IF any one thing more strikingly than another developes the austerity of the Roman character, and its propensity to domination, it is the arbitrary power which the father possessed over his children. By the laws of nature, immediate authority over the children belongs to the father, only for the time during which they require his providing care, protection, and guidance. The humanity and right feeling of the Grecian legislators led them to take the matter in this point of view, allowing the authority of the father to last only till the son was of a certain age, or till he married, or was entered on the list of citizens; and they so restricted this power, that the utmost a father could do was to eject his son from his house, and disinherit him. Not so in Rome. There the child was born the property of his father, who could dispose of it as he thought fit.