There are various grounds on which persons are exempted from serving the office of guardian or curator, of which the most common is their having a certain number of children, whether in power or emancipated. If, that is to say, a man has, in Rome, three children living, in Italy four, or in the provinces five, he may claim exemption from these, as from other public offices; for it is settled that the office of a guardian or curator is a public one. Adopted children cannot be reckoned for this purpose, though natural children given in adoption to others may: similarly grandchildren by a son may be reckoned, so as to represent their father, while those by a daughter may not. It is, however, only living children who avail to excuse their fathers from serving as guardian or curator; such as have died are of no account, though the question has arisen whether this rule does not admit of an exception where they have died in war; and it is agreed that this is so, but only where they have fallen on the field of battle: for these, because they have died for their country, are deemed to live eternally in fame. 1 The Emperor Marcus, too, replied by rescript, as is recorded in his Semestria, that employment in the service of the Treasury is a valid excuse from serving as guardian or curator so long as that employment lasts. 2 Again, those are excused from these offices who are absent in the service of the state; and a person already guardian or curator who has to absent himself on public business is excused from acting in either of these capacities during such absence, a curator being appointed to act temporarily in his stead. On his return, he has to resume the burden of tutelage, without being entitled to claim a year's exemption, as has been settled since the opinion of Papinian was delivered in the fifth book of his replies; for the year's exemption or vacation belongs only to such as are called to a new tutelage. 3 By a rescript of the Emperor Marcus persons holding any magistracy may plead this as a ground of exemption, though it will not enable them to resign an office of this kind already entered upon. 4 No guardian or curator can excuse himself on the ground of an action pending between himself and his ward, unless it relates to the latter's whole estate or to an inheritance. 5 Again, a man who is already guardian or curator to three persons without having sought after the office is entitled to exemption from further burdens of the kind so long as he is actually engaged with these, provided that the joint guardianship of several pupils, or administration of an undivided estate, as where the wards are brothers, is reckoned as one only. 6 If a man can prove that through poverty he is unequal to the burden of the office, this, according to rescripts of the imperial brothers and of the Emperor Marcus, is a valid ground of excuse. 7 Illhealth again is a sufficient excuse if it be such as to prevent a man from attending to even his own affairs: