But it cannot possibly have wrecked the town so utterly as to cause wholesale rebuilding on new lines, and an inscription points rather to the time of Augustus.

One Marcus Nonius Balbus (the text runs) built 'a basilica, gates and a wall at his own cost', and this builder Balbus was probably a contemporary of Augustus.[84] Others have preferred to think that the town-planning reveals Greek influences; they point to the Greek city of Naples, 7 miles west of Herculaneum, and the Doric temple at Pompeii, much the same distance east of it.

However, neither the town-planning of Naples, to be discussed in the next paragraphs, nor that of Pompeii (p.

68), seems to be necessarily Greek, and Herculaneum itself contains nothing which cannot be explained as Italian.

It is possible, though there is no record of the fact, that it received a settlement of discharged soldiers somewhere about 30 B.C.and was then laid out afresh.