Ancient Town-Planning Part 4

(AB, FG, CD, main streets. The shading represents excavated houses.)]

(ii) A greater puzzle, dating probably from the fifth century B.C., meets us in the ruins of a nameless little Etruscan town which stood outside of Etruria proper, on the north slopes of the Apennines. Its site is fifteen miles south of Bologna, close to the modern Marzabotto, on the left bank of the little river Reno. Only a tiny part has been uncovered. But the excavators have not hesitated to complete their results conjecturally into a rectangular town-plan, with streets crossing at right angles and oblong blocks of houses measuring from 158 to 176 yds. in length and 37 or 44 or 71 yds. in width (fig. 12). The whole must have been laid out at once, and the smaller remains seem to show that this was done by Etruscans. In the fourth century the place was sacked by the Gauls, and though there was later occupation,[44] its extent is doubtful.[45]

Further excavation is, however, needed to confirm this generally accepted interpretation of the place. Nothing has been noted elsewhere in Etruria or its confines to connect the Etruscans with any rectangular form of town-plan. At Veii, for example, most of the Etruscan city has lain desolate and unoccupied ever since the Romans destroyed it, but the site shows no vestige of streets crossing at right angles or of oblong blocks of houses. At Vetulonia the excavated fragment of an Etruscan city shows only curving and irregular streets.[46] Nor is there real reason to believe that the 'Etruscan teaching' learnt by Rome included an art of town-planning (p. 71) or that, as a recent French writer has conjectured, the Etruscans brought any such art with them from the East and communicated it to the West.

We must conclude that at Marzabotto we have a piece of evidence which we cannot set into its proper historical framework. We might perhaps call it an early blend of Greek and Italian methods and compare it with Naples (p. 100). It is odd that four out of seven house-blocks should measure just under 120 Roman ft. in width and thus approximate to a figure which we meet often elsewhere in the Roman world (p. 79).

But it would be well to learn more of the plan by further excavation.

[44] _Archaeological Journal_, 1903, p. 237.

[45] Brizio, _Monumenti Antichi_, i. 252, superseding Gozzadini's _Antica Necropoli a Marzabotto_ (Bologna, 1865-70); Grenier, _Bologne villanovienne_ &c. (Paris, 1912) p. 98. Compare _Authority and Archaeology_, pp. 305, 306.

[46] _Notizie degli Scavi_ 1895, p. 272; Durm, _Baukunst der Etr_. p. 39.

_Pompeii_ (fig. 13).

(iii) A third piece of evidence can be found on a site which historians and novelists alike connect mainly with the Roman Empire, but which dates back to the days of the early or middle Republic.

Pompeii began in or before the sixth century B.C. as an Oscan city.

For a while, we hardly know when, it was ruled by Etruscans. Later, about 420 B.C., it was occupied by Samnites. Finally, it became Roman; it was refounded in 80 B.C. as a 'colonia' and repeopled by soldiers discharged from the armies of Sulla. In A.D. 79 it reached its end in the disaster to which it owes its fame. Its life, therefore, was long and full of destruction, re-building, enlargement. Its architectural history is naturally hard to follow. Many of its buildings, however, can be dated more or less roughly by the style of their ornament or the character of their material, and the lines of its streets suggest some conjectures as to its growth which deserve to be stated even though they may conflict with the received opinions about Pompeii. It will be understood, of course, that these conjectures, like all speculations on Pompeii, are limited by the fact that barely half of its area has been as yet uncovered, and that very little search has been made beneath the floors and pavements of its latest period.[47]

[47] For recent plans of Pompeii the reader may consult the second edition (1908) of August Mau's _Pompeii_, or the fifth edition (1910) of his _Fuhrer durch Pompeii_, re-edited by W.

Barthel. A plan on a large scale is given in the last part of _CIL_. iv (1909); there are also occasional plans in the _Notizie degli Scavi_. See also C. Weichardt, _Pompeji vor der Zerstorung_ (Leipzig, 1897).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 13. POMPEII.

(T = Temple. The area of the supposed original settlement is outlined in black.)]

As we know it at present, Pompeii is an irregular oval area of about 160 acres, planted on a small natural hill and girt with a stone wall nearly two miles in circ.u.mference (fig. 13). On the west there was originally access to the sea, and on this side the walls have disappeared or have not been yet uncovered. Near this end of the town is the Forum, with the princ.i.p.al temples and public buildings round it. At the east end of the town, nearly 1200 yds. from the western extremity, is the amphitheatre, and the town-walls appear to have been drawn so as to include it. Two main streets, now called the Strada di Nola and the Strada dell' Abbondanza, cross the town from SW. to NE.

The main streets from NW. to SE. are less distinct, but the Strada Stabiana certainly ran from wall to wall. While there is some appearance of symmetry in the streets generally, it does not go very far; there is hardly a right angle, or any close approach to a right angle, at any street corner.

It is generally held, as Mau has argued, that the whole town was laid out at once, perhaps during the Etruscan period, on one plan of streets crossing at right angles. Two princ.i.p.al streets, those now styled the Strada di Mercurio and the Strada di Nola, are considered to be the main streets of this earliest town-plan, and to give it its general direction. A third main street, the Strada Stabiana, which cuts obliquely across from the Vesuvian to the Stabian Gate and mars the supposed symmetry of this town-plan, is ascribed to the influence of a small natural depression along which it runs, while a small area east of the Forum, which also breaks loose from the general scheme, is thought to have been laid out abnormally in order to remedy the effect of this obliquity.[48]

This theory is open to objections. In the first place the streets (even apart from those just east of the Forum) do not really form one symmetrical plan. Region VI fits very ill with Regions I and III. Both indicate systematic planning. But Region VI is laid out in oblong blocks 110 ft. wide and either 310 ft. or 480 ft. long, while Regions I and III are made up of approximately square blocks about 200 ft.

each way. Moreover, the orientation of the blocks is different. Those in Region VI follow the lines of the Strada di Mercurio; those of Regions I and II, and perhaps also of Region V, are dominated by the Strada Stabiana. Yet there is no obvious reason why this difference should not have been avoided; it results, indeed, in awkward corners and inconvenient s.p.a.ces. Nor, again, can we accept as in any degree adequate the cause a.s.signed by Mau for the odd orientation of the streets next to the east side of the Forum.

[48] Mau, _Fuhrer_ (1910), p. 5, 'um die Schiefwinkeligkeit zu vermindern.' Truly, a very inadequate reason.

These streets which lie round and east of the Forum suggest a different development. Pompeii may have begun with a little Oscan town planted in what became its south-western corner, near the Water-Gate and the Forum, within the area of Regions II and IV. Here is a little network of streets, about 300 by 400 yds. across (25 acres), which harmonizes ill with the streets in the rest of the town, which lies close to the river-haven on the Sarno, which includes the Forum and Basilica--probably the oldest public sites, though not the oldest surviving structures, in Pompeii--and which is large enough to have formed the greater part or even the whole of a prehistoric city. The earliest building as yet excavated at Pompeii, the Doric Temple, with its precinct now known as the Forum Triangulare, stood on the edge of this area looking out from its high cliff over the plain of the Sarno.

Originally this Temple may have stood just within the first town-wall, or perhaps just without it, sheltered by the precipice which it crowns. This area has all the appearance of an 'Altstadt'. No doubt it has been much altered by later changes. In particular, Forum and Basilica have grown far beyond their first proportions, and the buildings which surround them have been added, altered, enlarged out of all resemblance to the original plan. Nevertheless, this theory seems to account better than any other for this curious little corner of streets that are hardly regular even in their relations to one another and are wholly irreconcilable to the rest of the town.

Round this primitive city grew up the greater Pompeii. The growth must have been rather by two or three distinct accretions than a gradual and continuous development. At present we cannot trace these stages.

To do that we must wait till the excavations can be carried deeper down, and till the other half of the city has been uncovered, or at least till the lines of its streets and the shapes of its house-blocks have been determined, like those of Priene (p. 42), by special inquiry. All that is as yet certain is that Regions I, III, V, and VI were laid out, and their houses were (in part at least) in existence before--perhaps long before--80 B.C., when the Sullan colony was planted,[49] and we see also that Region VI is planned differently from I and III.

[49] Region VI contains an ancient column of the sixth century B.C. (Mau, _Fuhrer_, p. 113), but this may not be _in situ_.

Another fact claims notice. The town-planning of Pompeii is in the main trapezoidal, not rectangular. Neither its oblongs, nor its squares, nor its street-crossings exhibit true right angles, though many of the rooms and peristyles in the private houses are regular enough. In this feature Pompeii resembles the trapezoidal outlines of the Terremare (fig. 11). It resembles also much Roman military work, both of Republican and of Imperial date, which disregards the strict right angle and accepts squares and oblongs which are, so to say, askew. The motive of the Terremare is supposed to have been, as I have said above, that of providing an easy flow for the water in the encircling moat. The motive of various military camps may perhaps be found rather in a wish to secure the same area as that of an orthodox rectangle, even though the ground forbade the strict execution of the orthodox figure. Whatever the reason, the trapezoidal house-blocks of Pompeii exhibit a feature which is not alien to the earlier town-planning of Italy, though it is strange to the cities of Greece.

_Norba_.

Not only do we need to know more of Pompeii itself. We need evidence also from other Italian towns of similar age. Here our ignorance is deep. Only one site which can help has been even tentatively explored.

Norba, which once crowned a spur of the Monti Lepini above the Pontine marshes, was founded as a Roman town, according to the orthodox chronology, in 492 B.C.[50] But the received chronology of the earlier Republic, minute as it looks, probably deserves no more credence than the equally minute but mainly fict.i.tious dates a.s.signed by the Saxon Chronicle to the beginnings of English History. Actual remains found at Norba suggest rather that it was founded (not necessarily by Rome) about, or a little before, 300 B.C.; it is therefore later than the Terremare and Marzabotto, and later also than the Oscan age of Pompeii. On the other hand, it came to an end in the Sullan period (82 B.C.). Its excavation has little more than begun, but it already indicates a scheme of streets somewhat resembling that of Pompeii,[51]

and it is a useful adjunct to our better knowledge of the more famous town. The two together furnish examples of the town-planning of middle Italy of about 400-300 B.C., in days that are only half historic, and thus help to fill the gap between the Terremare and the fully developed system of the Roman Imperial period.

[50] Livy ii. 34, contradicted, however, by xxvii. 10 and by Dionysius Halic. vii. 13 _ad fin_.

[51] _Notizie degli Scavi_, 191, p. 558, 1903, p. 261; Frothingham, _Roman Cities_, plate ix. I am indebted to Dr. T. Ashby, Director of the British School at Rome, for information as to the site.

Excavations made in 1823 at the Roman Falerii (founded 241 B.C.) show streets crossing at right angles, but the piece unearthed was small and the date uncertain (Canina, _Etruria Maritima_ i, plate ix).

It may be permitted in this context to add a plan of a north Italian city, in which some of the modern streets recall one quarter of Pompeii (fig. 14). Modena, the Roman Mutina, was founded as a 'colonia' with 2,000 male settlers in 183 B.C., and despite various misfortunes became one of the chief towns in the Lombard plain. One part of this town shows a row of long narrow blocks measuring about 20 x 160 metres (fig. 14, plan A), with a second row of shorter blocks of the same width and about half the length (plan B). These blocks have been much marred and curtailed by the inevitable changes of town life, but their symmetry cannot be accidental, and if they date back, as is quite possible, to Roman days, they may be put beside the Sixth Region of Pompeii which contains two rows of similar blocks.[52]

[52] Fig. 14 is taken from Zuccagni-Orlandini (1844). Kornemann suggests that Mutina was refounded about 40-20 B.C., but there seems to be no evidence of this break in its continuity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 14. MODENA. See p. 69.]

(iv) There remains, fourthly, evidence relating to early Rome itself, and to customs and observances which obtained there. These customs belong to the three fields of religion, agrarian land-settlement and war. All three exhibit the same principle, the division of a definite s.p.a.ce by two straight lines crossing at right angles at its centre, and (if need be) the further division of such s.p.a.ce by other lines parallel to the two main lines. The Roman augur who asked the will of Heaven marked off a square piece of sky or earth--his _templum_--into four quarters; in them he sought for his signs. The Roman general who encamped his troops, laid out their tents on a rectangular pattern governed by the same idea. The commissioners who a.s.signed farming-plots on the public domains to emigrant citizens of Rome, planned these plots on the same rectangular scheme--as the map of rural Italy is witness to this day.

These Roman customs are very ancient. Later Romans deemed them as ancient as Rome itself, and, though such patriotic traditions belong rather to politics than to history, we find the actual customs well established when our knowledge first becomes full, about 200 B.C.[53]

The Roman camp, for example, had reached its complex form long before the middle of the second century, when Polybius described it in words.

Here, one can hardly doubt, are things older even than Rome. Scholars have talked, indeed, of a Greek origin or of an Etruscan origin, and the technical term for the Roman surveying instrument, _groma_, has been explained as the Greek word 'gnomon', borrowed through an Etruscan medium. But the name of a single instrument would not carry with it the origin of a whole art, even if this etymology were more certain than it actually is. Save for the riddle of Marzabotto (p.

61), we have no reason to connect the Etruscans with town-planning or with the Roman system of surveying. When the Roman antiquary Varro alleged that 'the Romans founded towns with Etruscan ritual', he set the fas.h.i.+on for many later a.s.sertions by Roman and modern writers.[54]

But he did not prove his allegation, and it is not so clear as is generally a.s.sumed, that he meant 'Etruscan ritual' to include architectural town-planning as well as religious ceremonial.

[53] The prologue to the Poenulus of Plautus (verse 49) which mentions 'limites' and a 'finitor', may well be as old as Plautus himself. But the 'centuriation' still visible in north Italy around colonies planted about 180 B.C. is no full proof of rectangular surveying at that date. These towns were re-founded at a much later date, and their lands, and even their streets, _may_ have been laid out anew.

[54] Varro _ling. lat_. 5. 143 _oppida condebant Etrusco ritu, id est, iunctis bobus_, cf. Frontinus _de limit_. (grom. i. p. 27).

These are Italian customs, far older than the beginnings of Greek influence on Rome, older than the systematic town-planning of the Greek lands, and older also than the Etruscans. They should be treated as an ancestral heritage of the Italian tribes kindred with Rome, and should be connected with the plan of Pompeii and with the far older Terremare. Many generations in the family tree have no doubt been lost. The genealogy can only be taken as conjectural. But it is a reasonable conjecture.

In their original character these customs were probably secular rather than religious. They took their rise as methods proved by primitive practice to be good methods for laying out land for farming or for encamping armies. But in early communities all customs that touched the State were quasi-religious; to ensure their due performance, they were carried out by religious officials. At Rome, therefore, more especially in early times, the augurs were concerned with the delimitation alike of farm-plots and of soldiers' tents. They testified that the settlement, whether rural or military, was duly made according to the ancestral customs sanctioned by the G.o.ds.

After-ages secularized once more, and as they secularized, they also introduced science. It was, perhaps, Greek influence which brought in a stricter use of the rectangle and a greater care for regular planning.

It may be asked how all this applies to the planning of towns. We possess certainly no such clear evidence with respect to towns as with respect to divisions agrarian or military. But the town-plans which we shall meet in the following chapters show very much the same outlines as those of the camp or of the farm plots. They are based on the same essential element of two straight lines crossing at right angles in the centre of a (usually) square or oblong plot. This is an element which does not occur, at least in quite the same form, at Priene or in other Greek towns of which we know the plans, and it may well be called Italian. We need not hesitate to put town and camp side by side, and to accept the statement that the Roman camp was a city in arms. Nor need we hesitate to conjecture further that in the planning of the town, as in that of the camp, Greek influence may have added a more rigid use of rectangular 'insulae'. When that occurred, will be discussed in Chapter VI.

Whether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier and the land-commissioner was adopted in the towns, is a more difficult, but fortunately a less important question. Modern writers speak of the _cardo_ and the _dec.u.ma.n.u.s_ of Roman towns, and even apply to them more highly technical terms such as _striga_ and _scamnum_. For the use of _cardo_ in relation to towns there is some evidence (p. 107).

But it is very slight, and for the use of the other terms there is next to no evidence at all.[55] The silence alike of literature and of inscriptions shows that they were, at the best, theoretical expressions, confined to the surveyor's office.[56]

[55] Whether the _possessores ex vico Lucretio scamno primo_ of Cologne (Corpus XIII. 8254) had their property inside the 'colonia' of that place or in the country outside, may be doubted (Schulten, _Bonner Jahrb._ ciii. 28).

[56] The phrase Roma Quadrata ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in this chapter. It does not seem, however, to be demonstrably older than the Ciceronian age. The line _et qui s.e.xtus erat Romae regnare quadratae_, once attributed to Ennius (ed. Vablen, 1854, 158), is clearly of much later date. As a piece of historical evidence, the phrase merely sums up some archaeologist's theory (very likely a correct theory, but still a theory) that the earliest Rome on the Palatine had a more or less rectangular outline.

CHAPTER VI

ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING: THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EARLY EMPIRE

During the later Republic and the earlier Empire many Italian towns were founded or re-founded. To this result several causes contributed.