the brevity of the historian does not enable us to decide how many house-blocks it had and how far the lesser streets were symmetrical with these seven principal thoroughfares.  In most of the cases which we shall meet in the following sections of this treatise, the number of streets running-straight or at right angles is very much greater than the number assigned to Thurii.  I may refer for example to the plans of Priene, Miletus, and Timgad.

Rhodes.

A third city assigned to Hippodamus is Rhodes.  This, according to Strabo, was laid out by ‘the architect of the Piraeus’; according to others, it was built round its harbour like the seats of an ancient theatre round the orchestra, that is, fan-fashion like Karlsruhe.  However, this case is doubtful.  Rhodes was laid out in 408 B.C., thirty-five years after the planting of Thurii and seventy years after the approximate date of the birth of Hippodamus.  It is conceivable but not altogether probable that Hippodamus was still planning towns in his extreme old age, nor is it, on political grounds, very likely that he would be planning in Rhodes.  As, however, we do not know the real date of his birth, and as Strabo does not specifically mention his name, certainty is unattainable.[18]

[18] On Hippodamus see K.F.  Hermann, de Hippodamo Milesio (Marburg, 1841) and Erdmann, Philologus xlii. 193-227, and Programm Protestant.  Gymnasium zu Strassburg, 1883.  As will be seen, I do not accept all Erdmann’s conclusions.  For the Piraeus see Aristotle, Politics, II. 8 = p. 1267 and IV. 11 = p. 1330.  For Thurii see Diodorus XII. 10.  For Rhodes see Strabo 654 = XIV. ii. 9:  E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iv. pp. 60, 199 rejects the tale.  For plans of the Piraeus see Wachsmuth, Stadt Athen im Alterthum, ii. 134, and Curtius and Kaupert, Karten von Attika (1881), plan II_a_ by Milchhoefer.  Foucart has adduced epigraphic reasons for dating the work of Hippodamus here to 480-470 B.C. (Journal des Savants, 1907, pp. 178-82); they are not conclusive, but, if he be right, the difficulty of assigning the Piraeus and Rhodes to the same architect becomes even greater.  The town-plan of Piraeus given by Gustav Hirschfeld (Berichte der sachs.  Ges. der Wissenschaften, 1878, xxx.  I) is not convincing, nor do I feel very sure even about Milchhoefer’s results.

If we cannot tell exactly how Hippodamus planned cities or exactly which he planned, still less do we know how far town-planning on his or on any theory came into general use in his lifetime or indeed before the middle of the fourth century.  Few Greek cities have been systematically uncovered, even in part.  Fewer still have revealed street-planning which can be dated previous to that time.  It does not follow, when we find streets in the ruins of an ancient city, that they must belong to its earliest period.  That is not true of towns in any age, modern or mediaeval, Roman or Greek.  Some Greek cities were founded in early times, were rebuilt in the Macedonian period, and again rebuilt in the Roman period.  Without minute excavation it may be impossible to assign the town-plan of such a place to its proper place among these three periods.