The gayana conception of "person" and the partial legal capacity of slaves

Abstract

In his Institutes Gaius classifies free men and slaves as persona. This classification should not be misunderstood as an intent to bestow upon slaves the dignity of the medieval theological and philosophical concept of person but rather as a technical usage which allows the jurists elegance and precision in their deprivation of the slaves' rights. The use of the phraseologism persona servi by Gaius and others however is something like a prelude to the later semantic adventures of the notion of persona.