2 Again, collateral relations connected with the deceased only by the female line are called to the succession by the praetor in the third order as cognates; 3 and children who are in an adoptive family are admitted in this order to the inheritance of their natural parent. 4 It is clear that illegitimate children can have no agnates, for in law they have no father, and it is through the father that agnatic relationship is traced, while cognatic relationship is traced through the mother as well. On the same principle they cannot be held to be consanguinei of one another, for consanguinei are in a way agnatically related: consequently, they are connected with one another only as cognates, and in the same way too with the cognates of their mother. Accordingly, they can succeed to the possession of goods under that part of the Edict in which cognates are called by the title of mere kinship. 5 In this place too we should observe that a person who claims as an agnate can be admitted to the inheritance, even though ten degrees removed from the deceased, both by the statute of the Twelve Tables, and by the Edict in which the praetor promises the possession of goods to heirs statutorily entitled: but on the ground of mere natural kinship the praetor promises possession of goods to those cognates only who are within the sixth degree; the only persons in the seventh degree whom he admits as cognates being the children of a second cousin of the deceased. TITLE VI. OF THE DEGREES OF COGNATION It is here necessary to explain the way in which the degrees of natural relationship are reckoned. In the first place it is to be observed that they can be counted either upwards, or downwards, or crosswise, that is to say, collaterally. Relations in the ascending line are parents, in the descending line, children, and similarly uncles and aunts paternal and maternal. In the ascending and descending lines a man's nearest cognate may be related to him in the first degree; in the collateral line he cannot be nearer to him than the second. 1 Relations in the first degree, reckoning upwards, are the father and mother; reckoning downwards, the son and daughter. 2 Those in the second degree, upwards, are grandfather and grandmother; downwards, grandson and granddaughter; 3 and in the collateral line brother and sister. In the third degree, upwards, are the greatgrandfather and greatgrandmother; downwards, the greatgrandson and greatgranddaughter; in the collateral line, the sons and daughters of a brother or sister, and also uncles and aunts paternal and maternal. The father's brother is called 'patruus,' in Greek 'patros', the mother's brother avunculus, in Greek specifically 'matros,' though the term theios is used indifferently to indicate either. The father's sister is called 'amita,' the mother's 'matertera'; both go in Greek by the name 'theia,' or, with some, 'tithis.'