therefore in this case we have preserved the older law, as also in that of an independent person giving himself in adrogation: all of which enactment can be gathered in its special details from the tenor of the aforesaid constitution. 15 By the ancient law too, which favoured the descent through males, those grandchildren only were called as family heirs, and preferred to agnates, who were related to the grandfather in this way: grandchildren by daughters, and greatgrandchildren by granddaughters, whom it regarded only as cognates, being called after the agnates in succession to their maternal grandfather or greatgrandfather, or their grandmother or greatgrandmother, whether paternal or maternal. But the Emperors would not allow so unnatural a wrong to endure without sufficient correction, and accordingly, as people are, and are called, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of a person whether they trace their descent through males or through females, they placed them altogether in the same rank and order of succession. In order, however, to bestow some privilege on those who had in their favour the provisions of the ancient law as well as natural right, they determined that grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, and others who traced their descent through a female should have their portion of the inheritance diminished by receiving less by onethird than their mother or grandmother would have taken, or than their father or grandfather, paternal or maternal, when the deceased, whose inheritance was in question, was a woman; and they excluded the agnates, if such descendants claimed the inheritance, even though they stood alone. Thus, exactly as the statute of the Twelve Tables calls the grandchildren and greatgrandchildren to represent their deceased father in the succession to their grandfather, so the imperial legislation substitutes them for their deceased mother or grandmother, subject to the aforesaid deduction of a third part of the share which she personally would have taken.