ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS
If Greek and Macedonian town-planning are fairly well known, the Roman
Empire offers a yet larger mass of certain facts, both in Italy and in
the provinces. The beginnings, naturally, are veiled in obscurity. We
can trace the system in full work at the outset of the Empire; we
cannot trace the steps by which it grew. Evidences of something that
resembles town-planning on a rectangular scheme can be noted in two or
three corners of early Italian history--first in the prehistoric
Bronze Age, then in a very much later Etruscan town, and thirdly on
one or two sites of middle Italy connected with the third or fourth
century B.C. These evidences are scanty and in part uncertain, and
their bearing on our problem is not always clear, but they claim a
place in an account of Italian town-planning. To them must be added,
fourthly, the important evidence which points to the use of a system
closely akin to town-planning in early Rome itself.
_The Terremare_ (fig. 11).
(i) We begin in the Bronze Age, somewhere between 1400 and 800 B.C.,
amidst the so-called Terremare. More than a hundred of these strange
settlements have been examined by Pigorini, Chierici, and other
competent Italians. Most of them occur in a well-defined district
between the Po and the Apennines, with Piacenza at its west end and
Bologna at its east end. Some have also been noted on the north bank
of the Po near Mantua, both east and west of the Mincio, and two or
three elsewhere in Italy. Archaeologically, they all belong to the
Bronze Age; they seem, further, to be the work of a race distinct from
any previous dwellers in North Italy, which had probably just moved
south from the Danubian plains. At some time or other this race had
dwelt in lake-villages. They were now settled on dry ground and far
away from lakes--one of their hamlets is high in the Apennines, nearly
1,900 ft. above the sea. But they still kept in the Terremare the
lacustrine fashion of their former homes.
The nature of these strange villages can best be explained by an
account of the best-known and the largest example of them (fig. 11).
At Castellazzo di Fontanellato, a little west of Parma, are the
vestiges of a settlement which, with its defences, covered an area of
about forty-three acres. In outline it was four-sided; its east and
west sides were parallel to one another, and the whole resembled a
rectangle which had been pulled a trifle askew. Round it ran a solid
earthen rampart, 50 ft. broad at the base and strengthened with
woodwork (plan, B). In front of the rampart was a wet ditch (A), 100
ft. wide, fed with fresh water from a neighbouring brook by an inlet
at the south-western corner (C) and emptied by an outfall on the east
(D). One wooden bridge gave access to this artificial island at its
southern end (E). The area within the rampart, a little less than
thirty acres in extent, was divided into four parts by two main
streets, which would have intersected at right angles had the place
been strictly rectangular; other narrower streets ran parallel to
these main thoroughfares. On the east side (F) was a small
'citadel'--_arx_ or _templum_--with ditch, rampart and bridge of its
own (G, H); in this were a trench and some pits (K) which seemed by
their contents to be connected with ritual and religion. Outside the
whole (L, M) were two cemeteries, platforms of urns set curiously like
the village itself, and also a little burning _ghat_.[43] The
population of the village is necessarily doubtful. A German writer,
Nissen, has reckoned it at four or five thousand, men, women and
children together, crowded into small huts. But this estimate may be
too high. In any case, many of the Terremare are much smaller.
[43] The literature of the Terremare is very large. The results
obtained up to 1894 were summarized by F. von Duhn in the _Neue
Heidelberger Jahrbücher_, iv. 144; the best recent accounts are
by T.E. Peet, _Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy_ (Oxford, 1909),
chaps. 14 and 17, from which fig. 11 is taken, and R. Munro,
_Palaeolithic Man and Terramara Settlements_ (Edin., 1912), pp.
291-487 and plates xxxiii foll. A good brief sketch is given by
Mr. H.S. Jones, _Companion to Roman History_, pp. 4-6. One point
in the arrangement seems not quite clear. It is generally stated
that the trapezoidal outline was adopted in order to allow the
water to enter the ditch from a running stream and to part easily
into two channels (fig. 11). That is quite intelligible. But, if
so, one would expect the outlet to be at the opposite end, and
not (as it actually is) in the middle of one side, where it would
'short-circuit' the current. (Mr. H.S. Jones seems to have
confused inlet and outlet.)
[Illustration: FIG. 11. TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAZZO DI FONTANELLATO]
These Terremare bear a strong likeness to the later Italian
town-planning, and they are usually taken to be the oldest
discoverable traces of that system. This means that the Italian
town-planning was derived from other sources besides Greece or the
East, since the Terremare are far older than Hippodamus or even
Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib (pp. 23, 29). It must be added that our
present knowledge does not allow us to follow the actual development
of the Terremare into historic times, and to link them closely with
the later civilization of Central Italy. When some modern scholars
call the men of the Terremare by the name 'Italici', they express a
hope rather than a proven fact. It may be safer, for the moment, to
avoid that name and to refrain from theories as to the exact relation
between prehistoric and historic. But we shall see below that the
existence of a relation between the two is highly probable.
_Marzabotto_ (fig. 12).
[Illlustration: FIG. 12. MARZABOTTO.
(AB, FG, CD, main streets. The shading represents excavated houses.)]
(ii) A greater puzzle, dating probably from the fifth century B.C.,
meets us in the ruins of a nameless little Etruscan town which stood
outside of Etruria proper, on the north slopes of the Apennines. Its
site is fifteen miles south of Bologna, close to the modern
Marzabotto, on the left bank of the little river Reno. Only a tiny
part has been uncovered. But the excavators have not hesitated to
complete their results conjecturally into a rectangular town-plan,
with streets crossing at right angles and oblong blocks of houses
measuring from 158 to 176 yds. in length and 37 or 44 or 71 yds. in
width (fig. 12). The whole must have been laid out at once, and the
smaller remains seem to show that this was done by Etruscans. In the
fourth century the place was sacked by the Gauls, and though there was
later occupation,[44] its extent is doubtful.[45]
Further excavation is, however, needed to confirm this generally
accepted interpretation of the place. Nothing has been noted elsewhere
in Etruria or its confines to connect the Etruscans with any
rectangular form of town-plan. At Veii, for example, most of the
Etruscan city has lain desolate and unoccupied ever since the Romans
destroyed it, but the site shows no vestige of streets crossing at
right angles or of oblong blocks of houses. At Vetulonia the excavated
fragment of an Etruscan city shows only curving and irregular
streets.[46] Nor is there real reason to believe that the 'Etruscan
teaching' learnt by Rome included an art of town-planning (p. 71) or
that, as a recent French writer has conjectured, the Etruscans brought
any such art with them from the East and communicated it to the West.
We must conclude that at Marzabotto we have a piece of evidence which
we cannot set into its proper historical framework. We might perhaps
call it an early blend of Greek and Italian methods and compare it
with Naples (p. 100). It is odd that four out of seven house-blocks
should measure just under 120 Roman ft. in width and thus approximate
to a figure which we meet often elsewhere in the Roman world (p. 79).
But it would be well to learn more of the plan by further excavation.
[44] _Archaeological Journal_, 1903, p. 237.
[45] Brizio, _Monumenti Antichi_, i. 252, superseding Gozzadini's
_Antica Necropoli a Marzabotto_ (Bologna, 1865-70); Grenier,
_Bologne villanovienne_ &c. (Paris, 1912) p. 98. Compare
_Authority and Archaeology_, pp. 305, 306.
[46] _Notizie degli Scavi_ 1895, p. 272; Durm, _Baukunst der
Etr_. p. 39.
_Pompeii_ (fig. 13).
(iii) A third piece of evidence can be found on a site which
historians and novelists alike connect mainly with the Roman Empire,
but which dates back to the days of the early or middle Republic.
Pompeii began in or before the sixth century B.C. as an Oscan city.
For a while, we hardly know when, it was ruled by Etruscans. Later,
about 420 B.C., it was occupied by Samnites. Finally, it became Roman;
it was refounded in 80 B.C. as a 'colonia' and repeopled by soldiers
discharged from the armies of Sulla. In A.D. 79 it reached its end in
the disaster to which it owes its fame. Its life, therefore, was long
and full of destruction, re-building, enlargement. Its architectural
history is naturally hard to follow. Many of its buildings, however,
can be dated more or less roughly by the style of their ornament or
the character of their material, and the lines of its streets suggest
some conjectures as to its growth which deserve to be stated even
though they may conflict with the received opinions about Pompeii. It
will be understood, of course, that these conjectures, like all
speculations on Pompeii, are limited by the fact that barely half of
its area has been as yet uncovered, and that very little search has
been made beneath the floors and pavements of its latest period.[47]
[47] For recent plans of Pompeii the reader may consult the
second edition (1908) of August Mau's _Pompeii_, or the fifth
edition (1910) of his _Führer durch Pompeii_, re-edited by W.
Barthel. A plan on a large scale is given in the last part of
_CIL_. iv (1909); there are also occasional plans in the _Notizie
degli Scavi_. See also C. Weichardt, _Pompeji vor der Zerstorung_
(Leipzig, 1897).
[Illustration: FIG. 13. POMPEII.
(T = Temple. The area of the supposed original settlement is outlined
in black.)]
As we know it at present, Pompeii is an irregular oval area of about
160 acres, planted on a small natural hill and girt with a stone wall
nearly two miles in circumference (fig. 13). On the west there was
originally access to the sea, and on this side the walls have
disappeared or have not been yet uncovered. Near this end of the town
is the Forum, with the principal temples and public buildings round
it. At the east end of the town, nearly 1200 yds. from the western
extremity, is the amphitheatre, and the town-walls appear to have been
drawn so as to include it. Two main streets, now called the Strada di
Nola and the Strada dell' Abbondanza, cross the town from SW. to NE.
The main streets from NW. to SE. are less distinct, but the Strada
Stabiana certainly ran from wall to wall. While there is some
appearance of symmetry in the streets generally, it does not go very
far; there is hardly a right angle, or any close approach to a right
angle, at any street corner.
It is generally held, as Mau has argued, that the whole town was laid
out at once, perhaps during the Etruscan period, on one plan of
streets crossing at right angles. Two principal streets, those now
styled the Strada di Mercurio and the Strada di Nola, are considered
to be the main streets of this earliest town-plan, and to give it its
general direction. A third main street, the Strada Stabiana, which
cuts obliquely across from the Vesuvian to the Stabian Gate and mars
the supposed symmetry of this town-plan, is ascribed to the influence
of a small natural depression along which it runs, while a small area
east of the Forum, which also breaks loose from the general scheme, is
thought to have been laid out abnormally in order to remedy the effect
of this obliquity.[48]
This theory is open to objections. In the first place the streets
(even apart from those just east of the Forum) do not really form one
symmetrical plan. Region VI fits very ill with Regions I and III. Both
indicate systematic planning. But Region VI is laid out in oblong
blocks 110 ft. wide and either 310 ft. or 480 ft. long, while Regions
I and III are made up of approximately square blocks about 200 ft.
each way. Moreover, the orientation of the blocks is different. Those
in Region VI follow the lines of the Strada di Mercurio; those of
Regions I and II, and perhaps also of Region V, are dominated by the
Strada Stabiana. Yet there is no obvious reason why this difference
should not have been avoided; it results, indeed, in awkward corners
and inconvenient spaces. Nor, again, can we accept as in any degree
adequate the cause assigned by Mau for the odd orientation of the
streets next to the east side of the Forum.
[48] Mau, _Führer_ (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, _Führer_, p. 113), but this may not be _in situ_.
Another fact claims notice. The town-planning of Pompeii is in the
main trapezoidal, not rectangular. Neither its oblongs, nor its
squares, nor its street-crossings exhibit true right angles, though
many of the rooms and peristyles in the private houses are regular
enough. In this feature Pompeii resembles the trapezoidal outlines of
the Terremare (fig. 11). It resembles also much Roman military work,
both of Republican and of Imperial date, which disregards the strict
right angle and accepts squares and oblongs which are, so to say,
askew. The motive of the Terremare is supposed to have been, as I have
said above, that of providing an easy flow for the water in the
encircling moat. The motive of various military camps may perhaps be
found rather in a wish to secure the same area as that of an orthodox
rectangle, even though the ground forbade the strict execution of the
orthodox figure. Whatever the reason, the trapezoidal house-blocks of
Pompeii exhibit a feature which is not alien to the earlier
town-planning of Italy, though it is strange to the cities of Greece.
_Norba_.
Not only do we need to know more of Pompeii itself. We need evidence
also from other Italian towns of similar age. Here our ignorance is
deep. Only one site which can help has been even tentatively explored.
Norba, which once crowned a spur of the Monti Lepini above the Pontine
marshes, was founded as a Roman town, according to the orthodox
chronology, in 492 B.C.[50] But the received chronology of the earlier
Republic, minute as it looks, probably deserves no more credence than
the equally minute but mainly fictitious dates assigned by the Saxon
Chronicle to the beginnings of English History. Actual remains found
at Norba suggest rather that it was founded (not necessarily by Rome)
about, or a little before, 300 B.C.; it is therefore later than the
Terremare and Marzabotto, and later also than the Oscan age of
Pompeii. On the other hand, it came to an end in the Sullan period (82
B.C.). Its excavation has little more than begun, but it already
indicates a scheme of streets somewhat resembling that of Pompeii,[51]
and it is a useful adjunct to our better knowledge of the more famous
town. The two together furnish examples of the town-planning of middle
Italy of about 400-300 B.C., in days that are only half historic, and
thus help to fill the gap between the Terremare and the fully
developed system of the Roman Imperial period.
[50] Livy ii. 34, contradicted, however, by xxvii. 10 and by
Dionysius Halic. vii. 13 _ad fin_.
[51] _Notizie degli Scavi_, 191, p. 558, 1903, p. 261; Frothingham,
_Roman Cities_, plate ix. I am indebted to Dr. T. Ashby, Director
of the British School at Rome, for information as to the site.
Excavations made in 1823 at the Roman Falerii (founded 241 B.C.)
show streets crossing at right angles, but the piece unearthed
was small and the date uncertain (Canina, _Etruria Maritima_ i,
plate ix).
It may be permitted in this context to add a plan of a north Italian
city, in which some of the modern streets recall one quarter of
Pompeii (fig. 14). Modena, the Roman Mutina, was founded as a
'colonia' with 2,000 male settlers in 183 B.C., and despite various
misfortunes became one of the chief towns in the Lombard plain. One
part of this town shows a row of long narrow blocks measuring about 20
x 160 metres (fig. 14, plan A), with a second row of shorter blocks of
the same width and about half the length (plan B). These blocks have
been much marred and curtailed by the inevitable changes of town life,
but their symmetry cannot be accidental, and if they date back, as is
quite possible, to Roman days, they may be put beside the Sixth Region
of Pompeii which contains two rows of similar blocks.[52]
[52] Fig. 14 is taken from Zuccagni-Orlandini (1844). Kornemann
suggests that Mutina was refounded about 40-20 B.C., but there
seems to be no evidence of this break in its continuity.
[Illustration: FIG. 14. MODENA. See p. 69.]
(iv) There remains, fourthly, evidence relating to early Rome itself,
and to customs and observances which obtained there. These customs
belong to the three fields of religion, agrarian land-settlement and
war. All three exhibit the same principle, the division of a definite
space by two straight lines crossing at right angles at its centre,
and (if need be) the further division of such space by other lines
parallel to the two main lines. The Roman augur who asked the will of
Heaven marked off a square piece of sky or earth--his _templum_--into
four quarters; in them he sought for his signs. The Roman general who
encamped his troops, laid out their tents on a rectangular pattern
governed by the same idea. The commissioners who assigned
farming-plots on the public domains to emigrant citizens of Rome,
planned these plots on the same rectangular scheme--as the map of
rural Italy is witness to this day.
These Roman customs are very ancient. Later Romans deemed them as
ancient as Rome itself, and, though such patriotic traditions belong
rather to politics than to history, we find the actual customs well
established when our knowledge first becomes full, about 200 B.C.[53]
The Roman camp, for example, had reached its complex form long before
the middle of the second century, when Polybius described it in words.
Here, one can hardly doubt, are things older even than Rome. Scholars
have talked, indeed, of a Greek origin or of an Etruscan origin, and
the technical term for the Roman surveying instrument, _groma_, has
been explained as the Greek word 'gnomon', borrowed through an
Etruscan medium. But the name of a single instrument would not carry
with it the origin of a whole art, even if this etymology were more
certain than it actually is. Save for the riddle of Marzabotto (p.
61), we have no reason to connect the Etruscans with town-planning or
with the Roman system of surveying. When the Roman antiquary Varro
alleged that 'the Romans founded towns with Etruscan ritual', he set
the fashion for many later assertions by Roman and modern writers.[54]
But he did not prove his allegation, and it is not so clear as is
generally assumed, that he meant 'Etruscan ritual' to include
architectural town-planning as well as religious ceremonial.
[53] The prologue to the Poenulus of Plautus (verse 49) which
mentions 'limites' and a 'finitor', may well be as old as Plautus
himself. But the 'centuriation' still visible in north Italy
around colonies planted about 180 B.C. is no full proof of
rectangular surveying at that date. These towns were re-founded
at a much later date, and their lands, and even their streets,
_may_ have been laid out anew.
[54] Varro _ling. lat_. 5. 143 _oppida condebant Etrusco ritu, id
est, iunctis bobus_, cf. Frontinus _de limit_. (grom. i. p. 27).
These are Italian customs, far older than the beginnings of Greek
influence on Rome, older than the systematic town-planning of the
Greek lands, and older also than the Etruscans. They should be treated
as an ancestral heritage of the Italian tribes kindred with Rome, and
should be connected with the plan of Pompeii and with the far older
Terremare. Many generations in the family tree have no doubt been
lost. The genealogy can only be taken as conjectural. But it is a
reasonable conjecture.
In their original character these customs were probably secular rather
than religious. They took their rise as methods proved by primitive
practice to be good methods for laying out land for farming or for
encamping armies. But in early communities all customs that touched
the State were quasi-religious; to ensure their due performance, they
were carried out by religious officials. At Rome, therefore, more
especially in early times, the augurs were concerned with the
delimitation alike of farm-plots and of soldiers' tents. They
testified that the settlement, whether rural or military, was duly
made according to the ancestral customs sanctioned by the gods.
After-ages secularized once more, and as they secularized, they also
introduced science. It was, perhaps, Greek influence which brought in
a stricter use of the rectangle and a greater care for regular
planning.
It may be asked how all this applies to the planning of towns. We
possess certainly no such clear evidence with respect to towns as with
respect to divisions agrarian or military. But the town-plans which we
shall meet in the following chapters show very much the same outlines
as those of the camp or of the farm plots. They are based on the same
essential element of two straight lines crossing at right angles in
the centre of a (usually) square or oblong plot. This is an element
which does not occur, at least in quite the same form, at Priene or in
other Greek towns of which we know the plans, and it may well be
called Italian. We need not hesitate to put town and camp side by
side, and to accept the statement that the Roman camp was a city in
arms. Nor need we hesitate to conjecture further that in the planning
of the town, as in that of the camp, Greek influence may have added a
more rigid use of rectangular 'insulae'. When that occurred, will be
discussed in Chapter VI.
Whether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier and the
land-commissioner was adopted in the towns, is a more difficult, but
fortunately a less important question. Modern writers speak of the
_cardo_ and the _decumanus_ of Roman towns, and even apply to them
more highly technical terms such as _striga_ and _scamnum_. For the
use of _cardo_ in relation to towns there is some evidence (p. 107).
But it is very slight, and for the use of the other terms there is
next to no evidence at all.[55] The silence alike of literature and of
inscriptions shows that they were, at the best, theoretical
expressions, confined to the surveyor's office.[56]
[55] Whether the _possessores ex vico Lucretio scamno primo_ of
Cologne (Corpus XIII. 8254) had their property inside the
'colonia' of that place or in the country outside, may be doubted
(Schulten, _Bonner Jahrb._ ciii. 28).
[56] The phrase Roma Quadrata ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in
this chapter. It does not seem, however, to be demonstrably older
than the Ciceronian age. The line _et qui sextus erat Romae
regnare quadratae_, once attributed to Ennius (ed. Vablen, 1854,
158), is clearly of much later date. As a piece of historical
evidence, the phrase merely sums up some archaeologist's theory
(very likely a correct theory, but still a theory) that the
earliest Rome on the Palatine had a more or less rectangular
outline.