Jugerum
The jugerum or juger (Template:Langx, Script error: No such module "Lang"., Script error: No such module "Lang"., or Script error: No such module "Lang".)[a] was a Roman unit of area, equivalent to a rectangle 240 Roman feet in length and 120 feet in width (about 71×35Page Template:Fraction/styles.css has no content.1⁄2 m), i.e. 28,800 square Roman feet (Template:Langx)[1] or about Page Template:Fraction/styles.css has no content.1⁄4 hectare (0.623 acre).
Name
It was the double of the Script error: No such module "Lang"., and from this circumstance, according to some writers, it derived its name.[2] It seems probable that, as the word was evidently originally the same as Script error: No such module "Lang"., a yoke, and as Script error: No such module "Lang"., in its original use, meant a path wide enough to drive a single beast along, that Script error: No such module "Lang". originally meant a path wide enough for a yoke of oxen, namely, the double of the Script error: No such module "Lang". in width; and that when Script error: No such module "Lang". was used for a square measure of surface, the Script error: No such module "Lang"., by a natural analogy, became the double of the Script error: No such module "Lang".; and that this new meaning of it superseded its old use as the double of the single Script error: No such module "Lang"..
Pliny the Elder states:
That portion of land used to be known as a "jugerum," which was capable of being ploughed by a single "jugum," or yoke of oxen, in one day; an "actus" being as much as the oxen could plough at a single spell, fairly estimated, without stopping. This last was one hundred and twenty feet in length; and two in length made a jugerum.[3]
Pliny (Book VIII, Chapter 16) also used jugerum as a measure of length. The translator (Bostock) speculated that the jugerum length measurement was equivalent to the Greek plethron, about 30 meters or 100 feet. This was based on Pliny translating Aristotle's "plethron" to "jugerum".
The uncial division as was applied to the Script error: No such module "Lang"., its smallest part being the Script error: No such module "Lang". of 100 sq ft or 9.2 m². Thus, the Script error: No such module "Lang". contained 288 Script error: No such module "Lang". (Varro, R. R. l.c.). The Script error: No such module "Lang". was the common measure of land among the Romans. Two Script error: No such module "Lang". formed an Script error: No such module "Lang"., a hundred heredia a centuria, and four Script error: No such module "Lang". a Script error: No such module "Lang".. These divisions were derived from the original assignment of landed property, in which two Script error: No such module "Lang". were given to each citizen as heritable property.[4]
Columella states:
The square actus is bounded by 120 feet each way: when doubled it forms a iugerum, and it has derived the name iugerum from the fact that it was formed by joining.[5]
In Gaul, half of a jugerum was called an arepennis ("head of a furrow”). It was the measure of a plowed furrow before the plowman turned the plow to cut a new parallel furrow. It was the origin of the later French unit of area, the arpent.
See also
Explanatory notes
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- ^ The form Script error: No such module "Lang". as a neuter noun[dubious – discuss] of the third declension is very common in the oblique cases and in the plural.[citation needed]
References
Citations
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- ^ Colum. R. R. v.i § 6; Quintil. i.18.
- ^ Varro, L. L. v.35. Müller, R. R. i.10. [Actus.]
- ^ Pliny the Elder: The Natural History (Book XVIII, Chapter 3). Translated by John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.
- ^ Varro, l.c.; Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. II, pp. 156– and Appendix II.
- ^ Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (1954). On Agriculture (De Re Rustica, Book V). Translated by Forster and Heffner. London: Heinemann MCMLIV.
