Round this primitive city grew up the greater Pompeii. The growth must
have been rather by two or three distinct accretions than a gradual
and continuous development. At present we cannot trace these stages.
To do that we must wait till the excavations can be carried deeper
down, and till the other half of the city has been uncovered, or at
least till the lines of its streets and the shapes of its house-blocks
have been determined, like those of Priene (p. 42), by special
inquiry. All that is as yet certain is that Regions I, III, V, and VI
were laid out, and their houses were (in part at least) in existence
before--perhaps long before--80 B.C., when the Sullan colony was
planted,[49] and we see also that Region VI is planned differently
from I and III.
[49] Region VI contains an ancient column of the sixth century
B.C. (Mau, _Führer_, p. 113), but this may not be _in situ_.
Another fact claims notice. The town-planning of Pompeii is in the
main trapezoidal, not rectangular. Neither its oblongs, nor its
squares, nor its street-crossings exhibit true right angles, though
many of the rooms and peristyles in the private houses are regular
enough. In this feature Pompeii resembles the trapezoidal outlines of
the Terremare (fig. 11). It resembles also much Roman military work,
both of Republican and of Imperial date, which disregards the strict
right angle and accepts squares and oblongs which are, so to say,
askew. The motive of the Terremare is supposed to have been, as I have
said above, that of providing an easy flow for the water in the
encircling moat. The motive of various military camps may perhaps be
found rather in a wish to secure the same area as that of an orthodox
rectangle, even though the ground forbade the strict execution of the
orthodox figure. Whatever the reason, the trapezoidal house-blocks of
Pompeii exhibit a feature which is not alien to the earlier
town-planning of Italy, though it is strange to the cities of Greece.
_Norba_.
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