Search

The following article aims to study the origins of Roman property. The exercise of corporal power in archaic Rome was possibly conducted by means of a process of domestication, subjugation and deprivation of force applied indiscriminately to both people and objects (mancipium = nexus). By the time of the Republic, this material power had evolved and partially dismembered into an abstract right to ownership separate from the effective and corporal power over objects themselves (mancipium), and partially into an individual right which spiritualized the archaic corporal legal bond (nexus) connecting the subjects implied in an obligatory legal relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]