Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Pagus

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

PA'GUS (πάγος). A Greek word, signifying literally a mountain peak, in which sense it was adopted by the Romans to designate any strong position in the midst of the open country, but more fortified by nature than art, like the top of a precipitous hill, to which the rural population of the surrounding district could retreat with their families, cattle, and property, as to a place of security, upon the occasion of any sudden incursion or razzia so frequent during the barbarous methods of warfare which characterized the earlier periods of Roman history. (Dionys. ii. 76. iv. 15.) And as each of these positions naturally formed the nucleus of a village, much in the same ways as many of the towns in modern Europe have sprung up, from the tendency of the industrious classes to establish themselves within the protection of a baronial castle, the name of pagus was given to the village and district immediately surrounding it, like our hundred or parish, and the name of pagani to the peasantry spread over it, expressly to distinguish them from the military. Varro, L. L. vi. 24. 26. Virg. Georg. ii. 328. Ov. Fast. i. 669. Tac. Ann. i. 56. Cic. Dom. 28. Suet. Aug. 27.