ADOPTION (Lat. adoptio); a legal institution of such importance in both of the classi cal nations of antiquity. A., in the strictest sense, in the Roman law, applied only to the case in which a person in the power of his father or grandfather was transferred to that of the person adopting him. Where the person adopted was already emancipated from the paternal power (patria potestas), and was regarded by the law as his own mas ter (gui furls), the proceeding was called adrogation (adrogatio). A., however, was also used as a generic term comprehending the two species; and in Greece, where there was nothing corresponding to the paternal power of the Romans, this distinction did not obtain. At Athens the adopted child was transferred from his own family and parish or tribe (demos) into those of the adoptive father, whose property he inherited in the absence of legitimate children, and whose sacred rights he was bound to maintain. Only Athenian citizens could be adopted, so that not only the next of kin but the whole com munity were interested in preventing fraudulent adoptions. With this view, registration in the deinus of the adoptive father was requisite, in order to entitle the son to the rights of citizenship as a member of it. In Rome the adopted child assumed the name and became bound to discharge the religious duties of the adoptive father, which usually consisted in sacrifices to the penates or other divinities. These observances were for the most part connected with the Hens or tribe to which the individual and his family belonged; and Savigny has even denied the existence of sacra peculiar to the family. A.
was effected under the authority of a magistrate, the prretor at Rome, or the governor (proses) in the provinces. Adrogation originally required a vote of the people in the coati-a euriata; but under the emperors it became the practice to effect it by an imperial rescript. A patrician was sometimes adrogated into a plebeian family for political purposes. Clodius, the enemy of Cicero, was so adrogatcd, in order that lie might be eligible to a tribuneship of the people. If a father havino. children in his power was adopted, both he and his children passed into the power of having adoptive father. It was requisite that the adoptive father should have no children at the time, and no reasonable prospect of having any. He was also required to be older than the person adopted. Females could not be adrogated, nor, from their not sharing in the paternal power, could they adopt in any form. An opposite rule has prevailed where the institution has been received in tnodern times. A, was unknown to the law of the Teutonic nations; and though most of the states of the continent have borrowed it from the Roman law, it has never existed as an institution either in England or Scotland. The patrimonial benefits of A. may, how ever, be conferred by deed; and there is no illegality in any one assuming the name, arms, and other distinguishing characteristics, and corresponding responsibilities, of a person who does not belong to his family. In France A. is recognized only in a very modified form (code civil, art. 343, et seq.).