Blocks of apartment complexes tower five stories and more over streets so crowded that delivery vehicles are allowed only at night. The walls are scribbled with graffiti, and people jostle in and out of bars and restaurants as people settle down to eat or clamor for takeout. Property values are sky-high–and it seems like insurance premiums are even higher.

This isn’t Victorian London or 20th-century New York but ancient Rome. The more things change, eh?

(The issues of change and continuity are ALWAYS a fierce battleground for historians. The real answer is that there is always–always–both, and the continuity between one period and the next is usually greater than any abrupt change while the change is usually more distinctive.)

One of the aspects of Rome as an imperial city that fascinates me is how everything *functioned.* There was a constant influx of immigrants from the countryside as well as other cities and provinces. The people from the countryside were typically displaced peasants–a social problem that grew increasingly difficult to tackle as the empire aged. Poor farmers were economically flattened by the rich landowners and their slave labor and went to where there was free food and entertainment and, with any luck, jobs. But such a large group of people became a destabilizing force in an already volatile city.

Whatever their origins, the poor lived packed in the upper stories of brick and wood apartment complexes that could be half a dozen or more stories high. The richer you were, the lower in the complex you lived, while the bottom floor was reserved for businesses. (Living above the baths was somewhat like having an apartment above a rowdy nightclub in NYC today…) The very wealthy had their own villas, of course, but the vast majority of people, including what we’d call middle class today, lived in these apartments. There were laws passed by at least four emperors to try to limit the height and/or the number of stories, but the number of times these laws were passed simply go to demonstrate how useless they were. The laws set the max height at 60 or 70 Roman feet and one set the number of stories at five.

There weren’t any building inspectors in the ancient world–or even in the early modern world. There was no zoning commission or fire marshal. There was no institutional mechanism to enforce any of the laws about building safety or even height. The owner basically got in trouble when the building actually fell down. Which happened regularly–death from building collapse was a constant danger! Imagine if landlords only got in trouble for fire safety violations when someone actually, you know, died in a fire…. Additionally, though we think of Rome and a magnificent city of stone, these buildings were somewhat temporary. A change in ownership often meant that the existing building would be razed and a new one–with equally shoddy, temporary construction–thrown up. The level of construction that was constantly going on was simply massive, and there was a low incentive to build well when you knew that it would only last a dozen years or so.

Interestingly, this kind of temporariness was pretty common in the past. Peasants in medieval Western Europe, for example, were required to rebuild their houses on inheritance because of the poor state that houses got into after a while. This generally worked out to a lifespan of a house of about 20 years. This also explains why peasant houses were so small–they weren’t an investment but always an expense which was made only great enough to meet the family’s minimum requirements. The building materials for most construction just didn’t last. So much for the good ol’ days!

Some people who resent building codes and inspections think that common sense and self-interest would make people largely build quality buildings even without such restrictions–some of which can be, admittedly, pretty silly. I’m afraid, though, that throughout the history of urban living, I can’t think of a single place o time that this would be the rule rather than the exception! Because of an interesting link of death by disease and the acceptability of death by accident, things would likely be much better than in the past, but not good enough for me, at least! I like knowing that there’s a very low chance that my house is constructed of spit and bubblegum under the sheetrock.

Before elevators–and still, now, in cities with few or none–the higher you have to climb, the cheaper the rent (and so the smaller and more rickety the rooms). Ancient cities had few to no neighborhoods of rich and poor. Instead, the districts were largely integrated, with the rich and poor living next to one another and in the same building but on different floors. (Suburbs and “garden districts” were an invention of mass transit–ancient cities were also incredibly compact even by modern standards.) This made things safer when life was good, as the wealthy wouldn’t stand for gangs running the streets, but incredibly dangerous when times were bad, when any rich guy could get knifed on the street unless he was accompanies by a bevy of guards. Rome had both of these times.

So in ancient Rome, a very poor family typically lived in a single room at the very top of a six story building or so. They almost never had a means of cooking food or heating, which was good because of the fire danger. But this meant that they shivered on cold days (and roasted directly under the eaves on the hot ones!), and for their meals, they went to the local taverns and bakeries to buy pre-prepared meals–ancient takeout. In an age before building codes and inspectors, the apartment complexes could be incredibly dangerous, and there are records of buildings collapsing and killing the occupants inside. Of course, fires still occurred even with the strictest regulations, and even when the emperors eventually instituted public fire brigades, the results could be devastating.

True story: One of the important public figures near the end of the republic amassed a fortune by running a private fire department. A fire would break out, and his force would rush to the scene and offer to buy the burning structure for a pittance. If the owner agreed, they put out the fire. If he refused, they let it burn to the ground.

Yeah. I like modern insurance and fire departments, too, even when they aren’t perfect!