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 786 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

space reserved at both sides of the wall ; it is forbidden to cultivate it or to live thereon. " Postmoerium dictum," says Varro, " quo urbana auspicia finiuntur." On this place there is neither cult nor cultivation; there is the artificial desert, death, the true frontier of the city.

Aulus Gellius 28 gives us the definition of pomoerium which

XIII, 14-

he found in the books of the augurs, where the question of the auguries was treated : " The pomoerium is a space around the city, between the walls and the field properly so called ; it is deter- mined by fixed limits where the auspices of the city are termi- nated." That established by Romulus ended at the foot of the Mons Palatinus, but it was extended together with the republic, and finally encompassed several high hills. The pomoerium could be extended only by a warrior who, by conquest, had enlarged the republic by a territory that was taken from the enemy. Of the seven hills only six were inclosed in the city limits up to the time of Emperor Claudius. Claudius finally added the Aventinus, which up to that time had been excluded, since it had given unfavorable auspices to Remus at the time of the foundation of the city.

Thus the development of the city center is already regarded as correlated with the extension of the state or the society; but in the Roman military society the social development is understood only as an extension of the territorial frontiers by conquest.

G. DE GREEF.

BlUSSELS.

[To be continued.]