SERVUS HEREDITARIUS.

The slave who forms part of an inheritance on which an extraneus heres has not yet entered, owes his prominence in the texts to the importance of the hereditas iacens whose mouthpiece or agent he is. The hereditas iacens cannot exist where there is no interval between the death and the succession, for instance in the case of institution of a suus heres. Even the development of ius abstinendi does not affect this, and the rules as to the acts of slaves, where there is a suus heres whose taking is still doubtful, are nowhere fully dealt with.

Most of the doubts and difficulties in connexion with serous hereditarius are the outcome of differences of opinion as to the nature of the hereditas iacens. We cannot deal with this in detail, but a few points may be noted. The hereditas is, not exactly a persona ficta, for the Romans never use this conception, but a sort of representation or symbol of the dominus. It is pointed out in several texts that it is not strictly a dominus, but domini loco habetur; sustinet personam domini. In three texts it is actually described as dominus. But of these one says, dominus ergo hereditas habebitur, after having said, cum dominus nullus sit huius servi; in the second the words, hoc est dominae, are, evidently, an insertion; the third, which contains the words hereditatem dominam esse, is as it stands unintelligible: it is clear that they are all interpolated. The hereditas does not however represent the dominus for all purposes: in multis partibus iurispro domino habetur; inplerisque personam domini sustinets.