ABSTRACT
Ancient Rome was a large city, even by modern standards; there was nowhere of comparable size in Europe until the Industrial Revolution. Its unique scale meant that a different level of organisation was needed, for example in the water supply, from that which would have been satisfactory in a smaller town. It meant that there could be closely-packed housing (for the majority) and yet urban sprawl. Life may have been uncomfortable-it was certainly short-for very many people, but it was tolerable for most; otherwise we would surely hear much more of riot and civil commotion. The law played a part in enabling people to live together, just as it did when cities began to re-emerge in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.1 So this book is a study of ‘such provisions of the law as should govern the conduct of citizens living together…[and of] provisions regulating the behaviour of citizens towards each other (an area for which the Working Party has coined the term “good neighbourliness”)’.2
