1 Agnates are persons related to one another by males, that is, through their male ascendants; for instance, a brother by the same father, a brother's son, or such son's son, a father's brother, his son or son's son. But persons related only by blood through females are not agnates, but merely cognates. Thus the son of your father's sister is no agnate of yours, but merely your cognate, and vice versa; for children are member's of their father's family, and not of your mother's. 2 It was said that the statute confers the guardianship, in case of intestacy, on the nearest agnates; but by intestacy here must be understood not only complete intestacy of a person having power to appoint a testamentary guardian, but also the mere omission to make such appointment, and also the case of a person appointed testamentary guardian dying in the testator's lifetime. 3 Loss of status of any kind ordinarily extinguishes rights by agnation, for agnation is a title of civil law. Not every kind of loss of status, however, affects rights by cognation; because civil changes cannot affect rights annexed to a natural title to the same extent that they can affect those annexed to a civil one. TITLE XVI. OF LOSS OF STATUS Loss of status, or change in one's previous civil rights, is of three orders, greatest, minor or intermediate, and least. 1 The greatest loss of status is the simultaneous loss of citizenship and freedom, exemplified in those persons who by a terrible sentence are made 'slaves of punishment,' in freedmen condemned for ingratitude to their patrons, and in those who allow themselves to be sold in order to share the purchase money when paid. 2 Minor or intermediate loss of status is loss of citizenship unaccompanied by loss of liberty, and is incident to interdiction of fire and water and to deportation to an island. 3 The least loss of status occurs when citizenship and freedom are retained, but a man's domestic position is altered, and is exemplified by adrogation and emancipation. 4 A slave does not suffer loss of status by being manumitted, for while a slave he had no civil rights: 5 and where the change is one of dignity, rather than of civil rights, there is no loss of status; thus it is no loss of status to be removed from the senate. 6 When it was said that rights by cognation are not affected by loss of status, only the least loss of status was meant; by the greatest loss of status they are destroyed--for instance, by a cognate's becoming a slave--and are not recovered even by subsequent manumission. Again, deportation to an island, which entails minor or intermediate loss of status, destroys rights by cognation. 7 When agnates are entitled to be guardians, it is not all who are so entitled, but only those of the nearest degree, though if all are in the same degree, all are entitled. TITLE XVII. OF THE STATUTORY GUARDIANSHIP OF PATRONS