Abstract
Under Roman law, the slave— , to a large extent, the son of the family as well has no legal existence vis-à-vis third parties the authority of the head of the family exercised over him tends to render him invisible. So much for the law.
But nature makes him a being capable of acting, exchanging, and entering into commitments that are expected to be honored. The peculium, a small estate that may be allocated to him by his master, serves as the mechanism that bridges these two incompatible . Legally the property of the master (or the head of the household), it is nevertheless placed at the disposal of the slave (or the son) to enable him to engage in relatively autonomous economic activity.
A small estate granted to those who, in law, do not exist in their own right, the peculium thus opens up an intermediate space between dependence and autonomy. And it is precisely when seeking to define its status that Roman jurists resort to metaphor the peculium is born, grows, diminishes, and dies. Just like a man.
It is precisely because the task is to define an ambiguous entity that the metaphor allows us to build a bridge between seemingly irreconcilable conceptual worlds. This session, which concludes the course as well as two of reflection devoted to metaphors in the legal language of ancient Rome, will draw on the image of the stages of human life to examine the role of metaphor in the thinking of Roman jurists— perhaps in any discipline.
