Further excavation is, however, needed to confirm this generally
accepted interpretation of the place. Nothing has been noted elsewhere
in Etruria or its confines to connect the Etruscans with any
rectangular form of town-plan. At Veii, for example, most of the
Etruscan city has lain desolate and unoccupied ever since the Romans
destroyed it, but the site shows no vestige of streets crossing at
right angles or of oblong blocks of houses. At Vetulonia the excavated
fragment of an Etruscan city shows only curving and irregular
streets.[46] Nor is there real reason to believe that the 'Etruscan
teaching' learnt by Rome included an art of town-planning (p. 71) or
that, as a recent French writer has conjectured, the Etruscans brought
any such art with them from the East and communicated it to the West.
We must conclude that at Marzabotto we have a piece of evidence which
we cannot set into its proper historical framework. We might perhaps
call it an early blend of Greek and Italian methods and compare it
with Naples (p. 100). It is odd that four out of seven house-blocks
should measure just under 120 Roman ft. in width and thus approximate
to a figure which we meet often elsewhere in the Roman world (p. 79).
But it would be well to learn more of the plan by further excavation.

[44] _Archaeological Journal_, 1903, p. 237.

[45] Brizio, _Monumenti Antichi_, i. 252, superseding Gozzadini's
_Antica Necropoli a Marzabotto_ (Bologna, 1865-70); Grenier,
_Bologne villanovienne_ &c. (Paris, 1912) p. 98. Compare
_Authority and Archaeology_, pp. 305, 306.

[46] _Notizie degli Scavi_ 1895, p. 272; Durm, _Baukunst der
Etr_. p. 39.