For this reason, too, we should probably seek in vain any marked distinction between richer and poorer quarters and larger or smaller houses.[95] The centurions and other officers may have formed the first municipal aristocracy of Timgad, as retired officers did in many Roman towns, but there can have been no definite element of poor among the common soldiers.
[95] Ballu detects a 'quartier industriel' in the outer town, but the evidence does not seem to warrant so grand a term.
Such was Trajan's Timgad, as revealed by excavations now about two-thirds complete.

The town soon burst its narrow bounds.

A Capitol, Baths, a large Meat-market, and much else sprang up outside the walls.
Soon the walls themselves, like those of many mediaeval towns--for example, the north and west town-walls of Oxford--were built over and hidden by later structures.

The town grew from one of 360 to a breadth of over 800 yds.

And as it expanded, it broke loose from the chess-board pattern.