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diff --git a/old/14189.txt b/old/14189.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9517a34 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14189.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4219 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Town-Planning, by F. Haverfield + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ancient Town-Planning + +Author: F. Haverfield + +Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14189] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNING *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + +[Illustration: STREETS IN TIMGAD. +From a photograph.] + + +ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNING + + +By + +F. HAVERFIELD + + +Oxford +at The Clarendon Press + + +1913 + + +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS +London::Edinburgh::Glasgow::New York +Toronto::Melbourne::Bombay +HUMPHREY MILFORD +Publisher to the University + + + + +PREFACE + + +The following pages are an enlargement of a paper read to the +University of London as the Creighton Lecture for 1910, and also +submitted in part to the London Conference on Town-planning in the +same year. + +The original lecture was written as a scholar's contribution to a +modern movement. It looked on town-planning as one of those new +methods of social reform, which stand in somewhat sharp contrast with +the usual aims of political parties and parliaments. The latter +concern mainly the outward and public life of men as fellow-citizens +in a state; they involve such problems as Home Rule, Disestablishment, +Protection. The newer ideals centre round the daily life of human +beings in their domestic environment. Men and women--or rather, women +and men--have begun to demand that the health and housing and food and +comfort of mankind, and much else that not long ago seemed to lie +outside the scope of legislation, should be treated with as close +attention and logic and intelligence as any of the older and more +conventional problems of politicians. They will not leave even the +tubes of babies' feeding-bottles to an off-hand opportunism. + +Among these newer efforts town-planning is one of the better known. +Most of us now admit that if some scores of dwellings have to be run +up for working-men or city-clerks--or even for University teachers +in North Oxford--they can and should be planned with regard to the +health and convenience and occupations of their probable tenants. +Town-planning has taken rank as an art; it is sometimes styled a +science and University professorships are named after it; in the +London Conference of 1910 it got its _deductio in forum_ or at +least its first dance. But it is still young and its possibilities +undefined. Its name is apt to be applied to all sorts of +building-schemes, and little attempt is made to assign it any specific +sense. It is only slowly making its way towards the recognized method +and the recognized principles which even an art requires. Here, it +seemed, a student of ancient history might proffer parallels from +antiquity, and especially from the Hellenistic and Roman ages, which +somewhat resemble the present day in their care for the well-being of +the individual. + +In enlarging the lecture I have tried not only to preserve this point +of view, but also to treat the subject in a manner useful to classical +scholars and historians. The details of Greek and Roman town-planning +are probably little known to many who study Greek and Roman life, and +though they have often been incidentally discussed,[1] they have never +been collected. The material, however, is plentiful, and it +illuminates vividly the character and meaning of that city-life which, +in its different forms, was a vital element in both the Greek and the +Roman world. Even our little towns of Silchester and Caerwent in Roman +Britain become more intelligible by its aid. The Roman student gains +perhaps more than the Hellenist from this inquiry, since the ancient +Roman builder planned more regularly and the modern Roman +archaeologist has dug more widely. But admirable German excavations at +Priene, Miletus, and elsewhere declare that much may be learnt about +Greek towns and in Greek lands. + + [1] For example, by Beloch in his volume on the cities of + Campania, by Schulten in various essays, by Barthel in a recent + inquiry into Roman Africa, and by others, to be cited below. Dr. + J. Stuebben in his _Staedtebau_ (Darmstadt, ed. 2, 1907) and Mr. + Raymond Unwin in his _Town planning in practice_ (London, 1909) + have given interesting notices and illustrations of the subject + for modern builders. + +The task of collecting and examining these details is not easy. It +needs much local knowledge and many local books, all of which are hard +to come by. Here, as in most branches of Roman history, we want a +series of special inquiries into the fortunes of individual Roman +towns in Italy and the provinces, carried out by men who combine two +things which seldom go together, scientific and parochial knowledge. +But a body of evidence already waits to be used, and though its +discussion may lead--as it has led me--into topographical minutiae, +where completeness and certainty are too often unattainable and errors +are fatally easy, my results may nevertheless contain some new +suggestions and may help some future workers. + +I have avoided technical terms as far as I could, and that not merely +in the interests of the general reader. Such terms are too often both +ugly and unnecessary. When a foreign scholar writes of a Roman town as +'scamnirt' or 'strigirt', it is hard to avoid the feeling that this +is neither pleasant nor needful. Perhaps it is not even accurate, as I +shall point out below. I have accordingly tried to make my text as +plain as possible and to confine technicalities to the footnotes. + +F.H. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + LIST OF PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS + + TABLE OF MEASURES + + 1. PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNING + + 2. GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS: BABYLON + + 3. GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. FIRST EFFORTS + + 4. GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. THE MACEDONIAN AGE + + 5. ITALY. THE ORIGINS + + 6. ITALY. THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE + + 7. ITALIAN TOWNS + + 8. ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWNS. I + + 9. ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWNS. II + +10. ROMAN BUILDING LAWS + +11. THE SEQUEL + + APPENDIX. TOWN-PLANNING IN CHINA + + INDEX + + + + +LIST OF PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS + +(For precise references to sources see the various footnotes.) + + + STREETS IN TIMGAD. From a photograph + 1. BABYLON. After Koldewey and others + 2. PIRAEUS. After Milchofer + 3. SELINUS. After Cavallari and Hulot and Fougeres + 4. CYRENE. After Smith and Porcher, 1864 + 5. SOLUNTUM. After Cavallari, 1875 + 6. PRIENE, GENERAL OUTLINE. After Zippelius + 7. PRIENE, DETAILS OF A PART OF THE EXCAVATED AREA. After the large + plan by Wiegand and Schrader, 1904 + 8. PRIENE, PANORAMA OF THE TOWN. As restored by Zippelius + 9. MILETUS. After Wiegand, 1911 +10. GERASA. After Schumacher +11. TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAZZO DI FONTANELLATO. After T.E. Peet +12. MARZABOTTO. After Brizio and Levi +13. POMPEII. After Mau, 1910 +14. MODENA. From the plan of Zuccagni-Orlandini, 1844 +15. TURIN. Reduced from a plan published by the Society for the + diffusion of Useful Knowledge (_Maps_, London, 1844, vol. ii) + after Zuccagni-Orlandini, 1844 +16. AOSTA. From Promis and others +17. FLORENCE. (A) Modern Florence. (B) After L. Bardi (1795?) and + Zuccagni-Orlandini +18. LUCCA. From Sinibaldi, 1843 +19. HERCULANEUM. After Ruggiero and Beloch +20. NAPLES. From the Neapolitan Government map of 1865 +21. INSCRIPTION OF ORANGE. From the _Comptes-rendus de l'Academie + des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, 1904 +22. TIMGAD. After R. Cagnat and the large plan by A. Ballu (_Ruines + de Timgad, Sept annees de decouvertes_ (Paris, 1911)) +23. DETAILS OF INSULAE IN TIMGAD. After R. Cagnat, _Timgad_, p. 337 +24. A PART OF CARTHAGE. Plan based on the _Carte archeologique des + ruines de Carthage_, by Gauckler and Delattre +25. A PART OF LAIBACH. From a plan by Dr. W. Schmid (_VI. Bericht + der roemisch-germanischen Kommission_, 1910-1911) +26. LINCOLN, OUTLINE OF ROMAN WALLS +27. LINCOLN, BASES OF THE COLONNADE UNDER BAILGATE. From a photograph +28. LINCOLN, SEWER UNDER BAILGATE. From a photograph +29. AUTUN. After H. de Fontenay (_Autun et ses Monuments_, Autun, + 1889) +30. TRIER. Plan reduced from plan (1:10,000) by the late Dr. Hans + Graeven, _Die Denkmalpflege_, 14 Dec. 1904 +31. SILCHESTER, GENERAL PLAN. Reduced from the large plan by W.H. + St. John Hope (1:1800), _Archaeologia_ lxi, plate 85 +32. SILCHESTER, DETAILS OF FOUR INSULAE, THE FORUM AND CHRISTIAN + CHURCH. From _Archaeologia_ +33. CAERWENT, GENERAL PLAN. Reduced from plan by F. King (1:900), + _Archaeologia_ lxii, plate 64 +34. BOSTRA. From a plan in Baedeker's _Guide to Palestine_ +35. SAUVETERRE-DE-GUYENNE, A BASTIDE OF A.D. 1281. From plan by Dr. + A.E. Brinckmann +36. RUINS OF KHARA-KHOTO, A CHINESE TOWN OF ABOUT A.D. 1100. + _Geographical Journal_, Sept. 1910 + +For the loan of blocks I am indebted to the Academie des Inscriptions +et Belles-Lettres (fig. 21), to the German Imperial Archaeological +Institute (fig. 9), to the Royal Geographical Society (fig. 36), and +to the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Editors of the +_Transactions of the Town-Planning Conference_, 1911 (figs. 7, 8, 17, +30, 32, 35). Fig. 11 is from Mr. T.E. Peet's _Stone and Bronze Ages in +Italy_. The other 26 blocks have been prepared for this volume. + + + + +TABLE OF MEASURES + + +The following figures may be found convenient by readers who wish to +take special account of the dimensions cited in the following pages, +and may also help them to correct any errors which I have unwittingly +admitted. + +1 Roman foot = 0.296 metres = 0.97 English feet. For practical +purposes 100 Roman feet = 97 English feet. + +1 Iugerum = 120 x 240 Roman feet = 116.4 x 233.8 English feet. For +practical purposes a _Iugerum_ may be taken to be rather over +2/3 of an acre and rather over 1/4 of a hectare, and more exactly +2523.3 sq. metres. + +1 Metre = 1.09 English yards, a trifle less than 40 ins. 402.5 metres +equal a quarter of a mile. + +1 Hectare (10000 sq. metres) = 2.47 acres (11955 sq. yds.). + +1 Acre = nearly 69-1/2 x 69-1/2 yds. (208.7 ft. square) = 4840 sq. yds. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +PRELIMINARY REMARKS + + +Town-planning--the art of laying out towns with due care for the +health and comfort of inhabitants, for industrial and commercial +efficiency, and for reasonable beauty of buildings--is an art of +intermittent activity. It belongs to special ages and circumstances. +For its full unfolding two conditions are needed. The age must be one +in which, whether through growth, or through movements of population, +towns are being freely founded or freely enlarged, and almost as a +matter of course attention is drawn to methods of arranging and laying +out such towns. And secondly, the builders of these towns must have +wit enough to care for the well-being of common men and the due +arrangement of ordinary dwellings. That has not always happened. In +many lands and centuries--in ages where civilization has been tinged +by an under-current of barbarism--one or both of these conditions have +been absent. In Asia during much of its history, in early Greece, in +Europe during the first half of the Middle Ages, towns have consisted +of one or two dominant buildings, temple or church or castle, of one +or two processional avenues for worshippers at sacred festivals, and a +little adjacent chaos of tortuous lanes and squalid houses. Architects +have devised beautiful buildings in such towns. But they have not +touched the chaos or treated the whole inhabited area as one unit. +Town-planning has been here unknown.[2] + + [2] Compare Brinckmann's remarks on mediaeval towns: 'Der + Nachdruck liegt auf den einzelnen Gebaeuden, der Kathedrale, dem + Palazzo publico, den festen Palaesten des Adels, nicht auf ibrer + einheitlichen Verbindung. Ebenso erscheint die ganze Stadt nur + eine Ansammlung einzelner Bauten. Strassen und Plaetze sind + unbebaute Reste.' + +In other periods towns have been founded in large numbers and +full-grown or nearly full-grown, to furnish homes for multitudes of +common men, and their founders have built them on some plan or system. +One such period is, of course, our own. Within the last half-century +towns have arisen all over Europe and America. They are many in +number. They are large in area. Most of them have been born almost +full-grown; some have been established complete; others have developed +abruptly out of small villages; elsewhere, additions huge enough to +form separate cities have sprung up beside towns already great. +Throughout this development we can trace a tendency to plan, beginning +with the unconscious mechanical arrangements of industrial cities or +suburbs and ending in the conscious efforts of to-day. + +If we consider their size and their number together, these new +European and American towns surpass anything that the world has yet +seen. But, save in respect of size, the process of founding or +enlarging towns is no new thing. In the old world, alike in the Greek +lands round the eastern Mediterranean and in the wide empire of Rome, +urban life increased rapidly at certain periods through the +establishment of towns almost full-grown. The earliest towns of Greece +and Italy were, through sheer necessity, small. They could not grow +beyond the steep hill-tops which kept them safe, or house more +inhabitants than their scanty fields could feed.[3] But the world was +then large; new lands lay open to those who had no room at home, and +bodies of willing exiles, keeping still their custom of civil life, +planted new towns throughout the Mediterranean lands. The process was +extended by state aid. Republics or monarchs founded colonies to +extend their power or to house their veterans, and the results were +equally towns springing up full-grown in southern Europe and, western +Asia and even northern Africa. So too in remoter regions. Obscure +evidence from China suggests that there also in early times towns were +planted and military colonies were sent to outlying regions on +somewhat the same methods as were used by the Greeks and Romans. + + [3] For the connexion between such towns and their local + food-supply, note the story of Alexander the Great and the + architect Dinocrates told by Vitruvius (II. i). Dinocrates had + planned a new town; Alexander asked if there were lands round it + to supply it with corn, and on hearing there were none, at once + ruled out the proposed site. + +Even under less kindly conditions, the art has not been wholly +dormant. Special circumstances or special men have called it into +brief activity. The 'bastides' and the 'villes neuves' of +thirteenth-century France were founded at a particular period and +under special circumstances, and, brief as the period was and governed +by military urgencies, they were laid out on a more or less definite +plan (p. 143). The streets designed by Wood at Bath about 1735, by +Craig at Edinburgh about 1770, by Grainger at Newcastle about 1835, +show what individual genius could do at favourable moments. But such +instances, however interesting in themselves, are obviously less +important than the larger manifestations of town-planning in Greece +and Rome. + +In almost all cases, the frequent establishment of towns has been +accompanied by the adoption of a definite principle of town-planning, +and throughout the principle has been essentially the same. It has +been based on the straight line and the right angle. These, indeed, +are the marks which sunder even the simplest civilization from +barbarism. The savage, inconsistent in his moral life, is equally +inconsistent, equally unable to 'keep straight', in his house-building +and his road-making. Compare, for example, a British and a Roman road. +The Roman road ran proverbially direct; even its few curves were not +seldom formed by straight lines joined together. The British road was +quite different. It curled as fancy dictated, wandered along the foot +or the scarp of a range of hills, followed the ridge of winding downs, +and only by chance stumbled briefly into straightness. Whenever +ancient remains show a long straight line or several correctly drawn +right angles, we may be sure that they date from a civilized age. + +In general, ancient town-planning used not merely the straight line +and the right angle but the two together. It tried very few +experiments involving other angles. Once or twice, as at Rhodes (pp. +31, 81), we hear of streets radiating fan-fashion from a common +centre, like the gangways of an ancient theatre or the thoroughfares +of modern Karlsruhe, or that Palma Nuova, founded by Venice in 1593 to +defend its north-eastern boundaries, which was shaped almost like a +starfish. But, as a rule, the streets ran parallel or at right angles +to each other and the blocks of houses which they enclosed were either +square or oblong. + +Much variety is noticeable, however, in details. Sometimes the outline +of the ancient town was square or almost square, the house-blocks were +of the same shape, and the plan of the town was indistinguishable from +a chess-board. Or, instead of squares, oblong house-blocks formed a +pattern not strictly that of a chess-board but geometrical and +rectangular. Often the outline of the town was irregular and merely +convenient, but the streets still kept, so far as they could, to a +rectangular plan. Sometimes, lastly, the rectangular planning was +limited to a few broad thoroughfares, while the smaller side-streets, +were utterly irregular. Other variations may be seen in the prominence +granted or refused to public and especially to sacred buildings. In +some towns full provision was made for these; ample streets with +stately vistas led up to them, and open spaces were left from which +they could be seen with advantage. In others there were neither vistas +nor open spaces nor even splendid buildings. + +A measure of historical continuity can be traced in the occurrence of +these variations. The towns of the earlier Greeks were stately enough +in their public buildings and principal thoroughfares, but they +revealed a half-barbaric spirit in their mean side-streets and +unlovely dwellings. In the middle of the fifth century men rose above +this ideal. They began to recognize private houses and to attempt an +adequate grouping of their cities as units capable of a single plan. +But they did not carry this conception very far. The decorative still +dominated the useful. Broad straight streets were still few and were +laid out mainly as avenues for processions and as ample spaces for +great facades.[4] Private houses were still of small account. The +notion that the City was the State, helpful and progressive as it was, +did something also to paralyse in certain ways the development of +cities. + + [4] Pindar mentions 'the paved road cut straight to be smitten by + horse-hoofs in processions of men that besought Apollo's care' at + Cyrene (_Pyth._ v. 90). An inscription from the Piraeus, of 320 + B.C., orders the Agoranomi (p. 37) to take care 'of the broad + roads by which the processions move to the temple of Zeus the + Saviour'. + +A change came with the new philosophy and the new politics of the +Macedonian era. The older Greek City-states had been large, wealthy, +and independent; magnificent buildings and sumptuous festivals were as +natural to them as to the greater autonomous municipalities in all +ages. But in the Macedonian period the individual cities sank to be +parts of a larger whole, items in a dominant state, subjects of +military monarchies. The use of public buildings, the splendour of +public festivals in individual cities, declined. Instead, the claims +of the individual citizen, neglected too much by the City-states but +noted by the newer philosophy, found consideration even in +town-planning. A more definite, more symmetrical, often more rigidly +'chess-board' pattern was introduced for the towns which now began to +be founded in many countries round and east of the Aegean. Ornamental +edifices and broad streets were still indeed included, but in the +house-blocks round them due space and place were left for the +dwellings of common men. For a while the Greeks turned their minds to +those details of daily life which in their greater age they had +somewhat ignored. + +Lastly, the town-planning of the Macedonian era combined, as I +believe, with other and Italian elements and formed the town system of +the later Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. As in art and +architecture, so also in city-planning, the civilization of Greece and +of Italy merged almost inextricably into a result which, with all its +Greek affinities, is in the end Roman. The student now meets a +rigidity of street-plan and a conception of public buildings which are +neither Greek nor Oriental. The Roman town was usually a rectangle +broken up into four more or less equal and rectangular parts by two +main streets which crossed at right angles at or near its centre. To +these two streets all the other streets ran parallel or at right +angles, and there resulted a definite 'chess-board' pattern of +rectangular house-blocks (_insulae_), square or oblong in shape, more +or less uniform in size. The streets themselves were moderate in +width; even the main thoroughfares were little wider than the rest, +and the public buildings within the walls were now merged in the +general mass of houses. The chief structure, the Forum, was an +enclosed court, decorated indeed by statues and girt with colonnades, +but devoid of facades which could dominate a town. The town councils +of the Roman world were no more free than those of Greece or modern +England from the municipal vice of over-building. But they had not the +same openings for error. On the other hand, there was in most of them +a good municipal supply of water, and sewers were laid beneath their +streets. + +The reason for all this is plain. These Roman towns, even more than +the Greek cities of the Macedonian world, were parts of a greater +whole. They were items in the Roman Empire; their citizens were +citizens of Rome. They had neither the wealth nor the wish to build +vast temples or public halls or palaces, such as the Greeks +constructed. Their greatest edifices, the theatre and the +amphitheatre, witness to the prosperity and population not so much of +single towns as of whole neighbourhoods which flocked in to periodic +performances.[5] But these towns had unity. Their various parts were, +in some sense, harmonized, none being neglected and none grievously +over-indulged, and the whole was treated as one organism. Despite +limitations which are obvious, the Roman world made a more real sober +and consistent attempt to plan towns than any previous age had +witnessed. + + [5] Compare the crowd of Nucerians who made a riot in the + amphitheatre at Pompeii in A.D. 59 (Tac. _Ann_. xiv. 17). The + common idea that the population of a town can be calculated by + the number of seats in its theatre or amphitheatre is quite + amiss. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS, BABYLON + + +The beginnings of ideas and institutions are seldom well known or well +recorded. They are necessarily insignificant and they win scant notice +from contemporaries. Town-planning has fared like the rest. Early +forms of it appear in Greece during the fourth and fifth centuries +B.C.; the origin of these forms is obscure. The oldest settlement of +man in town fashion which has yet been explored in any land near +Greece is that of Kahun, in Egypt, dating from about 2500 B.C. Here +Professor Flinders Petrie unearthed many four-roomed cottages packed +close in parallel oblong blocks and a few larger rectangular houses: +they are (it seems) the dwellings of the workmen and managers busy +with the neighbouring Illahun pyramid.[6] But the settlement is very +small, covering less than 20 acres; it is not in itself a real town +and its plan has not the scheme or symmetry of a town-plan. For that +we must turn to western Asia, to Babylonia and Assyria. + + [6] W.F. Petrie, _Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob_ (London, 1891), ch. + ii, plate xiv. The plan is reproduced in Breasted's _History of + Egypt_, p. 87, R. Unwin's _Town planning_, fig. 11 (with wrong + scale), &c. + +Here we find clearer evidence. The great cities of the Mesopotamian +plains show faint traces of town-planning datable to the eighth and +following centuries, of which the Greeks seem to have heard and which +they may have copied. Our knowledge of these cities is, of course, +still very fragmentary, and though it has been much widened by the +latest German excavations, it does not yet carry us to definite +conclusions. The evidence is twofold, in part literary, drawn from +Greek writers and above all Herodotus, and in part archaeological, +yielded by Assyrian and Babylonian ruins. + +The description of Babylon given by Herodotus is, of course, +famous.[7] Even in his own day, it was well enough known to be +parodied by contemporary comedians in the Athenian theatre. Probably +it rests in part on first-hand knowledge. Herodotus gives us to +understand that he visited Babylon in the course of his many +wanderings and we have no cause to distrust him; we may even date his +visit to somewhere about 450 B.C. He was not indeed the only Greek of +his day, nor the first, to get so far afield. But his account +nevertheless neither is nor professes to be purely that of an +eyewitness. Like other writers in various ages,[8] he drew no sharp +division between details which he saw and details which he learnt from +others. For the sake (it may be) of vividness, he sets them all on one +plane, and they must be judged, not as first-hand evidence but on +their own merits. + + [7] Hdt. i. 178 foil. The accounts of Ctesias and other ancient + writers seem to throw no light on the town-planning and streets + of Babylon, however useful they may otherwise be. + + [8] The Elizabethan description of Britain by William Harrison is + an example from a modern time. + +Babylon, says Herodotus, was planted in an open plain and formed an +exact square of great size, 120 stades (that is, nearly 14 miles) each +way; the whole circuit was 480 stades, about 55 miles. It was girt +with immense brick walls, 340 ft. high and nearly 90 ft. thick, and a +broad deep moat full of water, and was entered through 100 gates; +presumably we are intended to think of these gates as arranged +symmetrically, 25 in each side. From corner to corner the city was cut +diagonally by the Euphrates, which thus halved it into two roughly +equal triangles, and the river banks were fortified by brick +defences--less formidable than the main outer walls--which ran along +them from end to end of the city. There was, too, an inner wall on the +landward side. The streets were also remarkable: + + 'The city itself (he says) is full of houses, three or four + storeys high, and has been laid out with its streets straight, + notably those which run at right angles, that is, those which + lead to the river. Each road runs to a small gate in the brick + river-wall: there are as many gates as lanes.'[9] + + [9] Hdt. i. 180 [Greek: To de astu auto, eon pleres ohikieon + triorhofon te kai tetrorofon, katatetmetai tas hodous itheas, + tas te aggas kai tas epikarsias, tas epi ton potamon echousas]. + Apparently [Greek: epikarsias] means, as Stein says, those at + right angles to the general course of the river, but this nearly + = at right angles to the other roads. The course of the river + appears to have been straighter then than it is now. + +In each part of the city (that is, on either bank of the Euphrates) +were specially large buildings, in one part the royal palaces, in the +other the temple of Zeus Belos, bronze-gated, square in outline, 400 +yards in breadth and length. + +So far, in brief, Herodotus. Clearly his words suggest town-planning. +The streets that ran straight and the others that ran at right angles +are significant enough, even though we may doubt exactly what is meant +by these other streets and what they met or cut at right angles. But +his account cannot be accepted as it stands. Whatever he saw and +whatever his accuracy of observation and memory, not all of his story +can be true. His Babylon covers nearly 200 square miles; its walls are +over 50 miles long and 30 yds. thick and all but 120 yds. high; its +gates are a mile and a half apart. The area of London to-day is no +more than 130 square miles, and the topmost point of St. Paul's is +barely 130 yds. high. Nanking is the largest city-site in China and +its walls are the work of an Empire greater than Babylon; but they +measure less than 24 miles in circuit, and they are or were little +more than 30 ft. thick and 70 ft. high.[10] Moreover, Herodotus's +account of the walls has to be set beside a statement which he makes +elsewhere, that they had been razed by Darius sixty or seventy years +before his visit.[11] The destruction can hardly have been complete. +But in any case Herodotus can only have seen fragments, easily +misinterpreted, easily explained by local _ciceroni_ as relics of +something quite unlike the facts. + + [10] L. Gaillard, _Varietes sinologiques_, xvi (plan) and xxiii. + pp. 8, 235 (Chang-hai, 1898, 1903). Others give the figures a + little differently, but not so as to affect the argument. + + [11] Hdt. iii. 159. The theory that there were originally two + parallel outer walls, that Darius razed one and Herodotus saw the + other (Baumstark in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ ii. 2696), is + meaningless. There could be no use in razing one and leaving the + other, which was almost as strong (Hdt. i. 181). It is, however, + not quite certain that Herodotus (i. 181) meant that there were + two outer parallel walls. + +Turn now to the actual remains of Babylon, as known from surveys and +excavations. We find a large district extending to both banks of the +Euphrates, which is covered rather irregularly by the mounds of many +ruined buildings. Two sites in it are especially notable. At its +southern end is Birs Nimrud and some adjacent mounds, anciently +Borsippa; here stood a huge temple of the god Nebo. Near its north +end, ten or eleven miles north of Borsippa, round Babil and Kasr, is a +larger wilderness of ruin, three miles long and nearly as broad in +extreme dimensions; here town-walls and palaces of Babylonian kings +and temples of Babylonian gods and streets and dwelling-houses of +ordinary men have been detected and in part uncovered. Other signs of +inhabitation can be traced elsewhere in this district, as yet +unexplored. + +Not unnaturally, some scholars have thought that this whole region +represents the ancient Babylon and that the vast walls of Herodotus +enclosed it all.[12] This view, however, cannot be accepted. Quite +apart from the considerations urged above, the region in question is +not square but rather triangular, and traces of wall and ditch +surrounding it are altogether wanting, though city-walls have survived +elsewhere in this neighbourhood and though nothing can wholly delete +an ancient ditch. We have, in short, no good reason to believe that +Babylon, in any form or sense whatever, covered at any time this large +area. + + [12] So Baumstark, art. Babylon in Pauly-Wissowa, ii. 2696. + +On the other hand, the special ruins of Babil and Kasr and adjacent +mounds seem to preserve both the name and the actual remains of +Babylon (fig. 1). Here, on the left bank of the Euphrates, are vast +city-walls, once five or six miles long.[13] They may be described +roughly as enclosing half of a square bisected diagonally by the +river, much as Herodotus writes; there is good reason to think that +they had some smaller counterpart on the right bank, as yet scantily +explored. Within these walls were the palaces of the Babylonian kings, +Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar (625-561 B.C.), the temples of the +national god Marduk or Merodach and other Babylonian deities, a broad +straight road, Aiburschabu, running north and south from palaces to +temples, a stately portal spanning this road at the Istar Gate, many +private houses in the Merkes quarter, and an inner town-wall perhaps +of earlier date. Street and gate were built or rebuilt by +Nebuchadnezzar. He, as he declares in various inscriptions, 'paved the +causeway with limestone flags for the procession of the Great Lord +Marduk.' He made the Istar Gate 'with glazed brick and placed on its +threshold colossal bronze bulls and ferocious serpent dragons'. Along +the street thus built the statue of Marduk was borne in solemn march +on the Babylonian New Year's Day, when the king paid yearly worship to +the god of his country.[14] + + [13] F.H. Weissbach, _Stadtbild von Babylon_ (_Der alte Orient_, + fasc. 5); R. Koldewey, _Tempel von Babylon und Borsippa_, plates + i, ii; S. Langdon, _Expositor_, 1909, pp. 82, 142; Hommel, + _Geogr. des alten Orients_, pp. 290, 331; E. Meyer, _Sitzungsber. + preuss. Akad_. 1912, p. 1102. I am indebted to Dr. Langdon for + references to some of the treatises cited here and below. I + cannot share the unfavourable view which is taken by Messrs. How + and Wells, the latest good editors of Herodotus, of the views of + these writers. + + [14] Koldewey, _Pflastersteine von Aiburschabu_ (Leipzig, 1901). + Some of the streets of Babylon are much older than 600 B.C., but + this point needs to be worked out further. + +[Illustration: FIG I. BABYLON] + +Such are the remains of the city of Babylon, so far as they are known +at present. They do not fit ill with the words of Herodotus. We can +detect in them the semblance not indeed of one square but of two +unequal half-squares, divided by the river; we can trace at least one +great street parallel to the river and others which run at right +angles to it towards the river. If the brick defences along the +water-side have vanished, that may be due to their less substantial +character and to the many changes of the river itself. To the student +of Babylonian topography, the account of Herodotus is of very little +worth. But it is as good as most modern travellers could compile, if +they were let loose in a vast area of buildings, without plans, +without instruments, and without any notion that a scientific +description was expected of them. + +The remains show also--and this is more to our purpose--the idea of +the sacred processional avenue which recurs in fifth-century +Greece--and is indeed beloved of architects in the most modern times. +Here is a germ of town-planning. But whether this laying out of +streets extended beyond the main highways, is less clear. The Merkes +excavations occasionally show streets meeting at right angles and at +least one roughly rectangular _insula_, of 150 x 333 ft. But the +adjoining house-blocks agree neither in size nor shape, and no hint +seems to have yet come to light of a true chess-board pattern.[15] + + [15] _Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft_ 42, Dec. + 1909, pp. 7, 19; 44, Dec. 1910, p. 26. + +A little further evidence can be drawn from other Mesopotamian sites. +The city of Asshur had a long, broad avenue like the sacred road of +Babylon, but the one _insula_ of its private houses which has yet been +excavated, planned and published, shows no sign of rectangular +planning.[16] There is also literary evidence that Sanherib (765-681 +B.C.) laid out a 'Kingsway' 100 ft. wide to promote easy movement +through his city of Nineveh, and Delitzsch has even credited the +Sargonid dynasty generally (722-625 B.C.) with a care for the +dwellings of common men as well as of gods and of kings.[17] + + [16] _Mitt, deutsch. Orient-Gesell._ 28, Sept. 1905; 31, May + 1906. + + [17] F. Delitzsch, _Asurbanipal und die assyr. Kultur seiner + Zeit_ (_Der alte Orient_, Leipzig, 1909), p. 25. + +In conclusion, the mounds of Babil and Kasr and others near them seem +to represent the Babylon alike of fact and of Herodotus. It was a +smaller city than the Greek historian avers; its length and breadth +were nearer four than fourteen miles. But it had at least one +straight, ample, and far-stretching highway which gave space for the +ceremonies and the processions, if not for the business or the +domestic comforts, of life. In a sense at least, it was laid out with +its streets straight. Nor was it the only city of such a kind in the +Mesopotamian region. Asshur and Nineveh, both of them somewhat earlier +in date than Babylon, possessed similar features. These towns, or at +least Babylon, seem to have been known to Greek travellers, and +probably suggested to them the adornment of their Hellenic homes with +similar streets. The germ of Greek town-planning came from the east. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: FIRST EFFORTS + + +Greek town-planning began in the great age of Greece, the fifth +century B.C. But that age had scant sympathy for such a movement, and +its beginnings were crude and narrow. Before the middle of the century +the use of the processional highway had established itself in Greece. +Rather later, a real system of town-planning, based on streets that +crossed at right angles, became known and practised. Later still, in +the early fourth century, the growing care for town-life produced town +by-laws and special magistrates to execute them. In some form or +other, town-planning had now taken root in the Greek world. + +The two chief cities of Greece failed, indeed, to welcome the new +movement. Both Athens, the city which by itself means Greece to most +of us, and Sparta, the rival of Athens, remained wholly untouched by +it. Alike in the days of Themistocles and Pericles and in all its +later history, Athens was an almost Oriental mixture of splendid +public buildings with mean and ill-grouped houses. An often-quoted +saying of Demosthenes puts the matter in its most favourable light: + +'The great men of old built splendid edifices for the use of the +State, and set up noble works of art which later ages can never match. +But in private life they were severe and simple, and the dwelling of +an Aristides or a Miltiades was no more sumptuous than that of any +ordinary Athenian citizen' (Third Olynthiac Oration, 25). + +This is that 'desire for beauty and economy' which Pericles (or +Thucydides) praised in the Funeral Oration. It has a less lovely side. +Not a few passages in Greek literature speak, more or less clearly, of +the streets of Athens as narrow and tortuous, unpaved, unlighted, and +more like a chaos of mud and sewage than even the usual Greek road. +Sparta was worse. There neither public nor private buildings were +admirable, and the historian Thucydides turned aside to note the +meanness of the town. + +Nevertheless, the art of town-planning in Greece probably began in +Athens. The architect to whom ancient writers ascribe the first step, +Hippodamus of Miletus,--born about or before 480 B.C.,--seems to have +worked in Athens and in connexion with Athenian cities, under the +auspices of Pericles. The exact nature of his theories has not been +recorded by any of the Greek writers who name him. Aristotle, however, +states that he introduced the principle of straight wide streets, and +that he, first of all architects, made provision for the proper +grouping of dwelling-houses and also paid special heed to the +combination of the different parts of a town in a harmonious whole, +centred round the market-place. But there seems to be no evidence for +the statement sometimes made, that he had any particular liking for +either a circular or a semicircular, fan-shaped town-plan. + + +_Piraeus_ (fig. 2). + +Three cities are named as laid out by Hippodamus. Aristotle tells us +that he planned the Piraeus, the port of Athens, with broad straight +streets. He does not add the precise relation of these streets to one +another. If, however, the results of recent German inquiries and +conjectures are correct, and if they show us his work and not--as is +unfortunately very possible--the work of some later man, his design +included streets running parallel or at right angles to one another +and rectangular blocks of houses; the longer and presumably the more +important streets ran parallel to the shore, while shorter streets ran +at right angles to them down to the quays. Here is a rectangular +scheme of streets, though the outline of the whole town is necessarily +not rectangular (fig. 2). + +[Illustration: FIG. 2. PLAN OF PIRAEUS] + + +_Thurii_. + +Another town ascribed to Hippodamus is the colony which the Athenians +and others planted in 443 B.C. at Thurii in southern Italy, of which +Herodotus himself is said to have been one of the original colonists. +Its site has never been excavated, and indeed one might doubt whether +excavation would show the street plan of 443 B.C. or that of a later +and possibly even of a Roman age, when the town was recolonized on the +Roman system. But the historian Diodorus, writing in the first century +B.C. and no doubt embodying much older matter, records a pertinent +detail. The town, he says, was divided lengthways by four streets and +crossways by three. Plainly, therefore, it had a definite and +rectangular street-planning, though the brevity of the historian does +not enable us to decide how many house-blocks it had and how far the +lesser streets were symmetrical with these seven principal +thoroughfares. In most of the cases which we shall meet in the +following sections of this treatise, the number of streets +running-straight or at right angles is very much greater than the +number assigned to Thurii. I may refer for example to the plans of +Priene, Miletus, and Timgad. + + +_Rhodes_. + +A third city assigned to Hippodamus is Rhodes. This, according to +Strabo, was laid out by 'the architect of the Piraeus'; according to +others, it was built round its harbour like the seats of an ancient +theatre round the orchestra, that is, fan-fashion like Karlsruhe. +However, this case is doubtful. Rhodes was laid out in 408 B.C., +thirty-five years after the planting of Thurii and seventy years after +the approximate date of the birth of Hippodamus. It is conceivable but +not altogether probable that Hippodamus was still planning towns in +his extreme old age, nor is it, on political grounds, very likely that +he would be planning in Rhodes. As, however, we do not know the real +date of his birth, and as Strabo does not specifically mention his +name, certainty is unattainable.[18] + + [18] On Hippodamus see K.F. Hermann, _de Hippodamo Milesio_ + (Marburg, 1841) and Erdmann, _Philologus_ xlii. 193-227, and + _Programm Protestant. Gymnasium zu Strassburg_, 1883. As will be + seen, I do not accept all Erdmann's conclusions. For the Piraeus + see Aristotle, _Politics_, II. 8 = p. 1267 and IV. 11 = p. 1330. + For Thurii see Diodorus XII. 10. For Rhodes see Strabo 654 = XIV. + ii. 9: E. Meyer, _Gesch. des Alt._ iv. pp. 60, 199 rejects the + tale. For plans of the Piraeus see Wachsmuth, _Stadt Athen im + Alterthum_, ii. 134, and Curtius and Kaupert, _Karten von Attika_ + (1881), plan II_a_ by Milchhoefer. Foucart has adduced epigraphic + reasons for dating the work of Hippodamus here to 480-470 B.C. + (_Journal des Savants_, 1907, pp. 178-82); they are not + conclusive, but, if he be right, the difficulty of assigning the + Piraeus and Rhodes to the same architect becomes even greater. + The town-plan of Piraeus given by Gustav Hirschfeld (_Berichte + der sachs. Ges. der Wissenschaften_, 1878, xxx. I) is not + convincing, nor do I feel very sure even about Milchhoefer's + results. + +If we cannot tell exactly how Hippodamus planned cities or exactly +which he planned, still less do we know how far town-planning on his +or on any theory came into general use in his lifetime or indeed +before the middle of the fourth century. Few Greek cities have been +systematically uncovered, even in part. Fewer still have revealed +street-planning which can be dated previous to that time. It does not +follow, when we find streets in the ruins of an ancient city, that +they must belong to its earliest period. That is not true of towns in +any age, modern or mediaeval, Roman or Greek. Some Greek cities were +founded in early times, were rebuilt in the Macedonian period, and +again rebuilt in the Roman period. Without minute excavation it may be +impossible to assign the town-plan of such a place to its proper place +among these three periods. + +We have, however, at Selinus in Sicily and Cyrene on the north coast +of Africa, two cases which may belong to the age of Hippodamus. They +are worth describing, since they illustrate both the difficulty of +reaching quite certain conclusions and also the system which probably +did obtain in the later fifth and the early fourth century. + +_Selinus_ (fig. 3). + +At Selinus the Italian archaeologists discovered some years ago, in +the so-called Acropolis, a town of irregular, rudely pear-shaped +outline with a distinct though not yet fully excavated town-plan. Two +main thoroughfares ran straight from end to end and crossed at right +angles (fig. 3), the longer of these thoroughfares being just a +quarter of a mile long and 30 ft. wide. From these two main streets +other narrower streets (12-18 ft. wide) ran off at right angles; the +result, though not chess-board pattern, is a rectangular town-plan. +Unfortunately, it cannot be dated. Selinus was founded in 648 B.C., +was destroyed in 409, then reoccupied and rebuilt, and finally +destroyed for ever in 249. Its town-planning, therefore, might be as +early as the seventh century B.C. Or (and this is the most probable +conclusion) it may date from the days of Selinuntine prosperity just +before 409, when the city was growing and the great Temple of Zeus or +Apollo was rising on its eastern hill. Or again, though less probably, +it may have been introduced after 400. We may conclude that we have +here a clear case of town-planning and we may best refer it to the +later part of the fifth century.[19] + +[Illustration: FIG. 3. PLAN OF SELINUS] + + [19] Koldewey and Puchstein, _Die griech. Tempel in Unteritalien + und Sicilien_, p. 90, plan 29, from Cavallari; Hulot and + Fougeres, _Selinonte_, Paris, 1910, pp. 121, 168, 196. The latter + writers assign the rebuilding to Hermocrates, 408-407 B.C. But + our accounts of Hermocrates do not suggest that he rebuilt + anything at Selinus of any sort, except defences. + + +_Cyrene_ (fig. 4). + +[Illustration: FIG. 4. PLAN OF CYRENE] + +At Cyrene the researches of two English archaeologists about 1860 +disclosed a town-plan based, like that of Selinus, on two main streets +which crossed at right angles (fig. 4). Here, however, the other +streets do not seem to have been planned uniformly at right angles to +the two main thoroughfares, and the rectangular scheme is therefore +less complete and definite than at Selinus. Cyrene, unfortunately, +resembles Selinus in another respect, that we have no proper knowledge +of the date when its main streets were laid out. It was founded +somewhere in the seventh century B.C. and Pindar, in an ode written +about 466 B.C., mentions a great processional highway there. Whether +this was one of the two roads above mentioned is not clear. But it is +not probable, since Pindar's road seems hardly to have been inside the +city at all.[20] + + [20] Smith and Porcher, _Discoveries at Cyrene_ (1864), plate 40; + hence Studnickza, _Kyrene_ (1890, p. 167, fig. 35), and Malten, + _Kyrene_ (Berlin, 1911). For Pindar's reference see Pyth. v. 90 + and p. 16 above. + +In these two cases and in one or two others which might be noted from +the same or later times, the town-scheme includes rectangular elements +without any strict resemblance to the chess-board pattern. The +dominant feature is the long straight street, of great width and +splendour, which served less as the main artery of a town than as a +frontage for great buildings and a route for solemn processions. Here, +almost as in Babylon, we have the spectacular element which architects +love, but which is, in itself, insufficient for the proper disposition +of a town. Long and ample streets, such as those in question, might +easily be combined, as indeed they are combined in some modern towns +of southern Europe and Asia, with squalid and ill-grouped +dwelling-houses. Hippodamus himself aimed at something much better, as +Aristotle tells us. But it was not till after 350 B.C. or some +approximate date, that dwelling-houses were actually arranged and +grouped on a definite system.[21] + + [21] Soluntum, near Palermo, on the north coast of Sicily, was + found by Cavallari in 1875 to exhibit a rectangular street-plan; + one main street ran north and south along level ground and + several lesser streets lay at right angles to it mounting a + hillside by means of steps (as at Priene, p. 42). See the + _Bullettino delta Commissione di Antichita e Belle Arti in + Sicilia_, viii. Palermo, August 1875. Cavallari himself assigned + this plan to the date when Soluntum was founded--which is + unfortunately uncertain--but only on the general ground that 'in + una citta, una volta tracciate le strade e disposte le arterie + dicommunicazione, non e facile cambiarne la disposizione + generale'. I attach less weight than he does to this reason. + Soluntum was in the main and by origin a Phoenician town, with a + Greek colouring; in 307 B.C. it was refounded for the discharged + soldiers of Agathocles; later still, in Roman times, it had the + rank of 'municipium'; most of its ruins are generally considered + to be of Roman date and small objects found in it are also mostly + Roman, and its street-plan may also be Roman. As the 'Bullettino' + is somewhat rare, I add a reduced plan (fig. 5). + +[Illustration: FIG. 5. SOLUNTUM] + +It was probably, however, in the first half of the fourth century that +the Greek cities began to pass by-laws relating to the police, the +scavenging and the general public order of their markets and streets, +and to establish Agoranomi to control the markets and Astynomi to +control the streets. These officials first appear in inscriptions +after 350, but are mentioned in literature somewhat earlier. An +account of the Athenian constitution, ascribed formerly to Xenophon +and written (as is now generally agreed) about 430-424 B.C., mentions +briefly the prosecution of those who built on to the public land, that +is (apparently), who encroached upon the streets. But it is silent as +to specific officers, Astynomi or other. Plato, however, in his +'Laws', which must date a little earlier than his death in 347, +alludes on several occasions to such officers. They were to look after +the private houses 'in order that they may all be built according to +laws', and to police and clean the roads and water-channels, both +inside and outside of the city. A prohibition of balconies leaning +over the public streets, and of verandas projecting into them, is also +mentioned in two or three writers of the fourth century and is said to +go back to a much earlier date, though its antiquity was probably +exaggerated.[22] + + [22] Plato, _Laws_ 763 c, 779 c, &c.; Aristotle, _Ath. Pol._ 50; + Arist., _Oec._ ii. 5, p. 134; Xenophon, _Ath. Pol._ iii. 4; + Schol. to Aeschines, iii. 24. The fact that the word 'Astynomos' + occurs in Aeschylus does not justify the writer of an article in + Pauly-Wissowa (_Real-Encycl._ ii. 1870) in stating that + magistrates of this title were already at work in the earlier + part of the fifth century; the poet uses the noun in a general + sense from which it was afterwards specialized. Some of the + regulations recur at Rome (p. 137). + +The municipal by-laws which these passages suggest clearly came into +use before, though perhaps not long before, the middle of the fourth +century. They do not directly concern town-planning; they involve +building regulations only as one among many subjects, and those +regulations are such as might be, and in many cases have been, adopted +where town-planning was unknown. But they are natural forerunners of +an interest in town-planning. As in modern England, so in +fourth-century Greece, their appearance suggests the growth of a care +for well-ordered town life and for municipal well-being which leads +directly to a more elaborate and methodical oversight of the town as +an organized combination of houses and groups of houses. + +As we part from this early Greek town-planning, we must admit that +altogether we know little of it. There was such a thing: among its +main features was a care for stately avenues: its chief architect was +Hippodamus. Thus much is clear. But save in so far as Milchhoefer's +plans reproduce the Piraeus of B.C. 450 or 400, we cannot discern +either the shape or the size of the house-blocks, or the grouping +adopted for any of the ordinary buildings, or the scheme of the +ordinary roads. We may even wonder whether such things were of much +account in the town-planning of that period. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: THE MACEDONIAN AGE, 330-130 B.C. + + +The Macedonian age brought with it, if not a new, at least a more +systematic, method of town-planning. That was the age when Alexander +and his Macedonian army conquered the East and his successors for +several generations ruled over western Asia, when Macedonians and +Greeks alike flocked into the newly-opened world and Graeco-Macedonian +cities were planted in bewildering numbers throughout its length and +breadth. Most of these cities sprang up full-grown; not seldom their +first citizens were the discharged Macedonian soldiery of the armies +of Alexander and his successors. The map of Turkey in Asia is full of +them. They are easily recognized by their names, which were often +taken from those of Alexander and his generals and successors, their +wives, daughters, and relatives. Thus, one of Alexander's youngest +generals, afterwards Seleucus I, sometimes styled Nicator, founded +several towns called Seleucia, at least three called Apamea, and +others named Laodicea and Antiochia, thereby recording himself, his +Iranian wife Apama, his mother Laodice and his father Antiochus, and +his successors seem to have added other towns bearing the same name. +Indeed, two-thirds of the town-names which are prominent in the later +history of Asia Minor and Syria, date from the age of Alexander and +his Macedonians. + +Many discoveries show that these towns were laid out with a regular +'chess-board' street-plan. That method of town-planning now made +definite entry into the European world. No architect or statesman is +recorded to have invented or systematically encouraged it. Alexander +himself and his architect, one Dinocrates of Rhodes or perhaps of +Macedonia, seem to have employed it at Alexandria in Egypt, and this +may have set the fashion. Seven years after Alexander's death it +recurs at Nicaea in Bithynia, which was refounded by one of +Alexander's successors in 323 B.C. and was laid out on this fashion. +But no ancient writer credits either the founder or the architect of +Alexandria or the founder of Nicaea with any particular theory on the +subject. If the chess-board fashion becomes now, with seeming +suddenness, the common--although not the universal--rule, that is +probably the outcome of the developments sketched in the last chapter. +Approximations to chess-board planning had been here and there +employed in the century before Alexander. When his conquests and their +complicated sequel led, amongst other results, to the foundation of +many new towns, it was natural that the most definite form of planning +should be chosen for general use. + +We might, however, wonder whether its adoption was helped by the +military character of the generals who founded, and the discharged +soldiers who formed the first inhabitants of so many among these +towns. Military men are seldom averse to rigidity. It is worth noting, +in this connexion, that when chess-board planning came into common use +in the Roman Empire, many--perhaps most--of the towns to which it was +applied were 'coloniae' manned by time-expired soldiers. So, too, in +the Middle Ages and even in comparatively modern times, the towns laid +out with rectangular street-plans in northern Italy, in Provence, in +the Rhine Valley, are for the most part due in some way or other to +military needs.[23] In our own days rectangular planning is a dominant +feature of the largest and newest industrial towns. They are adapting +a military device to the purposes of an industrial age. + + [23] Since the invention of artillery, the rectangular + street-plan has been regarded by soldiers as useful in defending + the streets of a town. Aristotle, however, expressly observes in + the _Politics_ that, in street warfare, tortuous lanes were far + better than straight avenues for the defence, and he recommends + that the rectangular pattern should be adopted only 'in parts and + in places', though he does not explain how this would work out + (_Politics,_ iv. 11, p. 1330). + +[Illustration: FIG. 6. GENERAL OUTLINE OF PRIENE. +A, B, C. Gates. D, E, F, H, M, P. Temples (see fig. 7). G. Agora, +Market. I. Council House, K. Prytaneion. L, Q. Gymnasium. N. Theatre, +O. Water-reservoir, R. Race-course.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 7. PART OF PRIENE AS EXCAVATED 1895-8. +(From the large plan by Wiegand and Schrader.)] + +[Illustration: FIG. 8. PRIENE, PANORAMA OF THE TOWN. +(As restored by Zippelius.)] + + +_Priene_ (figs. 6-8). + +The best instance of the new system is not perhaps the most famous. +Priene was a little town on the east coast of the Aegean. The high +ridge of Mycale towered above it; Miletus faced it across an estuary; +Samos stood out seawards to the west. In its first dim days it had +been perched on a crag that juts out from the overhanging mountain; +there its life began, we hardly know when, in the dawn of Greek +history. But it had been worn down in the fifth century between the +upper and the nether millstone of the rival powers of Samos and +Miletus. Early in the Macedonian age it was refounded. The old +Acropolis was given up. Instead, a broad sloping terrace, or more +exactly a series of terraces, nearer the foot of the hill, was laid +out with public buildings--Agora, Theatre, Stoa, Gymnasium, Temples, +and so forth--and with private houses. The whole covered an area of +about 750 yds. in length and 500 yds. in width. Priene was, therefore, +about half the size of Pompeii (p. 63). It had, as its excavators +calculate, about 400 individual dwelling-houses and a population +possibly to be reckoned at 4,000. + +In the centre was the Agora or market-place, with a temple and other +large buildings facing on to it; round them were other public +buildings and some eighty blocks of private houses, each block +measuring on an average 40 x 50 yds. and containing four or five +houses. The broader streets, rarely more than 23 ft. wide, ran level +along the terraces and parallel to one another. Other narrower +streets, generally about 10 ft. wide, ran at right angles up the +slopes, with steps like those of the older Scarborough or of +Assisi.[24] The whole area has not yet been explored and we do not +know whether the houses were smaller or larger, richer or poorer, in +one quarter than in another, but the regularity of the street-plan +certainly extended over the whole site. + + [24] Compare Soluntum, p. 36, n. 2. + +Despite this reasoned and systematic arrangement, no striking artistic +effects appear to have been attempted. No streets give vistas of +stately buildings. No squares, save that of the Agora--120 by 230 ft. +within an encircling colonnade--provide open spaces where larger +buildings might be grouped and properly seen. Open spaces, indeed, +such as we meet, in mediaeval and Renaissance Italy or in modern +English towns of eighteenth century construction, were very rare in +Priene. Gardens, too, must have been almost entirely absent. In the +area as yet uncovered, scarcely a single dwelling-house possessed any +garden ground or yard.[25] + + [25] Wiegand and Schrader, _Priene, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabung in + den Jahren 1895-8_ (Berlin, 1904). Professor P. Gardner gave a + good account to the Town-Planning Conference (_Proceedings_, pp. + 112-122). I am indebted to him for two of my illustrations. + + +_Miletus_ (fig. 9). + +The skill of German archaeologists has revealed what town-planning +meant in a small town rebuilt in the Alexandrine period. No other even +approximately complete example has been as yet uncovered on any other +site. But spade-work at the neighbouring and more famous city of +Miletus has uncovered similar street-planning there. In one quarter, +the only one yet fully excavated, the streets crossed at right angles +and enclosed regular blocks of dwelling-houses measuring 32 x 60 yds. +(according to the excavators) but sub-divided into blocks of about 32 +yds. square (fig. 9). These blocks differ somewhat in shape from those +of Priene, which are more nearly square; whether they differ in date +is more doubtful. They are certainly not earlier than the Macedonian +era, and one German archaeologist places the building or rebuilding of +this quarter of Miletus after that of Priene and in a 'late +Hellenistic' and apparently Roman period. There is unquestionably much +Roman work in Miletus; there seems, however, no sufficient reason for +ascribing the house-blocks shown on fig. 7 to any date but some part +of the Macedonian period. Though differently shaped, they do not +differ very greatly in actual area from those of Priene. They are +somewhat smaller, but only by about 60 sq. yds. in each average-sized +plot.[26] + + [26] Wiegand, _Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie_, 1911, Anhang; + _Archaeol. Anzeiger_, 1911, 420 foll. + +[Illustration: FIG. 9. MILETUS, AS EXCAVATED BY WIEGAND. +(_Archaologischer Anzeiger_, 1911, p. 421.)] + + +_Alexandria_. + +A yet more famous town, founded by Alexander himself, is definitely +recorded by ancient writers to have been laid out in the same +quasi-chess-board fashion, with one long highway, the Canopic Street, +running through it from end to end for something like four miles.[27] +Unfortunately the details of the plan are not known with any +certainty. Excavations were conducted at the instigation of Napoleon +III in 1866 by an Arab archaeologist, Mahmud Bey el Fallaki, and, +according to him, showed a regular and rectangular scheme in which +seven streets ran east and west while thirteen ran north and south at +right angles to them. The house-blocks divided by these streets were +thought to vary somewhat in size but to measure in general about 300 x +330 metres.[28] More recent research, however, has not confirmed +Mahmud's plans. The excavations of Mr. Hogarth and M. Botti suggest +that many of his lines are wrong and that even his Canopic Street is +incorrectly laid down. Mr. Hogarth, indeed, concludes that 'it is +hopeless now to sift his work; those who would treat the site of +Alexandria scientifically must ignore him and start _de novo_'. More +recent excavation, carried out by Dr. Noack in 1898-9, seemed to show +that the ancient streets which can now be traced beneath Alexandria +belong to a Roman age, though they may of course follow older lines, +and that, if some items in Mahmud's plans are possibly right, the +errors and omissions are serious. We may accept as certain the +statement that Alexandria was laid out with a rectangular town-plan; +we cannot safely assume that Mahmud has given a faithful picture of +it.[29] + + [27] Strabo, xvii. 793. + + [28] Mahmud Bey, _Memoire sur l'ancienne Alexandrie_ (Copenhagen, + 1872); Neroutsos Bey, _L'ancienne Alexandrie_ (Paris, 1888). + + [29] D.G. Hogarth, _Archaeological Report of the Egypt + Exploration Fund_, 1894-5, p. 28, and _Hellenic Journal_, xix. + 326; F. Noack, _Athen. Mitteil._ xxv. (1900), pp. 232, 237. Dr. + Noack thought that his results confirmed Mahmud; to me, as to + some others, they seem rather to yield the conclusions indicated + in the text. + + +_Nicaea_. + +Priene, Miletus, and Alexandria supply more or less well-known +instances of Macedonian town-planning. They can be reinforced by a +crowd of less famous examples, attested by literature or by actual +remains. One of the most characteristic is known to us from +literature, Nicaea in Bithynia, founded by one of the Macedonians in +316 B.C. and renamed by another some years later in honour of his wife +Nicaea. Strabo, writing about A.D. 15, describes it and his +description no doubt refers to arrangements older than the Romans. It +formed, he says, a perfect square in which each side measured four +stades, a little over 800 yds. In each side--apparently in the middle +of each side--there was one gate, and the streets within the walls +were laid out at right angles to one another. A man who stood at a +certain spot in the middle of the Gymnasium could see straight to all +the four gates.[30] Here is the chess-board pattern in definite form, +though the central portion of the city may have been laid out under +the influence of spectacular effect rather than of geometry. + + [30] Strabo, 565, 566. + + +_Sicyon, Thebes, &c._ + +Another Macedonian town-plan may be found at Sicyon, a little west of +Corinth. This old Greek city was rebuilt by Demetrius Poliorcetes +about 300 B.C., and is described by a Greek writer of the first +century B.C. as possessing a regular plan and roads crossing at right +angles. The actual remains of the site, explored in part by English +and French archaeologists early in the nineteenth century, show some +streets which run with mathematical straightness from north-east to +south-west and others which run from north-west to south-east.[31] +These streets might, indeed, date from the period when Sicyon was the +chief town of the Roman province of Achaia, the period (that is) +between the overthrow of Corinth in 146 B.C. and its restoration just +a century later. But that was not an epoch when such rebuilding is +likely to have been carried through. Friendly as the Republican +government of Rome showed itself in other ways to Hellas, there is no +reason to think that it spent money on town-planning in Hellenic +cities. It is far more probable that the town-plan of Sicyon dates +from the Macedonians. + + [31] Diodorus Sic. xx. 102; _Expedition scientifique de Moree, + archit. et sculpture_, iii (1838), plate LXXXI. + +To the same Macedonian epoch we may perhaps ascribe the building or +rather the rebuilding of Boeotian Thebes, which one who passes for a +contemporary writer under the name of Dicaearchus, describes as +'recently divided up into straight streets'.[32] To the same period +Strabo definitely assigns the newer town of Smyrna, lying in the plain +close to the harbour. It was due, he says, to the labours of the +Macedonians, Antigonus, and Lysimachus.[33] We may perhaps assign to +the same period the town-planning of Mitylene in Lesbos, which +Vitruvius mentions as so splendid and so unhealthy, were it not that +his explanation of its unhealthiness suggests rather a fan-shaped +outline than a square. It was, he says, intolerable, whatever wind +might blow. With a south wind, the wind of damp and rain, every one +was ill. With a north-west wind, every one coughed. With a north wind, +no one could stand out of doors for the chilliness of its blasts.[34] +Streets that lay open to the north and the north-west and the south, +equally and alike, could only be found in a town-plan fashioned like a +fan. But perhaps Vitruvius only selected three of the plagues of +Lesbos. + + [32] Dicaearchus, p. 143. + + [33] Strabo, 646. + + [34] Vitruvius, i. 6. + +In other cases the same planning was probably adopted, although the +evidence as yet known shows only a rectangular plan of main streets, +such as we have met in Pre-Macedonian Greece. In Macedonia itself, +Thessalonika, laid out perhaps about 315 B.C., had at least one main +street running southwards to the sea and two more running east and +west at right angles to that.[35] In Asia two Syrian towns, which +occupy sites closed to Hellenic culture before Alexander, may serve as +examples. Apamea on the Orontes was built by the Macedonians, rose +forthwith to importance, and retained its vigorous prosperity through +the Roman Empire; in A.D. 6 it was 'numbered' by Sulpicius Quirinius, +then the governor of Syria, and the census showed as many as 117,000 +citizens settled in the city and its adjacent 'territory'. Its ruins +seem to be mainly earlier than the Romans, and its streets may well +date from its Macedonian founders. In outline it is an irregular +oblong, nearly an English mile in length and varying in width from +half to two-thirds of a mile. A broad and straight street, lined +throughout with colonnades, runs from end to end of its length and +passes at least five great buildings, which seem to be the temples and +palaces of the Seleucid kings. Two other streets cross this main +street at right angles. Whether the smaller thoroughfares took the +same lines can be determined only by excavation. It would be a gentle +guess to think so.[36] + + [35] Tafrali, _Topographie de Thess._ pp. 121 foll. and plan. + + [36] E. Sachau, _Reise in Syrien_ (1883), p. 76; Mommsen, + _Ephemeris epigr_. iv, p. 514, and _Mon. Ancyr._ (ed. 2), p. 540. + +Further south, on the edge of the Hauran, stood the town of Gerasa. +This too, like Apamea, was built by the Macedonians and flourished not +only in their days but during the following Roman age. Its general +outline was ovoid, its greatest diameter three quarters of a mile, its +area some 235 acres--nearly the same with Roman Cologne and Roman +Cirencester. Its streets resembled those of Apamea. A colonnaded +highway ran straight through from north to south; two other streets +crossed at right angles, and its chief public buildings, the Temple of +the Sun and three other temples, two theatres and two public baths, +stood near these three streets (fig. 10). Again the evidence proves +rectangular town-planning in broad outline; excavation alone can tell +the rest.[37] + + [37] _Zeitschrift des deutschen Palastina-Vereins_, xxv (1902), + plate 6; Badeker, _Palestine and Syria_ (1906), p. 140. For the + neighbouring Bostra, see p. 136. + +[Illustration: FIG. 10. GERASA] + +In the towns just described a distinctive feature is the 'chess-board' +pattern of streets and rectangular house-blocks. That, of course, is +the feature which most concerns us here. It may not have looked so +predominant to their builders and inhabitants. The towns which the +Macedonians founded were not seldom rich and large; several were the +capitals of powerful and despotic rulers. In such towns we expect +great public buildings, temples, palaces. It is not surprising if +sometimes those who reared them cared solely for the spectacular +grouping of magnificent structures and forgot the private houses and +the general plan of the town. + + +_Pergamum_. + +One such instance from the Macedonian age, perhaps the most +instructive which we could ever hope to get,[38] is Pergamum, in the +north-west of Asia Minor. This has been thoroughly explored by German +science; its remains are superb; its chief buildings date from an age +when town-planning had grown familiar to the Greek world. About 300 +B.C. it was a hill-town where a Macedonian chief could bestow a +war-chest. It grew both populous and splendid in the third and second +centuries B.C. under the Attalid kings; later builders, Augustus or +Trajan or other, added little either to its general design or to its +architectural glory. The dominant idea was that of a semi-circle of +great edifices, crowning the crest and inner slopes of a high +crescent-shaped ridge. Near the northern and highest end of this ridge +stood the palace of the Attalid princes, afterwards buried beneath a +temple in honour of Trajan. Next, to the south, was the Library--with +stores of papyri worth more perhaps to the world than all the +architecture of Pergamon. The middle of the crescent held the shrine +of Athena, goddess of Pergamon, and beside it the Altar of Zeus the +Saviour, gigantic in size, splendid with sculpture, itself the equal +of an Acropolis. Lastly, the southern or lower end of the ridge bore a +temple of Dionysus and an Agora for Assemblies. + + [38] Ephesus, refounded by Lysimachus about 281 B.C., might + perhaps be another. But the repeated excavations there, though + they have taught us much about the temples and other large + edifices of the great city, seem to have left the streets + comparatively unexplored. + +These buildings ringed the hill-top in stately semi-circle; below +them, a theatre was hewn out of the slopes and a terrace 250 yds. long +was held up by buttresses against precipitous cliffs. Lower yet, +beneath the Agora, the town of common men covered the lower hill-side +in such order or disorder as its steepness allowed. Here was no +conventional town-planning. Only a yet lower and later city, built in +Roman days on more or less level spaces beside the stream Selinus, +seems perhaps to have been laid out in chess-board fashion.[39] The +Attalid kings, the founders of Pergamon, cared only for splendid +buildings splendidly adorned. If their abrupt hill-side forbade the +straight and broad processional avenues of some other Greek cities, +they crowned their summits instead with a crescent of temples and +palaces which had not its like on the shores of the Aegean. + + [39] P. Schatzmann, _Athen. Mitteil_. xxxv. (1910) 385; _Archaol. + Anzeiger_ (1910), p. 541. This lowest city is covered by a swarm + of modern houses and hovels, and has not been very fully + explored. + +Yet even Pergamon had its building-laws and by-laws for the protection +of common life. A Pergamene inscription contains part of a 'Royal Law' +which apparently dates from one of the Attalid rulers. It is +imperfect. But we can recognize some of the items for which it +provided. Houses which fell or threatened to fall on to the public +street, or which otherwise became ruinous, could be dealt with by the +Astynomi; if their owners failed to repair them, these magistrates +were to make good the defects themselves and to recover the cost, and +a fine over and above it, from the owners; if the Astynomi neglected +their duty, the higher magistrates, the Strategi, were to take up the +matter. Streets were to be cleaned and scavenged by the same Astynomi. +Brick-fields were expressly forbidden within the city. The widths of +roads outside the town were fixed and owners of adjacent land were +held liable for their repair, and there was possibly some similar +rule, not preserved on the inscription, for roads inside the walls; at +Priene, it seems, these latter were in the care of the municipality. +There were provisions, too, for the repair of common walls which +divided houses belonging to two owners, and also for the prevention of +damp where two houses stood side by side on a slope and the wall of +the lower house stood against the soil beneath the upper house.[40] + + [40] Kolbe, _Athen. Mitteil_. xxvii. 47 and xxix. 75; Hitzig, + _Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, roman. Abteilung_ xxvi. 433. + +These rules are very like those which were coming into use before 330 +B.C. (p. 37). Only, they are more elaborate, and it is significant +that the inscriptions begin in Macedonian and later days to give more +and fuller details as to the character of these laws and as to the +existence in many cities of officials to execute them. It is not +surprising to find that Roman legislation of the time of Caesar and +the early Empire applies these or very similar rules to the local +government of the Roman municipalities of the Empire (p. 137). + +So common in the Macedonian world was the town-planning which has been +described above, that the literature of the period, even in its casual +phrases and incidental similes, speaks of towns as being normally +planned in this fashion. Two examples from two very different authors +will suffice as illustration. Polybius, writing somewhere about B.C. +150, described in well-known chapters the scheme of the Roman camp, +and he concludes much as follows: 'This being so, the whole outline of +the camp may be summed up as right-angled and four-sided and +equal-sided, while the details of its street-planning and its general +arrangement are precisely parallel to those of a city' (VI. 31, 10). +He was comparing the Greek town, as he knew it in his own country, +with the encampment of the Roman army; he found in the town the aptest +and simplest parallel which he could put before his readers. A much +later writer, living in a very different environment and concerned +with a very different subject, fell nevertheless under the influence +of the same ideas. Despite his 'sombre scorn' for things Greek and +Roman, St. John, when he wished to figure the Holy City Jerusalem, +centre of the New Heaven and New Earth, pictured it as a city lying +foursquare, the length as large as the breadth, and entered by twelve +gates, 'on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the +south three gates, and on the west three gates.'[41] + + [41] Revelation xxi. 13, 16. Some of the details are, no doubt, + drawn from the later chapters of Ezekiel, but the difference + between the two writers is plain. + +The instances and items cited in the preceding paragraphs lie within +the limits of the Greek world and of the Roman Empire. We might +perhaps wish to pursue our speculations and ask whether this vigorous +system influenced foreign lands, and whether the Macedonian army +carried the town-plan of their age, in more or less perfect form, as +far as their conquests reached. Alexander settled many soldiers in +lands which were to form his eastern and north-eastern frontiers, as +if against the central-asiatic nomads. Merv and Herat, Khokand and +Kandahar,[42] have been thought--and, it seems, thought with some +reason--to date from the Macedonian age and in their first period to +have borne the name Alexandria. But no Aurel Stein has as yet +uncovered their ruins, and speculation about them is mere speculation. + + [42] See p. 145 below. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS + + +If Greek and Macedonian town-planning are fairly well known, the Roman +Empire offers a yet larger mass of certain facts, both in Italy and in +the provinces. The beginnings, naturally, are veiled in obscurity. We +can trace the system in full work at the outset of the Empire; we +cannot trace the steps by which it grew. Evidences of something that +resembles town-planning on a rectangular scheme can be noted in two or +three corners of early Italian history--first in the prehistoric +Bronze Age, then in a very much later Etruscan town, and thirdly on +one or two sites of middle Italy connected with the third or fourth +century B.C. These evidences are scanty and in part uncertain, and +their bearing on our problem is not always clear, but they claim a +place in an account of Italian town-planning. To them must be added, +fourthly, the important evidence which points to the use of a system +closely akin to town-planning in early Rome itself. + + +_The Terremare_ (fig. 11). + +(i) We begin in the Bronze Age, somewhere between 1400 and 800 B.C., +amidst the so-called Terremare. More than a hundred of these strange +settlements have been examined by Pigorini, Chierici, and other +competent Italians. Most of them occur in a well-defined district +between the Po and the Apennines, with Piacenza at its west end and +Bologna at its east end. Some have also been noted on the north bank +of the Po near Mantua, both east and west of the Mincio, and two or +three elsewhere in Italy. Archaeologically, they all belong to the +Bronze Age; they seem, further, to be the work of a race distinct from +any previous dwellers in North Italy, which had probably just moved +south from the Danubian plains. At some time or other this race had +dwelt in lake-villages. They were now settled on dry ground and far +away from lakes--one of their hamlets is high in the Apennines, nearly +1,900 ft. above the sea. But they still kept in the Terremare the +lacustrine fashion of their former homes. + +The nature of these strange villages can best be explained by an +account of the best-known and the largest example of them (fig. 11). +At Castellazzo di Fontanellato, a little west of Parma, are the +vestiges of a settlement which, with its defences, covered an area of +about forty-three acres. In outline it was four-sided; its east and +west sides were parallel to one another, and the whole resembled a +rectangle which had been pulled a trifle askew. Round it ran a solid +earthen rampart, 50 ft. broad at the base and strengthened with +woodwork (plan, B). In front of the rampart was a wet ditch (A), 100 +ft. wide, fed with fresh water from a neighbouring brook by an inlet +at the south-western corner (C) and emptied by an outfall on the east +(D). One wooden bridge gave access to this artificial island at its +southern end (E). The area within the rampart, a little less than +thirty acres in extent, was divided into four parts by two main +streets, which would have intersected at right angles had the place +been strictly rectangular; other narrower streets ran parallel to +these main thoroughfares. On the east side (F) was a small +'citadel'--_arx_ or _templum_--with ditch, rampart and bridge of its +own (G, H); in this were a trench and some pits (K) which seemed by +their contents to be connected with ritual and religion. Outside the +whole (L, M) were two cemeteries, platforms of urns set curiously like +the village itself, and also a little burning _ghat_.[43] The +population of the village is necessarily doubtful. A German writer, +Nissen, has reckoned it at four or five thousand, men, women and +children together, crowded into small huts. But this estimate may be +too high. In any case, many of the Terremare are much smaller. + + [43] The literature of the Terremare is very large. The results + obtained up to 1894 were summarized by F. von Duhn in the _Neue + Heidelberger Jahrbuecher_, iv. 144; the best recent accounts are + by T.E. Peet, _Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy_ (Oxford, 1909), + chaps. 14 and 17, from which fig. 11 is taken, and R. Munro, + _Palaeolithic Man and Terramara Settlements_ (Edin., 1912), pp. + 291-487 and plates xxxiii foll. A good brief sketch is given by + Mr. H.S. Jones, _Companion to Roman History_, pp. 4-6. One point + in the arrangement seems not quite clear. It is generally stated + that the trapezoidal outline was adopted in order to allow the + water to enter the ditch from a running stream and to part easily + into two channels (fig. 11). That is quite intelligible. But, if + so, one would expect the outlet to be at the opposite end, and + not (as it actually is) in the middle of one side, where it would + 'short-circuit' the current. (Mr. H.S. Jones seems to have + confused inlet and outlet.) + +[Illustration: FIG. 11. TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAZZO DI FONTANELLATO] + +These Terremare bear a strong likeness to the later Italian +town-planning, and they are usually taken to be the oldest +discoverable traces of that system. This means that the Italian +town-planning was derived from other sources besides Greece or the +East, since the Terremare are far older than Hippodamus or even +Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib (pp. 23, 29). It must be added that our +present knowledge does not allow us to follow the actual development +of the Terremare into historic times, and to link them closely with +the later civilization of Central Italy. When some modern scholars +call the men of the Terremare by the name 'Italici', they express a +hope rather than a proven fact. It may be safer, for the moment, to +avoid that name and to refrain from theories as to the exact relation +between prehistoric and historic. But we shall see below that the +existence of a relation between the two is highly probable. + + +_Marzabotto_ (fig. 12). + +[Illlustration: FIG. 12. MARZABOTTO. +(AB, FG, CD, main streets. The shading represents excavated houses.)] + +(ii) A greater puzzle, dating probably from the fifth century B.C., +meets us in the ruins of a nameless little Etruscan town which stood +outside of Etruria proper, on the north slopes of the Apennines. Its +site is fifteen miles south of Bologna, close to the modern +Marzabotto, on the left bank of the little river Reno. Only a tiny +part has been uncovered. But the excavators have not hesitated to +complete their results conjecturally into a rectangular town-plan, +with streets crossing at right angles and oblong blocks of houses +measuring from 158 to 176 yds. in length and 37 or 44 or 71 yds. in +width (fig. 12). The whole must have been laid out at once, and the +smaller remains seem to show that this was done by Etruscans. In the +fourth century the place was sacked by the Gauls, and though there was +later occupation,[44] its extent is doubtful.[45] + +Further excavation is, however, needed to confirm this generally +accepted interpretation of the place. Nothing has been noted elsewhere +in Etruria or its confines to connect the Etruscans with any +rectangular form of town-plan. At Veii, for example, most of the +Etruscan city has lain desolate and unoccupied ever since the Romans +destroyed it, but the site shows no vestige of streets crossing at +right angles or of oblong blocks of houses. At Vetulonia the excavated +fragment of an Etruscan city shows only curving and irregular +streets.[46] Nor is there real reason to believe that the 'Etruscan +teaching' learnt by Rome included an art of town-planning (p. 71) or +that, as a recent French writer has conjectured, the Etruscans brought +any such art with them from the East and communicated it to the West. +We must conclude that at Marzabotto we have a piece of evidence which +we cannot set into its proper historical framework. We might perhaps +call it an early blend of Greek and Italian methods and compare it +with Naples (p. 100). It is odd that four out of seven house-blocks +should measure just under 120 Roman ft. in width and thus approximate +to a figure which we meet often elsewhere in the Roman world (p. 79). +But it would be well to learn more of the plan by further excavation. + + [44] _Archaeological Journal_, 1903, p. 237. + + [45] Brizio, _Monumenti Antichi_, i. 252, superseding Gozzadini's + _Antica Necropoli a Marzabotto_ (Bologna, 1865-70); Grenier, + _Bologne villanovienne_ &c. (Paris, 1912) p. 98. Compare + _Authority and Archaeology_, pp. 305, 306. + + [46] _Notizie degli Scavi_ 1895, p. 272; Durm, _Baukunst der + Etr_. p. 39. + + +_Pompeii_ (fig. 13). + +(iii) A third piece of evidence can be found on a site which +historians and novelists alike connect mainly with the Roman Empire, +but which dates back to the days of the early or middle Republic. +Pompeii began in or before the sixth century B.C. as an Oscan city. +For a while, we hardly know when, it was ruled by Etruscans. Later, +about 420 B.C., it was occupied by Samnites. Finally, it became Roman; +it was refounded in 80 B.C. as a 'colonia' and repeopled by soldiers +discharged from the armies of Sulla. In A.D. 79 it reached its end in +the disaster to which it owes its fame. Its life, therefore, was long +and full of destruction, re-building, enlargement. Its architectural +history is naturally hard to follow. Many of its buildings, however, +can be dated more or less roughly by the style of their ornament or +the character of their material, and the lines of its streets suggest +some conjectures as to its growth which deserve to be stated even +though they may conflict with the received opinions about Pompeii. It +will be understood, of course, that these conjectures, like all +speculations on Pompeii, are limited by the fact that barely half of +its area has been as yet uncovered, and that very little search has +been made beneath the floors and pavements of its latest period.[47] + + [47] For recent plans of Pompeii the reader may consult the + second edition (1908) of August Mau's _Pompeii_, or the fifth + edition (1910) of his _Fuehrer durch Pompeii_, re-edited by W. + Barthel. A plan on a large scale is given in the last part of + _CIL_. iv (1909); there are also occasional plans in the _Notizie + degli Scavi_. See also C. Weichardt, _Pompeji vor der Zerstorung_ + (Leipzig, 1897). + +[Illustration: FIG. 13. POMPEII. +(T = Temple. The area of the supposed original settlement is outlined +in black.)] + +As we know it at present, Pompeii is an irregular oval area of about +160 acres, planted on a small natural hill and girt with a stone wall +nearly two miles in circumference (fig. 13). On the west there was +originally access to the sea, and on this side the walls have +disappeared or have not been yet uncovered. Near this end of the town +is the Forum, with the principal temples and public buildings round +it. At the east end of the town, nearly 1200 yds. from the western +extremity, is the amphitheatre, and the town-walls appear to have been +drawn so as to include it. Two main streets, now called the Strada di +Nola and the Strada dell' Abbondanza, cross the town from SW. to NE. +The main streets from NW. to SE. are less distinct, but the Strada +Stabiana certainly ran from wall to wall. While there is some +appearance of symmetry in the streets generally, it does not go very +far; there is hardly a right angle, or any close approach to a right +angle, at any street corner. + +It is generally held, as Mau has argued, that the whole town was laid +out at once, perhaps during the Etruscan period, on one plan of +streets crossing at right angles. Two principal streets, those now +styled the Strada di Mercurio and the Strada di Nola, are considered +to be the main streets of this earliest town-plan, and to give it its +general direction. A third main street, the Strada Stabiana, which +cuts obliquely across from the Vesuvian to the Stabian Gate and mars +the supposed symmetry of this town-plan, is ascribed to the influence +of a small natural depression along which it runs, while a small area +east of the Forum, which also breaks loose from the general scheme, is +thought to have been laid out abnormally in order to remedy the effect +of this obliquity.[48] + +This theory is open to objections. In the first place the streets +(even apart from those just east of the Forum) do not really form one +symmetrical plan. Region VI fits very ill with Regions I and III. Both +indicate systematic planning. But Region VI is laid out in oblong +blocks 110 ft. wide and either 310 ft. or 480 ft. long, while Regions +I and III are made up of approximately square blocks about 200 ft. +each way. Moreover, the orientation of the blocks is different. Those +in Region VI follow the lines of the Strada di Mercurio; those of +Regions I and II, and perhaps also of Region V, are dominated by the +Strada Stabiana. Yet there is no obvious reason why this difference +should not have been avoided; it results, indeed, in awkward corners +and inconvenient spaces. Nor, again, can we accept as in any degree +adequate the cause assigned by Mau for the odd orientation of the +streets next to the east side of the Forum. + + [48] Mau, _Fuehrer_ (1910), p. 5, 'um die Schiefwinkeligkeit zu + vermindern.' Truly, a very inadequate reason. + +These streets which lie round and east of the Forum suggest a +different development. Pompeii may have begun with a little Oscan town +planted in what became its south-western corner, near the Water-Gate +and the Forum, within the area of Regions II and IV. Here is a little +network of streets, about 300 by 400 yds. across (25 acres), which +harmonizes ill with the streets in the rest of the town, which lies +close to the river-haven on the Sarno, which includes the Forum and +Basilica--probably the oldest public sites, though not the oldest +surviving structures, in Pompeii--and which is large enough to have +formed the greater part or even the whole of a prehistoric city. The +earliest building as yet excavated at Pompeii, the Doric Temple, with +its precinct now known as the Forum Triangulare, stood on the edge of +this area looking out from its high cliff over the plain of the Sarno. +Originally this Temple may have stood just within the first town-wall, +or perhaps just without it, sheltered by the precipice which it +crowns. This area has all the appearance of an 'Altstadt'. No doubt it +has been much altered by later changes. In particular, Forum and +Basilica have grown far beyond their first proportions, and the +buildings which surround them have been added, altered, enlarged out +of all resemblance to the original plan. Nevertheless, this theory +seems to account better than any other for this curious little corner +of streets that are hardly regular even in their relations to one +another and are wholly irreconcilable to the rest of the town. + +Round this primitive city grew up the greater Pompeii. The growth must +have been rather by two or three distinct accretions than a gradual +and continuous development. At present we cannot trace these stages. +To do that we must wait till the excavations can be carried deeper +down, and till the other half of the city has been uncovered, or at +least till the lines of its streets and the shapes of its house-blocks +have been determined, like those of Priene (p. 42), by special +inquiry. All that is as yet certain is that Regions I, III, V, and VI +were laid out, and their houses were (in part at least) in existence +before--perhaps long before--80 B.C., when the Sullan colony was +planted,[49] and we see also that Region VI is planned differently +from I and III. + + [49] Region VI contains an ancient column of the sixth century + B.C. (Mau, _Fuehrer_, p. 113), but this may not be _in situ_. + +Another fact claims notice. The town-planning of Pompeii is in the +main trapezoidal, not rectangular. Neither its oblongs, nor its +squares, nor its street-crossings exhibit true right angles, though +many of the rooms and peristyles in the private houses are regular +enough. In this feature Pompeii resembles the trapezoidal outlines of +the Terremare (fig. 11). It resembles also much Roman military work, +both of Republican and of Imperial date, which disregards the strict +right angle and accepts squares and oblongs which are, so to say, +askew. The motive of the Terremare is supposed to have been, as I have +said above, that of providing an easy flow for the water in the +encircling moat. The motive of various military camps may perhaps be +found rather in a wish to secure the same area as that of an orthodox +rectangle, even though the ground forbade the strict execution of the +orthodox figure. Whatever the reason, the trapezoidal house-blocks of +Pompeii exhibit a feature which is not alien to the earlier +town-planning of Italy, though it is strange to the cities of Greece. + + +_Norba_. + +Not only do we need to know more of Pompeii itself. We need evidence +also from other Italian towns of similar age. Here our ignorance is +deep. Only one site which can help has been even tentatively explored. +Norba, which once crowned a spur of the Monti Lepini above the Pontine +marshes, was founded as a Roman town, according to the orthodox +chronology, in 492 B.C.[50] But the received chronology of the earlier +Republic, minute as it looks, probably deserves no more credence than +the equally minute but mainly fictitious dates assigned by the Saxon +Chronicle to the beginnings of English History. Actual remains found +at Norba suggest rather that it was founded (not necessarily by Rome) +about, or a little before, 300 B.C.; it is therefore later than the +Terremare and Marzabotto, and later also than the Oscan age of +Pompeii. On the other hand, it came to an end in the Sullan period (82 +B.C.). Its excavation has little more than begun, but it already +indicates a scheme of streets somewhat resembling that of Pompeii,[51] +and it is a useful adjunct to our better knowledge of the more famous +town. The two together furnish examples of the town-planning of middle +Italy of about 400-300 B.C., in days that are only half historic, and +thus help to fill the gap between the Terremare and the fully +developed system of the Roman Imperial period. + + [50] Livy ii. 34, contradicted, however, by xxvii. 10 and by + Dionysius Halic. vii. 13 _ad fin_. + + [51] _Notizie degli Scavi_, 191, p. 558, 1903, p. 261; Frothingham, + _Roman Cities_, plate ix. I am indebted to Dr. T. Ashby, Director + of the British School at Rome, for information as to the site. + Excavations made in 1823 at the Roman Falerii (founded 241 B.C.) + show streets crossing at right angles, but the piece unearthed + was small and the date uncertain (Canina, _Etruria Maritima_ i, + plate ix). + +It may be permitted in this context to add a plan of a north Italian +city, in which some of the modern streets recall one quarter of +Pompeii (fig. 14). Modena, the Roman Mutina, was founded as a +'colonia' with 2,000 male settlers in 183 B.C., and despite various +misfortunes became one of the chief towns in the Lombard plain. One +part of this town shows a row of long narrow blocks measuring about 20 +x 160 metres (fig. 14, plan A), with a second row of shorter blocks of +the same width and about half the length (plan B). These blocks have +been much marred and curtailed by the inevitable changes of town life, +but their symmetry cannot be accidental, and if they date back, as is +quite possible, to Roman days, they may be put beside the Sixth Region +of Pompeii which contains two rows of similar blocks.[52] + + [52] Fig. 14 is taken from Zuccagni-Orlandini (1844). Kornemann + suggests that Mutina was refounded about 40-20 B.C., but there + seems to be no evidence of this break in its continuity. + +[Illustration: FIG. 14. MODENA. See p. 69.] + +(iv) There remains, fourthly, evidence relating to early Rome itself, +and to customs and observances which obtained there. These customs +belong to the three fields of religion, agrarian land-settlement and +war. All three exhibit the same principle, the division of a definite +space by two straight lines crossing at right angles at its centre, +and (if need be) the further division of such space by other lines +parallel to the two main lines. The Roman augur who asked the will of +Heaven marked off a square piece of sky or earth--his _templum_--into +four quarters; in them he sought for his signs. The Roman general who +encamped his troops, laid out their tents on a rectangular pattern +governed by the same idea. The commissioners who assigned +farming-plots on the public domains to emigrant citizens of Rome, +planned these plots on the same rectangular scheme--as the map of +rural Italy is witness to this day. + +These Roman customs are very ancient. Later Romans deemed them as +ancient as Rome itself, and, though such patriotic traditions belong +rather to politics than to history, we find the actual customs well +established when our knowledge first becomes full, about 200 B.C.[53] +The Roman camp, for example, had reached its complex form long before +the middle of the second century, when Polybius described it in words. +Here, one can hardly doubt, are things older even than Rome. Scholars +have talked, indeed, of a Greek origin or of an Etruscan origin, and +the technical term for the Roman surveying instrument, _groma_, has +been explained as the Greek word 'gnomon', borrowed through an +Etruscan medium. But the name of a single instrument would not carry +with it the origin of a whole art, even if this etymology were more +certain than it actually is. Save for the riddle of Marzabotto (p. +61), we have no reason to connect the Etruscans with town-planning or +with the Roman system of surveying. When the Roman antiquary Varro +alleged that 'the Romans founded towns with Etruscan ritual', he set +the fashion for many later assertions by Roman and modern writers.[54] +But he did not prove his allegation, and it is not so clear as is +generally assumed, that he meant 'Etruscan ritual' to include +architectural town-planning as well as religious ceremonial. + + [53] The prologue to the Poenulus of Plautus (verse 49) which + mentions 'limites' and a 'finitor', may well be as old as Plautus + himself. But the 'centuriation' still visible in north Italy + around colonies planted about 180 B.C. is no full proof of + rectangular surveying at that date. These towns were re-founded + at a much later date, and their lands, and even their streets, + _may_ have been laid out anew. + + [54] Varro _ling. lat_. 5. 143 _oppida condebant Etrusco ritu, id + est, iunctis bobus_, cf. Frontinus _de limit_. (grom. i. p. 27). + +These are Italian customs, far older than the beginnings of Greek +influence on Rome, older than the systematic town-planning of the +Greek lands, and older also than the Etruscans. They should be treated +as an ancestral heritage of the Italian tribes kindred with Rome, and +should be connected with the plan of Pompeii and with the far older +Terremare. Many generations in the family tree have no doubt been +lost. The genealogy can only be taken as conjectural. But it is a +reasonable conjecture. + +In their original character these customs were probably secular rather +than religious. They took their rise as methods proved by primitive +practice to be good methods for laying out land for farming or for +encamping armies. But in early communities all customs that touched +the State were quasi-religious; to ensure their due performance, they +were carried out by religious officials. At Rome, therefore, more +especially in early times, the augurs were concerned with the +delimitation alike of farm-plots and of soldiers' tents. They +testified that the settlement, whether rural or military, was duly +made according to the ancestral customs sanctioned by the gods. +After-ages secularized once more, and as they secularized, they also +introduced science. It was, perhaps, Greek influence which brought in +a stricter use of the rectangle and a greater care for regular +planning. + +It may be asked how all this applies to the planning of towns. We +possess certainly no such clear evidence with respect to towns as with +respect to divisions agrarian or military. But the town-plans which we +shall meet in the following chapters show very much the same outlines +as those of the camp or of the farm plots. They are based on the same +essential element of two straight lines crossing at right angles in +the centre of a (usually) square or oblong plot. This is an element +which does not occur, at least in quite the same form, at Priene or in +other Greek towns of which we know the plans, and it may well be +called Italian. We need not hesitate to put town and camp side by +side, and to accept the statement that the Roman camp was a city in +arms. Nor need we hesitate to conjecture further that in the planning +of the town, as in that of the camp, Greek influence may have added a +more rigid use of rectangular 'insulae'. When that occurred, will be +discussed in Chapter VI. + +Whether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier and the +land-commissioner was adopted in the towns, is a more difficult, but +fortunately a less important question. Modern writers speak of the +_cardo_ and the _decumanus_ of Roman towns, and even apply to them +more highly technical terms such as _striga_ and _scamnum_. For the +use of _cardo_ in relation to towns there is some evidence (p. 107). +But it is very slight, and for the use of the other terms there is +next to no evidence at all.[55] The silence alike of literature and of +inscriptions shows that they were, at the best, theoretical +expressions, confined to the surveyor's office.[56] + + [55] Whether the _possessores ex vico Lucretio scamno primo_ of + Cologne (Corpus XIII. 8254) had their property inside the + 'colonia' of that place or in the country outside, may be doubted + (Schulten, _Bonner Jahrb._ ciii. 28). + + [56] The phrase Roma Quadrata ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in + this chapter. It does not seem, however, to be demonstrably older + than the Ciceronian age. The line _et qui sextus erat Romae + regnare quadratae_, once attributed to Ennius (ed. Vablen, 1854, + 158), is clearly of much later date. As a piece of historical + evidence, the phrase merely sums up some archaeologist's theory + (very likely a correct theory, but still a theory) that the + earliest Rome on the Palatine had a more or less rectangular + outline. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING: THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EARLY EMPIRE + + +During the later Republic and the earlier Empire many Italian towns +were founded or re-founded. To this result several causes contributed. +Like the Greeks before them, the Romans of the Republic sent out from +time to time compact bodies of emigrants whenever the home population +had grown too large for its narrow space. These bodies were each large +enough to form a small town, and thus each migration meant--or might +mean--the foundation of a new town full-grown from its birth. The +Greeks generally established new and politically independent towns. +The Romans followed another method. Their colonists remained subject +to Rome and constituted new centres of Roman rule, small +quasi-fortresses of Roman dominion in outlying lands. Often the +military need for such a stronghold had more to do with the foundation +of a 'colonia' than the presence of too many mouths in the city. +Cicero, speaking of a 'colonia' planted at Narbo (now Narbonne) in +southern Gaul about 118 B.C., and planted perhaps with some regard to +an actual overflow of population in contemporary Rome, calls it +nevertheless 'a colonia of Roman citizens, a watch-tower of the Roman +people, a bulwark against the wild tribes of Gaul'. Those words state +very clearly the main object of many such foundations under Republic +and Empire alike. + +Another reason for the establishment of 'coloniae' may be found in the +history of the dying Republic and nascent Empire. During the civil +wars of Sulla, of Caesar and of Octavian, huge armies were brought +into the field by the rival military chiefs. As each conflict ended, +huge masses of soldiery had to be discharged almost at once. For the +sake of future peace it was imperative that these men should be +quickly settled in some form of civic life in which they would abide. +The form chosen was the familiar form of the 'colonia'. The +time-expired soldiers were treated--not altogether unreasonably--as +surplus population, and they were planted out in large bodies, +sometimes in existing towns which needed population or at least a +loyal population, sometimes in new towns established full-grown for +the purpose. This method of dealing with discharged soldiers was +continued during the early Empire, though it was then employed +somewhat intermittently and the 'coloniae' were oftener planted in the +provinces than in Italy itself; indeed the establishment of Italian +'coloniae', as distinct from grants of colonial rank by way of honour, +almost ceased after A.D. 68. + +It is not easy to determine the number of such new foundations of +towns in Italy. Some seventy or eighty are recorded from the early and +middle periods of the Republic--previous to about 120 B.C.; Sulla +added a dozen or so; Octavian (Augustus) in his earlier years +established or helped to establish about thirty.[57] But these figures +can hardly represent the whole facts. The one certainty is that, +through the causes just detailed, a very large number of the Italian +towns were either founded full-grown or re-founded under new +conditions during the later Roman Republic and the earlier Empire. Few +towns in Italy developed as Rome herself developed, expanding from +small beginnings in a slow continuous growth which was governed by +convenience and opportunism and untouched by any new birth or +systematic reconstruction. + + [57] See Mommsen, _Gesamm. Schriften_ v. 203; Nissen, _Ital. + Landeskunde_ ii. 27; Kornemann in Pauly-Wissowa, _Encycl._ iv. + 520 foll. + +Coincident with these processes of urban expansion, we find, in many +towns which can be connected with the later Republic or the Empire, +examples of a definite type of town-planning. This type has obvious +analogies with earlier Italy and with the town-planning of the Greek +world, but is also in certain respects distinct from either. The town +areas with which we have now to deal are small squares or oblongs; +they are divided by two main streets into four parts and by other and +parallel streets into square or oblong house-blocks ('insulae'), and +the rectangular scheme is carried through with some geometrical +precision. The 'insulae', whatever their shape--square or oblong--are +fairly uniform throughout. Only, those which line the north side of +the E. and W. street are often larger than the rest (pp. 88, 125).[58] +The two main streets appear to follow some method of orientation +connected with augural science. As a rule, one of them runs north and +south, the other east and west, and now and again the latter street +seems to point to the spot where the sun rises above the horizon on +the dawn of some day important in the history of the town.[59] + + [58] Modern plans seem sometimes to imply that the 'insulae' + which abutted on the walls were also abnormally large. That is + because the corresponding modern blocks often include, with the + original 'insula', the space between it and the wall, and also + the wall itself which has been disused and built over. + + [59] See on this point some remarks by W. Barthel, _Bonner + Jahrbuecher_, cxx. 101-108. + +The public buildings of these towns are in general somewhat small and +arranged with little attempt at processional or architectural +splendour; they seldom dominate or even cross the scheme of streets. +Open spaces are rare; the Forum, which corresponds to the Greek Agora, +contains, like that, a paved open court, but this court is almost as +much enclosed as the cloister of a mediaeval church or the quadrangle +of a mediaeval college. Theatre and amphitheatre[60] might, no doubt, +reach huge dimensions, but externally they were more often massive +than ornamental and the amphitheatre often stood outside the city +walls. Here and there a triumphal arch spanned a road where it +approached a town, and provided the only architectural vista to be +seen in most of these Roman towns. + + [60] In western Europe the provincial Roman amphitheatre averaged + 45 x 70 yds. for its arena. + +Dimensions, of course, varied. There was no normal size for an infant +town. Some, when first established, covered little more than 30 acres, +the area of mediaeval Warwick. Others were four or five times as +spacious; they were twice or nearly twice as large as mediaeval +Oxford, no mean city in thirteenth-century England. Most of them, +doubtless, grew beyond their first limits; a few spread as far as a +square mile, twice the extent of mediaeval London. Similarly the +'insulae' varied from town to town. In one, Timgad, they were only 70 +to 80 ft. square. Often they measured 75 to 80 yds. square, rather +more than an acre, as at Florence, Turin, Pavia, Piacenza.[61] +Occasionally they were larger, but they seldom exceeded three acres, +and their average fell below the prevalent practice of modern +chess-board planning. + + [61] For Florence and Turin see below; for Piacenza, the plans on + the scale of 1:1000 and 1:5000 in L. Buroni's _Acque potabili di + Piacenza_ (1895). + +In most towns, though not in all, the dimensions of the 'insulae' show +a common element. In length or in breadth or in both, they usually +approximate to 120 ft. or some multiple of that. The figure is +significant. The unit of Roman land-surveying, the 'iugerum', was a +rectangular space of 120 by 240 Roman feet--in English feet a tiny +trifle less--and it seems to follow that 'insulae' were often laid out +with definite reference to the 'iugerum'. The divisions may not have +always been mathematically correct; our available plans are seldom +good enough to let us judge of that,[62] and we do not know whether we +ought to count the surface of the streets with the measurement of the +'insulae'. But the general practice seems clear, and it extended even +to Britain (p. 129), and though blocks forming exactly a 'iugerum' or +a half 'iugerum' are rare, the Italian land-measure certainly affected +the civilization of the provincial towns. + + [62] Silchester and Timgad are the only two sites which have been + planned well enough to provide accurate measurements. The large + modern town-plans (e.g. of Turin, p. 86) are useful, but + inadequate to our purpose; for one thing, they often exaggerate + the width of the streets. One really needs actual measurements + made on the spot. + +In this system perhaps the most peculiar feature is the intermixture +of square and oblong 'insulae'. It is not merely the variation which +can be traced in Priene (fig. 5), where some blocks are rather more +square or oblong than others, but where all approach the same norm. +The Roman towns which we are now considering show two varieties of +house-blocks. Sometimes the blocks are square; sometimes, perhaps more +often, they are oblong approximating to a square, like the blocks of +Priene. But in a few cases, as at Naples among the more ancient, and +at Carthage among the later foundations, they are oblong and the +oblongs are very long and narrow. + +It is hard to detect any principle underlying the use of these various +forms. No doubt differences of historical origin are ultimately the +causes of the mixture. But our present knowledge does not reveal these +origins. The evidence is, indeed, contradictory at every point. If the +Graeco-Macedonian fashion be quoted as precedent for square or +squarish 'insulae', the Terremare show the same. If the theoretical +scheme of the earlier Roman camp seemed based on the long narrow +oblong, the actual remains of legionary encampments of the second +century B.C. at Numantia include many squares. If one part of Pompeii +exhibits oblongs, another part is made up of squares. If Piacenza, +first founded in north Italy about 183 B.C., and founded again a +hundred and fifty years later, is laid out in squares, its coeval +neighbour Modena prefers the oblong. If the old Greek city of Naples +embodies an extreme type of oblong, so does the later Augustan +Carthage (pp. 100, 113). In the historic period, it would seem, no +sharp line was drawn, or felt to exist, between the various types of +'insulae'. In the main, the square or squarish-oblong was preferred. +Local accidents, such as the convenience of the site at Carthage, led +to occasional adoption of the narrower oblong. + +The Roman land-surveyors, it is true, distinguished the square and the +oblong in a very definite way. The square, they alleged, was proper to +the Italian land or to such provincial soil as enjoyed the privilege +of being taxed--or freed from taxation--on the Italian scale. The +oblong they connected with the ordinary tax-paying soil of the +provinces. This distinction, however, was not carried out even in the +agrarian surveys with which these writers were especially +concerned,[63] and it applies still less to the towns. No doubt it is +a fiction of the office. It would be only human nature if the +surveyors, finding both forms in use, should invent a theory to +account for them. + + [63] Schulten, _Bonner Jahrbuecher_, ciii. 23, and references + given there. + +The system sketched in the preceding paragraphs seems, as has been +said (p. 73), to have sprung from a fusion of Greek or Graeco-Macedonian +with Italian customs. Roman town-planning, like Roman art, was recast +under Hellenistic influence and thus gained mathematical precision and +symmetry. When this happened is doubtful. Foreign scholars often +ascribe it to Augustus and find a special connexion between the first +emperor and the chess-board town-plan. But the architect Vitruvius, +who dedicated his book to Augustus and who gives some brief notice to +town-planning, urges strongly that towns should not be laid out on the +chess-board pattern, but rather on an eight-sided or (as we might call +it) star-shaped plan.[64] He would hardly have denounced a scheme +which had been specially taken up by his patron, nor indeed does his +criticism of the chess-board system sound as if he were denouncing a +novelty in Italian building. + + [64] i. 5 (21), 6 (28, 29). + +On the other hand there seems no great difficulty in the idea that +the regularization of the old Italian town-plan by Greek influence +took place spontaneously in the late Republic. We cannot, indeed, +date the change. It must remain doubtful whether it came by degrees +or all at once,[65] and whether the right-angled plans of towns like +Aquileia[66] or Piacenza belonged to their first foundation, i.e. to +about 180 B.C., or to later rearrangements. But it seems reasonable +to believe that a Graeco-Italian rectangular fashion of town-planning +did supersede an earlier, irregular, Italian style, and had become +supreme before the end of the Republic. + + [65] Perhaps about 180 B.C., Mommsen, _Roman Hist._ iii. 206. + + [66] Aquileia was set up in 181 B.C. to guard the north-east gate + of Italy, and was reinforced in 169. Its remains, so far as + excavated, show a rectangular plan of oblong 'insulae'--some of + 1-1/2 acres (74 by 94 yards), some larger--while, till its + downfall, about A.D. 450, we hear no word of refoundation or + wholesale rebuilding. But if its original area be the space of 70 + acres which is usually assigned, that is not rectangular but a + square somewhat askew, which fits very badly with the rectangular + street-plan, and one would incline to ascribe the latter to a + later date. See Maionica, _Fundkarte von Aquileia_. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +INSTANCES OF ITALIAN TOWN-PLANS + + +The preceding chapters have dealt with the origins and general +character of the Italian town-plan. We pass now to the remains which +it has left in its own home, in Italy. These are many. In one city +indeed, the greatest of all, no town-planning can be detected. Like +Athens and Sparta, Rome shows that conservatism which marks so many +capital cities. No part of it, so far as we know, was laid out on a +rectangular or indeed on any plan.[67] It grew as it could. Its +builders, above all its imperial builders, cared much for spectacular +effects and architectural pomp. Even in late Republican times the +gloomy mass of the Tabularium and the temples of the Capitol must have +towered above the Forum in no mere accidental stateliness, and +imperial Rome contained many buildings in many quarters to show that +it was the capital of an Empire. But for town-planning we must go +elsewhere. + + [67] The traces of prehistoric planning detected by some writers + in Rome are very dubious. + +The sources of our knowledge are twofold. In a few cases +archaeological excavation has laid bare the paving of Roman streets or +the foundation of Roman house-blocks. More often mediaeval and modern +streets seem to follow ancient lines and the ancient town-plan, or a +part of it, survives in use to-day. Such survivals are especially +common in the north of Italy. It is not, indeed, possible to gather a +full list of them. He who would do that needs a longer series of good +town-maps and good local histories than exist at present; he needs, +too, a wider knowledge of mediaeval Italian history and a closer +personal acquaintance with modern Italian towns, than a classical +scholar can attempt. But much can be learnt even from our limited +material.[68] + + [68] See the seventeenth century Atlases of Blaeu, Janssons, and + others, the modern maps prepared by Grassellini and others about + 1840-50 (some on the scale 1:4,000), and in particular the + _Atlante geografico_ of Attilio Zuccagni-Orlandini (Firenze, + 1844), and the recent town-maps of various Italian cities (mostly + about 1:10,500). Different maps of the same town sometimes differ + much in their detail. The Italian Government maps of the largest + scale (1:25,000) are small for our present purpose and have been + issued mainly for northern Italy. + +The evidence of the streets needs, however, to be checked in every +case. It would be rash to assume a Roman origin for an Italian town +simply because its streets are old and their plan rectangular. There +are many rectangular towns of mediaeval or modern origin. Such is +Terra Nova, near the ancient Gela in Sicily, built by Frederick Stupor +Mundi early in the thirteenth century. Such, too, Livorno, built by +the Medici in the sixteenth century. Such, too, the many little +military colonies of the Italian Republics, dotted over parts of +northern and middle Italy. Often it is easy to prove that, despite +their chess-board plans, these towns do not stand on Roman sites. +Often the inquiry leads into regions remote from the study of ancient +history. + +Fortunately, enough examples can be identified as Roman to serve our +purpose. Some of these occur in the Lombardy plain where, both under +the Republic and at the outset of the Empire, many 'coloniae' were +planted full-grown and where town-life on the Roman model was +otherwise developed. Not all these towns survive to-day; not all of +the survivors retain clear traces of their Roman town-plan; in nine +cases, at least, the streets seem unmistakably to follow Roman lines. +Four of the nine date from early days; in the late third and the early +second centuries (218-183 B.C.), Piacenza, Bologna, Parma, and Modena, +were built as new towns with the rank of 'colonia'. The first three of +these were later refounded, about 40-20 B.C.--whether their streets +were then laid out afresh is an open question--and Turin and Brescia +were added. In addition, Verona, Pavia, and Como won municipal status +in or before this later date, though when or how they came to be laid +out symmetrically is not certain.[69] And there are other less certain +examples. + + [69] Milan (Mediolanium), once the chief Roman town of north + Italy, is usually stated to preserve to-day no trace of Roman + street-planning. But the line of the Via Manzoni, Via Margherita, + and Via Nerino (cutting the Ambrosian Library) seems really to + represent one of its main streets, and the line of the Fulcorino + and Corso di Porta Romana the other, while one or two traces of + 'insulae' can be detected near the Ambrosian Library. The town + was destroyed in A.D. 539 and again in 1162, and more survivals + cannot be expected. + +Other instances, but not so many, may be quoted from south of the +Apennines. At Florence, for example, and at Lucca 'coloniae' were +planted full-grown and the street-plans still record the fact. At +Naples, at Herculaneum, perhaps at Sorrento,[70] proofs survive of +similar planning. But the towns of central Italy were in great part +more ancient than the era of precise town-planning, and many of them +were perched in true Italian fashion on lofty crags--_praeruptis +oppida saxis_--which gave no room for square or oblong house-blocks. +In the period of the dying Republic and nascent Empire fewer +'coloniae' were planted here than in the north, while in much of +southern Italy towns have in all ages been comparatively rare. + + [70] Beloch, _Campanien_, p. 252. + +In the towns just noted we can trace many, though not all, of the +original house-blocks. Usually the blocks are square or nearly so, as +at Turin, Verona, Pavia, Piacenza, Florence, Lucca. Less often they +are long and even narrow rectangles, as at Modena, and Sorrento, and +above all Naples, and as usual it is not easy to understand the reason +for the difference (p. 80). + + +_Turin_ (fig. 15). + +Of all the examples of Roman town-planning known to us in Italy, Turin +is by far the most famous.[71] Here the streets have survived almost +intact, and excavations have confirmed the truth of the survival by +revealing both the ancient road-metalling and the ancient town-walls +and gates. Turin, Augusta Taurinorum, began about 28 B.C. as a +'colonia' planted by Augustus. Its walls enclosed an oblong of about +745 x 695 metres (127 acres).[72] The sides are represented (1) on the +north by the Via Giulio, in the western part of which the southern +edge of the street actually coincides with the line of the Roman +town-wall, while further east the Porta Palatina enshrines an ancient +gate; (2) on the west by the Via della Consolata, and the Via +Siccardi, the east side of which latter street seems to stand upon the +Roman town-wall; and (3) on the south by the Via della Cernaia and Via +Teresa, the north side of which stands over the Roman southern +town-wall. (4) The east wall agrees with no existing street but may be +represented by a line drawn through the Carignano Theatre and the +western front of the Palazzo Madama, which contains the actual towers +of the Roman east gate.[73] The north-west corner, uncovered in 1884, +is a sharp right angle. This feature recurs at Aosta and at Laibach +(pp. 90, 116), both founded, like Turin, in the Augustan age, and +seems to belong to that period; later, it gave place to the rounded +angle visible at Timgad (p. 109) and in many Roman forts of the middle +Empire. + + [71] Carlo Promis, _Storia dell' antico Torino_ (Torino, 1869); + Alfredo d'Andrade, _Relazione dell' ufficio regionale per la + conservazione dei monumenti del Piemonte_, 1883-91 (Torino, + 1899); Schultze, _Bonner Jahrbuecher_, cxviii. 339; Barthel, + _ibid_. cxx. 105; Pianta di Torino (1-10,000), by G.B. Paravia. + + [72] I take these figures from the plan of Paravia, which is said + to be the most correct plan of Turin at present available. Promis + gives smaller dimensions, 720 x 670 m., and he measured from what + is now known to be a point too far to the east (the Via Accademia + delle Scienze) instead of from the west front of the Palazzo + Madama; he has, however, been usually followed. Other maps give + other dimensions, Orlandini (1844), 758 x 780 m.; Vallardi + (1869), 680 x 740 m.; Maggi (1876), 730 x 800 m.; Ashby (Art. + 'Turin' in _Encycl. Britannica_) gives 2,526 x 2,330 ft. which + must be too large. I reproduce here (fig. 15) the plan of + Orlandini, since it shows well the extent of street-survivals in + Turin before the great modern rebuildings or expansions. + + [73] d'Andrade, _Relazione_, pp. 8-20; _Notizie degli Scavi_, + 1885, pp. 173, 271, and 1902, p. 277. + +Of the interior buildings of the town little is known. The Forum +perhaps stood near the present Palazzo di Citta, and the Theatre was +traced in 1899 in the north-east corner of the town, occupying +apparently, a complete insula;[74] of the private houses nothing +definite seems to be recorded. + + [74] _Notizie_, 1903, p. 3. + +But the street-plan has survived intact, except in two outlying +corners. The town was divided up into square or nearly square blocks, +of which there were nine counting from east to west and eight from +north to south. Most of these 'insulae' measured about 80 yds. +square.[75] A few were larger, 80 x 120 yds.; these were ranged along +the north side of the street now called Via Garibaldi (formerly Dora +Grossa), which represents the Roman main street between the east and +west gates--in the language of the Roman land-surveyors, the +_decumanus maximus_. This street cut the town into two equal halves. +The other divisions of the town were no less symmetrical. But, as +there were nine 'insulae' from east to west, the main north and south +street could not bisect the town. Indeed, the south gate seems to have +had five house-blocks west of it and four east of it, while the Porta +Palatina stands further west, with six blocks on the west side of it. +The north and south gates, therefore, are not opposite.[76] Whether +this was the original plan is not clear, nor is the age of the +surviving walls and gates quite certain; the bonding courses in some +of the masonry of the walls does not seem Augustan. But the street +plan may unhesitatingly be assigned to the first establishment of the +town, about 28 B.C. Since, it has been extended far beyond the Roman +walls. Nearly all modern Turin has been laid out, bit by bit, in +imitation and continuation of the original Roman lines. + + [75] An insula is mentioned in _Notizie_, 1901, p. 391, which + measured 74 x 80 metres. It is likely that there were small + unevennesses in the ancient as there are in the modern + house-blocks. The 'insulae' which abutted on the town-walls are + represented to-day by unduly large blocks, oblong rather than + square, but these latter contain not only the areas of the Roman + 'insulae' in question, but also the space between them and the + town-walls and the lines of the wall themselves (p. 77). + + [76] This failure in symmetry recurs in one or two other Roman + towns as probably at Timgad (p. 109) and at Cologne (E. and W. + gates), at Silchester and Caerwent, but it may sometimes be the + result of alteration. Occasionally it appears in military sites + (Ritterling, _Lager bei Hofheim_, p. 29 _note_). It is presumably + a mere matter of convenience; no superstition attaches to it such + as that which led the Chinese not to put their gates opposite + each other (p. 148). + +[Illustration: FIG. 15. TURIN. FROM A PLAN OF 1844] + + +_Aosta_ (fig. 16). + +Another example of an Italian town-plan, from the same date and +district as Turin, is supplied by Augusta Praetoria, now Aosta, some +fifty miles north of Turin in the Dora Baltea Valley, not far from the +foot of Mont Blanc.[77] Aosta was founded by Augustus in 25 B.C. on a +hitherto empty spot, to provide homes for time-expired soldiers and to +serve as a quasi-fortress in an important Alpine valley. Its first +inhabitants were 3,000 men discharged from the Praetorian Guard, with +their wives and children; its population may have numbered at the +outset some 15,000 free persons, besides slaves. The town, as it is +known to us from excavation and observation, formed a rectangle 620 +yds. long and 780 yds. wide, and covered an area of about 100 acres +(fig. 16). The walls formed sharp right angles at the corners, as at +Turin. Within the walls were an amphitheatre, a theatre, public baths, +a structure covering nearly 2 acres and interpreted as a granary or +(perhaps more correctly) as a cistern,[78] and private houses as yet +unexplored. Beneath the chief streets were sewers, by which indeed +these streets were mainly traced. + + [77] C. Promis, _Antichita di Aosta_ (Torino, 1862), with plan, + plate 3, dating from 1838; _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1899, p. 108, + with a later plan, but lacking a scale; Nissen, _Ital. + Landeskunde_, ii. 171. + + [78] Durm _Baukunst der Roemer_, p. 458. + +[Illustration: FIG. 16. AOSTA] + +The whole was divided by a regular network of streets into rectangular +blocks. According to the latest plan of the site, there were sixteen +blocks, nearly identical in shape and averaging 145 x 180 yds. (5-1/2 +acres). That, however, is an incredible area for single house-blocks, +and it is to be noted that Promis shows two further roads (A, A in +fig. 16). If these are survivals of other such roads, Aosta may have +contained thirty-two oblong 'insulae', each nearly 220 x 540 ft., or +even sixty-four smaller and squarer 'insulae', measuring half that +size.[79] Four gates gave entrance; those in the two longer sides +which face north-west and south-east, are curiously far from the +centre and indeed close to the south-western end of the town. It is, +of course, impossible to determine, without spade-work, which of the +recognizable buildings of Aosta date from the foundation of the place +in 25 B.C. But the general internal scheme and the symmetrical and +practically 'chess-board' pattern of streets must date from the first +foundation.[80] + + [79] Promis, p. 140; his plan has no proper scale. There seems no + decisive evidence and the modern streets of Aosta do not help us. + + [80] The town of Concordia in north-east Italy, where Augustus + planted a 'colonia', doubtless of discharged soldiers, is said to + have possessed a ground-plan of oblong blocks very like that of + Augusta Praetoria. But this plan rests mainly on the authority of + a workman who apparently did not know how to read or write (he is + described as 'analfabeta') and I therefore omit it here. See + _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1880, p. 412, and Plate XII (the text + gives no dimensions and the plan lacks a scale), and compare + 1882, p. 426, and 1894, p. 399. + + +_Florence_ (fig. 17). + +A yet more interesting instance of a Roman town-plan preserved in many +streets may be found in Florence.[81] In Roman times Florence was a +'colonia'. When this 'colonia' was planted is very doubtful. Perhaps +the age of Sulla (90-80 B.C.) is the likeliest date; all that is +actually certain is that the foundation was made before the end of the +first century A.D. This 'colonia', like others, was laid out in +chess-board fashion, and vestiges of its streets survive in the Centro +which forms the heart of the present town. The Centro of Florence, as +we see it to-day, is very modern. It was, indeed, laid out a +generation ago by Italian architects who designed the broad streets +crossing at right angles which form its characteristic. But this +'Haussmannization' revived, consciously or unconsciously, an old +arrangement. The plan of Florence in 1427 shows a group of twenty +unmistakable 'insulae', each of them about 1-1/8 acre in area, that +is, very similar in size to the 'insulae' of Turin. This group is +bounded by the modern streets Tornabuoni on the west, Porta Rossa on +the south, Calzaioli on the east, Teatina on the north; it covers a +rectangle of some 305 x 327 yds., not quite 21 acres. + + [81] On Roman and early mediaeval Florence see Villani, _Cronica_ + (written about 1345, published 1845), i. 61, 89, 120; R. + Davidsohn, _Geschichte von Florenz_ and _Forschungen_ (Berlin, + 1886); L.A. Milani, _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1887, p. 129; plan of + the Centro in 1427 by Comm. Guido Carocci, _Studi storici sul + Centro di Firenze_ (Florence, 1889); _Monumenti antichi_, vi. 15. + Nissen _(Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 296) fixes its area at 400 x 600 + m., about 58 acres. + +[Illustration: FIG. 17A. FLORENCE, SINCE THE REBUILDING OF THE +CENTRAL PORTION (Centro shaded).] + +[Illustration: FIG. 17B. FLORENCE ABOUT 1795, FROM L. BARDI. +The chief streets which seem to have preserved Roman lines are marked +in black.] + +The original Roman town presumably extended beyond these narrow +limits. But it is not easy to fix its area, nor are unmistakable +'insulae' to be detected outside them. On the west the Via Tornabuoni +seems to have marked the Roman limit, as it does to-day. On the north, +a probable line is given by the gateway, Por Episcopi, which once +spanned the passage--now an open space--on the east side of the +Archbishop's Palace (plan 17 B). That gateway stood between the Via +Teatina and the next street to the north, the Via dei Cerretani, and +the Roman north wall and ditch apparently ran along the intervals +between these two modern streets--as indeed the lines of certain +mediaeval lanes suggest. On the east the 'colonia' is supposed to have +stretched to the Via del Proconsolo and the old Por S. Piero, probably +the original east gate. Here the traces of 'insulae' are ill +preserved; the space in question would contain, and the mediaeval +streets would admit of, twelve blocks in addition to the twenty noted +above. + +The southern limit of Roman Florence towards the Arno is altogether +doubtful. There are, or were, traces of Roman baths in the Via delle +Terme, and it has been thought that the town stretched riverwards as +far as the old gate Por S. Maria and the Piazza S. Trinita. The gate, +however, is ill-placed and the line of wall implied by this theory is +irregular. The mediaeval streets point rather to a south wall near the +Via Porta Rossa. The baths might perhaps be due to a later Roman +extension, such as we shall meet at Timgad (p. 113). The Por S. Maria +may even be due to one of the reconstructions of Florence in the +Middle Ages. At the end we must admit that without further evidence +the limits of Roman Florence cannot be fixed for certain. But the +limits indicated above give the not unsuitable dimensions of 46 acres +(380 x 590 yds.), while the history of the twenty indubitable insulae +of the Centro remains full of interest. We see here, as clearly as +anywhere in the Roman world, how the regular Roman plan has gradually +been distorted by encroachments and how, even in its irregularity, it +has had power to drive modern builders towards its ancient fashion. + +Of the interior of the Roman town little is known. The streets now +called Strozzi and Speziali plainly preserve the Roman main street +from east to west, while the Via Calimara overlies that which ran from +north to south. Where these crossed was the mediaeval Mercato Vecchio, +now enlarged into a patriotic Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele; here we may +put the Roman forum, and here too, by the former church of S. Maria in +Campidoglio, was the temple of Capitoline Juppiter. There were also +theatres, a shrine of Isis, and, outside the Roman limit, an +amphitheatre still discernible in the curves of certain streets (plan +17 B). However small Florentia was, it possessed the true elements of +the Roman town. + + +_Lucca_ (fig. 18). + +A good parallel to Florence may be found at Lucca, the ancient Luca, +where again the streets preserve a rectangular pattern without showing +clearly what was its full extent. Luca is said to have been founded as +a 'colonia' in 177 B.C., but the statement is of doubtful truth. +Certainly it was a 'municipium' in Cicero's days, and a little later, +in the period 40-20 B.C., it received the rank of 'colonia' and many +colonists, taken (as an inscription says) from discharged soldiers of +Legions VII and XXVI. Whether the surviving traces of town-planning +date from this latter event or from some earlier age is not easy to +say. But of the street-plan there can be no doubt, though its original +size is uncertain. A rectangular area about 700 yds. from east to west +and 360 yds. from north to south is divided into fifteen square or +squarish 'insulae' arranged in three rows. Each insula is about 3 +acres, but those of the middle row are larger than the rest (150 x 150 +yds.). The Via S. Croce which runs along the south side of this row +was perhaps the main east and west thoroughfare of the town, the +'decumanus maximus', so that the larger 'insulae' correspond to those +which appear in the same position at Turin and elsewhere (p. 88). + +[Illustration: FIG. 18. LUCCA. +(The streets which preserve Roman lines are marked in black.)] + +Whether there were other 'insulae' besides the fifteen is doubtful. On +the east there were certainly none: the two narrow parallel streets at +the east end of the area just described are obviously due to a growth +of houses along the line of the original east wall. The other limits +are more obscure. Probably the north and west walls stood a little +outside of the Via Galli Tassi (once S. Pellegrino) and the Via S. +Giorgio, but there may well have been a row of insulae, now +obliterated, south of the Via del Battistero. One or two interior +buildings are known. The Forum appears to have stood where is now the +Piazza S. Michele in Foro; close by was a temple; in the north-eastern +quarter, at the Piazza del Carmine, was probably the theatre; near it +but outside the walls was the amphitheatre, its outlines still visible +in the Piazza del Mercato (110 x 80 yds. in greatest dimensions).[82] + + [82] Plan by P. Sinibaldi, 1843, 1:4,000. _Notizie degli Scavi_, + 1906, p. 117, &c. Nissen (_Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 288) gives the + area as 800 x 1,200 metres, which seems much too large. + + +_Herculaneum_ (fig. 19). + +To these examples from north Italy may be added two from the south, +Herculaneum and Naples. Herculaneum had much the same early history as +its more important neighbour Pompeii. First an Oscan settlement, then +Etruscan, then Samnite, it passed later under Roman rule. After the +Social Wars (89 B.C.) it appears as a 'municipium'; of its history +from that date till its destruction (A.D. 79) we know next to nothing. +But excavations, commenced in the eighteenth century and now long +suspended, have thrown light on its ground-plan.[83] This was a +rectangular pattern of oblong house-blocks, measuring 54 x 89 yds., or +in some cases a little more, and divided by streets varying from 15 to +30 ft. in width which ran at right angles or parallel to one another. +Only a part of the town has been as yet unearthed. In that a broad +colonnaded main street ran from north-west to south-east; on the +north-east side of this street stood a row of house-blocks with a +structure taken to be a Basilica, and on the south-west of it were ten +house-blocks, one of which includes some public baths. At the north +end of this area are a theatre and temple, at the south end two large +structures which have been called temples but are more like large +private houses; on the east (according to the eighteenth-century +searchers) are graves. + + [83] M. Ruggiero, _Scavi di Ercolano_ (Naples, 1885), plates ii + and xii; Beloch. _Campanien_, pp. 215 foll.; Nissen, _Ital. + Landeskunde_, ii. 759; Waldstein and Shoobridge, _Herculaneum_ + (London, 1908), pp. 60 foil.; E.R. Barker, _Buried Herculaneum_ + (1908); Gall in Pauly-Wissowa, viii. (1912) 532-48. + +[Illustration: FIG. 19. HERCULANEUM] + +How much of the town has been uncovered, how much still lies hidden +beneath the lava which overflowed it in A.D. 79, is disputed. Of its +town-walls and gates no trace has yet been found. But nearly all its +public buildings seem to be known; the graves on the east side, if +correctly mapped by their discoverers and if coeval with the streets +and houses, leave no room for further 'insulae' in that direction, +while the great country-house called the 'Casa dei Papiri' plainly +stood outside the town on the north-west. From these facts one modern +writer has calculated that Herculaneum was less than a quarter of a +mile long, less than 350 yds. broad, and less than 26 acres in +extent--in short, not a sixth part of Pompeii. These measures are +probably too small. The 'Basilica' on the north side of the main +street cannot have stood on the extreme edge of the town. There must +have been not three but four rows of house-blocks from south-west to +north-east; the graves once noted in this quarter must be older than +our Herculaneum or otherwise unconnected with it. The whole town must +have been 40 or 45 rather than 25 acres in area. Even so it is a +little town. The unenthusiastic references to it in ancient literature +are, after all, truthful. Apart from the great villa outside +it--possibly an imperial residence--it hardly deserved, or to-day +deserves, to be excavated at the extraordinary cost which its +excavation would involve. + +The date of its planning is as doubtful as the extent of its area. One +recent writer, Nissen, has suggested that it was reconstructed after +an earthquake in A.D. 63 and was hardly completed before the eruption +of 79. The earthquake is well attested. But it cannot possibly have +wrecked the town so utterly as to cause wholesale rebuilding on new +lines, and an inscription points rather to the time of Augustus. One +Marcus Nonius Balbus (the text runs) built 'a basilica, gates and a +wall at his own cost', and this builder Balbus was probably a +contemporary of Augustus.[84] Others have preferred to think that the +town-planning reveals Greek influences; they point to the Greek city +of Naples, 7 miles west of Herculaneum, and the Doric temple at +Pompeii, much the same distance east of it. However, neither the +town-planning of Naples, to be discussed in the next paragraphs, nor +that of Pompeii (p. 68), seems to be necessarily Greek, and +Herculaneum itself contains nothing which cannot be explained as +Italian. It is possible, though there is no record of the fact, that +it received a settlement of discharged soldiers somewhere about 30 +B.C. and was then laid out afresh. But here, as throughout this +inquiry, more light is needed if the inquirer is to pass from +guesswork to proven fact. + + [84] _CIL_. x. 1425; compare Dessau, 896. It is, no doubt, + possible that this Nonius Balbus is the M. Nonius ... who built + something in honour of Titus in A.D. 72, but the identification + is not likely. + + +_Naples_ (fig. 20). + +One more example, from the neighbourhood of Herculaneum, may complete +the list of Italian street-plans. Naples, the Greek and Roman +Neapolis, was a Greek city, the most prosperous of the Greek towns in +Campania.[85] After 90 B.C. it appears to have become a Roman +'municipium'. But it retained much of its Greek civilization. A writer +of the early first century after Christ, Strabo, states that abundant +traces of Greek life survived there, 'gymnasia, and athletic schools, +and tribal divisions, and Greek names even for Roman things.' Even +later Tacitus calls it a 'Greek city', and Greek was still used for +official inscriptions there in the third century. + + [85] Beloch, _Campanien_ (Berlin, 1879), p. 26; Capasso, _Napoli + Greco-Romana_ (Napoli, 1905). The Forum, Market, and some other + buildings marked by Capasso seem to me (and even to him or his + editors) very dubious (p. 63). Two theatres (p. 82) and a Temple + of the Dioscuri are better established. For plans see _Piante + topogr. dei quartieri di Napoli_ 1861-5 (1:3,888) and _Pianta + della citta di N._ (Off. della Guerra, 1865), from which latter + fig. 20 is adapted. + +[Illustration: FIG. 20. NAPLES. ADAPTED FROM A PLAN OF 1865. +(TH = Theatre, T = Temple.)] + +This Neapolis town had, as certain existing streets declare, a +peculiar form of town-planning. The area covered by these streets is +an irregular space of 250 acres in the heart of the modern city, about +850 yds. from north to south and 1,000 yds. from east to west.[86] In +Roman days three straight streets ran parallel from east to west and a +large number of smaller streets, twenty or so, ran at right angles to +them from north to south. The house-blocks enclosed by these streets +were all of similar size and shape, a thin oblong of 35 x 180 metres +(39 x 198 yds.). Some of the public buildings naturally trespassed on +to more than one 'insula'; a theatre appears indeed to have stretched +over parts of three. In general, the oblongs seem to have been laid +out with great regularity and the angles are right angles, though the +'insulae' in the northern and southern rows of house-blocks cannot +have been fully rectangular and symmetrical. + + [86] The limits are the Castel Capuano on the east, the Strada + dell' Orticello on the north, the church of S. Pietro a Majella + on the west, and on the south the churches of S. Marcellino and + S. Severino. + +This town-plan of Naples differs from any of those noted above. Its +blocks are narrower than those in any Italian town, unless in Modena, +and while they resemble the 'insulae' of the sixth region of Pompeii +(fig. 13), are far more regular than those. Almost the only close +parallel is that of Roman Carthage (fig. 24). As Naples was by origin +and character a Greek city, these narrow oblongs have been supposed to +represent a Greek arrangement. They do not, however, correspond to +anything that is known in the Greek lands, either of the Macedonian or +of any earlier period. The conclusion is difficult to avoid that this +Greek city of Naples adopted an Italian street-scheme, but laid it out +with more scientific regularity than the early Italians themselves. +When this occurred and why, is wholly unknown. That the result is not +an unpractical form of building is shown by the fact that similar long +and narrow house-blocks are a characteristic feature of modern +Liverpool, though they seldom occur in other English towns, unless +intermixed with square and other blocks. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWN-PLANS. I + + +The provinces, and above all the western provinces of the Roman +Empire, tell us even more than Italy about Roman town-planning. But +they tell it in another way. They contain many towns which were +founded full-grown, or re-founded and at the same time rebuilt, and +which were in either case laid out on the Roman plan. But the modern +successors of these towns have rarely kept the network of their +ancient streets in recognizable detail. Though walls, gates, temples, +baths, palaces, amphitheatres still stand stubbornly erect amidst a +flood of modern dwellings, they are but the islands which mark a +submerged area. The paths and passages by which men once moved across +that area have vanished beneath the waves and cannot be recovered from +any survey of these visible fragments. There is hardly one modern town +in all the European and African provinces of the Roman Empire which +still uses any considerable part of its ancient street-plan. In our +own country there is no single case. In Gaul and Germany, two or three +streets in Cologne and one or two in Trier are the sole survivals.[87] +In Illyricum there is no example unless possibly at Belgrade. In the +Spanish peninsula the town of Braga in northern Portugal seems to +stand alone. In Roman Africa--Tunis, Algiers and Morocco--no instance +has survived the Arab conquest.[88] + + [87] For Orange see p. 107. Nimes may possibly retain one or two + streets of the Roman Nemausus, but it is very doubtful; see + Menard's map of 1752. See further in general p. 142. + + [88] Though, curiously enough, the chess-board pattern of field + divisions has survived in the neighbourhood of Carthage. + +If, however, survivals of ancient streets are as rare in the provinces +as they are common in Italy, the provinces yield other evidence +unknown to Italy. In these lands, and above all in Africa, the sites +of many Roman towns have lain desolate and untouched since Roman days, +waiting for the excavator to recover the unspoilt pattern of their +streets. If the Roman Empire brought to certain provinces, as it +unquestionably did to Africa, the happiest period in their history +till almost the present day, that only makes their remains the more +noteworthy and instructive. Here the new art of excavation has already +achieved many and varied successes. In the western Empire one town, +Silchester in Britain, has been wholly uncovered within the circuit of +its walls. Others, like Caerwent in Britain or Timgad and Carthage in +Africa, have been methodically examined, though the inquiries have not +yet touched or perhaps can never touch their whole areas. In others +again, some of which lie in the east, occasional search or even chance +discoveries have shed welcome light. Our knowledge is more than enough +already for the purposes of this chapter. + +We can already see that the town-plan described in the foregoing pages +was widely used in the provinces of the Empire. We find it in Africa, +in Central and Western Europe, and indeed wherever Rorrran remains +have been carefully excavated; we find it even in remote Britain +amidst conditions which make its use seem premature. Where excavation +has as yet yielded no proofs, other evidence fills the gap. In +southern Gaul, as it happens, archaeological remains are unhelpful. +But just there an inscription has come to light, the only one of its +kind in the Roman world, which proves that one at least of the +'coloniae' of Gallia Narbonensis was laid out in rectangular oblong +plots. It is clear enough that this town-plan was one of the forms +through which the Italian civilization diffused itself over the +western provinces. + +The exact measure of its popularity is, however, hard to determine. In +the east it found little entrance. There, the very similar Macedonian +and Greek methods of town-planning were rooted firmly, long before +Rome conquered Greece or Asia Minor or Syria or Egypt. The few +town-plans which have been noted in these lands, and which may be +assigned more or less conjecturally to the Roman era, seem to be +Hellenic or Hellenistic rather than Italian. They show broad stately +streets, colonnades, vistas, which belong to the east and not to +Italy. Even in the west, the rule of the chess-board was sometimes +broken. Aquincum, near Budapest, became a 'municipium' under Hadrian; +its ruins, so far as hitherto planned, exhibit no true street-planning. +But that may be due to its history, for it seems not to have been +founded full-grown, but to have slowly developed as best it could, +and to have won municipal status at the end. + +Roman Africa is here, as so often, our best source of knowledge. At +Timgad (p. 109), a town laid out in Roman fashion with a rigid +'chess-board' of streets was subsequently enlarged on irregular and +almost chaotic lines. At Gigthi, in the south-east of Tunis, the +streets around the Forum, itself rectangular enough, do not run +parallel or at right angles to it or to one another.[89] At Thibilis, +on the border of Tunis and Algeria, the streets, so far as they have +yet been uncovered, diverge widely from the chess-board pattern.[90] +One French archaeologist has even declared that most of the towns in +Roman Africa lacked this pattern.[91] Our evidence is perhaps still +too slight to prove or disprove that conclusion. Few African towns +have been sufficiently uncovered to show the street-plan.[92] But +town-life was well developed in Roman Africa. It is hardly credible +that the Africans learnt all the rest of Roman city civilization and +city government, and left out the planning. The individual cases of +such planning which will be quoted in the following pages tell their +own tale--that, while the strict rule was often broken, it was the +rule. + + [89] _Archives nouvelles des Missions scientifiques_, xv. 1907, + fasc. 4. + + [90] Plan by Joly, _Arch. Anzeiger_, 1911, p. 270, fig. 17. The + plan has been thought to imply 'insulae' twice as large as those + of Timgad. To me it suggests nothing so regular. + + [91] Toutain, _Cites romaines de la Tunisie_, p. 79 note: 'Ce qui + toutefois est incontestable, c'est que cette disposition d'une + regularite artificielle, autour de deux grandes voies exactement + orientees et se coupant a angle droit, est tres rare dans + l'Afrique romaine. Les villes de ce pays n'out pas ete toutes + construites sur le meme plan: chacune d'elles a, pour ainsi dire, + epouse la forme de son emplacement.' + + [92] There are many in which it could be traced with some ease, + apparently. Thelepte, Cillium, Ammaedara, Sufetula, _Archives des + Missions_, 1887, pp. 68, 121, 161-171, Simitthu, _Memoires + presentes par divers savants_, ser. I. x. 462, and Thuccabor, + Tissot, _Geogr. d'Afrique_, ii. 292, seem to have visible + streets, but no one has recorded them exactly. The plan of Utica, + given by Tissot (_Atlas_, by Reinach, plate vi) on the authority + of Daux, is open to doubt. + +[Illustration: FIG. 21. INSCRIPTION OF ORANGE. +(From the _Comptes-rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions_.) + +Plot (_meris_) I (_lost_) ... + +Plot II ... perpetual lessee (_manceps_) C. Naevius Rusticus: surety +for him C. Vesidius Quadratus. Fronting the Kardo. + + (5) Plot III, frontage of 34-1/2 feet and Plot IV, frontage of 35 feet; +ground rent (?), 69-1/2 denarii (_in margin_). Yearly rent II ... (?). +Lessee and surety, as above. Fronting the Kardo. + +(10) Plot V, frontage 55-1/2 feet, and Plot VI, next to the Ludus +(gladiators' school), frontage 75 feet ...] + + +_Orange_ (fig. 21). + +The case which deserves the first place stands by itself. It is the +one piece of written evidence (as distinct from structural remains) +which has survived from Roman town-planning. Curiously enough, it was +found not in Italy but in a province, and a province which, for all +its wealth of Roman buildings, has not yet revealed the smallest +structural proof of Roman town-planning. In April 1904 a scrap of +inscribed marble, little more than 18 in. broad and high, was dug up +at Orange, in southern France, right in the centre of the town. It is +a waif from a lengthy document. But it chances to be intelligible. It +enumerates six plots of land--'merides' it calls them, from a Greek +word meaning 'share' or 'division'--which seem to have formed one +parcel: each plot is numbered, and the length of its frontage on the +public way (_in fronte_), the name of its lessee or _manceps_ and that +of his surety (_fideiussor_) are added. The frontages of four plots +make up 200 ft. (those of the other two are lost), and it has been +suggested that the six together made up 240 ft. The depth--which is +not stated on the surviving fragment, but was doubtless uniform for +all the plots--may then have been 120 ft., and the whole parcel may +have covered 120 x 240 ft., that is, a Roman 'iugerum'. It was plainly +a piece of town property. The largest 'meris', Plot v, measured only +25 by 40 yds. and no one would care for such a field or farm. Besides, +this plot at one end adjoined a 'ludus' or gladiatorial school, and it +fronted AD K, _ad kardinem_, on to the street called in surveying +language the 'cardo'. The whole land apparently belonged to one lessee +who held it from the municipality on something like a perpetual +lease.[93] + + [93] For the inscription see Esperandieu, _Acad. des Inscriptions, + Comptes rendus_, 1904, p. 497; Cagnat, _Annee Epigr._, 1905, 12; + and especially Schulten, _Hermes_, 1906, 1; a convenient English + account is given by H.S. Jones, _Companion to Roman Hist._, p. + 22. It has been suggested by Schulten that the blocks were at + first divided into plots of 35 ft. frontage, and that the + boundaries had become changed in the ordinary course of things + before the survey was made. But this seems to carry conjecture + rather far. + +Here, in short, is the record of an oblong 'insula' in the Roman town +of Orange. It is doubtless part of a longer record, a register of +house-property in the whole town. Orange, Colonia Iulia Secundanorum +Arausio, was a 'colonia' founded about 45 B.C. with discharged +soldiers of Caesar's Second Legion. Possibly the register was drawn up +at this date; more probably it is rather later and may be connected +with a _census_ of Gaul begun about 27 B.C. Certainly it was preserved +with much care, as if one of the 'muniments' of the citizens. The spot +where it was dug up is in the heart of the ancient as well as of the +modern town, close to the probable site of the Forum, and the +inscription may have been fastened up in all its length on the walls +of some public building. If, as is likely, the town owned the soil of +the town, the connexion of the inscription with the Forum becomes even +clearer. In any case, the town was plainly laid out in a rectangular +street-plan. To-day its lanes are as tortuous as those of any other +Provencal town.[94] A strange chance reveals what it and many other of +these towns must once have been. + + [94] It has been said to show marks of streets laid out + rectangularly, but neither the look of the town itself nor the + plans of it seem to me to confirm this idea; compare Lentheric, + _Le Rhone_, ii. 110. + +[Illustration: FIG. 22. AFTER CAGNAT AND BALLU (1911). +(The six 'insulae' marked A are shown in detail in fig. 23. Unshaded +'insulae' are as yet unexcavated.)] + + +_Timgad_ (figs. 22, 23). + +From this piece of half-literary evidence we pass to purely +archaeological remains, and first to the province of Numidia in Roman +Africa and to the town of Timgad. The town of Thamugadi, now Timgad, +lay on the northern skirts of Mount Aures, halfway between Constantine +and Biskra and about a hundred miles from the Mediterranean coast. +Here the emperor Trajan founded in A.D. 100 a 'colonia' on ground then +wholly uninhabited, and peopled it with time-expired soldiers from the +Third Legion which garrisoned the neighbouring fortress of Lambaesis. +The town grew. Soon after the middle of the second century it was more +than half a mile in width from east to west, and its extent from north +to south, though not definitely known, cannot have been much less. The +first settlement was smaller. So far as it has been uncovered by +French archaeologists--sufficiently for our purpose, though not +completely--the 'colonia' of Trajan appears to have been some 29 or 30 +acres in extent within the walls and almost square in outline (360 x +390 yds.). It was entered by four principal gates, three of which can +still be traced quite clearly, and which stood in the middle of their +respective sides; the position of the south gate is doubtful. +According to Dr. Barthel, the street which joins the east and west +gates was laid out to point to the sunrise of September 18, the +birthday of Trajan. + +[Illustration: FIG. 23. SIX 'INSULAE' IN S.W. TIMGAD +(after Prof. Cagnat). Nos. 91, 92, 99, one house each; 108, 109, +3 houses; 100, Baths.] + +The interior of the town was divided by streets into a chess-board +pattern of small square house-blocks; from north to south there were +twelve such blocks and from east to west eleven--not twelve, as is +often stated. The possible total of 132 'insulae' was, however, +diminished by the space needed for public buildings, though it is not +easy to tell how great this space was in the original town. +Ultimately, as the excavations show, eight 'insulae' were taken up by +the Forum, four by the Theatre, three by the various Baths, one by a +Market, one by a Public Library, and one by a Christian church. But +some of these edifices were certainly not established till long after +A.D. 100 and the others, which must have existed from the first, were +soon extended and enlarged. A competent writer on the subject, Dr. +Barthel, allows seven blocks for public purposes in the original town, +but this seems too little. The blocks themselves measured on the +average a square of 70 Roman feet (23 x 23 yards), and may have +contained one, two, three, or even four houses apiece, but they have +undergone so many changes that their original arrangements are not at +all clear. The streets which divided these blocks were 15 to 16 ft. +wide; the two main streets, which ran to the principal gates, were +further widened by colonnades and paved with superior flagging. All +the streets had well-built sewers beneath them. + +Trajan's Timgad was plainly small. On any estimate of the number of +houses, the original draft of veterans sent there in A.D. 100 can +hardly have exceeded 400, and the first population, apart from slaves, +must have been under 2,000. This agrees with the figures of Aosta (p. +89). There, 100 acres took 3,000 veterans and their families; here the +area is about one-third of 100 acres and the ground available for +dwellings may perhaps have been one-sixth. In neither case was space +wasted. There was not probably at Aosta, there certainly was not at +Timgad, any provision of open squares, of handsome facades, of temples +seen down the vista of stately avenues; there were not even private +gardens. The one large unroofed space in Timgad was the half-acre shut +within the Forum cloister. This economy of room is no doubt due to the +fact that the 'colonia' was not only a home for time-expired soldiers, +but, as Prof. Cagnat has justly observed, a quasi-fortress watching +the slopes of Mount Aures south of it, just as Aosta watched its +Alpine valley. As Machiavelli thought it worth while to observe, the +shorter the line of a town's defence, the fewer the men who can hold +it. The town-planning of Timgad was designed on other than purely +architectural or municipal principles. For this reason, too, we should +probably seek in vain any marked distinction between richer and poorer +quarters and larger or smaller houses.[95] The centurions and other +officers may have formed the first municipal aristocracy of Timgad, as +retired officers did in many Roman towns, but there can have been no +definite element of poor among the common soldiers. + + [95] Ballu detects a 'quartier industriel' in the outer town, but + the evidence does not seem to warrant so grand a term. + +Such was Trajan's Timgad, as revealed by excavations now about +two-thirds complete. The town soon burst its narrow bounds. A Capitol, +Baths, a large Meat-market, and much else sprang up outside the walls. +Soon the walls themselves, like those of many mediaeval towns--for +example, the north and west town-walls of Oxford--were built over and +hidden by later structures. The town grew from one of 360 to a breadth +of over 800 yds. And as it expanded, it broke loose from the +chess-board pattern. The builders of later Timgad did not resemble +those of later Turin. Even the _decumanus_, the main 'east and west' +street, wandered away north-west in an uncertain curve, and all that +has been discovered of streets outside the walls of Trajan is +irregular and complicated. A town-plan, it seems, was binding on the +first builders of the 'colonia'. It lost its power within a very few +years.[96] + + [96] Boeswillwald, Cagnat and Ballu, _Timgad_ (Paris, 1891-1905); + see especially Appendix, pp. 339-349; Ballu, _Ruines de Timgad_ + (Paris, 1897-1911); Barthel, _Bonner Jahrbuecher_, cxx. 101. + + +_Carthage_ (fig. 24). + +It remains to note another example of town-planning in a Roman +municipality of the western Empire, which is as important as it is +abnormal. Carthage, first founded--though only in an abortive +fashion--as a Roman 'colonia' in 123 B.C. and re-established with the +same rank by Julius Caesar or Augustus, shows a rectangular town-plan +in a city which speedily became one among the three or four largest +and wealthiest cities in the Empire. The regularity of its planning +was noted in ancient times by a topographical writer.[97] But the +plan, though rectangular, is not normal. According to the French +archaeologists who have worked it out, it comprised a large number of +streets--perhaps as many as forty--running parallel to the coast, a +smaller number running at right angles to these down the hillside +towards the shore, and many oblong 'insulae', measuring each about +130 x 500 ft., roughly two Roman _iugera_. The whole town stretched +for some two miles parallel to the shore and for about a mile inland, +and covered perhaps 1,200 acres. Its street-plan can hardly be older +than Caesar or Augustus, but the shape of its 'insulae' appears to be +without parallel in that age. It comes closest to the oblong blocks of +Pompeii and of Naples (pp. 63, 100), and its two theatres also recall +those towns. One reason for its plan may no doubt be found in the +physical character of the site. The ground slopes down from hills +towards the shore, and encourages the use of streets which run level +along the slopes, parallel to the shore, and not more or less steeply +towards it.[98] + + [97] _Totius orbis descriptio_, 61 (Mueller, _geogr. graeci min._ + ii. 527); dispositione gloriosissima constat ... in directione + vicorum et platearum aequalibus lineis currens' (written probably + about A.D. 350). + + [98] _Carte archeologique et topogr. des Ruines de Carthage_, by + Gauckler and Delattre (1:5,000); Schulten, _Archaeol. Anzeiger_, + 1905, p. 77; 1909, p. 190; 1911, p. 246; Audollent, _Carthage + romaine_ (Paris, 1901), pp. 309, 846. The older accounts of Daux + and Tissot seem less trustworthy. + +[Illustration: FIG. 24. A PART OF CARTHAGE. +Plan based on the _Carte archeologique des ruines de Carthage_, by +Gauckler and Delattre.] + + +_Laibach_ (fig. 25), _Numantia, Lincoln_ (fig. 26). + +Three or four more ordinary examples chosen at random from provincial +municipalities may show the diffusion of town-planning in the western +Roman world. One example, from the borders of Italy, may be found just +outside the pleasant town of Laibach in southern Austria. Here +Augustus in 34 B.C. planted a 'Colonia Iulia Augusta Emona', and +recent work of Dr. W. Schmid has thrown much light on its character. +The colony was in outline a rectangle of nearly 55 acres (480 x 560 +yds.), and was divided up into forty-eight blocks by five streets +which ran north and south and seven which crossed them at right +angles; of these forty-eight blocks some must, of course, have been +taken up by public buildings. They varied in size: the largest as yet +planned (II in fig. 25) measured 170 x 195 ft., or 3/4 acre; two +others measured 163 x 170 ft.; while one block, which contained one +large house not unlike the Silchester 'inn', was 112 x 168 ft. (Plan, +II), and the block next it was a trifle smaller. None of the +dimensions show any trace of the normal 120 or 240 ft. (p. 79). The +streets were very broad (37-40 ft.); one, which may be the 'cardo +maximus', measured as much as 47 ft. across. Beneath the main streets +were sewers, in the usual fashion. Round the whole town stood strong +walls, reinforced at regular intervals by square projecting towers; +the four corners were not rounded but rectangular, after the fashion +of Aosta and Turin (pp. 87, 90).[99] + + [99] _Correspondenzblatt des Gesamtvereins der deutschen + Geschichts und Altertumsvereine_, April 1912; _Bericht vi der + roemisch-germanischen Kommission_ 1910-11, p. 96. Muellner's + _Emona_ (Laibach, 1879), p. 19, plate 2, is wholly inadequate. + +[Illustration: FIG. 25. A PART OF LAIBACH. +(From W. Schmid.)] + +[Illustration: FIG. 26. LINCOLN, OUTLINE OF ROMAN WALLS. +(See p. 118.)] + +[Illustration: FIG. 27. LINCOLN, BASES OF COLONNADE UNDER BAILGATE. +(p. 118).] + +For a second example turn to a remote corner of central Spain. The +town of Numantia was famous in early days for its long struggle with +the armies of the Roman Republic. Under Roman rule it was wholly +insignificant. Over the debris of Numantine liberty a little Roman +town grew up. But it is hardly mentioned save in one or two +road-books. Yet it enjoyed some form of municipal status and its +streets and houses show to the excavator traces of Roman +town-planning. The streets ran parallel or at right angles to one +another; the house-blocks measured some 50 yds. square.[100] + + [100] Schulten, _Abhandlungen der k. Gesellschaft der + Wissenschaften zu Goettingen, phil.-hist. Kl._, viii. (1905), p. + 61, plan 2; the evidence seems adequate though not wholly + decisive. The Roman town Emporiae, now Ampurias, in the extreme + north-east of Spain, seems to have had a rectangular street-plan, + though its Greek predecessor was irregular, _Institut d'estudis + catalans, anuari 1908_, p. 185. + +A third example may be drawn from our own country. Lincoln, the Roman +Lindum, was established as a 'colonia' about A.D. 75, and the lines of +its original area, its 'Altstadt'--for it was perhaps enlarged in +Roman times,--can still be traced 'Above Hill' round the Castle and +Cathedral (fig. 26). It formed a rectangle just over 41 acres in +extent (400 x 500 yds.). Four gates, one of which still keeps its +Roman arch, gave access to the two main streets which divided the town +into four symmetrical quarters and crossed at right angles in the +centre. Along one of these streets, which agrees, if only roughly, +with the modern Bailgate, ran a stately colonnade (fig. 27), though +whether this belonged to some special building or adorned the whole +extent of street is not quite certain. Beneath the same street ran, as +at Timgad and Laibach and elsewhere, the town sewer (fig. 28). Of the +other main street and of side streets nothing is known, but we can +hardly doubt that they carried out the chess-board pattern.[101] + + [101] _Archaeologia_, liii. 236 and lvi. 371. The plan given by + Mr. Fox in liii. 236 represents his own theory, which may be open + to doubt. + +Probably the other four municipalities in Britain were planned +similarly, though the evidence is too slender to prove it. At +Verulamium (for example) near St. Albans, a local archaeologist long +ago claimed to detect a scheme of symmetrical house-blocks, resembling +squares very slightly askew. Subsequent inquiry has shown that this +scheme was merely or mostly imagination.[102] + + [102] J.W. Grover, _Brit. Archaeol. Assoc. Journal_, xxvi. + (1870), p. 45, plate 1. The theories of the late Mr. Bellows + about the streets of Roman and modern Gloucester were equally + astray, though in other ways. + +[Illustration: FIG. 28. LINCOLN. SEWER UNDER BAILGATE] + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWN-PLANS. II + + +In the preceding chapters Roman town-planning has been treated in +connexion with towns of definite municipal rank, which bore the titles +'colonia' or 'municipium'. The system is, of course, closely akin to +such foundation or refoundation as the establishment of a 'colonia' +implied in the early Empire, while the no less Roman character of the +'municipium' made town-planning appropriate to this class of town +also. + +It was, however, not limited to these towns. It appears not seldom in +provincial towns of lower legal status, such as were not uncommon in +Britain, in Gaul, and in some other districts. Four instances may be +quoted from the two provinces just named. In the first, Autun, the +town-planning is explained by the establishment of the town full-grown +under Roman official influence. Unfortunately, however, little is +known of the buildings, and it is difficult to judge of the actual +character of the place. In the second case, Trier, we may conjecture a +similar official origin. At Silchester, official influence seems also +to have been at work, and it is not impossible that the fourth case, +Caerwent, may be explained by the same cause. In these two latter, +however, it is more important to observe the nature of the towns, +which is better known than that of any others in western Europe. For +they embody a type of urban life which is distinct from any that +occurs in Italy or in the better civilized districts of the Empire, +and which illustrates strikingly one stratum of provincial culture. + + +_Autun_ (fig. 29). + +Caesar won northern and central Gaul for the Roman Empire; it fell to +Augustus to organize the conquered but as yet unromanized lands. Among +many steps to that end, he seems to have planted new native towns +which should take the places of old native tribal capitals and should +drive out local Celtic traditions by new Roman municipal interests. +These new towns did not, as a rule, enjoy the full Roman municipal +status; northern Gaul was not quite ripe for that. But they were +plainly devised to help Romanization forward, and their object is +declared by their half-Roman, half-Celtic names--Augustodunum (now +Autun), Caesaromagus (Beauvais), Augusta Suessionum (Soissons), +Augusta Treverorum (Trier), and the like.[103] Of two of these, Autun +and Trier, we chance to know the town-plans. The reader will notice a +certain similarity between them. + + [103] Hirschfeld, _Haeduer und Arverner_ (_Sitzungsber. der + preuss. Akademie_, 1897, p. 1102). Similar hybrid names have + been created by the English in India, mostly on the North-west + Frontier, where alone they have planted new inhabited + sites--Lyallpur, Abbotabad, Edwardesabad, Robertsganj, and the + like. But these are almost all small places or forts, and their + names represent no policy of Anglicization. + +[Illustration: FIG. 29. AUTUN. +After H. de Fontenay, 1889.] + +Autun stands on the site and contains the stately ruins of the Roman +Augustodunum, built by Augustus about 12 B.C. He, as it seems, brought +down the Gaulish dwellers in the old native hill-fortress of Bibracte, +on Mont-Beuvray, and planted them twelve miles away on an unoccupied +site beside the river Arroux. The new town covered an area of +something like 490 acres--that is, if the now traceable walls and +gates are, as is generally thought, the work of Augustus. The town +within the walls must have been laid out all at once. Quite a large +part of it, perhaps has much as three-quarters, have revealed to the +careful inquiries of French archaeologists a regular system of +quadrangular street-planning, which may very likely have extended even +through the unexplored quarter. The Roman street which ran through the +town from south to north, from the Porte de Rome to the Porte +d'Arroux, was fronted by at least thirteen 'insulae', and one of the +streets which crossed it at right angles was fronted by eleven such +blocks. They vary somewhat in size. The larger 'insulae', which lie +west of the main north and south street, are oblong and measure about +150 x 100 yds. (say, 3 acres); many smaller ones are more nearly +square (98 x 98 or 109 yds., about 2 acres). + +But the regularity of the plan is plainly the work of civilized man. +When the Celts were brought to live in a Roman city, care was taken +that it should be really Roman.[104] Only we may perhaps wonder +whether the plan may not have been drawn by Augustus with an eye more +to the future than to the present and may have included more 'insulae' +than there were actually inhabitants to occupy at once. That was the +case certainly in the mediaeval English town of Winchelsea, where the +rectangular building-plots laid out by Edward I have in great measure +lain empty and untenanted to the present day. + + [104] H. de Fontenay, _Autun et ses monuments_ (Autun, 1889), pp. + 49 foll. and map (1:6,250). The existence of a town-plan was + first noticed by J. de Fontenay, _Bulletin monumental_, 1852, p. + 365, but his map appears to be incorrect and his views generally + are based too much on _a priori_ assumptions. + + +_Trier_ (fig. 30). + +We may take another example from a northern city, Trier on the Mosel, +in north-eastern Gaul (Augusta Treverorum). It was in its later days a +large city, perhaps the largest Roman city in western Europe. When its +walls were built and its famous north gate, the Porta Nigra, was +erected, probably towards the end of the third century, they included +a space of 704 acres, twenty-five times as much as the original +Timgad, though, it must be added, this area may not have been wholly +covered with houses. But it was then an old city. Its earliest remains +date from the earliest days of the Roman Empire (A.D. 2), when it was +founded, like Autun, on a spot which had (as it seems) never been +inhabited before.[105] Of this first beginning we possess vestiges +which concern us here. Eight or nine years ago, when the modern town +was provided with drainage, the engineers of the work and the Trier +archaeologists, headed by the late Dr. Graven, combined to note the +points where the drainage trenches cut through pieces of Roman +roadway.[106] + + [105] Ademeit, _Siedelungsgeographie des Moselgebiets_, pp. 367, + 431. + + [106] H. Graeven, _Stadtplan des roemischen Triers_ in _Die + Denkmalpflege_, 14 Dec. 1904 (1:10,000); the plan has been often + copied, as by Cramer, _Das roem. Trier_ (Guetersloh, 1911), and Von + Behr, _Trierer Jahresberichte_, i. 1908. Compare Barthel, _Bonner + Jahrbuecher_, cxx. 106. Trier at some time or other became a + 'colonia'. When this occurred, is hotly disputed; the evidence + seems to me to suggest that it was founded without colonial + status and became a 'colonia latina' in the course of the first + century (see Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen_, p. 153). I have + therefore inserted Trier in this chapter with Autun and not in + Chapter VIII with Orange and Timgad. + +These points yielded a regular plan of streets crossing at right +angles, which in many of its features much resembles that of Autun. +Thirteen streets were traced running east and west, and eight (Dr. +Graven says seven but his plan shows eight) running north and south. +The east and west streets, with two exceptions, lay some 320 ft. from +one another. The north and south streets varied, some observing that +distance, others being no more than 260 ft. apart. As a result, the +rectangular house-blocks varied also in size. The largest seem to be +those which fronted a street that crossed the town from east to west, +from the Imperial Palace to the Baths and the West Gate, and +corresponds roughly with the present Kaiserstrasse. This may well have +been the _decumanus_, the main east and west street of the 'colonia', +and hence the house-blocks fronting it may have been unusually large +(p. 77). One of them, near the Neumarkt, reached the awkward size of +nearly 3-1/2 acres (320 x 460 ft.). Others elsewhere were smaller, +many measuring 320 x 320 ft., and others again 320 x 245 ft., rather +less than 2 acres. In general, the 'insulae' on the east and west +sides of the town were larger than those in the centre. The whole has +a resemblance to Autun, and is more irregular than writers on Trier +are ready to allow.[107] + + [107] Graeven estimated that, except in the central street, all + the 'insulae' measured 300 Roman ft. (290 English ft., 88 + metres), but his plan suggests rather 100 metres. We need in + reality that larger plan which he did not live to complete. + +How many houses may have occupied either a large or a small 'insula' +is uncertain; indeed, we know next to nothing of the private houses of +Roman Trier. Nor can we fix the number of the 'insulae'. On the west, +and still more on the east and south-east of the town, much of the +area was not touched by the drainage works and therefore went +unexplored. We have proof only of streets and buildings for a mile in +length and half a mile in breadth. + +[Illustration: FIG. 30. TRIER. +From plan by the late Dr. Graeven.] + +Nevertheless we may make some guess at the original area. The +streetage itself plainly dates from the original foundation of the +Romano-Gaulish town by Augustus. There is, indeed, no other epoch in +its history, so far as we know it, when a complete laying out could +have been carried through. On the other hand, it is not probable that +the first town was a mile long and half a mile wide. Possibly, as an +acute German archaeologist has suggested, the small 'insulae' in the +south of the town may indicate the line of an original wall and ditch +which, like the first walls of Timgad, were overrun later by an +expanding town. Certainly, early graves found hereabouts show that +this space lay once outside the inhabited area, and similar evidence +has been noted both on the north of the town in the Simeonstrasse, and +on the west near the Mosel Bridge. If this be so, Augusta Treverorum +may have at first covered only 120 or 130 acres; then, as the place +spread beyond its original limits, its builders followed more or less +closely the lines of the first streets, and, save near the Porta +Nigra, continued the chess-board pattern as it was continued at Turin. + + +_Silchester_ (figs. 31, 32). + +Silchester, Calleva Atrebatum (fig. 31), shows a different picture, +which is the more interesting because the excavations carried out in +1890-1909 have given us a fuller knowledge of the town than of any +other Roman site in the western provinces.[108] It was, apparently, +the old tribal capital of the Atrebates and the county-town of its +district in Roman days; though not possessing the full municipal +status, it was probably the seat of local government for a +considerable neighbourhood. In outline it was an irregular eight-sided +area of 100 acres, defended by a strong stone wall, which was added +long after the original foundation. Internally it was divided up by +streets which, except near the east gate, run parallel or at right +angles to one another. Its buildings are: a Forum and Basilica, a +suite of public baths, four small temples, a small Christian church, a +hotel, and a large number of private houses. Its area is by no means +filled with buildings. Garden ground must have been common and cheap, +and the buildings themselves do not form continuous streets; they do +not even front the roadway in the manner of houses in Italian towns. +In these respects Silchester differs widely from any of the examples +which we have already considered, so far as their internal buildings +are known to us. I will not call it a 'garden city', for a garden city +represents an attempt to add some of the features of the country to a +town. Silchester, I fancy, represents the exact opposite. It is an +attempt to insert urban features into a country-side. + + [108] For accounts of the Silchester excavations, see + _Archaeologia_, vols. lii-lxii, and _Victoria Hist. of + Hampshire_, i. 271, 350; large plan by W.H. St. John Hope + (1:1,800) in _Archaeol._ lxi. + +[Illustration: FIG. 31. SILCHESTER. +(For detail see fig. 32.)] + +Most of it must have been laid out at once. At any rate, the area of +which the 'insulae' numbered X, XXI, XXXV, and XIX form the corners, +and the Forum the centre, must have been planned complete from the +first. This covers just 40 acres, and is divided into rectangular +plots of which the smallest covers a little less than an acre and a +half, while the largest fall little short of 3-1/2 acres.[109] Outside +this area, the division of the town into 'insulae' is less completely +carried through, although most of the streets run straight on as far +as the walls, and one or two details may tempt us to think that the +division into 'insulae' was at some time extended beyond the line +ultimately taken by the walls. + + [109] The plots are of three sizes, two being 3-4 acres (128 x + 130 yds.), six about 2.4 acres (128 x 89 yds.), and six about 1.4 + acres (89 x 80 yds.). In the third size the dimension of 240 + Roman feet (p. 79) can perhaps be recognized. + +[Illustration: FIG. 32. DETAILS OF FOUR INSULAE, THE FORUM AND THE +CHURCH AT SILCHESTER. (From _Archaeologia_.)] + +But whatever the exact amount of Roman building and Roman street-plan +given to Silchester when it was first laid out, the place is not in +effect a real town. It is not merely that, as I have said, the houses +do not form continuous streets. A glance at the houses will show that +they could not possibly be fitted into streets. The types of house +here visible are not town houses. They are the types which appear +among the 'villas', that is, the landlords' or the farmers' dwellings, +up and down the rural districts of Roman Britain and northern Gaul, +and the town which they constitute is a conglomeration of country +houses. The reverse has taken place of that which we often see to-day +in England. Our modern builders and architects had--until perhaps +quite recently--only one idea of a small house, the house, namely, +which to-day characterizes the monotonous streets in the poorer +quarters of our new towns, with its front door and bow window on one +side, its offices behind, and its two other sides left blank for other +houses to stand against. This is a town house. Yet our modern builders +use it, all by itself, in the most desolate country districts. I came +across one such not long ago, when driving over a lonely valley in +Exmoor. There it stood, with no other house near it, yet with its two +sides blankly waiting for the street that ought to form itself to the +right and left. + +The opposite of this has occurred at Calleva; here the rural house has +been used, with scarcely a change, to form a town. We see the Roman +street-plan introduced in surroundings which are not properly urban. +The outward expression of the civilised municipal system jostles +against a provincial and rural life. Here was a premature attempt to +municipalize the Briton, which outstripped the readiness of the Briton +to be municipalized. Silchester was probably a tribal centre before +the Roman came; for awhile it may have remained much the same under +Roman rule. But forty years after the Roman Conquest, in the reign of +Vespasian (about A.D. 70-85), the Romanization of the whole province +appears to have rapidly advanced. It was, indeed, encouraged by the +Home Government. Various details suggest that the laying out of +Silchester belonged to this very date. But to this the Callevan failed +to rise. He learnt much from Rome; he learnt even town-life; he did +not learn town-life in its highest form. When his town had been +'haussmannized' and fitted with Roman streets, and equipped with Roman +Forum and Basilica, and the rest, he yet continued to live--perhaps +more happily than the true townsman--in his irregularly grouped houses +and cottages amid an expanse of gardens. The area of Silchester +differed little from that of Aosta; its population, if we may judge by +the number of dwelling-houses, was hardly as large as that of Timgad. + + +_Caerwent_ (fig. 33). + +I turn lastly to another Romano-British town, Caerwent (Venta +Silurum), between Chepstow and Newport in Monmouthshire. It is a +smaller town than Silchester. Both towns perhaps began with the same +area, 40 or 45 acres. But Caerwent never expanded; it remained not +much more than 45 acres within the walls. Land was probably valuable +within it; certainly its houses are packed closer, and its garden +ground is smaller than at Silchester. Its general type is, however, +the same. It has a very similar Forum and Basilica, Temples, an +Amphitheatre, and a large number of private houses which resemble +closely those of Silchester. It has, moreover, at least in the parts +that have been so far excavated, distinct traces of a rectangular +street pattern, which, if it was carried through the whole town, would +provide (including the Forum) twenty 'insulae'. The size of these +blocks cannot be determined with any precision. Indeed, in some cases +the houses seem to have encroached on and distorted the street-plan. +Probably it would be true to say that the average block covered an +acre and a half or an acre and two-thirds.[110] We do not know enough +of the history of Caerwent to do more than guess how this street-plan +came to it. Very likely the same process of establishing a +Roman-looking town for a local capital was adopted here as at +Silchester. Very likely the step was taken in the same period as at +Silchester, that is, in the last thirty years of the first century. +Its occurrence is significant. Caerwent lay remote in the far west, +with nothing but garrisons beyond it. It was the outpost of Roman city +life towards the Atlantic. It was the only town of Roman municipal +plan in Britain which was swept by Atlantic breezes.[111] + + [110] The three best defined examples measure about 260 x 260, + 260 x 280, 275 x 275 ft. (1.55, 1.61, and 1.73 acres respectively). + The unit of 240 Roman feet (p. 79) does not appear at Caerwent. + + [111] Accounts of the Caerwent Excavations, 1899-1910, will be + found in _Archaeologia_, vols. lvii-lxii. A good plan of the + whole town, from which fig. 33 is taken, was issued in vol. lxii, + plate 64, by Mr. F. King, architect to the excavations (scale, + 1:900). + +[Illustration: FIG. 33. CAERWENT. +(Reduced from plan by F. King.)] + +Silchester and Caerwent did not stand alone in Britain. At Wroxeter, +the ancient Viroconium, tribal centre of the Cornovii and a +Romano-British country-town much like Silchester, though somewhat +larger, oblong 'insulae' have recently been detected by Mr. +J.P. Bushe-Fox which measure 103 x 126 yds. (2-2/3 acres). At +Cirencester, the Romano-British centre for the canton of the Dobuni +and a still larger town than Wroxeter, the 'insulae' near the Basilica +seem to have measured as much as 120 yards in length, though full +details have not yet been obtained. Both these towns may be ascribed +to the later years of the first century and to the same civilizing +process as Silchester and Caerwent. As further Romano-British towns +are uncovered, we may therefore hope for more examples. However +imperfectly the inner meaning of town-planning was understood, it was +plainly common in the south of Roman Britain. + + +NOTE. THE EASTERN PROVINCES. + +To complete the survey of Roman provincial town-planning, we must +glance briefly at the East. Here towns of Roman origin were few, and +of those few scarcely any are well known. But they do not lack +interest. For example, take Antinoe, built by Hadrian in memory of his +favourite Antinous, on the banks of the Nile. It was a parallelogram +more than 3 miles round, which covered an area of 360 acres. Two main +streets, each colonnaded, crossed at right angles and cut it into four +parts. Of the other streets, nothing certain seems to be known. But +references to the town in papyri denote four quarters of it by various +letters, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and distinguish its house-blocks +by the term Plintheion with a numeral attached. Thus, a house is +described as lying 'in the letter Delta and the Plintheion 7'. Our +documents show that there were in Antinoe at least eleven of these +Plintheia.[112] It is fairly plain that they are rectangular +'insulae', of either Roman or Hellenic type, while the general fashion +of the town and of its monuments suggest a Greek rather than an +Italian city. + + [112] _Exploration des ruines d' Antinoe_, by A.C. Gayet + (Annales du Musee Guimet, xxvi, Paris, 1897); _Grundzuege der + Papyruskunde,_ Wilcken, i, pp. 49, 50. Professor A.S. Hunt refers + me to the following papyri:--Reinach, 49. 11; Oxyrhynchus, 1110. + 9-10 and note there; Brit. Mus. 1164 (c) 12. The numeration of + the divisions of the town by letters was borrowed from + Alexandria, where the five parts of the city were known as A, B, + C, D, E. For plans see the Napoleonic _Description d'Egypte_ iv + (Paris, 1817), plate 53, and E. Jomard, _Antiquites d'Egypte_ + (1818), chap. xv. + +[Illustration: FIG. 34. BOSTRA. +(After Baedeker.)] + +Another instance may be found still further east, in the land beyond +Jordan, at the capital of the Hauran, Bosra, anciently Bostra. Little +has been achieved in the way of exploration of this site beyond +studies of the stately ruins of theatres, palaces, temples, triumphal +arches, aqueducts. Little can therefore be said as to the date of its +ground-plan. But it was rectangular in outline, or nearly so; and its +streets crossed at right angles and enclosed rectangular insulae.[113] +The place owes all its greatness to Rome. During the second century it +was the fortress of the Legio III Cyrenaica, which guarded this part +of the eastern Roman frontier. About A.D. 225 it became a 'colonia,' +and perhaps we should date from this the town-plan just described +(fig. 34). + + [113] Baedeker, _Palestine and Syria_ (1906), p. 162. + +This rectangular planning remained long in use in the Eastern Empire. +When in A.D. 705 (as it seems) the town of Chersonnesus in the Crimea +was rebuilt after a total destruction, it was rebuilt on a symmetrical +plan of oblong 'insulae' (25-30 by 60-70 yds. area). Its streets were +mean and narrow. But their plan at least was apparently more regular +than that of their predecessors.[114] + + [114] Minns, _Greeks and Scythians_, pp. 493, 508, and references + there given. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +ROMAN BUILDING-LAWS + + +Archaeology tells us that the western half of the Roman Empire and +many districts in its eastern half used a definite town-plan which may +be named, for brevity, the chess-board pattern. It remains to ask +whether literature, or at least legal literature, provides any basis +of theory or any ratification of the actual system which archaeology +reveals. Of augural lore we have indeed enough and to spare. We know +that the _decumanus_ and the _cardo_, the two main lines of the Roman +land-survey and probably also the two main streets of the Roman +town-plan,[115] were laid out under definite augural and +semi-religious provision. We should expect to find more. A system of +town-planning that is so distinctive and so widely used might +reasonably have created a series of building-laws sanctioning or +modifying it. This did not occur. Neither the lawyers nor even the +land-surveyors, the so-called Gromatici, tell us of any legal rules +relative to town-planning as distinct from surveying in general. The +surveyors, in particular, are much more concerned with the soil of the +province and its 'limitation' and 'centuriation', than with the +arrangements of any individual town, and, whatever their value for +extramural boundaries,[116] throw no light on streets and 'insulae'. + + [115] See p. 73. + + [116] Schulten, _Hermes_, 1898, p. 534. + +The nearest approach to building-laws which occurs is a clause which +seems to be a standing provision in many municipal charters and +similar documents from the age of Cicero onwards, to the effect that +no man might destroy, unroof, or dismantle an urban building unless he +was ready to replace it by a building at least as good or had received +special permission from his local town council. The earliest example +of this provision occurs in the charter of the municipality of +Tarentum, which was drawn up in the time of Cicero.[117] It is +repeated in practically the same words in the charter of the 'colonia +Genetiva' in southern Spain, which was founded in 44 B.C.; it recurs +in the charter granted to the municipality of Malaga, also in southern +Spain, about A.D. 82.[118] Somewhat similar prohibitions of the +removal of even old and worthless houses without special leave are +implied in decrees of the Roman Senate passed in A.D. 44 and A.D. 56, +though these seem really to relate to rural rather than to urban +buildings and were perhaps more agrarian than municipal in their +object.[119] Hadrian, in a dispatch written in A.D. 127 to an eastern +town which had lately obtained something like municipal status, +includes a provision that a house in the town belonging to one +Claudius Socrates must either be repaired by him or handed over to +some other citizen.[120] Similar legislation occurs in A.D. 224 and in +the time of Diocletian and later.[121] + + [117] Mommsen, _Eph. Epigr._ ix, p. 9; Dessau, _Inscr. sel._ + 6086; 'nei quis in oppido quod eius municipi erit aedificium + detegito neive demolito neive disturbato nisei quod non deterius + restiturus erit nisei de senatus sententia. sei quis adversus ea + faxit, quanti id aedificium fuerit, tantam pequniam municipio + dare damnas esto eiusque pequniae quei volet petitio est.' + (English translation in E.G. Hardy's _Roman Laws and Charters_, + p. 101.) + + [118] Dessau, 6087, 6089; Hardy, _Roman Laws_, part 2, pp. 34, + 108. + + [119] For these decrees, which are practically equivalent at this + date to laws, see _CIL_. x. 1401 = Dessau 6043, and de Pachtere + in _Melanges Cagnat_, p. 169. + + [120] For the letter of Hadrian see _Bulletin de Corresp. Hell._ + x. 111; it is quoted by Bruns, _Fontes_, 1909, p. 200. Compare + the _Historia Augusta_, Life of Hadrian, ch. 18. + + [121] Mommsen, _Eph. Epigr._ iii, p. 111 and _Ges. Schiften_, i. + 158, 263, 371; Liebenam, _Staedteverwaltung_, 393. + +Rules were also laid down occasionally to forbid balconies and similar +structures which might impede the light and air in narrow streets, and +it was a common rule that cemeteries and brickyards must lie outside +the area of inhabitation. At Rome too, efforts were made by various +emperors to limit the height of the large tenement houses which there +formed the 'insulae'. These limits were, however, fixed haphazard +without due reference to the width of the streets; they do not seem to +occur outside of Rome, and even in Rome they were very scantily +observed. + +But in general no definite laws were framed. Probably the +municipalities were somewhat closely tied in the administration of +municipal property and had to refer schemes for the employment even of +the smallest bit of vacant space to the 'patron' or the _curator_ of +the town. But, apart from the provisions mentioned above, they had no +specific rights, that are recorded, against private owners or +builders. It was only once, after Rome itself had been burnt out, that +an imperial order condemned landowners who 'held up' their ground +instead of using it, to forfeit their ownership in favour of any one +who offered to build at once. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SEQUEL + + +What was the sequel to this long work of town-planning? Two facts +stand out distinct. First, the Roman planning helped the towns of the +Empire to take definite form, but when the Empire fell, it too met its +end. Only here and there its vestiges lingered on in the streets of +scattered cities like things of a former age. But, secondly, from this +death it rose again, first in the thirteenth century, with +ever-growing power to set the model for the city life of the modern +world. + +I. The value of town-planning to Roman civilization was twofold. It +increased the comfort of the common man; it made the towns stronger +and more coherent units to resist the barbarian invasions. When, after +250 years of conflict, the barbarians triumphed, its work was done. In +the next age of ceaseless orderless warfare it was less fit, with its +straight broad streets, for defence and for fighting than the chaos of +narrow tortuous lanes out of which it had grown and to which it now +returned. The cases are few in which survivals of Roman streets have +conditioned the external form of mediaeval or modern towns. We in +England tend perhaps to overrate the likelihood of such survivals. Our +classical education has, until very lately, taught most of us more of +ancient than of mediaeval history, and when our antiquaries find towns +rectangular in outline and streets that cross in a Carfax, they give +them a Roman origin. + +Such a tendency is wrong. Plentiful evidence shows that even in Italy +and even in towns where men have dwelt without a break since Roman +days, the Roman streets, and with them the Roman town-plans, have far +oftener vanished than endured. Rome herself, the Eternal City, uses +hardly one street to-day which was used in the Roman Empire. Some few +Italian towns, described in detail above, have a better claim to be +called 'eternal'; half a dozen in northern Italy retain their ancient +streets in singular perfection. Yet even there cities like Padua and +Mantua, Genoa and Pisa, have lost the signs of their older fashion. +So, too, in the provinces. In the Danubian lands only one town can +even be supposed to preserve a few of its Roman streets. In all the +once great cities of that region, Sirmium and Siscia, Poetovio and +Celeia and Emona, they have wholly gone; you may walk across the sites +to-day and seek them in vain in modern street or hedgerow or lane. In +Gaul there were many Roman municipalities in the south; there were +many towns of lesser rank but equal wealth in the centre and west and +north. But we owe our knowledge of their town-plans to an inscription +from Orange and to some excavations at Autun and Trier. Cologne and +Trier alone, or almost alone, keep Roman streets in modern use, and +they are significant. Both became Roman towns in the first century; +both held colonial rank; both have lived on continuously ever since +and hardly changed their names. Yet both bear to-day the stamp of the +Middle Ages, and the Roman streets which they use are small and nearly +unrecognizable fragments. + +There is, indeed, no law of survivals. Chance--that convenient ancient +word to denote the interaction of many imponderable forces--has ruled +one way in one place and otherwise in another. Sometimes monuments +have alone survived, sometimes only streets, and we can seldom give +reasons for this contrast of fates. At Pola, gates, temples, and +amphitheatre still tell of the Roman past and the modern town-square +keeps so plainly the tradition of the Forum that you cannot walk +across it without a sense of what it was. Yet not a single street +agrees with those of the Roman 'colonia'. In the Lombard and Tuscan +plains, at Turin and Pavia and Piacenza, at Florence and Lucca, the +Roman streets are still in use, just as the old Roman field-ways still +divide up the fertile plains outside those towns. But, save in Turin, +hardly one Roman stone has been left upon another. In the no less +fertile plain of the lower Rhone, at Nimes and Arles and Orange, the +stately ruins wake the admiration of the busiest and least learned +traveller; of the Roman streets there is no sign. + +Britain has enjoyed less continuity of civilization than any other +western province; in Britain the survivals are even fewer. In London, +within the limits of the Roman city, no street to-day follows the +course of any Roman street, though Roman roads that lead up to the +gates are still in use. At Colchester the Roman walls still stand; the +places of the Roman gates are known; the masonry of the west gate is +still visible as the masonry of a gateway. But the modern and ancient +streets do not coincide, and the west gate, which has so well +withstood the blows of time, can hardly be reached by road from within +the city. At York the defences of the legionary fortress have still +their place in the sun, but the 'colonia' on the other bank of the +Ouse has vanished wholly from the surface, walls and streets together, +and the houses of the citizens of Eburacum are known solely by finds +of mosaic floors. At Lincoln the Roman walls and gates can easily be +traced and one gate rears its arch intact, but the Bailgate alone +follows, and that erratically, the line of a Roman street. The road +from the Humber, thirty miles north of Lincoln, runs to-day, as it has +run for eighteen centuries, under the Newport arch and through the +modern town and passes on southwards. That long straight road has +given a feature to Lincoln, but it is a feature due to the Roman +highway outside the town, not to the streets within it. Lincoln itself +is as English as Cologne and Trier are German. + +II. But if Roman streets have seldom survived continuously to modern +days, if Roman town-planning perished with the western Empire, it has +none the less profoundly influenced the towns of mediaeval and modern +Europe and America. Early in the thirteenth century men began to +revive, with certain modifications, the rectangular planning which +Rome had used. Perhaps copying Roman originals seen in northern Italy, +Frederic Stupor Mundi now built on a chess-board pattern the Terra +Nova which he founded in Sicily. Now, in 1231, Barcelonette was built +with twenty square 'insulae' in south-eastern France. Now, too, the +'Bastides' and 'Villes Neuves' of southern France and towns like +Aigues-Mortes (1240) were built on similar plans.[122] + + [122] For the Bastides and Villes Neuves see Dr. A.E. Brinckmann, + _Deutsche Bauzeitung_, Jan.-Feb., 1910, and, for an example, fig. + 35. Many of them may be earlier than 1200 (A. Giry, _Bibl. de + l'Ecole des Chartes_, xlii. 451), but those with more or less + chess-board plans seem later. + +[Illustration: FIG. 35. PLAN OF A BASTIDE TOWN, SAUVETERRE-DE-GUYENNE +NEAR BORDEAUX (A.D. 1281). +(By Dr. A.E. Brinckmann.)] + +Soon after, the chess-board pattern came to England and was used in +Edwardian towns like Flint[123] and Winchelsea; then, too, it was +adopted at the other end of the civilized world by German soldiers in +Polish lands. Cracow, for example, owes to German settlers in the +mid-thirteenth century that curious chess-board pattern of its +innermost and oldest streets which so much puzzles the modern +visitor.[124] It is unnecessary here to follow further the renaissance +of town-planning. By intervals and revivals it continued to spread. In +1652 it reached Java, when the Dutch built Batavia. In 1682 it reached +America, when Penn founded Philadelphia. In 1753, when Kandahar was +refounded as a new town on a new site, its Afghan builders laid out a +roughly rectangular city, divided into four quarters meeting at a +central Carfax and divided further into many strangely rectangular +blocks of houses.[125] + + [123] Compare E.A. Lewis, _Medieval Boroughs of Snowdonia_, pp. + 30, 61 foll. + + [124] So, too, Lemberg. Compare R.F. Kaindl, _Die Deutschen in + den Karpathenlaendern_, i. 178, 293; ii. 304; he does not, however, + deal with the actual plans. + + [125] I have to thank the late Sir Alfred Lyall for a sight of a + survey made by English engineers in 1839. + +But in growing, the old town-planning has passed into a new stage. The +Romans dealt with small areas, seldom more than three hundred acres +and often very much less. The town-plans of the Middle Ages and even +of modern times affected areas that were little larger. Only the last +days have brought development. Till the enormous changes of the +nineteenth century--changes which have transferred the termination of +ancient history from A.D. 476 to near A.D. 1800--the older fashions +remained, in town-life as in most other forms of civilized society. +Towns were still, with few exceptions, small and their difficulties, +if real, were simple. Save in half a dozen abnormal capitals, they +had, even in relatively modern days, no vast populations to be fed and +made into human and orderly citizens. They had no chemical industries, +no chimneys defiling the air, or drains defiling the water. Now, +builders have to face the many square miles of Chicago or Buenos +Ayres, to provide lungs for their cities, to fight with polluted +streams and smoke. Their problems are quite unlike those of the +ancients. When Cobbett, about 1800, called London the Great Wen, he +contrasted in two monosyllables the ancient ideal of a city with the +ugly modern facts. + +It is not, therefore, likely that modern architects or legislators +will learn many hints from plans of Timgad or of Silchester. There are +lessons perhaps in the growth of Turin from its little ancient +chess-board to its modern enlargement, but such developments are rare. +The great benefit to modern workers of such a survey as I have +attempted is that it shows the slow and painful steps by which mankind +became at last able to plan towns as units, yet inhabited by +individual men and women, and that it emphasizes the need for definite +rules and principles. Nor is it perhaps quite superfluous to-day to +point out how closely, even after the great upheaval of the nineteenth +century, the forms of modern life depend on the Roman world. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Town-Planning, by F. 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