pref - forgotten books

PREFACE

THE follow ing pages are an enlargement of a paper

read to the University of London as the Creighton

Lecture for 1 9 10,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 con

tribution to a modern movement. I t looked on town

planning as one of those new methods of social reform,

which stand in somewhat sharp contrast wi th the usual

aims of political parties and parliaments. The latter

concern mainly the outward and publ ic l ife of men as

fellow-citizens in a state ; they involve such problems

as Home Rule,D isestabl ishment

,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

l ie outside the scope of legislation,should be treated

w i th as close attention and logic and intell igence as

any of the older and more conventional problems of

politicians. They wil l not leave even the tubes of

babies'

feeding-bottles to an off-hand opportunism .

Among these newer efforts town-planning is one

A 2

PREFACE

of the better known . Most of us now admit that if

some scores ofdwel lings 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 ; i t is sometimes styled a science and

University professorships are named after it ; in the

London Conference of 1 9 10 i t got its deductz'

o in

for um or at least its'

first dance . But it is stil l youngand its possibilities undefined. I ts name is apt to be

appl ied to all sorts of building-schemes,and little

attempt is made to assign it any specific sense . I t is

only slowly making its way towards the recognized

method and the recognized principles which even an

art requires. H ere, i t 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.

I n 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 incident

ally discussed!l they have never been collected . The

For example, by Beloch in his volume on the c ities of Campan ia ,by Schulten in various essays, by Barthel in a recent inquiry into

PREFACE 5

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 S ilchester 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

w idely. But admirable German excavations at Priene,

Miletus,and elsewhere declare that much may be

learnt about Greek towns and in Greek lands.

The task of collecting and examining these details

is not easy. I t 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 I taly 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 sug

gestions and may help some future workers .

Roman Africa, and by others, to be c ited be.ow. Dr. J . Stubben inhis Stédtebau (Darmstadt, ed. 2 , 1 907) and M r. Raymond Unwin inhis Townplanning inpractice (London, 1 909) have given interestingnotices and illustrations of the subjec t for modern builders.

6 PREFACE

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 un

necessary. 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 techn icalities to the footnotes.

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLE OF MEASURES

1 . PRELIM INARY REMARKS ON ANCIENT TOWN

PLANNING

2 . GREEK TOWN-PLANNING . THE ORIGINS

BABYLON

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. FIRST EFFORTS

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING . THE MACEDONIAN

AGE

ITALY . THE ORIGINS .

ITALY . THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE .

ITALIAN TOWNS

ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWNS. I

ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWNS . I I .

ROMAN BUILDING LAWS

THE SEQUEL

APPENDIx. TOWN -PLANNING IN CHINA

INDEx

LIST OF PLANS AND I LLUSTRATIONS

(For prec ise references to sources see the various footnotes. )

STREETS IN T IMGAD . From a photographI . BABYLON . After Koldewey and others2 . P IRAEUS. After M ilchOfer

3 . SELINUS . After Cavallari and Hulot and Fougéres4. CYRENE . After Sm ith and Porcher, 1 8645 . SOLUNTUM . After Cavallari, 1 8 756. PRIENE , GENERAL OUTLINE. After Zippelius

7 . PRIENE , DETAILS OF A PART OF THE EXCAVATED AREA .

After the large plan byWiegand and Schrader, 1 904 facingr 4 28 PRIENE, PANORAMA OF THE TOWN . As restored by

Zippelius

9. M ILETUS. After Wiegand, 1 9 1 1

1 0. GERASA . After Schumacher1 1 . TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAz z o D 1 FONTANELLATO . After

T. E . Peet1 2 . M ARZABOTTO . After Briz io and Levi1 3 . POM PEH . After Man, 1 9 1 0

1 4 . M ODENA . From the plan of Zuccagni-Orlandini , 1 844

1 5 . TURIN . Reduced from a plan published by the Soc ietyfor the diffusion of Useful Knowledge (M aps, London,1 844, vol. ii) after Zuccagni-Orlandini, 1 844

1 6. AOSTA . From Promis and others1 7 . FLORENCE . (A) Modern Florence. (B) After L . Bardi

( 1 795 P) and Zuccagni-Orlandini1 8 . LUCCA . From Sinibaldi, 1 843 96

1 9 . HERCULANEUM . After Ruggiero and Beloch 98

20. NAPLES. From theNeapolitanGovernmentmapof 1 865 facing I O I

2 1 . INSCRIPTION OF ORANGE. From the Compfes-rena’

us o’

e

I’

Acaa’

e'

mie dos I nscr iptions ct B elles-Lettres,1 904 faa

’

ng I 07

PLANS AND I LLUSTRATIONS 9

FIG . PAGE2 2 . T IMGAD. After R . Cagnat and the large plan by A. Ballu

(Ruines a’

o fi'

mgad, Sept annees a’e de

’

conw r tes (Paris,

23 . DETAILS OF INSULAE IN TIMGAD. After R. Gagnat,

24 . A PART OF CARTHAGE . Plan based on the Car te arctze’

o

logique des ruines a’e Car tfzage, by Gauckler and Delattre 1 1 4

2 5 . A PART OF LAIBACH . From a plan by Dr. W . Schmid

( VI . B er ic/zt a’

er romiscfz-germanzscfzen Kommission,

1 9 1 0—1 9 1 1 )

26. LINCOLN, OUTLINE OF ROMAN WALLS

2 7 . LINCOLN, BASES OF THE COLONNADE UNDER BAILGATE .

From a photograph facing 1 1 7

28 . LINCOLN,SEW ER UNDER BAILGATE . From a photo

graph29. AUTUN . After H . de Fontenay (Autun et ses M onuments,

Autun,1 889)

30 . TR IER . Plan reduced from plan ( 1 by the lateDr. Hans Gr’aven, D ie D enkmalpflege, 1 4 Dec . 1 904

3 1 . S ILCHESTER,GENERAL PLAN. Reduced from the large

plan by W. H . St . John Hope ( 1 Arcfiaeologi a lxi,

plate 853 2 . S ILCHESTER, DETAILS OF FOUR INSULAE, THE FORUM

AND CHR ISTIAN CHURCH . From Arctzaeologi a

33 . CAERWENT,GENERAL PLAN . Reduced from plan by

F . K ing ( 1 : 9oo), Arcftaeologi a lxii, plate 6434. BOSTRA. From a plan in Baedeker’s Guide to P alestine

3 5 . SAUVETERRE -DE -GUYENNE, A BASTIDE OF A . D . 1 28 1 .

From plan by Dr. A. E . Brinckmann

36. RU INS OF KHARA-KHOTO,A CH INESE TOWN OF ABOUT

A . D . 1 1 00 . Geogr apfticaljournal, Sept . 1 9 1 0 facing 1 4 7

For the loan of blocks I am indebted to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (fig. 2 to theGerman Imperial ArchaeologicalInstitute (fig. to the Royal Geographical Soc iety (fig. and to

the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Editors of the

Transactions of tfze Town-P lanning Conference, 1 9 1 1 (figs. 7 , 8, 1 7 ,

30, 3 2 , Fig. 1 1 is from M r . T . E . Peet’s Stone and Bronze Agesin I taly . The other 26 blocks have been prepared for th is volume.

TABLE OF MEASURES

THE following figures may be found convenient by readers whowish to take spec ial account of the dimensions c ited in the followingpages, and may also help them to correct any errors which I haveunwittingly admitted .

1 Roman foot 0-296 metres 0-97 English feet. For practicalpurposes 1 00 Roman feet 97 English feet.

1 Iugerum 1 20 x 240 Roman feet 1 1 6-4 x 233-8 English feet.

For prac tical purposes a I ugerum may be taken to be ratherover 73 of an acre and rather over of a hec tare, and more

exactly 25 23-3 Sq . metres.

1 Metre 1 -09 English yards, a. trifle less than 40 ins. 402-5 metres

equal a quarter of a mile.

1 Hec tare ( 1 0000 sq. metres) 2-47 acres ( 1 1 95 5 sq.

1 Ac re nearly 69—é- x 69% yds. (208-7 ft . square) 4840 sq. yds.

CHAPTER 1

PRELIM INARY REMARKS

TOWN-PLANNING—the art of laying out towns w i thdue care for the health and comfort of inhabitants, forindustrial and commercial efficiency , and for reasonablebeauty of buildings—is an art of intermittent activity.

I t belongs to special ages and circumstances . For itsfull unfolding two conditions are needed . The age

must be one in which, whether through growth or

through “movements of population , towns are beingfreely founded or freely enlarged , and almost as amatter of course attention is drawn to methods of

arranging and lay ing out such towns . And secondly ,the builders of these towns must have wit enough tocare for the well-being of common men and the duearrangement of ordinary dwellings . That has notalways happened . I n many lands and centuries—inages where civil ization has been tinged by an undercurrent of barbarism—one or both of these conditionshave been absent . I n Asia during much of its history,in early G reece

,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 worsh ippers at sacredfestivals, and a little adjacent chaos of tortuous lanesand squa l id houses . Architects have devised beautifulbuildings in such towns. But they have not touched

I 2 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING

the chaos or treated the whole inhabited area as oneunit. Town-planning has been here unknown.

1

I n other periods towns have been founded in largenumbers and full-grown or nearly full-grown , to furnishhomes for multitudes of common men , and theirfounders 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 andAmerica. They are many in number. They are largein area . Most of them have been born almost fullgrown ; some have been established complete ; othershave developed abruptly out

-

of small villages ; elsewhere, additions huge enough to form Separate citieshave sprung up beside towns already great. Throughout this development we can trace a tendency to plan ,beginning wi th the unconscious mechanical arrangements of industrial cities or suburbs and ending in theconscious efforts of to-day .

I f 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 isno new thing. I n the old world

,alike in the Greek

lands round the eastern Mediterranean and in the W ideempire of Rome, urban life increased rapidly at certainperiods through the establishment of towns almost fullgrown . The earliest towns of Greece and I taly were ,

Compare Brinckmann’s remarks on mediaeval towns : Der

Nachdruck liegt auf den einz elnen Geb‘

auden, der Kathedrale,dem Palaz zo publico, den festen Palasten des Adels, nicht auf ihrereinheitlichen Verbindung. Ebenso erscheint die gauze Stadt nur eineAnsammlung einzelner Bauten. Strassen und Pl 'atze sind unbebauteReste.

’

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING 1 3

through sheer necessity , small . They could not growbeyond the steep hill-tops which kept them safe

,or

house more inhabitants than their scanty fields couldfeed .

1 But the world was then large ; new lands layopen to those who had no room at home , and bodies ofw illing exi les

,keeping still their custom of civil l ife

,

planted new towns throughout the Mediterranean lands .The process was extended by state aid. Republics ormonarchs founded colonies to extend their power or tohouse their veterans , and the

-

results were equally townsspringing up full-grown in southern Europe andwestern Asia and even northern Africa . So too inremoter regions . Obscure evidence from China sug

gests that there also in early times towns were plantednies were sent to outlying regions oname methods as were used by the

GreeksEven under less kindly conditions , the art has not

been wholly dormant . Special circumstances or specialmen have called it into brief activity. The bastidesand the ‘villes neuves ’

of thirteenth-century Francewere founded at a particular period and under specialcircumstances

,and

,briefas the period was and governed

by military urgencies,they were la id out on a more or

less definite plan (p . The streets designed byWood at Bath about 1 7 3 5 , by Craig at Edinburghabout 1 7 70,

by Grainger at Newcastle about 1 83 5 ,

1 For the connexion between such towns and their local foodsupply, note the story of Alexander the Great and the architectDinoc rates told by V itruvius (II . i) . Dinocrates had planned a new

town ; Alexander asked if there were lands round it to supply it withc orn, and on hearing there were none, at once ruled out the pro

posed site.

1 4 ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING

Show what individual genius could do at favourablemoments . But such instances , however interesting inthemselves

,are obviously less important than the

larger manifestations of town-planning in Greece andRome.

I n almost all cases, the frequent establishment of

towns has been accompanied by the adoption of adefinite principle of town-planning, and throughout theprinciple has been essentially the same . I t has beenbased on the straight l ine and the ri ht an le. These

,

indeed,are the marks which sunder even the simplest

civil ization from barbarism . The w ge ,inconsistent

in his moral l ife , is equally inconsistent, equally unableto ‘keep straight

,in his hOuse—building and his road

making. Compare,for example

,a Bri tish and a Roman

road. The Roman road ran proverbially direct ; evenits few curves were not seldom formed by straight linesjoined together. The British road was quite different.I t curled as fancy dictated

,wandered along the -foot or

the scarp of a range of hills,followed the ridge of

w inding downs , and only by chance stumbled brieflyinto straightness. Whenever ancient remains showa long straight line or several correctly drawn' rightangles

, we may be sure that they date from a civilizedage.In general

,ancient town-planning used not merely

the straight l ine and the right angle but the two

together. I t tried very few experiments involvingother angles . Once or tw ice

,as at Rhodes (pp. 3 1 ,

we hear of streets radiating fan-fashion from a commoncentre

,like the gangways of an ancient theatre or the

thoroughfares of modern Karlsruhe, or that PalmaNuova , founded by Venice in I 593 to defend its north

ANCI ENT TOWN -PLANN I NG

eastern boundaries,which was shaped almost l ike a

starfish . But,as a rule

,the streets ran parallel or at

right angles to each other and the blocks of houseswhich they enclosed were either square or oblong.

Much variety is noticeable,however, in details .

Sometimes th—ew

o'

utline of the ancient town was squareor almost Square , the house-blocks were of the sameshape

,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 ac hess-board but

“ geometrical and rectangular. Oftenthe outI i

—E Of the town was irregular and merely

convenient,but the streets stil l kept

,so far as they

could , to a rectangular plan . Sometimes , lastly, therectangular planning was l imited to a few broadthoroughfares

,while the smaller side-streets were

utterly irregular. . O ther variations may be seen inthe prominence granted or refused to public andespecially to sacred buildings . In some towns fullprovision was made for these ; ample streets w ithstately vistas led up to them

,and open spaces were

left from which they could be seen with advantage .

I n others there were neither vistas nor open spacesnor even splendid buildings .A measure of historical continuity can be traced in

the occurrence of these variations . The towns of theearlier G reeks were stately enough in their publicbuildings and principal thoroughfares, but they revealeda half-barbaric spirit in their mean side

-streets and

unlovely dwellil n .gs In the middle of the fifth centurymen rose above this ideal . They began to recognizeprivate houses and to attempt an adequate groupingof their cities as units capable of a Single plan . But

I 6 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING

they did not carry this conception very far . Th e

decorative still dominated the useful . Broad straigh tstreets were still few and were la id out mainly a s

avenues for processions and as ample spaces for grea tfacades.

1 Private houses were still of small accoun t .

The notion that the City was the State,helpful and

progressive as it was , did something also to paralysein certain ways the development of cities.A change came w ith the new philosophy and the

Vnew politics of the Macedonian era . The older GreekCity-states had been large

,wealthy , and indepen

dent ; magnificent buildings and sumptuous festiva lswere as natural to them as to the greater autonomousmunicipal ities in all ages . But in the Macedon ianperiod the individual cities sank to be parts of a largerwhole, i tems in a dominant state , subjects of militarymonarchies . The use of public buildings , the Splendourof public festivals in individual cities

,declined . I nstead

,

the claims of the individual citizen , neglected too muchby the City-states but noted by the newer philosophy

,

found consideration even in town-planning. A moredefinite

,more symmetrical , often more rigidly

‘ chessboard ’ pattern was introduced for the towns which nowbegan to be founded in many countries round and eastof the Aegean. Ornamental edifices and broad streetswere still indeed included, but in the house-blocks roundthem due space and place were left for the dwell ings ofcommon men. For a while the Greeks turned their

1 P indar mentions ‘the paved road cut straight to be smitten by

horse-hoofs in processions of men that besought Apollo’

s care at

Cyrene (Py tft. v. An inscription from the Piraeus, of 3 20 B.C .,

orders the Agoranomi (p. 3 7) to take care of the broad roads bywhich the processions move to the temple of Zeus the Saviour ’

.

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNI NG 1 7‘

m inds to those details of daily life which in their greaterage they had somewhat ignored .

Lastly, the town-planning of the Macedonian eracombined

,as I believe

, w ith other and I talian elementsand formed the town system of the later RomanRepublicand the Roman Empire. AS in art and architecture, soalso in city-planning

,the civil ization of Greece and of

I ta lym erged almost inextricably into a result which ,w ithall its Greek affinities

,is in the end Roman . The student

now meets a rigidity of street-plan and a conceptiono fpublic buildingswhich are neither Greek nor Oriental .The Roman town was usually _

a_rec_ _ gje broken up into

four more or less equal and rectangular parts by twomam streets Wh ich crosSed at r ight angles at or near itscentre . To these two streets all the other streets ranparallel or at right angles

,and there resulted a defi

nite ‘ chess-board ’ pattern of rectangular house-blockssquare or oblong in shape , more or less uniform

in size . The streets themselves were moderate inw idth ; even the main thoroughfares were little w iderthan the rest

,and the public buildings w ithin the walls

were now merged in the general mass of houses. Thechief structure, the Forum

,was an enclosed court ,

decorated indeed by statues and girt W ith colonnades ,but devoid of facades Which could dom inate a town .

The town councils of the Roman world were no morefree than those of Greece or modern England fromthe municipal vice of over-bui lding. But they had not

the same openings for error. On the other hand ,there was in most of them a good municipal supply ofwater

,and sewers were laid beneath their streets.

The reason for all th is is plain . These Roman towns ,even more than the Greek cities of the Macedonian

1494 B

1 8 ANCIENT TOW N -PLANN ING

rld,were parts of a greater whole. They were i tem s

in the Roman Empire ; their citizens were citizens of

Rome. They had neither the wealth nor the w ish to

build vast temples or public halls or palaces,such as

the Greeks constructed . Their greatest edifices , thetheatre and the amphitheatre , w itness to the pros

perity and population not so much of Single towns as

of whole neighbourhoods which flocked in to periodicperformances .‘ But these towns had unity. The irvarious parts were

,in some sense , harmonized , none

being neglected and none grievously over- indulged , andthe whole was treated as one organism . Despite limitationsWhich are obvious

,the Roman world made a more

real sober and consistent attempt to plan towns thanany previous age had w i tnessed .

Compare the crowd of Nucerians who made a riot in the amph itheatre at Pompeii in A.D . 59 (Tac . Ann. xiv. 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.

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20 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING

still very fragmentary,and though it has been much

w idened by the latest German excavations,it does no t

yet carry us to definite conclusions . The evidence istwofold, in part l iterary, drawn from Greek writers andabove all Herodotus

,and in part archaeological

,yielded

by Assyrian and Babylonian ruins.The description of Babylon given by Herodotus

is, of course , famous. l Even in his own day,i t wa s

well enough known to be parodied by contemporary

comedians in the Athenian theatre. Probably it restsin part on first-hand knowledge. Herodotus gives usto understand that he visited Babylon in the course o fhis many wanderings and we have no cause to distrusthim ; we may even date his visit to somewhere abou t

450 B.C. He was not indeed the only Greek of his

day,nor the first , to get so far afield. But his accoun t

nevertheless neither is nor professes to be purely thatof an eyewitness . Like other writers in various ages

,

2

he drew no Sharp division between details which he sawand 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.Babylon

,says H erodotus , was planted in an open

plain and formed an exact Square of great size ,1 20 stades (that is , nearly 1 4 miles) each way ; thewhole circuit was 480 stades , about 5 5 m i les. I t wasgirt with immense brick walls

, 340 ft . high and

Hdt. i. 1 78 foll. The accounts of Ctesias and other anc ientwriters seem to throw no light on the town-planning and streets of

Babylon, however useful they may otherwise be.

The Elizabethan description of Britain byW illiam Harrison is anexample from a modern time.

ANC IENT TOWN -PLANN ING 2 1

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 arrangedsymmetrically, 25 in each side . From corner to cornerthe city was cu t diagonally by the Euphrates , whichthus halved it into two roughly equal triangles , andthe river banks were fortified by brick defences—lessformidable than the mam outer walls—which ranalong 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 orfour storeys high

,and has been laid outwith its streets

straight,notably those which run at right angles

,that

is , those which lead to the river. Each road runs toa small gate in the brick river-wall there are as manygates as lanes.

’ l

I n each part of the city (that is, on either bank of

the Euphrates) were specially large buildings , in onepart 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 wordssuggest town-planning. The streets that ran straightand the others that ran at right angles are significantenough

,even though we may doubt exactly what is

meant by these other streets and what they met or cut

1 Hdt. i . 1 80 TO 32 d'

o‘

rv e’

Ov whips; oixte'

wv Tptwpddmv 1'

s Ka iI I C S I I V S I

r e-rpwpoc/v , Kar ar erpn

‘ mt Tas oSovs fleas, r as r e aM as Ka t r ag em xapcn as,

e’

rri. rev fl or a/Lev éxoficras. Apparently ém xapcn'

ae means, as Steinsays, those at right angles to the general course of the river, butth is nearly at right angles to the other roads. The course of the

river appears to have been straighter then than it is now.


at right angles. But his account cannot be acceptedas it stands . Whatever he saw and whatever h isaccuracy of observation and memory, not all of hisstory can be true . H is Babylon covers nearly 200

square miles ; its walls are over 50 miles long and

30 yds . thick and all but 1 20 yds . high ; i ts gates area m i le and a half apart . The area of London to-dayis no more than 1 30 square m iles , and the topmostpoint of St . Paul

’

s is barely 1 30 yds . high. Nank ingis the largest city-Site in China and its walls are thework of an Empire greater than Babylon ; but theymeasure less than 24 miles in circuit , and they are or

were,

l ittle more than 3o ft. thick and 7o ft. high .

1

Moreover,Herodotus

’

s account of the walls has tobe set beside a statement which he makes elsewhere

,

that they had been razed by Darius sixty or seventyyears before his visit .2 The destruction can hardlyhave been complete . But in any case Herodotus canonly have seen fragments easily m isinterpreted

,easily

explained by local ci cer onz as rel ics of something quiteunlike the facts.

Turn now to the actual remains of Babylon , asknown from surveys and excavations . We find a largedistrict extending to both banks of the Euphrates ,

which is covered rather irregularly by the mounds

L . Gaillard, Var ie'

tefs sinologioues, xvi (plan) and xxii i . pp . 8 , 23 5

(Chang-hai,1 898, Others give the figures a little differently,

but not so as to affect the argument.2 Hdt. iii . 1 59 . The theory that there were originally two parallel

outer walls, that Darius raz edone andHerodotus saw the other (Baumstark in Pauly-W issowa, Rea l-E ncy cl. i i . is meaningless. Therecould be no use in raz ing one and leaving the other, wh ich was almostas strong (Hdt. i . I t is, however, not quite certain thatHerodotus (i . 1 8 1 ) meant that there were two outer parallel walls.

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING 2 3

of many ruined buildings . Two sites in it areespecially notable . At its southern end is Birs Nimrud

l

and some adjacent mounds , anciently Borsippa ; herestood a huge temple of the god Nebo . Near its northend

,ten or eleven miles north of Borsippa ,

round Babiland Kasr, i s a larger w ilderness of ruin

,three miles

long and nearly as broad in extreme dimensions heretown-walls and palaces of Babylonian kings and templesof Babylonian gods and streets and dwelling-houseso f ordinary men have been detected and in part uncovered . Other signs of inhabitation can be tracedelsewhere in this district , as yet unexplored .

Not unnaturally,some scholars have thought that

this whole region represents the ancient Babylon andthat the vast walls of Herodotus enclosed it all. 1 Thisv iew , however, cannot be accepted . Quite apart fromthe considerations urged above , the region in questionis not square but rather triangular , and traces of walland ditch surrounding it are altogether wanting

,

though city-walls have survived elsewhere in thisneighbourhood and though nothing can wholly deletean ancient ditch . We have , in short , no good reason tobelieve that Babylon,

in any form or sense whatever,

covered at any time this large area .

On the other hand,the Special ruins of Babil and Kasr

and adjacent mounds seem to preserve both the nameand the actual remains of Babylon (fig. Here , on theleft bank of the Euphrates, are vast city-walls , oncefive or six mi leslong.

2 They may be described roughly

1 So Baumstark, art. Babylon in Pauly-W issowa, I I . 2696.

2 F. H . Weissbach , Stadtbild von B aby lon (Der alte Or ient, fasc . 5)R. Koldewey, Tempe!won B aby lon and Borsippa , plates i, i i ; S. Lang

don, E xpositor , 1 909, pp. 82 , 1 42 Hommel, Geogr . des alten Orients,

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING

as enclosing halfOf a square bisected diagonally by th e

river much as Herodotus writes there is good reason

to th ink that they had some smaller counterpart on th e

right bank,as yet scantily explored . Within thes e

walls were the palaces of the Babylonian kings ,

Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnez z ar (625 56 1 B. th e

temples of the national god Marduk or Merodach and

BABYLONM

new

FIG . 1 . (After Koldewey and others.)

0011w lines 1! wall

other Babylonian deities , a broad straight road,

Aiburschabu,running north and south from palaces to

temples,a stately portal spanning this road at the

I star Gate, many private houses in the Merkes

pp . 290, 33 1 E . Meyer , S i tz zcngsoer . prezcss. Akaa’

. 1 9 1 2 , p. 1 1 0 2 .

I am indebted to Dr. Langdon for references to some of the treatisesc ited here and below. I cannot share the unfavourable view whic his taken by Messrs. How and Wells

,the latest good editors of

Herodotus, of the views of these writers.


quarter, and an inner town-wall perhaps of earlier date.S treet and gate were built or rebuilt by Nebuchadnez z ar. He

,as he declares in various inscriptions ,

pav ed the causeway w ith limestone flags for theprocession of the Great Lord Marduk .

’

He madethe I star Gate ‘

w ith glazed brick and placed on itsthreshold colossal bronze bulls and ferocious serpentdragons ’

. Along the street thus built the statue ofM arduk was borne in solemn march on the BabylonianNew Year’s Day

,when the king paid yearly worship

to the god of his country.

l

Such are the remains of the city of Babylon , so faras they are known at present. They do not fit ill w i ththe words of Herodotus . We can detect in them thesemblance not indeed of one square but of two unequalhalf-squares

,divided by the river ; we can trace at least

one great street parallel to the river and others whichrun at right angles to it towards the river. If the brickdefences 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 ofBabylonian topography , the account of Herodotus isof very l ittle worth . But it is as good as most moderntravellers could compile, if they were let loose ina vast area of buildings

,w ithout plans

,w ithout instru

ments,and w ithout any notion that a scientific descrip

tion was expected of them .

The remains show also—and this is,more to our

purpose -the idea of the sacred processional avenuewh ich recurs in fifth-century Greece—and is indeed

Koldewey, Pflastersteine oon A ioursclzaozc (Leipz ig, Some

of the streets of Babylon are much older than 600 B . C . , but th is pointneeds to be worked out further .

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN I NG

beloved of architects in the most modern times. Hereis a germ of town-planning . But whether this layingout of streets extended beyond the main highways , isless clear. The Merkes excavations occas ionally showstreets meeting at right angles and at least one roughlyrectangular insula

, of 1 50 x 333 ft. But the adjoininghouse-blocks agree neither in size nor shape , and no

hint Seems to have yet come to light of a true chessboard pattern.

l

A little further evidence can be drawn from othe rMesopotamian sites . The city of Asshur had a long ,

broad avenue like the sacred road of Baby lon , but th eone insnt

'

a of its private houses which has yet beenexcavated

,planned and publi shed , shows no Sign o f

rectangular planning.

2 There is also l iterary evidenc ethat Sanher ib (765—68 1 D. C .) laid out a ‘ Kingsway100 ft . w ide to promote easy movement through h iscity of N Delitzsch has even credited theSargonid dynasty generally (7 22—625 B . C .) w ith a carefor the dwel lings of common men as well as of godsand of kings .3

I n conclusion,the mounds of Babil and Kasr and

others near them Seem to represent the Babylon alikeof fact and of Herodotus . I t was a Smaller city tha nthe Greek historian avers its length and breadth werenearer four than fourteen miles . But it had at least onestraight

,ample ,

and far—stretching highway which gaveSpace for the ceremonies and the processions , if no t

1 M'

tteilungen a'

er dentsclzen On'

ent-Gesellsclzafl 42 , Dec . 1 909 ,

pp . 7 , 1 9 ; 44, Dec . 1 9 1 0, p . 26.

2 M itt. a’

ezctsclz. Or ient-Gesell. 28, Sept. 1 905 ; 3 1 , M ay 1 906.

3 F. Delitz sch, Asuroanzpal and die assy r . Kultur seiner Zei t (Der

a/te Or ient, Leipz ig, p. 25 .

CHAPTER I I I

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING : FIRST EFFORTS

GREEK town-planning began in the great age of

Greece,the fifth century B. C. But that age had sc a nt

sympathy for such a movement, and its beginningswere crude and narrow. Before the middle of the

century the use of the processional highway h ad

established itself in Greece . Rather later,a real

system of town-planning,based on streets that crossed

at right angles,became known and practised . La ter

still,in the early fourth century

,the grow ing care for

town-l ife produced town by-laws and special magistra testo execute them . I n 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 c itywhich by itself means Greece to most of us , a nd

Sparta , the rival of Athens , remained wholly untouchedby it . Alike in the days of Themistocles and Peric lesand in all its later history

,Athens was an a lm ost

Oriental mixture of splendid public buildings w ith mean

and ill-grouped houses . An often-quoted saying of

Demosthenes puts the matter in its most favoura blel ight

‘The great men of old built Splendid edifices for theuse of the State , and set up noble works of art wh ichlater ages can never match . But in private l ifethey were severe and simple , and the dwell ing of an

Aristides or a Miltiades was no more sumptuous th an

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING 29

t hat of any ordinary Athenian citizen (Third OlynthiacO ration ,

This is that ‘ desire for beauty and economy’

whichPericles (or Thucydides) praised in the FuneralOration . I t 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 l ike a chaos of mud and

sewage than even the usual Greek road . Sparta wasw orse. There neither public nor private buildingswere admirable

,and the historian Thucydides turned

a si de to note the meanness of the town .

Nevertheless,the art of town-planning in Greece

probably began in Athens . The architect to whoma ncient writers ascribe the first step

,H ippodamus of

M i letus,

—born about or before 480 B. C.,

—seems tohave worked in Athens and in connexion with Atheniancities , under the auspices of Pericles . The exact natureof 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 w idestreets , and that he, first of all architects, made provisionfor

“

the proper grouping of dwelling-houses and alsopaid special heed to the combination of the differentparts of a town in a harmonious whole , centredround the market-place . But there seems to be noevidence for the statement sometimes made , that hehad any particular l iking for either a circular or asemicircular

,fan-shaped town-plan .

P i r aeus .(fig.

Three cities are namediias laid out by H ippodamus .

Aristotle tells us that he “planned the Piraeus,the port

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING

of Athens,with broad straight streets. He does n ot

add the precise relation of these streets to one anothe rIf

,however

,the results of recent German inqu i ri es

and conjectures are correct,and if thejr Show us h is

work and not—as is unfortunately very possible— th e

work of some later man , his design included streetsrunning parallel or at right angles to one another a nd

FIG . 2 .

rectangular blocks of houses ; the longer and presumably the more important streets ran parallel tothe Shore

,while shorter streets ran at right ang les

to them down to the quays. Here is a rectangu larscheme of streets

,though the outl ine of the who le

town is necessarily not rectangular (fig.

Tnnr zz .

Another town ascribed to H ippodamus is the colo nywhich the Athenians and others planted in 443 B. C. at

Thuri i in southern I taly,of which Herodotus himself


is said to have been one of the original colonists. I tsS i te has never been excavated

,and indeed one might

doubt whether excavation would Show the street plano f 443 B . C . or that of a later and possibly even of aRoman age, when the town was recolonized on theRoman sys tem . But the historian D iodorus, writingin the first century B. C. and no doubt embodying mucholder matter, records a pertinent detail . The town

,

he says , was divided lengthways by four streets andcrossways by three. Plainly

,therefore

,it had a

definite and rectangular street-planning,though the

brevity of the historian does not enable us to decidehow many house-blocks it had and how far the lesserstreets were symmetrical wi th these seven principalthoroughfares. I n most of the cases which we shallmeet in the following sections of th is treatise , thenumber of streets running straight or at right anglesis very much greater than the number assigned toThuri i. I may refer for example to the plans of

P riene,Miletus , and Timgad .

t oa’es.

A third city assigned to H ippodamus is Rhodes .This

,according to S trabo

,was laid out by ‘ the archi

teet of the Piraeus’

; according to others , it was builtround i ts harbour like the seats of an ancient theatreround 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 approx imate date of thebirth of H ippodamus. I t is conceivable but not altogether probable that H ippodamus was still planningtowns in his extreme old age, nor is it, on political

32 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNING

grounds, very likely that he would be planning in

Rhodes. As , however, we do not know the real da teof his birth , and as Strabo does not specifically ment ionhis name

,certainty is unattainable .

‘

If we cannot tell exactly how H ippodamus plann edcities or exactly which he planned

,still less do we

know how far town-planning on his or on any theo rycame into general use in his l ifetime or indeed befo rethe middle of the fourth century. Few Greek ci t ieshave been systematically uncovered

,even in part.

Fewer still have revealed street-planning which canbe dated previous to that time. I t does not follow ,

when we find streets in the ruins of an ancient ci ty,that they must belong to its earliest period. That is nottrue of towns in any age, modern or mediaeval, Romanor Greek. Some Greek cities were founded in earlytimes

,were rebuilt in the Macedonian period , and again

rebuilt in the Roman period. Without minute excava

On H ippodamus see K . F. Hermann, cle H ippodamo M'

lesio

(Marburg, 1 84 1 ) and Erdmann , P /ti lologus xli i . 1 93—22 7 and P ro

gramm P rotestant. Gymnasium z u Strassburg, 1 883 . AS will be seen,

I do not accept all Erdmann’s conc lusions. For the Piraeus see

Aristotle, P olitics, II. 8 p. 1 267 and IV . 1 1 p. 1 3 30. For

Thurii seeDiodorusX I I . 1 0. For Rhodes see Strabo 654 ! X IV . i i . 9E . Meyer, Gesclt . a

’

es Alt. iv. pp . 60, 1 99 rejec ts the tale. For plansof the Piraeus see Wachsmuth, Stadt Atlzen im Alter tlzum, ii . 1 3 4,and Curtius and Kaupert, Kar ten non A ttika plan 11 a by

M ilct fer . Foucart has adduced epigraphic reasons for dating thework of H ippodamus here to 480

—470 B . C . (journal des Savan ts,

1 907 , pp. 1 78 they are not conc lusive, but, if he be right, thediffi culty of assigning the P iraeus and Rhodes to the same arch itec tbecomes even greater. The town-plan of Piraeus given by GustavH irschfeld (B er ic/tte cler sa

‘

clzs. Ges . cler I/Vissensc/zaflen, 1 878, xxx. 1 )is not convinc ing, nor do I feel very sure even about M ilct fer

’s

results.


t ion it may be impossible to assign the town-plan of sucha place to its proper place among these three periods .We have

,however

,at Selinus in S icily and Cyrene

on the north coast of Africa,two cases which may

belong to the age of Hippodamus. They are worthdescribing

,Since they illustrate both the di fficulty of

reaching quite certain conclusions and also the systemwhich probably did obtain in the later fifth and the

early fourth century.

Selinus (fig.

At Selinus the I talian archaeologists discoveredsome years ago

,in the so-called Acropolis , a town

o f irregular, rudely pear-shaped outline w ith a distinctt hough not yet fully excavated town-plan. Two mainthoroughfares ran straight from end to end and crosseda t right angles (fig. the longer of these thoroughfares being just a quarter of a mile long and 30 ft .w ide . From these two main streets other narrowers treets (1 2—1 8 ft . w ide) ran off at right angles ; theresult, though not chess-board pattern , is a rectangulartown-plan . Unfortunately, it cannot be dated . Selinus

was founded in 648 B . C. ,was destroyed in 409 ,

thenreoccupied and rebuilt, and finally destroyed for everin 249 . I ts town-planning

,therefore

,might be as

early as the seventh century B . C. Or (and this is themost probable conclusion) it may date from the daysof Selinuntine prosperity just before 409 ,

when thecity was grow ing and the great Temple of Zeus orApollo 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

C

34 ANCIENT TOWN—PLANNING

town-planning and we may best refer it to the later pa rt

of the fifth century.

‘

FIG . 3 .

Koldewey and Puchstein, Die gr ieclz. Tempel i n Unteri talien and

Sicilien, p . 90, plan 29, from Cavallari Hulot and Fougeres, Selinonte,Paris, 1 9 1 0, pp . 1 2 1 , 1 68, 1 96. The latter writers assign the rebu ilding to Hermocrates, 408

—407 B . C. But our accounts of Hermoc rates

do not suggest that he rebuilt anything at Selinus of any sort, exceptdefences.

36 ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING

was one of the two roads above mentioned is not clea r .

But it is not probable , Since Pindar’s road seems hardly

to have been inside the ci ty at all . 1

I n these two cases and in one or two others wh ic hmight be noted from the same or later times

,the tow n

scheme includes rectangular elements w ithout a n y

strict resemblance to the chess-board pattern. The

dominant feature is the long straight street,of grea t

w idth and splendour, which served less as the ma inartery of a town than as a frontage for great buildingsand a route for solemn processions . Here , almost a s

in Babylon , we have the spectacular element wh i charchitects love , but which is , in itself, insufficient forthe proper disposition of a town . Long and amp lestreets

,such as those in question , might easily be com

b ined,as indeed they are combined in some mode rn

towns of southern Europe and Asia , w ith squal idand ill-grouped dwelling-houses. H ippodamus himselfaimed at something much better

,as Aristotle tells u s .

But it was not till after 3 50 B. c . or some approxima tedate , that dwelling-houses were actually arranged and

grouped on a definite system .

”

Smith and Porcher, D iscoveries at Cy rene plate 40 henc eStudnickza, Ky rene ( 1 890 , p. 1 67 , fig. and Malten ,

Ky r ene

(Berlin, 1 9 1 For Pindar’s reference see Pyth . v. 90 and p . 1 6 above .

Soluntum,near Palermo, on the north coast of Sic ily, was fo und

by Cavallari in 1 875 to exhibit a rectangular street-plan one m a instreet ran north and south along level ground and several lesserstreets lay at right angles to it mounting a hillside by means of steps(as at Priene, p. See the B ullettino a

’

ella Commissione cli

Antic/zitaeB elleAr ti in S icilca, viii . Palermo, August 1 8 7 5 . Cava l lari

h imself assigned this plan to the date when Soluntum was foundedwh ich is unfortunately uncertain—but only on the general ground that‘ in una c itta, una volta tracc iate le strade e d isposte le arterie di

ANCIENT TOW N -PLANN ING 3 7

I t was probably, however , in the first half of thefourth century that the Greek cities began to passby

-laws relating to the police,the scavenging and

the general public order of their markets and streets ,and to establish Agoranom i to control the markets andA stynom i to control the streets . These officials firsta ppear in inscriptions after 3 50,

but are mentioned

c ommunicaz ione, non e fac ile cambiarne la d isposiz ione generaleI attach less weight than he does to this reason. Soluntum was in

the main and by origin a Phoenic ian town , with a G reek colouring ;in 307 B. C . it was refounded for the discharged soldiers of Agathoc leslater still , in Roman times, it had the rank of

‘munic ipium most

of its ruins are generally considered to be of Roman date and smallobjects found in it are also mostlyRoman, and its street-plan may alsobe Roman . As the Bullettino is somewhat rare, I add a reducedplan (fig.


in literature somewhat earlier. An account of th e

Athenian constitution , ascribed formerly to Xenopho nand written (as is now generally agreed) about 4 30

424 B . C .,mentions briefly the prosecution of those wh o

built on to the public. land,that is (apparently), wh o

encroached upon the streets . But it is Silent as t o

specific officers, Astynomi or other. Plato,howeve r ,

in his Laws which must date a little earlier than h isdeath in 347 , alludes on several occasions to su c hofficers . They were to look after the private hou se s‘ in order that they may all be built according t o

laws’

, and to police and clean the roads and wate rchannels , both inside and outside of the city. Aprohibition of balconies leaning over the pub l i cstreets , and of verandas projecting into them , is a l somentioned in two or three writers of the fourth centu ryand is said to go back to a much earlier date , thoughi ts antiquity was probably exaggerated.

1

The municipal by-laws which these passages sug

gest clearly came into use before,though perhaps

not long before,the middle of the fourth centu ry.

They do not directly concern town-planning ; theyinvolve building regulations only as one among manysubjects

,and those regulations are such as might b e

,

and in many cases have been,adopted where tow n

planning was unknown . But they are natural for e

Plato,Laws 763 C, 7 79 C, &c . Aristotle, Atlz. P ol. 50 ; Arist. , Oec.

i i . 5 , p. 1 34; Xenophon , Atlz . P ol. iii. 4 ; Schol. toAeschines, i i i . 24. The

fac t that the word Astynomos occurs in Aeschylus does not just ifythe writer of an artic le in Pauly-Wissowa (Real-E ncy cl. ii. 1 8 70) instating that magistrates of th is title were already at work in the ear l ierpart of the fifth century ; the poet uses the noun in a general sen sefrom which it was afterwards spec ialized . Some of the regulat ionsrecur at Rome (p .


runners of an interest in town-planning. As in modernE ngland , so in fourth-century Greece ,

their appearances ugges ts the growth of a care for well-ordered townl ife a nd for municipal well-being which leads directlyto a m ore elaborate and methodical oversight of thetow n a s an organized combination of houses and groupso f h ou ses .A s we part from this early Greek town-planning

,we

m u st admit that altogether we know l ittle of it . Therew a s s uch a thing : among its main features was a carefo r s tately avenues : its chief architect was Hippodam u s. Thus much is clear. But save in so far asM i lc hhofer

’

s plans reproduce the Piraeus of B. C . 450

o r 400 ,we cannot discern either the shape or the

s i z e of the house-blocks, or the grouping adopted fora ny of the ordinary buildings, or the scheme of theo rd inary roads . We may even wonder whether suchth ings were of much account in the town-planning of

th a t period .

CHAPTER IV

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING : THE MACEDONIAN AG E,

330—1 30 B. C .

THE Macedonian age brought w ith it, if not a new,

at least a more systematic , method of town-plann ing.

That was the age when Alexander and his Macedon ianarmy conquered the East and his successors for seve ralgenerations ruled over western Asia

,when Macedonia ns

and Greeks alike flocked into the newly-opened wo rldand G raeco-Macedonian cities were planted in bewi ldering numbers throughout its length and breadth . M ostof these cities sprang up full-grown ; not seldom theirfirst citizens were the discharged Macedonian soldie ryof the armies of A lexander and his successors. The

map of Turkey in Asia is full of them . They a re

easily recognized by their names,which were often

taken from those of Alexander and his generals andsuccessors, their wives, daughters , and relatives . Thu s ,one of Alexander

’s youngest generals,afterwards

Seleucus I , sometimes styled Nicator , founded severaltowns called Seleucia

,at least three called Apamea

,

and others named Laodicea and Antiochia, thereb yrecording himself

,his I ranian w ife Apama , his mo ther

Laodice and his father Antiochus , and his successo rsseem to have added other towns bearing the sam e

name. I ndeed , two-thirds of the town-names wh ic hare prominent in the later history of Asia Minor andSyria

,date from the age of Alexander and h is

Macedonians .

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING 4 ;

Many discoveries Show that these towns were laidout w ith a regular ‘chess-board ’ street-plan . Thatm ethod of town-planning now made definite entry intothe European world. No architect or statesman isrecorded to have invented or systematically encouragedi t . Alexander himself and his architect, one D inocrateso f Rhodes or perhaps of Macedonia, seem to haveemployed it at Alexandria in Egypt

,and this may

have set the fashion . Seven years after Alexander’s

death it recurs at N icaea in Bithynia,which was

refounded by one ofAlexander’s successors in 323 B . C .

a ndwas laid out on this fashion . But no ancient writercredits either the founder or the architect ofAlexandriaor the founder of Nicaea wi th any particular theoryon the subject . I f the chess-board fashion becomesnow , with seeming suddenness, the common—althoughnot the universal—rule , that is probably the outcomeof the developments sketched in the last chapter.Approximations to chess-board planning had been hereand 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 generalswho founded , and the discharged soldiers who formedthe first inhabitants of so many among these towns.M il itary men are seldom averse to rigidi ty. I t is worth

noting, in this connexion , thatwhen chess-board planningcame into common use in the Roman Empire, manyperhaps most—of the towns to which it was appliedwere ‘

coloniae’ manned by time-expired soldiers . So

,


too , in the Middle Ages and even in comparati v e lymodern times , the towns laid out w ith rectangu la rstreet-plans in northern I taly

,in Provence

,in th e

Rhine Valley,are for the most part due in some w a y

or other to military needs. 1 I n our own days re c tangular planning is a dominant feature of the large stand newest industrial towns. They are adaptingmilitary device to the purposes of an industrial age .

FIG . 6. GENERAL OUTLINE OF PRIENE (after Zippelius) . A, B, c .

Gates. D, E, F, H, M ,P . Temples (see fig. G . Agora, Market.

1 . Counc il House. K . Prytaneion. L, Q . Gymnasium. N . Theatre.

0 . Water-reservoir. R . Race-course.

S ince the invention of artillery, the rec tangular street-plan hasbeen regarded by soldiers as useful in defend ing the streets of a town.

Aristotle, however, expressly observes in the P oli tics that, in street

warfare, tortuous lanes were far better than straight avenues for thedefence, and he recommends that the rectangular pattern should beadopted only ‘ in parts and in places ’

, though he does not explainhow this would work out (P oli tics, iv. 1 I , p.

From the pictured

D THE GERMAN EXCAVATIONS OF 1 895- 8.

ius (Leipz ig : Teubner) .


B r ieuc (figs . 6

The best instance of the new system is not perhapsth e most famous. Pr iene was a little town on the

e a s t coast of the Aegean. The high ridge of Mycalet ow ered above i t ; Miletus faced it across an estuary ;S a mos stood out seawards to the west . In its first dimda y s i t had been perched on a crag that juts out fromth e overhanging mountain ; there i ts l ife began , weh a rdly know when

,in the dawn of Greek history. But

i t had been worn down in the fifth century between theu pper and the nether millstone of the rival powers ofS amos and Miletus. Early in the Macedonian age

i t was refounded. The old Acropolis was given up .

I n stead,a broad sloping terrace, or more exactly a series

o f terraces,nearer the foot of the hill , was laid out with

publ ic buildings—Agora, Theatre , Stoa, Gymnasium ,

T emples,and so forth—Land w ith private houses . The

w hole covered an area of about 750 yds. in length and

500 yds . in w idth . Priene was, therefore , about halfthe size of Pompe i i (p . I t had , as its excavatorsc alculate , about 400 individual dwel ling-houses and apopulation possibly to be reckoned atI n the centre was the Agora or market-place, w ith

a temple and other large buildings facing on to it ;round them were other public buildings and somee ighty blocks of private houses

,each block measuring

on an average 40 x 50 yds . and containing four or fivehouses. The broader streets, rarely more than 23 ft .

w ide,ran level along the terraces and parallel to one

another. Other narrower streets,generally about 10 ft .

w ide, ran at right angles up the slopes , w i th steps likethose of the older Scarborough or ofAss isi . 1 The whole

Compare Soluntum ,p. 36, n. 2 .

44 ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN I NG

area has not yet been explored and we do not knowwhether the houses were smaller or larger, ric h eror poorer, in one quarter than in another, but the

regularity of the street-plan certainly extended o verthe whole Site.Despite this reasoned and systematic arrangement , no

striking artistic effects appear to have been attempted.

No streets give vistas of stately buildings. N0 squares ,

save that of the Agora— I 20 by 230 ft . w ithin an

encircling colonnade—provide open spaces where largerbuildings might be grouped and properly seen . Openspaces

,indeed , such as we meet

,in mediaeval and

Renaissance I taly or in modern English towns of

eighteenth century construction,were very rare in

Priene. Gardens, too , must have been almost entirelyabsent. I n the area as yet uncovered , scarcely a singledwelling-house possessed any garden ground or yard .

l

M i letus (fig.

The Skill of German archaeologists has revealedwhat town-planning meant in a small town reb uiltin the Alexandrine period. No other even approx i

mately complete example has been as yet uncoveredon any other site. But spade-work at the neighbouringand more famous city of Miletus has uncovered sim i larstreet-planning there. I n one quarter

,the only one

yet fully excavated , the streets crossed at right anglesand enclosed regular blocks of dwelling-houses measur

ing 3 2 x 60 yds . (according to the excavators) but subdivided into blocks of about 32 yds. square (fig.

Wiegand and Schrader, P r iene, E rgebnissea'

er Ausgraoung in den

jaltren 1 895—8 (Berlin, Professor P . Gardner gave a good

account to the Town-PlanningConference (P roceedings, pp . 1 1 2—1

I am indebted to him for two of my illustrations.


These blocks differ somewhat in shape from tho s e of

Priene,which are more nearly square ; whethe r th ey

differ in date is more doubtful . They are certain ly not

earlier than the Macedonian era , and one G e rm anarchaeologist places the building or rebuilding o f thisquarter of Miletus after that of Priene and in a

‘

la teHellenistic ’ and apparently Roman period . Th e re is

unquestionably much Roman work in Miletus ; th ereseems , however, no sufficient reason for ascribing the

house-blocks shown on fig. 7 to any date but some partof the Macedonian period . Though di fferently sha ped,they do not differ very greatly in actual area from

those of Priene. They are somewhat smaller, but o nlyby about 60 sq . yds . in each average-sized plot. l

A lexana’r ia .

A yet more famous town , founded by Alexanderhimself, is definitely recorded by ancient writers to havebeen laid out in the same quasi-chess-board fashion , w ithone long highway

,the Canopic Street, running through

it from end to end for something like four m iles.2

Unfortunately the details of the plan are not knownwith any certainty. Excavations were conducted at

the instigation of Napoleon I I I in 1 866 by an Arabarchaeologist

,Mahmud Bey el Fallaki , and , according

to him , showed a regular and rectangular scheme inwhich seven streets ran east and west while thirteenran north and south at right angles to them . The

house-blocks divided by these streets were thought tovary somewhat in size but to measure in general about

Wiegand, Aonancllungen a'

er B er liner Akaa'

emie, 1 9 1 I , AnhangArc/tool. Anz ezger , 1 9 1 1 , 420 foll.

2 Strabo, xvi i . 793.


300 x 330 metres.1 More recent research

,however

,has

no t c onfirmed Mahmud’

s plans. The excavations of

M r . H ogarth and M . Botti suggest that many of hisli nes are wrong and that even his Canopic Street isin c o r rectly laid down . Mr. Hogarth

,indeed

,concludes

th a t‘ it is hopeless now to Sift his work ; those who

w ou ld treat the site of Alexandria scientifically mustign o re him and start a

’onooo

’

. More recent excavation ,c a r r ied out by Dr. Noack in 1 898

—9 ,seemed to Show

th a t the ancient streets which can now be tracedb e n eath Alexandria belong to a Roman age,

thoughth ey may of course follow older lines , and that, if somei tems in Mahmud

’

s plans are possibly right,the errors

and omissions are Serious . We may accept as certainth e statement that Alexandria was laid out w ith are ctangular town-plan ; we cannot safely assume thatM ahmud has given a faithful picture of it .

2

P riene,Miletus

,and Alexandria supply more or less

w ell-known instances of Macedonian town-planning.

They can be reinforced by a crowd of less famousexamples , attested by l iterature or by actual remains .O ne of the most characterist ic is known to us froml iterature, Nicaea in Bithynia , founded by one of the

M acedonians in 3 1 6 B . C. and renamed by another some

Mahmud Bey, M e’

moire sur l’ancienne Alexana

'

rie (Copenhagen,1 8 7 2) Néroutsos Bey, L

’

ancienne Alexana'

n'

e (Paris,2 D . G . Hogarth, Arc/zaeological Repor t of tlze Egypt E xploration

P una’

,1 894 5 , p . 28

,and H ellenicjourna l, xix. 3 26 F. Noack

,A tlzen .

Ill i tteil. xxv. pp . 23 2 , 23 7 . Dr. Noack thought that hisresults confirmed Mahmud ; to me, as to some others, they seem

rather to yield the conc lusions indicated in the text.

ANCI ENT TOWN-PLANNING

years later in honour of his w ife N icaea . S t ra bo ,writing about A.D. 1 5 , describes it and his descriptionno doubt refers to arrangements older than the Roma ns .I t formed , he says, a perfect square in which each s idemeasured four stades

,a little over 800 yds. I n each

side—apparently in the middle of each side—there w as

one gate,and the streets w ithin the walls were laid out

at right angles to one another. A man who stood ata certain spot in the middle of the Gymnasium cou ldsee straight to all the four gates.1 Here is the chessboard pattern in definite form

,though the cen tral

portion of the city may have been laid out underthe influence of spectacular effect rather than of

geometry.

S icy on,Tli coes

,é ‘

c .

Another Macedonian town-plan may be found a t

S icyon,a l ittle west of Corinth . Th is old Greek c i ty

was rebuilt by Demetrius Poliorcetes about 300 B . C . ,

and is described by a Greek writer of the first centuryB . C . as possessing a regular plan and roads crossing a t

right angles. The actual remains of the site , exploredin part by English and French archaeologists early i nthe nineteen th century

,show some streets which run

w ith mathematical straightness from north-east to

south-west and others which run from north-west to

south-east. 2 These streets might , indeed, date fromthe period when Sicyon was the chief town of the

Roman province ofAchaia,the period (that is) between

the overthrow of Corinth in 1 46 B . C. and its restorationjust a century later. But that was not an epoch when

2 Strabo, 565 , 566.

2 Diodorus Sic . xx. 1 02 E xpedi tion scientifique cle M ar i e, areki t.

et sculpture, iii ( 1 8 plate LXXXI.


s u c h rebui lding is l ikely to have been carriedth ro ugh . Friendly as the Republican governmento f R ome showed itself in other ways to Hel las,th ere is no reason to think that it spent moneyo n town-planning in Hellenic cities . I t is far more

p rob a ble that the town-plan of S icyon dates from the

M a c edonians .To the same Macedonian epoch we may perhaps

a s c r ibe the building or rather the rebuilding of BoeotianTh ebes

,which one who passes for a contemporary

w r i ter under the name of Dicaearchus , describes as

re c ently divided up into straight streets To thesam e period Strabo definitely assigns the newer towno f Smyrna

,lying in the plain close to the harbour. I t

w a s due,he says

,to the labours of the Macedonians

,

A n tigonus,and Lysimachus.2 We may perhaps assign

to the same period the town-planning of Mitylene inL esbos

,which Vitruvius mentions as so splendid and

so unhealthy, were it not that h is explanation of itsunhealthiness suggests rather a fan-shaped outl ine thana square. I t was

,he says

,intolerable , whatever w ind

m ight blow . With a south w ind, the w ind of dampand rain , every one was i ll . With a north-west

w ind , every one coughed . With a north w ind,no one

c ould stand out of doors for the chilliness of itsb lasts .3 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 .I n other cases the same planning was probably

1 Dicaearchus, p. 1 43 .

2 Strabo, 646.

2 V itruvius, i . 6.

D


adopted,although the evidence as yet known show s

only a rectangular plan of main streets , such a s w e

have met in Pre-Macedonian Greece . I n Macedon iaitself

,Thessalonika , laid out perhaps about 3 1 5 B . c . ,

had at least one main street running southw a rdsto the sea and two more running east and west a t r igh tangles to that.1 I n Asia two Syrian towns

,wh ich

occupy sites closed to Hellenic culture be foreAlexander

,may serve as examples. Apamea on

the Orontes was built by the Macedonians,r ose

forthwith to importance , and retained its vigoro usprosperity through the Roman Empire ; in A. D . 6 i twas

‘ numbered’

by Sulpicius Quirinius, then the

governor of Syria , and the census showed as many as

citizens settled in the ci ty and its adjacent‘ territory ’

. I ts ruins seem to be mainly earlier th anthe Romans , and its streets may well date from i ts

Macedonian founders . I n outline it is an irregularoblong

,nearly an English mile in length and varying

in width from half to two-thirds of a m i le . A broadand straight street

,l ined throughout wi th colonnades ,

runs from end to end of its length and passes at leastfive great buildings

,which seem to be the temples and

palaces of the Seleucid kings. Two other streets crossthis main street at right angles. Whether the sma llerthoroughfares took the same lines can be determ inedonly by excavation . I t would be a gentle guess tothink so.

z

Further south , on the edge of the Hauran , stood thetown of Gerasa. This too

,l ike Apamea

, was bui l t by1 Tafrali, Topograplzie clc mess. pp. 1 2 1 foll. and plan.

2 E . Sachau, Reise in Sy r ien p. 76 Mommsen , Epfiemeris

epigr . iv, p . 5 1 4, and M on. Ancyr . (ed. p . 540 .


the M acedonians and flourished not only in their daysbut du ring the following Roman age . I ts general outl ine was ovoid , its greatest diameter three quarters of

a mile , i ts area some 2 35 acres—nearly the same w ithRoman Cologne and Roman Cirencester. Its streetsresembled those of Apamea. A colonnaded highway

FIG . 1 0. (After G . Schumacher. )

ran st raight through from north to south ; two otherstreets crossed at right angles

,and its ch ief public

buildi ngs,the Temple of the Sun and three other

temples,two theatres and two public baths , stood near

these three streets (fig. Again the evidence provesrectangular town-planning in broad outline ; excavationalone can tell the rest. 1

In the towns just described a distinctive feature is

1 Zei tscltrzf t a’

es a’

eutsclxen P alc'

istina Vereins,xxv ( I plate 6

Badeker, P alestine and Sy ria p . 1 40 . For the neighbouringBostra , see p. 1 36.

5 2 ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN I NG

the ‘

clIess-board’ pattern of streets and rectangula r

house-blocks . That,of course

,is the feature which

most concerns us here . I t may not have looked so

predominant to their builders and inhabitants . The

towns which the Macedonians founded were not seldomrich and large ; several Iwere the capitals of powerfuland despotic rulers. I n such towns we expect greatpublic bui ldings

,temples, palaces. I t is not surpris ing

if sometimes those who reared them cared solely forthe spectacular grouping of magnificent structures andforgot the private houses and the general plan of thetown .

One such instance from the Macedonian age ,perhaps

the most instructive which we could ever hOpe to get ,1

is Pergamum,in the north-west of Asia Minor. Th is

has been thoroughly explored by German science i ts

remains are superb ; its chief buildings date from an

age when town-planning had grown familiar to theGreek world . About 300 B . C. i t was a hill-town wherea Macedonian chief could bestow a war-chest. I t grewboth populous and splendid in the third and secondcenturies B . C. under the Attalid kings ; later builders ,Augustus or Trajan or other, added little ei ther to i tsgeneral design or to its architectural glory. The

dominant idea was that of a semi-circle of greatedifices

,crowning the crest and inner slopes of a high

crescent-shaped ridge. Near the northern and highestend of this ridge stood the palace of the Attalid princes,

1 Ephesus,refounded by Lysimachus about 28 1 B . C . , might perhaps

be another. But the repeated excavations there, though they havetaught us much about the temples and other large edifices of the

great c ity, seem to have left the streets comparatively unexplored .

54 ANCI ENT TOWN -PLANN I NG

apparently dates from one of the Attal id rulers . I t isimperfect. But we can recognize some of the i tems fo rwhich i t provided . Houses which fell or threatened tofall on to the public street

,or which otherwise became

ruinous, could be dealt w ith by the Astynomi if the irowners failed to repair them ,

these magistrates wereto make good the defects themselves and to recover thecost , and a fine over and above it, from the owners i f

the Astynomi neglected their duty , the higher magistrates , the Strategi , were to take up the matter. Streetswere to be cleaned and scavenged by the sameAstynom i . Brick-fields were expressly forbiddenw ithin the city. The widths of roads outside the townwere fixed and owners of adjacent land were held liablefor their repair, and there was possibly some Sim ilarrule

,not preserved on the inscription

, for roads insidethe walls ; at Priene, it seems , these latter were in thecare of the municipality. There were provisions , too,for the repair of common walls which divided housesbelonging to two owners

,and also for the prevention

of damp where two houses stood side by side ona slope and the wall of the lower house stood again stthe soil beneath the upper house .

1

These rules are very like those which were com inginto use before 330 B. C . (p. Only

,they are more

elaborate,and it is significant that the inscriptions

begin in Macedonian and later days to give more andfuller deta ils as to the character of these laws and as tothe existence in many cities of officials to execute them .

I t is not surprising to find that Roman legislat ion of

the time of Caesar and the early Empire applies these1 Kolbe, A tlzen. Ill i ttei l. xxvu . 47 and xxix. 75 H itz ig, Zei tsc/zr ift

der Sam'

gny-Stiftung, roman . Abteilung xxvi . 433 .

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN I NG 5 5

o r v ery similar rules to the local government of theR o man municipali ties of the Empire (p.

S o common in the Macedonian world was the town

p la nning which has been described above, that thel i te rature of the period , even in its casual phrases andin c idental Similes

,speaks of towns as being normally

p lanned in this fashion. Two examples from two verydifferent authors w ill suffice as illustration. Polybius

,

w ri ting somewhere about B. C . 1 50,described in well

k nown chapters the scheme of the Roman camp , andhe concludes much as follows : ‘This being so, thew hole outline of the camp may be summed up as rightangled and four-sided and equal-sided

,while the details

of i ts street-planning and its general arrangement areprecisely parallel to those of a city (VI . 3 1 , Hewas comparing the Greek town , as he knew i t in hisown country

,w ith the encampment of the Roman

army ; he found in the town the aptest and simplestparallel which he could put before his readers. Amuch later writer, l iving in a very different environmentand concerned w ith a very different subject

,fell never

theless under the influence of the same ideas . Despitehis ‘ sombre scorn ’

for things Greek and Roman ,St. john, when he w ished to figure the Holy City

jerusalem ,centre of the New Heaven and New Earth

,

pictured it as a city lying foursquare , the length aslarge as the breadth

,and entered by twelve gates ,

‘onthe east three gates , on the north three gates , on the

south three gates , and on the west three gates .’ 1

1 Revelation xxi . I 3 , 1 6. Some of the details are, no doubt, drawnfrom the later chapters of Ezekiel, but the difference between the twowriters is plain.


The instances and items cited in the precedingparagraphs lie w ithin the l imits of the Greek world andof the Roman Empire. We might perhaps wish to

pursue our speculations and ask whether th is vigorou s

system influenced foreign lands,and whether th e

Macedonian army carried the town-plan of their age ,

in more or less perfect form,as far as their conquest s

reached . Alexander settled many Soldiers in landswhich were to form h is eastern and north-easternfront iers , as if against the central-asiatic nomads .

Merv and Herat,Khokand and Kandahar,1 have been

thought—and,it seems

,thought w ith some reason—to

date from the Macedonian age and in their first periodto have borne the name Alexandria . But no AurelStein has as yet uncovered their ruins

,and speculation

about them is mere speculation .

1 See p. 1 45 below.

CHAPTER V

I TALIAN TOWN-PLANNING . THE ORIGINS

I F Greek and Macedonian town-planning are fairlyw e l l k nown

,the Roman Empire offers a yet larger mass

of c e rtain facts,both in I taly and in the provinces .

Th e beginnings,naturally

,are vei led in obscurity. W e

c an trace the system in full work at the outset of theE m p i re ; we cannot trace the steps by which it grew .

E v i dences of something that resembles town-planningon a rectangular scheme can be noted in two or threeco rners of early I talian history— first in the prehistoricB ro nze Age

,then in a very much later Etruscan

tow n,and thirdly on one or two Sites of middle I taly

c on nected w ith the third or fourth century B . C . Theseev idences are scanty and in part uncertain

,and their

bearing on our problem is not always clear, but theyc la im a place in an account of I talian town-planning .

To them must be added,fourthly

,the important

evidence which points to the use of a system closelyak in to town-planning in early Rome itself.

T/te Ter r emar e (fig. 1 I ) .

(i) W e begin in the Bronze Age ,somewhere between

1 400 and 800 B . C. , amidst the so-called Terremare. Morethan a hundred of these strange settlements have beenexamined by Pigorini , Chierici , and other competentI talians . Most of them occur in a well-defined districtbetween the Po and the Apennines , w ith Piacenza at

58 ANC IENT TOWN-PLANN ING

its west end and Bologna at its east end. Some h a vealso been noted on the north bank of the Po n ea r

Mantua , both east and west of the Mincio , and tw o o r

three elsewhere in I taly. Archaeologically , they a ll

belong to the Bronze Age ; they seem ,further

,to b e

the work of a race distinct from any previous dwelle rsin North I taly

,which had probably j ust moved so u th

from the Danubian plains . At some time or o th erthis race had dwelt in lake-villages. They were n owsettled on dry ground and far away from lakes—one of

their hamlets is high in the Apennines,nearly ft .

above the sea . But they still kept in the Terrem a rethe 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. At Castellazzo diFontanellato

,a little west of Parma , are the vestiges of

a settlement which,w ith its defences, covered an area

of about forty-three acres . I n outline it was four-sided ;its east and west sides were parallel to one another, andthe whole resembled a rectangle which had been pulleda trifle askew . Round it ran a solid earthen rampart,50 ft . broad a t the base and strengthened w ith woodwork (plan , B) . I n front of the rampart was a wet

ditch (A) , 100 ft. w ide , fed w ith fresh water from a

neighbouring brook by an inlet at the south-westerncorner (C) and emptied by an outfall on the east (D) .One wooden bridge gaVe access to this artificial is landat its southern end (E) . The area within the rampart,a little less than thirty acres in extent , was dividedinto four parts by two main streets , which would haveintersected at right angles had the place been strictlyrectangular ; other narrower streets ran parallel to


th e se m ain thoroughfares . On the east side (F) was asm a l l c itadel —a rx or templum—w i th ditch , ramparta nd b ridge of its own (G , H) in this were a trench ands om e pits (K) which seemed by their contents to bec o n nected w ith ritual and religion . Outside the whole

Mem es

FIG . 1 1 . TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAz z o DI FONTANELLATO.

(L ,M) were two cemeteries

,platforms of urns set

curiously like the village itself,and also a l ittle burning

gna t.1 The population of the village is necessari ly

1 The literature of the Terremare is very large. The resultsobtained up to 1 894 were summarized by F. von Duhn in the [Veue


doubtful . A German writer,Nissen

,has reckoned i t

at four or five thousand,men

,women and chi ldre n

together,crowded into small huts. But this estima te

may be too high . I n any case,many of the Terrema re

are much smaller.These Terremare bear a strong likeness to the laterI talian town-planning

,and they are usually taken to b e

the oldest discoverable traces of that system . Th ismeans that the I talian town-planning was derived fromother sources besides Greece or the East

,Since the

Terremare are far older than H ippodamus or evenNebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib (pp . 23 , I t m ustbe added that our present knowledge does not al lowus to follow the actual development of the Terremareinto historic times

,and to l ink them closely with the

later civilization of Central I taly . When some modernscholars call the men of the Terremare by the nam e

‘ I tal ici they express a hOpe rather than a prov enfact. I t may be safer

,for the moment , to avoid that

name and to refrain from theories as to the exa ctrelation between prehistoric and historic . But we

Heidelberg”jalzroitc/zer , iv. 1 44 the best recent accounts are by

T. E . Peet, Stone and B ronze Ages in I taly (Oxford, chaps. 1 4

and 1 7 , from wh ich fig. 1 1 is taken, and R. Munro, P alaeolit/zic

M an and Ter ramara Settlements (Edin . ,pp. 29 1

-48 7 and

plates xxxiii foll . A good brief sketch is given by M r. H . S . Jones,Companion toRoman I f istory , pp . 4

- 6. One point in the arrangement

seems not quite c lear. I t is generally stated that the trapezoidal outline was adopted in order to allow the water to enter the ditch froma running stream and to part easily into two channels (fig. 1 Thatis quite intelligible. But

,if so, one would expec t the outlet to be at

the opposite end,and not (as it ac tually is) in the middle of one Side,

where it would short-c ircuit the current. (M r. H . S. Jones seems tohave confused inlet and outlet.)

62 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNI NG

been laid out at once,and the smaller remains seem to

Show that th is was done by Etruscans . I n the fou r thcentury the place was sacked by the Gauls , and thoughthere was later occupation ,1 its extent is doubtful . 2

Further excavat ion is,however, needed to c on

firm this generally accepted interpretation of the

place. Nothing has been noted elsewhere in Etru r iaor its confines to connect the Etruscans w i th a ny

rectangular form of town-plan . At Vei i,for example ,

most of the Etruscan city has lain desolate and u n

occupied ever since the Romans destroyed it,but the

site shows no vestige of streets crossing at righ tangles or of oblong blocks of houses. At Vetulon iathe excavated fragment of an Etruscan ci ty Show sonly curving and irregular streets. 3 Nor is there realreason to believe that the ‘Etruscan teaching ’ learntby Rome included an art of town-planning (p. 7 1 ) orthat

,as a recent French writer has conjectured

,the

Etruscans brought any such art wi th them from theEast and communicated it to the West. We mustconclude that at Marzabotto we have a piece of ev i

dence which we cannot Set into its proper historicalframework . We might perhaps call it an early blendof Greek and I talian methods and compare it w ithNaples (p . I t is odd that four out of sevenhouse-blocks should measure just under 1 20 Romanft . in w id th and thus approximate to a figure which

1 Arc/zaeologi cal/ournal, 1 903 , p. 23 7 .

2 Briz io, M onumenti Anticlzi , i . 25 2 , superseding Goz zadini’s Antica

Necropoli a M arz abotto (Bologna, 1 865—70) G renier, B ologne

villano'oienne &c . (Paris, 1 9 1 2) p . 98 . Compare Autltor i ty and

Arcltaeology , pp . 305 , 306.

2 Noti z ie clegli Scam'

1 895 , p . 2 7 2 Durm,B aukunst a

’

er E tr . p . 39.

ANCI ENT TOWN-PLANN ING 63

w e m eet often elsewhere in the Roman world (p .

Bu t it would be well to learn more of the plan byfu rther excavation.

P ompezz (fig.

( i i i) A third piece of evidence can be found ona s ite which historians and novelists alike connectma in ly w i th the Roman Empire , but which dates backto the days of the early or middle Republic. Pompeiibegan in or before the Sixth century B . C. as an Oscanc i ty . For a while,

we hardly know when,i t was ruled

by E truscans . Later, about 420 B . C it was occupiedby S amnites . Finally

,it became Roman ; i t was

refou nded in 80 B. C. as a ‘ colonia ’ and repeopled byso l d i ers discharged from the armies of Sulla. I nA . D . 79 it reached its end in the disaster to which itowes its fame . I ts l ife

,therefore

,was long and full

of destruction,re-building , enlargement. I ts architec

tural history is naturally hard to follow . Many of itsbu i ldings

,however

,can be dated more or less roughly

by the style of their ornament or the character of theirmaterial

,and the l ines of its streets suggest some con

jec tures as to its growth which deserve to be statedeven though they may confl ict w ith the receivedopinions about Pompeii . I t w ill be understood

, of

course , that these conjectures , l ike all speculations onPompeii

,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 .

1

1 For recent plans of Pompei i the reader may consult the second

edition ( 1 908) of August Mau’

s P ompei i , or the fifth edition ( 1 9 1 0) ofhis Fri /trer a

’

urclz P ompei i , re-edited byW . Barthel. A plan on a large

64 ANCIENT TOW N-PLANN ING

As we know it at present, Pompeu is an irregula roval area of about 160 acres, planted on a sma l lnatural hill and girt wi th a stone wall nearly two m ile s

in circumference (fig. On the west there wa s

originally access to the sea , and on this side the w alls

have disappeared or have not been yet uncovered . N ea r

th is end of the town is the Forum , w ith the princ ipa l

temples and public buildings round it. At the eas t

FIG . 1 3 . (T Temple. The area of the supposed originalsettlement is outl ined in black. )

end of the town , nearly 1 200 yds. from the westernextremity

,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 lessdistinct , but the Strada S tab iana certainly ran fromwall to wall . While there is some appearance of

scale isgiven in the last part of CM . iv ( there are also occasionalplans in the Notiz ie a

’

egli Scavi . See also C. Weichardt, P ompei i nor

a’

er Zersto'

rung (Leipz ig,

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING 65

s ym m e try in the streets generally,i t does not go very

fa r t h ere is hardly a right angle, or any close approachto a r ight angle

,at any street corner.

I t i s generally held,as Mau has argued

,that the

w h o le town was laid out at once , perhaps during theE t ru s can period

,on one plan of streets crossing at

r igh t angles . Two principal streets, those now styledth e S trada di Mercurio and the Strada di Nola

,are

c o n s i dered to be the main streets of this earliest town

pla n ,and to give it its general direction . A third

m a in street,the Strada S tabiana ,

which cuts obliquelya c ro ss from the Vesuvian to the S tabian Gate andm a r s the supposed symmetry of this town-plan

,is

as c ribed to the influence of a small natural depressiona lo ng which i t runs

,while a small area east of the

F o rum,which also breaks loose from the general

sch eme,is thought to have been laid out abnormally

in order to remedy the effect of this obl iquity .

1

This theory is open to objections . I n the first placethe streets (even apart from those j ust east of theF orum) do not really form one symmetrical plan .

Region VI fi ts very ill w ith Regions I and I I I . Bothindicate systematic planning . But Region VI is laidout in oblong blocks 1 10 ft . w ide and either 3 10 ft. or

480 ft . long, while Regions I and I I I are made up of

approximately square blocks about 200 ft. each way .

M oreover,the orientation of the blocks is different .

Those in Region V I follow the lines of the Strada diMercurio ; those of Regions I and I I , and perhapsalso ofRegion V , are dominated by the Strada S tabiana .

Yet there is no obvious reason why this difference1 M au, Fri /tr” p. 5 , um die Schiefwinkeligkeit z u ver

mindern .

’ Truly, a very inadequate reason.

1 494 E

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANNING

should not have been avoided ; i t results , indeed , inawkward corners and inconvenient spaces . Nor, aga i n ,

can we accept as in any degree adequate the cau seassigned by Man for the odd orientation of the stree tsnext to the east side of the Forum .

These streets which lie round and east of th e

Forum suggest a different development . Pompe i imay have begun w ith a little Oscan town planted inwhat became its south-western corner

,near the Wate r

Gate and the Forum,w ithin the area of Regions I I

and IV. Here is a little network of streets,abou t

300 by 400 yds . across (25 acres) , which harmoniz es i llw i th the s treets in the rest of the town , which l i esclose to the river-haven on the Same, which includesthe Forum and Basilica—probably the oldest publ icsites

,though not the oldest surviving structures , in

Pompeii—and which is large enough to have formedthe greater part or even the whole of a prehistori ccity. The earliest building as yet excavated atPompei i , the Doric Temple , with i ts precinct now

known as the Forum Triangulare , stood on the edgeof this area looking out from its high cliff over theplain of the Sarno . Originally this Temple may havestood just w ithin the first town-wall , or perhaps j ustwithout it , sheltered by the precipice which it crowns .

This area has all the appearance of an ‘Altstadt Nodoubt it has been much altered by later changes . I nparticular

,Forum and Basilica have grown far beyond

their first proportions , and the buildings which sur

round them have been added,altered , enlarged out of

all resemblance to the original plan . Nevertheless,

this theory seems to account better than any other forthis curious little corner of streets that are hardly

ANC IENT TOWN -PLANN ING 67

regu lar even in their relations to one another and are

w h o l ly irreconcilable to the rest of the town .

R ound this primitive city grew up the greaterP om pe ii . The growth must have been rather by twoo r three distinct accretions than a gradual and cont in u ous development . At present we cannot traceth e se stages. To do that we must wait till the excav a t i ons can be carried deeper down

,and till the other

h a lf of the city has been uncovered,or at least till the

l in es of i ts streets and the shapes of its house-blocksh a v e been determined

,l ike those of Priene (p . by

special inquiry. All that is as yet certain is thatR egions I , I I I , V , and V I were la id out, and theirh ou ses were (in part at least) in existence before

p erhaps long before—80 B. C.,when the Sullan colony

w a s planted,

1 and we see also that Region V I is

p l anned differently from I and I I I .Another fact claims notice. The town-planning of

Pompeii is in the main trapezoidal , not rectangular.Ne i ther its oblongs

,nor its squares

,nor i ts street

crossings exhibit true right angles,though many of

the rooms and peris tyles in the private houses are

regular enough . I n this feature Pompeu resemblesthe trapezoidal outlines of the Terremare (fig . I tresembles also much Roman military work , both of

Republican and of Imperial date,which disregards the

strict right angle and accepts squares and oblongswh ich‘ are

,so to say, askew . The motive of the

Terremare is supposed to have been , as I have saidabove, that of providing an easy flow for the water inthe encircling moat. The motive of various mili tary

1 Region V I contains an anc ient column of the sixth century B. C.

(Mau, Fi'

l/trer , p. I but this may not be in si tu.

E 2


camps may perhaps be found rather in a w ish t o

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 Pompei i exhibit a featurewhich is not alien to the earlier town-planning of

I taly,though it is strange to the cities of Greece.

N oroa .

Not only do we need to know more of Pompei ii tself. We need evidence also from other I tal iantowns of Similar age . Here our ignorance is deep .

Only one site which can help has been even tentative lyexplored. Norba ,

which once crowned a spur of theMonti Lepini above the Pontine marshes , was foundedas a Roman town , according to the orthodox chronology, in 492 B.C .

1 But the receiv ed chronology of theearlier Republic , minute as it looks, probably deservesno more credence than the equally minute but mainlyfictitious dates assigned by the Saxon Chronicle to thebeginnings of English H istory. Actual remains foundat Norba suggest rather that it was founded (notnecessarily by Rome) about , or a little before , 300 B.C . ;

i t 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 . I ts excavation has little morethan begun , but it already indicates a scheme of

streets somewhat resembling that of Pompeii,

2 andit is a useful adjunct to our better knowledge of

1 Livy II . 34, contradic ted, however, by xxvu . 1 0 and by DionysiusHalic . vii . 1 3 adfi n.

2 Notiz ie degli Scar/i , 1 9 1 , p. 5 58, 1 903 , p. 26 1 Frothingham,


three fields of religion,agrarian land-settlement a nd

war. All three exhibit the same principle,the divis ion

of a definite space by two straight lines crossing a t

right angles at its centre , and (if need be) the furth erdivision of such space by other lines parallel to the

FIG . 1 4 . See p . 69 .

two main lines. The Roman augur who asked thew ill of Heaven marked off a square piece of sky or

earth—his templum—into four quarters ; in them hesought for his signs . The Roman general who

encamped his troops,laid out their tents on a rect

angular pattern governed by the Same idea. Thecommissioners who assigned farming-plots on thepublic domains to emigrant citizens of Rome

,planned


th es e plots on the same rectangular scheme—as them a p of rural I taly is w itness to this day.

These Roman customs are very ancient. LaterRom ans deemed them as ancient as Rome itself

,and

,

th o ugh such patriotic traditions belong rather to

po l i tics than to history, we find the actual customsw e l l established when our knowledge first becomesfu ll , about 200 B. C.

1 The Roman camp, for example ,

h a d reached its complex form long before the middleo f the second century

,when Polybius described it in

w o rds . Here , one can hardly doubt, are th ings oldere v en than Rome. Scholars have talked

,indeed , of

a Greek origin or of an Etruscan origin , and the

technical term for the Roman surveying instrument,

g r oma,has been explained as the Greek word

gnomon ’

,borrowed through an Etruscan medium .

B ut the name of a Single instrument would not carryw i th it the origin of a whole art, even if this etymologyw ere more certain than it actually is. Save forthe riddle of Marzabotto (p . we have no reasonto connect the Etruscans w ith town-planning or w iththe Roman system of surveying. When the Romana ntiquary Varro alleged that the Romans foundedtowns w ith Etruscan ritual ’

,he set the fashion for

many later assertions by Roman and modern writers .2

But he did not prove his allegation , and i t is not1 The prologue to the Poenulus of Plautus (verse 49) which men

tions l im ites and a finitor may well be as old as Plautus himself.But the

‘centuriation still visible in north Italy around colonies

planted about 1 80 B. C . is no full proof of rec tangular surveyingat thatdate. These towns were re-founded at a much later date, and theirlands, and even their streets, may have been laid out anew.

2 Varro ling. lat. 5 1 43 oppida condebant E trusco ri tu, id est,iunctis

ooous, Cf. Frontinus de limi t. (grom . i. p.

7 2 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING

so clear as is generally assumed , that he mean tEtruscan ritual ’ to include architectural town-plann ingas well as religious ceremonial .These are I talian customs

,far Older than the

beginnings of Greek influence on Rome , older thanthe systematic town-planning of the Greek lands ,and older also than the Etruscans. They shouldbe treated as an ancestral heritage of the I tal iantribes kindred w ith Rome, and should be connectedw ith the plan of Pompeii and w ith the far olderTerremare. Many generations in the family treehave no doubt been lost. The genealogy canonly be taken as conjectural . But it is a reasonableconjecture.

I n their original character these customs wereprobably secular rather than religious. They tooktheir 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 S tate were quasi-religious ;to ensure their due performance

,they were carried ou t

by religious officials. At Rome,therefore

,more

especially in early times,the augurs were concerned

w ith 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-agessecularized once more, and as they secularized, theyalso introduced science . I t was, perhaps, Greek influence which brought in a stricter use of the rectangle and a greater care for regular planning.

I t may be asked how all this applies to the planningof towns. We possess certainly no such clear evidence


w ith r e s pect to towns as w i th respect to divisionsagra r ia n or military. But the town-plans which wesha ll m e et in the following chapters Show very muchth e s am e outlines as those of the camp or of the farm

p lo t s . They are based on the same essential elemento f tw o straight lines crossing at right angles in the

c en t r e of a (usually) square or oblong plot. This is anelem e n t which does not occur, at least in quite the

s am e form,at Priene or in other Greek towns of

w h ic h we know the plans , and it may well be cal ledI ta li a n . We need not hesitate to put town and camps ide by Side

,and to accept the statement that the

R om an camp was a city in arms. Nor need we

h es it ate to conjecture further that in the planningo f th e town

,as in that of the camp, Greek influence

m a y have added a more rigid use of rectangularin s ulae ’

. When that occurred,w ill be discussed in

C h apter V I .W hether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier

and the land-commissioner was adopted in the towns ,i s a more difficult, but fortunately a less important

qu estion. Modern writers speak of the car a'o and

the decumanus of Roman towns , and even apply toth em more highly technical terms such as str zga andscamnum. For the use of cardo in relation to townsthere is some evidence (p. But it is very Slight,and for the use of the other terms there is next tono evidence at all. 1 The silence alike of l iteratureand of inscriptions shows that they were

,at the best,

1 Whether thepossessores ex vico Lucretia scamnopr imo of Cologne

(Corpus X II I . 82 54) had their property inside the‘colonia ’

of thatplace or in the country outside, may be

'

doubted (Schulten, Bonner

jalzrb. c iii .

74 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN I NG

theoretical expressions,confined to the surveyo r

’

s

office.

1

1 The phrase Roma Quadrata ought, perhaps, to be mentioned inthis chapter . I t does not seem,

however, to be demonstrably olderthan the Ciceronian age. The line at gui sextus erat Romae regna r e

ouadratae, once attributed to Ennius (ed. Vahlen, 1 854, is

c learly of much later date. As a piece of historical evidence, th ephrase merely sums up some archaeologist

’s theory (very like ly

a correc t theory, but still a theory) that the earliest Rome on th e

Palatine had a more or less rectangular outline.

CHAPTER VI

I TAL IAN TOWN-PLANNING THE LATE REPUBL IC AND

EARLY EMPIRE

D UR ING the later Republic and the earlier Empireman y I talian towns were founded or re-founded. Toth is result several causes contributed. Like the Greeksbefo re them ,

the Romans of the Republ ic sent out fromtime to time compact bodies of emigrants whenever thehom e population had grown too large for its narrowspace . These bodies were each large enough to forma sm all town

,and thus each migration meant—o r might

mea n—the foundation of a new town full-grown fromits b irth . The Greeks generally established new andpo l i tically independent towns. The Romans followedano ther method . Their colonists remained subject toRome and constituted new centres of Roman rule

,small

quasi-fortresses of Roman dominion in outlying lands.Often the m il itary need for such a stronghold had moreto do w ith the foundation of a ‘ colonia ’ than the

presence of too many mouths in the city. Cicero,speak ing of a ‘ colonia ’ planted at Narbo (now Narbonne) in southern Gaul about 1 1 8 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 w ild tribes of

Gaul ’ . Those words state very clearly the main objectof many such foundations under Republic and Empirealike .


Another reason for the establishment of coloniae

may be found in the history of the dying Republic andnascent Empire. During the civi l wars of Sulla

, of

Caesar and of Octavian,huge armies were brought in to

the field by the rival military chiefs . As each confli c tended

,huge masses of soldiery had to be discharged

almost at once. For the sake of future peace it wasimperative that these men Should be quickly settled insome form of civic life in which they would abide .

The form chosen was the fam il iar form of the ‘colonia ’

.

The time-expired soldiers were treated—not altogetherunreasonably—as surplus population , and they wereplanted out in large bodies , sometimes in existing town s

which needed population or at least a loyal population,

somet imes in new towns established full-grown for thepurpose. This method of dealing w ith dischargedsoldiers was continued during the early Empire,thoughit was then employed somewhat intermittently and the‘

coloniae’

were oftener planted in the provinces thanin I taly itself ; indeed the establishment of I tal ian‘

coloniae’

,as distinct from grants of colonial rank by

way of honour, almost ceased after A .D . 68 .

I t is not easy to determ ine the number of such new

foundations of towns in I taly . Some seventy or eightyare recorded from the early and middle periods of theRepublic—previous to about 1 20 B . C Sulla addeda dozen or so Octavian (Augustus) in his earlier yearsestablished or helped to establish about thirty .

1 Butthese figures can hardly represent the whole facts .The one certainty is that, through the causes j ust

1 SeeMommsen, Gesamm. Sc/zr zften v . 203 Nissen, I tal. Landeskunde ii . 2 7 Kornemann in Pauly-W issowa, E ncy cl. iv . 5 20 foll .


above the horizon on the dawn of some day importantin the history of the town .

1

The publ ic buildings of these towns are in genera lsomewhat small and arranged w i th little attempt atprocessional or architectural splendour ; they seldomdominate or even cross the scheme of streets . Openspaces are rare the Forum

, which corresponds to theGreek Agora

,contains

,l ike that , a paved open court, but

this court is almost as much enclosed as the Cloister ofa mediaeval church or the quadrangle of a mediaev alcollege. Theatre and amphitheatre 2 might

,no doubt ,

reach huge dimensions,but externally they were more

often massive than ornamental and the amphitheatreoften stood outside the city walls. Here and therea triumphal arch spanned a road where it approacheda town

,and provided the only architectural v ista to be

seen in most of these Roman towns .

D imensions , of course , varied . There was no norma lsize for an infant town . Some

, when first es tablished,

covered little more than 30 acres, the area of mediaeva lWarw ick . Others were four or five times as spaciousthey were twice or nearly twice as large as mediaeva lOxford , no mean city in thirteenth-century England .

Most of them,doubtless

,grew beyond their first l imits

a few spread as far as a square mile,twice the extent of

mediaeval London. S imilarly the ‘ insulae varied fromtown to town . I n one

,Timgad, theywere only 70 to 80 ft.

square . Often they measured 7 5 to 80 yds. square , rather

1See on this point some remarks byW. Barthel, B onner f altrouc/ter ,

cxx. 1 0 1 - 1 08 .

2 In western Europe the provinc ial Roman amphitheatre averaged45 x 70 yds. for its arena .


more than an acre,asatFlorence,

Turin,Pavia

,Piacenza .

1

Occasionally they were larger, bu t they seldom exceededthree acres

,and their average fell below the prevalent

practice of modern chess-board planning .

I n most towns,though not in all

,the dimensions of

the ‘ insulae show a common element . In length or inbreadth or in both

,they usually approx imate to 1 20 ft .

o r some multiple of that . The figure is significant .The unit of Roman land-surveying , the

‘ iugerum was

a rectangular space of 1 20 by 240 Roman feet—lnE nglish feet a tiny trifle less—and it seems to followthat ‘ insulae ’

were often laid out w ith definite referenceto the iugerum The divisions may not have alwaysb een mathematically correct ; our available plans areseldom good enough to let us j udge of that,2 andwe donot know whether we ought to count the surface of thes treets w ith the measurement of the ‘ insulae

’

. But

the general practice seems clear, and it extended evento Britain (p . and though blocks forming exactlya iugerum

’ or a half iugerum are rare,the I tal ian

land-measure certainly affected the civilization of theprovincial towns .

I n this system perhaps the most peculiar feature isthe intermixture of square and oblong ‘ insulae ’

. I t isnot merely the variation which can be traced in Pr iene

(fig. where some blocks are rather more square or1 For Florence and Turin see below ; for Piacenza, the plans on

the scale of 1 1 000 and 1 : 5000 in L. Buroni’s Acquepotabili di

P iacenz a2 S ilchester and Timgad are the only two sites which have been

planned well enough to provide accurate measurements. The largemodern town-plans (e. g. of Turin, p. 86) are useful, but inadequateto our purpose for one thing, they often exaggerate the width of thestreets. One really needs ac tual measurements made on the spot.


oblong than others,but where all approach the same

norm . The Roman towns which we are now cons idering Show two varieties of house-blocks. Sometimes theblocks are square ; sometimes , perhaps more often , theyare oblong approximating to a square

,l ike 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 .

I t is hard to detect any principle underlying the use

of these various forms. No doubt differences of h istorical 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 pre

cedent for square or squarish insulae the TerremareShow the same. If the theoretical scheme of the earl ierRoman camp seemed based on the long narrow oblong

,

the actual remains of legionary encampments of th esecond century B . C . at Numantia include many squares .

If one part of Pompei i exhibits oblongs, another partis made up of squares . If Piacenza , first founded innorth I taly about 1 83 B. C and founded again a hundredand fifty years later, is laid out in squares , its coeva lneighbour Modena prefers the oblong. If the oldGreek city of Naples embodies an extreme type o f

oblong,so does the later Augustan Carthage (pp . 100

,

I n the historic period , it would seem ,no sharp

l ine was drawn,or felt to exist

,between the various

types of insulae I n the main,the square or squarish

oblong was preferred . Local accidents,such as the con

venience of the site at Carthage , led to occasionaladoption of the narrower oblong.

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING

The Roman land-surveyors, i t is true, distinguishedthe square and the oblong in a very definite way . Thesquare , they alleged , was proper to the I talian land orto such provincial soi l as enjoyed the privilege of beingta xed—or freed from taxation—on the I talian scale.The oblong they connected w ith the ordinary tax

paying soil of the provinces . This distinct ion , however ,w as not carried out even in the agrarian surveys w ithw hich these writers were especially concerned

,

1 and itapplies still less to the towns . No doubt it is a fictionof the office . I t would be only human nature if thesurveyors

,finding both forms in use

,should invent

a theory to account for them .

The system sketched in the preceding paragraphsseems

,as has been sa id (p . to have sprung from

a fusion of Greek or Grac co—Macedonian with I taliancustoms . Roman town-planning, l ike Roman art, wasrecast under Hellen istic influence and thus gainedm athematical precision and symmetry. When thishappened is doubtful . Foreign scholars often ascribei t to Augustus and find a special connexion between thefirst emperor and the chess-board town-plan . But thearchitect Vitruvius , who dedicated his book to Augustusandwho gives some brief notice to town-planning

,urges

strongly that towns should not be laid out on the chessboard pattern , but rather on an eight-sided or (as wem ight call it) star-shaped plan .

2 He would hardly havedenounced a scheme which had been specially taken upby his patron

,nor indeed does his criticism of the

1 Schulten, B onner c iii . 23 , and references giventhere.

2 i . 5 6 (28,

8 2 ANCI ENT TOWN -PLANN ING

chess-board system sound as if he were denouncinga novelty in I talian bui lding.

On the other hand there seems no great difficulty inthe idea that the regularization of the old I talian townplan by Greek influence took place spontaneously inthe late Republic. We cannot , indeed, date the change .

I t must remain doubtful whether it came by degreesor all at once

,

1and whether the right-angled plans of

towns like Aquileia 2 or P iacenza belonged to their firstfoundation , i . e . to about 1 80 B . C.

, or to later rearrangements . But it seems reasonable to bel ieve that aGracco-I talian rectangular fashion of town-planning didsupersede an earlier

,irregular, I talian style , and had

become supreme before the end of the Republic.

1 Perhaps about 1 80 B . C .,Mommsen, Roma n H ist. i i i . 206.

2 Aquileia was set up in 1 8 1 B . C . to guard the north-east gate o f

Italy, and was reinforced in 1 69. I ts remains, so far as excavated,

Show a rec tangular plan of oblong insulae —some of acres (74 by94 yards), some larger—while, till its downfall, about A. D . 450, we

hear no word of refoundation or wholesale rebuilding. But i f its

original area be the space of 70 acres which is usually assigned, thatis not rec tangu lar but a square somewhat askew,

which fits very badlywith the rectangular street-plan, and one would inc line to ascribe thelatter to a later date. See Maionica, Funa

’

kartewon Aqui leia .

CHAPTER VI I

INSTANCES or ITALIAN TOWN-PLANS

THE preceding chapters have dealtw ith the origins andgeneral character of the I tali an town-plan . We passnow to the . remains which it has left in its own home ,in I taly. These are many. In one city indeed, thegreatest of all , no town-planning can be detec ted . LikeAthens and Sparta , Rome shows that conservatismwhich 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 .

1 I t grew as it could. I ts builders , aboveall its imperial builders

,cared much for spectacular

effects and architectural pomp. Even in late Republican times the gloomy mass of the Tabulariumand the temples of the Capitol must have toweredabove the Forum in no mere accidental stateliness , andimperial Rome contained many buildings in manyquarters to Show that it was the capital of an Empire .

But for town-planning we must go elsewhere.

The sources of our knowledge are twofold . I na few cases archaeologic al excavation has laid bare thepaving of Roman streets or the foundation of Romanhouse-blocks . More often mediaeval and modern streetsseem 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 I taly . I t is not,

1 The traces of prehistoric planning detec ted by some writersin Rome are very dubious.


indeed, possible to gather a full l ist of them . He who

would do that needs a longer series of good town-mapsand good local histories than exist at present ; he needs,too

,a w ider knowledge of mediaeval I talian history and

a closer personal acquaintance w ith modern Italiantowns , than a classical Scholar can attempt. But muchcan be learnt even from our l imited material . 1

The evidence of the streets needs , however, to bechecked in every case . I t would be rash to assumea Roman origin for an I talian town Simply because itsstreets are old and their plan rectangular. There aremany rectangular towns of mediaeval or modern origin .

Such is Terra Nova , near the ancient Gela in S ici ly,built by Frederick Stupor Mundi early in the thirteenthcentury. Such

,too

,Livorno , bui lt by the Medici in the

sixteenth century. Such,too , the many little military

colonies of the I talian Republics , dotted over parts ofnorthern and middle I taly. Often it is easy to provethat

,despite their chess-board plans

,these towns do not

stand on Roman sites . Often the inquiry leads intoregions remote from the study of ancient history.

Fortunately, enough examples can be identified as

Roman to serve our purpose . Some of these occur inthe Lombardy plain where

,both under the Republic

and at the outset of the Empire , many‘

coloniae’

were

1 See the seventeenth century Atlases of Blaeu, Janssons, and

others, the modern maps prepared by Grassellini and others about1 840- 50 (some on the scale 1 and in particular the Atlantegeografi co ofAttilio Zuccagni-Orlandini (Firenze, and the recent

town-maps ofvarious Italian c ities (mostly about 1 Differentmaps of the same town sometimes difl'

er much in their detail . The

Italian Government maps of the largest scale ( 1 are smallfor our present purpose and have been issued mainly for northernItaly.


room for square or oblong house-blocks . I n the periodof the dying Republic and nascent Empire fewercoloniae

’

were planted here than in the north,while

in much of southern I taly towns have in all ages beencomparatively rare.

I n the towns j ust noted we can trace many , though notall , of the original house-blocks. Usually the blocksare 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 tounderstand the reason for the difference (p .

Tur in (fig.

Of all the examples of Roman town-planning knownto us in I taly , Turin is by far the most famous . 1 Herethe streets have survived almost intact, and excavationshave confirmed the truth of the survival by reveal ingboth the ancient road-metall ing and the ancient townwalls and gates. Turin , Augusta Taurinorum, beganabout 28 B. C . as a colonia planted by Augustus. I ts

walls enclosed an oblong of about 745 x 695 metres

( 1 2 7 acres) .2 The sides are represented ( I ) on the

1 Carlo Promis, Storia dell ’ anticoTor ino (Torino, 1 869) Alfredod ’Andrade, Relaz ione dell ’ ufi cio regionale per la conservaz ione dei

monumenti del P iemonte, 1 883-

9 1 (Torino, 1 899) Schultze,B onner jaltroii clzer , cxviii . 339 Barthel, ibid. cxx. 1 05 Pianta diTorino ( 1 by G . B . Paravia.

2 I take these figures from the plan of Paravia, which is said to bethe most correct plan of Turin at present available. Promis givessmaller d imensions, 7 20 x 670 m .

, and be measured from what is nowknown to be a point too far to the east (the V ia Accademia delleSc ienze) instead of from the west front of the Palaz zo Madama ; hehas

,however, been usually followed. Other maps give other dimen

sions, Orlandini 758 x 780 m . Vallardi 680 x 740 m.


north by the Via Giulio,in the western part of which

the southern edge of the street actually coincides withthe l ine of the Roman town-wall

,while further east the

Porta Palatina enshrines an ancient gate ; (2) on thewest by the Via della Consolata

,and the Via S iccardi

,

the east side of which latter street seems to stand uponthe Roman town-wall and (3) on the south by the V iadella Cernaia and Via Teresa

,the north side of which

stands over the Roman southern town-wall . (4) Theeast wall agrees with no existing street but may berepresented by a line drawn through the CarignanoTheatre and the western front of the Palazzo Madama ,which contains the actual towers of the Roman east

gate.1 The north-west corner, uncovered in 1 884, is

a sharp right angle . This feature recurs at Aosta anda t Laibach (pp . 90,

both founded , like Turin , inthe 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 them iddle Empire .

Of the interior buildings of the town little isknown . The Forum perhaps stood near the presentPalazzo di Citta

,and the Theatre was traced in 1 899

in the north-east corner of the town , occupying apparently

,a complete insula 2

of the private houses nothingdefinite seems to be recorded .

Maggi 7 30 x 800 m . Ashby (Art. Turin in E ncy cl. B r i tan

nica ) gives x ft. wh ich must be too large. I reproducehere (fig. 1 5 ) the plan of Orlandini, since it shows well the extent ofstreet-survivals in Turin before the great modern rebuildings or

expansions.

1 d’Andrade, Relaz ione, pp. 8—20 ; Noti z ie degli Scar/i , 1 885 ,

pp. 1 73, 2 7 1 , and 1 902 , p. 2 7 7 .

2 Notiz ie, 1 903 , p. 3 .


But the street-plan has survived intact, except intwo outlying corners. The town was divided up intosquare or nearly square blocks

, of which there werenine counting from east to west and eight from northto south . Most of these ‘insulae ’ measured about 80 yds .square. 1 A few were larger

,80 x 1 20 yds . these were

ranged along the north side of the street now called V iaGaribaldi (formerly Dora Grossa) , which represents theRoman main street between the east and west gatesin the language of the Roman land-surveyors

,the

a’ecumanus maximus. This street cut the town i ntotwo equal halves . The other divisions of the town wereno less symmetrical . But , as there were nine

‘ insulaefrom east to west

,the main north and south street

could not bisect the town . I ndeed,the south gate

seems to have had five house-blocks west of i t andfour east of it

,while the Porta Palatina stands further

west, w ith S ix blocks on the west side of it. The northand south gates , therefore , are not opposi te .

’ Whetherthis was the original plan is not clear

,nor is the age of

the surviving walls and gates quite certain the bonding1 An insula is mentioned in Notiz ie

,1 90 1 , p . 39 1 , which measured

74 x 80 metres. It is l ikely that there were small unevennesses in theanc ient as there are in themodern house-blocks. The insulae whichabutted on the town-walls are represented to-day by unduly largeblocks, oblong rather than square, but these latter contain not only theareas of the Roman insulae in question , but also the space betweenthem and the town-walls and the lines of the wall themselves (p.

2 This failure in symmetry recurs in one or two other Romantowns as probably at Timgad (p. 1 09) and at Cologne (E . and W .

gates), at Si lchester and Caerwent, but it may sometimes be the resultof alteration. Occasionally it appears in military sites (Ritterl ing,Lager bei Hof/teim, p . 29 note) . I t is presumably a mere matter of

convenience ; no superstition attaches to it such as that which ledthe Chinese not to put their gates Opposite each other (p.

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN I NG 89

courses i n some of the masonry of the walls does notSeem A ugustan. But the street plan may unhesitatinglybe a ss igned to the first establishment of the town , about2 8 B . C . S ince

,it has been extended far beyond the

Rom an walls . Nearly all modern Turin has been laidou t

,b i t by bit

,in imitation and continuation of the

origina l Roman lines .

A osta (fig . 1

A no ther example of an I talian town-plan , from the

sam e date and district as Turin,is supplied by Augusta

P rae to ria , now Aosta , some fifty miles north of Turin inthe D o ra Baltea Valley, no t far from the foot of MontBla nc .

1 Aosta was founded by Augustus in 2 5 B. C.

on a h itherto empty spot , to provide homes for timeexp i red soldiers and to serve as a quasi-fortress in animpo rtant Alpine valley. I ts first inhabitants were

men discharged from the Praetorian Guard ,w i th their w ives and children ; its population may

hav e numbered at the outset some free persons ,bes ides slaves. The town , as it is known to us fromexcav ation and observation

,formed a rectangle 620 yds .

long and 780 yds . w ide, and covered an area of about1 00 acres (fig. The walls formed sharp rightangles at the corners

,as at Turin . Within the walls

were an amphitheatre , a theatre , public baths, a structurecovering nearly 2 acres and interpreted as a granaryor (perhaps more correctly) as a cistern ,

2 and privatehouses as yet unexplored. Beneath the chief streets weresewers

,by which indeed these streetsweremainly traced .

1 C . Promis,Anticlzi tci di Aosta (Torino, with plan, plate 3 ,

dating from 1 838 Noti z ie degli Scam, 1 899, p . 1 08,with a later plan

,

but lacking a scale ; Nissen, I tal. Landeskunde, ii . 1 7 1 .

2 Durm B aukunst der Renter,p . 458 .

90 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNI NG

The whole was divided by a regular netwo rk of

streets into rectangular blocks . According to the

latest plan of the Site,there were sixteen blo cks ,

nearly identical in shape and averaging 1 45 x 1 80 yds .

(527 acres) . That , however, is an incredible area for

7011“A-M m -I-dd gbgmS-M Son 's

FIG. 1 6. AOSTA.

single house-blocks, and it is to be noted that PromisShows two further roads (A,

A in fig. If these are

survivals ofother such roads , Aosta may have containedthirty-two oblong ‘ insulae ’

, each nearly 220 x 540 ft. ,

or even sixty-four smaller and squarer insulae measur


tion was made before the end of the first century A . D .

This colonia like others, was laid out in chess-boardfashion

, and vestiges of its streets survive i n the

Centro which forms the heart of the present town .

The Centro of Florence , as we see it to day , i s very

FIG. 1 7 A . FLORENCE, SINCE THE REBUILD ING OF THE CENTRALPORTION (Centro shaded).

modern . I t was,indeed

,laid out a generation ago by

I tal ian archi tects who designed the broad streets crossing at right angles which form its characteristic. But

this Haussmannization ’ revived , consciously or un

consciously, an old arrangement. The plan of Florencein 1 42 7 Shows a group of twenty unmistakable

‘ insulae’

,

each of them about acre in area,that is , very similar

in size to the insulae ofTurin. This group is boundedby the modern streets Tornabuoni on the west, Porta


Rossa on the south, Calzaioli on the east, Teatina onthe no r th it covers a rectangle of some 305 x 32 7 ydsnot qu i te 2 1 acres.

FIG . 1 7 B . FLORENCE ABOUT 1 795 , FROM L. BARD I .The chief streets which seem to have preserved Roman lines are

marked in black .

The original Roman town presumably extendedbeyond these narrow limits . But it is not easy to fixi ts area

,nor are unmistakable ‘ insulae to be detected

outside them . On the west the Via Tornabuoni seemsto 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 o pe n

space—ou the east side of the Archb ishop’s P a la c e

(plan 1 7 B) . That gateway stood between the V ia

Teatina and the next stree t to the north , the Via de i C e r

retani,and the Roman north wall and ditch appa r e n t l y

ran along the intervals between these two modern s t r e e ts—as indeed the lines of certain mediaeval lanes sugge s t .

On the east the colonia is supposed to have stret c h edto the Via del Proconsolo and the old Por S . P iero ,

probably the original east gate. Here the trace s o f‘ insulae ’ are ill preserved ; the space in ques t ionwould contain , and the mediaeval streets would adm i tof, twelve blocks in addition to the twenty noted abo v e .

The southern limit of Roman Florence towards the

Arno is altogether doubtful . There are,or w e re ,

traces of Roman baths in the Via delle Terme , aa ,

i t has been thought that the town stretched riverwa rdsas far as the old gate Por S . Maria and the P ia z z aS . Trinita The gate , however, is ill-placed and the

l ine of wall implied by this theory is irregular. The

mediaeval streets point rather to a south wall ne arthe Via Porta Rossa . The baths might perhaps bedue to a later Roman extension , such as we shall mee tat Timgad (p . The Por S . Maria may even bedue to one of the reconstructions of Florence in the

Middle Ages . At the end we must admit that w ithout further evidence the limits of Roman

“

Florenc ecannot be fixed for certain . But the l imits indicatedabove give the not unsuitable d imensions of 46 acres

(380 x 590 while the history of the twentyindubitable 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


size is uncertain . A rectangular area about 7 0 0 yds

from east to west and 360 yds. from north to so u th isdivided into fifteen square or squarish ‘insulae

’

a r r a ngedin three rows . Each insula is about 3 acr e s ,

bu t

those of the middle row are larger than the rest ( 1 5 0 x

1 50 The Via S . Croce which runs alo ng the

L U C CA

FIG . 1 8 . The streets wh ich preserve'

Roman lines are markedin black .

south Side of this row was perhaps the main east andwest thoroughfare of the town , the

‘decumanus max imus ’

, so that the larger‘ insulae ’ correspond to those

which appear in the same posi t ion at Turin and elsewhere (p .

W hether there were other ‘ insulae ’ besides the

fifteen is doubtful . On the east there were certainly

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN I NG 9 7

none the two narrow parallel streets at the east end ofth e a rea just described are obviously due to a growthof hou ses along the line of the original east wall. Theo ther limits are more obscure . Probably the northand w est walls stood a little outside of the Via GalliTass i (once S . Pellegrino) and the Via S . Giorgio

,

bu t th ere may well have been a row of insulae,now

ob l i te rated,south of the Via del Battistero. One or

tw o in terior buildings are known . The Forum appearsto h av e stood where is now the Piazza S . Michele inFo ro ; close by was a temple ; in the north-eastern

qua rt er, at the Piazza del Carmine, was probably thethea tre ; near it but outside the walls was the amphithea t re ,

its outlines still visible in the Piazza delM erc ato ( 1 1 0 x 80 yds. in greatest dimensions) .

1

H er cu laneum (fig.

To these examples from north I taly may be addedtwo from the sou th

,Herculaneum and Naples .

H erculaneum had much the same early history asi ts more important neighbour Pompeii . First anOscan settlement, then Etruscan , then Samnite

,it

passed later under Roman rule . After the SocialWars (89 B. C.) it appears as a ‘municipium ’

; of its

his tory from that date t i ll its destruction (A . D . 79) weknow next to nothing . But excavations, commencedin the eighteenth century and now long suspended,

have thrown ligh t on its ground-plan .

2 This was a

1 P lan by P. Sinibaldi, 1 843 , 1 Noti z ie degli Scavi , 1 906,

p. 1 1 7 , &c . N issen (I tal. Landeskunde, II . 288) gives the area as

800 x metres, which seems much too large.

2 M . Ruggiero, Scaoi di E rcolano (Naples, plates 11 and xi 1 ;Beloch, Companion, pp. 2 1 5 foll . ; Nissen, I tal. Landeskunde, i i . 759

1494 G


rectangular pattern of oblong house-blocks , measu ring

54 x 89 yds . , or in some cases a little more ,and div ided

by streets varying from 1 5 to 30 ft. in width wh ichran at right angles or parallel to one another. O n lya part of the town has been as yet unearthed . In thata broad colonnaded main street ran from north-westto south-east ; on the north-east side of this streetstood a row of house-blocks w ith a structure taken tobe a Basilica

,and on the south-west of it were ten

FIG. 1 9. HERCULANEUM .

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 s tructures which havebeen called temples but are more like large privatehouses on the east (according to the eighteenth-centurysearchers) are graves.How much of the town has been uncovered

,how

much still l ies h idden beneath the lava which overflowed it in A.D. 79, is disputed . Of i ts town wallsand gates no trace has yet been found. But nearly

Waldstein and Shoobridge, Herculaneum (London, pp. 60 foll. ;E . R. Barker

,B ur ied IYerculaneum ( 1 908) Gall in Pauly-Wissowa,

viii . ( 1 9 1 2 ) 5 3 2- 48 .

I oo ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN I NG

wal l at his own cost ’ , and this builder Balbus was

probably a contemporary of Augustus. 1 Others havepreferred to think that the town-planning reveals Greekinfluences ; they point to the Greek city of Naples ,

7 miles west of Herculaneum ,and the Doric temple

at Pompei i , much the same distance east of it. How

ever, neither the town-planning of Naples,to be dis

cussed in the next paragraphs,nor that of Pompe i i

seems to be necessari ly Greek, and Herculaneumitself contains nothing which cannot be explained as

I talian . I t is possible,though there is no record o f

the fact , that it received a settlement of dischargedsoldiers somewhere abou t 30 B . C . and was then lai dout afresh . But here

,as throughout this inquiry , more

l ight is needed if the inquirer is to pass from guessworkto proven fact.

N aples (fig.

One more example , from the neighbourhood of Herculaneum , may complete the l ist of I talian streetplans. Naples

,the Greek and Roman Neapolis , was

a Greek ci ty,the most prosperous of the Greek towns

in Campania.

11 After 90 B . C. i t appears to have become

a Roman ‘municipium ’

. But it retained much of its

1 CIL . x. 1 425 compare Dessau, 896. I t is, no doubt, possiblethat this Nonius Balbus is the M . Non ius who built something inhonour of T itus in A. D. 7 2, but the identification is not likely.

2 Beloch, Campanien (Berlin, p. 26 Capasso, Napoli

Greco-Romana (Napoli, The Forum, Market, and some

other buildings marked by Capasso seem to me (and even to him or

his editors) very dubious (p. 6 Two theatres (p. 8 2) and a Templeof the Dioscuri are better established . For plans see P iante topogr .

dei quar tieri di Napoli 1 86 1 5 ( 1 3 ,888 ) and P ianta della ci ttd di

N . (03 . della Guerra, from which latter fig. 20 is adapted .

eatre, T ! Temple.)

P . 1 0 1


the only close parallel is that of Roman Carthage

(fig. As Naples was by origin and charactera Greek ci ty, these narrow oblongs have been supposedto represent a Greek arrangement. They do no t ,

however , correspond to anything that is known in theGreek lands

,either of the Macedonian or of anyE arlier

period . The conclusion is difficult to avoid that th isGreek city of Naples adopted an I talian street-scheme

,

but laid it out with more scientific regulari ty than theearly I tal ians themselves . When this occurred and

why , is wholly unknown. That the result is not anunpractical form of building is shown by the fact tha tsimilar long and narrow house-blocks are a characteristicfeature of modern Liverpool

,though they seldom

occur in other English towns,unless intermixed wi th

square and other blocks.

CHAPTER V I I I

ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWN-PLANS. I

THE provinces, and above all the western provincesof the Roman Empire , tell us even more than I talyabout Roman town-planning. But they tell it inanother way . They contain many towns which werefounded 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 townshave rarely kept the network of their ancient streetsi n recognizable detail . Though walls

,gates

,temples

,

baths,palaces , amphitheatres sti ll stand stubbornly

erect amidst a flood of modern dwellings , they are butthe islands which mark a submerged area . The pathsand passages by which men once moved across thatarea have vanished beneath the waves and cannot berecovered from any survey of these visible fragments .There is hardly one modern town in all the EuropeanandAfrican provinces of the Roman Empire which stilluses any considerable part of its ancient street-plan.

I n our own country there is no single case. In Gauland Germany, two or three streets in Cologne and oneor two in Trier are the sole survivals .1 I n I llyricumthere is no example unless possibly at Belgrade. I nthe Spanish peninsula the town of Braga in northern

1 For Orange see p. 1 07 . Nimes may possibly retain one or two

streets of the Roman Nemausus, but it is very doubtful ; see

Menard’s map of 1 7 5 2 . See further in general p. 1 42.


Portugal seems to stand alone . I n Roman AfricaTunis

,Algiers and Morocco—no instance has survived

the Arab conquest. ‘

If,however

,survivals of ancient streets are as rare

in the prov inces as they are common in I taly, theprovinces yield other ev idence unknown to I taly. In

these lands,and above all in Africa , the sites of many

Roman towns have lain desolate and untouched SinceRoman days

, waiting for the e xcavator to recover theunspoilt pattern of their streets. If the RomanEmpire brought to certain provinces , as it unquestionably did to Africa , the happiest period in their historytill almost the present day

,that only makes their

remains the more noteworthy and instructive. Herethe new art of excavation has already achieved manyand varied successes . I n the western Empire one

town,S i lchester in Britain

,has been wholly uncovered

w ith in the circuit of its walls . Others , l ike Caerwentin Britain or Timgad and Carthage in Africa

,have

been methodically examined,though the inquiries

have not yet touched or perhaps can never touch theirwhole areas. I n others again

,some of which lie in

the east , occasional search or even chance discoverieshave shed welcome l ight. Our knowledge is morethan enough already for the purposes of this chapter.We can already see that the town-plan described in

the foregoing pages was w idely used in the provincesof the Empire. We find it in Africa

,in Central and

Western Europe,and indeed wherever Roman remains

have been carefully excavated ; we find it even inremote Britain amidst conditions which make its use

1 Though, curiouslyenough , the chess-boardpattern offielddivisionshas survived in the neighbourhood of Carthage.

1 06 ANCI ENT TOWN -PLANNING

streets around the Forum,itself rectangular enough ,

do not run parallel or at right angles to it or to oneanother.‘ At Thibilis

,on the border of Tunis a nd

Algeria, the streets , so far as they have yet been nu

covered,diverge w idely from the chess-board pattern .

2

One French archaeologist has even declared thatmost of the towns in Roman Africa lacked th ispattern .

3 Our evidence is perhaps stil l too slight toprove or disprove that conclusion . Few African townshave been sufficiently uncovered to show the streetplan .

1 But town-l ife was well developed in RomanAfrica . I t is hardly credible that the Africans learntall the rest of Roman city civilization and city government

,and left out the planning. The individual cases

of such planning which w i ll be quoted in the follow ingpages tell their own tale—that, while the strict rulewas often broken

,it was the rule .

1A rclzives nouvelles des M issions scientifiques, xv. 1 907 , fasc . 4 .

2 Plan by Joly, A rc/z. Anz eiger , 1 9 1 1 , p. 2 70, fig. 1 7 . The planhas been thought to imply insulae twice as large as those ofTimgad .

To me it suggests nothing so regular.

2 Toutain, Ci tés roma ines de la Tunisie, p. 79 note : Ce qui

toutefois est incontestable, c ’est que cette disposition d’une régularitéartific ielle, autour de deux grandes voies exactement orientées et se

coupant 8. angle droit, est tres rare dans l’Afrique romaine. Les villes

de cc pays n’out pas ététoutes construites sur le meme plan : chacune

d’

elles a, pour ainsi dire, épousé la forme de son emplacement .

’

1 There are many in which it could be traced with some case,

apparently. Thelepte, Cillium ,Ammaedara , Sufetula, Arclzioes des

M issions, 1 887 , pp . 68, 1 2 1 , 1 6 1—1 7 1 , Simitthu, M e’

moires prefisentefis

par divers savants, Sér. I . x. 462 , and Thuccabor, Tissot, Ge

’

ogr .

d’Afr ioue, ii. 292, seem to have visible streets, but no one has

recorded them exac tly. The plan of Utica, given by Tissot (Atlas,by Reinach, plate vi) on the authority of Daux, is open to doubt.

FIG . 2 1 . INSCR IPTION OF ORANGE .

(From the Comptes-rendus de l’Acade

’

mie des I nscriptions.)

Plot (mer is) I (lost)Plot I I perpetual lessee (manceps) C . Naevius Rusticus : surety for

C . Vesidius Quadratus. Fronting the Kardo.

Plot I I I , frontage of feet and Plot IV , frontage of 35 feet ground rent

denarii (in margi n) . Yearly rent 1 1 Lessee and surety

above. Fronting the Kardo.

Plot V,frontage 5 5213 feet, and Plot V I , next to the Ludus (gladiators

’

sch

frontage 75 feet

108 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN I NG

apparently belonged to one lessee who held it from the

municipality on something like a perpetual lease.‘

Here, in short , is the record of an oblong‘ insula In

the Roman town of Orange. I t is doubtless part of

a longer record,a register of house-property in the

whole town . Orange , Colonia Iulia SecundanorumArausio ,

was a ‘ colon ia’

founded about 45 B. C . w i thdischarged soldiers of Caesar's Second Legion .

Possibly the register was drawn up at this datemore probably it is rather later and may be connec ted with a census of Gaul begun about 2 7 B . C .

Certainly it was preserved w i th much care , as if one

of the ‘muniments ’

of the citizens . The spot whereit was dug up is in the heart of the ancient as well a sof 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.

I f,as is likely

,the town owned the soil of the town , the

connexion of the inscription w ith the Forum becomeseven clearer. I n any case , the town was plainly laid outin a rectangular street-plan . To-day its lanes are as

tortuous as those of any other Provencal town .

2 A

strange chance reveals what it and many other of

these towns must once have been .

1 For the inscription see Espérandieu, Acad. des I nscr iptions,

Comptes rendus, 1 904, p. 497 ; Cagnat, Anule Epigra, 1 905 , 1 2 ;

and espec ially Schulten, Hermes,1 906, I ; a convenient English

account is given by H . S. Jones, Companion to Roman H ist , p. 2 2.

I t has been suggested by Schulten that the blocks were at firstdivided into plots of 35 ft. frontage, and that the boundaries hadbecome changed in the ordinary course of things before the survey

was made. But th is seems to carry conjec ture rather far.

2 I t has been sa id 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 Lenthéric , Le E laine, ii. 1 1 0.


Timgaa'

(figs . 2 2 ,

F r o m this piece of half-l iterary evidence we pass to

pu re ly archaeological remains , and first to the province

FIG . 2 2 . AFTER CAGNAT AND BALLU The six insulaemarked A are shown in detail in fig. 23 . Unshaded ‘ insulae ’

are

as yet unexcavated .

of Numidia in Roman Africa and to the town of

Timgad. The town of Thamugadi , now Timgad, layon the northern skirts ofMount Aures , halfway betweenConstantine and Biskra and about a hundred milesfrom the Mediterranean coast . Here the emperorTrajan founded in A .D . 1 00 a ‘ colonia on ground thenwholly uninhabited

,and peopled it with time-expired

1 1 0 ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING

soldiers from the Third Legion which garrisoned th e

neighbouring fortress of Lambaesis. The town grew .

Soon after the middle of the second century it w a s

FIG. 23 . s1x ‘ INSULAE ’IN S.W . TIMGAD (after Prof. Cagnat).

Nos. 9 1 , 92, 99, one house each ; 1 08, 1 09, 3 houses ; 1 00, Baths.

Scale 1 600.

more than half a mile in width from east to west, andits extent from north to south , though not definitely


apiece,but they have undergone so many changes that

thei r original arrangements are not at all clear. The

stree tswhich divided these blocks were I 5 to 1 6 ft. w idethe two main streets , which ran to the principal gates ,were further w idened by colonnades and paved w i thsuperior flagging. All the streets had well-built sewersbeneath them.

Trajan ’s Timgad was pla inly small . On any est imateof 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 havebeen under This agrees w ith the figures of

Aos ta (p . There , 100 acres took veteransand their families ; here the area is about one-th i rd of

1 00 acres and the ground available for dwellings mayperhaps have been one-Sixth . I n neither case was

Space wasted. There was not probably at Aosta , therecertainly was not at Timgad , any provision of open

squares , of handsome facades , of temples seen downthe vista of stately avenues ; there were not evenprivate gardens . The one large unroofed space inTimgad was the half-acre shut wi thin the ForumC loister. This economy of room is no doubt due tothe fact that the ‘ colonia ’

was not only a home fortime-expired soldiers

,but , as Prof. Cagnat has justly

observed , a quasi-fortress watching the slopes ofMountAures south of it, just as Aosta watched i ts Alpinevalley. As Machiavell i thought it worth while toobserve, the shorter the l ine of a town

’

s defence,the

fewer the men who can hold it . The town-planning of

Timgad was designed on other than purely architecturalor municipal principles . For this reason

,too

,we should

probably seek in vain any marked dis tinction between

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING 1 1 3

richer and poorer quarters and larger or smaller houses. ‘

The c en turions and other officers may have formed thefirst m u nicipal aristocracy of Timgad

,as retired officers

did in m any Roman towns , but there can have been nodefin i te element of poor among the common soldiers .S u ch was Trajan

’

s Timgad,as revealed by excava

tions now about two-thirds complete. The town soonburs t i ts narrow bounds. A Capitol , Baths, a largeMea t-market

,and much else sprang up outside the

wal ls . Soon the walls themselves , like those of manymedia eval towns—for example , the north and west townwal ls of Oxford—were built over and hidden by laterstruc tures . The town grew from one of 360 to a breadthof ov er 800 yds. And as it expanded, i t broke loose fromthe ch ess-board pattern . The builders of later Timgaddid not resemble those of later Turin . Even thea’

ecumanus,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 Trajanis i rregular and complicated. A town-plan , i t seems,was b inding on the first builders of the ‘ colonia I tlost its power within a very few years .2

Ca r t/cage (fig .

I t remains to note another example of town-planningin a Roman municipality of thewestern Empire , which isas important as it is abnormal . Carthage

,first founded

though only in an abortive fashion—as a Roman

1 Ballu detects a quartier industriel’in the outer town, but the

evidence does not seem to warrant so grand a term.

2 Boeswillwald, Cagnat and Ballu, Timgad (Paris, 1 89 1—1 905 )

see espec ially Appendix, pp. 339—349 ; Ballu, Ruines de Timgad

(Paris, 1 897 Barthel, B onner jalzrouclzer , cxx. 1 0 1 .

H

1 1 4 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING

‘

colonia’

in 1 23 B . C. and re-established with the sam e

Empire. The regularity of its planning was noted inancient times by a topographical writer. ‘ But the plan

,

00 200 300 400 600

FIG. 24 . RESTORED, AFTER GAUCKLER AND DELATTRE.

though rectangular, is not normal . According to theFrench archaeologists who have worked it out

,it

comprised a large number of streets—perhaps as manyas forty —running parallel to the coast

,a smaller number

1 Totius orbis descnptio, 6 1 (M ii ller,geogr .graeci min. 11.‘dispo

sitione gloriosissima constat in direc tione vicorum et platearumaequalibus lineis currens (written probably about A.D . 3


seven which crossed them at right angles ; of the se

forty-eight blocks some must, of course, have be e n

taken up by public buildings . They varied in siz e

the largest as yet planned (I I in fig. 2 5) measur ed

l 7o x 1 95 ft or 71

} acre ; two others measured 1 63 x

1 70 ft . ; while one block , which contained one largehouse not unlike the S ilchester ‘ inn was I 1 2 x 1 68 ft .

(Plan , I I) , and the block next it was a trifle smalle r .None of the dimensions show any trace of the norm al

FIG . 25 . LAIBACH (from W . Schm id).

1 20 or 240 ft . (p. The streets were very broad

(37—40 one , which may be the cardo max imusmeasured as much as 47 ft . across. Beneath the mainstreets were sewers , in the usual fashion . Round thewhole town stood strong walls, reinforced at regularintervals by square projecting towers ; the four cornerswere not rounded but rectangular, after the fashion of

Aosta and Turin (pp . 8 7 ,

1 Cor respondenzblatt des Gesamtvereins der deutsclzen Gescltici i ts and

Alter tumsvereine, April 1 9 1 2 B er icltt vi der romzisc/z-germanzlscnen

FIG . 2 7 . BASES OF COLONNADE UNDER BAI LGATE,LINCOLN (p.

1 1 8 ANCI ENT TOWN-PLANN ING

A third example may be drawn from our own

country. Lincoln , the Roman Lindum , was establ ishedas a ‘ colonia ’ about A.D. 75 , and the lines of i tsoriginal area , i ts Altstadt

’—for i t was perhaps en

larged in Roman times , —can still be traced‘Above

H ill ’ round the Castle and Cathedral (fig. I tformed a rectangle j ust over 4 1 acres in extent (400 x

500 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 andcrossed at right angles in the centre. Along one of

these streets , which agrees , if only roughly , w ith themodern Ba ilgate, ran a stately colonnade (fig.

though whether this belonged to some special buildingor 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. Of the othermain street and of side streets nothing is known , but wecan hardly doubt that they carried out the chess-boardpattern .

‘

Probably the other four municipalities in Britainwere planned Similarly, though the evidence is tooslender to prove it. At Verulamium (for example)near St . Albans , a local archaeologist long ago claimedto detect a scheme of symmetrical house-blocks

,resem

Go'

ttingen, pl n'

l.-lzist. Kl , viii . p . 6 1,plan 2 ; the evidence

seems adequate though not wholly dec isive. The Roman town

Emporiae, now Ampurias, in the extreme north-east of Spain,seems to have had a rectangular street-plan, though its Greekpredecessor was irregular, I nsti tut d

’estudis catalans, aunar i 1908 ,

p . 1 85 .

1 Arcitaeologia, l ii i. 236 and lvi . 3 7 1 . The plan given by M r. Fox

in lii i . 236 represents his own theory, which may be open to

doubt

FIG. 28 . LINCOLN . SEWER UNDER BAILGATE .

CHAPTER I X

ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWN-PLANS. I I

IN the preceding chapters Roman town-planning ha sbeen treated in connexion with towns of defini temunicipal rank

,which bore the titles ‘colonia ’

o r

municipium The system is,of course , closely akin

to such foundation or refoundation as the establishment of a colonia implied in the early Empire

,whi le

the no less Roman character of the ‘municipium ’ madetown-planning appropriate to this class of town also .

I t was, however, not limited to these towns . I tappears not seldom in provincial towns of lower legalstatus

,such as were not uncommon in Britain , in Gaul ,

and in some other districts . Four instances may bequoted from the two provi nces just named . I n the

first,Autun , the town-planning is explained by the

establishment of the town full-grown under Romanofficial influence . Unfortunately, however, li ttle is

known of the buildings, and it is difficul t to judge of

the actual character of the place . I n the second case,

Trier,we may conjecture a similar official origin. At

S ilchester,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. I nthese two latter

,however, i t is more important to

observe the nature of the towns,which is better known

than that of any others in western Europe . For theyembody a type of urban life wh ich is distinct from any

ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN ING 1 2 1

that o ccurs in I taly or in the better civi lized districtsof th e Empire

,and which illustrates strikingly one

stra tum of provincial culture .

A utun (fig.

C a esar won northern and central Gaul ” for theRom an Empire ; i t fell to Augustus to organize theconquered but as yet unromanized lands. Amongman y steps to that end , he seems to have plantednew native towns which should take the places of oldnat iv e tribal capitals and should drive out local Celtictradi tions by new Roman municipal interests. Thesenew towns did not

,as a rule

,enjoy the full Roman

mun i cipal status ; northern Gaul was not quite ripe fortha t . But they were plainly devised to help Romanization forward , and their object is declared by theirhalf-Roman, half-Celtic names—Augustodunum (nowAutun) , Caesaromagus (Beauvais) , Augusta Suess ionum (Soissons), Augusta Treverorum (Trier) , andthe like .‘ Of two of these

,Autun and Trier

,we

chance to know the town-plans . The reader will noticea certain similarity between them .

Autun stands on the site and contains the statelyru ins of the Roman Augustodunum ,

built by Augustusabout 1 2 B. C. He , as i t seems, brought down theGaulish dwellers in the old native h ill-fortress of

1 H irschfeld, H aeduer und Aroerner (Si tz ungsber . der preuss.

Akademie, 1 897 , p. 1 Similar hybrid names havebeen c reated bythe English in India, mostly on the North-west Frontier, where alonethey have planted new inhab ited sites—Lyallpur, Abbotabad,

Edwardesabad, Robertsganj, and the like. But these are almostall small places or forts, and their names represent no policy of

Angl ic ization.

1 2 2 ANCIENT TOWN-PLANN I NG

Bibrac te, on Mont-Beuvray, and planted them twe lv e

miles away on an unoccupied Site beside the ri v e r

FIG. 29 . AFTER H . DE FONTENAY,1 889.

Arroux . The new town covered an area of somethingl ike 490 acres—that is , if the now traceable walls and

1 24 ANCI ENT TOWN-PLANN ING

Tr ier (fig.

We may take another example from a northern city ,Trier on the Mose!

,in north-eastern Gaul (Augusta

Treverorum). I t 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 N igra,was erected

,probably towards the

end of the th ird century, they included a space of

704 acres , twenty-five times as much as the originalTimgad

,though

,it must be added

,this area may not

have been wholly covered w ith houses. But it wasthen an old city. I ts earliest remains date from the

earliest days of the Roman Empire (A. D . when it wasfounded

,l ike Autun

,on a spot which had (as it seems)

never been inhabited before.‘ Of this first beginningwe possess vestiges which concern us here . Eight ornine years ago

,when the modern town was provided

w ith drainage,the engineers of the work and the Trier

archaeologists,headed by the late Dr. Graven , com

bined to note the points where the drainage trenchescut through pieces of Roman roadway.

2

These points yielded a regular plan of streets crossingat right angles

,which in many of its features much

1 Ademeit, S iedelungsgeograp/zie des M oselgebiets, pp . 367 , 43 12 H . Gri ven, S tadtplan des ro

’

miscli en Tr iers in D ieDenkmalpflege,1 4 Dec . 1 904 ( 1 the plan has been often Copied, as by

Cramer, D as rom. Tr ier (G iitersloh, 1 9 1 and Von Behr, Tr ierer

jaltresben’

cltte, i . 1 908 . Compare Barthel, B onnerjalzrbuclter , cxx. 1 06.

Trier at some time or other became a colonia When this occurred,is hotly disputed the evidence seems to me to suggest that it wasfounded without colonial status and became a colonia latina in the

course of the first century (see Domasz ewski, Ablzandlungen, p .

I have therefore inserted Trier in th is chapter with Autun and not in

Chapter V III with Orange and Timgad .

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN I NG 1 2 5

resembles that of Autun. Thirteen streets were tracedrunning east and west

,and eight (Dr. Gri ven says

seven but his plan shows eight) running north andsou th . The east and west streets , wi th two exceptions,lay some 3 20 ft . from one another. The north andsouth 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. Thelargest seem to be those which fronted a street thatcrossed the town from east to west

,from the Imperial

Palace to the Baths and the West Gate , and correspondsroughly wi th the present Kaiserstrasse. This may wel lhave been the a

'ecumanus

,the main east and west

s t reet of the colonia and hence the house-blocks fronting it may have been unusually large (p. Oneof them

,near the Neumarkt

,reached the awkward size

of nearly 331

, acres (320 X 46O O thers elsewhere

w ere smaller,many measuring 320x 3 20 ft and others

again 3 20 x 245 ft . , rather less than 2 acres. I n general ,the insulae ’ on the east and west sides of the townwere larger than those in the centre. The whole hasa resemblance to Autun

,and is more irregular than

w riters on Trier are ready to allow .

‘

How many houses may have occupied either a largeor a small insula is uncertain indeed

,we know next

to nothing of the private houses of Roman Trier. Norcan 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

1 Graven estimated that, except in the central street, all the‘ insulae ’

measured 300 Roman ft. (290 Engl ish ft ., 88 metres) ,but his plan suggests rather 1 00 metres. We need in reality thatlarger plan which he did not l ive to complete.

ANCI ENT TOWN -PLANN ING

FIG. 30. TR IER. From plan by the late Dr. G raven.


Roman site in the western provinces .‘ I t w a s ,

apparently, the old tribal capital of the Atrebate sand the county-town of its district in Roman day s ;though not possessing the full municipal status , i t w a s

probably the seat of local government for a conside r

NOR‘

TH 0m

FIG . 3 1 . (For detail see fig.

able neighbourhood. I n outline it was an irregulareight-sided area of 1 00 acres

,defended by a strong

stone wall,which was added long after the original

foundation . Internally it was divided up by streets

1 For accounts of the Silchester excavations, see Arclzaeologia ,

vols. Iii—lxii, and Victori a H ist. of Hamps/zire, i . 2 7 1 , 3 50 ; largeplan by W . H . St. John Hope ( I in Arclzaeol. lxi .


wh i ch , except near the east gate , run parallel or atright angles to one another. I ts buildings area Forum and Basilica

,a suite of publ ic baths , four

sm all temples , a small Christian church ,a hotel

,and

a large number of private houses . I ts area is by nomeans fil led w ith buildings . Garden ground must havebeen common and cheap , and the buildings themselvesdo not form continuous streets ; they do not even frontthe roadway in the manner of houses in I talian towns .I n these respects S ilchester differs widely from any of

the examples which we have already considered , so faras their internal buildings are known to us . I w i ll notcall i t a garden city ’

,for a garden city represents an

attempt to add some of the features of the countryto a town . S ilchester, I fancy , represents the exactopposite. I t is an attempt to insert urban featuresinto a country-side.Most of it must have been laid out at once . A t any

rate,the area of which the insulae

’

numbered X , XXI ,XXXV

,and X IX form the corners

,and the Forum

the centre must have been planned complete from the

fi rst. Th is covers just 40 acres , and is divided intorectangular plots of which the smallest covers a l ittleless than an acre and a half, while the largest falll i ttle short of 3 } acres .

‘ Outside this area,the

division of the town into ‘ insulae ’ is less completelycarried through , although most of the streets runstraight on as far as the walls , and one or two detailsmay tempt us to think that the division into ‘insulae

’

1 The plots are of three siz es,two being 3 4 acres ( 1 28 x 1 30

six about 2-4 acres ( 1 28 x 89 and six about 1 -4 acres (89 x

80 In the th ird Siz e the dimension of 240 Roman feet (p . 79)can perhaps be recogniz ed .

1494


S c a rs or fi t !

FIG . 3 2 . DETAILS OF FOUR INSULAE,THE FORUM AND THE

CHURCH AT SILCHESTER (from Arclzaeologia ).

1 32 ANCI ENT TOWN-PLANN I NG

system jostles against a provincial and rural l ife. H e r e

was a premature attempt to municipalize the Bri t o n,

which outstripped the readiness of the Briton to b e

municipal ized. S ilchester was probably a tribal cen t r ebefore the Roman came ; for awhile it may have t e

mained much the same under Roman rule. But fo r t y

years after the Roman Conquest,in the reign o f

Vespasian (about A . D . 70 the Romanizat ion o f

the whole province appears to have rapidly advanc e d .

I t was , indeed , encouraged by the Home Gove r nment. Various details suggest that the laying out o f

S i lchester belonged to this very date. But to th is th e

Callevan failed to rise. He learnt much from Rom e ;

he learnt even town-l ife ; he did not learn town- l ife i ni ts highest form . When his town had been hau s smanniz ed

’ and fitted w ith Roman streets , and equippedw ith Roman Forum and Basilica

,and the rest, he y e t

continued to live—perhaps more happily than the tru etownsman—in his irregularly grouped houses and

cottages amid an expanse of gardens . The area o f

S i lchester differed little from that ofAosta ; its population , if we may judge by the number of dwel l inghouses , was hardly as large as that of Timgad .

Caerwent (fig.

I turn lastly to another Romano-British town,Caer

went (Venta S ilurum) , between Chepstow and Newportin Monmouthshire . I t is a smaller town than S i lchester. Both towns perhaps began with the samearea, 40 or 45 acres . But Caerwent never expanded ;it rema ined not much more than 45 acres w ithin the

walls . Land was probably valuable w ithin it ; certainlyits houses are packed closer

,and its garden ground is

ANCI ENT TOWN -PLANN ING 1 33

smaller than at S i lchester. I ts general type is , however

,the same. I t has a very similar Forum and

Basilica,Temples

,an Amphitheatre

,and a large

number of private houses which resemble closely thoseof S ilchester. I t has , moreover, at least in the partsthat have been so far excavated , distinct traces of

FIG . 33 . REDUCED FROM PLAN BY F. K ING .

a rectangular street pattern,which

,if i t was carried

through the whole town , would provide (including theForum) twenty

‘ insulae’

. The size of these blockscannot be determined with any precision . I ndeed

,in

some cases the houses seem to have encroached on anddistorted the street-plan . Probably it would be trueto say that the average block covered an acre anda half or an acre and two -thirds .‘ We do not know

1 The three best defined examples measure about 260 x 260,


enough of the history of Caerwent to do more tha nguess how this street-plan came to it. Very likely th e

same process of establishing a Roman-looking town fo ra local capital was adopted here as at S ilchester. V ery

l ikely the step was taken in the same period as a t

S i lchester,that is

,in the last thirty years of the fi rs t

century. I ts occurrence is significant . Caerwent layremote in the far west

, w ith nothing but garrisonsbeyond it. I t was the outpost of Roman city l ifetowards the Atlantic. I t was the only town of Romanmunicipal plan in Britain which was swept by Atlanticbreezes .‘

S i lchester and Caerwent did not stand alone in

Britain . At Wroxeter,the ancient V iroconium ,

tribalcentre of the Cornov ii and a Romano-British countrytown much like S ilchester

,though somewhat larger ,

oblong insulae ’ have recently been detected byMr. J . P . Bushe-Fox which measure l o3 x 1 26 yds .

(23 acres). At Cirencester, the Romano-British centrefor the canton of the Dobuni and a still larger townthan Wroxeter

,the ‘ insulae ’ near the Basil ica seem

to have measured as much as 1 20 yards in length,

though full detai ls have not yet been obtained . Boththese towns may be ascribed to the later years of

the first century and to the same civil izing process asS ilchester and Caerwent . AS further Romano-Britishtowns are uncovered

,we may therefore hope for more

260 x 280, 2 75 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.2 Accounts of the Caerwent Excavations, 1 899- 1 9 1 0, will be found

in Arclzaeologi a, vols. lvii—lxii . A good plan of the Whole town, fromwhich fig. 33 is taken, was issued in vol. lxii, plate 64, by M r. F. King,architect to the excavations (scale, 1

1 36 ANCIENT TOWN -PLANNING

the land beyond Jordan , at the capital of the Hauran ,

Bosrfi , anciently Bostra . Little has been achieved inthe way of exploration of this site beyond studies of

the stately ruins of theatres , palaces , temples , triumpha larches

,aqueducts. Little can therefore be said as to

the date of its ground-plan . But it was rectangular inoutline

,or nearly so ; and its streets crossed at right

angles and enclosed rectangular insulae .

‘ The placeowes all its greatness to Rome. During the secondcentury it was the fortress of the Legio I I I Cyrenaica ,

scale i aap oo

FIG . 34. AFTER BAEDEKER .

which guarded this part of the eastern Roman frontier.About A . D . 2 2 5 it became a

‘ colonia ’

,and perhaps we

should date from this the town-plan just described

(fig 34)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 rebuiltafter a total destruction, it was rebuilt on a symmetrical plan of oblong ‘ insulae (2 5—30 by 60—70 yds.

area) . I ts streets were mean and narrow . But theirplan at least was apparently more regular than that oftheir predecessors. 2

1 Baedeker, P alestine and Sy r ia p . 1 62 .

2 M inns, Greeks and Scy t/zians, 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 halfused a definite town-plan which may be named , forbrevity

,the Chess-board pattern . I t remains to ask

whether literature, or at least legal literature , providesany basis of theory or any ratification of the actualsystem which archaeology reveals . Of augural lorewe have indeed enough and to spare. W e know thatthe decumanus and the cardo

,the two main l ines of the

Roman land-survey and probably also the two mainstreets of the Roman town-plan

,

‘ were laid out underdefinite augural and semi-rel igious provision . W e

should expect to find more. A system of town-planningthat is so distinctive and so widely used might reasonably have created a series of building-laws sanctioningor modify ing it. This did not occur. Nei ther thelawyers nor even the land-surveyors

,the so-called

Gromatici , tell us of any legal rules relative to townplanning as distinct from surveying in general . Thesurveyors

,in particular

,are much more concerned with

the soil of the province and its‘ limitation ’ and

centuriation than with the arrangements of anyindividual town , and , whatever their value for extramural boundaries

,

2 throw no light on streets andinsulae

1 See p. 73 .

2 Schulten, Hermes, 1 898, p . 534 .


The nearest approach to building-laws which oc c u r s

is a clause which seems to be a standing provision i n

many municipal charters and similar documents fromthe age of Cicero onwards

,to the effect that no m a n

might destroy,unroof

,or dismantle an urban bui lding

unless he was ready to replace it by a building at lea s tas good or had received special permission from h is

local town council . The earliest example of th i sprovision occurs in the charter of the municipality o f

Tarentum , which was drawn up in the time of Cicero .

‘

I t is repeated in practically the same words in the

charter of the colonia Genet iva ’ in southern Spa in ,wh ich

was founded in 44 B . C. it recurs in the charter grantedto the municipality of Malaga

,also in southern Spain

,

about A .D . Somewhat similar prohibitions of the

removal of even old and worthless houses w ithou tspecial leave are implied in decrees of the RomanSenate passed in A. D . 44 and A . D . 56 , though theseseem really to relate to rural rather than to urbanbuildings and were perhaps more agrarian thanmunicipal in their object.2 Hadrian

,in a dispatch

written in A. D. 1 2 7 to an eastern town which had latelyobtained something like municipal status

,includes a

1 Mommsen, Eplz. Epigr . ix,p. 9 Dessau, I nscr . sel. 6086

‘nei quis in oppido quod eius munic ipi crit aedific ium detegito neivedemolito neive disturbato nisei quod non deterius restiturus crit n iseide senatus sententia . sei quis adversus ea faxit, quanti id aedific iumfuerit, tantam pequniam munic ipio dare damnas esto eiusque pequniae

quei volet petitio est.’

(Engl ish translation in E . G . Hardy’s Roman

Laws and C/zar ters, p .

2 Dessau, 6087 , 6089 Hardy, Roman Laws, part 2 , pp. 34, 1 08.

2 For these decrees, which are prac tically equivalent at th is date tolaws, see CI L . x. 1 40 1 ! Dessau 6043 , and de Pachtere in M e

’

langes

Cagnat, p . 1 69.

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 totake definite form

,but when the Empire fell

,i t too met

i ts end . Only here and there its vestiges lingered on

in the streets of scattered cities like things of a formerage. But, secondly, from this death it rose again , firstin the thirteenth century

, wi th ever-growing power toset the model for the city life of the modern world .

I . The value of town-planning to Roman civil izationwas twofold. I t increased the comfort of the commonman ; it made the towns stronger and more coherentunits to resist the barbarian invasions. When , after250 years of confl ict , the barbarians triumphed , its workwas done. I n the next age of ceaseless orderless warfare it was less fit

,w ith its straight broad streets, for

defence and for fighting than the Chaos of narrowtortuous lanes out of Which it had grown and to whichit now returned . The cases are few in which surv ivalsof Roman streets have conditioned the external formof mediaeval or modern towns. We in England tendperhaps 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 inoutl ine and streets that cross in a Carfax

,they give

them a Roman origin .

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN ING 1 4 1

Such a tendency is wrong. Plentiful evidence showsth a t even in I taly and even in towns where men havedw elt without a break Since Roman days

,the Roman

s t reets,and w ith them the Roman town-plans

,have far

o ftener vanished than endured . Rome herself,the

E ternal City , uses hardly one street to day which wasu s ed in the Roman Empire . Some few I tal ian towns

,

described in detail above , have a better claim to bec a lled eternal ’ ; half a dozen in northern I taly retainth eir ancient streets in singular perfection . Yet eventh ere cities like Padua and Mantua , Genoa and Pisa ,h ave lost the Signs of their older fashion. So , too , in the

p rovinces. I n the Danubian lands only one town caneven be supposed to preserve a few of its Roman streets.I n all the once great cities of that region , S irmiuma nd S iscia

,Poetov io and Celeia and Emona , they have

wholly gone ; you may walk across the sites to-day andseek them in vain in modern street or hedgerow or lane.I n Gaul there were many Roman municipalities in theSouth there were many towns of lesser rank but equalwealth in the centre and west and north . But we owe

our know ledge of their town-plans to an inscriptionfrom Orange and to some excavations at Autun andTrier . Cologne and Trier alone , or almost alone, keepRoman streets in modern use, and they are Significant.Both became Roman towns in the first century ; both

’

held colonial rank ; both have lived on continuouslyever Since and hardly changed their names . Yet bothbear to day the stamp of the Middle Ages , and theRoman streets which they use are small and nearlyunrecognizable fragments.There is

,indeed , no law of survivals . Chance

that convenient ancient word to denote the inter


action of many imponderable forces—has ruled one

way in one place and otherwise in another. Som e

times monuments have alone survived, sometimes on lystreets

,and we can seldom give reasons for this contra st

of fates . At Pola , gates , temples , and amphitheatrestill tell of the Roman past and the modern town-squarekeeps so plainly the tradit ion of the Forum that youcannot walk across i t wi thout a sense of what it was.

Yet not a single street agrees w ith those of the Roman‘ colonia ’

. I n 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 oldRoman field-ways sti ll divide up the fertile plains outsidethose towns. But , save in Turin , hardly one Romanstone has been left upon another . I n the no less fertileplain of the lower Rhone , at N imes and Arles andOrange

,the stately ruins wake the admiration of the

busiest and least learned traveller ; of the Romanstreets there is no Sign .

Britain has enjoyed less continuity of civil ization thanany other western province ; in Britain the survivalsare even fewer. I n London

,w ithin the limits of the

Roman city, no street to-day follows the course of anyRoman street

,though Roman roads that lead up to the

gates are still in use. At Colchester the Roman wallsstill stand the places of the Roman gates are knownthe masonry of the west gate is sti ll visible as the

masonry of a gateway. But the modern and ancientstreets do not coincide, and the west gate , which has sowell w ithstood the blows of time

,can hardly be reached

by road from w ithin the city. At York the defences ofthe legionary fortress have still their place in the sun,

but the colonia on the other bank of the Ouse has


Soon after, the chess-board pattern came to Engla n d

and was used in Edwardian towns like Flint ‘ and W i n

chelsea ; then , too , it was adopted at the other end o f

the civil ized world by German soldiers in Polish la nd s .

Cracow,for example , owes to German settlers i n

the mid-thirteenth century that curious chess-boa r dpattern of its innermost and oldest streets which s o

FIG . 3 5 . PLAN OF A BASTIDE TOWN,SAUVETERRE-DE-GUYENNE

NEAR BORDEAUX (A . D . BY Dr. A. E . BRINCKMANN .

much puzzles the modern visitor.2 I t is unnecessaryhere to follow further the renaissance of town-planning.

By intervals and revivals it continued to spread . I II

1 65 2 i t reached Java , when the Dutch built Batavia .

1 Compare E . A. Lewis,M edieval B oroughs of Snowdonia , pp. 30 ,

6 1 foll .2 So, too, Lemberg. Compare R. F. Kaindl

,D ie D eutsc/ten in

den K'

arpa tlzenla'

ndern, i . 1 78, 293 i i . 304 ; he does not, however,deal with the actual plans.

ANCIENT TOWN -PLANN I NG 1 45

In 1682 i t reached America , when Penn foundedPhiladelphia. In 1 7 5 3 , when Kandahar was refoundedas a new town on a new site , i ts Afghan builderslaid out a roughly rectangular city, divided into fourquarters meeting at a central Carfax and dividedfurther into many strangely rectangular blocks of

houses.‘

But in grow ing, the old town-planning has passedinto a new stage . The Romans dealt w ith small areas ,seldom more than three hundred acres and often verymuch less. The town-plans of the Middle Ages andeven of modern times affected areas that were li ttlelarger . Only the last days have brought development .Till the enormous changes of the nineteenth centurychanges which have transferred the termination of

ancient history from A . D. 476 to near A . D . 1 800—theolder fashions remained

,in town-life as in most other

forms of civil ized society. Towns were still , w ith fewexceptions

,small and their difficulties

,if real

,were

Simple. Save in half a dozen abnormal capitals,they

had,even in relatively modern days, no vast popula

tions to be fed and made into human and orderlycitizens . 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 Chicagoor Buenos Ayres, to provide lungs for their cities , tofight with polluted streams and smoke. Their problemsare quite unlike those of the ancients. When Cobbett

,

about 1 800, called London the Great Wen , he contrastedin two monosyllables the ancient ideal of a city with theugly modern facts.

1 I have to thank the late Sir Alfred Lyall for a sight of a survey

made by English engineers in 1 839.

1 494 K


It is not,therefore

,likely that modern architects o r

legislators w ill learn many hints from plans of Timgador of Silchester. There are lessons perhaps in thegrowth of Turin from its l ittle ancient chess-board to

i ts modern enlargement, but such developments a re

rare. s The great benefit to modern workers of su cha survey as I have attempted is that it shows the Slowand pa inful steps by which mankind became at lastable to plan towns as units

,yet inhabited by individual

men and women , and that it emphasizes the need fordefinite rules and princ iples. Nor is it perhaps qu itesuperfluous to day to point out how c losely

,even after

the great upheaval of the nineteenth century, the formsof modern life depend on the Roman world.

k ah u na-f 1 1111111 . q

80 50 1 00 0 f on t

Ruins of 141. 1111114311; of Kin n e y

E ii i-in nu

Ct o

5Ra in. N9O

o l ( 3 ifiuburg-n hta. . 13

D Ruins of Mosque

[38145 141 011 0

F IG . 36. RUINS OF A CH INESE M ILITARY COLONY AT KHARA-KHOTO IN CENT(eleventh or twelfth century A. Geograplt i caljournal, Sept. 1910.

APPEND I X

CHINESE TOWN-PLANNING

AN essay in ancient town-planning ought to inc lude some

a ccount of town-

planning in the far east, in Ch ina and J apan.

Unfortunately , no more than a reference is here possib le .

Ch inese antiquities lie beyond the range of c lassical scholars,and the particular subject of Chinese town-

planning seems

not to have been systematica l ly treated by any orientalscholar.

Many towns in China and also in J apan1 Show more or less

definite traces of ‘chess-board planning wh ich recal l the

customs of the Macedonian and Roman worlds. The out

l ines of such towns are sometimes rectangu lar, thoughsometimes whol ly irregular as if the sport of local cond it ions ; their streets, or at least their main streets, run

general ly straight and at right angles to one another and

end at symmetrically placed gateways. This is no moderndevice. Probably it goes back two thousand , or even three

thousand, years. The i llustrat ion2 which I give here, in fig. 36,

Showing one of the Chinese mil itary colonies planted in

Turkestan in the eleventh or twelfth century , is selected not

as the oldest,but as the best example wh ich I can find of more

or less ancient Chinese planning. There seems no doubt thatthe system itself is very much more anc ient than th is instance.

Even in J apan, wh ich probab ly copied China in th is respect ,

towns were laid out in chess-board fash ion long before the

twelfth century ; such arethe former capitals, K ioto and Nara,

‘

1 The most accessible plans are in Madrolle’

s and Murray’

s Guides.For some notes on J apan I am indebted to Sir E rnest Satow.

2 From a paper by Col. Koz loff, Geograpl u'

cal journal, Sept. 19 10.

For the date I have the authority of S ir Aurel Stein.

K 2

1 48 APPEND I X

the latter of wh ich is sa id to have been founded as ea r lyas A . D . 708.

P robably the custom is connected with a very old agrariansystem ,

somet imes known as the Tsing ’

system (from the

shape of the Ch inese character of that name) , accord ing to

which land was div ided into square parcels and each parce lwas subdivided into nine equa l squares . The origin o f

th is system has been ascribed to the twelfth and even to the

eighteenth century B . C . About 30O B . C . the philosop herMenc ius made it the subjeef of a financ ia l scheme ; of the n ineunits , eight were to be t i l led by eight private owners for the irown profit , wh i le the ninth was to be cultivated by the eightmen together for the benefit of the S tate. This Utopian landtax does not seem to have been actual ly tried, but it prov idesconfirmatory proof of the antiquity of the agrarian system . I t

seems that th is system may be c losely connected with the

system of lay ing out sett lements and towns, wh ich developedco llateral ly with it and produced Chinese town-planning . In

China, as at Rome, it would appear that the technical princ ipleson wh ich town and country were laid out were int imately akin.

One item in the Ch inese ‘chess-board ’

plan is curiouslypara l lel to a feature wh ich occasional ly occurs in Roman

towns (p. Q fl

many .

Chinese c ities, where the streets are

M L a_n

_

d‘ 11111 at right angles to one another , ,

the gatestowards which they pOint are nevertheless no

_

t m’

s—d-uis, butthe main thoroughfares between the gates make two rightangled turns at some point in their otherwise straight course.

Thus t ravel lers do not pass through the town in one continuousstraight l ine, and, as in fig. 36 , the east gate is not just opposite

1 I am indebted to Prof. E . H . Parker and Dr. F. Hirth for suggestionson th is point. See F. H irth , Anci ent H istory of Cltina (New York ,p . 296 ; Dae, Land-tax in C/zina (E ighth Oriental Congress, Stockholm ,

1 50 APPEND IX

had no doubt heard of the Roman Empire, just as the Romans

had heard of China such hearsay does not produce any grea t

effect on the c ivil iz ation of either Side. The Ch inese doubt lessknew much more of Bactria ; and Greek , or rather Grac co

Buddh ist art , has left abundant traces in the desert cit iesof central Asia as far as the Ch ineseWal l . But a town-

planis too complex a th ing to travel wel l . I t is plainly more

l ikely that east and west reached their simi lar results quiteindependent ly .

That certainly Seems the case with another striking para l lelbetween anc ient China and anc ient Europe. The Great W a llwh ich encircles northern Ch ina and the Shorter rampart , latelytraced by S ir Aurel Stein,

which guarded the road from Pekinto Khotan and Kashgar, are not unl ike the fortified frontiersof the Roman Empire. They are earlier than these Roman

works. The Great W al l dates from the third century B.C .

and the lesser Wa l l from about 100 B. C. ; none of the Roman

W alls was begun t i l l nearly 200 years later. But there is no

sort of reason to think that the designers of Hadrian’

s Wal l inCumberland and Northumberland or of the Limes in Upper

Germany and Raetia or of any other Roman border rampart

were moved by precedents drawn even indirectly from China.

The two c ivi liz ed Empires were faced with the same frontierdangers of invading barbarians they devised , each for itself,the method of defence by frontier wa lls. Only , the Chinesedefences succeeded the Roman wal ls—to the great goodof the world—were beaten down.

INDEX

Africa, town-planning in Roman,1 06—1 1 3 .

Agoranomi, Astynomi, I 6, 3 7 , 54.

Agrarian field-planning, in the

Roman world, 70 , 7 3 n .

,8 1

,

1 04 n.,1 42 ; in China, 1 48 .

Aigues Mortes, 1 43 .

A lexandria (inEgypt), 46, 1 35 n.

other towns of that name,40, 56.

Amphitheatres, 1 8, 63 , 78 , 90,

Antinoe (Egypt), 1 35 .

Aosta (Augusta Praetoria) , 89- 9 1 .

Apamea (on the Orontes), 50.

Aquileia, 8 2 .

Aquincum ,1 05 .

Arausio (Orange), inscription, I 07 .

Arch itectural displays, in relationto town-planning proper, 1 1

25 1 44) 5 2 : 78 , 83 °

Asshur, 26.

Athens, lack of plan, 2 8 .

Augusta Treverorum, seeTrier.Augustodunum (Autun), 1 20—1 23 .

Augustus (Oc tavian) , work in

founding and planning towns,

76, 8 1 ini

central andnorthernGaul, 1 2 1 .

Autun,1 20- 1 23 .

Babylon, 20- 26.

Bastides, 1 3 ,1 43 .

Bostra, 1 36.

Braga (Portugal), 1 03 .

Britain, Roman town-planning,1 1 8 , 1 2 7 foll.

Bronze Age, village planning, 58 .

Building laws in Greek lands, 3 7 ,53 ; in Roman, 1 3 7 foll.

Caerwent, 1 3 2- 1 34.

Calleva, 79 n.,88 n.

,1 27—1 33 .

Cardo, as a technical term in

town-planning, 73 , 1 07 .

Carfax, 1 40.

Carthage, 80, 1 1 3- 1 1 5 .

Castellaz z o di Fontanellato, 58 .

Chersonnesus (Crimea) , 1 36.

China, town-planning, 1 3 , 2 2 ,

88 n . , 1 47—1 50 intercoursebetween anc ient China and theWest, 1 49.

Cirencester, 5 1 , 1 34.

Claudius Socrates,1 39.

Colchester, 1 42 .

Cologne, 7 3 n.,88 n., 1 03 , 1 4 1 .

Coloniae; 75Concordia , 9 1 n.

Cyrene, 35 foll.Decumanus

,as a technical term

in town-planning, 73 , 1 3 7 .

Dinoc rates, Macedonian architeet, 1 3 , 4 1 .

Emona (Laibach), 1 1 5 .

Emporiae, 1 1 8 n.

Ephesus, 5 2 n .

E truscan town-planning, if any ,62

, 7 1 .

Faleri i , 69 n.

Florence, 85 , 9 1—95 .

Forum,1 7, 78 , 1 29, 1 33 .

Gaul, town-planning in, 1 07 , 1 20.

Gerasa, 50 .

G igthi (Roman Africa) , 1 05 .

G loucester,1 1 9 n.

Greek town-planning, 1 5 , 2 7—40 ;survivals in Italy , 66, 97—1 02 .

Herculaneum, 97—100.

Herodotus, on Babylon,20 foll .

Hippodamus of M iletus, firstG reek town-planner, 29—3 2, 60.

Hotels, 1 1 6, 1 28.

I nsulae in Roman towns, 1 7, 7 7foll.

, 88 .

Italian town-planning, its or igins,1 7 , 5 7 foll. , 7 2 how influencedby G reek patterns, 73 , 8 1 .

Iugerum (Roman land-measure) ,how far used in provinc ialtown, 79, 1 07 , 1 29.

115 2 INDEX

Japan, 1 47 , 1 48 .

Kahun (Egypt) , 1 9.

Kandahar, 56, 1 45 .

Kara-khoto, 1 47 .

Laibach (Emona), 1 1 5 .

L incoln, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8, 1 43 .

Livorno,rec tangular plan of the

sixteenth century, 84.

London ,no Roman streets now

traceable, 1 42 .

Lucca, 85 . 95-

97

Macedonian Age, town-planning,1 7 , 3 2, 40 foll . , 1 05 .

Marz abotto, 6 1—63 .

Milan,faint traces of Roman

town-planning, 85 n.

M iletus, 44—46.

Military causes for town-planning,—1 44

Mitylene, as described by V itruvius, 49.

Modena, 69—70, 85 , 1 0 1 .

Naples, 80, 85 , 1 00—1 02 .

Nicaea (Bithynia), 4 1 , 47 .

Ntmes, 1 03 n . , 1 42 .

Nineveh, 26.

Norba, 68 .

Numantia,1 1 7 .

Orange, inscription, 1 07 .

Orientation of town-plans, 7 7 , I 1 1 .

Pergamum, 5 2—5 5 .

P iacenz a,80, 85 , 1 42 .

P iraeus, 29, 3 2 n.

Plintheia, in Greek towns in

Egypt. 1 35Pola, 1 42 .

Pompeii,63—69 its OldTown

66.

Priene, 42—44.

Processions, influence on town

plans, 1 6, 2 5 .

Rectangular elements in town

planning, 1 4 ; resemblance to

m il itary encampments, 5 5 ;

connexion between the Rom an

town-plan and fortress-plan ,

73 foll ., 80 ; in mediaeval andmodern towns

, 84, 1 4 1 foll .Rhodes, 1 4, 3 1 , 3 2 n .

Roman towns, when and whyfounded, 7 5 ; Size, 78 .

Rome, lack of plan,8 3 ; Roma

Quadrata, 74.

Scamnum, str iga , 7 3 .

Selinus (Sic ily) , 3 3 , 34.

Sewers, 1 7 , 89, 90, 1 1 2,1 1 8 .

Sicyon, 48 .

S ilchester, 79 n. ,88 n.,

1 2 7—1 3 2 .

Smyrna, 49.

Soluntum, 36 n.

Sorrento, 85 .

Sparta, lack of plan, 29.

Survivals of anc ient town-plans inmodern towns

,84 , 1 40 foll.

Templum, 70.

Terra Nova (Sic ily) , 84, 1 43 .

Terremare of North Italy , 5 76 1

,8 1 .

Thamugadi, see T imgad.

Theatres, 1 7 , 63 , 78 , 98, 1 00 n .,

I 1 5 .

Thebes (Boeotia) , 49.

Thessalonica, 50.

Thibilis (Roman Africa) , 1 06.

Thurii , 30.

T imgad, 79 n. , 88 n .,1 09—1 1 3 .

Trier, 1 24- 1 2 7 .Turin

, 79 n.,85 , 86

—89.

Utica, 1 06 n .

Venta Silurum,1 3 2—1 34.

Verulam ium, I 1 8 .

Vetulonia, 62 .

V illes Neuves, 1 3 , 1 43 .

V itruvius, anecdote of Dinocrates,1 3 on Mitylene, 49 on

Roman town-planning, 8 1 .

Wroxeter, 1 34.

York, 1 42 .

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