70. Read the whole third Satire, but particularly 166, 223,
etc. The description of a crowded 'insula', or
lodging-house, in Petronius (c. 95, 97), perfectly tallies
with the complaints of Juvenal; and we learn from legal
authority that, in the time of Augustus (Heineccius, Hist.
Juris Roman. c. iv. p. 181), the ordinary rent of the
several 'caenacula', or apartments of an 'insula', annually
produced forty thousand sesterces, between three and four
hundred pounds sterling (Pandect. 1. xix. tit. ii. No. 30),
a sum which proves at once the large extent and high value
of those common buildings.