10 It is certain that the part of the Edict in which the possession of goods is promised to the next of kin has nothing to do with the relationships of slaves with one another, nor is there any old statute by which such relationships were recognised. However, in the constitution which we have issued with regard to the rights of patrons--a subject which up to our times had been most obscure, and full of difficulties and confusion--we have been prompted by humanity to grant that if a slave shall beget children by either a free woman or another slave, or conversely if a slave woman shall bear children of either sex by either a freeman or a slave, and both the parents and the children (if born of a slave woman) shall become free, or if the mother being free, the father be a slave, and subsequently acquire his freedom, the children shall in all these cases succeed their father and mother, and the patron's rights lie dormant. And such children we have called to the succession not only of their parents, but also of one another reciprocally, by this enactment, whether those born in slavery and subsequently manumitted are the only children, or whether there be others conceived after their parents had obtained their freedom, and whether they all have the same father and mother, or the same father and different mothers, or vice versa; the rules applying to children born in lawful wedlock being applied here also. 11 To sum up all that we have said, it appears that persons related in the same degree of cognation to the deceased are not always called together, and that even a remoter is sometimes preferred to a nearer cognate. For as family heirs and those whom we have enumerated as equivalent to family heirs have a priority over all other claimants, it is clear that a great-grandson or great-great-grandson is preferred to a brother, or the father or mother of the deceased; and yet the father and mother, as we have remarked above, are in the first degree of cognation, and the brother is in the second, while the great-grandson and great-great-grandson are only in the third and fourth respectively. And it is immaterial whether the descendant who ranks among family heirs was in the power of the deceased at the time of his death, or out of it through having been emancipated or through being the child of an emancipated child or a child of the female sex.