can hardly doubt, are things older even than Rome.  Scholars have talked, indeed, of a Greek origin or of an Etruscan origin, and the technical term for the Roman surveying instrument, groma, has been explained as the Greek word ‘gnomon’, borrowed through an Etruscan medium.  But the name of a single instrument would not carry with it the origin of a whole art, even if this etymology were more certain than it actually is.  Save for the riddle of Marzabotto (p. 61), we have no reason to connect the Etruscans with town-planning or with the Roman system of surveying.  When the Roman antiquary Varro alleged that ‘the Romans founded towns with Etruscan ritual’, he set the fashion for many later assertions by Roman and modern writers.[54] But he did not prove his allegation, and it is not so clear as is generally assumed, that he meant ‘Etruscan ritual’ to include architectural town-planning as well as religious ceremonial.

[53] The prologue to the Poenulus of Plautus (verse 49) which mentions ‘limites’ and a ‘finitor’, may well be as old as Plautus himself.  But the ‘centuriation’ still visible in north Italy around colonies planted about 180 B.C. is no full proof of rectangular surveying at that date.  These towns were re-founded at a much later date, and their lands, and even their streets, may have been laid out anew.

    [54] Varro ling. lat. 5. 143 oppida condebant Etrusco ritu, id
    est, iunctis bobus, cf.  Frontinus de limit. (grom. i. p. 27).

These are Italian customs, far older than the beginnings of Greek influence on Rome, older than the systematic town-planning of the Greek lands, and older also than the Etruscans.  They should be treated as an ancestral heritage of the Italian tribes kindred with Rome, and should be connected with the plan of Pompeii and with the far older Terremare.  Many generations in the family tree have no doubt been lost.  The genealogy can only be taken as conjectural.  But it is a reasonable conjecture.

In their original character these customs were probably secular rather than religious.  They took their rise as methods proved by primitive practice to be good methods for laying out land for farming or for encamping armies.  But in early communities all customs that touched the State were quasi-religious; to ensure their due performance, they were carried out by religious officials.  At Rome, therefore, more especially in early times, the augurs were concerned with the delimitation alike of farm-plots and of soldiers’ tents.  They testified that the settlement, whether rural or military, was duly made according to the ancestral customs sanctioned by the gods.  After-ages secularized once more, and as they secularized, they also introduced science.  It was, perhaps, Greek influence which brought in a stricter use of the rectangle and a greater care for regular planning.