7 In agnatic succession the established rule was that the right of accepting the inheritance could not pass from a nearer to a more remote degree; in other words, that if the nearest agnate, who, as we have described, is called to the inheritance, either refuses it or dies before acceptance, the agnates of the next grade have no claim to admittance under the Twelve Tables. This hard rule again the praetors did not leave entirely without correction, though their remedy, which consisted in the admission of such persons, since they were excluded from the rights of agnation, in the rank of cognates, was inadequate. But we, in our desire to have the law as complete as possible, have enacted in the constitution which in our clemency we have issued respecting the rights of patrons, that in agnatic succession the transference of the rights to accept from a nearer to a remoter degree shall not be refused: for it was most absurd that agnates should be denied a privilege which the praetor had conferred on cognates, especially as the burden of guardianship fell on the second degree of agnates if there was a failure of the first, the principle which we have now sanctioned being admitted so far as it imposed burdens, but rejected so far as it conferred a boon. 8 To statutory succession the ascendant too is none the less called who emancipates a child, grandchild, or remoter descendant under a fiduciary agreement, which by our constitution is now implied in every emancipation. Among the ancients the rule was different, for the parent acquired no rights of succession unless he had entered into a special agreement of trust to that effect prior to the emancipation. TITLE III. OF THE SENATUSCONSULTUM TERTULLIANUM So strict were the rules of the statute of the Twelve Tables in preferring the issue of males, and excluding those who traced their relationship through females, that they did not confer reciprocal rights of inheritance even on a mother and her children, though the praetors called them to succeed one another as next of kin by promising them the possession of goods in the class of cognates. 1 But this narrowness of the law was afterwards amended, the Emperor Claudius being the first to confer on a mother, as a consolation for the loss of her children, a statutory right to their inheritance, 2 and afterwards, very full provisions were made by the SC. Tertullianum, enacted in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, and relating to the melancholy succession of children by their mothers, though not by their grandmothers, whereby it was provided that a freeborn woman who had three or a freedwoman who had four children should be entitled to succeed to the goods of her children who died intestate, even though herself under paternal power; though, in this latter case, she cannot accept the inheritance except by the direction of the person in whose power she is.