An instance of the triumph of the state in its conflict with private property is furnished by the position of the bondsman (_nexus_). It may be appropriately discussed here; for the _nexus_ is in private law practically in the position of the son under power. He was a man who had contracted a debt on the security of his person,[96] and who, on non-fulfilment of that obligation, had had his body and his services attached by the creditor. In private law he is a slave; in public law he is a free-born Roman citizen, and may be summoned for service in the legions when the state needs his help. It would be an anachronism to enter on a full treatment of Roman slavery in connexion with the beginnings of Roman history. Almost all that we know of the legal relations of slaves to their masters, of their capacities and their disabilities, their hopes of freedom, their position in the home, and their influence on the public life of the city, refers to a far later period. Yet the class doubtless existed from the earliest times, and as Roman legal conceptions became modified but never completely altered by the course of time, it is possible to give a faint outline of the conditions of slavery in the Regal and early Republican periods. Slavery may at all periods of the history of Rome be defined as an absence of personality. The slave was a thing (_res_) and belonged to that more valuable class of chattels which the Romans called _res mancipi_, and which included land and beasts of burden. He was, therefore, a part of the homestead (_familia_),[97] the transfer of any portion of which required the most solemn forms of Roman law. As a thing, the master is said to exercise _dominium_ over him; he might deal with him as he pleased, and had over him the power of life and death. The slave, on the other hand, has not only no rights against his master, but cannot conclude legal relations with others. He has no legal relatives, no legal wife; he may be permitted to retain the fruits of his own labour, but even his master’s will cannot make it his property. How far this “thing” possessed a potential personality we do not know—how far, that is, the personality inherent in him could be realised by subsequent emancipation. Liberation could at best have raised the slave to the condition of the client at this early period—a slight ascent in the scale of actual rights, but one that might have been valued for the greater personal freedom and the surer guarantee of religious protection which it gave. But the fact that the slave is a part of the homestead, and at the same time an intelligent being, makes him in the truest sense a member of the family. The owner is said to have power (_potestas_) over him, a word which is used only of rule over reasonable beings; and this _dominica potestas_ does not differ essentially from the _patria potestas_ which is exercised over the son. The treatment of the two was doubtless different,