also affects him and his master. For if it is said that he committed fornication, and he does not assert his right by seeking the discretionary punishment of the slanderer, he will lose standing in people’s eyes and no one will want him—except someone willing to take a risk. The correct view, therefore, is that the right belongs to the enslaved person, but he has no right to waive it.

His statement, “If he dies, it belongs to his master,” means: if the enslaved person dies, the right belongs to his master. We do not say that it belongs to his heirs, because an enslaved person does not inherit, owing to the presence of one of the impediments to inheritance: enslavement.