MODERN IDEAS OF SANlTARt ECONOMY. 



45 



from adisease by draining pestiferous ground. The neighbour- 

 hood of Rome was healthy or unhealthy according as it was 

 inhabited, nature producing disease, and art health. Cities, 

 also, seem to have been carefully drained before the historic 

 times, whilst a drain tile of modern form has been taken 

 from the neighbourhood of the Euphrates. The Greeks 

 were well aware of the value of having streets wider than 

 they possessed in Athens, although the municipal economists 

 of early times would not permit a change, for fear of the 

 leading men misusing the money, — making what we should 

 call a job; as it seems to have happened there as here, 

 that the best schemes were not always proposed by the most 

 suitable characters.* In the later Empire, however, very par- 

 ticular directions are given as to widening the spaces between 

 houses, removing obstructions from the street, and raising 

 balconies to prevent the street air from being close. Most 

 of these laws came from Rome apparently, and there, also, 

 we find that elegance and security are more looked to than 

 actual health. Houses were not allowed to be above nine 

 stories, not because they occasioned a crowding of the popula- 

 .tion and a closing of the street, but because they were apt 

 to fall down. In Rome houses were ordered to be five feet 

 apart. Augustus ordered that they should not exceed seventy 

 feet in height, whilst Trajan thought sixty feet high enough. 

 In Constantinople, Zeno ordered all houses to be twelve feet 

 distant from each other, from the ground upwards, that is, 

 they should not project as they rose, nor should they deprive 

 a neighbour of his view of the sea. This looking to the 

 sea was considered very important, as no one was allowed to 

 stop the prospect from houses, excepting from kitchens, baths, 

 stairs, passages, &c.f One too severe law in connection seems 

 to have been useful at times ; workmen who did not do their 

 work well, were compelled to make good any damage that 

 might result, or if not able through poverty, they were beaten 

 • Boeckh's Publio Econ. of Athens. + Cod. Jurt. Lib. viii. Tit. 10. 



