mancipatio

• a making over, delivery, transfer of a thing to another; one of the modes of acquiring possession by the Roman civil law; hence, also, for purchase: qui mancipio accipit, apprehendere id ipsum, quod ei mancipio datur, necesse sit: unde etiam mancipatio dicitur, quia manu res capitur, Gai. Inst. 1, 121 (v. the passage in full under mancipium): mancupationem tabulis probare, the purchase, Plin. 9, 35, 58, § 117.

MANCIPA´TIO[MANCIPIUM]

(from manus + capio, “a taking with the hand”). A formal mode of purchase among the Romans, which seems to go back to a time when the price of purchase was weighed out in bars of copper. In the presence of six Roman citizens of the age of puberty, one of whom, called the libripens (weigher), held a copper balance, the purchaser took hold of the thing and uttered certain prescribed words. He then struck the balance (libra) with a small piece of copper (aes or raudusculum), which he gave to the seller as symbol of the price. This mode of purchase per aes et libram was employed in the case of res mancipi—i. e. estates in Italy or provinces with Italian law, in the country or in towns, slaves, and domestic animals and beasts of burden needed for agricultural purposes; also in a certain kind of testaments, in the form of marriage called coëmptio, and in transferring one's power over a person (manus) to another. See adoptio; emancipatio; mancipium; manus.