e age
of Nero, and we may take it that along the more frequented streets the
houses commonly ran to a height of four or five stories. They looked
the taller because of the narrowness of the street itself. While it is
perhaps, though not necessarily, an exaggeration for the
epigrammatist--who lived "up three pair of stairs, and high ones"--to
say that he could touch his opposite neighbour with his hand, it is at
least an indication of the truth. Some of the narrower lanes between
blocks cannot have been more than a few feet across.

Nor does it appear that the occupants' of rooms opening on the streets
were very particular as to what they threw out in the way of rubbish
or dirty water. It is true that there were aediles, or officers to
look after the order of the streets and public places, but their
efforts seem to have been mainly directed to preventing conspicuous
obstruction. Practices which we should regard as heinous were treated
lightly or disregarded. To make matters worse, the shopkeepers, who
occupied the lower fronts of most of such houses, took the greatest
liberties in encroaching upon the roadway when exhibiting their wares,
and it was not till twenty years later than our date that the Emperor
Domitian ordered them to keep within their own thresholds.

Apart from the question of the freedom of traffic, it can be readily
imagined that, with all the wooden counters, doors, and shutters down
below, and with the disproportionate quantity of woodwork in the
beams, floors, and even walls above, fires were of the commonest
occurrence, and, with streets so high and narrow, the conflagration of
a whole quarter of the town was speedy and complete. Augustus had
divided the metropolitan area into fourteen regions, and had
distributed over these a force of 7000 watchmen to keep the peace and
to deal with fires at night; but it was not to be expected, if a fire
occurred in a lofty block, that this body, assisted or hampered by the
neighbours, could do much with the buckets, siphons, and wet blankets
which formed the extinguishing apparatus of the time.

Another serious danger, or, when not danger, at least discomfort, came
from the trick which the Tiber has always had of flooding the lower
parts of the city. Somewhat later than our date the river restrained
by strong stone embankments, which one had to descend by steps in
order to reach the river at the ferries or other boats; but this must
have been but inadequately a