Lex Julia
Lex Julia, ET TITIA (supposed to have been passed B.C. 31) assigned to the governors of provinces (praesides) the duty of appointing guardians for women and impuberes who were not in patria potestas, or already provided with one. A Lex Atilia, which was in existence in the seventh century of the city, had already given the same power in Rome to the praetor urbanus, acting with a majority of the tribuni plebis (Gaius, 1.185; Inst. 1.20, pr.; Ulpian, Reg. 11.18).
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.