These insulae were usually built or owned by men of capital, and were often called by the names of their owners.  Cicero, in one of his letters,[47] incidentally mentions that he had money thus invested; and we are disposed to wonder whether his insulae were kept in good repair, for in another letter he happens to tell his man of business that shops (tabernae) belonging to him were tumbling down and unoccupied.  It is more than likely that many of the insulae were badly built by speculators, and liable to collapse.  The following passage from Plutarch’s Life of Crassus suggests this, though, if Plutarch is right, Crassus did not build himself, but let or sold his sites and builders to others:  “Observing (in Sulla’s time) the accidents that were familiar at Rome, conflagrations and tumbling down of houses owing to their weight and crowded state, he bought slaves who were architects and builders.  Having collected these to the number of more than five hundred, it was his practice to buy up houses on fire, and houses next to those on fire:  for the owners, frightened and anxious, would sell them cheap.  And thus the greater part of Rome fell into the hands of Crassus:  but though he had so many artisans, he built no house except his own, for he used to say that those who were fond of building ruined themselves without the help of an enemy."[48] The fall of houses, and their destruction in the frequent fires, became familiar features of life at Rome about this time, and are alluded to by Catullus in his twenty-third poem, and later on by Strabo in his description of Rome (p. 235).  It must indeed have often happened that whole families were utterly homeless;[49] and in those days there were no insurance offices, no benefit societies, no philanthropic institutions to rescue the suffering from undeserved misery.  As we shall see later on, they were constantly in debt, and in the hands of the money-lender; and against his extortions their judicial remedies were most precarious.  But all this is hidden from our eyes:  only now and again we can hear a faint echo of their inarticulate cry for help.

2.  The needs of these poorer classes in respect of food and drink were very small; it was only the vast number of them that made the supply difficult.  The Italians, like the Greeks,[50] were then as now almost entirely vegetarians; cattle and sheep were used for the production of cheese, leather, and wool or for sacrifices to the gods; the only animal commonly eaten, until luxury came in with increasing wealth, was the pig, and grain and vegetables were the staple food of the poor man, both in town and country.  Among the lesser poems ascribed to Virgil there is one, the Moretum, which gives a charming picture of the food-supply of the small cultivator in the country.  He rises very early, gropes his way to the hearth, and stirs the embers into flame:  then takes from his meal-bin a supply of grain for three days and proceeds to grind it in a hand-mill,