The existence of wage earners was not a distinctive feature of ancient Roman society. Manual labour was expected to be carried out by slaves or poor free men. If a person who was formally free agreed to perform manual work (operæ illiberales) in exchange for economic remuneration, the commitment was regarded as exceptional and degrading, and it lay close at hand to treat the contract as belonging to the locatio conductio.This legal institution concerned hiring and belonged to the same category as sale (emptio venditio), that is to say contracts which were based on a free and not a formalistic agreement between the parties. The origin of locatio conductio is not clear, but it is usually considered to have developed as a uniform category of contract that covered several different relationships concerning the hiring of houses, plots, commodities as well as agreements concerning performance of work. Services that required education or served the common good, for instance medical care, legal matters or teaching (artes liberales), were usually not remunerated by money and in any case they were not treated within the framework of locatio conductio.59 p a r t 1 i , c h a p t e r 2 40 . Ancient labour law 2. 3. 1 a common legal rhetoric 59 Coing 1985, pp. 458-459; Supiot 1994, pp. 13-14;Vigneau 1997, pp. 108-115. “…as long as he does not beat him black or bloody …”.
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