Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/184

164 assigned the party seized in execution to his creditor, so that he could lead him away and keep him like a slave. After the expiry of sixty days, during which the debtor was three times exposed in the market-place, and proclamation was made whether any one would have compassion upon him (if these steps were without effect), his creditors had a right to put him to death and to divide his carcase, or to sell him with his children and his effects into foreign slavery, or to keep him at home as a substitute for a slave; he could not by the Roman law, so long as he remained within the bounds of the Roman community, become absolutely a slave (P. 110). It was thus that the Roman community protected every man's estate and effects with unrelenting rigour as well from the thief and the injurer, as from the unauthorized possessor and the insolvent debtor.

Protection was in like manner provided for the estate of persons not capable of bearing arms and therefore not capable of protecting their own property, such as minors and lunatics, and above all for that of women; in these cases the nearest heirs were called to undertake the guardianship.

After a man's death his property fell to the nearest heirs: in the division all who were equal proximity of relationship, women included, shared alike, and the widow along with her children was admitted to her proportional share. A dispensation from the legal order of succession could only be granted by the assembly of the people; previous to which the consent of the priests had to be obtained on account of the religious obligations attaching to property. Such dispensations appear nevertheless to have become at an early period very frequent. In the event of a dispensation not being procured, the want could be in some measure remedied by means of the completely free power to dispose of his property, which belonged to every one during his lifetime. His whole property was transferred to a friend who distributed it after death according to the wishes of the deceased.

Emancipation was unknown to the law of very early times. The owner might indeed refrain from exercising his proprietary rights; but this did not cancel the existing impossibility that master and slave could contract mutual obligations; still less did it enable the slave to acquire, in relation to the community, the rights of a guest or of a