be summed up as right-angled and four-sided and
equal-sided, while the details of its street-planning and its general
arrangement are precisely parallel to those of a city' (VI. 31, 10).
He was comparing the Greek town, as he knew it in his own country,
with the encampment of the Roman army; he found in the town the aptest
and simplest parallel which he could put before his readers. A much
later writer, living in a very different environment and concerned
with a very different subject, fell nevertheless under the influence
of the same ideas. Despite his 'sombre scorn' for things Greek and
Roman, St. John, when he wished to figure the Holy City Jerusalem,
centre of the New Heaven and New Earth, pictured it as a city lying
foursquare, the length as large as the breadth, and entered by twelve
gates, 'on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the
south three gates, and on the west three gates.'[41]

[41] Revelation xxi. 13, 16. Some of the details are, no doubt,
drawn from the later chapters of Ezekiel, but the difference
between the two writers is plain.

The instances and items cited in the preceding paragraphs lie within
the limits of the Greek world and of the Roman Empire. We might
perhaps wish to pursue our speculations and ask whether this vigorous
system influenced foreign lands, and whether the Macedonian army
carried the town-plan of their age, in more or less perfect form, as
far as their conquests reached. Alexander settled many soldiers in
lands which were to form his eastern and north-eastern frontiers, as
if against the central-asiatic nomads. Merv and Herat, Khokand and
Kandahar,[42] have been thought--and, it seems, thought with some
reason--to date from the Macedonian age and in their first period to
have borne the name Alexandria. But no Aurel Stein has as yet
uncovered their ruins, and speculation about them is mere speculation.

[42] See p. 145 below.

CHAPTER V

ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS

If Greek and Macedonian town-planning are fairly well known, the Roman
Empire offers a yet larger mass of certain facts, both in Italy and in
the provinces. The beginnings, naturally, are veiled in obscurity. We
can trace the system in full work at the outset of the Empire; we
cannot trace the steps by which it grew. Evidences of something that
resembles town-planning on a rectangular scheme can be noted in two or
three corners of early Italian history--first in the