Note 40 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.

We may even go farther. The condition of slaves is not always very bad; but however kindly treated, they are slaves, are the property of their masters. So with children too. They may not be, as in the cases mentioned above, under strict discipline; yet the father’s, or in a few cases the maternal uncle’s, power, however moderate a use he makes of it, may be legally unbounded, not restricted by social rules, not interfered with by the community. In such a case the head of the family may be called owner of the child, and is really called so in Roman law, so clearly distinct from Roman practice. “The patria potestas of ancient civil law means the full power of the father over the persons subjected to him (the child, the grand-child by the son, the wife in manu), the right of death and life (ius vitae ac necis) and the right to sell into slavery”40. “This potestas originally was equal to that over the slaves”41.