The three questions to which I wish to make some answer in this
chapter are: (1) how was this population housed? (2) how was it
supplied with food and clothing? and (3) how was it employed?
1. It was of course impossible in a city like Rome that each man,
married or unmarried, should have his own house; this is not so even
in the great majority of modern industrial towns, though we in England
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.
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