POSTLĪMĬNĬUM

POSTLĪMĬNII JUS. If a Roman citizen during war came into the po e ion of an enemy, he sustained a diminutio capitis maxima [ Caput ], and all his civil rights were in abeyance. Being captured by the enemy, he became a slave; but his rights over his children, if he had any, were not destroyed, but were said to be in abeyance ( pendere ) by virtue of the Jus Postliminii : when he returned, his children were again in his power; and if he died in captivity, they became sui juris. Sometimes by an act of the state a man was given up bound to an enemy, and if the enemy would not receive him, it was a question whether he had the Jus Postliminii. This was the case with Sp. Postumius, who was given up to the Samnites, and with C. Hostilius Mancinus, who was given up to the Numantines; but the better opinion was, that they had no Jus Postliminii , and Mancinus was restored to his civic rights by a lex. It appears that the Jus Postliminii was founded on the fiction of the captive having never been absent from home; a fiction which was of easy application, for, as the captive during his absence could not do any legal act, the interval of captivity was a period of legal non-activity, which was terminated by his showing himself again.