I. The value of town-planning to Roman civilization was twofold. It
increased the comfort of the common man; it made the towns stronger
and more coherent units to resist the barbarian invasions. When, after
250 years of conflict, the barbarians triumphed, its work was done. In
the next age of ceaseless orderless warfare it was less fit, with its
straight broad streets, for defence and for fighting than the chaos of
narrow tortuous lanes out of which it had grown and to which it now
returned. The cases are few in which survivals of Roman streets have
conditioned the external form of mediaeval or modern towns. We in
England tend perhaps to overrate the likelihood of such survivals. Our
classical education has, until very lately, taught most of us more of
ancient than of mediaeval history, and when our antiquaries find towns
rectangular in outline and streets that cross in a Carfax, they give
them a Roman origin.