Informal Manumission

In later times various informal modes of manumission were recognized which became effective, as already stated, through the action of the prjetor and the lex Junia Norbana. The principal modes were by a letter in which the master gave the slave his freedom, by a declaration by the master before friends, and by permitting the slave to wear the cap of freedom at his master's funeral.

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Special Cases of Slavery Arising under the Jus Civile

These were all cases in which a person lost his liberty as a punishment for crime or other wrong doing. A Roman citizen who, for the purpose of avoiding military service, failed to have himself enrolled on the census, thereby lost his liberty. As the census ceased under the Empire, this case was obsolete in the time of Justinian. Under the XII Tables a thief taken in the act might be adjudged to belong to the person from whom he stole. (Gaius, 3, 189). This case was rendered obsolete by the substitution by the praetor of the penalty of fourfold restitution. By the XII Tables an insolvent debtor might be sold into slavery. By the Senatus Consultum Claudianum a free woman who had repeated intercourse with a slave might be made the slave of his master. This was abolished by Justinian (Inst. III, 12, 1). A person condemned for crime to the mines or to fight with wild beasts were regarded as slaves of punishment {servi poena), having no other master. The infliction of slavery as...
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Marriage with Manus - Strict Marriage

In a strict sense, marriage with manus was originally the only type of marriage to receive full recognition in Roman law, the free marriage not being' attended with all the legal consequences of marriage with m-anits. In time, however, as we shall see, in Roman law, as in English law, some of the most striking consequences of marriage become obsolete, and finally the strict form of marriage disappeared and was superseded by the free marriage and the doctrine of manus became obsolete.
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Impossible Promises

A promise to do what could not be done was not binding impossibilium nulla obligatio est . A thing was impossible when it was something that no one could do, not merely something which the promisor could not do. The promise might be to do an act physically impossible as a promise to give something that does not or cannot exist, as a slave that has died, or a "hippocentaur" or legally impossible, as to give something which could not be privately owned, as a forum, theatre or burial place. So if one agreed to buy what, unknown to him, was already his own, there was no contract, for what is a man's own cannot be given to him. But if a man agreed to give something which, although he did not own it, was yet in existence and capable of being given by the owner, for example, 100 pounds of copper, the contract was valid, for the impossibility existed only when none could perform the promise. An impossible promise was not binding though neither party or both parties...
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