382 SOME THOUGHTS ON 



scarcely be doubted but that it formed a rectangle, as the 

 methods of the gromatici would else have been inapplicable. 

 The simplest hypothesis appears to be that the 6 jugera of which 

 I have before spoken were arranged parallelly in a quadrangle, 

 whose longer side was 480 feet and shorter 360, and that the 

 7th jugerum (that which I have supposed to be reserved for 

 house and garden) was treated exceptionally, divided, that is, 

 into 2 half jugera so as to form a strip 60 feet in width, and in 

 length equal to and in contact with one of the longer sides of 

 the before-mentioned rectangle. Or this strip may have been 

 interposed among the pairs of jugera, but this is immaterial, 

 what I am going to say depending merely on the assumption 

 (and it is no more) of the divided jugerum. Of its two halves 

 one I suppose occupied by house and kitchen-garden, the other 

 by a vineyard with probably some pot-herbs growing among 

 the vines, at least the enmity of the vine and the cabbage 

 (depending probably on the amount of potash they both con- 

 tain) could hardly have been observed where such a mode of 

 culture had been uncommon. Half a jugerum would (speaking 

 quite roughly) produce about 20 dozen yearly on the lowest 

 computation admitted by Columella, twice as much according 

 to his own estimate, and yet more according to others. Even 

 this in a frugal family, the women and slaves drinking no wine, 

 would have been quite enough, though of course wine was not, 

 as with us, a luxury. My inference is that the normal form of 

 a vineyard was in "la petite culture" a rectangle whose longer 

 side was 4 times the shorter, and that this idea was retained 

 when the unit of a vineyard was doubled and became in point 

 of area a jugerum. It is thus I would account for what is 

 plainly indicated by its divisions. That the pezza or petia 

 (and it is to be remembered that the word is only used with 

 reference to garden and vineyards) has to this day such a rect- 

 angle for its normal form. Perhaps the word replaced its older 

 synonyme in consequence of this ideal change of figure. The 

 proof that the pezza is conceived of in the form I have men- 

 tioned appears to result from the following consideration : it is 

 divided into 4 quarters and each quarter into 40 ordini or vine- 

 ranks. Now the length of the surveyor's chain is 10 stajoli, 

 and therefore no length would be so naturally assigned to each 

 ordine as this. And with this length the distance between two 



