right angles (fig. 4). Here, however, the other
streets do not seem to have been planned uniformly at right angles to
the two main thoroughfares, and the rectangular scheme is therefore
less complete and definite than at Selinus. Cyrene, unfortunately,
resembles Selinus in another respect, that we have no proper knowledge
of the date when its main streets were laid out. It was founded
somewhere in the seventh century B.C. and Pindar, in an ode written
about 466 B.C., mentions a great processional highway there. Whether
this was one of the two roads above mentioned is not clear. But it is
not probable, since Pindar's road seems hardly to have been inside the
city at all.[20]
[20] Smith and Porcher, _Discoveries at Cyrene_ (1864), plate 40;
hence Studnickza, _Kyrene_ (1890, p. 167, fig. 35), and Malten,
_Kyrene_ (Berlin, 1911). For Pindar's reference see Pyth. v. 90
and p. 16 above.
In these two cases and in one or two others which might be noted from
the same or later times, the town-scheme includes rectangular elements
without any strict resemblance to the chess-board pattern. The
dominant feature is the long straight street, of great width and
splendour, which served less as the main artery of a town than as a
frontage for great buildings and a route for solemn processions. Here,
almost as in Babylon, we have the spectacular element which architects
love, but which is, in itself, insufficient for the proper disposition
of a town. Long and ample streets, such as those in question, might
easily be combined, as indeed they are combined in some modern towns
of southern Europe and Asia, with squalid and ill-grouped
dwelling-houses. Hippodamus himself aimed at something much better, as
Aristotle tells us. But it was not till after 350 B.C. or some
approximate date, that dwelling-houses were actually arranged and
grouped on a definite system.[21]
[21] Soluntum, near Palermo, on the north coast of Sicily, was
found by Cavallari in 1875 to exhibit a rectangular street-plan;
one main street ran north and south along level ground and
several lesser streets lay at right angles to it mounting a
hillside by means of steps (as at Priene, p. 42). See the
_Bullettino delta Commissione di Antichita e Belle Arti in
Sicilia_, viii. Palermo, August 1875. Cavallari himself assigned
this plan to the date when Soluntum was founded--which is
unfortunately uncertain--but only on the gen
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