e is his altar,
his hearth, here are his Di Penates: here he keeps all the objects
of his worship and performs all his religious rites: his house is
a refuge so solemnly protected, that no one can be torn from it by
force."[46] The warm-hearted Cicero is here, as so often, dreaming
dreams: the "each individual citizen" of whom he speaks is the citizen
of his own acquaintance, not the vast majority, with whom his mind
does not trouble itself.

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