Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/106

 More than six score of such stations are scattered throughout the town, and the necessary corn is stored in large granaries which are for the most part replenished by ships arriving every season from Alexandria. More than twenty public bakeries furnish daily the required demand of bread. Besides free grants of food and houses for the entertainment of strangers, the city contains various other charities under the direction of state officials, the chief of which are hospitals for the sick and aged, orphanages, poor-houses, and institutions for the reception of foundlings. A medical officer, entitled an arch-physician, with a public stipend, is attached to each parish to attend gratuitously to the poor.

The civic authorities are well aware that disease arises from putrid effluvia, and hence an elaborate system of deep drainage has been constructed so that all sewage is carried by multiple channels into the sea. Since the introduction of Christianity, cremation has become obsolete, and burial in the earth is universally practised. Public cemeteries, however, are not allowed within the walls, but churches and monasteries are permitted to devote a portion of their precincts to

being doubtless such as would prevent a crush. This state-feeding of the people was begun at Rome by Julius Caesar, and of course imitated by Constantine; Socrates, ii, 13, etc. The tickets were checked by a brass plate for each person fixed at the Step; Cod. Theod., XIV, xvii, 5.]
 * [Footnote: exact form of these Gradus, but only that they were high, the design