analogy of the rule regarding slaves' unions, first made a serf's offspring by a slavewoman to be slave (530), and afterwards from the love of liberty made a serf's offspring by a freewoman to be free (533). He confirmed this again in 537 and 539, though, by the later law, he required the children, though free and retaining their property, to be permanently attached to the farm. Finally in 540, influenced by representations of the danger of thus depleting the land of its proper cultivators, he restored the old law and made the children serfs, without affecting the mother's status as a freewoman. His successors made such children personally free.
It was difficult for a serf to improve his status. Justinian abolished (c. 531) any claim to throw off serfdom by prescription, but allowed anyone who had been consecrated as a bishop to be free from serfdom as from slavery (546). Orthodoxy however was essential, and any serf who encouraged Donatist meetings on his land was to be beaten, and if he persisted was fined one-third his peculium.
Serfs were sometimes called originarii from being in the class by birth; censiti from being enrolled in the census-register; usually adscripti or adscripticii from being enrolled as of a certain farm; tributarii from paying poll tax. Another term, inquilini, which appears in the Digest in the beginning of the third century, and in earlier inscriptions, appears to denote a similar class, possibly serfs living in huts on the land and employed either as cultivators or herdsmen or otherwise. The clear recognition of serfs as half-free is seen chiefly in laws since Constantine. After Justinian there is little said of them.
Patria potestas. The father (or grandfather) when regularly married, as head of the family (paterfamilias), had in early times absolute power over the other members whether sons or daughters. And his wife, if married by the ancient forms, ranked as a daughter. In imperial times this relation was largely modified. She remained outside her husband's family, who instead of taking her whole property, received only a dowry of which he was rather the accountable manager than the beneficial owner. The children unless emancipated had no property of their own, any more than slaves had. Whatever came to them, from any source, passed in strict law at once to the father, who could do what he liked with it. This "fatherly power" endured irrespectively of the age or social or political position of his sons and daughters. A man of full age, married, with children and occupying a high office was, unless formally emancipated, still under his father's power and had only a peculium like slaves. He could sue and be sued only in his father's name and in law for his father's account. Nor could he compel his father to emancipate him, and if emancipated himself he did not thereby carry his children with him, unless expressly included in the emancipation. If his father died, his children fell into his own power; if he died first, his children remained under his father's power. Loss of citizenship had the same effect as death.
