ul'. Those words state
very clearly the main object of many such foundations under Republic
and Empire alike.

Another reason for the establishment of 'coloniae' may be found in the
history of the dying Republic and nascent Empire. During the civil
wars of Sulla, of Caesar and of Octavian, huge armies were brought
into the field by the rival military chiefs. As each conflict ended,
huge masses of soldiery had to be discharged almost at once. For the
sake of future peace it was imperative that these men should be
quickly settled in some form of civic life in which they would abide.
The form chosen was the familiar form of the 'colonia'. The
time-expired soldiers were treated--not altogether unreasonably--as
surplus population, and they were planted out in large bodies,
sometimes in existing towns which needed population or at least a
loyal population, sometimes in new towns established full-grown for
the purpose. This method of dealing with discharged soldiers was
continued during the early Empire, though it was then employed
somewhat intermittently and the 'coloniae' were oftener planted in the
provinces than in Italy itself; indeed the establishment of Italian
'coloniae', as distinct from grants of colonial rank by way of honour,
almost ceased after A.D. 68.

It is not easy to determine the number of such new foundations of
towns in Italy. Some seventy or eighty are recorded from the early and
middle periods of the Republic--previous to about 120 B.C.; Sulla
added a dozen or so; Octavian (Augustus) in his earlier years
established or helped to establish about thirty.[57] But these figures
can hardly represent the whole facts. The one certainty is that,
through the causes just detailed, a very large number of the Italian
towns were either founded full-grown or re-founded under new
conditions during the later Roman Republic and the earlier Empire. Few
towns in Italy developed as Rome herself developed, expanding from
small beginnings in a slow continuous growth which was governed by
convenience and opportunism and untouched by any new birth or
systematic reconstruction.

[57] See Mommsen, _Gesamm. Schriften_ v. 203; Nissen, _Ital.
Landeskunde_ ii. 27; Kornemann in Pauly-Wissowa, _Encycl._ iv.
520 foll.

Coincident with these processes of urban expansion, we find, in many
towns which can be connected with the later Republic or the Empire,
examples of a definite type of town-planning. This type has obviou