ain; the bonding courses in some
of the masonry of the walls does not seem Augustan. But the street
plan may unhesitatingly be assigned to the first establishment of the
town, about 28 B.C. Since, it has been extended far beyond the Roman
walls. Nearly all modern Turin has been laid out, bit by bit, in
imitation and continuation of the original Roman lines.

[75] An insula is mentioned in _Notizie_, 1901, p. 391, which
measured 74 x 80 metres. It is likely that there were small
unevennesses in the ancient as there are in the modern
house-blocks. The 'insulae' which abutted on the town-walls are
represented to-day by unduly large blocks, oblong rather than
square, but these latter contain not only the areas of the Roman
'insulae' in question, but also the space between them and the
town-walls and the lines of the wall themselves (p. 77).

[76] This failure in symmetry recurs in one or two other Roman
towns as probably at Timgad (p. 109) and at Cologne (E. and W.
gates), at Silchester and Caerwent, but it may sometimes be the
result of alteration. Occasionally it appears in military sites
(Ritterling, _Lager bei Hofheim_, p. 29 _note_). It is presumably
a mere matter of convenience; no superstition attaches to it such
as that which led the Chinese not to put their gates opposite
each other (p. 148).

[Illustration: FIG. 15. TURIN. FROM A PLAN OF 1844]

_Aosta_ (fig. 16).

Another example of an Italian town-plan, from the same date and
district as Turin, is supplied by Augusta Praetoria, now Aosta, some
fifty miles north of Turin in the Dora Baltea Valley, not far from the
foot of Mont Blanc.[77] Aosta was founded by Augustus in 25 B.C. on a
hitherto empty spot, to provide homes for time-expired soldiers and to
serve as a quasi-fortress in an important Alpine valley. Its first
inhabitants were 3,000 men discharged from the Praetorian Guard, with
their wives and children; its population may have numbered at the
outset some 15,000 free persons, besides slaves. The town, as it is
known to us from excavation and observation, formed a rectangle 620
yds. long and 780 yds. wide, and covered an area of about 100 acres
(fig. 16). The walls formed sharp right angles at the corners, as at
Turin. Within the walls were an amphitheatre, a theatre, public baths,
a structure covering nearly 2 acres and interpreted as a granary or
(perhaps more correctly) as a cistern,