history, for it seems not to have been
founded full-grown, but to have slowly developed as best it could,
and to have won municipal status at the end.

Roman Africa is here, as so often, our best source of knowledge. At
Timgad (p. 109), a town laid out in Roman fashion with a rigid
'chess-board' of streets was subsequently enlarged on irregular and
almost chaotic lines. At Gigthi, in the south-east of Tunis, the
streets around the Forum, itself rectangular enough, do not run
parallel or at right angles to it or to one another.[89] At Thibilis,
on the border of Tunis and Algeria, the streets, so far as they have
yet been uncovered, diverge widely from the chess-board pattern.[90]
One French archaeologist has even declared that most of the towns in
Roman Africa lacked this pattern.[91] Our evidence is perhaps still
too slight to prove or disprove that conclusion. Few African towns
have been sufficiently uncovered to show the street-plan.[92] But
town-life was well developed in Roman Africa. It is hardly credible
that the Africans learnt all the rest of Roman city civilization and
city government, and left out the planning. The individual cases of
such planning which will be quoted in the following pages tell their
own tale--that, while the strict rule was often broken, it was the
rule.

[89] _Archives nouvelles des Missions scientifiques_, xv. 1907,
fasc. 4.

[90] Plan by Joly, _Arch. Anzeiger_, 1911, p. 270, fig. 17. The
plan has been thought to imply 'insulae' twice as large as those
of Timgad. To me it suggests nothing so regular.

[91] Toutain, _Cites romaines de la Tunisie_, p. 79 note: 'Ce qui
toutefois est incontestable, c'est que cette disposition d'une
regularite artificielle, autour de deux grandes voies exactement
orientees et se coupant a angle droit, est tres rare dans
l'Afrique romaine. Les villes de ce pays n'out pas ete toutes
construites sur le meme plan: chacune d'elles a, pour ainsi dire,
epouse la forme de son emplacement.'

[92] There are many in which it could be traced with some ease,
apparently. Thelepte, Cillium, Ammaedara, Sufetula, _Archives des
Missions_, 1887, pp. 68, 121, 161-171, Simitthu, _Memoires
presentes par divers savants_, ser. I. x. 462, and Thuccabor,
Tissot, _Geogr. d'Afrique_, ii. 292, seem to have visible
streets, but no one has recorded them exactly. The plan of Utica,
given by Tissot (_Atlas_, b