Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

be carried out during the owner’s lifetime or (quite commonly) by her will. The emperor Augustus introduced restrictions on the number and age of slaves manumitted (and on the age of the person doing the manumitting), but the basic procedure remained the same. A former slave is called a “freedman” (note the “d”); the former owner is called a “patron.” The freedman had a social duty of continued deference to the patron, and often a legal duty to continue to provide some labor (the details were negotiated at the time of manumission). The patron also had some rights to inherit from the freedman. The freedperson had no rights “upward” against the patron, but might in prac tice be treated as a member of the family, especially in common burial [20, 21] . A freedperson had limited rights in public law (e.g., no office holding) but was an almost entirely normal citi zen in private law. The freedperson’s free-born child was a full Roman in both respects. Note, however, that the freedperson’s life as a legal person effectively began at the time of manu mission. Any children or other “family” they might have had beforehand was not legally connected to them. So, for instance, freeing a slave would not, by itself, free his children from the same owner. And even if they were freed at the same time, they would not (from the point of view of the law) be their father’s “children.” Originally slaves did not have the kind of civil or criminal liability that free persons did. If a slave was accused by a pri vate citizen of damaging property (or committing some other delict; see Chapter 18), she could not be sued by the normal procedure. Instead, the owner of the slave had two choices.

102