Patria potestas was crucial to Roman law and Roman society. It was the relatively unfettered power of the eldest surviving male in an agnatically-defined family line over everyone below him in the family tree who traced his or her descent from him solely through the male line.
That's a very dense sentence.
Here's what that means in practice and some basic principles:
1) An agnate is a relative in the male line, although the person may be female.
If a grandfather has a daughter and she has a daughter (his granddaughter):
--he is agnatically related to his daughter because there is no woman in between him and her in the family line (his wife, his daughter's mother, is parallel to him, not below him in the family line).
--he is NOT agnatically related to his granddaughter, because there is a woman (his daughter) in between them in the family line.--he is, however, related "cognatically" to his granddaughter. She would be his "cognate," not his "agnate."
If a grandfather has a son and the son has a daughter or a son:
--the grandfather is agnatically related to his son, because there is no woman in between them in the family tree
--the grandfather is agnatically related to both his grandson and his granddaughter, again because there is no woman in between them in the family tree.
--if both his grandson and his granddaughter had a child, the grandfather would be agnatically related to his greatgrandson but not to his greatgranddaughter, although he would be cognatically related to his greatgranddaughter.
2) What happened when a woman got married? In general, by the later part of the Roman Republic, she stayed in the patria potestas of her birth family.
3) If parents divorced, the children stayed with the family of the father.They were part of his agnatic family, but not part of their mother's agnatic family, although they were part of her family cognatically.
4) If the man holding patria potestas died, the people immediately under him became what was called sui juris, which meant they had patria potestas over themselves and no one else had it over them.
For instance, Bill has a son Bob and a daughter Jill. When Bill dies, both Bob and Jill become sui juris. If Bob had a son Jim and if Bill died, Bob would become sui juris. What would happen to Jim? Jim had been under Bill's patria potestas, and when Bill died Jim would fall under the patria potestas of Bob, Jim's father. If Jill had a son, that son would be under the patria potestas of his father (or of whoever had patria potestas over his father).
1) Draw a family tree for the folllowing family.Peter and Paula have three children:
2) Assuming that everyone is alive, in whose patria potestas are:
3) Now assume that Alice, Peter, Frank, and Edward have died. In whose patria potestas are:
4) Now, if you can, draw up your own family tree for three generations. Assuming the time is the present, who would be in the patria potestas of whom?
Created by rstarr, 1/08; last modified 1/08; expires 7/08