passes at least five great buildings, which seem to be the temples and
palaces of the Seleucid kings. Two other streets cross this main
street at right angles. Whether the smaller thoroughfares took the
same lines can be determined only by excavation. It would be a gentle
guess to think so.[36]

[35] Tafrali, _Topographie de Thess._ pp. 121 foll. and plan.

[36] E. Sachau, _Reise in Syrien_ (1883), p. 76; Mommsen,
_Ephemeris epigr_. iv, p. 514, and _Mon. Ancyr._ (ed. 2), p. 540.

Further south, on the edge of the Hauran, stood the town of Gerasa.
This too, like Apamea, was built by the Macedonians and flourished not
only in their days but during the following Roman age. Its general
outline was ovoid, its greatest diameter three quarters of a mile, its
area some 235 acres--nearly the same with Roman Cologne and Roman
Cirencester. Its streets resembled those of Apamea. A colonnaded
highway ran straight through from north to south; two other streets
crossed at right angles, and its chief public buildings, the Temple of
the Sun and three other temples, two theatres and two public baths,
stood near these three streets (fig. 10). Again the evidence proves
rectangular town-planning in broad outline; excavation alone can tell
the rest.[37]

[37] _Zeitschrift des deutschen Palastina-Vereins_, xxv (1902),
plate 6; Badeker, _Palestine and Syria_ (1906), p. 140. For the
neighbouring Bostra, see p. 136.

[Illustration: FIG. 10. GERASA]

In the towns just described a distinctive feature is the 'chess-board'
pattern of streets and rectangular house-blocks. That, of course, is
the feature which most concerns us here. It may not have looked so
predominant to their builders and inhabitants. The towns which the
Macedonians founded were not seldom rich and large; several were the
capitals of powerful and despotic rulers. In such towns we expect
great public buildings, temples, palaces. It is not surprising if
sometimes those who reared them cared solely for the spectacular
grouping of magnificent structures and forgot the private houses and
the general plan of the town.

_Pergamum_.

One such instance from the Macedonian age, perhaps the most
instructive which we could ever hope to get,[38] is Pergamum, in the
north-west of Asia Minor. This has been thoroughly explored by German
science; its remains are superb; its chief buildings date from an age
when town-planning had grown familiar to the Greek worl