Introduction
his chapter considers the key legal institutions that governed the I lives of Roman citizens and others who were affected by Roman JL law.
The background is the central question of how a person became a legitimate Roman citizen; interlinked with this is the unique Roman institution of paternal power. These key themes are reflected throughout the law on adoption, marriage and divorce, and on tutors and guardians. The chapter considers these questions not just as a matter of legal doctrine but also, so far as possible, in their social context. It also deals with the place occupied by slaves and freedmen alongside the elaborate legal institutions applicable to freeborn Roman citizens.iSubordination was a permanent feature of Roman social and legal life. Only a few, exclusively male, Roman citizens possessed full legal rights in both private and public life. The majority of free male citizens and nearly all free female citizens were subordinate within their families and as such were denied full status in private law. Male citizens over the age of puberty, later settled at 14 years of age, were in principle able to participate as citizens in public life, but in private law they remained subordinated to their fathers and other male ascendants. A very large proportion of the population was not free at all: as slaves they lacked all personal rights in either private or public law.
In the course of the first century AD the little Spanish town of Irni was granted an urban charter. This has recently come to light in the form of several bronze tablets designed to be displayed in the forum of the town and recovered from their resting place by means of metal detectors. Amongst the provisions of the charter, which was of a standard type promulgated throughout the western part of the Roman Empire but only very partially preserved elsewhere, was a section on family law headed: ‘That those who become Roman citizens remain in the same manus, mancipium and potestas’.2
The clause dealt with the situation which arose when, by whatever means, citizens of the town of Irni obtained Roman citizenship, a process we will glance at later in this chapter.
The three key terms manus, mancipium, and potestas are used to describe different sorts of subordinate status. Those in manus are wives bound to their husbands by the old formal modes of marriage. Mancipium in the usage of the jurists is a term for a peculiar temporary status created in the process of emancipation, but it seems to have been the original Roman term for slavery: mancipi is a term for slaves. Potestas is a term used classically to describe both the father’s power over his children and the master’s power over his slaves. The two situations share enough in common juristically for the anomaly to be borne, but socially speaking it must always have been a curiosity. Because it is by far the most common term for subordination, we start with potestas.2.
More on the topic Introduction:
- Introduction
- A Introduction
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Introduction
- 7.1 INTRODUCTION