We have seen that manumission in due form made a citizen of a slave. The _libertini_, therefore, are not a third class in the state, and only demand a separate treatment in so far as their grant of freedom was conditioned by the performance of certain duties to their former masters, and in so far as the lack of free birth (_ingenuitas_) entailed certain political disabilities. The relation of the _libertus_[577] to his former master, who now became his _patronus_, was to some extent modelled on that of the ancient client to his lord. The freedman owed his manumitter reverence and obedience (_obsequium_);[578] he could not prosecute, or appear as a witness against him, in the criminal courts,[579] and he required the permission of the praetor to bring even a civil action against his former master or that master’s near relatives.[580] The patron’s right of succession to the freedman’s estate if he died intestate and without heirs,[581] if it was not a family right, was justified by the fact that the capital with which the freedman started life must have been generally the gift of the master, whether it took the form of a _peculium_ or not. This circumstance must have been also felt to justify manumission on the condition of continuing to perform certain services to the _dominus_. But the privilege of imposing such conditions was abused, and had to be limited by the edict of a praetor Rutilius,[582] which practically confined them to the performance of certain personal services (_operae_). The fact that the freedman was still regarded as an appendage of the _familia_ was most clearly shown by the criminal jurisdiction—even extending to capital punishment—exercised over him by the head of the family even at the close of the Republic.[583]