=159. Theoretical Rights of Father over Children. The _Patria Potestas_.=--When a child is born into a Roman home the father has complete legal rights even as in Athens to determine whether it is to live or to die.[95] If theoretically he has the terrific power as _pater familias_ to kill his children in later life if they merely displease him, how much more can he claim the right to decide that “This boy will be one too many,” or “We can afford no more girls,” or “This child will be sickly and deformed.” If his decision is adverse, mother and nurse may beseech in vain; the babe is simply “exposed”--that is, carried by a slave to some spot by the highway and left to perish. This harsh old law is unrepealed. Possibly such deserted children will be taken up by those whose homes are desolate and who require consolation. There is a greater and fouler chance that such babes will be carried away and reared by human harpies who raise boys and girls to sell as victims of gross wickedness among the rich, or who even mutilate the children to convert them into grotesque buffoons or pathetic beggars to wheedle the coppers from the tender-hearted. Perhaps some of those horribly deformed creatures who cry “Give! Give!” behind the litters of the senators are blood relations to the gilded lords themselves. This is physically possible, if we can believe many ugly stories. Legal right and actual custom can often, however, stand miles asunder. No Roman gladly will see his house dying out, despite the “advantages of childlessness.” In fact to keep up the family name, resort is often had to _adoption_, sometimes of mature adults, to an extent quite unknown in other ages. The upper classes under the Empire are dwindling so rapidly, thanks to many causes, that rare indeed is the house where a lawful child is unwelcome; and in the lower classes fathers are fathers still. In short though the cruel old “right of exposure” exists, it is not exercised often enough to make its practice a wholesale evil, and a man of distinction who exposes a babe (unless his family is remarkably large and expensive) will fall under social ostracism; in fact the Emperor may even be advised to strike him from the list of senators or equites as “a bad citizen.” =160. Ceremonies after Birth of a Child. The _Bulla_.=--The birth of a child in a good family is, therefore, the signal for no common rejoicing, and thanks to the favored position of Roman women, girls are not a serious discount as against boys. Then comes the grand celebration--the _lustratio_, the name-day for the babe.