We have, however, at Selinus in Sicily and Cyrene on the north coast of Africa, two cases which may belong to the age of Hippodamus.  They are worth describing, since they illustrate both the difficulty of reaching quite certain conclusions and also the system which probably did obtain in the later fifth and the early fourth century.

Selinus (fig. 3).

At Selinus the Italian archaeologists discovered some years ago, in the so-called Acropolis, a town of irregular, rudely pear-shaped outline with a distinct though not yet fully excavated town-plan.  Two main thoroughfares ran straight from end to end and crossed at right angles (fig. 3), the longer of these thoroughfares being just a quarter of a mile long and 30 ft. wide.  From these two main streets other narrower streets (12-18 ft. wide) ran off at right angles; the result, though not chess-board pattern, is a rectangular town-plan.  Unfortunately, it cannot be dated.  Selinus was founded in 648 B.C., was destroyed in 409, then reoccupied and rebuilt, and finally destroyed for ever in 249.  Its town-planning, therefore, might be as early as the seventh century B.C.  Or (and this is the most probable conclusion) it may date from the days of Selinuntine prosperity just before 409, when the city was growing and the great Temple of Zeus or Apollo was rising on its eastern hill.  Or again, though less probably, it may have been introduced after 400.  We may conclude that we have here a clear case of town-planning and we may best refer it to the later part of the fifth century.[19]

[Illustration:  FIG. 3.  PLAN OF SELINUS]

[19] Koldewey and Puchstein, Die griech.  Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien, p. 90, plan 29, from Cavallari; Hulot and Fougeres, Selinonte, Paris, 1910, pp. 121, 168, 196.  The latter writers assign the rebuilding to Hermocrates, 408-407 B.C.  But our accounts of Hermocrates do not suggest that he rebuilt anything at Selinus of any sort, except defences.

Cyrene (fig. 4).

[Illustration:  FIG. 4.  PLAN OF CYRENE]

At Cyrene the researches of two English archaeologists about 1860 disclosed a town-plan based, like that of Selinus, on two main streets which crossed at right angles (fig. 4).  Here, however, the other streets do not seem to have been planned uniformly at right angles to the two main thoroughfares, and the rectangular scheme is therefore less complete and definite than at Selinus.  Cyrene, unfortunately, resembles Selinus in another respect, that we have no proper knowledge of the date when its main streets were laid out.  It was founded somewhere in the seventh century B.C. and Pindar, in an ode written about 466 B.C., mentions a great processional highway there.  Whether this was one of the two roads above mentioned is not clear.  But it is not probable, since Pindar’s road seems hardly to have been inside the city at all.[20]