municipalities were somewhat closely tied in the administration of
municipal property and had to refer schemes for the employment even of
the smallest bit of vacant space to the 'patron' or the _curator_ of
the town. But, apart from the provisions mentioned above, they had no
specific rights, that are recorded, against private owners or
builders. It was only once, after Rome itself had been burnt out, that
an imperial order condemned landowners who 'held up' their ground
instead of using it, to forfeit their ownership in favour of any one
who offered to build at once.

CHAPTER XI

THE SEQUEL

What was the sequel to this long work of town-planning? Two facts
stand out distinct. First, the Roman planning helped the towns of the
Empire to take definite form, but when the Empire fell, it too met its
end. Only here and there its vestiges lingered on in the streets of
scattered cities like things of a former age. But, secondly, from this
death it rose again, first in the thirteenth century, with
ever-growing power to set the model for the city life of the modern
world.

I. The value of town-planning to Roman civilization was twofold. It
increased the comfort of the common man; it made the towns stronger
and more coherent units to resist the barbarian invasions. When, after
250 years of conflict, the barbarians triumphed, its work was done. In
the next age of ceaseless orderless warfare it was less fit, with its
straight broad streets, for defence and for fighting than the chaos of
narrow tortuous lanes out of which it had grown and to which it now
returned. The cases are few in which survivals of Roman streets have
conditioned the external form of mediaeval or modern towns. We in
England tend perhaps to overrate the likelihood of such survivals. Our
classical education has, until very lately, taught most of us more of
ancient than of mediaeval history, and when our antiquaries find towns
rectangular in outline and streets that cross in a Carfax, they give
them a Roman origin.

Such a tendency is wrong. Plentiful evidence shows that even in Italy
and even in towns where men have dwelt without a break since Roman
days, the Roman streets, and with them the Roman town-plans, have far
oftener vanished than endured. Rome herself, the Eternal City, uses
hardly one street to-day which was used in the Roman Empire. Some few
Italian towns, described in detail above, have a better claim to be
called 'eternal'; half a doz