The ''Lex Aelia Sentia'' was a law established in the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

in 4 AD. It was one of the laws that the

Roman assemblies The Roman assemblies were meetings of the Roman people duly convened by a magistrate. There were two general kinds of assemblies: a '' contio'' where a crowd was convened to hear speeches or statements from speakers without any further arrangem ...

passed at the behest of the emperor

Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...

. Along with the ''

Lex Fufia Caninia The ''lex Fufia Caninia'' of 2 BC was a law passed under Augustus, the first Roman emperor, concerning the manumission of slaves. The law placed limits on the number of slaves that could be formally released from slavery by means of a will ...

'' of 2 BC, this law regulated the

manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing slaves by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most wi ...

(freeing from ownership) of

slaves Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

. This law had several provisions. For a manumission to be valid, the owner had to be at least twenty years old, and the slave at least thirty. Slaves whose masters had punished them for criminal acts could not become Roman citizens if they were later freed, as was customary for formally manumitted slaves in the

Republican era Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

; instead, they would be counted among the ''

dediticii In ancient Rome, the ''dediticii'' or '' peregrini dediticii'' () were a class of free provincials who were neither slaves nor citizens holding either full Roman citizenship as ''cives'' or Latin rights as '' Latini''. A conquered people who w ...

'', who were free subjects of Roman who held neither the rights of Roman ''cives'' nor

Latin rights Latin rights or Latin citizenship ( or ) were a set of legal rights that were originally granted to the Latins and therefore in their colonies ( Latium adiectum). ''Latinitas'' was commonly used by Roman jurists to denote this status. With the ...

. If a manumitted slave was under age thirty, he could only achieve full citizenship after a legal proceeding (''consilia'') similar to a family law trial. These legal proceedings were to be held at pre-determined times in the provinces and in Rome. Any slave under the age of thirty could achieve full citizenship rights without the need for a ''consilia'' if his master was insolvent and agreed to free him. If a slave was freed under the age of thirty, but was not granted full citizenship rights upon his manumission, he could be granted those full citizenship rights if he married a Roman freedwoman or freewoman, and had with this woman a child who was, at the time, at least one year of age. If he could prove this to a magistrate or governor, he, his wife, and his child, would all become full citizens. If the father had died before this had occurred, the mother could accomplish the same result. This provision was inserted by Augustus to increase the rate of marriage and childbirth, which were both in decline. Augustus also believed that public morals were in a state of decline during his reign, and so by encouraging marriage especially, Augustus was attempting to "restore" the degree of virtue that he believed had existed under the Republic. Slaves could be pledged as collateral for a loan, and a master manumitted his slave in order to defraud his creditors, the manumission was invalid. A person under the age of twenty could only manumit a slave if he went through the ordinary legal proceeding (''consilium''). This provision, and several other provisions did not apply to slaves who had been given membership in certain lower classes of freedmen. These classes were included in these provisions, however, upon a decree of the senate during the reign of the emperor

Hadrian Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples, Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, Aelia '' ...

. By the time of the late empire, this law had little importance. This law was passed by virtue of the constitutional forms at the time of Augustus, when the status of a ''civis'' had not yet lost its value, and a semblance of the

Constitution of the Roman Republic The constitution of the Roman Republic was a set of Uncodified constitution, uncodified norms and customs which, together with various Roman law, written laws, guided the procedural governance of the Roman Republic. The constitution emerged from ...

still existed.Ulpian, Frag. tit. 1; Dig. 28 tit. 5 s57, 60; Dig. 38 tit. 2 s33; Tacitus, ''Annals'' XV.55

Notes

External links

The Roman Law Library, incl. ''Leges''
{{Italic title Roman law 1st century in law Slavery in ancient Rome

See also

Notes

External links