Page images
PDF
EPUB

L

infraction of Primordial rights partly belong to the civil code of obligation arising from Tort (e.g. actio injuriarum), partly and principally to the criminal code. (On the different interpretations which have been put on this threefold division of Private Law cf. Moyle's Introduction to the Inst. Just.)

[III. DE CONDICIONE HOMINVM.]

§ 9. Et quidem summa diuisio de iure personarum haec est quod omnes homines aut liberi sunt aut serui.

§ 10. Rursus liberorum hominum alii ingenui sunt, alii libertini.

§ 11. Ingenui sunt qui liberi nati sunt; libertini qui ex iusta seruitute manumissi sunt.

§ 12. Rursus libertinorum (tria sunt genera; nam aut ciues Romani aut Latini aut dediticiorum) numero sunt." de quibus singulis dispiciamus ; ac prius de dediticiis.

ON DIVERSITIES OF CONDITION.

§ 9. The first division of men by the law of persons is into freemen and slaves.

§ 10. Freemen are divided into freeborn and freedmen.

§ 11. The freeborn are free by birth; freedmen by manumission from legal slavery.

§ 12. Freedmen, again, are divided into three classes, citizens of Rome, Latins, and persons on the footing of enemies surrendered at discretion. Let us examine each class in order, and commence with freedmen assimilated to enemies surrendered at discretion.

§ 12. As Gaius has not marked very strongly the divisions of the present book, it may be worth while to consider what are the leading branches of the doctrine of Status. Status falls under three heads-liberty (libertas), citizenship (civitas), and domestic position (familia).

Under the first head, men are divided into free (liberi) and slaves (servi): the free, again, are either free by birth (ingenui) or by manumission (libertini). We have here, then, three classes to consider: ingenui, libertini, servi.

Under the second head men were originally divided into citizens (cives) and aliens (peregrini). The rights of citizens fall into two branches, political and civil, the former being electoral and legislative power (jus suffragii) and capacity for office (jus honorum); the latter relating to property (commercium) or to marriage (connubium). Aliens were of course devoid of the political portion of these rights (suffragium and honores); they were also devoid of proprietary and family rights as limited and protected by the jus civile (commercium and connubium), though they enjoyed corresponding rights under the jus gentium. At a subsequent period a third class were intercalated between cives and peregrini, namely, Latini, devoid of the political portion of the rights of citizenship, and

enjoying only a portion of the private rights of citizenship, commercium without connubium. Here also, then, we have three classes, cives, Latini, peregrini.

The powers of the head of a family came to be distinguished by the terms potestas, manus, mancipium: potestas, however, was either potestas dominica, power over his slaves, or potestas patria, power over his children, which, at the period when Roman law is known to us, were different in kind; so that the rights of paterfamilias were really fourfold. Manus or marital power placed the wife on the footing of filiafamilias, which was the same as that of filiusfamilias. Paterfamilias had a legal power of selling (mancipare) his children into bondage; and mancipium, which is also a word used to denote a slave, designated the status of a filiusfamilias who had been sold by his parent as a bondsman to another paterfamilias. In respect of his purchaser, such a bondsman was assimilated to a slave in respect of the rest of the world, he was free and a citizen, though probably his political capacities were suspended as long as his bondage (mancipii causa) lasted, § 116*. As slaves are treated of under the head of libertas, and the status of the wife (manus) was not legally distinguishable from that of the son, we may say, that in respect of domestic dependence or independence (familia), as well as in respect of libertas and civitas, men are divided into three classes,-paterfamilias, filiusfamilias, and Qui in mancipio est; paterfamilias alone being independent (sui juris), the other two being dependent (alieni juris) in unequal degrees.

These different classes are not examined by Gaius with equal minuteness. Under the first head he principally examines the libertini: the classes under the second head, cives, Latini, peregrini, are only noticed indirectly, i. e. so far as they present a type for the classification of libertini; and the bulk of the first book of the Institutions is devoted to domestic relations.

In modern jurisprudence, Status having disappeared, the law of domestic relations-the relation of husband to wife, parent to child, guardian to ward-constitutes the whole of that of which formerly it was only a part, the law of Persons. It differs from the rest of the civil code in that, while the relations of Property and Obligation are artificial and accidental, the relations governed by the code of the Family are natural, and essential to the existence of the human race: so much so that the principal relations of the family extend to the rest of the animal world, and the portion of the code relating to them is called by Ulpian pre-eminently jus Naturale, Dig. 1, 1, 3, Inst. 1, 2 pr. Secondly, whereas every feature of Property and Obligation is the creation of political law, Domestic life is only partially governed by political law, which leaves the greater portion

of its rights and duties to be ruled by the less tangible dictates of the moral law.

The pure law of the Family, that is, when we exclude all consideration of Property and Obligation relating to property, is of very moderate compass: but with the pure code of the family it is convenient to aggregate what we may call with Savigny, Syst. § 57, the applied code of the Family, i.e. such of the laws of Property and Obligation as concern members of the family group-husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward. The main divisions then of the substantive code are Family law Pure and Applied; the law of Ownership; and the law of Obligation. If, in view of its importance, we separate from the law of Ownership the law of Rerum Universitates, confining the law of Ownership to the province of Res singulae, we may add to the three we have enumerated a fourth division, the law of Successions per universitatem. Sohm, § 29.

[blocks in formation]

FREEDMEN

ASSIMILATED TO SURRENDERED FOES AND DISPOSITIONS OF THE LEX AELIA SENTIA.

§ 13. The law Aelia Sentia enacts that slaves who have been punished by their proprietors with chains, or have been branded, or have been examined with torture on a criminal charge, and have been convicted, or have been delivered to fight with men or beasts, or have been committed to a gladiatorial school or a public prison, if subsequently manumitted by the same or by another proprietor, shall acquire by manumission the status of enemies surrendered at discretion.

CONCERNING SURRENDERED

ENEMIES.

§ 14. Surrendered enemies are people who have taken up arms and fought against the people of Rome and having been defeated have surrendered.

§ 15. Slaves tainted with this degree of criminality, by whatever mode they are manumitted and at whatever age, and notwithstanding the plenary dominion of their proprietor, never become

dicemus, sed omni modo dediticiorum numero constitui intellegemus.

§ 16. Si uero in nulla tali turpitudine sit seruus, manumissum modo ciuem Romanum modo Latinum fieri dicemus.

17. Nam in cuius persona tria haec concurrunt, ut maior sit annorum triginta, et ex iure Quiritium domini, et iusta ac legitima manumissione liberetur, id est uindicta aut censu aut testamento, is ciuis Romanus fit; sin uero aliquid eorum deerit, Latinus erit.

[blocks in formation]

citizens of Rome or Latins, but can only acquire the status of enemies who have surrendered.

§ 16. If the slave has not committed offences of so deep a dye, manumission sometimes makes him a citizen of Rome, sometimes a Latin.

§ 17. A slave in whose person these three conditions are united, thirty years of age, quiritary ownership of the manumitter, liberation by a civil and statutory mode of manumission, i. e. by the form of vindicta, by entry on the censor's register, by testamentary disposition, becomes

a citizen of Rome: a slave who fails to satisfy any one of these conditions becomes only a Latin.

ON MANUMISSION AND PROOF OF ADEQUATE GROUNDS OF MANUMISSION.

§ 18. The requisition of a certain age of the slave was introduced by the lex Aelia Sentia, by the terms of which law, unless he is thirty years old, a slave cannot on manumission become a citizen of Rome, unless the mode of manumission is by the form of vindicta, preceded by proof of adequate motive before the council.

§ 19. There is an adequate motive of manumission if, for instance, a natural child or natural brother or sister or foster child of the manumitter's, or a teacher of the manumitter's child, or a male slave intended to be employed as an agent in business, or a female slave about to become the manumitter's wife, is presented to the council for manumission. CONCERNING THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COUNCIL.

§ 20. The council is composed in the city of Rome of five sena

quinque senatorum et quinque equitum Romanorum puberum; in prouinciis autem uiginti recuperatorum ciuium Romanorum, idque fit ultimo die conuentus; sed Romae certis diebus apud consilium manumittuntur. maiores uero triginta annorum serui semper manumitti solent, adeo ut uel in transitu manumittantur, ueluti cum praetor aut pro consule in balneum uel in theatrum eat.

§ 21. Praeterea minor triginta annorum seruus [manumissus] potest ciuis Romanus fieri, si ab eo domino qui soluendo non erat, testamento eum liberum et heredem relictum

(24 uersus in Clegi nequeunt) Ulp. 1, 14; Inst. 1, 6, 1; Epit. 1, 1, 2, § 22. homines Latini Iuniani appellantur; Latini Latini ideo, quia adsimulati sunt Latinis coloniariis; Iuniani ideo, quia per legem Iuniam libertatem acceperunt, cum olim serui uiderentur esse.

§ 23. Non tamen illis permittit lex Iunia uel ipsis testamentum facere, uel ex testamento alieno capere, uel tutores testamento dari. Ulp. 20, 14.

§ 24. Quod autem diximus ex testamento eos capere non posse, ita intellegemus, ne quid directo hereditatis legatorumue nomine eos posse capere dicamus: alioquin per fideicommissum capere possunt.

§ 25. Hi uero qui dediticio

tors and five Roman knights above the age of puberty: in the provinces of twenty recuperators, who must be Roman citizens, and who hold their session on the last day of the assize. At Rome the

council holds its session on certain A slave above the age of thirty days appointed for the purpose. can be manumitted at any time, and even in the streets, when the praetor or pro-consul is on his way to the bath or theatre. //

§ 21. Under the age of thirty a slave becomes by manumission a citizen of Rome, when his owner being insolvent leaves a will, in which he gives him his freedom and institutes him his heir (2 § 154), provided that no other heir accepts the succession.

§ 22. Slaves manumitted in writing, or in the presence of witnesses, or at a banquet, are called Latini Juniani: Latini because they are assimilated in status to Latin colonists (§ 131), Juniani because they owe their freedom to the lex Junia, before whose enactment they were slaves in the eye of the law.

§ 23. These freedmen, however, are not permitted by the lex Junia either to make a will or to take under the will of another, or to be appointed testamentary guardians.

§ 24. Their incapacity to take under a will must only be understood as an incapacity to take directly as heirs or legatees, not to take indirectly as beneficiaries of a trust.

§ 25. Freedmen classed with

« PreviousContinue »