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(Quote) Lucretius does use the exact phrase "deep-set boundary stone" (alte terminus haerens, I think) in Book I. There's something to all of this, but I haven't been able to crack it. I've written here before about the English and Colonial practice of Beating the Bounds. The ritual is thought to have had a Roman origin. So a boundary stone is a definer of limits; but it is also (or was) the subject of ceremony and ritual, a focal point of collective memory, something agreed upon and quite liter…

Here's something completely irrelevant; when the Romans got hold of the word ἀγρός, they used it in one of the two principal words they had for "land-surveyor". The Gromatici were those skilled in the use of the groma, a tool for laying out roads, camps and new settlements, in the classic Roman way of straight lines and right angles. But the Finitors, or Agrimensores, were responsible for settling boundary disputes between parties, replacing lost boundary stones, and the like. Other types of uno…