are accustomed to see our comparatively well-to-do artisans dwelling
in cottages spreading out into the country. At Rome only the wealthy
families lived in separate houses (_domus_), about which we shall have
something to say in another chapter. The mass of the population lived,
or rather ate and slept (for southern climates favour an out-of-door
life), in huge lodging-houses called islands (_insulae_), because they
were detached from other buildings, and had streets on all sides of
them, as islands have water.[42] These _insulae_ were often three or
four stories high;[43] the ground-floor was often occupied by shops,
kept perhaps by some of the lodgers, and the upper floors by single
rooms, with small windows looking out on the street or into an
interior court. The common name for such a room was _coenaculum_, or
dining-room, a word which seems to be taken over from the _coenaculum_
of private houses, i.e. an eating-room on the first floor, where there
was one. Once indeed we hear of an _aedicula_, in an insula, which was
perhaps the equivalent of a modern "flat"; it was inhabited by a young
bachelor of good birth, M. Caelius Rufus, the friend of Cicero, and
in this case the insula was probably one of a superior kind.[44]
The common lodging-house must have been simply a rabbit-warren, the
crowded inhabitants using their rooms only for eating and sleeping,
while for the most part they prowled about, either idling or getting
such employment as they could, legitimate or otherwise.

In such a life there could of course have been no idea of home, or of
that simple and sacred family life which had once been the ethical
basis of Roman society.[45] When we read Cicero's thrilling language
about the loss of his own house, after his return from exile, and then
turn to think of the homeless crowds in the rabbit-warrens of Rome, we
can begin to feel the contrast between the wealth and poverty of that
day. "What is more strictly protected," he says, "by all religious