Institutio Oratoria

The same thing occurs when there is a question about some one thing which is claimed by a number

of persons, who may all of them rely on the same kind of plea (for instance, on the right of the next of kin), or may put in different claims, one urging that the property was left him by will, another that he is next of kin. Now whenever a different defence has to be made against different claimants, there must be different bases, as for example the well-known controversial theme:

Wills that are made in accordance with law shall be valid. When parents die intestate, their children shall be the heirs. A disinherited son shall receive none of his father's property. A bastard, if born before a legitimate son, shall be treated as legitimate, but if born after a legitimate son shall be treated merely as a citizen. It shall be lawful to give a son in adoption. Every son given in adoption shall have the right to re-enter his own family if his natural father has died childless. A father of two legitimate sons gave one in adoption, disinherited the other, and acknowledged a bastard, who was born to him later. Finally after making the disinherited son his heir he died. All three sons lay claim to the property.

Nothbus is the Greek word for a bastard; Latin, as Cato emphasized in one of his speeches, has no word of its own and therefore borrows the foreign term. But I am straying from the point.

The son who was made heir by the will finds his way barred by the law

A disinherited son shall receive none of his father's property.

The basis is one resting on the letter of the law and intention, and the problem is whether he can inherit by any means at all? can he do so in accordance with the intention of his father? or in virtue of the fact that he was made heir by the will? The problem confronting the bastard is twofold, since he was born after the two legitimate sons and was not born before a legitimate son.