[517] See the section dealing with the comitia.
[518] Suet. Aug. 40; Senec. de Vit. Beat. 24.
[519] It implied the imperium. At Rome these magistrates would be consul, praetor, dictator, or interrex; in the provinces the governors.
[520] Gaius iv. 16.
[521] “Praetor addicit libertatem.” See Cic. ad Att. vii. 2, 8.
[522] For the censor as such had no power to confer freedom (Mommsen Staatsr. ii. p. 374). Cicero (de Orat. i. 40, 183) mentions the juristic controversy whether the slave was free from the moment of the announcement or from the lustrum, which gave validity to the censorian ordinances. Servi publici were manumitted by the magistrates, but whether by the consul only or by any magistrate is unknown (Momms. Staatsr. i. p. 321). The greatest instance of state emancipation is that of the Volones in 214 B.C. (Liv. xxiv. 16).
[523] In the first case it is called directa libertas (Dig. 40, 4, 35), in the second libertas fidei commissa (Dig. 40, 4, 11).
[524] Theophilus (i. 5, 4) calls them φυσικοὶ τρόποι ἐλευθερίας.
[525] Suet. Claud. 24 (Claudius said that App. Caecus, censor in 312 B.C., had chosen the sons of libertini for the Senate) “ignarus, temporibus Appii et deinceps aliquamdiu, ‘libertinos’ dictos, non ipsos, qui manu mitterentur, sed ingenuos ex his procreatos.”
[526] Justin. Inst. i. 4 “qui statim ut natus est liber est”; Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 18, 45 “in jure civili, qui est matre libera, liber est.” This is the sense in which Cincius (ap. Fest. p. 241) and Livy (x. 8) declare patricius to have been originally equivalent to ingenuus. See p. 5.