ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

PART II THE PLANNING AND BUILDING OF ROMAN TOWNS
Ground survey and measurement in Roman towns O A W Dilke
It is not possible to consider urban survey separately from
rural survey, nor Roman Britain in isolation from other
parts of the Empire. The town was, among other things, a
place of residence for many of the farmers, who went out
daily to work their fields. The Romans were in origin, and
remained for many purposes, an agricultural and pastoral
people, and there are numerous links between their
organization of urban and rural areas.
We can, nevertheless, divide Roman surveying into
four main branches: military, agricultural, services, and
architectural. If we take, for example, a colony with
centuriated land, such as is common in the western
Mediterranean, the army was concerned with the fortifications
(in consultation with the architect) and the settlement
of its veterans. A military surveyor, who might be an
evocatus (veteran volunteer), would be even more concerned
if the colony was a recycled legionary fortress. A
land surveyor, however, supervised the allocation of land
holdings. This was done by drawing lots, and the position
of the holding-whether near or far from a town-could
have a significant effect on the subsequent fortunes of the
colonus. The land surveyor would have his office in a town,
and his records would be lodged in the tabularium there.
Services essential to all towns, such as water supply,
sewage, transport, and street type and pattern, would be
controlled by the appropriate urban surveyor, subordinate
to the ordo of decurions. The overall plan for a new
town or for considerable modification to an old town
would lie with an architect, who would employ surveyors.
Whereas we possess a corpus of treatises of the Roman
land surveyors (Blume et al 1848-52; Corpus 1970; Thulin
1971; Dilke 1971; Hinrichs 1974; Carder 1978), we are not
so well informed about other types of surveyor. On the
military side we have only the incomplete ps-Hyginus, De
castrorum metatione. On the services side we have a
splendid work by Frontinus on one set of aqueducts, those
of the Rome area (Ashby 1935) (cf Fig 7). But there are no
manuals on road-making, on canals, or on cloacae. As to
Fig 7 Plan of an aqueduct near Tusculum, showing the number of outlets and the times at which individual landownersamong
them C Iulius Caesar-could draw off water (CIL, 6, 1261)
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