Vigiles
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Vigiles or more properly the Vigiles Urbani ("watchmen of the City") or Cohortes Vigilum ("cohorts of the watchmen") were the firefighters and police of ancient Rome.
History
The
In AD 6,
The vigiles also acted as a night watch, keeping an eye out for burglars and hunting down runaway slaves, and were on occasion used to maintain order in the streets. Their most famous prefect, Naevius Sutorius Macro, succeeded Lucius Aelius Sejanus as Prefect of the Praetorian Guard after his men had been used by the Emperor Tiberius to retake control of the city from Sejanus's soldiers.
Vigiles were stationed at the harbour cities of
During the Great Fire of Rome, the vigiles took to looting the city rather than enforcing law and fighting the fires.[8]
The vigiles appear to have lost their status as an independent unit and come under the authority of the Praetorian prefects sometime in the early 3rd century.[citation needed]
Organization
In the beginning, the corps had difficulty recruiting men. In an effort to entice men to enlist the Lex Visellia was passed in 24 AD, granting full citizenship and a bonus cash stipend to Vigiles after six years of service. By the 2nd century, citizens were also allowed to enlist.
The Vigiles were accommodated in barracks and patrolled the streets, especially at night, on the lookout for any unsupervised fires. Every householder was obliged to keep equipment for fighting fires, and the men themselves were equipped with pumps, buckets, hooks (for pulling down burning material), picks, mattocks and axes. They also used ballistae for knocking down burning houses and creating firebreaks. They even had their own medical support (medici), with four doctors attached to each cohort, and their own chaplains (victimarii). A siphonarius operated a pump and an aquarius supervised the supply of water. The ordinary firefighters were called milites (soldiers).
The Vigiles were organized into seven
Beyond the office of the prefect, the Vigiles were ordered by rank similar to the military. While some terms of service could extend beyond twenty years, most commissioned ranks were much shorter. Since the Vigiles never achieved the prestige of the Praetorian Guard or the
One known praefectus,
Whether or not the Praefectus Vigilum had his headquarters in any of the stationes identified above or whether he had an entirely separate praefectura is not known. If he is associated with one of the barracks it is likely to have been that of I Cohort in the Via Lata.
Duties
Fighting fires
Every cohort was equipped with standard firefighting equipment. The sipho or
A major duty of the Vigiles was to enforce preventative measures against conflagrations. Adequate fire fighting equipment was required in every home. The Digest of Justinian decrees that Vigiles are "ordered to remind every one to have a supply of water ready in his upper room". While the Vigiles only had advising authority, their recommendations were often followed to avoid repercussions for negligence. Corporal punishment was the most common punishment for negligence according to the Digest of Justinian, "where persons have paid insufficient attention to their fire, the prefect ... orders them to be beaten".
During the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 over one third of Rome was destroyed by flames. The young Emperor Nero helped to direct the Vigiles in fighting the flames. It was rumoured that the Vigiles intentionally allowed the city to burn under orders from Nero, who later built his palace on land that was cleared by the fire. Regardless, Nero enacted fire code laws following the Great Fire to avoid further conflagrations. These laws called for more public access to water and prohibited buildings from sharing a common wall.
Police force
Starting about 27 BC, Augustus added a police function to the Vigiles to counterbalance the urban mobs that had run rampant during the latter days of the Republic.[12]
In addition to extinguishing fires, the Vigiles were the
Quarters
The first Vigiles
The locations of four of the seven cohort stationes or barracks have been fairly definitively identified:
- I Cohort: On the east side of the Saepta;
- III Cohort: On Viminal;
- IV Cohort: Near Baths of Caracalla;
- V Cohort: On Caelian Hill near present site of S. Maria in Domnica.
The VII Cohort was probably housed in a statio provisionally identified near the Aemilian Bridge.[clarification needed]
As mentioned elsewhere detachments of watchmen were stationed at Ostia
In popular culture
The Vigiles often play a prominent role in the
In Death in Vesunna by Harry Turtledove, the vigiles of Vesunna, Roman Gaul (now modern Périgueux, France) are tasked to hunt down two murderers from the future, whose victim was a prominent citizen in the city whom they murdered with a pistol. Despite initial bafflement, the head of the vigiles is able to solve the case with help from his Greek doctor friend and arrest the murderers despite their previously unknown weapon.
See also
- Praetorian Guard
- Urban cohort
- History of firefighting
- List of fire departments
- List of Roman army unit types
- Vigili del Fuoco
References
- ^ "Vigiles". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2021-01-20.
- ^ Spirkina, O.O. "Key Points Of The History Of Firefighting (From the Early Times Till The Middle Ages)" (PDF): 188.
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: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ISBN 978-1-4214-3371-4.
- ^ Peresun’ko, T. I.; Spirkina, O. O. "History of Firefighting: Key Points" (PDF): 361.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ISBN 978-0-521-38749-1.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-58510-975-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85109-730-2.
- ISBN 978-0-521-89629-0.
- ISBN 978-1-5381-1489-6.
- ISBN 978-0-19-973784-0.
- ISBN 978-1-4008-5655-8.
- ^ "History of Law Enforcement - Police History". Archived from the original on 2015-09-19. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
- ISBN 978-1-134-84493-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4464-5523-4.
- ^ Windle, Sir Bertram Coghill Alan (1887). A Collection of Archaeological Pamphlets on Roman Remains Formed by Sir B.C.A. Windle and Relating Principally to Great Britain.
- ISBN 978-0-521-38749-1, retrieved 2020-11-14
- ISBN 978-0-7637-9938-0.
Primary sources
- Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. The Annals. In: The Complete Works of Tacitus. (1942) Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb.
- Justinian I. (529) The Digest of Justinian. Book I, XV. Translated by Monro, Charles Henry. (1904) Cambridge University Press. pp. 50–51.
Secondary sources
- Bunson, Matthew. (1994) Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire. Facts on File Inc., New York, NY
- Cambridge Ancient History. (1996) 2nd Ed, Vol. X: The Augustan Empire, 43B.C.-A.D.69 Ed. Bowman, Alan K.; Champlin, Edward; Lintott, Andrew. Cambridge University Press, New York.
- Canter, H.V. (1932)
- H. V. Canter, "Conflagrations in Ancient Rome", Classical Journal, 27 (1932), pp. 270–288
- Daugherty, Gregory N. "The Cohortes Vigilum and the Great Fire of 64 AD", Classical Journal, Vol. 87 (1992), pp. 229–240.
- ISBN 0-89005-552-1. Originally published in 1926 by Oxford University Press, London.