At the call of indigence or avarice the master of a family could dispose
of his children or his slaves. But the condition of the slave was far
more advantageous, since he regained by the first manumission his
alienated freedom: the son was again restored to his unnatural father;
he might be condemned to servitude a second and a third time, and it was
not till after the third sale and deliverance that he was enfranchised
from the domestic power which had been so repeatedly abused. According
to his discretion, a father might chastise the real or imaginary faults
of his children by stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by sending them
to the country to work in chains among the meanest of his servants. The
majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death; and the
examples of such bloody executions, which were sometimes praised and
never punished, may be traced in the annals of Rome beyond the times of
Pompey and Augustus. Neither age nor rank, nor the consular office, nor
the honors of a triumph could exempt the most illustrious citizen from
the bonds of filial subjection: his own descendants were included in the
family of their common ancestor; and the claims of adoption were not
less sacred or less rigorous than those of nature.
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