Open, of patent writs. Tayler. See PATENT WRIT, APERTA BREVIA, PATER (Lat.). Father. The term is frequently used in genealogical tables. PATER-FAMILIAS (Lat.). In Civil Law. One who was sui juris, and not subject to the paternal power. In order to give a correct idea of what was un- derstood in the Roman law by this term. It is proper to refer briefly to the artificial organization of the Roman family, the greatest moral phenomenon in the history of the human race. The comprehensive term familia embraced both persons and property: money, lands, houses, slaves, children, all consti- tuted part of this artificial family, this juridical entity, this legal patrimony, the title to which was exclusively vested in the chief or pater-familias, who alone was capaz dominii, and who belonged to himself, sui juris. The word pater-familias is by no means equiva lent to the modern expression father of a family, but means proprietor in the strongest sense of that term; it is he qui in domo dominium habet, in whom were centred all property, all power, all authority: he was, in a word, the lord and master, whose authority was unlimited. No one but he who was sui juris, who was pater-familias, was capable of exercising any right of property, or wielding any superiority or power over anything; for nothing could belong to him who was himself alieni juris. Hence the children of the filii familias, as well as those of slaves, belonged to the pater familias. In the same manner, everything that was acquired by the sons or slaves formed a part of the familia, and, consequently, belonged to its chief. This absolute property and power of the pater-familias, only ceased with his life, unless he voluntarily parted with them by a sale; for the alienation by sale is invariably the symbol resorted to for the purpose of dissolving the stern dominion of the pater-familias over those belonging to the familia. Thus, both emancipation and adoption are the results of imaginary sales, per imaginarias venditiones. As the daughter remained in the family of her father, grandfather, or great-grand- father, as the case might be, notwithstanding her marriage, it followed as a necessary consequence that the child never belonged to the same family as its mother: there is no civil relationship between them; they are natural relations, cognati,-but they are not legally related to each other.-agnati; and therefore the child never inherits from its mother, nor the mother from her child. There was, however, a means by which the wife might enter into the family and subject herself to the power of her husband. in manu mariti, and thereby establish a legal relationship between herself and her husband. This marital power of the husband over the wife was generally acquired either coemptione, by the purchase of the wife by the husband from the pater-familias, or usu, by the prescription the possession of one year, the same by based on the which the title to movable property was acquired according to the principles governing the usucapio (usu capere, to obtain by use). Another mode of obtaining the same end was the confarreatio, a sacred ceremony performed by the breaking and eating of a small cake, farreum, by the married couple. It was supposed that by an observance of this ceremony the marital power was pro- duced by the intervention of the gods. This solemn mode of celebrating marriages was peculiar to the patrician families. By means of these fictions and ceremonies the wife became in the eye of the law the daughter of her husband, and the sister of the children to whom she gave birth, who would otherwise have been strangers to her. Well might Gaius say, Fere nulli ulli sunt homines qui talem in liberos habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus. There is some similarity between the agnatio, or civil relationship, of the Romans, and the trans- mission of the name of the father, under the modern law, to all his descendants in the male line. The Roman law says of the children, patris, non matris, familiam sequuntur; we say, patris, non matris, nomen sequuntur. All the members of the family who, with us, bear the same name, were under that law agnates, or constituted the agnatio, or civil family. Those children only belonged to the family, and were subject to the paternal power, who had been conceived in justis nuptiis, or been adopted. Nuptia, or matrimonium, was a marriage celebrated in conformity with the peculiar rules of the civil law. There existed a second kind of mar- riage, call concubinatus, a valid union and a real marriage, which has been often improperly com- founded, even by high authority, with concubinage. This confusion of ideas is attributable to a super- ficial examination of the subject; for the illicit intercourse between a man and a woman which we call concubinage was stigmatized by the oppro- brious term stuprum by the Romans, and is spoken of in the strongest terms of reprobation. The concubinatus was the natural marriage, and the only one whic