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 feeling, than the house of each individual citizen?
Here 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.