Roman Law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (), to the (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law also den ...

, the ''lex Iunia Norbana'' classified all

freedmen A freedman or freedwoman is a person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their owners), emancipation (granted freedom as part of a larger group), or self- ...

into two classes according to their mode of enfranchisement: enfranchised citizens, (freedmen who enjoyed Roman citizenship) and enfranchised Latini (freedmen who had only

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 ...

). The date of this ''lex'' is uncertain, with arguments for as early as 25 BC or more commonly 17 BC, or as late as AD 19. Freedmen would be granted only Latin rights if 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 ...

of the slave failed to meet any of the conditions set out by the Lex Aelia Sentia of 4 AD for it to confer Roman citizenship. This provided that for the freedman to acquire Roman citizenship a slave had to be manumitted at the age of 30 or older, the owner had to have quiritary ownership and the ceremony had to be public. For slaves under the age of thirty, the manumission had to be approved by a special council. The manumission of slaves who had been enslaved because of crimes would raise them only to the position of ''

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 ...

'' (war captives). Thus, the ''lex Iunia Norbana'' made the slaves who were not eligible for Roman citizens as per the ''lex Aelia Sextia'' enfranchised Latins. The law retained the dediticii. A clause of the law "took away from these Latini Juniani, as they were called, the capacity of making a testament, taking under a testament, and being appointed tutores by a testament." The Institutes, which were part of the

Corpus Juris Civilis The ''Corpus Juris'' (or ''Iuris'') ''Civilis'' ("Body of Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred ...

(Body of Civil Law) commissioned by

Justinian I Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

in the sixth century, recorded that in previous times there were three form of freedmen: those who became Roman citizens, those who acquired inferior freedom as Latins as per the ''lex Junia Norbana'' and those who obtained still less freedom as ''dediticii'' as per the ''lex Aelia Sentia''. This last status had decayed and the Latini had become rare by then. The Institutes also noted that two edicts corrected this situation. One abolished the ''dediticii'' and the other “rendered all freedmen Roman citizens without making any distinction with reference to age, the mode of manumission, or the authority of the manumitting party, as was formerly the practice.”The Enactments of Justinian, The Institutes, Bok 1, Title 5, Concerning freedmen, 3

References

{{reflist Roman law Slavery in ancient Rome

See also

References