Qvibvs Modis Tvtela Finiatvr. (2)

§ 194. Guardianship is terminated for a freeborn woman by title of being mother of three children, for a freedwoman if under statutory guardianship of her patron or his children by being mother of four children: those who have other kinds of guardians, Atilian or fiduciary, for instance, are liberated from wardship by being mothers of three children.

§ 195. There are various ways by which a freedwoman may have other kinds of guardians: for instance in case of her manumission by a woman, when she must request a guardian under the lex Atilia, or, in the provinces, under the lex Julia and Titia, since a female patron cannot be her guardian.

§ 195 a. Also on manumission by a male, if with his sanction she makes a coemption, and then is remancipated and manumitted, for the patron then ceases to be guardian, and is replaced by the second manumitter, who is called a fiduciary guardian.

§ 195 b. Also on the adrogation of her patron or his son she must demand a guardian under the lex Atilia or Titia.

§ 195 c. Similarly in compliance with the same laws she must demand a guardian on the decease of her patron without leaving any male descendant in the family.

For males the attainment of the age of puberty is a release from wardship. Puberty, according to Sabinus and Cassius and the other authorities of my school, depends on physical development, that is, on capacity of generation; or in case of impotence, eunuchs for instance, on the completion of the age which usually implies capacity of generation. The other school hold that puberty is to be exclusively measured by age, that is to say, that it should always be deemed to be attained on the completion by a male of his fourteenth year.

All jurists agreed that in the case of impotence, whether natural or acquired, some fixed date must be assumed as the conventional period of puberty. The Sabinian rule appears to be preserved in a passage of Paulus: Spadones eo tempore testamentum facere possunt quo plerique pubescunt, id est, anno decimo octavo, 3, 4 a, 2. Fourteen was assumed to be the average age of puberty; but it was too early, even in the southern climes subject to Roman legislation, for a minority of constitutions which advance more slowly to maturity. Eighteen was supposed to be sufficiently postponed to include most of these cases of retarded development. We have already, in treating of adrogation, § 106, commentary, met with the phrase, plena pubertas, denoting eighteen years of age.