ADOPTION

At Rome there were two kinds of adoption, both requiring the adopter to be a male and childless: Arrogatio and Adoption proper. The former could only take place where the person to be adopted was independent (sui juris), and his adopter had no prospect of male offspring; at the instance of the pontifex, and after full proof of admissibility, it had to be sanctioned by the comitia curiata. Adoption proper applied to those still under paternal rule (patria potestas), the father selling his son by formal muncipatio (q.v.) to the adopter, who then, the paternal power being thus abolished, claimed the son before the court as his own, and the father allowed him to be adjudged to him. By either transaction the person adopted passed completely over into the family and rank of the adopter, and naturally took his name in full, but with the addition of a second cognomen formed from his own former nomen gentile by the suffix -anus, e.g. Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus). Women too could be adopted, but not arrogated; neither could they adopt. At the latter end of the Republic we find a testamentary Adoption in existence, which at first likewise produced a change of name, but not of status.