POSTLĪMĬNĬUM, POSTLĪMĬNII JUS. If a Roman citizen during war came
into the possession of an enemy, he sustained a _diminutio capitis
maxima_ [CAPUT], and all his civil rights were in abeyance. Being
captured by the enemy, he became a slave; but his rights over his
children, if he had any, were not destroyed, but were said to be in
abeyance (_pendere_) by virtue of the _Jus Postliminii_: when he
returned, his children were again in his power; and if he died in
captivity, they became sui juris. Sometimes by an act of the state
a man was given up bound to an enemy, and if the enemy would not
receive him, it was a question whether he had the Jus Postliminii.
This was the case with Sp. Postumius, who was given up to the
Samnites, and with C. Hostilius Mancinus, who was given up to the
Numantines; but the better opinion was, that they had no _Jus
Postliminii_, and Mancinus was restored to his civic rights by a lex.
It appears that the Jus Postliminii was founded on the fiction of the
captive having never been absent from home; a fiction which was of
easy application, for, as the captive during his absence could not
do any legal act, the interval of captivity was a period of legal
non-activity, which was terminated by his showing himself again.