During this period, the legal condition of the Roman woman was also greatly ameliorated. The acute sense of justice which actuated these emperors could not neglect this result of civilization. On one occasion, a matron stopped Hadrian in the street and begged leave to submit to him a matter in which she was suffering injustice. He refused to be delayed. "Why, then, are you emperor?" she bitterly exclaimed. This appealed to him; for he was conscious that he had no right to govern unless he allowed the salutary influence of his rule to extend to all alike. A man and a woman, who, though they had cohabited, were not legally married, disputed as to the possession of their child in order to receive its share of the public allowance. "With whom do you live?" asked Hadrian of the child. "My mother," was the answer. "You rascal," said the emperor to the man, "you have no right to this allowance." "I implore you," cried another woman, "to order that a part of my son's allowance be given to me." "But, my lord," said the son, "I do not acknowledge her to be my mother." "Then," answered Hadrian, "I shall not acknowledge you as a citizen." These, it may be, were only casual incidents; but they indicate the sort of rule under which Rome had come, and they must have formed powerful precedents in future rulings in such cases. Laws were also passed which helped to relieve the burden of legal injustice which from the first had rested upon the Roman woman. A father had it always in his power to compel his son to put away his wife, and could thus, if he chose, shatter the life of a faithful, loving woman and drive her from her home. Marcus Aurelius amended this tyrannical law, so that it could only be executed for great and just cause. Under the old code, a child was always subject to the condition of his mother at his birth; hence, if a free woman, after conception, was relegated to servitude by sentence of law, her child was born a slave. Hadrian decreed that if a woman was free at any time during her pregnancy, her child should be free. This would seem to be more of a relief to the child so born than to the mother; but, apart from the mother sympathy, the parent of a free son would be much more likely to regain her own liberty. This emperor also decided that women should have the power to dispose of the whole of their property by will, on obtaining the consent of their guardians. It was soon afterward decreed that such a will should be valid without such consent, and this made the property rights of the Roman woman as untrammelled as such laws have been in any country, almost down to the present time. There was also a modification of the law of inheritance, so that women were allowed to take from their sons; but to avail herself of this new law a freedwoman must have had no less than four children.