ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Introduction: the study of Classical urban topography Francis Grew and Brian Hobley
In Britain the comprehensive study of Graeco-Roman
town planning began in 1910 when Haverfield gave a
paper on the subject to the London Conference of Town
Planning, itself in its infancy and much concerned with
social reforms. This new discipline sought the benefits of
parallels from antiquity, and Haverfield clearly identified
the adoption of the straight line and right angle as the most
definite principle of Classical town planning, which
‘separated the simplest civilization from barbarism’
(Haverfield 1913, 14).
During the past 73 years much more has been learnt,
both through aerial photography and through major
excavations in urban centres, and many important studies
have appeared (von Gerkan 1924; Congress 1958; Pounds
1969; Castagnoli 1972; Ward-Perkins 1974; Chevallier
1974; Frere 1977; Goudineau 1980). Yet many of the
themes are the same as in 1910. At the 1983 conference
Cunliffe, while recognizing certain characteristics of
‘proto-urbanism’ in the nucleated settlements of late
barbarian Europe, clearly still placed with ancient Athens
and 7th-century Rome the beginnings in Europe of
uniform town planning as it is generally accepted today
(this volume, pp l-5). And, in particular, he called the
attention of archaeologists to the importance of studying
cities as socio-economic political systems, not simply as
artefacts (this volume, p 1).
The location of Roman cities is a matter dealt with by
many Classical writers, but principally by Vitruvius. After
military requirements, trade and the need for sites on safe
and navigable rivers and shorelines were major determinants,
as the Peutinger map shows (Miller 1962); but, in
the choice between several possible sites, a factor which
should not be forgotten was the Roman reliance on
favourable omens as pronounced by the livers of sacrificed
animals, particularly of those who had lived on the site and
which thus might reflect healthy living conditions, not
least the presence of pure water (Salway, this volume,
p 67). The ownership of land was highly prized in the
Roman world, not only for the status it conferred but as a
sound investment, as was the ownership of urban properties.
In the provinces, however, the Roman authorities
ignored ownership rights of native peoples at their peril, as
Tacitus recognized in his examination of the causes of the
Boudican revolt (Annals, xiv.31; Agricola, 15).
Once the site for a town was chosen its layout or
planning would commence. There was, of course, a wide
range and hierarchy of urban settlement, and there is
general agreement between contributors that those below
the rank of colonia have far greater irregularity of layout.
As Drinkwater states, ‘Individual cities did not in the end
emerge as identical, all reflecting some overriding master
plan’ (this volume, p 51). Rather, as investigations have
recently shown in Britain, there was an infinite variety of
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sizes and shapes, with or without defences or suburbs
(Rodwell & Rowley 1975). The more important settlements,
coloniae, municipia, and civitas capitals, showed
the highest degree of planned layout, and this was
achieved principally by means of an orthogonal street
grid. Drinkwater correctly observes that once the main
grid had been laid down every structure had to respect it (p
53) - although sometimes there were small encroachments
by houses and especially by porticoes (Frere 1977,
97 and fig 8) - and it is clear that whenever possible,
contours were ignored, for the grid concept was based on
horizontality. This was the reason for the importance of
the mensores (Dilke, this volume, pp 613).
It is indeed with the orthogonal grid that many recent
studies have been concerned, and these have shown that in
this, as in many other cultural affairs, Britain and the
western Roman provinces - the subject of this volume -
are a small but distinctive part of a developing tradition
which extends, temporally, back to the early 1st millennium
BC and, spatially, as far as the Euphrates. There can
be little doubt that throughout antiquity itself the grid was
widely recognized as the chief instrument of town planning,
and almost invariably it was regarded with approval,
comparing favourably with haphazard growth - this was
considered old-fashioned. Aristotle, for example, writing
in the 4th century BC and describing the ideal city, seems
to have it in mind when he explains that ‘the arrangement
of private houses is more pleasant and convenient for
general purposes if it is clear-cut, in the modern “Hippodamean”
fashion’ (Politics, vii. 10.4); the only drawback is
that in the event of attack and street-fighting the regular
layout may assist the attackers no less than the defenders.
Similarly, Pausanias, writing about 500 years later and
observing with his antiquarian eye the city of Elis in the
Peloponnese, notes that ‘the agora is not like those of the
Ionian cities or of the Greek cities near Ionia; it is built in
the older style with stoas separated from each other and
with streets passing through them’ (vi.24.2).
The credit for inventing the ‘modern’ planning system
to which these writers allude has generally been given to
Hippodamus of Miletus (eg Aristotle, loc cit). Recent
commentators have, with some justification, questioned
the extent of his personal contribution (Burns 1976; Segal
1978), but the fact remains that in the Greek and Roman
worlds orthogonal planning came to maturity during
Hippodamus’s lifetime, that is, the 5th century BC. Two
factors may have combined to bring this about. In the first
place, it was a time when many cities were built or rebuilt
de novo. Some were ancient foundations razed during the
Persian Wars, others new colonies founded for political
and commercial reasons by Athens in particular. Many of
the former are the sites in Asia Minor to which Pausanias
refers. This factor, the need to build many complete, new