Peculium
idea · 2 works · 8 mentions · 9 anchored passages
peculium · Peculium Adventicium · Peculium Castrense · Peculium Profecticium · castrense peculium · peculii iure · peculium adventicium · peculium castrense · peculium profecticium · peculium quasicastrense
in the texts
Institutes of Roman Law
The property a slave was permitted to hold, used as the legal analogy for how a Junian Latin's goods pass to his patron.
But the peculium of a slave belongs to his co-proprietors in the ratio of their property, and on the decease of one, his rights do not accrue to the co-proprietors, but are transmitted to the representatives of the deceased.
and as the author of the lex Junia foresaw that the effect of this fiction of their being on the same footing as Latini coloniarii would be that the goods of deceased Latini Juniani would cease to belong to the patron, since not being slaves at the time of their death, their goods would not belong to the patron by right of peculium, nor could the goods of a Latin colonist devolve on him by title of manumission;
legis itaque Iuniae lator cum intellegeret futurum, ut ea fictione res Latinorum defunctorum ad patronos pertinere desinerent, quia scilicet neque ut serui decederent, ut possent iure peculii res eorum ad patronos pertinere, neque liberti Latini hominis bona possent manumissionis iure ad patronos pertinere, necessarium existimauit, ne beneficium istis datum in iniuriam patronorum conuerteretur, ca …
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom
The Roman-derived concept of permissive separate property, discussed as a force dissolving joint family and house community holdings.
Peculium—a few head of oxen kept apart—was the name which the Romans gave to the permissive separate property allowed to son or slave.
(c) The wives of the confederated kinsmen brought into the community from outside have their marriage portion reserved to them as separate property or peculium, and a certain amount of money or goods (which many customs enable us to trace to the ancient institution of the ‘morning gift’) is held by them independently, not only of the collective group, but of their husbands.