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 praefect protected the town and patrolled the streets by night, and he exercised a jurisdiction closely connected with his police functions, and resembling, in a lower degree, that of the praefect of the city. He tried cases of arson, robbery, burglary, and thefts in baths; but the higher jurisdiction in such cases belonged to the praefectus urbi, and the praefect of the watch could not try Roman citizens on capital charges. In the third century he possessed some civil jurisdiction in matters connected with leases and house-rent.

(ii.) The Curators.—There were certain curae undertaken by Augustus which he did not give to equestrian praefects, but to senatorial curatores. These curae of the roads of Italy, of the public works, of the public water-supply, and of the channel and banks of the Tiber (viarum, operum publicorum, aquarum publicarum, alvei et riparum Tiberis), were filled by nomination of the Princeps, but their holders were perhaps, like the praefects of the aerarium, regarded as officials of the people or of the Senate rather than of the Emperor; the reason for this view probably being that the care of the roads, opera publica, and the like was concerned with solum publicum, and "the public soil in Rome and Italy was, even after the foundation of the Principate, not the property of the Emperor but of the people or the Senate." Hence in the early Principate the pecuniary means for this administration was guaranteed from the aerarium, the fiscus merely contributing. Hence too the occupation of these posts by senators and their method of appointment. In 11 Augustus nominated curatores aquarum with the consent of the Senate (ex. consensu senatus, ex senatus auctoritate); the curatores operum publicorum and viarum were perhaps nominated in the same way, and the curatores of the Tiber were in Tiberius' reign appointed by lot. , 1.]