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Centuriation
Centuriation (in Latin ''centuriatio'' or, more usually, ''limitatio''), also known as Roman grid, was a method of land measurement used by the Romans. In many cases land divisions based on the survey formed a field system, often referred to in modern times by the same name. According to O. A. W. Dilke, centuriation combined and developed features of land surveying present in Egypt, Etruria, Greek towns and Greek countryside. Centuriation is characterised by the regular layout of a square grid traced using surveyors' instruments. It may appear in the form of roads, canals and agricultural plots. In some cases these plots, when formed, were allocated to Roman army veterans in a new colony, but they might also be returned to the indigenous inhabitants, as at Orange (France). The study of centuriation is very important for reconstructing landscape history in many former areas of the Roman empire. History The Romans began to use centuriation for the foundation, in the fourth cen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (50927 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic peoples, Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually controlled the Italian Peninsula, assimilating the Greece, Greek culture of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and the Etruscans, Etruscan culture, and then became the dominant power in the Mediterranean region and parts of Europe. At its hei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eclogues
The ''Eclogues'' (; , ), also called the ''Bucolics'', is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil. Background Taking as his generic model the Greek bucolic poetry of Theocritus, Virgil created a Roman version partly by offering a dramatic and mythic interpretation of revolutionary change at Rome in the turbulent period between roughly 44 and 38 BC. Virgil introduced political clamor largely absent from Theocritus' poems, called idylls ('little scenes' or 'vignettes'), even though erotic turbulence disturbs the "idyllic" landscapes of Theocritus. Virgil's book contains ten pieces, each called not an idyll but an eclogue, from the Greek ('selection', 'extract'). The poems are populated by and large with herdsmen imagined conversing and performing amoebaean singing in rural settings, whether suffering or embracing revolutionary change or happy or unhappy love. Performed with great success on the Roman stage, they feature a mix of visionary politics and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Independence, Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was the nation's first United States Secretary of State, U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation's second vice president of the United States, vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and Natural law, natural rights, and he produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels. Jefferson was born into the Colony of Virginia's planter class, dependent on slavery in the colonial history of the United States, slave labor. During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Second Continental Congress, which unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dioptra
A dioptra (sometimes also named dioptre or diopter, from ) is a classical astronomical and surveying instrument, dating from the 3rd century BC. The dioptra was a sighting tube or, alternatively, a rod with a sight at both ends, attached to a stand. If fitted with protractors, it could be used to measure angles. Use Greek astronomers used the dioptra to measure the positions of stars; both Euclid and Geminus refer to the dioptra in their astronomical works. It continued in use as an effective surveying tool. Adapted to surveying, the dioptra is similar to the theodolite, or surveyor's transit, which dates to the sixteenth century. It is a more accurate version of the groma. There is some speculation that it may have been used to build the Eupalinian aqueduct. Called "one of the greatest engineering achievements of ancient times," it is a tunnel long, excavated through a mountain on the Greek island of Samos during the reign of Polycrates in the sixth century B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chorobates
The chorobates, described by Vitruvius in Book VIII of the ''De architectura'', was used to measure horizontal planes and was especially important in the construction of Aqueduct (bridge), aqueducts. Similar to modern spirit levels, the chorobates consisted of a beam of wood 6 m in length held by two supporting legs and equipped with two plumb lines at each end. The legs were joined to the beam by two diagonal rods with carved notches. If the notches corresponding to the plumb lines matched on both sides, it showed that the beam was level. On top of the beam, a groove or channel was carved. If the condition was too windy for the plumb bobs to work effectively, the surveyor could pour water into the groove and measure the plane by checking the water level. Isaac Moreno Gallo's interpretation of the chorobates :es:Isaac_Moreno_Gallo, Isaac Moreno Gallo, a Technical Engineer of Public Works specialized in Ancient Rome's civil engineering, claims that the present-day representat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cardo Maximus
A ''cardo'' (: ''cardines'') was a north–south street in ancient Roman cities and military camps as an integral component of city planning. The ''cardo maximus'', or most often the ''cardo'', was the main or central north–south-oriented street. Etymology “Cardo” is the Latin word for "hinge". Being the hinge the turning point of the doors, the word ''cardo'' would also be used to designate other “turning points”, like the North Pole of the sky, or the four ''cardinal'' directions (quattuor ''cardines'' orbis terrarum). Also the “the principal line laid down in surveying land was called ''cardo''", which is also applied to the first street of a city: the street around which the city would be structured. Most Roman cities also had a ''decumanus maximus'', an east–west street that served as a secondary main street. Due to varying geography, in some cities the ''decumanus'' is the main street and the ''cardo'' is secondary, but in general the ''cardo maximus'' serve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decumanus Maximus
In Roman urban planning, a ''decumanus'' was an east–west-oriented road in a Roman city or '' castrum'' (military camp). The main ''decumanus'' of a particular city was the ''decumanus maximus'', or most often simply "the ''decumanus''". In the rectangular street grid of the typical Roman city plan, the ''decumanus'' was crossed by the perpendicular ''cardo'', a north–south street. In a military camp, the ''decumanus'' connected the Porta Praetoria (closest to the enemy) to the Porta Decumana (away from the enemy). In the center – called groma – of a city or ''castrum'', the ''decumanus maximus'' crossed the perpendicular ''cardo maximus'', the primary north–south road. The forum was normally located close to this intersection. Etymology ''Decumanus'' or ''decimanus'' was the Latin word for 'tenth'. This name is said to come from the fact that the ''via decumana'' or ''decimana'' (the "tenth") separated the Tenth Cohort from the Ninth in the legionary encampme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Groma Surveying
The groma (as standardized in the imperial Latin, sometimes ''croma'', or ''gruma'' in the literature of the republican times) was a surveying instrument used in the Roman Empire. The groma allowed projecting right angles and straight lines and thus enabling the centuriation (setting up of a rectangular grid). It is the only Roman surveying tool with examples that survive to the present day. History The name "groma" came to Latin from the Greek ''gnoma'' via the Etruscan language. It is unclear which of the many meanings of the ''gnomon'' (cf. Liddell & Scott, "gnoma" is a form) was used, although in multiple sources the Greek term is used to designate the central point of a camp or town. Dividing the land into rectangular plots was used by the Ancient Greeks, Egyptians and even Mesopotamians. However, the sheer scale of Roman centuriation from the 2nd century BC, when the new colonies were formed mostly to provide for veterans and landless citizens, was unprecedent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umbilicus (reference Point)
In a typical Roman city, an umbilicus (''umbilicus urbis'', "city navel") represented the reference point used by the city planners to map out the city spaces, including the pomerium, a sacred city boundary. The place for an umbilicus was supposedly set by examining the sky. The standard city plan included two major thoroughfares, decumanus maximus and cardo maximus, intersecting at the umbilicus thus starting the centuriation (surveying). Umbilicus played an important spiritual role. Not only it symbolized the birth of a city; a mundus cerialis, an underground chamber dedicated to the underground gods, was dug next to it as a part of the breaking ground for the city. The Roman idea of an absolute and unchangeable center of the city is related to the beliefs that the city is a permanent dwelling of gods, with both the umbilicus and the pomerium predestined by the divine forces; even if the city was physically destroyed, it was not forsaken for as long as the deities remained. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salerno
Salerno (, ; ; ) is an ancient city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Campania, southwestern Italy, and is the capital of the namesake province, being the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after Naples. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. In recent history the city hosted Victor Emmanuel III, the King of Italy, who moved from Rome in 1943 after Italy negotiated a peace with the Allies in World War II, making Salerno the capital of the "Government of the South" () and therefore provisional government seat (and de facto Capital) for six months and so one of the former capitals of Italy. Some of the Allied landings during Operation Avalanche (the invasion of Italy) occurred near Salerno. It has 125,958 inhabitants as of 2025. Human settlement at Salerno has a rich and vibrant past, dating back to pre-historic times. In the early Middle Ages it was an independent Lombard principality, the Principality of Salerno, which around ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
