the street-plan.
Probably it would be true to say that the average block covered an
acre and a half or an acre and two-thirds.[110] We do not know enough
of the history of Caerwent to do more than guess how this street-plan
came to it. Very likely the same process of establishing a
Roman-looking town for a local capital was adopted here as at
Silchester. Very likely the step was taken in the same period as at
Silchester, that is, in the last thirty years of the first century.
Its occurrence is significant. Caerwent lay remote in the far west,
with nothing but garrisons beyond it. It was the outpost of Roman city
life towards the Atlantic. It was the only town of Roman municipal
plan in Britain which was swept by Atlantic breezes.[111]

[110] The three best defined examples measure about 260 x 260,
260 x 280, 275 x 275 ft. (1.55, 1.61, and 1.73 acres respectively).
The unit of 240 Roman feet (p. 79) does not appear at Caerwent.

[111] Accounts of the Caerwent Excavations, 1899-1910, will be
found in _Archaeologia_, vols. lvii-lxii. A good plan of the
whole town, from which fig. 33 is taken, was issued in vol. lxii,
plate 64, by Mr. F. King, architect to the excavations (scale,
1:900).

[Illustration: FIG. 33. CAERWENT.
(Reduced from plan by F. King.)]

Silchester and Caerwent did not stand alone in Britain. At Wroxeter,
the ancient Viroconium, tribal centre of the Cornovii and a
Romano-British country-town much like Silchester, though somewhat
larger, oblong 'insulae' have recently been detected by Mr.
J.P. Bushe-Fox which measure 103 x 126 yds. (2-2/3 acres). At
Cirencester, the Romano-British centre for the canton of the Dobuni
and a still larger town than Wroxeter, the 'insulae' near the Basilica
seem to have measured as much as 120 yards in length, though full
details have not yet been obtained. Both these towns may be ascribed
to the later years of the first century and to the same civilizing
process as Silchester and Caerwent. As further Romano-British towns
are uncovered, we may therefore hope for more examples. However
imperfectly the inner meaning of town-planning was understood, it was
plainly common in the south of Roman Britain.

NOTE. THE EASTERN PROVINCES.

To complete the survey of Roman provincial town-planning, we must
glance briefly at the East. Here towns of Roman origin were few, and
of those few scarcely any are well known. But they do not lack
interest. For