Note 43 — BOOK VIII. CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE AND INJURIES.

Between one twelfth and one fourteenth of an acre. The great Roman highways, portions of which are still in good preservation in some of the provinces of the Spanish Peninsula, and especially in Estremadura, were usually from eleven to fifteen feet wide; and, with the space required by the Visigothic laws to be left unenclosed for the passage of cattle, were sometimes sixty to a hundred feet in their entire width.

The Visigothic surface measures were partly Roman, partly Gallic, and partly Gothic. The standard, the Jugerum .622 acre, was older than the Roman Republic; the Arepennis, equal to half a Jugerum, was used by the Gauls; and the Aratrum, or “ploughland,” corresponded to an area of a hundred and twenty acres, approximately, and is of Northern derivation. The Aratrum was divided into “oxgates,” or “oxlands,” being as much arable soil as could be tilled by an ox, usually fifteen acres, but varying according to country and custom. For purposes of description, the latter term, evidently an importation of the Danes or Saxons, is frequently employed in the ancient English works on tenures; particularly where the latter were of the classes designated as “base,” and “in gross”; as well as in conveyances and leases, where absolute accuracy of boundaries was either unnecessary or unattainable. The divisions of “ploughland” and “oxgate” were used much more recently in Scotland than in England.—[Ed.]