[MARCELLUS libro uicesimo quarto digestorum. ] §18.7.4.prSi minor uiginti annis seruum tibi in hoc uendiderit et tradiderit, ut eum manumitteres, nullius momenti est traditio, quamquam ea mente tradiderit, ut, cum uiginti annos ipse explesset, manumitteres: non enim multum facit, quod distulit libertatis praestationem: lex quippe consilio eius quasi parum firmo restitit.
[MARCELLUS in the twenty-fourth book of the Digests.] If a person under twenty years of age has sold and delivered a slave to you for the purpose of your manumitting him, the delivery is of no effect, even though he delivered him with the intention that you should manumit him when he himself had completed twenty years of age; for it does not make much difference that he postponed the granting of freedom, since the law indeed opposed his decision as being, as it were, insufficiently firm.