Callis
Callis defined by Isidor. Orig. 15.16, 20, as iter pecudum inter montes angustum et tritum, a callo pecudum tritum:
cf. Serv. ad Verg. A. 4.405 In the lex Agraria (C. I. L. 300), § 26, we find quod quisque pecudes in calleis viasve publicas itineris causa induxerit,
where Mommsen notes that calleis corresponds to what are now called tratture. Suetonius (Suet. Jul. 19) says that when Caesar and Bibulus were made consuls, provinciae minimi negotii, id est, silvae callesque,
were decreed to them, which can hardly mean, as Mommsen (Hist. 4.203) takes it to be, provinces in which the governor should find no other employment than the construction of roads and other such works of utility.
In Tac. Ann. 4.27, the MS. reads, quaestor, cui provincia vetere ex mori calles evenerat,
which is defended by Orelli, and taken to mean the charge of the mountain-pastures in the southern Apennines; but most scholars adopt the conjecture of Lipsius, Cales, regarding Cales, the oldest Latin colony in Campania, as the residence of the quaestor classicus in charge of South Italy. (Cf. Mommsen, Staatsr. 2.536, note; and Nipperdey ad loc.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.