MANCEPS
MANCEPS has the same relation to
mancipium that
auspex has to
auspicium, and in its original sense =
is qui manu capit or qui mancipat; that is, it means
an acquirer or purchaser of a thing by the form of conveyance called
mancipium or
mancipatio (
mancipio accipiens, see
MANCIPIUM; cf. Tertull.
Apolog.
11). But at. an early time the word was also used to signify party conveying
by mancipation (
mancipio dans), in which sense
it is equivalent to
emanceps (Plaut.
Curc. 4, 2, 29).
From its original meaning
manceps derived
several special significations. It frequently means a person who purchases
or hires a thing at a public auction.
Mancipes
were they who bid at the public lettings of the censors for the purpose of
farming any part of the public property (Festus, s. v.
Manceps: “Manceps dicitur qui quid a populo emit
conducitve quia,” &c.). Sometimes the chief of the
Publicani generally are meant by this term, as they were the bidders for the
public revenue and gave the
[p. 2.117]security, and then
they shared the undertaking with others or underlet it (Ascon.
ad
Div. in Caecil. 10, 33). These
mancipes would accordingly have distinctive names, according to
the kind of revenue which they took on lease, as Decumani, Portitores,
Pecuarii. Suetonius (
Vesp. 1) says that the father of Petro
was a
manceps of labourers (
operae), who went yearly from Umbria to Sabinum to cultivate
the land; that is, he hired them from their masters and paid so much for the
use of them, as has been often done in slave countries. Conductores
Thermarum et Salinarum are called
mancipes in
the Theodosian Code (14, 5, 1). The word is also used in the Theodosian Code
to denote a class of public officials (8, 5, 53; 60, 24, 65,
mancipes locorum). In one place of this Code (14,
16, 2)
manceps means a manager or manciple of a
public bakery. (See Forcellini,
Lex.; Dirksen,
Manuale, s. v.; and Voigt,
XII.
Tafeln, 2.84, n. 4.)
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G.L] [
E.A.W]
