For the settlement of these, sometimes regularly constituted military coloniæ were founded; and in this case, where everything had to be started de novo, a large tract of land was divided for the purpose by straight roads and lanes—pointing north, and south, and east, and west—into centuriæ of mostly 200 or 240 jugera, which were then sub-divided into equal rectangular divisions, according to the elaborate rules of the Agrimensores,[388] the odds and ends of land, chiefly woods and marshes, being alone left to be used in common by the 'vicini,' or body of settlers.
But in other cases the settlement was much more irregular and haphazard in its character.
Irregular holdings.
Sometimes the veteran received his pay and his outfit, and was left to settle wherever he could find unoccupied land—'vacantes terræ'—to his mind. Under the later empire, owing to the constant ravages of German tribes, there was no lack of land ready for cultivators, without the appliance of the red-tape rules of the Agrimensores. The veterans settled upon this and occupied it pretty much as they liked, taking what they wanted according to their present or prospective means of cultivating it. Lands thus taken were called 'agri occupatorii,' and were irregular [p274] in their boundaries and divisions, instead of being divided into the rectangular centuriæ.[389]
It is to these more irregular occupations of territory that the chief interest attaches.
Outfit of oxen and seed of two kinds.
When, under the later empire, veterans were allowed to settle upon 'vacantes terræ,' they had assigned to them an outfit of oxen and seed closely resembling the Saxon 'setene' and the Northumbrian 'stuht.'
Single or double fuga.
The jugum.
Those of the upper grade, whether so considered from military rank or special service rendered by them to the State, were provided, according to the edicts of A.D. 320 and 364, with an outfit of two pairs of oxen and 100 modii of each of two kinds of seed. Those of lower rank received as outfit one pair of oxen and fifty modii of each of the two kinds of seed.[390] And the land they cultivated with these single or double yokes of oxen was perhaps called their single or double jugum. Cicero, in his oration [p275] against Verres, speaks of the Sicilian peasants as mostly cultivating 'in singulis jugis.' [391] During the later empire the typical holding of land—the hypothetical unit for purposes of taxation—as we shall see, came to be the jugum, but the assessment no longer always corresponded with the actual holdings.