No doubt it has been much altered by later changes.

In particular, Forum and Basilica have grown far beyond their first proportions, and the buildings which surround them have been added, altered, enlarged out of all resemblance to the original plan.

Nevertheless, this theory seems to account better than any other for this curious little corner of streets that are hardly regular even in their relations to one another and are wholly irreconcilable to the rest of the town.
Round this primitive city grew up the greater Pompeii.

The growth must have been rather by two or three distinct accretions than a gradual and continuous development.

At present we cannot trace these stages.
To do that we must wait till the excavations can be carried deeper down, and till the other half of the city has been uncovered, or at least till the lines of its streets and the shapes of its house-blocks have been determined, like those of Priene (p.