e Etruscans. They should be treated
as an ancestral heritage of the Italian tribes kindred with Rome, and
should be connected with the plan of Pompeii and with the far older
Terremare. Many generations in the family tree have no doubt been
lost. The genealogy can only be taken as conjectural. But it is a
reasonable conjecture.

In their original character these customs were probably secular rather
than religious. They took their rise as methods proved by primitive
practice to be good methods for laying out land for farming or for
encamping armies. But in early communities all customs that touched
the State were quasi-religious; to ensure their due performance, they
were carried out by religious officials. At Rome, therefore, more
especially in early times, the augurs were concerned with the
delimitation alike of farm-plots and of soldiers' tents. They
testified that the settlement, whether rural or military, was duly
made according to the ancestral customs sanctioned by the gods.
After-ages secularized once more, and as they secularized, they also
introduced science. It was, perhaps, Greek influence which brought in
a stricter use of the rectangle and a greater care for regular
planning.

It may be asked how all this applies to the planning of towns. We
possess certainly no such clear evidence with respect to towns as with
respect to divisions agrarian or military. But the town-plans which we
shall meet in the following chapters show very much the same outlines
as those of the camp or of the farm plots. They are based on the same
essential element of two straight lines crossing at right angles in
the centre of a (usually) square or oblong plot. This is an element
which does not occur, at least in quite the same form, at Priene or in
other Greek towns of which we know the plans, and it may well be
called Italian. We need not hesitate to put town and camp side by
side, and to accept the statement that the Roman camp was a city in
arms. Nor need we hesitate to conjecture further that in the planning
of the town, as in that of the camp, Greek influence may have added a
more rigid use of rectangular 'insulae'. When that occurred, will be
discussed in Chapter VI.

Whether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier and the
land-commissioner was adopted in the towns, is a more difficult, but
fortunately a less important question. Modern writers speak of the
_cardo_ and the _decumanus_ of Roman towns, and even apply to them