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The Roman Surveyors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

O. A. W. Dilke
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Extract

It is curious that so little has been written in English about the Roman land surveyors and their work. Most of the nineteenth-century study of the subject was carried out by German scholars. In 1812 Niebuhr stressed the importance of the extant writings of the agrimensores and suggested that field-work in Italy would contribute to our understanding of them. In 1833 a Dane, Captain Falbe, noticed that the squares into which the land round Carthage was divided had sides corresponding to 2,400 feet and thus equalled a normal centuria. The standard edition of the agrimensores, edited by Blume, Lachmann, and others, appeared in 1848 and 1852. Mommsen contributed to this work, and he and other German scholars extended the study of Roman surveying. Before the First World War it was a Swede, Thulin, who furthered research on the ancient writings. Apart from that in German the bulk of the work on the subject is in Italian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , October 1962 , pp. 170 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1962

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References

page 170 note 1 Jones, H. Stuart, Companion to Roman History (Oxford, 1912), 16 ff.Google Scholar; Oxf. Class. Dict., s.v. ‘Gromatici’; Bradford, John, Ancient Landscapes (London, 1957), 145–216Google Scholar, on centuriation and air photography; and see below, pp. 172 n. 4, 176 nn. 1, 3, 178 n. 2.

page 170 note 2 Die Schriften der römischen Feldmesser, 2 vols. (repr. Hildesheim, 1961).Google Scholar

page 170 note 3 Especially Schulten, A., in Die römische Flurteilung und ihre Reste (Berlin, 1898)Google Scholar, and various articles.

page 170 note 4 Of his Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum in the Teubner series (1913) only one volume appeared.

page 170 note 5 Especially Legnazzi, E. N., Del catasto romano e di alcuni strumenti antichi di geodesia (Verona-Padova, 1887)Google Scholar; Castagnoli, F., Le ricerche sui resti della centuriazione (Rome, 1958).Google Scholar

page 170 note 6 An accepted emendation for ianitores in Cic. Leg. Agr. ii. 32Google Scholar; cf. 34, 45, 5

page 171 note 1 Phil. xiv. 10.Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 In Phil. xi. 12 as well as in the above passage.

page 171 note 3 The Oxf. Class. Dict., s.v. ‘Frontinus’, says that these form part of a book which was in two volumes; but this can only be inferred if, with Lachmann, we argue that a certain section of Agennius Urbicus’ commentary (p. 25 Thulin = Feldm. i. 64) is partly extracted from Frontinus.

page 171 note 4 Among the earliest is Vegoia's prophecy, which Heurgon, J., J.R.S. xlix (1959). 41–45.Google Scholar dates to 91 b.c.

page 171 note 5 Hygini Gromatici liber de munitionibus castrorum, ed. Gemoll, G. (Leipzig, 1879).Google Scholar

page 172 note 1 Perhaps more accurately libri regionum; edited by Pais, E., Storia della colonizzazione di Roma antica, i (Rome, 1923).Google Scholar

page 172 note 2 The phrases iter populo debetur and iter populo non debetur occur frequently. In the affirmative sentences the iter varies from 10 to 120 feet. The meaning of the phrases, which appear to denote the existence or non-existence of a legal servitude to the State by owners of adjacent property, has been discussed by Saumagne, C., Rev. Phil., 3rd Ser., ii (1928), 320–52Google Scholar, and others.

page 172 note 3 Edited by A. Josephson (Upsala, 1951).

page 172 note 4 Schulten, A., ‘Römische Flurkarten’, in Hermes, xxxiii (1898), 534–65Google Scholar; Castagnoli, F., ‘Le formae delle colonie romane e le miniature dei codici dei gromatici’, Atti della Reale Accad. d'Ital. (Mem. Linc., 7th Ser.), iv (1943), 83–118Google Scholar; Dilke, O. A. W. and Dilke, Margaret S., ‘Terracina and the Pomptine Marshes’, Greece & Rome, 2nd Series, viii (1961), 172–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dilke, O. A. W., ‘Maps in the Treatises of Roman Land Surveyors’, Geog.Journ. cxxvii (1961), 417–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 173 note 1 C.I.L. x. 8038.Google Scholar

page 173 note 2 Ep. x. 17b. 2, 18. 3.Google Scholar

page 173 note 3 For example, Dig. xi. 6Google Scholar, ‘si mensor falsum modum dixerit’; x. 1.4. 1, which points to the type of contract known as locatio conductio; 1. 13. 1Google Scholar, which suggests a mandate to the surveyor.

page 173 note 4 Var. iii. 52.Google Scholar

page 173 note 5 Much of the land near the Nile had to be re-surveyed every year. For an account of Egyptian land-registers see Déléage, A., ‘Les Cadastres antiques jusqu’ à Dioclétien’, Études de Papyrologie, ii (1934), 73–228Google Scholar; SirLyons, Henry, ‘Land Surveying in Ancient Times’, Conference of Empire Survey Officers, 1931 (London, 1932), 175–80.Google Scholar

page 174 note 1 Most of the manuscripts have yron metricus; Hodgkin, T.'s translation (The Letters of Cassiodorus [Oxford, 1886], 232)Google Scholar wrongly gives ‘the author Hyrummetricus’.

page 174 note 2 Castagnoli, F., Le ricerche sui resti della centuriazione, 30 and fig. 14.Google Scholar

page 174 note 3 The iugerum (about acre) was originally a strip of land which could be ploughed in a day by a yoke of oxen; it was equal to 2 × 1 actus.

page 175 note 1 In early Latin C represented the sound of G. When later the letter G was introduced, C came to represent the sound of K, and the latter thus gradually became obsolete, being used chiefly for certain abbreviations. See Quint, i. 7. 10, 4. 9. The Orange inscriptions give C (citra), the Gracchan terminus and the surveyors' writings K for both kitra and kardo.

page 175 note 2 C.I.L. 12. 640.Google Scholar

page 175 note 3 Castagnoli, F., op. cit. 12–20Google Scholar; Bradford, J., op. cit. 193–207Google Scholar; and bibliography in the footnotes of each.

page 176 note 1 Haverfield, F., ‘Centuriation in Roman Britain’, Engl. Hist. Rev. xxxiii (1918), 289–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nightingale, M. D. and Stevens, C. E., ‘A Roman Land Settlement near Rochester’, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxv (1952), 150–9.Google Scholar

page 176 note 2 J. Bradford, op. cit., passim.

page 176 note 3 Corte, M. Della, ‘Groma’, Monumenti Antichi, xxviii (1922), 5–100Google Scholar; review by Kelsey, F. W., Class. Philol. xxi (1926), 259–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar and fig. 1. The groma in the Science Museum was not, when the writer saw it, well situated or orientated in its relation to the terminus encased with it, but the authorities promised to rectify this. For surveying instruments see Shorey, E. N., ‘Roman Surveying Instruments’, Univ. of Washington Publ. in Lang, and Lit. iv (1926–1928), 215–42Google Scholar; Walters, R. C. S., Trans. of the Newcomen Soc. ii (1921–1922), 1–16.Google Scholar

page 177 note 1 According to Della Corte 23½cm., which is less than a Roman foot; but the bracket may have been longer than he supposed.

page 177 note 2 Dioptra 33.Google Scholar

page 177 note 3 SirLyons, Henry, ‘Two Notes on Land-measurement in Egypt’, Journ. Egypt. Archaeol. xii (1926), 242–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., ‘Ancient Surveying Instruments’, Geog. Journ. lxix (1927), 132–43.Google Scholar

page 177 note 4 Needham, J., Science and Civilization in Ancient China (Cambridge, 1954–1959), iii. 218.Google Scholar

page 178 note 1 Edited with reproductions by Jordan, H. (Berlin, 1874)Google Scholar, by Lanciani, R. (Milan, 1893)Google Scholar, and by G. Carettoni and others (Rome, 1960).

page 178 note 2 Richmond, I. A. and Stevens, C. E., ‘The Land-register of Arausio’, J.R.S. xxxii (1942), 65–77Google Scholar; Sautel, Canon J. and Piganiol, A., ‘Les Inscriptions cadastrales d'Orange’, Gallia, xiii (1955), 5–39Google Scholar; Ribaille-Rogier, Simone, ‘The Land-register of a Roman Town’, Archaeology, xi (1958), 172–4Google Scholar; A. Piganiol, forthcoming work on the Orange inscriptions.

page 179 note 1 This legion is otherwise unknown. For the restoring of land cf. Hyginus, in Corp. Agrim. Rom.Google Scholar 85.21 Thulin: ‘lapides uero inscripti nomine diui Vespasiani sub clausula tali, OCCVPATI A PRIVATIS FINES: P.R. RESTITVIT.’

page 179 note 2 There are also fragments relating to islands on the Rhone.

page 179 note 3 Bradford, J., op. cit. 188 and n. 2.Google Scholar

page 180 note 1 Abstract of a German article in Nature, lxxxviii (1911–1912), 158.Google Scholar