Manumission by will took effect on the owner's death, by census only at Rome and sporadically (and this method became obsolete under Augustus), by the rod only when a magistrate was available (but in the provinces as at Rome) (Tit. Ulp. 1.6-9). F°r convenience or haste, owners might free their slaves informally, by a written or verbal declaration. This method did not confer citizenship but allowed the slave temporary liberty, which might be protected by the praetor.[1083] Any property, or children born to an informally freed woman, belonged to the master (Jr. Dos. 5). Equity demanded that owners should not be encouraged to shrug off their responsibilities while retaining their privileges in this way.[1084]
Three laws regulated manumission, the Lex Fufia Caninia of 2 B.C., the Lex Aelia Senda of a.d. 4 and a Lex Iunia of uncertain date, which is associated with the Aelio-Sentian law and seems to precede it. It fits well with Augustus' social engineering (particularly with an urge to keep legal status tidy) and may tentatively be assigned to 17 B.C., the period of
Augustus' major efforts in this area.[1085] The Lex Iunia recognized informally freed slaves and gave them freedom and a half-citizenship, as 'Junian Latins', like that of Latin colonists of an earlier age. The law specified that the owner must want the slave to be free and that he must be worthy of freedom in the opinion of the magistrate whose duty it would be to protect him; there were various details about the rights of owners.[1086] The law proved useful and adaptable: further rulings were gradually added.[1087]
Another area was regulated by the Fufio-Caninian law, which limited the numbers an owner could free by will. This method was popular because it displayed generosity at the expense of heirs. Augustus introduced a sliding scale: testators might free both slaves if they only had two, half the total if they had two to ten, a third if ten to thirty, a fourth if thirty to 100, one fifth if 100-500, and never more than 100. But they might always free as many as they would have been allowed if they had been in the category below (so an owner of thirty-two might free ten, rather than eight). This law applied only to wilclass="underline" an owner could still free as many as he liked in his lifetime.[1088] Augustus had now regulated the two methods of manumission which had previously needed no specific ratification by public authority.
The Lex Aelia Sentia was a comprehensive law on manumission and the resulting rights of patrons and libertini. It required the freedman to show gratitude. It contained a requirement that the manumitter must be over twenty, but if he could prove a valid reason before a magistrate with imperium and a special council (five senators and five equites in Rome, or twenty citizens in the provinces) he could free by the rod (or informally).[1089] The motive must be honourable: this was interpreted as meaning that the council might approve manumission of a blood relative or quasi-relative such as a nurse, a benefactor or a girl a master wanted to marry. The law also introduced a minimum age for the slave, thirty, again with the possibility of justifying exceptions before a council.[1090] A younger slave did not become a citizen, but probably a Latin.[1091] The law also invalidated manumission which defrauded a creditor or a patron, and it debarred from either citizen or Latin rights slaves previously punished as criminals by their owners or the state, by whatever means they were freed.[1092] These were put in a pre-existing category of particularly recalcitrant surrendered enemies, the dediticii. They had to reside at least 100 miles from Rome[1093] and could not make a will[1094] or inherit.[1095]Junian Latins were prohibited by the Junian law from making a will (Tit. Ulp. 20.14). Unlike dediticii, they were encouraged to become full citizens. For instance, a man freed under thirty who had become a Latin, could prove that he had in accordance with the Aelio-Sentian Law married a Roman or Latin woman and had a year-old child and claim promotion to full citizenship for himself and his family.[1096] The Visellian Law, under Tiberius (Pa.d. 24) gave Roman citizenship to Junians who served six years in the vigiles; a Claudian edict to those who built a ship of at least 10,000 measures and transported grain to Rome for six years, and Nero to those who built a house in Rome costing at least HS 100,ooo.[1097]Formal repetition by iusta manumissio after thirty also gave full citizenship.[1098] This law, among other things, laid down guidelines for magistrates who authorized a manumission.
Ancient sources thought Augustus aimed at checking the flow of servile and foreign blood into the citizen body.[1099] Though the Fufio- Caninian law may have reduced the number of manumissions, the rest of his legislation blocked only criminal ex-slaves and made access to citizenship easier for others. He aimed to regulate, not to stop the talented and energetic. Pollution by foreigners remained a favourite theme of writers. But by the time of Nero it could be argued that most senators and equites had ex-slaves in their family trees (Tac. Ann. xiii.27.2).
Later emperors also intervened. The Visellian law regulated the promotion of freedmen, pursuing those who sought offices reserved for the freeborn, unless they obtained the gold ring by application to the emperor (CJ ix. 21), but also, as we have seen, assisting their rise in return for public service. Under Claudius, an important step was taken to channel talent into the service of the emperor himself, when Pallas the financial bureau chief excogitated a senatorial decree which ensured that if a slave lived in quasi-marriage with a free woman, his owner could, if he wished, take her and her children as his slaves. (The children would otherwise have been freeborn and illegitimate, and their father's owner have no rights over them.) The Senate may have thought they were repressing ambidous slaves and punishing perverse women, but the main modve was probably to allow the emperor to recruit back into his service the promising sons of his slave bureaucrats.88 This system is introduced just when it seems that the upward mobility of slave 'civil servants' was recognized enough for them to become eligible husbands to freeborn women (although these were often daughters of imperial libertt).89 We see in this later legislation nuanced measures designed for the state, not in the interests of any one group. It is unprofitable to expect general laws to be simple enough to be labelled as 'pro' or 'anti' a whole category of the population, let alone such a large and heterogeneous group as the slaves of Roman citizens.