will should not be allowed to give his freedom to a single slave:
wherefore we allow him to deal in his last will as he pleases with his
slaves as with the rest of his property, and even to give them their
liberty if he will. But liberty being a boon beyond price, for which
very reason the power of manumission was denied by the older law to
owners under twenty years of age, we have as it were selected a middle
course, and permitted persons under twenty years of age to manumit their
slaves by will, but not until they have completed their seventeenth
and entered on their eighteenth year. For when ancient custom allowed
persons of this age to plead on behalf of others, why should not their
judgement be deemed sound enough to enable them to use discretion in
giving freedom to their own slaves?

TITLE VII. OF THE REPEAL OF THE LEX FUFIA CANINIA

Moreover, by the lex Fufia Caninia a limit was placed on the number of
slaves who could be manumitted by their master's testament: but this
law we have thought fit to repeal, as an obstacle to freedom and to some
extent invidious, for it was certainly inhuman to take away from a man
on his deathbed the right of liberating the whole of his slaves, which
he could have exercised at any moment during his lifetime, unless there
were some other obstacle to the act of manumission.

TITLE VIII. OF PERSONS INDEPENDENT OR DEPENDENT

Another division of the law relating to persons classifies them as
either independent or dependent. Those again who are dependent are in
the power either of parents or of masters. Let us first then consider
those who are dependent, for by learning who these are we shall at the
same time learn who are independent. And first let us look at those who
are in the power of masters.

1 Now slaves are in the power of masters, a power recognised by the
law of all nations, for all nations present the spectacle of masters
invested with power of life and death over slaves; and to whatever is
acquired through a slave his owner is entitled.

2 But in the present day no one under our sway is permitted to
indulge in excessive harshness towards his slaves, without some reason
recognised by law; for, by a constitution of the Emperor Antoninus Pius,
a man is made as liable to punishment for killing his own slave as for
killing the slave of another person; and extreme severity on the part of
masters is checked by another constitution whereby the same Emperor, in
ans