The Institutes of Justinian | Page 6

have as it were selected a middle course, and permitted persons under twenty years of age to manumit their slaves by will, but not until they have completed their seventeenth and entered on their eighteenth year. For when ancient custom allowed persons of this age to plead on behalf of others, why should not their judgement be deemed sound enough to enable them to use discretion in giving freedom to their own slaves?
TITLE VII OF THE REPEAL OF THE LEX FUFIA CANINIA
Moreover, by the lex Fufia Caninia a limit was placed on the number of slaves who could be manumitted by their master's testament: but this law we have thought fit to repeal, as an obstacle to freedom and to some extent invidious, for it was certainly inhuman to take away from a man on his deathbed the right of liberating the whole of his slaves, which he could have exercised at any moment during his lifetime, unless there were some other obstacle to the act of manumission.
TITLE VIII OF PERSONS INDEPENDENT OR DEPENDENT
Another division of the law relating to persons classifies them as either independent or dependent. Those again who are depend- ent are in the power either of parents or of masters. Let us first then consider those who are dependent, for by learning who these are we shall at the same time learn who are independent. And first let us look at those who are in the power of masters.
1 Now slaves are in the power of masters, a power recognised by the law of all nations, for all nations present the spectacle of masters invested with power of life and death over slaves; and to whatever is acquired through a slave his owner is entitled. 2 But in the present day no one under our sway is permitted to indulge in excessive harshness towards his slaves, without some reason recognised by law; for, by a constitution of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, a man is made as liable to punishment for killing his own slave as for killing the slave of another person; and extreme severity on the part of masters is checked by another constitution whereby the same Emperor, in answer to inquiries from presidents of provinces concerning slaves who take refuge at churches or statues of the Emperor, commanded that on proof of intolerable cruelty a master should be compelled to sell his slaves on fair terms, so as to receive their value. And both of these are reasonable enactments, for the public interest requires that no one should make an evil use of his own property. The terms of the rescript of Antoninus to Aelius Marcianus are as follow: -- `The powers of masters over their slaves ought to continue undiminished, nor ought any man to be deprived of his lawful rights; but it is the master's own interest that relief justly sought against cruelty, insufficient sustenance, or intoler- able wrong, should not be denied. I enjoin you then to look into the complaints of the slaves of Iulius Sabinus, who have fled for protection to the statue of the Emperor, and if you find them treated with undue harshness or other ignominious wrong, order them to be sold, so that they may not again fall under the power of their master; and the latter will find that if he attempts to evade this my enactment, I shall visit his offence with severe punishment.'
TITLE IX OF PATERNAL POWER
Our children whom we have begotten in lawful wedlock are in our power. 1 Wedlock or matrimony is the union of male and female, involving the habitual intercourse of daily life. 2 The power which we have over our children is peculiar to Roman citizens, and is found in no other nation. 3 The offspring then of you and your wife is in your power, and so too is that of your son and his wife, that is to say, your grandson and grand- daughter, and so on. But the offspring of your daughter is not in your power, but in that of its own father.
TITLE X OF MARRIAGE
Roman citizens are joined together in lawful wedlock when they are united according to law, the man having reached years of puberty, and the woman being of a marriageable age, whether they be independent or dependent: provided that, in the latter case, they must have the consent of the parents in whose power they respectively are, the necessity of which, and even of its being given before the marriage takes place, is recognised no less by natural reason than by law. Hence the question has arisen, can the daughter or son of a lunatic lawfully contract marriage? and as the doubt still remained with regard to the son, we decided that, like the daughter, the son of a lunatic