Vigĭles
1.
Sentinels who were on duty about a camp at night. (See
Castra.)
2.
A name given to the police of Rome. Of these there were seven
cohortes
or battalions with fourteen station-houses (
excubitoria). They were
under the command of a superintendent (
praefectus vigilum), who was
responsible for the order of the city, it being his duty to protect the citizens from all
forms of lawlessness. He was also charged with the duty of preventing and extinguishing
fires, so that the vigiles were really a police and fire department combined. Policemen were
regularly detailed for duty at the theatres, public baths, and other places of public resort;
and had very considerable powers, resembling those exercised by the police in the Continental
cities. As firemen they were provided with axes, ropes, buckets, and also operated a kind of
hand fire-engine (
sipho, sipo), whence they received the popular
nickname of
siponarii. Each of the seven cohorts was commanded by a
captain (
tribunus), and the whole force numbered 7000 men. In
1868, an
excubitorium belonging to the seventh cohort was excavated at
Rome, and on its walls were found many interesting inscriptions, scratched by the policemen
when off duty, and giving a curious picture of the life and thought of the ancient vigiles,
being of every possible description—humorous, complaining, serious, and obscene.
See the account of this discovery and of the Roman police in general in Lanciani,
Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, ch. viii.
(Boston,
1888).
