n, though inconvenient, practice of raising
the houses to a considerable height in the air. [68] But the loftiness
of these buildings, which often consisted of hasty work and insufficient
materials, was the cause of frequent and fatal accidents; and it was
repeatedly enacted by Augustus, as well as by Nero, that the height of
private edifices within the walls of Rome, should not exceed the measure
of seventy feet from the ground. [69] III. Juvenal [70] laments, as
it should seem from his own experience, the hardships of the poorer
citizens, to whom he addresses the salutary advice of emigrating,
without delay, from the smoke of Rome, since they might purchase, in the
little towns of Italy, a cheerful commodious dwelling, at the same price
which they annually paid for a dark and miserable lodging. House-rent
was therefore immoderately dear: the rich acquired, at an enormous
expense, the ground, which they covered with palaces and gardens; but
the body of the Roman people was crowded into a narrow space; and the
different floors, and apartments, of the same house, were divided, as it
is still the custom of Paris, and other cities, among several families
of plebeians. IV. The total number of houses in the fourteen regions
of the city, is accurately stated in the description of Rome, composed
under the reign of Theodosius, and they amount to forty-eight thousand
three hundred and eighty-two. [71] The two classes of domus and of
insuloe, into which they are divided, include all the habitations of
the capital, of every rank and condition from the marble palace of the
Anicii, with a numerous establishment of freedmen and slaves, to the
lofty and narrow lodging-house, where the poet Codrus and his wife were
permitted to hire a wretched garret immediately under the files. If we
adopt the same average, which, under similar circumstances, has
been found applicable to Paris, [72] and indifferently allow about
twenty-five persons for each house, of every degree, we may fairly
estimate the inhabitants of Rome at twelve hundred thousand: a number
which cannot be thought excessive for the capital of a mighty empire,
though it exceeds the populousness of the greatest cities of modern
Europe. [73] [7311]

[Footnote 66: Lipsius (tom. iii. p. 423, de Magnitud. Romana, l. iii.
c. 3) and Isaac Vossius (Observant. Var. p. 26-34) have indulged strange
dreams, of four, or eight, or fourteen, millions in Rome. Mr. Hume,
(Essays, vol. i. p. 450-4