ROMAN LAW sharply distinguished public front private law and political from property rights. The Roman law of property, however, originally included family rights. The earliest classifica tion of property, which appears in the XII. Ta bles, is (I) foam ilia, the household, which includes land and agricultural easements, beasts of draught and burden, slave, wife and children; and (2) pccunia (from rreuR, a herd), which in cludes all other things. Since things of familia were capable of conveyance only through a format sale before witnesses, known as maneipation, they were also termed rrs mancipi, and the things of pecunia were terna,i rcs ncr mancipi. In early Roman law these two classes of property seem to have Iskil rrotevted by different remedies and to have been governed by different rules as re gards testamentary disposition. In the later law. as n odilied by the praetors. the distinction lost all practical importance. In the later jurispru dence, family rights were taken out of the category of property (res) and put under the law of persons.
It is probable that the debtor was originally regarded as a res mancipi: but with the disap pearance of the pledge of the debtor's person in the form of sale (nesum), rights against debtors (obligations, q.v.) were sharply distinguished
from rights over things.
The Roman law also developed a clear dis tinction between ownership and all other rights in things. (1) Ownership (proprietas) included all powers that were neither specifically with held by the law, in the interest of the community, nor specifically granted by the owner to another person. Ownership was thus at once the general and the residuary right over things. (2) All other rights (jura in re) were limited either in content or in duration. These limited rights were either (a.) rights of use, viz. servitudes (q.v.) and long leaseholds (emphytcusis and su perticies, q.v.), or (b) rights of eventual sale, created to secure debts, viz. pledge (pignus, q.v.) and hypothecation (q.v.). Except as regards the real servitudes and the leaseholds, these rights could he established either over immovables or mmo•ables; and substantially the same rules were applied to both classes of property. With rare exceptions, right in timings could be freely alien ated, and unless restricted to time single life• they were subject to free testamentary disposition. Finally all rights in things run against all time title prevailing over possession. •