Family and inheritance in the Augustan marriage laws

“Finally in his sixth consulship Caesar Augustus, securely in control, cancelled the orders he had issued as triumvir and laid the legal foundations for use in peace under principate. The bonds were more bitter from then on; watchers were set over us, with the inducement of rewards from the lex Papia Poppaea ; the aim was that if men shirked the privileges of parenthood, the state as common parent should lay claim to their vacant possessions”. Tacitus Annals 3.28.