AGRIMENSO´RES
AGRIMENSO´RES The business or profession of a
land-surveyor appears not to have had any special organization or state
recognition, at any rate until late in the history of Rome. At first the
augurs directed the laying out of a town or colony, but no doubt they had
assistants for the mechanical duties. The older term specially for a
surveyor was
finitor, and is used by Plautus
(
Poen. 48), and Cicero (
Cic.
Agr. 2.13, 34; 2.20, 53). The latter also uses
decempedator (
Phil. 13.18, 37). The ordinary
term in imperial times was
mensor (
Col. 5.1,
33;
Dig. 10,
1,
4;
11,
6; Non.
p. 63).
Metator appears to have been applied
only to military surveyors (
Cic. Phil.
11.5,
12;
14.4; Front.
Strat. 2.7.12). Vegetius (
de
Re Mil. 2.7) describes
metator as
one who selected the ground for the camp,
mensor as one who measured out the ground. The real distinction
meant was perhaps that between the skilled officer and the subordinate. But
mensor, in general use, is certainly not
confined to the lower ranks. Under the empire a body of official
mensores existed to arrange quarters for the army on
march. The Justinian Code has, in one place (Just.
Cod.
12.40, 5),
metator, where the Theodosian has
mensor. The professors of the art were also
called
Gromatici (Hygin.
Munit.
Castr. 11), and the teachers
geometrae
(cf.
Col. 5.1.4).
The state required surveyors chiefly for three purposes: laying out land for
a colony, or other distributions of land among citizens or soldiers,
measuring and registering the land for the census, and military operations,
such as laying out a camp, or measuring the breadth of rivers and height of
mountains. But their services were also required both by the state and by
individuals to survey and mark the boundaries of estates, to re-discover
lost boundaries, or give a decision or advice (
judicare aut
advocationem praestare, Grom. p. 35) in many questions of
dispute. Soldiers were of course employed for camp purposes, and also
frequently for other state-surveys (
Grom. pp. 91 sq., 121,
244, 251). Rullus proposed to take with him for executing his agrarian law
two hundred
finitores from the equestrian order
(
Cic. Agr. 2.1. 3,
34).
Mensores, along with many other artificers and
professional persons, were freed from the more burdensome civil duties
(
Dig. 50,
6,
7). And, as their work was regarded as of an
honourable character, their payment was a
honorarium, and the relation of hiring was not properly
applicable to their services, so that the civil law gave no remedy for a
false report, even though maliciously false, and the praetor had to give an
action on the case (
in factum). Neither want of
skill nor negligence (unless gross negligence) was a ground of action (D.
11, 6, 1). Teachers of the art (
geometrae) were
freed by Constantius from civil duties generally (
Cod. 10.66,
2), but not from acting as guardians, any more than were teachers of the
civil law (
Vat. Fr. 150;
Dig. 27,
1,
22;
Cod.
Theod. 13.4, 3). The position was evidently regarded as of a
lower rank. Some Constitutions of Theodosius contained in the Gromatical
collection, assigning the surveyors large fees, and, if students, the rank
of
clarissimi, if professors that of
spectabiles, are regarded by Rudorff, Mommsen, and
others as forgeries. The surveyors do however appear to have had the rank of
perfectissimi (
Rudorff, Grom.
Inst. p. 322).
The services of the land-surveyors were resorted to in disputes (
jurgia in older language,
controversiae in the
Gromatici）
about land, when the question turned primarily or incidentally on the
boundary between neighbours, or on the position or size of pieces of land,
which had been marked out by bounds and were the subject of a claim or
liable to tax or duties. They had nothing to do with any questions of law
which might be involved, but solely with the ascertainment by their
technical knowledge of the true boundary, and with the interpretation of the
official or private charts or records, or of the inscriptions, or of the
symbolical meaning of the stones, posts, or other marks of boundaries
(
Grom. p. 281). The disputes which arose touching land,
so far as the land-surveyors were concerned, belonged to one of two
classes--
de fine or
de
loco, i.e. they related to the boundary of the land only, or
to a piece of the land itself. Under the former head came disputes whether
boundary stones had been removed (
de positione
terminorum), or where ran the straight line indicated by certain
posts (
de rigore), or what trustworthy
indication of the true boundary were to be found. Under the latter head
(
de loco, cf.
Dig.
50,
16,
60) came
questions as to ownership or possession, or the correspondence in acreage of
the land occupied by a person with that registered or assigned to him or his
predecessor (
de. modo); or whether the land
belonged wholly
[p. 1.84]to the public, or was subject to a
public right of road, or was an oddment, or was abandoned and shut out from
the assignment, or belonged to some religious body or purpose, or to a tomb,
or was within the jurisdiction of the contiguous community, or that of a
more distant colony. To the same head belong also questions of accretion by
the action of water (
alluvio), and of damage
caused by a neighbour's action in increasing the flow of rain-water on to
the adjoining land (pp. 9-24, 37-58, 123-134). The two classes had this
distinction in law, that questions of a boundary (
de
fine), if within five feet, were according to the Twelve Tables to
be decided by three experts as arbiters, and any claim of usucapion was to
be disregarded. Questions of a piece of land (
de
loco) were settled by the ordinary tribunals, with or without the
aid of experts, as particular circumstances might require. A
lex Mamilia, perhaps passed in Cicero's time (
Cic. Leg. 1.2. 1, 55),
substituted a single arbiter for the three. A Constitution of A.D. 385
removed the restriction of five feet, and committed all disputes of this
class to the decision of an expert, provided they were capable of settlement
by skilful ascertainment of the old boundary line (
Cod. Th.
2.26, 4). A later Constitution of A.D. 392 restored the old distinction (ib.
s. 5). Justinian again removed the distinction, and allowed, in all such
cases, a prescription of thirty years (
Cod. Just. 3.39, 5,
6). The collection of the
Gromatici does not
contain this change of Justinian's. Karlowa (
Beitr. p. 141.1)
takes a different view of these Constitutions from the above, which is the
view generally taken.
The writings of the
Gromatici which are extant
contain short treatises of about the 2nd century after Christ, by Frontinus
(embedded in a commentary of a later writer called Agennius Urbicus), by
Siculus Flaccus, and by apparently two writers bearing the name of Hyginus;
several short mathematical treatises of uncertain date by Balbus, Nipsus, a
so-called Boethius, and others; extracts from official registers, probably
of the 5th century, of the colonial and other surveys of lands, chiefly in
Italy; lists and descriptions of different kinds of boundary stones;
extracts from the Theodosian code, and one title (10.1) of Justinian's
Digest; an obscure and barbarous tract (
casae litterarum) by one Innocentius, supposed to be
school exercises in land-surveying, and some other short pieces. The origin
and date of the collection is unknown. The principal treatises are in two
Wolfenbüttel MSS., viz.
Codex Arcerianus of the 6th
or 7th century, which, however, does not contain Siculus Flaccus, and
Codex Gudianus of the 9th or 10th century. Niebuhr
awakened modern interest in these writers (see the Appendix to his
Rom. Hist. vol. ii. Eng. Tr.), and in 1848
Lachmann's critical edition (based partly on Blume's researches published in
the
Rhein. Mus. vols. v. vii.) appeared and
superseded all earlier editions. In 1852 a second volume was published,
containing essays on the MSS. by Blume, on the text by Lachmann, and on the
list of colonies by Mommsen, as well as a careful and learned, though
somewhat fanciful, treatise on the whole subject by Rudorff, who had
previously published an essay on the action for regulating boundaries in the
Zeits. Gesch. Rechtsw. vol. x.
[
H.J.R]
