lia Sentia on the footing of
enemies surrendered at discretion. This last and lowest class, however,
has long ceased to exist, and the title of Latin also had become rare:
and so in our goodness, which desires to raise and improve in every
matter, we have amended this in two constitutions, and reintroduced the
earlier usage; for in the earliest infancy of Rome there was but one
simple type of liberty, namely that possessed by the manumitter, the
only distinction possible being that the latter was free born, while
the manumitted slave became a freedman. We have abolished the class of
'dediticii,' or enemies surrendered at discretion, by our constitution,
published among those our decisions, by which, at the suggestion of the
eminent Tribonian, our quaestor, we have set at rest the disputes of
the older law. By another constitution, which shines brightly among the
imperial enactments, and suggested by the same quaestor, we have altered
the position of the 'Latini Iuniani,' and dispensed with all the rules
relating to their condition; and have endowed with the citizenship
of Rome all freedmen alike, without regard to the age of the person
manuumitted, and nature of the master's ownership, or the mode of
manumission, in accordance with the earlier usage; with the addition of
many new modes in which freedom coupled with the Roman citizenship, the
only kind of freedom now known may be bestowed on slaves.

TITLE VI. OF PERSONS UNABLE TO MANUMIT, AND THE CAUSES OF THEIR
INCAPACITY

In some cases, however, manumission is not permitted; for an owner who
would defraud his creditors by an intended manumission attempts in vain
to manumit, the act being made of no effect by the lex Aelia Sentia.

1 A master, however, who is insolvent may institute one of his slaves
heir in his will, conferring freedom on him at the same time, so that
he may become free and his sole and necessary heir, provided no one else
takes as heir under the will, either because no one else was instituted
at all, or because the person instituted for some reason or other does
not take the inheritance. And this was a judicious provision of the
lex Aelia Sentia, for it was most desirable that persons in embarrassed
circumstances, who could get no other heir, should have a slave as
necessary heir to satisfy their creditors' claims, or that at least (if
he did not do this) the creditors might sell the estate in the slave's
name, so as to save the memory of the