Institutes of Roman Law. Gaius

      MODES BY WHICH LATIN FREEDMEN BECOME ROMAN CITIZENS.

      § 28. Latins have many avenues to the Roman citizenship.

      § 29. For instance, the lex Aelia Sentia enacts that when a slave below the age of thirty becomes by manumission a Latin, if he take to himself as wife a citizen of Rome, or a Latin colonist, or a freedwoman of his own condition, and thereof procure attestation by not less than seven witnesses, citizens of Rome above the age of puberty, and begets a son, on the latter attaining the age of a year, he is entitled to apply to the praetor, or, if he reside in a province, to the president of the province, and to prove that he has married a wife in accordance with the lex Aelia Sentia, and has had by her a son who has completed the first year of his age: and thereupon if the magistrate to whom the proof is submitted pronounce the truth of the declaration, that Latin and his wife, if she is of the same condition, and their son, if he is of the same condition, are declared by the statute to be Roman citizens.

      § 30. The reason why I added, when I mentioned the son, if of the same condition, was this, that if the wife of the Latin is a citizen of Rome, the son, in virtue of the recent senatusconsult made on the motion of the late Emperor Hadrian, is a citizen of Rome from the date of his birth.

      § 31. This capacity of acquiring Roman citizenship, though by the lex Aelia Sentia exclusively granted to those under thirty years of age who had become Latins by this statute, by a subsequent senatusconsult, made in the consulship of Pegasus and Pusio, was extended to all freedmen who acquire the status of Latins, even though thirty years old when manumitted.

      § 32. If the Latin die before proof of his son’s attaining the age of a year the mother may prove his condition, and thereupon both she and her son, if she be a Latin, become citizens of Rome. And if the mother fails to prove it, the tutors of the son may do so or the son himself when he has attained the age of puberty. If the son himself is a Roman citizen owing to the fact of his having been born of a Roman citizen mother, he must nevertheless prove his condition in order to make himself his father’s self successor.

      § 32 a. What has been said about a son of a year old, must be understood to be equally applicable to a daughter of that age.

      § 32 b. By the Visellian statute those either under or over thirty years of age, who when manumitted become Latins, acquire the jus quiritium, i. e. become Roman citizens, if they have served for six years in the guards at Rome. A subsequent senatusconsultum is said to have been passed, by which Roman citizenship was conferred on Latins, who completed three years’ active military service.

      § 32 c. Similarly by an edict of Claudius Latins acquire the right of citizenship, if they build a ship which holds 10,000 modii of corn, and this ship or one substituted for it imports corn to Rome for six years.

      § 33. Nero further enacted that if a Latin having property worth 200,000 sesterces or more, build a house at Rome on which he expends not less than half his property, he shall acquire the right of citizenship.

      § 34. Lastly, Trajan enacted that if a Latin carry on the business of miller in Rome for three years, and grinds each day not less than a hundred measures of wheat, he shall attain Roman citizenship.

      § 35. Slaves who become Latins either because they are under thirty at the time of their manumission, or having attained that age because they are informally manumitted, may acquire Roman citizenship by re-manumission in one of the three legal forms, and they are thereby made freedmen of their re-manumitter. If a slave is the bonitary property of one person and the quiritary property of another he can be made a Latin by his bonitary owner, but his re-manumission must be the act of his quiritary owner, and even if he acquires citizenship in other ways he becomes the freedman of his quiritary owner. The praetor, however, invariably gives the bonitary owner possession of the inheritance of such freedman. A slave in whom his owner has both bonitary and quiritary property, if twice manumitted by his owner, may acquire by the first manumission the Latin status, and by the second Roman citizenship.

      § 36. Not every owner who is so disposed is permitted to manumit.

      § 37. An owner who would defraud his creditors or his own patron by an intended manumission, attempts in vain to manumit, because the lex Aelia Sentia prevents the manumission.

      § 38. Again, by a disposition of the same statute, before attaining twenty years of age, the only process by which an owner can manumit is fictitious vindication, preceded by proof of adequate motive before the council.

      § 39. It is an adequate motive of manumission, if the father, for instance, or mother or teacher or foster-brother of the manumitter, is the slave to be manumitted. In addition to these, the motives recently specified respecting the slave under thirty years of age may be alleged when the manumitting owner is under twenty; and, reciprocally, the motives valid when the manumitting owner is under twenty are admissible when the manumitted slave is under thirty.

      § 40. As, then, the lex Aelia Sentiaimposes a certain restriction on manumission for owners under the age of twenty, it follows that, though a person who has completed his fourteenth year is competent to make a will, and therein to institute an heir and leave bequests; yet, if he has not attained the age of twenty, he cannot therein enfranchise a slave.

      § 41. And even to confer the Latin status, if he is under the age of twenty, the owner must satisfy the council of the adequacy of his motive before he manumits the slave in the presence of witnesses.