eyance, a proceeding to
which we may unhesitatingly assign the parentage of two great
institutions without which modern society can scarcely be supposed
capable of holding together, the Contract and the Will. The
_mancipium_, or as the word would exhibit itself in later Latinity,
the Mancipation, carries us back by its incidents to the infancy of
civil society. As it sprang from times long anterior, if not to the
invention, at all events to the popularisation, of the art of writing,
gestures, symbolical acts, and solemn phrases take the place of
documentary forms, and a lengthy and intricate ceremonial is intended
to call the attention of the parties to the importance of the
transaction, and to impress it on the memory of the witnesses. The
imperfection too of oral, as compared with written, testimony
necessitates the multiplication of the witnesses and assistants beyond
what in later times would be reasonable or intelligible limits.

The Roman Mancipation required the presence first of all of the
parties, the vendor and vendee, or we should perhaps rather say, if we
are to use modern legal language, the grantor and grantee. There were
also no less than _five_ witnesses; and an anomalous personage, the
Libripens, who brought with him a pair of scales to weigh the uncoined
copper money of ancient Rome. The Testament we are considering--the
Testament _per aes et libram_, "with the copper and the scales," as it
long continued to be technically called--was an ordinary Mancipation
with no change in the form and hardly any in words. The Testator was
the grantor; the five witnesses and the libripens were present; and
the place of grantee was taken by a person known technically as the
_familiae emptor_, the Purchaser of the Family. The ordinary ceremony
of a Mancipation was then proceeded with. Certain formal gestures were
made and sentences pronounced. The _Emptor familiae_ simulated the
payment of a price by striking the scales with a piece of money, and
finally the Testator ratified what had been done in a set form of
words called the "Nuncupatio" or publication of the transaction, a
phrase which, I need scarcely remind the lawyer, has had a long
history in Testamentary jurisprudence. It is necessary to attend
particularly to the character of the person called _familiae emptor_.
There is no doubt that at first he was the Heir himself. The Testator
conveyed to him outright his whole "familia," that is, all the rights
he enjo