PAGUS
PAGUS a canton. The meaning of this word cannot be given in
precise and absolute terms, partly because we can have no doubt that its
significance varied greatly between the earliest and the later times of
Roman history, partly because its application by Latin writers to similar,
but not identical, communities outside Italy (especially in Gaul) and their
comparison of
pagi with the Greek
δῆμοι tend to complicate the question. Latium
was anciently divided into a number of clan-settlements or villages which
were an aggregate of dwellings gathered round a central enclosed or
fortified space, an
arx or
castellum [cf.
OPPIDUM]. As regards the terms
vicus
(
οἶκος) and
pagus in reference to these ancient settlements, we may gather
from various passages that
vicus meant houses
closely connected, and so a small village or hamlet of a continuous street,
pagus a district including scattered houses
or scattered hamlets (Varro,
L. L. 5.145; Festus, p. 371;
Amm. Marc. 31.2, 17;
VICUS). This will
hold good, whether we take its etymology (
pango) to signify “buildings” or “fixed
boundary” (cf. Mommsen,
Roman Hist.
vol. i. p. 38, with
Staatsrecht, iii. p. 116). Old writers
have connected it with
πήγη, the central
village well, or with
πάγος, i. e. a
hill-fort (Festus, s.v. Serv.
ad Georg. 2.381;
Dionys. A. R. 4.15): but the first would
rather suit the
vicus or hamlet, since the
pagus would have many wells, and the second
would do better for the
arx than for the
district round it. In speaking of clan-settlements, we must guard against
the notion that the gens and pagus could be identified the one with the
other: the pagus was purely local and would remain, if the main body of the
gens dwelling in it migrated elsewhere: so long only as they dwelt there,
they would be pagani of that pagus. We cannot even assume that the
inhabitants of a pagus were, except perhaps in altogether prehistoric times,
members of the same gens. It is
[p. 2.310]probable indeed
that originally they were so, and that afterwards in some cases two or more
gentes might have joined in the same pagus; in others some portions of the
old gens or gentes may have left the district, and their places have been
filled up by others. Accordingly we find the names of pagi mostly local with
the termination--
anus, but some few gentile, as
pagus Valerius, pagus Julius, or the Roman
pagus Lemonius for instance (see Mommsen,
Staatsr. 3.113):
and even where pagi have gentile names, we cannot always say whether the
name belonged to it, as the original clan-settlement, or was given in honour
of some member of the gens afterwards connected with it.
Politically, as both Mommsen and Marquardt are careful to point out, the
pagus did not form an independent community. Here again, however, we cannot
say that this was always true, and the original pagi may have been purely
independent clan-settlements: such an opinion would, after all, be in accord
with a dictum in Mommsen's
Rome,
“All history begins, not with the union but with the disunion of a
nation.” But whatever the pre-historic condition of these
cantons, we know them as only single members of an aggregate state called
civitas or populus, which gathered together in
fora or
conciliabula for markets or for legislation, and, as one people,
combined for defensive or offensive warfare. This is indeed clearly
indicated by Isidore (
Orig. 15.2, 11). The stages were,
probably, first the pagus with its own centre of refuge and its own
sovereign rights, then several pagi gathering round a common centre for
refuge--such, for instance, as Tusculum, which became the urbs or oppidum of
the combined pagi, and then a league of various canton centres, such as
Alba.
Though, however, the pagus was not (unless in primitive times) an independent
state, it had an organisation analogous to that of a collegium: we find that
magister pagi=aediles pagi (sometimes a
single
magister pagi)--whom
Dionys. A. R. 2.76, ascribing the
institution to Numa, calls
πάγων
ἄρχοντας--are annually elected with priestly functions, to look
after the sacred rites of the pagus, with some police control also of local
matters, such as the roads (Siculus Flaccus, p. 146), and perhaps of
water-supply (cf. Festus, s. v.
sifus): a power of
fining the members of the pagus appears in inscriptions (
C. I.
L. 9.3513), and a common council for such local business (
C.
I. L. 1.571). It is clear that their administrative importance,
whatever it had been once, dwindled to almost nothing,--to nothing in fact,
apart from the religious rites, but what necessarily followed on the pagus
having common as well as private property,--but to a late period it remained
as a geographical term for the district of woodland and tillage outside a
town and attached to it for all real administration, containing within
itself villages (
vici), country houses
(
villae), and farms (
fundi or
praedia): often several
pagi attached to one large town, as for instance 11 pagi to Beneventum (see
Isid.
Orig. 15.2, 11; and the inscriptions cited by
Marquardt,
Staatsr. i. p. 11).
It may be seen from the above description that the pagi resembled in many
respects village
communes or
Gemeinde, particularly those in Switzerland [cf.
DEMUS], and they have often been
compared to the Attic
δῆμος It is highly
probable that the primitive
δῆμος and the
primitive pagus were essentially the same, but it would be misleading to
regard them as identical in historic times, as may be readily seen by
comparing the accounts in the separate articles. One salient point of
difference was that the connexion with the
δῆμος was retained whether the members of it dwelt in Athens or
not, whereas the contrary was the case with the pagus. Hence Mommsen in his
Staatsrecht deprecates the comparison with the
δῆμος, and prefers to compare the pagus with the
Egyptian
νόμος or the subdivision
τοπαρχία (for an account of which see Marquardt,
Staatsverw. i. pp. 447 f.): it must be observed, however,
that the extent and the administrative importance of the
nome were much greater than those of the Italian pagus.
At Rome the inhabitants of the old city (for which see
SEPTIMONTIUM) were called
montani; the accretion of other
settlements, or
pagi, later included in the
city, furnished the
pagani. Hence in the age of
Cicero
montani et pagani would come to mean all
the inhabitants of the city, as in Cic.
de
Domo, 27, 74; Q.
Cic. de pet.
Cons. 8, 30 (if the reading
montium for
omnium is adopted).
So the Capitol, the Aventine, and the Janiculum were
pagi, not
montes; and the terms
pagus Janicolensis, pagus Aventinensis lasted down to the
year B.C. 7, when Augustus re-arranged the city.
The Celtic pagus, at the time of the Roman conquest, had at once a greater
extent than the Italian, and a greater power from the fact that these
cantons were not in the same way changed from their primitive condition and
absorbed into a regularly constituted state, but still retained their own
clan government with generally a somewhat loose combination in the
civitas (closer, however, among the Belgae than
among other Gallic tribes). The political state to some extent represents
what Aristotle gives as
ἔθνος in
contradistinction to
πόλις--a people
dwelling
κατὰ κώμας κεχωρισμένοι. From
the direct information which we possess about Gaul, we see that a certain
number of pagi made up a
civitas (Liv.
Ep. 65): of the Helvetii there were four pagi which made
up the
civitas Helvetica (
Caes.
Gal. 1.37): and four was probably the normal number, though
Caesar (4.1) tells us of the nation which he calls the Suevi with 100 pagi,
each contributing 1000 warriors in a national war. The most powerful of the
Helvetic pagi was the pagus Tigurinus, whose chief place was Aventicum
(Avenches, near the Lake of Morat; (
C. I. Helvet. 159). It
would seem that the Pays de Vaud to some extent geographically represents
the
pagus Tigurinus, as etymologically pagus is represented
by
pays. After the Roman conquest and the
dissolution of the Helvetic
civitas, the
political and administrative importance of the pagus ceases, and it retains
only its religious functions (
inser. cit.): that the
vici subsequently had the power of making
decrees is seen in several Helvetic inscriptions (149, 241, &c.).
Perhaps some indication of the nature and origin of the Celtic pagus may be
found in the fact that Strabo (
iv. p.193）
calls it
φῦλον, and Mommsen (
Hermes, xix. p. 316) considers that it resembles
[p. 2.311]a Roman
tribus in its
original composition. In the same article he shows that the clue to the real
nature and constitution of these cantons may be found in the account of the
Galatian state given in Strabo. The
τετραρχία of the Galatians is one-fourth of the
cicitas or
ἔθνος:
each tetrarchy had for matters of justice or for command in war a head-man
(
τέτραρχος): the office is for life and
hereditary (
Strabo xii. p.547,
πατρῴα τετραρχία τῶν Γαλατῶν: cf. p. 541,
τοῖς ἀπὸ γένους τετράρχοις); under
the tetrarch are officials called
δικαστὴς
and
στρατοφύλαξ, and two
ὑποστρατοφύλακες. There was a national council
of the three
ἔθνη or
civitates who occupied Asia, composed of the twelve tetrarchs
and three hundred senators; but except for cases of murder and the national
concerns of peace and war, the twelve tetrarchies or pagi had independent
local government. For national interests the three
ἔθνη at various periods had separate princes, whom Strabo
calls
ἡγεμόνες or a single
ἡγεμὼν for the three combined (Strabo, xii. pp.
566, 567). It is not improbable that we have here an organisation belonging
to the Celts in Gaul as well as in Asia. The fourfold division may be traced
in the four “kings,” or tetrarchs, of the Cantii (
Caes. Gal. 5.22), whom we see acting together
in a national war under the leadership of “Cassivellaunus,” but
apparently having rule over their respective tetrarchies.
Paganalia.--The Italian pagi had their tutelary
deities and sanctuaries, which are mentioned even in Christian times (as in
a conservative decree of Constantine, Cod. Theod. 16.10, 3). Here were
celebrated in January at the end of seed-time, “semente
peracta,” the country
paganalia, which
corresponded to the
feriae sementivae.
(Preller, however, believes in a festival at the beginning as well as the
end of seed-time: the evidence for his view is not satisfactory.) An
offering was made to Tellus (in later times to Ceres) of cakes of meal and a
pregnant sow. At this festival also masks or small images were hung up [
OSCILLA], and there were games
and rustic songs. (
Ov. Fast. 1.667
ff.;
Dionys. A. R. 4.15;
Verg. G. 2.385;
Hor.
Ep. 1.1,
49;
2.1,
140.) The
lustratio pagi at this festival was a
rustic Ambarvalia, which, besides its religious significance, had the
advantages of fixing the boundaries of the pagus. [AMBARVALIA; LUSTRATIO.] At the festival of the Paganalia the
magister pagi presided, and his wife
(
magistra) assisted.
Pagani.--It remains only to remark on special
acquired senses of this word, which strictly meant only those who for the
time being dwelt in any pagus. We find
pagani
used in contradistinction to
milites or to
armati (
Juv.
16.33;
Plin. Ep. 7.25,
10.86;
Suet. Aug.
27,
Galb. 19;--
Tac. Hist.
1.53;
2.14,
88;
3.24,
43,
77;
4.20;
Dig.
48,
19,
14). From
these passages, and especially from Tacitus, taking also notice of the date
when the usage began, it is tolerably clear that the original distinction
was between the regularly enrolled soldiers and the irregular undrilled
half-armed bands of rustics who in the Roman campaigns fought sometimes
against them for their country like the rustics in
Verg. A. 7.505 or modern
francs-tireurs,
sometimes in the ranks of one Roman army against another in times of civil
war. The famous “Vos nisi vincitis pagani” (
Tac. Hist. 3.24) is not the same as Caesar's
use of “Quirites” : the word “yokel” might be
used, but “militiamen,” i. e. rustic levies, would more nearly
express the taunt which Antonius Primus addressed to his soldiers. The more
general opposition of the word to
miles
followed. The modern use of the word “pagan,” from the fact
that the old religion lingered most in the rural districts, first appears in
a law of Valentinian A.D. 368, when the old religion is called
religio paganorum (Cod. Theod. 16.2, 18; cf. Isid.
8.10).
(For the
pagus, see Mommsen,
Rom. Hist. 1.37-40;
Staatsrecht, iii. pp.
112-119; Marquardt,
Staatsverwaltung, i. pp. 1.3-15;--for the
Gallic
pagi, Mommsen in
Hermes, 16.449 ff, 19.316 ff.;--for the
paganalia, Marquardt,
Staatsverw. 3.199; Preller,
Röm. Myth. 404.)
[
G.E.M]
