People were constantly in prospect of a dearth, and not unfrequently in utter famine.

Nowhere was a man less secure of his life than in the capital; murder professionally prosecuted by banditti was the single trade peculiar to it; the alluring of the victim to Rome was the preliminary to his assassination; no one ventured into the country in the vicinity of the capital without an armed retinue.
Its outward condition corresponded to this inward disorganization, and seemed a keen satire on the aristocratic government.
Nothing was done for the regulation of the stream of the Tiber; excepting that they caused the only bridge, with which they still made shift,( 47) to be constructed of stone at least as far as the Tiber-island.

As little was anything done toward the levelling of the city of the Seven Hills, except where perhaps the accumulation of rubbish had effected some improvement.

The streets ascended and descended narrow and angular, and were wretchedly kept; the footpaths were small and ill paved.

The ordinary houses were built of bricks negligently and to a giddy height, mostly by speculative builders on account of the small proprietors; by which means the former became vastly rich, and the latter were reduced to beggary.
Like isolated islands amidst this sea of wretched buildings were seen the splendid palaces of the rich, which curtailed the space for the smaller houses just as their owners curtailed the burgess- rights of smaller men in the state, and beside whose marble pillars and Greek statues the decaying temples, with their images of the gods still in great part carved of wood, made a melancholy figure.
A police-supervision of streets, of river-banks, of fires, or of building was almost unheard of; if the government troubled itself at all about the inundations, conflagrations, and falls of houses which were of yearly occurrence, it was only to ask from the state- theologians their report and advice regarding the true import of such signs and wonders.