For why should a woman be disabled from inheriting property?
Why can a vestal virgin become an heir, while her mother cannot?
And why, admitting that it is necessary to set some limit to the wealth of women, should Crassus's daughter, if she be his only child, inherit thousands without offending the law, while my daughter can only receive a small share in a bequest.[337] * * * XI.

* * * [If this justice were natural, innate, and universal, all men would admit the same] law and right, and the same men would not enact different laws at different times.

If a just man and a virtuous man is bound to obey the laws, I ask, what laws do you mean?
Do you intend all the laws indifferently?
But neither does virtue permit this inconstancy in moral obligation, nor is such a variation compatible with natural conscience.

The laws are, therefore, based not on our sense of justice, but on our fear of punishment.

There is, therefore, no natural justice; and hence it follows that men cannot be just by nature.
Are men, then, to say that variations indeed do exist in the laws, but that men who are virtuous through natural conscience follow that which is really justice, and not a mere semblance and disguise, and that it is the distinguishing characteristic of the truly just and virtuous man to render every one his due rights?
Are we, then, to attribute the first of these characteristics to animals?
For not only men of moderate abilities, but even first-rate sages and philosophers, as Pythagoras and Empedocles, declare that all kinds of living creatures have a right to the same justice.