cipium' in Cicero's days, and a little later,
in the period 40-20 B.C., it received the rank of 'colonia' and many
colonists, taken (as an inscription says) from discharged soldiers of
Legions VII and XXVI. Whether the surviving traces of town-planning
date from this latter event or from some earlier age is not easy to
say. But of the street-plan there can be no doubt, though its original
size is uncertain. A rectangular area about 700 yds. from east to west
and 360 yds. from north to south is divided into fifteen square or
squarish 'insulae' arranged in three rows. Each insula is about 3
acres, but those of the middle row are larger than the rest (150 x 150
yds.). The Via S. Croce which runs along the south side of this row
was perhaps the main east and west thoroughfare of the town, the
'decumanus maximus', so that the larger 'insulae' correspond to those
which appear in the same position at Turin and elsewhere (p. 88).

[Illustration: FIG. 18. LUCCA.
(The streets which preserve Roman lines are marked in black.)]

Whether there were other 'insulae' besides the fifteen is doubtful. On
the east there were certainly none: the two narrow parallel streets at
the east end of the area just described are obviously due to a growth
of houses along the line of the original east wall. The other limits
are more obscure. Probably the north and west walls stood a little
outside of the Via Galli Tassi (once S. Pellegrino) and the Via S.
Giorgio, but there may well have been a row of insulae, now
obliterated, south of the Via del Battistero. One or two interior
buildings are known. The Forum appears to have stood where is now the
Piazza S. Michele in Foro; close by was a temple; in the north-eastern
quarter, at the Piazza del Carmine, was probably the theatre; near it
but outside the walls was the amphitheatre, its outlines still visible
in the Piazza del Mercato (110 x 80 yds. in greatest dimensions).[82]

[82] Plan by P. Sinibaldi, 1843, 1:4,000. _Notizie degli Scavi_,
1906, p. 117, &c. Nissen (_Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 288) gives the
area as 800 x 1,200 metres, which seems much too large.

_Herculaneum_ (fig. 19).

To these examples from north Italy may be added two from the south,
Herculaneum and Naples. Herculaneum had much the same early history as
its more important neighbour Pompeii. First an Oscan settlement, then
Etruscan, then Samnite, it passed later under Roman rule. After the
Social Wars (89 B.C.) it ap