Disputatio:Urbs

Please see: en:Latin names of European cities +it:, +ro: and de:Liste lateinischer Ortsnamen (not only from Europe). Regards Gangleri 00:52 nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

My dictionaries aren't in agreement on this, however it seems to me that the closest equivalent to the English town or the Italian paese would be oppidum. What do you think? LionhardusCiampa 02:13, 17 Septembris 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppidum certainly is a good equivalent for English "town", and urbs for "city". In English, admittedly, the meaning of these words varies from place to place. Oppidum suits a smaller and less-important place.

As far as I can see, Italian "paese" has a lot of other meanings; it often refers to a rural area, not to a town, and in that case it would translate to pagus or terra or some such word. But when it does refer to a town, as in a sentence such as "Napoli è un bel paese", you would not say pagus, I guess; you would say urbs or oppidum depending on the size of the place. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:20, 17 Septembris 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To me oppidum is more like a settlement than a city, and urbs is a city/town. Maybe it's because in Polish is one word for "town" and "city". We shouldn't involve English city/town rights into this subject. Przsak 00:01, 3 Iulii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The definition of these political concepts is obviously going to depend sensitively on the laws and therefore the culture and time period of a place. I.e. they will vary from country to country and from age to age, and from one government/constitution to the next. For example, in the united states the definition varies from one state to the next.

Based on the descriptions at lacus curtius and elsewhere, in golden age Rome, an oppidum was any walled/fortified settlement, as opposed to a vicus or a villa; a pagus a defined rural geographical region with a government, and an oppidum was usually built within the pagus on a hill where the citizens could run and shelter against foreign attacks; and then an urbs was a city that played the part of Rome to its surrounding towns and usually built according to plan with two main roads. Each colonia had an urbs, and it could be small or big but it played the part of Rome to the incolae. In the late empire, when civitas was extended to all within the empire, it became customary to reorganize the empire into civitates (citizenships or cities in the wider archaic english sense), which geographically generally were the same as pagi, but organized according to census population for tax collection purposes. Today, in the united states, the civitates of that period would correspond to federal and state congressional districts.--173.70.154.122 00:42, 3 Iulii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cavete diversitatem: http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/cathlibs/towns/towns-li.htm#P nomina latinificata urbium typographicorum--Agnus 03:18, 2 Decembris 2007 (UTC)[reply]