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.
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.
Like the Greeks before them, the Romans of the Republic sent out from
time to time compact bodies of emigrants whenever the home population
had grown too large for its narrow space. These bodies were each large
enough to form a small town, and thus each migration meant--or might
mean--the foundation of a new town full-grown from its birth. The
Greeks generally established new and politically independent towns.
The Romans followed another method. Their colonists remained subject
to Rome and constituted new centres of Roman rule, small
quasi-fortresses of Roman dominion in outlying lands. Often the
military need for such a stronghold had more to do with the foundation
of a 'colonia' than the presence of too many mouths in the city.
Cicero, speaking of a 'colonia' planted at Narbo (now Narbonne) in
southern Gaul about 118 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 wild tribes of Ga
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