_Pompeii_ (fig. 13).

(iii) A third piece of evidence can be found on a site which
historians and novelists alike connect mainly with the Roman Empire,
but which dates back to the days of the early or middle Republic.
Pompeii began in or before the sixth century B.C. as an Oscan city.
For a while, we hardly know when, it was ruled by Etruscans. Later,
about 420 B.C., it was occupied by Samnites. Finally, it became Roman;
it was refounded in 80 B.C. as a 'colonia' and repeopled by soldiers
discharged from the armies of Sulla. In A.D. 79 it reached its end in
the disaster to which it owes its fame. Its life, therefore, was long
and full of destruction, re-building, enlargement. Its architectural
history is naturally hard to follow. Many of its buildings, however,
can be dated more or less roughly by the style of their ornament or
the character of their material, and the lines of its streets suggest
some conjectures as to its growth which deserve to be stated even
though they may conflict with the received opinions about Pompeii. It
will be understood, of course, that these conjectures, like all
speculations on Pompeii, are limited by the fact that barely half of
its area has been as yet uncovered, and that very little search has
been made beneath the floors and pavements of its latest period.[47]

[47] For recent plans of Pompeii the reader may consult the
second edition (1908) of August Mau's _Pompeii_, or the fifth
edition (1910) of his _Führer durch Pompeii_, re-edited by W.
Barthel. A plan on a large scale is given in the last part of
_CIL_. iv (1909); there are also occasional plans in the _Notizie
degli Scavi_. See also C. Weichardt, _Pompeji vor der Zerstorung_
(Leipzig, 1897).