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Justinian I · The Digest of Justinian §40.8.2.pr

Freedom for Slaves Abandoned Due to Severe Illness

Passage 6515 of 9271 · Latin

Summary

It states that a slave treated as abandoned by their master due to a severe illness is granted freedom under the edict of the divine Claudius.

[MODESTINUS libro sexto regularum. ] §40.8.2.prSeruo, quem pro derelicto dominus ob grauem infirmitatem habuit, ex edicto diui Claudii competit libertas.
[MODESTINUS, from the sixth book of Rules.] Freedom belongs, by the edict of the divine Claudius, to a slave whom his master has treated as abandoned because of a severe illness.

Notes

  1. §40.8.2.prpro derelicto habuit — The verb habere, accompanied by the preposition pro and an ablative (here the substantivated neuter of the perfect passive participle derelictus), means "to regard or treat someone as..." In this context, with the relative pronoun quem (accusative, referring to Seruo) as its object, it means "treated (the slave) as abandoned."
  2. §40.8.2.prSeruo ... competit libertas — The verb competere takes a dative to mean "to belong to" or "to be due to (as a right)." Here, the subject libertas (freedom) belongs to the dative Seruo, which is placed at the beginning of the main clause and modified by the relative clause.

Cite this passage

Justinian I, The Digest of Justinian §40.8.2.pr. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi2806.phi002.humanitext-lat1:40.8.2.pr

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