Blair, in comparing the Greek and Roman systems of slavery, points with justice to the greater facility and frequency of emanci pation as the great superiority of the latter. No Roman slave, he says, "needed to despair of becoming both a freeman and a citi zen." Manumission was of two kinds—justa or regular, and minus justa. Of manumissio justa there were four modes: (I) by adop tion, rarely resorted to; (2) by testament, already recognized in the Twelve Tables; (3) by census, which was of exceptional use, and did not exist later than the time of Vespasian ; and (4) by vindicta, which was the usual form. In the last method the mas ter turned the slave round, with the words "liber esto," in the presence of the praetor, that officer or his lictor at the same time striking the slave with his rod. The manumissio minus justa was effected by a sufficient manifestation of the will of the master, as by letter, by words, by putting the pileus (or cap of liberty) on the slave, or by any other formality which had by usage become significant of the intention to liberate, or by such an act as making the slave the guardian of his children. This extra-legal sort of manumission was incomplete and precarious ; even after the lex hada Norbana (A.D. 19), which assimilated the position of those so liberated to that of the Latin colonists, under the name of Latini juniores, the person remained in the eye of the law a slave till his death and could not dispose of his peculium by gift or testamentary disposition.
A freedman, unless he became such by operation of law, re mained client of his master, and both were bound by mutual obligations arising out of that relation. These obligations existed also in the case of freedmen of the State, of cities, temples and cor porations. The freedman took his former master's name; he owed him deference (obsequium) and aid (officium) ; and neglect of these obligations was punished, in extreme cases even with loss of liberty. Conditions might be annexed by the master to the gift of freedom, as of continued residence with him, or of general service or some particular duty to be performed, or of a money payment to be made. But the praetor Rutilius, about the beginning of the st century B.C., limited the excessive imposition of such condi tions, and his restrictions were carried further by the later jurists and the imperial constitutions. Failing natural heirs of an intes tate freedman, the master, now patron, succeeded to his property at his death; and he could dispose by will of only half his posses sions, the patron receiving the other half. Freedmen and their sons were subject to civil disabilities; the third generation became ingenui (full citizens). Thus the slave element tended to merge itself in the general popular body.
It was often a pecuniary advantage to the master to liberate the slave; he obtained payment which enabled him to buy a sub stitute and at the same time gained a client. This, of course, presupposes the recognition of the right of the slave to his pecu lium; and the same is implied in Cicero's statement that a diligent slave could in six years purchase his freedom. Augustus set him self against the undue multiplication of manumissions, probably considering the rapid succession of new citizens a source of social instability, and recommended a similar policy to his successor. The lex Aelia Sentia (about A.D. 3) forbade manumission, except in strictly limited cases, by masters under 20 years of age or of slaves under 3o; and the lex Furia Caninia (about A.D. 7) fixed the proportion of a man's slaves which he could liberate by testa ment, and forbade more than i oo being so enfranchised, what ever might be the number of the familia. Under the empire the freedmen rose steadily in influence; they became admissible to the rank of equites and to the senate; they obtained provincial Gov ernments, and were appointed to offices in the imperial household which virtually placed them at the head of administrative depart ments. (See article on NARCISSUS.) Freedmen of humbler rank,
on the other hand, filled the minor offices in the administrative service, in the city cohorts, and in the army; and we shall find that they entered largely into the trades and professions when free labour began to revive. They appeared also in literature, e.g., Tiro, the amanuensis of Cicero; Hyginus, the librarian of Augus tus; Livius Andronicus, Caecilius, Statius, Terence, Publilius Syrus, Phaedrus and Epictetus.
In the 2nd century of the Christian era we find a marked change with respect to the institution of slavery, both in the region of thought and in that of law. Already the principles of reason and humanity had been applied to the subject by Seneca. But it was in the 2nd century, as we have said, that "the victory of moral ideas" in this, as in other departments of life, became "decisive. . . . Dio Chrysostom, the adviser of Trajan, is the first Greek writer who has pronounced the principle of slavery to be contrary to the law of nature" (Mark Pattison). And a parallel change is found in the practical policy of the State. The military vocation of Rome was now felt to have reached its normal limits; and the emperors, understanding that, in the future, industrial activity must prevail, prepared the abolition of slavery as far as was then possible, by honouring the freedmen, by protecting the slave against his master, and by facilitating manumissions. The general tendency both of the imperial constitutions and of the maxims of the legists is in favour of liberty. The practices of exposure and sale of children, and of giving them in pledge for debt, are f or bidden. Diocletian forbade a free man to sell himself. Kidnappers (plagiarii) were punished with death. The insolvent debtor was withdrawn from the yoke of his creditor. While the slave trade was permitted, the mutilation of boys and young men, too often practised, was punished with exile and even with death. In red hibitory actions (for the annulment of sales), if a slave were returned to the seller, so must also be his parents, brothers and personae contubernio conjunctae. In the interpretation of testa ments it was to be assumed that members of the same family were not to be separated by the division of the succession. The law also favoured in special cases the security of the pecu/iutn, though in general principle it still remained the property of the master. The State granted to public slaves the right of bequeath ing half their possessions ; and private persons sometimes per mitted similar dispositions even to a greater extent, though only within the familia. Hadrian took from masters the power of life and death and abolished the subterranean prisons. Antoninus Pius punished him who killed his own slave as if he had killed another's. Already in the time of Nero the magistrates had been ordered to receive the slave's complaint of ill-treatment ; and the lex Petronia, belonging to the same or an earlier period, forbade masters to hand over their slaves to combats with wild beasts. M. Aurelius gave to masters an action against their slaves for any cause of complaint, thus bringing their relation more directly under the surveillance of law and public opinion. A slave's oath could still not be taken in a court of law; he was interrogated by the "question"; but the emperors and jurists limited in various ways the application of torture, adding, however, as we have men tioned, to the cases in which it could previously be appealed to that of the crime of majestas. For certain alleged offences of the master the slave could bring an action, being represented for the purpose by an adsertor. Emancipation was facilitated. The power of imposing conditions on testamentary manumissions was re stricted, and these conditions interpreted in the sense most favour able to freedom. The emperor could confer liberty by presenting a gold ring to a slave with the consent of the master, and the legal process called restitutio natalium made him a full citizen.