Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Insula

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

IN'SULA. A house, or a cluster of contiguous houses, having a free space all round the collective pile, so that they formed a single and isolated mass of building, like an island in the water (Donat. ad Ter. Ad. iv. 2. 39. Festus, s. v. Cic. Off. iii. 16.) But as the houses composing an insula were let out in flats to different families, or comprised several distinct shops and tenements, the word came to be used in a less definite sense for any hired lodging (Pet. Sat. 95. 3.), or house occupied by more than one family, as contradistinguished from domus, the private house or mansion only tenanted by a single person, the owner or his lessee. (Tac. Ann. vi. 45. Suet. Nero, 16. 38. 44. Id. Jul. 41.) The ground-plan, which occupies the second column at p. 250., affords an example both of an insula and a domus; being an isolated patch of buildings surrounded on all sides by streets, and containing one private mansion, and eleven separate shops and tenements, each of which was occupied by a different tenant, as will appear by referring to the description there given.