Centenarium

The neuter substantive centenarium appears in a series of
documents to designate a particular type of building. The
etymology and precise meaning of this word have long
been debated by scholars, who have proposed a wide
range of explanations, none of which appears to be entirely
satisfactory. In this paper, we put forward a different solution,
taking into account textual, archaeological and linguistic
evidence. In our opinion, the word centenarium
comes from centenum, which means a kind of a cereal;
thus, centenarium indicates a ‘fortified grain-house’. It
seems probable that original centenaria were military structures
of varying shape and size, first created in the third
century and then spreading in the Tetrarchic period.
They appear to be distinctive of the African provinces,
from which comes most of the evidence, but one cannot
exclude that the same name was applied to similar structures
in other parts of the Empire (such as in the Iberian
Peninsula, for instance). The military centenaria were
later imitated by private landlords – maybe even indigenous
chieftains in charge of the defence of sectors of the
frontier – who transferred the name to their unofficial or
para-official defensive structures. This process of emulation
was already advanced in Constantinian age.