Save in half a dozen abnormal capitals, they had, even in relatively modern days, no vast populations to be fed and made into human and orderly citizens.

They had no chemical industries, no chimneys defiling the air, or drains defiling the water.

Now, builders have to face the many square miles of Chicago or Buenos Ayres, to provide lungs for their cities, to fight with polluted streams and smoke.

Their problems are quite unlike those of the ancients.

When Cobbett, about 1800, called London the Great Wen, he contrasted in two monosyllables the ancient ideal of a city with the ugly modern facts.
It is not, therefore, likely that modern architects or legislators will learn many hints from plans of Timgad or of Silchester.