reckoned none twice over, and the one century, that is, of a hundred actus, as next to the principal line as the first, the Romulean was of a hundred hereevery fifth.26 dia.32 Now these balks, being the visible re- The proportion between the squarepresentatives of the imaginary lines, were root of the Roman actus or fundus, called limites; they continued public pro- twelve roods of ten feet a-piece, and the perty; and in Italy all of them, not mere- Etruscan or Umbrian versus or vorsus,— ly the broader ones, were reserved for which, as we learn from a fragment of highways. The surface of them was Frontinus,33 contained ten such roods, deducted from the ground to be divided: and which Varro tells us was in use in so that the squares bordering on the Campania,-was just the same as that broader roads came out smaller than the between the Roman civil and the cyclic remainder. The motive for this, no year. Hence as the limites of the pledoubt, was to spare the ignorant land- beian centuries, both the decumani and surveyor every calculation in the slight- the cardines, were drawn at intervals of est degree complicated.27 twelve hundred feet, those of the Etruscans, without doubt, were a thousand feet apart; so that twelve of their centuries were equivalent to ten Roman ones. The distance between the limites was determined by the size of the squares, or centuries, as they were called, bounded by them. I have remarked, that the The division according to this system oldest centuries assigned to the populus embraced the whole district, the assigncontained two hundred jugers, those to ment of which, had been ordained: but the plebs fifty; and that those of two hun- only the land fit for tillage and for fruitdred and ten also refer to assignments of trees was assigned or granted as proseven jugers to each plebeian: the others perty. The agrarian ordinance deterbelong to a later age, and have nothing mined the region to be divided, the size to do with the old state of things. Even of the allotments, and the number of perin the time of the triumvirate, assignments were expressly made according to centuries of fifty jugers, which name the agrimensors refused to apply to the old questorian plots of land. For they looked on the juger merely as a unit, and thought the use of the word century for a greater number intelligible, but inconceivable for a less. The juger, however, as the very name implies, was a double measure:29 the real unit in the Roman land-measure was the actus, containing corresponding number of the names.14400 square feet, that is, a square of which each side was 120 feet.30 A square area of fifty jugers was the square of ten actus,31 and was just as much a 31 sons to receive them. The distribution was effected by lot, as many claimants, as made up a century with the collective amount of their shares, being classed under one number; while tickets for all the centuries consisting entirely of cultivatible land were, in like manner, thrown into an urn, each marked with the numbers on its boundary-lines: these were then drawn out one after another, and as each came forth it was assigned to the The quality of the soil was left to chance: the sole points considered were the dimensions, and the land's having been previously in cultivation. It is as a very rare exception, in cases where the difference in the quality of the soil was inordinately great, that any compensation on that account is spoken of in the imperial colonies. A necessary consequence from the manner of making these allotments was, proof against their existence. We are that all the centuries which either wholly justified in drawing inferences from interor in part consisted of land unfit for cul-nal arguments on points, which the accitivation, or which reaching to the irregu- dental destruction of testimonies bearing lar border did not make up full measure, on them has perhaps made it for ever imwere not distributed at all. The person possible to establish by documentary evito whom they might have been allotted dence; unless this be reserved for some would not have had their fair share. more learned or more fortunate inquirer. These pieces of land continued to be the It is clear that the art of the agrimenproperty of the Roman people under the sores, who profess to discover the originame of subseciva (remnants,) as did nal boundaries of estates, must have been likewise such complete centuries of cul- utterly baffled, if the proprietors had the tivated land as might be left over at the right of alienating pieces of land of whatallotment. The cultivated remnants were ever extent they pleased: and as we are now and then granted to the new pro- accustomed to take such a right for prietors in common, but more frequently granted, we shall for this very reason rewere occupied by the state as part of its gard the profession as useless and absurd. domain. The forests, pastures, and It might be their business to determine wastes in the district were almost all be- the boundaries at the first; but from that stowed upon the community as public time forward all questions must have property: for, since none but arable land been decided by deeds of sale and other was ever distributed, a common pasture documents: and if these were not drawn was absolutely necessary. If the culti- up with complete geometrical exactness, vated land proved inadequate to give no property could be more insecure than each individual his full share, in the days purchases of land marked out by limites, of the commonwealth another portion of where the land-holders in the same centhe domains would have been taken to tury might raise the controversia de make up the deficiency: in the military modo. colonies this was done by the lawless confiscation of the adjacent district, a fate experienced by Mantua. This leads us to conjecture that a fundus assigned by the state was considered as one entire farm, as a whole the limits of which could not be changed; a notion which seems to be confirmed by the ori The land which was regularly limited, and that which was indeterminate in form, along with all the other characteris-ginal purposes of the limitatio. tics of quiritary property, had both of them that of being free from direct taxes; but their value was registered in the census, and tribute was levied accordingly. In other respects the limited fields had certain legal peculiarities, concerning which scarcely any other express statement is preserved, than that they had no right to alluvial land, the determinateness of their size being the condition of their exist 36 From the Pandects, and from inscriptions and ancient documents, it is known that a fundus usually bore a peculiar name; which did not change with the possessor for the time being, but was so permanent, that even at the present day, if any one were to institute a search for the purpose, especially in the Roman Campagna, he would undoubtedly find many hundred clearly distinguishable inThis kind of landed property, stances of Roman names of estates. Of which under the emperors was almost the four fundi mentioned in the donation the prevailing one in most parts of Italy, of A. Quinctilius at Ferentinum, two have and was common in the western pro- retained their name almost unchanged:37 vinces, seems to have been extremely nor is this mentioned as in any way rerare in the East: hence no notice was markable. St. Jerome tells us that the taken of it in the extracts made for the fundus, which the poet Attius received Pandects. Consequently, though even for his share at the assignment of lands to its most striking peculiarities are not mentioned, this cannot be esteemed a ence. del Lazio, p. 18,) remarks that the fundi Roia. 37 Marianna Dionigi (viaggj in alcune città nus and Ceponianus, are without doubt the 36 L. 16. D. de adquir. rer. dom. (XLI. 1.) L. same estates which are now called la Roana 1. § 6. D. de fluminib. (XLIII. 12.) and la Cipollara. Rome concerning the sixteen Ælii who held a single farm in the Veientine district as tenants in common.3 the colony at Pisaurum, bore his name:38 so strange to our ears; as well as with a and although such permanent designa- fact belonging to the early history of tions might prevail even in districts which had not been partitioned, it is probable that in land which was assigned, like that at Pisaurum, they were taken from the first grantee, under whose name the farm was registered in the land-roll. Now in the oldest records of the suburbicarian regions the landed estates are almost always designated by some such name; and the sale or transfer of them, when the whole was not alienated, was in parts according to the duodecimal scale. This accords with the mention, which we find so frequently in the Pandects, of many proprietors of the same fundus, a thing 38 Chron. n. 1877. 39 This did not preclude the division of estates, 40 nor even the sale of duodecimal parts of them: but the original boundaries circumscribed them as one integral whole; and all the parts were pledged for the conditions of the first assignment. It has also been remarked above, how important the unchangeableness of these units was for the maintenance of regularity in the land-rolls of the censors.* 39 Valerius Maximus, IV. 4. 8. APPENDIX II ON THE AGRIMENSORES.* such as may be found even in the volumes of the cabalists. In the investigations concerning the agrarian institutions, I have made frequent and considerable use of the works For me these writings from several and fragments which treat of the art of causes have had a peculiar charm. There dividing lands. The collection of these is always some kind of attraction in whatworks, at least in the latest of the three dif- ever is mysterious and difficult: and as I ferent editions which were published during derived much instruction from them the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when I learnt in some degree to undereach subsequent one containing fresh stand them, they called forth a feeling of matter derived from manuscripts, is by no gratitude which excites a particularly means rare even in common private libra- lively interest even in neglected books. ries; yet, as has been remarked already, We lose ourselves in the contemplation it is less known than any other work of the destinies of Rome and the changes of ancient profane literature. One would that Italy has undergone, in reading these hardly believe that in books on literary singular works, where at one moment we history it is classed under the head of fall in with a fragment of a treatise by an agriculture: and although a few quota- Etruscan aruspex written in the fifth tions here and there seem to show that in our days these writings are rather less neglected than they used to be, yet it is quite plain that they are still a sealed mysterious book, wherein only such scattered passages are noticed as are intelligible when taken apart from the rest, The dissertation on the Agrimensores, which stood in the appendix to the first edition, has been left out by the author in the second. century of the city, in another place hear the words of an engineer who served under Trajan during the conquest of Dacia, and measured the heighth of the Transylvanian Alps, and lastly, in the most recent of the various collections, meet with extracts from a book by the wise Pope Gerbert, who was the teacher of his age at the close of the tenth century of our era. All the epochs of Roman history Nevertheless, as it not only throws great light stand here side by side;-the ancient on one of the most obscure portions of ancient aruspicy and religion, and Christianity;literature, but is intimately connected with the ordinances of the plebs, and sections of subject of the foregoing appendix, and indeed the Theodosian code and the Pandeets; with those disquisitions concerning the agrarian the Latin of the earliest ages, and the institutions out of which this history originally sprang, the translators have thought it advisa. ble to retain as much of it as might be interesting to the general scholar, omitting the minuter critical remarks, in which none but a reader of the Agrimensores would take any concern. embryo Italian of the seventh century. The place in which the collection was made, the time when it was compiled, is a mystery: and when we have solved it we find ourselves at Rome, at the period when the fallen mistress of the world is undivided lands, and by the help of wrapped in her thickest veil. ground-plans and of peculiar marks to A few general remarks therefore, such detect every illegal alteration of bounda as may render these writings more easily ries: in fine it was necessary that they intelligible, may be allowed to find room should be acquainted with the laws on here. For when a subject is of impor-boundaries, and with the disputes wont to tance in itself, it is better to introduce it arise concerning landed property, in even in a place which may not be quite which they were sometimes vested with appropriate, than to pass it over altoge-judicial power, sometimes and very freI wish to excite others to take the quently appealed to from their knowledge same interest in it. For I want a quali- of the subject. fication which is indispensable to a full During the decline of the empire they understanding of the later fragments: I formed a numerous and respectable class, have never been in Italy, where without on which Theodosius the Younger condoubt, especially in the Campagna, a ferred the title and rank of spectabiles: number of peculiar customs with regard their labour was rewarded by the state to the partition of lands and the marking with a very handsome salary. They had of boundary-stones must be subsisting regularly established schools, like the down to this very day, though unnoticed jurisconsuls; and even the students were by travellers and even by natives, with entitled clarissimi by an edict of Theothe help of which the most obscure parts dosius and Valentinian, in Goes, p. of these books would at once become 343. clear. Manuscripts are not likely to give The writings on such branches of their us much aid: for the early editions are art as were unconnected with mathefounded on very ancient ones; and the matics were very numerous; and of these others which have been compared with an extensive collection was made, perthese have afforded but scanty gleanings: haps about the same time with the Theodothe dismal confusion of the text arose sian code, the twelfth book of which colprior to any that can possibly be pre-lection is cited in ours: see the title of the served: still even this assistance, of which treatise in p. 220, compared with the I am wholly destitute, should be called in note of Rigaltius in p. 276, and Arcadius, by any one who undertakes to publish a p. 259. This collection, however, concritical edition. tained not merely scientific treatises, like The business of the Roman agrimen- those by Frontinus and Hygenus (for this sores was to measure and divide the dis- is the way his name is invariably spelt in tricts the assignment of which had been the manuscripts,) but also the laws conresolved upon, and a map of which was cerning the subjects of the craft, and a deposited in the imperial archives, while number of special documents relating to a copy was placed in those of the colony, assignments and limitations, and ground-to measure and register the unassigned plans of the district subjected to them with lands for the state, to measure ordinary the papers thereto belonging. These lands for the proprietors, to discover and form the chief part of the short fragments. maintain the limits of fundi held under A writer of their class seems to have been an assignment,' to mark them out on the termed auctor by them by way of distinction. 1 in opposition to the conjecture started above The later agrimensors, in conformity in p. 283, that fundi held under an assignment to the spirit of their age, invented a numwere units that could not be altered, somebody ber of artifices, of which those of the semight perhaps cite L. 1, C. fin. regund. and L. 12. D. eod. the latter of which is inserted in cond century seem to have been totally Edict. Theodor. § 105. I believe, however, that ignorant, with regard to the shape and the these passages may not only be restricted with- marks of the boundary-stones, with the out any violence to the ager arcifinius, but that view of rendering their original position such declarations could only be made where ascertainable in case they were removed. there was a considerable class of estates which were properly and necessarily of an opposite In like manner they spent probably still greater pains in devising symbolical cha character. |