.; it recurs
in the charter granted to the municipality of Malaga, also in southern
Spain, about A.D. 82.[118] Somewhat similar prohibitions of the
removal of even old and worthless houses without special leave are
implied in decrees of the Roman Senate passed in A.D. 44 and A.D. 56,
though these seem really to relate to rural rather than to urban
buildings and were perhaps more agrarian than municipal in their
object.[119] Hadrian, in a dispatch written in A.D. 127 to an eastern
town which had lately obtained something like municipal status,
includes a provision that a house in the town belonging to one
Claudius Socrates must either be repaired by him or handed over to
some other citizen.[120] Similar legislation occurs in A.D. 224 and in
the time of Diocletian and later.[121]

[117] Mommsen, _Eph. Epigr._ ix, p. 9; Dessau, _Inscr. sel._
6086; 'nei quis in oppido quod eius municipi erit aedificium
detegito neive demolito neive disturbato nisei quod non deterius
restiturus erit nisei de senatus sententia. sei quis adversus ea
faxit, quanti id aedificium fuerit, tantam pequniam municipio
dare damnas esto eiusque pequniae quei volet petitio est.'
(English translation in E.G. Hardy's _Roman Laws and Charters_,
p. 101.)

[118] Dessau, 6087, 6089; Hardy, _Roman Laws_, part 2, pp. 34,
108.

[119] For these decrees, which are practically equivalent at this
date to laws, see _CIL_. x. 1401 = Dessau 6043, and de Pachtere
in _Melanges Cagnat_, p. 169.

[120] For the letter of Hadrian see _Bulletin de Corresp. Hell._
x. 111; it is quoted by Bruns, _Fontes_, 1909, p. 200. Compare
the _Historia Augusta_, Life of Hadrian, ch. 18.

[121] Mommsen, _Eph. Epigr._ iii, p. 111 and _Ges. Schiften_, i.
158, 263, 371; Liebenam, _Staedteverwaltung_, 393.

Rules were also laid down occasionally to forbid balconies and similar
structures which might impede the light and air in narrow streets, and
it was a common rule that cemeteries and brickyards must lie outside
the area of inhabitation. At Rome too, efforts were made by various
emperors to limit the height of the large tenement houses which there
formed the 'insulae'. These limits were, however, fixed haphazard
without due reference to the width of the streets; they do not seem to
occur outside of Rome, and even in Rome they were very scantily
observed.

But in general no definite laws were framed. Probably the