[German version]

is a technical term from Roman surveying ( Limitatio), and denotes the perpendicular lines (limites) in a rectangular surveying system; originally it was a term from cosmology, for the east-west axis as sighting line for the apparent movement of the heavens [1. 199]: counterpart of the  cardo , which as north-south axis divides the world into the hemisphere of the sunrise and that of the sunset, or diurnal and nocturnal hemispheres [2. 147]. In the practise of land-surveying the decumanus maximus was established as an axis of orientation on the basis of to…