The ager peregrinus was other territory that had been brought under treaty (pacatus). According to Varro, the ager Gabinus pertained to the special circumstances of the oppidum of Gabii, which was the first to sign a sacred treaty (pax) with Rome. The ager Romanus originally included the urban space outside the pomerium and the surrounding countryside. There were five kinds of ager: Romanus, Gabinus, peregrinus, hosticus and incertus.
In religious usage, ager (territory, country, land, region) was terrestrial space defined for the purposes of augury in relation to auspicia. The plebeian aediles had their headquarters at the aedes of Ceres. The temple (aedes) of Flora, for instance, was built in 241 BC by two aediles acting on Sibylline oracles. The word aedilis (aedile), a public official, is related by etymology among the duties of the aediles was the overseeing of public works, including the building and maintenance of temples.
Thus in theory, though not always in practice, architectural aesthetics had a theological dimension. For a celestial deity such as Jupiter, Coelus, Sol or Luna, the building should be open to the sky an aedes for a god embodying virtus ( valour), such as Minerva, Mars, or Hercules, should be Doric and without frills the Corinthian order is suited for goddesses such as Venus, Flora, Proserpina and the Lymphae and the Ionic is a middle ground between the two for Juno, Diana, and Father Liber. The design of a deity's aedes, he writes, should be appropriate to the characteristics of the deity. In his work On Architecture, Vitruvius always uses the word templum in the technical sense of a space defined through augury, with aedes the usual word for the building itself. See also the diminutive aedicula, a small shrine. For instance, the Temple of Vesta, as it is called in English, was in Latin an aedes. Aedes is one of several Latin words that can be translated as "shrine" or "temple" see also delubrum and fanum. It was thus a structure that housed the deity's image, distinguished from the templum or sacred district. The aedes was the dwelling place of a god. Thus the omen had no validity apart from the observation of it. The latter tactic required promptness, wit and skill based on discipline and learning. He might, however, take certain actions in order to ignore the signa, including avoiding the sight of them, and interpreting them as favourable. At the taking of formally solicited auspices ( auspicia impetrativa), the observer was required to acknowledge any potentially bad sign occurring within the templum he was observing, regardless of the interpretation. The noun is abominatio, from which English " abomination" derives. The verb abominari ("to avert an omen", from ab-, "away, off," and ominari, "to pronounce on an omen") was a term of augury for an action that rejects or averts an unfavourable omen indicated by a signum, "sign".
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