ertain curve, and all that
has been discovered of streets outside the walls of Trajan is
irregular and complicated. A town-plan, it seems, was binding on the
first builders of the 'colonia'. It lost its power within a very few
years.[96]

[96] Boeswillwald, Cagnat and Ballu, _Timgad_ (Paris, 1891-1905);
see especially Appendix, pp. 339-349; Ballu, _Ruines de Timgad_
(Paris, 1897-1911); Barthel, _Bonner Jahrbuecher_, cxx. 101.

_Carthage_ (fig. 24).

It remains to note another example of town-planning in a Roman
municipality of the western Empire, which is as important as it is
abnormal. 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.[97] But the
plan, though rectangular, is not normal. According to the French
archaeologists who have worked it out, it comprised a large number of
streets--perhaps as many as forty--running parallel to the coast, a
smaller number running at right angles to these down the hillside
towards the shore, and many oblong 'insulae', measuring each about
130 x 500 ft., roughly two Roman _iugera_. The whole town stretched
for some two miles parallel to the shore and for about a mile inland,
and covered perhaps 1,200 acres. Its street-plan can hardly be older
than Caesar or Augustus, but the shape of its 'insulae' appears to be
without parallel in that age. It comes closest to the oblong blocks of
Pompeii and of Naples (pp. 63, 100), and its two theatres also recall
those towns. One reason for its plan may no doubt be found in the
physical character of the site. The ground slopes down from hills
towards the shore, and encourages the use of streets which run level
along the slopes, parallel to the shore, and not more or less steeply
towards it.[98]

[97] _Totius orbis descriptio_, 61 (Mueller, _geogr. graeci min._
ii. 527); dispositione gloriosissima constat ... in directione
vicorum et platearum aequalibus lineis currens' (written probably
about A.D. 350).

[98] _Carte archeologique et topogr. des Ruines de Carthage_, by
Gauckler and Delattre (1:5,000); Schulten, _Archaeol. Anzeiger_,
1905, p. 77; 1909, p. 190; 1911, p. 246;