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Rh by another law (326) chaining or beating in the ordinary way of correction for offences, even if the slave died of it, was not to justify any inquiry into the master's intentions or to found any charge against him. Justinian in his Code reproduced only the former constitution, and retained in the Digest the duty imposed on the city praefect and provincial governors of hearing the complaints of slaves who had fled from cruelty, starvation, or indecency, to the refuge of the Emperor's statues. To give such protection, said Antoninus (152), was required by the interests of masters, whose full command over their slaves should be maintained by moderate rule, sufficient supplies, and lawful tasks. On the other hand any offences of slaves which came under the animadversion of the State were visited with severer punishments than those of a freeman.

The economical position of slaves requires some notice also. In theory they were simply instruments of their master; what they acquired passed at once to him; they were not capable of having property of their own, he was responsible for them as he was for any other domestic animal that he kept. But in practice slaves were usually allowed to accumulate property out of their savings or from gifts, and the law by a fiction allowed them to use it in purchasing their own freedom. Such quasi-property was called their peculium ("petty stock"): it existed only so long as their master chose; he could withdraw it, but rarely did so, except for grave offences. But so long as it existed and his master gave him a free hand, a slave could trade with it and enter into all kinds of business transactions ostensibly for himself, but in the eye of the law for the master's account. He could not however give away anything, and he had no locus standi in court: he could sue and be sued only in the name of his master. If he was freed by his master when living, the peculium was deemed to accompany him, unless expressly withdrawn. But if he was freed by will or alienated, it did not pass with him unless expressly granted.

The law of persons was greatly simplified by Justinian's legislation. There were now only two classes of persons, slaves and freemen, though freemen were not all treated alike by the law. Besides some discrimination in favour of persons of high rank, freedmen and serfs were in a very inferior position.

were manumitted slaves and retained traces of their former servile condition. In earlier times, besides the regular forms of manumission by a ceremony before the praetor or by last will, some legal effect used to be given to informal expressions of the master's will. The slave so informally emancipated became free in fact during his life, but his property on his death did not pass as a freeman's by will or to his relatives, but remained like a slave's peculium to his former master or master's representatives. Such half-freemen were called Latins as not being complete citizens. Justinian (531) allowed the informal acts