Note 28 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION
Charles Francis Atkinson translation
In Rome and Byzantium, lodging-houses of six to ten stories (with street-widths of ten feet at most!) were built without any sort of official supervision, and frequently collapsed with all their inmates. A great part of the cives Romani, for whom panem et circenses constituted all existence, possessed no more than a high-priced sleeping-berth in one of the swarming ant-hills called insulæ. (Pohlmann, Aus Altertum und Gegenwart, 1911, pp. 199 ff.)