Note 45 — BOOK IX. CONCERNING FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES.

This law was evidently intended to repeal the preceding one, although this is not specifically stated. Its enactment, as is set forth in the preamble, was demanded by the constantly increasing number of marriages between freeborn persons and slaves. The degradation attending such unions does not seem to have been regarded by the masses with the same prejudice that actuated the law-making power, whose interest it was to rigidly maintain the barriers of caste.—[Ed.]