Flouting a ban to return to Italy - info?

[Renatus]

If I remember my Roman law correctly, if a citizen was taken prisoner, his citizen rights were held in abeyance pending his possible return. If he escaped or was released and re-entered the Empire, his rights were restored to him under the doctrine of postliminium. Whilst he was in captivity he was deemed to be a slave and one of the features of slavery was that he could not make a Will. As a Will speaks from death, what would happen to his estate, if he died in captivity? The Romans had a way around this, a legal fiction known as the fictio legis Cornelia. By this fiction, he was deemed to have died at the moment of captivity. Thus, he had not actually been captured, he had never been a slave and his Will was valid. I love it!