In 2 BC a law was passed at Rome which regulated the number of slaves a slaveowner was allowed to set free in his will. The lex Fufia Caninia was one element of what is customarily called the Augustan social legislation, a sequence of measures enacted in the principate of Augustus intended by and large to arrest a decline in civic responsibility that contemporaries perceived in the world around them. In this case the object was to oblige slaveowners to use their powers of manumission wisely and to set free only those slaves who had proved that they deserved freedom: indiscriminate and irresponsible manumission was to be avoided. A fragment of a Latin will found in Egypt (CPL 174) shows a slaveowner late in the central period about to give details on the slaves he proposed to set free. It begins: ‘Since I know that I am not permitted by will to manumit a greater number than provided by the lex Fufia Caninia …’ The law was followed, even in much later times and far removed places, and made an impact on society.

The point of immediate interest, however, is not the issue of setting slaves free but the scale of slaveownership that the authors of the lex Fufia understood to be typical of their society when they framed it.