ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Fig 8 Tombstone of T Statilius Aper in the Musei Capitolini,
Rome. It was set up by his parents, and the
epitaph records that he died suddenly and undeserved&
in the prune of life, not at all in the
circumstances of the mythical ‘aper’ (boar) killed in
the hunt by Meleager and Diana. The same museum
has three other reliefs showing normae and other
surveying instruments
buildings, our Roman source is Vitruvius, who wrote
from the point of view of an architect and engineer.
One monument survives which defines the occupation
of an urban surveyor and shows us him and his equipment.
The tombstone of T Statilius Aper (CIL, 6, 1975;
Jones 1912, 1, 76-7; 2, pl 15) is in the Capitoline
Museums, Rome (Fig 8). He was a building surveyor,
mensor aedificiorum, and died aged 22 in c AD 50-75. He is
shown wearing a toga and carrying a short measuring rod;
alongside are a roll of papyrus and a rectangular box, and
he is accompanied by a young slave. On the left side is a
decempeda. The only surveyor recorded by name in
Britain, Attonius Quintianus, was a military surveyor. He
is described, in a lost inscription from near Piercebridge
7
Dilke: Ground survey and measurement in Roman towns
with a dedication to Mars Condates, as MEN EX CC
(RIB 1024 = CIL, 7, 420) (Fig 9). This means mensor ex
ducenario, a surveyor who had been a ducenarius in the
army, a late Empire term for primus hastatus (Vegetius
ii.8), not an eques earning 200,000 denarii (Hinrichs 1974,
160-1).
In practice, though, not only could all the surveyors
mentioned be called mensores, ‘measurers’, but their
functions overlapped to some extent. The whole of the
extensive land division in what is now southern Tunisia
(Atlas 1954) was carried out by Legio III Augusta. It was
common for evocati to carry out centuriation, which the
agrimensores considered properly their own work. Both
urban and rural surveyors were involved in questions
concerning public thoroughfares and had to know the
legal aspects of these. Hyginus Gromaticus (Blume et al
1848-52, 1, 179) reminds us that in some colonies the
decumanus maximus coincides with the via consularis, as at
Tarracina-Anxur (Dilke & Dilke 1961). In the libri
coloniarum we regularly find the phrase iter populo debetur,
followed by a number of feet from 10 to 120. This has been
correctly explained (Saumagne 1928; Herzig 1974) as a
legal servitude on main thoroughfares and was clearly the
concern of both urban and rural surveyors. At Orange
(Piganiol 1962, 329-36) we find the same archive (tabularium)
housing cadastral plans relating to centuriation and
records of- the letting of merides, literally ‘lots’. Although
these could be attached to a farm, they were almost
certainly urban in that colony, owing to the high rentals
mentioned, and were presumably market stalls. There are
also among the Orange tablets solaria (ground rents) levied
on those who had encroached on public areae.
Fig 9 Altar (now lost) from Piercebridge, Co Durham,
dedicated by Attonius Quintianus