y Reinach, plate vi) on the authority
of Daux, is open to doubt.

[Illustration: FIG. 21. INSCRIPTION OF ORANGE.
(From the _Comptes-rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions_.)

Plot (_meris_) I (_lost_) ...

Plot II ... perpetual lessee (_manceps_) C. Naevius Rusticus: surety
for him C. Vesidius Quadratus. Fronting the Kardo.

(5) Plot III, frontage of 34-1/2 feet and Plot IV, frontage of 35 feet;
ground rent (?), 69-1/2 denarii (_in margin_). Yearly rent II ... (?).
Lessee and surety, as above. Fronting the Kardo.

(10) Plot V, frontage 55-1/2 feet, and Plot VI, next to the Ludus
(gladiators' school), frontage 75 feet ...]

_Orange_ (fig. 21).

The case which deserves the first place stands by itself. It is the
one piece of written evidence (as distinct from structural remains)
which has survived from Roman town-planning. Curiously enough, it was
found not in Italy but in a province, and a province which, for all
its wealth of Roman buildings, has not yet revealed the smallest
structural proof of Roman town-planning. In April 1904 a scrap of
inscribed marble, little more than 18 in. broad and high, was dug up
at Orange, in southern France, right in the centre of the town. It is
a waif from a lengthy document. But it chances to be intelligible. It
enumerates six plots of land--'merides' it calls them, from a Greek
word meaning 'share' or 'division'--which seem to have formed one
parcel: each plot is numbered, and the length of its frontage on the
public way (_in fronte_), the name of its lessee or _manceps_ and that
of his surety (_fideiussor_) are added. The frontages of four plots
make up 200 ft. (those of the other two are lost), and it has been
suggested that the six together made up 240 ft. The depth--which is
not stated on the surviving fragment, but was doubtless uniform for
all the plots--may then have been 120 ft., and the whole parcel may
have covered 120 x 240 ft., that is, a Roman 'iugerum'. It was plainly
a piece of town property. The largest 'meris', Plot v, measured only
25 by 40 yds. and no one would care for such a field or farm. Besides,
this plot at one end adjoined a 'ludus' or gladiatorial school, and it
fronted AD K, _ad kardinem_, on to the street called in surveying
language the 'cardo'. The whole land apparently belonged to one lessee
who held it from the municipality on something like a perpetual
lease.[93]

[93] For the inscription see Esperandieu, _Acad. des Inscriptions,