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Slavery may at all periods of the history of Rome be defined as an absence of personality. The slave was a thing (res) and belonged to that more valuable class of chattels which the Romans called res mancipi, and which included land and beasts of burden. He was, therefore, a part of the homestead (familia),[97] the transfer of any portion of which required the most solemn forms of Roman law. As a thing, the master is said to exercise dominium over him; he might deal with him as he pleased, and had over him the power of life and death. The slave, on the other hand, has not only no rights against his master, but cannot conclude legal relations with others. He has no legal relatives, no legal wife; he may be permitted to retain the fruits of his own labour, but even his master’s will cannot make it his property. How far this “thing” possessed a potential personality we do not know—how far, that is, the personality inherent in him could be realised by subsequent emancipation. Liberation could at best have raised the slave to the condition of the client at this early period—a slight ascent in the scale of actual rights, but one that might have been valued for the greater personal freedom and the surer guarantee of religious protection which it gave. But the fact that the slave is a part of the homestead, and at the same time an intelligent being, makes him in the truest sense a member of the family. The owner is said to have power (potestas) over him, a word which is used only of rule over reasonable beings; and this dominica potestas does not differ essentially from the patria potestas which is exercised over the son. The treatment of the two was doubtless different, for the one would some day be a lord, the other would remain a slave, but their legal relation to the dominus was the same.