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Archaeology tells us that the western half of the Roman Empire and many districts in its eastern half used a definite town-plan which may be named, for brevity, the chess-board pattern. It remains to ask whether literature, or at least legal literature, provides any basis of theory or any ratification of the actual system which archaeology reveals.
We might perhaps wish to pursue our speculations and ask whether this vigorous system influenced foreign lands, and whether the Macedonian army carried the town-plan of their age, in more or less perfect form, as far as their conquests reached. Alexander settled many soldiers in lands which were to form his eastern and north-eastern frontiers, as if against the central-asiatic nomads.
Carthage, first founded though only in an abortive fashion as a Roman 'colonia' in 123 B.C. and re-established with the same rank by Julius Caesar or Augustus, shows a rectangular town-plan in a city which speedily became one among the three or four largest and wealthiest cities in the Empire. The regularity of its planning was noted in ancient times by a topographical writer.
In others again, some of which lie in the east, occasional search or even chance discoveries have shed welcome light. Our knowledge is more than enough already for the purposes of this chapter. We can already see that the town-plan described in the foregoing pages was widely used in the provinces of the Empire.
More often mediaeval and modern streets seem to follow ancient lines and the ancient town-plan, or a part of it, survives in use to-day. Such survivals are especially common in the north of Italy. It is not, indeed, possible to gather a full list of them.
The limits are the Castel Capuano on the east, the Strada dell' Orticello on the north, the church of S. Pietro a Majella on the west, and on the south the churches of S. Marcellino and S. Severino. This town-plan of Naples differs from any of those noted above. As Naples was by origin and character a Greek city, these narrow oblongs have been supposed to represent a Greek arrangement.
Without minute excavation it may be impossible to assign the town-plan of such a place to its proper place among these three periods. We have, however, at Selinus in Sicily and Cyrene on the north coast of Africa, two cases which may belong to the age of Hippodamus.
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