His whole property was transferred to a friend, who distributed it after death according to the wishes of the deceased.
Manumission Manumission was unknown to the law of very early times.

The owner might indeed refrain from exercising his proprietary rights; but this did not cancel the existing impossibility of master and slave coming under mutual obligations; still less did it enable the slave to acquire, in relation to the community, the rights of a guest or of a burgess.

Accordingly manumission must have been at first simply -de facto-, not -de jure-; and the master cannot have been debarred from the possibility of again at pleasure treating the freedman as a slave.

But there was a departure from this principle in cases where the master came under obligation not merely towards the slave, but towards the community, to leave him in possession of freedom.

There was no special legal form, however, for thus binding the master--the best proof that there was at first no such thing as a manumission,--but those methods were employed for this object which the law otherwise presented, testament, action, or census.