The former is easily shown to be founded upon a fictitious identification between the deceased and his successor.  And as a first step to the further discussion, as well as for its own sake, I shall briefly state the evidence touching the executor, the heir, and the devisee.  In order to understand the theory of our law with regard to the first of these, at least, scholars are agreed that it is necessary to consider the structure and position of the Roman family as it was in the infancy of Roman society.

Continental jurists have long been collecting the evidence that, in the earlier periods of Roman and German law alike, the unit of society was the family.  The Twelve Tables of Rome still recognize the interest of the inferior members of the family in the family property.  Heirs are called sui heredes, that is, heirs of themselves or of their own property, as is explained by Gaius. 1 Paulus says that they are regarded as owners in a certain sense, even in the lifetime of their father, and that after his death they do not so much receive an inheritance as obtain the full power of dealing with their property. 2

Starting from this point it is easy to understand the [343] succession of heirs to a deceased paterfamilias in the Roman system.  If the family was the owner of the property administered by a paterfamilias, its rights remained unaffected by the death of its temporary head.  The family continued, although the head died.  And when, probably by a gradual change, 1 the paterfamilias came to be regarded as owner, instead of a simple manager of the family rights, the nature and continuity of those rights did not change with the title to them.  The familia continued to the heirs as it was left by the ancestor.  The heir succeeded not to the ownership of this or that thing separately, but to the total hereditas or headship of the family with certain rights of property as incident, 2 and of course he took this headship, or right of representing the family interests, subject to the modifications effected by the last manager.

The aggregate of the ancestor’s rights and duties, or, to use the technical phrase, the total persona sustained by him, was easily separated from his natural personality.  For this persona was but the aggregate of what had formerly been family rights and duties, and was originally sustained by any individual only as the family head.  Hence it was said to be continued by the inheritance, 3 and when the heir assumed it he had his action in respect of injuries previously committed. 4

Thus the Roman heir came to be treated as identified with his ancestor for the purposes of the law.  And thus it is clear how the impossible transfers which I seek to explain were accomplished in that instance.  Rights to which B [344] as B could show no title, he could readily maintain under the fiction that he was the same person as A, whose title was not denied.