[140] The exact meaning and origin of the word has been much discussed. It is tempting to connect it with pax, paciscor, and make it a territory within whose bounds there is pax; see Rudorff, Gromatici veteres, ii. 239, and Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, ii. 8 foll.
[141] See Rudorff, Grom. vet. ii. 236 foll.; Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 116 foll.; Kornemann in Klio, vol. v. (1905) p. 80 foll.; Greenidge, Roman Public Life, p. 1 foll.
[142] Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 22 foll.; Kornemann, l.c.; Roby in Dict. of Antiquities, s.v. "Agrimetatio," p. 85. The view that there was freehold garden land attached to the homestead gains strength from a statement of Pliny (N.H. xix. 50) that the word used in the XII. Tables for villa, which was the word in classical times for the homestead, was hortus, a garden, and that this was heredium, private property. See Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 23. It would indeed be strange if the house had no land immediately attached to it; we know that in the Anglo-Saxon village community the villani, bordarii and cotagii, had their garden croft attached to their dwellings, apart from such strips as they might hold from the lord of the manor in the open fields. See Vinogradoff, Villainage in England, p. 148. For the centuriatus ager, Roby l.c. We have no direct knowledge of the system in the earliest times, but it is almost certain that it was old-Italian in outline, and not introduced by the Etruscans, as stated, e.g., by Deecke-Müller, Etrusker, ii. 128.
[143] For Latium this is proved by the sepulchral hut-urns found at Alba and also on the Esquiline. One of these in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford shows the construction well. See article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie; Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, p. 50 foll. Later there was an opening in the roof.
[144] Von Duhn in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1896, p. 125 foll., and article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa.
[145] This is Aust's admirable expression, Religion der Römer, p. 214.
[146] See the author's Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 242.
[147] Serv. Aen. i. 270; Marquardt, p. 126.
[148] Ap. Gellium, iv. 1. 17. For the sacredness of food and meals, see below (Lect. VIII. p. 172).
[149] See a paper by the author in Classical Rev. vol. x. (1896) p. 317, and references there given. Cp. the passage of Servius quoted above (Aen. i. 730), where a boy is described as announcing at the daily meal that the gods were propitious. For the purity necessary I may refer to Hor. Odes, iii. 23 ad fin., "Immunis aram si tetigit manus," etc.