ПОДПАЛВАЧИ, КРАДЦИ, РОБИ БЕГЪЛЦИ – ОСНОВНИТЕ ПРОБЛЕМИ НА PRAEFECTUS VIGILUM
INCENDIARIES, THIEVES, SLAVES FUGITIVES – MAJOR PROBLEMS OF PRAEFECTUS VIGILUM

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the imperial period in Rome many fires have been known - some with serious consequences. In fact, it was not about unfounded fears. Fires were a constant danger to the public security and even the development of the city during the Age of Augustus did not reduce the frequency and severity of this problem. The rapid increase of the population of the capital and the need for new housing led to the construction of many vertical buildings, which have become more and more thanks to the financial speculation from which their builders and owners were led. These huge buildings, characteristic of the intensive construc-tion during the imperial period, have become a constant source of trouble. But in the six years when many fires destroyed different neighborhoods on the same day, it became clear that the measures taken were inadequate and that the preservation of the city by fires required the work of specialized personnel equipped with convenient means and acting under the guidance of an expert. The decision was to create a vigiles corpus, organized as a military structure consist-ing of 7,000 men, divided into 7 cohorts, each of which had to watch over two adjacent areas. At the head of each cohort was placed a tribune, chosen among the centurions of the legions, most often primipilares, while the senior command of the corpus was entrusted to an ad hoc employee who was nominated by the Emperor himself and called praefectus vigilum. It is not very easy to completely restore its functions, which have increased from the beginning of the Principate until the end of the 3rd century. In fact, we are sufficiently well informed about the duties and powers of this civil servant during the time of the Severan Dynasty, as the Digests provide us with a small number of testimonies (5 fragments, one long enough for liber singularis de officio praefecti vigilum - Paul, and one with the same name liber singularis - to Ulpian). More complete jurisdictional competence, relevant to civil and administrative disputes, was certainly recognized as praefec-tus vigilum in an unusual way, and only for a limited range of disputed parties, only towards the end of period under consideration, with regard to the reorganization of the professional associations of Alexander Severus. This reorganization, we learn from the Historia Augusta, appointment required for each college a judge competent to know relating to its disputes.

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