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Another organization dedicated to fighting fires in ancient Rome was a band of slaves led by the aedile Marcus Egnatius Rufus. [1] [2] The privately operated system became ineffective, so in the interest of keeping himself and Rome safe, Augustus instituted a new public firefighting force called the vigiles.
Plan of imperial Rome with the seven districts controlled by the cohorts and the position of each cohort. The offices of the praefectus vigilum were located in the Campus Martius, perhaps in the quadriportico of the theatre of Balbus (along the via Lata), inside the barracks of the First Cohort of Vigiles (Latin: statio primae cohortis vigilum). [2]
The history of organized firefighting began in ancient Rome while under the rule of the first Roman Emperor Augustus. [1] Prior to that, Ctesibius, a Greek citizen of Alexandria, developed the first fire pump in the third century BC, which was later improved upon in a design by Hero of Alexandria in the first century BC. [2]
The imperial-era Vigiles would patrol the streets of Rome looking for fires. They would uses axes, catapults, or ballistae to destroy buildings near a fire to prevent the fire from spreading. It is possible this is the origin of the phrase "hook and ladder". [1] The Vigiles could also use buckets and water pumps to extinguish fires. [16]
The 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. 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.
Unlike the Vigiles, who mostly operated at night as firefighters and watchmen, members of the urban cohorts were considered legionaries, though with higher pay than the regular legions—if not quite as much as the Praetorian Guards—and tended to receive slightly higher donatives, though not as much as the Praetorians.
Urbanae – A special police force of Rome, created to counterbalance the Praetorians. Velites – A class of light infantry in the army of the Roman Republic. Venator – A hunter (a type of immunes). Vexillarius – Bearer of a vexillum (standard). Vigiles – were the firefighters and police.
By 1921, he had become a Pelham student at the British School in Rome. While Rome he wrote books and articles for which he is well remembered (e.g., The Troops Quartered in the Castra Peregrina JRS 13 1923, pages 168–87; The Vigiles of Imperial Rome, Oxford 1926). Baillie Reynolds extensively researched the remains of ancient Rome's aqueducts.