A yet more famous town, founded by Alexander himself, is definitely recorded by ancient writers to have been laid out in the same quasi-chess-board fashion, with one long highway, the Canopic Street, running through it from end to end for something like four miles.[27] Unfortunately the details of the plan are not known with any certainty.  Excavations were conducted at the instigation of Napoleon III in 1866 by an Arab archaeologist, Mahmud Bey el Fallaki, and, according to him, showed a regular and rectangular scheme in which seven streets ran east and west while thirteen ran north and south at right angles to them.  The house-blocks divided by these streets were thought to vary somewhat in size but to measure in general about 300 x 330 metres.[28] More recent research, however, has not confirmed Mahmud’s plans.  The excavations of Mr. Hogarth and M. Botti suggest that many of his lines are wrong and that even his Canopic Street is incorrectly laid down.  Mr. Hogarth, indeed, concludes that ’it is hopeless now to sift his work; those who would treat the site of Alexandria scientifically must ignore him and start de novo’.  More recent excavation, carried out by Dr. Noack in 1898-9, seemed to show that the ancient streets which can now be traced beneath Alexandria belong to a Roman age, though they may of course follow older lines, and that, if some items in Mahmud’s plans are possibly right, the errors and omissions are serious.  We may accept as certain the statement that Alexandria was laid out with a rectangular town-plan; we cannot safely assume that Mahmud has given a faithful picture of it.[29]

    [27] Strabo, xvii. 793.

    [28] Mahmud Bey, Memoire sur l’ancienne Alexandrie (Copenhagen,
    1872); Neroutsos Bey, L’ancienne Alexandrie (Paris, 1888).

[29] D.G.  Hogarth, Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1894-5, p. 28, and Hellenic Journal, xix. 326; F. Noack, Athen.  Mitteil. xxv. (1900), pp. 232, 237.  Dr. Noack thought that his results confirmed Mahmud; to me, as to some others, they seem rather to yield the conclusions indicated in the text.

Nicaea.

Priene, Miletus, and Alexandria supply more or less well-known instances of Macedonian town-planning.  They can be reinforced by a crowd of less famous examples, attested by literature or by actual remains.  One of the most characteristic is known to us from literature, Nicaea in Bithynia, founded by one of the Macedonians in 316 B.C. and renamed by another some years later in honour of his wife Nicaea.  Strabo, writing about A.D. 15, describes it and his description no doubt refers to arrangements older than the Romans.  It formed, he says, a perfect square in which each side measured four stades, a little over 800 yds.  In each side—­apparently in the middle of each side—­there was one gate, and the streets within the walls were laid out at right angles to one another.  A man who stood at a certain spot in the middle of the Gymnasium could see straight to all the four gates.[30] Here is the chess-board pattern in definite form, though the central portion of the city may have been laid out under the influence of spectacular effect rather than of geometry.