Lex Aelia Sentia, manumission of slaves and the letter to Philemon

Lex Aelia Sentia was a Roman law established in 4 CE. Augustus asked the assemblies to pass it.  Lex Aelia Sentia and Lex Fufia Caninia limited manumissions. Manumission, the freeing of a slave, was increasingly important in the early empire. Augustus attempted to regulate the practice by enacting a series of restrictions. Limitations on manumissions were made because the number of manumissions was so large at the end of the republic and the beginning of the empire, that they challenged the social system of the period.

Lex Aelia Sentia law had several provisions. One stated that slaves who were manumitted could not become full Roman citizens, but became members of a lower class of freedmen (Peregrini dediticii).   For a manumission to be valid under Lex Aelia Sentia, a master had to be at least twenty years old and a slave at least thirty.  If a manumitted slave was under age thirty, he could only achieve full citizenship after a “consilia,” a legal proceeding similar to a family law trial. These legal proceedings were held at pre-determined times. Any slave under the age of thirty could achieve full citizenship without the need for a consilia if his master was insolvent and agreed to free him. If a slave was freed under the age of thirty, but was not granted full citizenship upon his manumission, he could be granted full citizenship if he married a Roman freedwoman or freewoman, and had a son who was at least one year of age with this woman. If the manumitted slave could prove this to a magistrate or governor, he, his wife, and his son, would all become full citizens. If the manumitted slave died before the hearing occurred, the mother could prove it to the magistrate with the same resut.  Augustus inserted this provision to increase the rate of marriage and childbirth, which were both in decline.  Manumission was deemed invalid if a master manumitted his slave for the purpose of defrauding his creditors, since slaves could be pledged as collateral. 

This raises interesting questions about what “Paul” meant when he called himself a “slave” (δουλος) of Christ.  The term “slave” was not one that was bandied about poetically, given that it had serious legal implications.

In the letter to Philemon, “Paul” makes no mention of manumission of Onesimus.  It is open to question if Philemon’s age, or Onesimus’, was the reason behind that omission.