Few towns in Italy developed as Rome herself developed, expanding from small beginnings in a slow continuous growth which was governed by convenience and opportunism and untouched by any new birth or systematic reconstruction.
[57] See Mommsen, _Gesamm.

Schriften_ v.

203; Nissen, _Ital.
Landeskunde_ ii.

27; Kornemann in Pauly-Wissowa, _Encycl._ iv.
520 foll.
Coincident with these processes of urban expansion, we find, in many towns which can be connected with the later Republic or the Empire, examples of a definite type of town-planning.

This type has obvious analogies with earlier Italy and with the town-planning of the Greek world, but is also in certain respects distinct from either.