Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Status

While perhaps less pernicious in this overall sense, Roman slavery does not seem to have been much better from the point of view of the individual slave. Slaves were fully property and so were subject to whatever use and abuse their owners wished, including hard labor, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. Less dramatically, slaves were potential objects of commerce, so they could be bought and sold away from their families and friends without recourse or even warn ing. While lucky slaves could in practice control or at least make use of considerable wealth (see the last section of this chapter for details), they could never be its legal owner or pos sessor, and so they could lose everything at any time at their owner’s whim. Since there was no racial or other class “naturally” equated with slavery, slaves could be released by their owners. This is called manumission. It might be a reward for good service, a show of generosity, or just an easy way to cut expenses in lean times. Manumission was a common event, though the average individual’s chances of being freed were probably not good. Not only did manumitted slaves cease to be the prop erty of their owners, but they ceased to be property at all. Furthermore, they became Roman citizens (see the next section on citizenship). This is striking both because it shows an inter esting degree of openness to (former) slaves in Roman society and because it is one of the few cases in Roman law where a private act (manumission) is allowed to affect a normally pub lic category (citizenship). Originally, there were no limits on manumission other than the interests of the owner. It might

101