Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/362

 fourteen years of age, so that he could legally make a will, yet was denied the power of manumitting a slave. The first of these enactments was abrogated, the second modified by Justinian. In the case of a slave being in the joint possession of two or more persons, and one of the owners desiring to manumit, he made it compulsory that the others should sell their share to that one; and if a free woman married a slave he enacted that she should retain her liberty, contrary to previous law on the subject. He also forbade the prostitution of female slaves, to whom in such case he ordained that freedom should at once accrue as a consequence of the offence. In general he declared himself to be the friend of liberty, and endeavoured to expedite the solution of all legal difficulties in wills, and the wishes of testators in favour of the slave being speedily emancipated. Finally he deprived the slave of the option of remaining in servitude, stating that no one had the right to reject the gift of Roman citizenship. He asserted, however, very strictly that a freedman should fulfil his duties towards his patron, that is, his former master, to whose generosity he owed his liberty, and threatened him with relapse into servitude should he prove himself to be an ingrate. But he relaxed the rule which compelled a freedman to leave half his property to his patron; and in ordinary