The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

[438.] Cod. Theod. lib. viii. t. v.

[439.] The 'veredus' or post-horse, from which the paraveredus or extra post-horse, sometimes parhippus (all these words occur in the Codex Justin. xii. l. [li.], 2 and 4, De Cursu Publico), may have been equivalent to the later 'averius' or 'affrus' by which the averagium was performed. Cf. 'Parhippus vel Avertarius' (Cod. Theod. VIII. v. xxii.) and see Id. xlvii., 'avertarius' = a horse carrying 'averta' or saddlebags. Hence, perhaps, the base Latin avera, averiæ, averii, affri, beasts of burden, oxen, or farm horses, and the verb 'averiare' (Saxon of 10th century 'averian'), and lastly the noun 'averagium' for the service. See also the Gallic Ep-o-rediæ (men of the horse-course) mentioned by Pliny iii. 21 (Dr. Guest's Origines Celticæ, i. 381), and compare this word with paraveredi. In modern Welsh 'Rhed' = a running, a course.

[440.] Compare the careful paragraphs on these words in M. Guerard's Introduction to the Polyptique de l'Abbé Irminon, pp. 793 et seq. The sense of the word as implying a compulsory service is shown in the Vulgate of Matt. v. 4: 'Et quicunque te angariaverit mille passus: vade cum illo et alia duo.'

The same word is used in Matt. xxvii. 32, and Mark xv., where Simon is compelled to bear the cross.

[441.] Supra, p. 154.

[442.] There were probably servi on the 'ager publicus' as there were on the Frankish public lands, called 'servi fisci.' See Decretio Chlotharii regis, A.D. 511, 55S. Mon. Germ. Hist. Legum Sectio, ii. p. 6

[443.] Compare Dr. J. N. Madvig's Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des Römischen Staates (Leipzig, 1882), ii. p. 408.

[444.] Madvig, ii. p. 573; and Cod. Just. xii. 8–14, and Cod. Theod. xii. i. 38. See also the Notitia Dignitatum, passim.

[445.] With regard to the procuratores, ducenarii, and centenarii see Madvig, ii. p. 411. See also Cod. Just., xii. 20 (De agentibus in rebus), where a certain 'magister officiorum' is forbidden to have under him more than 48 ducenarii and 200 centenarii. Also Cod. Just., xii. 23 (24). Mr. Coote (Romans in England, p. 317 et seq.), identifies the 'centenarii' with the 'stationarii,' or police of the later provincial rule. Compare this with the distinctly police duties of the 'centenarii' of the 'Decretio Clotharii' (A.D. 511–558), Mon. Germ. Hist.—Capitularia, p. 7.

[446.] Madvig, ii. 432, and the authorities there quoted.