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, _Cités romaines de la Tunisie_, p. 79 note: 'Ce qui toutefois est incontestable, c'est que cette disposition d'une régularité artificielle, autour de deux grandes voies exactement orientées et se coupant a angle droit, est très rare dans l'Afrique romaine. Les villes de ce pays n'out pas été toutes construites sur le mème plan: chacune d'elles a, pour ainsi dire, épousé 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, _Mémoires présentés par divers savants_, ser. I. x. 462, and Thuccabor, Tissot, _Géogr. d'Afrique_, ii. 292, seem to have visible streets, but no one has recorded them exactly. The plan of Utica, given by Tissot (_Atlas_, by Reinach, plate vi) on the authority of Daux, is open to doubt. [Illustration: FIG. 21. INSCRIPTION OF ORANGE. (From the _Comptes-rendus de l'Académie 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).