Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/66

 arcades have naturally become the habitual resort of courtezans, and they are recognized as the legitimate place of shelter for the houseless poor.

(2) The open spaces, to which the Latin name of forum is applied more often than the Greek word agora, are expansions of the main streets, and, like them, are surrounded on all sides by porticoes. They are not, however, very numerous and about a dozen will comprise all that have been constructed within the capital. They originate in the necessity of preserving portions of the ground unoccupied for use as market-places, but the vacant area is always more or less decorative and contains one or more monuments of ornament or utility. Each one is named distinctively either from the nature of the traffic carried on therein or in honour of its founder, and most of them will deserve special attention during our itinerary of the city.

(3) The greater part of the ground area of Constantinople is, of course, occupied by residential streets, and these are usually, according to modern ideas, of quite preposterous narrowness. Few of them are more than ten feet wide, and this scanty space is still more contracted above by projecting floors and balconies. In many places also the public way is encroached upon by solaria or sun-stages, that is to say by balconies supported on pillars of wood or marble, and oftenbeing Byzantine for portico). So say Alemannus ad Procop. (Hist. Arcan., p. 381) and his copyist Byzantios (op. cit., i, p. 113), but Pliny seems to use the word for an actress in interludes (H. N., vii, 49), an occupation not, however, very different.].]