Chapter VI

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Whether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier and the land-commissioner was adopted in the towns, is a more difficult, but fortunately a less important question. Modern writers speak of the _cardo_ and the _decumanus_ of Roman towns, and even apply to them more highly technical terms such as _striga_ and _scamnum_. For the use of _cardo_ in relation to towns there is some evidence (p. 107). But it is very slight, and for the use of the other terms there is next to no evidence at all.[55] The silence alike of literature and of inscriptions shows that they were, at the best, theoretical expressions, confined to the surveyor's office.[56]

[55] Whether the _possessores ex vico Lucretio scamno primo_ of Cologne (Corpus XIII. 8254) had their property inside the 'colonia' of that place or in the country outside, may be doubted (Schulten, _Bonner Jahrb._ ciii. 28).

[56] The phrase Roma Quadrata ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in this chapter. It does not seem, however, to be demonstrably older than the Ciceronian age. The line _et qui sextus erat Romae regnare quadratae_, once attributed to Ennius (ed. Vablen, 1854, 158), is clearly of much later date. As a piece of historical evidence, the phrase merely sums up some archaeologist's theory (very likely a correct theory, but still a theory) that the earliest Rome on the Palatine had a more or less rectangular outline.

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