Inter amicos manumittere: a proposito delle cosiddette manomissioni pretorie

This article offers a critical assessment of Francesca Terranova’s monograph Inter amicos manumittere. Problemi di origine, focusing on the historical and methodological reconsideration of informal manumission in Roman law. The study examines the author’s decision to privilege the verbal expression inter amicos manumittere over the conventional noun manumissio inter amicos, arguing that this choice more faithfully reflects the terminology preserved in the sources. Particular attention is devoted to the critique of the modern category of “praetorian manumissions,” whose use may impose anachronistic unity on practices that developed over different periods and produced different legal effects. The article then reviews Terranova’s systematic examination of the relevant evidence, including Gaius, the Fragmentum Pseudo-Dositheanum, Justinianic sources, epigraphic and documentary material, and selected passages from Plautus, Seneca, Pliny, and Tacitus. At the centre of the discussion lies the thesis that, before the emergence of the condicio Latinorum created by the lex Iunia, the master’s decision to allow a slave to remain in libertate constituted a factual situation rather than a technically defined act of manumission. The lex Iunia is therefore interpreted as the turning point that enabled the progressive juridical qualification of the act, later shaped by juristic interpretation. The article also considers the proposed reinterpretation of Tacitus, Annals 13.26–27, and the question of the function performed by the amici. While acknowledging the originality and methodological rigour of Terranova’s reconstruction, it emphasises the conjectural nature of several conclusions and identifies issues that remain open to further investigation.