Jugerum

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Jugerum or jugus (the latter form, as a neuter noun of the third declension, is very common in the oblique cases and in the plural) was a Roman unit of measurement of area, 240 feet in length and 120 in breadth, containing therefore 28,800 square feet (Colum. R. R. v.i § 6; Quintil. i.18).

It was the double of the Actus Quadratus, and from this circumstance, according to some writers, it derived its name (Varro, L. L. v.35, Müller, R. R. i.10). [Actus.] It seems probable that, as the word was evidently originally the same as jugus or jugum, a yoke, and as actus, in its original use, meant a path wide enough to drive a single beast along, that jugerum originally meant a path wide enough for a yoke of oxen, namely, the double of the actus in width; and that when actus quadratos was used for a square measure of surface, the jugerum, by a natural analogy, became the double of the actus quadratus; and that this new meaning of it superseded its old use as the double of the single actus.

The uncial division As was applied to the jugerum, its smallest part being the scrupulum of 10 feet square = 100 square feet. Thus the jugerum contained 288 scrupula (Varro, R. R. l.c.). The jugerum was the common measure of land among the Romans. Two jugera formed an heredium, a hundred heredia a centuria, and four centuriae a saltus. These divisions were derived from the original assignment of landed property, in which two jugera were given to each citizen as heritable property (Varro, l.c.; Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. ii pp156, &c., and Appendix ii.).