If, however, survivals of ancient streets are as rare in the provinces as they are common in Italy, the provinces yield other evidence unknown to Italy. In these lands, and above all in Africa, the sites of many Roman towns have lain desolate and untouched since Roman days, waiting for the excavator to recover the unspoilt pattern of their streets. If the Roman Empire brought to certain provinces, as it unquestionably did to Africa, the happiest period in their history till almost the present day, that only makes their remains the more noteworthy and instructive. Here the new art of excavation has already achieved many and varied successes. In the western Empire one town, Silchester in Britain, has been wholly uncovered within the circuit of its walls. Others, like Caerwent in Britain or Timgad and Carthage in Africa, have been methodically examined, though the inquiries have not yet touched or perhaps can never touch their whole areas. In others again, some of which lie in the east, occasional search or even chance discoveries have shed welcome light. Our knowledge is more than enough already for the purposes of this chapter. We can already see that the town-plan described in the foregoing pages was widely used in the provinces of the Empire. We find it in Africa, in Central and Western Europe, and indeed wherever Rorrran remains have been carefully excavated; we find it even in remote Britain amidst conditions which make its use seem premature. Where excavation has as yet yielded no proofs, other evidence fills the gap. In southern Gaul, as it happens, archaeological remains are unhelpful. But just there an inscription has come to light, the only one of its kind in the Roman world, which proves that one at least of the 'coloniae' of Gallia Narbonensis was laid out in rectangular oblong plots. It is clear enough that this town-plan was one of the forms through which the Italian civilization diffused itself over the western provinces. The exact measure of its popularity is, however, hard to determine. In the east it found little entrance. There, the very similar Macedonian and Greek methods of town-planning were rooted firmly, long before Rome conquered Greece or Asia Minor or Syria or Egypt. The few town-plans which have been noted in these lands, and which may be assigned more or less conjecturally to the Roman era, seem to be Hellenic or Hellenistic rather than Italian. They show broad stately streets, colonnades, vistas, which belong to the east and not to Italy. Even in the west, the rule of the chess-board was sometimes broken. Aquincum, near Budapest, became a 'municipium' under Hadrian; its ruins, so far as hitherto planned, exhibit no true street-planning. But that may be due to its 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.