101.
_Carthage_ (fig.

24).
It remains to note another example of town-planning in a Roman municipality of the western Empire, which is as important as it is abnormal.

Carthage, first founded--though only in an abortive fashion--as a Roman 'colonia' in 123 B.C.and re-established with the same rank by Julius Caesar or Augustus, shows a rectangular town-plan in a city which speedily became one among the three or four largest and wealthiest cities in the Empire.

The regularity of its planning was noted in ancient times by a topographical writer.[97] But the plan, though rectangular, is not normal.

According to the French archaeologists who have worked it out, it comprised a large number of streets--perhaps as many as forty--running parallel to the coast, a smaller number running at right angles to these down the hillside towards the shore, and many oblong 'insulae', measuring each about 130 x 500 ft., roughly two Roman _iugera_.