[117]
“If any doubt arises about an inheritance, and if
testamentary papers are produced before me, sealed with not fewer seals than are
required by law, I shall adjudge the inheritance as far as possible according to the
testamentary papers.” So far is usual. This ought to follow next:
“If testamentary papers are not produced....” What says he? That
he will adjudge it to him who says he is the heir. What, then, is the difference
whether testamentary papers are produced or not? If he produces them, though they
may have only one seal less than is required by law, you will not give him
possession; but if he produces no such papers at all, you will. What shall I say
now? That no one else ever issued a similar edict afterwards? A very marvellous
thing, truly, that there should have been no one who chose to be considered like
that fellow! He himself, in his Sicilian edict, has not this passage. No; for he had
received his payment for it. And so in the edict which I have mentioned before,
which he issued in Sicily, about giving
possession of inheritances, he laid down the same rules which all the praetors at
Rome had laid down besides himself. From
the Sicilian edict,—“If any doubt arise about an
inheritance...”
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.