Did you know...?

• In contrast to the unwashed West, early Byzantium abounded in public baths. Street lighting made the nights safer.

• Emperors and wealthy citizens vied in endowing hospitals, poorhouses, orphanages, homes for the blind or aged (where "the last days of man's earthly life might be peaceful, painles, and dignified"), homes for repentant prostitutes (some became saints), even a reformatory for fallen women aristocrats.

• In the spirit "if any would not work, neither should he eat," the indigent were put to work in state bakeries and market gardens.

• "Idleness leads to crime," noted Emperor Leo III. And Drunkenness to disorder and sedition - so taverns closed at eight.

• God's state would protect the working girl: a fine of two pound of gold for anyone who corrupted a woman employed in the imperial textile factoryes.

• Incest, homicide, privately making or selling purple cloth (reserved for royalty alone), or teaching shipbuilding to enemies might bring decapitation, impalement, hanging - or drowning in a sack with a hog, a cock, a viper, and an ape.

• The grocer who gave false measure lost his hand. Arsonists were burned.

• The Byzantines came to favor mutilation as a humane substitute for the death penalty; the tongueless or slit-nosed sinner had time to repent.

• "Men...should not shamelessly trample upon one another," observed Leo VI, the Wise.

• Constractors had to replace faulty construction at their own cost. Housing codes forbade balconies less than ten feet from the facing house, storing noxious mater, or encroaching on a neighbor's light or sea view.