After the decadence of the gentile organization commenced, new gentes ceased to form by the old process of segmentation; and some of those existing died out. This tended to enhance the value of gentile descent as a lineage. In the times of the empire, new families were constantly establishing themselves in Rome from foreign parts, and assuming gentile names to gain social advantages. This practice being considered an abuse, the Emperor Claudius (A. D. 40-54), prohibited foreigners from assuming Roman names, especially those of the ancient gentes.[319] Roman families, belonging to the historical gentes, placed the highest value upon their lineages both under the republic and the empire.
All the members of a gens were free, and equal in their rights and privileges, the poorest as well as the richest, the distinguished as well as the obscure; and they shared equally in whatever dignity the gentile name conferred which they inherited as a birthright. Liberty, equality and fraternity were cardinal principles of the Roman gens, not less certainly than of the Grecian, and of the American Indian.
VIII. _The right of adopting strangers in blood into the gens._
In the times of the republic, and also of the empire, adoption into the family, which carried the person into the gens of the family, was practiced; but it was attended with formalities which rendered it difficult. A person who had no children, and who was past the age to expect them, might adopt a son with the consent of the pontifices, and of the _comitia curiata_. The college of pontiffs were entitled to be consulted lest the sacred rites of the family, from which the adopted person was taken, might thereby be impaired;[320] as also the assembly, because the adopted person would receive the gentile name, and might inherit the estate of his adoptive father. From the precautions which remained in the time of Cicero, the inference is reasonable that under the previous system, which was purely gentile, the restrictions must have been greater and the instances rare. It is not probable that adoption in the early period was allowed without the consent of the gens, and of the curia to which the gens belonged; and if so, the number adopted must have been limited. Few details remain of the ancient usages with respect to adoption.