Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/67

 furnished with a flight of stairs leading to the pavement below. In such alleys low windows, affording a view of the street, or facile to lean out of, are considered unseemly by the inmates of opposite houses. Hence mere light-giving apertures, placed six feet above the flooring, are the regular means of illumination. Transparent glass is sometimes used for the closure of windows, but more often we find thin plates of marble or alabaster with ornamental designs figured on the translucent substance. Simple wooden shutters, however, are seen commonly enough in houses of the poorer class.

Impatient to see the immense vacant area which he added to Byzantium covered with houses Constantine exercised little or no supervision over private builders; necessary thoroughfares became more or less blocked, walls of public edifices were appropriated as buttresses for hastily erected tenements, and the task of evolving order out of the resulting chaos was imposed on succeeding rulers. On Constantinople becoming the seat of empire, as a resident of the period remarks, "such a multitude of people flocked hither from all, Cod., loc. cit.]