A City in Darkness
The Romans, after they had attained a high culture, when they had filled their city with noble architecture, sculpture, engineering, monuments, and other accompaniments of maturity, had no system of street-lightning. Not a trace of anything of the kind has been discovered. It is referred to in no extant books. It is, in short, as certain as anything can be, short of absolute demonstration, that the masters of the world endured dark streets to the end. They had plenty of good oil-lamps in their houses. They even invented mechanical lamps, something like the Carcel burners, for use in their libraries. But after sunset it was always dangerous to walk the streets of Rome, and the Roman police (who were called “cops” in the slang of the period) had enough to do. In fact, they had more than enough to do, for they combined the functions of policemen and firemen. Rome had a regular body of men, some nine thousand strong. The police were well treated, if they were worked hard. Their quarters were palaces of marble and stone; spacious, airy, furnished with everything which could conduce to the comfort and even luxury of the inmates. Those old Roman roundsmen and policemen were, like all the ancient Italians, greatly addicted to scribbling on the walls. These scribblings, after being buried for twelve or fifteen hundred years or so, are now being uncovered and deciphered. They are called graffiti and from them many intimate details of the old life may be gathered. The police of ancient Rome were very human. They set down their complaints and their opinions of their captains and superintendents, their poor jokes (funny enough to them, no doubt) and all their little affairs.