_We know not whether they manumitted upon condition, or, if so, upon what conditions they manumitted formerly those servants who continued thenceforth as freed persons, but elevated to more honourable employments, to serve in the houses of their masters. We do indeed know in the Tit._ de Operis Libertorum, _and in another_ de bonis Libertorum _of the Digests, that very many acquired their liberty with the obligation of giving to their masters presents, or doing work if they were artists_, Operas vel donum. _This was in all likelihood practised only by merchants or other masters given to making profit, but not by noble houses. As to these the ancient inscriptions exhibit to us that very many who obtained their freedom, yet continued to live and to do service in those same houses, no longer as slaves, but as freed persons, because probably each party found it beneficial. The patrons kept about them persons in whom they had confidence, and who had already been engrafted on their families; the freed persons, grown to honour and making profit could create property for themselves and for their children. I cannot discover whether the Romans had hireling servants, as is now the case. They had then true slaves and sometimes freed persons. This being the case, it is matter of surprise that Pignoria, in treating of the employment of the ancient slaves, should have been so perplexed as not to be able clearly to distinguish slaves from freed persons, and should have attributed to the former many employments which were specially reserved for the latter: and it is more to be wondered at, that marbles which speak of freed persons are referred to by him and explained as treating of slaves._ It is clear that even in the days of the Emperor Claudius, to whose reign, A.D. 45, the marble of which he treats refers, and probably long before that period, many of the freedmen of the Roman empire were bound to do certain services for the patrons who had been their masters, and that this obligation descended to their progeny. Hence this would still be a species of servitude. The barbarians who overran the empire came chiefly from Scythia and Germany, as that vast region was then called which stretches from the Alps to the Northern Ocean. When they settled in the conquered provinces of Gaul and in Italy, they introduced many of their customs as well of government as of policy. Most of their slaves were what the writers of the second, third, and fourth centuries describe as _coloni_ and _conditionibus obligati_. As Tacitus describes, in xxv. _De Moribus Germanorum_: