Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

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modern judicial decisions, it gives no hint of the grounds on which it was made. The citizenship of the deceased and his heir is uncertain, • nor do we know whether the case was decided on the basis of Roman or local law. (If the people were not Romans, then even the application of “normal” Roman law would be a spe cial adaptation to local conditions; inheritance normally fol lowed the personality principle.) [Name missing] made this for himself and his most upright wife, Arecusa, and his freedmen and freedwomen and their descen dants and the freedmen of Arescusa. This monument does not go to the heir. Family tombs, such as this, were common in Rome, but the • definition of “family” was ambiguous. The law recognized one type of tomb that was available to the familia , that is, the entire household, apparently what is intended here. There is another that goes to the heirs of the deceased for their own later use. In strict law, freedpersons were not entitled to co-burial unless they were heirs, but the rule seems to have been widely ignored, as even our legal sources admit. The final phrase excluding the heirs is abbreviated, just using the first letter of each word in Latin, showing how common the expression was. The inclusion of freedmen is also very common in tomb • inscriptions, though some jurists questioned the validity of [21] FIRA 3.80s

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