BV (before vigiles)

[Trethiwr]

OK so Rome needed a police force. So they introduced the vigiles.

 

But up before then i.e. late republic,

if someone was silly/angry enough to start a fight with a legionary in the middle of the city in broad daylight.

Who, other than the winner, would stop it?

Who would bring the perpetrator to justice?

Would they be tried in a court or what?

Edited September 23, 2010 by Trethiwr

[GhostOfClayton]

I refer you (I'm very much afraid) to my answer to your jails question. Again, there is a little about policing somewhere among the many episodes if you watch with 'All Roads lead to Rome' turned on. The period seems about right.

 

On the up side - you will learn lots of new and interesting Roman facts with which to impress your family and friends. Take it with a pinch of salt, though. I think the historical advisor was a guy called Jonathan Stamp, and although he is undoubtedly a very brilliant and well educated man, some of the facts mentioned are just plain wrong.

 

Happy viewing.

[Melvadius]

OK so Rome needed a police force. So they introduced the vigiles.

 

But up before then i.e. late republic,

if someone was silly/angry enough to start a fight with a legionary in the middle of the city in broad daylight.

Who, other than the winner, would stop it?

Who would bring the perpetrator to justice?

Would they be tried in a court or what?

 

Just a point of information contrary to what Lindsey Davis suggests in her first few books the Vigiles were primarily set up by Augustus as a fire fighting force rather than a police force. There is however a suggestion that by the second century they were also on the look out for excaped slaves and robbers along with people deliberately starting fires so probably then had a partial police function.

 

The Falcophiles website includes the following Cassio Dio quote:

When many parts of the city were at this time destroyed by fire, he [Emperor Augustus] organized a company of freedmen, in seven divisions, to render assistance on such occasions, and appointed a knight in command over them, expecting to disband them in a short time. He did not do so, however; for he found by experience that the aid they gave was most valuable and necessary, and so retained them. These night-watchmen exist to the present day, as a special corps, one might say, recruited no longer from the freedmen only, but from the other classes as well. They have barracks in the city and draw pay from the public treasury.

[Dio Cassius, The Roman History, (55, chap. 26)]