[36]
I am speaking before the priests; I say that that adoption did not take place
according to the sacerdotal law. In the first place, because your respective
ages are such that the man who has adopted you as your father might, as far
as his age went, have been your son; in the second place, because a question
is usually put as to the reason for the adoption, in order that the adopter
may be a person who is seeking by regular and sacerdotal law that which by
the ordinary process of nature he is no longer able to obtain; and that he
may adopt a son in such a manner, as to in nowise impair the dignity of the
families or the reverence belonging to their sacred ceremonies; and, above
all things, that no false pretence, or fraud, or trickery, may creep in; so
that this fictitious adoption of a son may appear to imitate as far as
possible the real case of children being born to a man.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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