Introduction

In this book, most of the discussion assumes individuals acting on their own behalf, whether entering into contracts, acquiring property, incurring liability for wrongdoing, or anything else.

The same was true of the Romans. Although Roman law in this area had many differences from modern law, it was equally true that Romans would frequently act through others. We have seen already^[739] that the Romans made extensive use of slaves in business, often allowing them a high level of responsibility and auton­omy. Such a slave might act in such a way that, for a free person, rights would be acquired or liabilities incurred. The same is true of those subject to patria potestas. The law had to be able to square the position that someone who had a paterfamilias could not own property and had limited capacity to act on his or her own behalf, with the fact that such a person would often in fact act as if these things were pos­sible. In the case of both the slave and the filiusfamilias, the only person who could be held liable would be the slave-owner or the paterfamilias.

In Chapter 5, legal personality was defined as the capacity to hold rights and be subject to obligations. In Chapters 5 to 8, we have seen how that capacity could be restricted or qualified by the different kinds of personal status that an individual could hold. In this chapter we see how an individual’s legal personality, in the sense of the ability to become subject to obligations, could in effect be extended to the acts of others, whether slave, filiusfamilius or free employee. This chapter divides into two. First, we shall look at the imposition of contractual liability by the acts of another. We have already seen that contractual rights could be acquired through the acts of a slave or filiusfamilias. After this, we shall con­sider delictual liability for the wrongdoing of another.

Before going further, however, there is a point of terminology to consider. Almost everything in this chapter about the position of a slave-owner applies equally to a paterfamilias and vice versa. The same is true of a slave and a filiusfa­milias. To avoid unnecessary repetition, both slave-owner and paterfamilias will be referred to as ‘master’. The slave orfiliusfamilias will be referred to as ‘dependant’.

B.