Definitions for "Pagus"
In the later Western Roman Empire, following the reorganization of Diocletian, a pagus (compare French pays) became the smallest administrative district of a province. Previously it had been an informal designation for a rural district, as flexible in regard to its imprecise borders as the cultural horizons of those folk whose lives were circumscribed by their locality: agricultural workers, peasants, slaves. Within the reduced area of Diocletian's subdivided provinces, the pagi could have several kinds of focal centers.