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For the inscription see Esperandieu, Acad. des Inscriptions, Comptes rendus, 1904, p. 497; Cagnat, Année Épigr., 1905, 12; and especially Schulten, Hermes, 1906, 1; a convenient English account is given by H.S. Jones, Companion to Roman Hist., p. 22.
It has been suggested by Schulten that the blocks were at first divided into plots of 35 ft. frontage, and that the boundaries had become changed in the ordinary course of things before the survey was made. But this seems to carry conjecture rather far. Here, in short, is the record of an oblong 'insula' in the Roman town of Orange.
Over the débris of Numantine liberty a little Roman town grew up. But it is hardly mentioned save in one or two road-books. Yet it enjoyed some form of municipal status and its streets and houses show to the excavator traces of Roman town-planning. The streets ran parallel or at right angles to one another; the house-blocks measured some 50 yds. square. Schulten, Abhandlungen der k.
It would be only human nature if the surveyors, finding both forms in use, should invent a theory to account for them. Schulten, Bonner Jahrbücher, ciii. 23, and references given there. Roman town-planning, like Roman art, was recast under Hellenistic influence and thus gained mathematical precision and symmetry. When this happened is doubtful.
The surveyors, in particular, are much more concerned with the soil of the province and its 'limitation' and 'centuriation', than with the arrangements of any individual town, and, whatever their value for extramural boundaries, throw no light on streets and 'insulae'. See p. 73. Schulten, Hermes, 1898, p. 534.
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