suggests its actual importance in life: as much as 40 percent of Justinian’s Di­gest. Therefore this chapter only samples relevant case law illustrating fundamental themes related to the family.

Technical complexity, a hallmark of the Roman law of succession, should be appreciated and enjoyed for its own sake. Even a glance at its most basic features shows that the Romans had no use for Occam’s razor.

This multiplication of entities is partially explained by a cultural conservatism keyed to precise interests that the legal system struggled to define. The story of the Roman law of succession is that of a continuously unstable compromise between the freedom of a testator to dispose of property and the sense of responsibility that the Romans saw as integral to the exercise of this freedom—or, if you will, a com­promise between the desires of the dead and those of the living. The elements of the Roman compromise came to be articulated in more than one way: for example, in terms of the need for legal certainty or for the orderly and equitable transmission of property, as well as other, more concrete social goals enshrined in positive legisla­tion, such as the marriage laws of Augustus.

For readers who want a quicker survey of the law of succession, we have con­structed a fast track, consisting of Cases 159-161, 165, 167-169, 171-174, 177-179, 182-184, 186-187, 192-193, 195, 198-199, 201, 203-204, and 206. These twenty-eight Cases are marked below with an asterisk.