To the legendary Romulus were attributed the regulations or laws which forbade the massacre or enslavement of the male youth of conquered villages or districts, and prohibited also the transformation of the conquered lands into pasturages, and provided that they should be parcelled into small homesteads for Roman citizens. At first two acres, and afterward seven, constituted such a civic patrimony or homestead. It was the abandonment of this law in after ages which generated slavery and the ruin of the populace. Only the prisoners made on the battle-field and counted among the spoils, were sold by the state at public auction: _sub hasta_, "under the spear," and _sub corona_, "the citizen wearing a crown"--to the citizens or members of the community. Such prisoner, like all other vended booty, became a _mancipium_, _res mancipia_, (from _manu capere_, "taken, caught by the hand.") Such slaves, in all probability, were not numerous. A more prolific source of slavery was the right to enslave a debtor for life. The debtor became a _mancipium_; and even when the right to enslave him was abolished, the legal formality of catching him or touching by the hand, was maintained. The power of the father or chief of the household--_patria potestas_--was limitless, in the precincts of the house, over both the family and the servants. The father, be he patrician or plebeian, could sell his son into slavery, but the right was very seldom used. So also, the father had the right of life and death over all his family and household. Manumission of slaves was common; it existed from the most ancient times. The slave could also buy his liberty. Subsequently, in the last centuries of the republic and under the emperors, a slave could be emancipated by various positive enactments, and the status of the manumitted slave often passed through various gradations before reaching absolute independence. The fortieth book of the Pandects contains several chapters relating to manumission. Sometimes, though rarely, under the kings, the _public slaves_--or those of the state, exclusively war prisoners--were employed on public works, or to take care of public buildings, or to attend on magistrates or priests. The condition of public slaves was preferable to that of the private slaves; indeed, the former subsequently had the right to dispose by will of half of their property. The land was tilled by the hands of the senators themselves, patricians though they were. If a patrician (_pater_) possessed more land than he could cultivate himself, he divided it among small free cultivators, or let it out; and no servile hand desecrated the plough. The slaves employed in the house were not numerous.