However small Florentia was, it possessed the true elements of the Roman town.
_Lucca_ (fig.

18).
A good parallel to Florence may be found at Lucca, the ancient Luca, where again the streets preserve a rectangular pattern without showing clearly what was its full extent.

Luca is said to have been founded as a 'colonia' in 177 B.C., but the statement is of doubtful truth.
Certainly it was a 'municipium' in Cicero's days, and a little later, in the period 40-20 B.C., it received the rank of 'colonia' and many colonists, taken (as an inscription says) from discharged soldiers of Legions VII and XXVI.

Whether the surviving traces of town-planning date from this latter event or from some earlier age is not easy to say.

But of the street-plan there can be no doubt, though its original size is uncertain.