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p651 Jugerum (Jugus)

Article by Philip Smith, B.A., of the University of London
on pp651‑652 of

William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D.:
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875.

JUʹGERUM or JUGUS (the latter form, as a neuter noun of the third declension, is very common in the oblique cases and in the plural), a Roman measure of surface, •240 feet in length and 120 in breadth, containing therefore •28,800 square feet (Colum. R. R. V.I § 6; Quintil. I.18). It was the double of the Actus Quadratus, and from this circumstance, according to some writers, it derived its name (Varro, L. L. V.35, Müller, R. R. I.10). [Actus.] It seems probable that, as the word was evidently originally the same as jugus or jugum, a yoke, and as actus, in its original use, meant a path wide enough to drive a single beast along, that jugerum originally meant a path wide enough for a yoke of oxen, namely, the double of the actus in width; and that when actus quadratus p652was used for a square measure of surface, the jugerum, by a natural analogy, became the double of the actus quadratus; and that this new meaning of it superseded its old use as the double of the single actus. The uncial division [As] was applied to the jugerum, its smallest part being the scrupulum of •10 feet square, = 100 square feet. Thus the jugerum contained 288 scrupula (Varro, R. R. l.c.). The jugerum was the common measure of land among the Romans. Two jugera formed an heredium, a hundred heredia a centuria, and four centuriae a saltus. These divisions were derived from the original assignment of landed property, in which two jugera were given to each citizen as heritable property (Varro, l.c.; Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. II pp156, &c., and Appendix II.).

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