How did the Romans handle petty crime if they had no police force, specifically in a big city like Rome?

How did the Romans handle petty crime if they had no police force, specifically in a big city like Rome?
Was it all like in greece where everyone could play detective and bring anybody else before the judges?

Weren't neighborhoods basically controlled by self policing gangs?

Basically, but Augustus set up vigiles to act like watchmen/riot police/firemen because Rome kept having riots and fires.

Athens had scythian slaves armed with bows acting as police force. Citizens did the judging though.

Hello, Veeky Forums. I had an exam at university about roman laws, so i can answer.

In republican age people can complain about violations to a judge. Anyone who have interest could accuse a criminal, there were no prosecutors as in modern times. Private citzens could even arrest a criminal.

For minor offenses (theft, trespass...) if the victim caught the offender, he could punish him on your own. You could rape a thief (pedicare) or you could force him to oral sex (irrumare), and it was perfectly legal, nobody could complain. For more informations on this specific point you can find a "carmina priapea" collection of poems. My teacher said that "penal law" comes from the latin word "penis" because it was the eldest mean of punishment

Prison wasn't a punishment, you only staied in prison when waiting for a trial. A common punishment was phisical beating. The lictores, a group of 12 magistrates who walked beside a consol, had fasces made of sticks and axes to symbolize correctional power and death penality.
So, lictores can beat you or can behead you.
Another punishment was exile, often used for political crimes or crimes committed by public officers (embezzlement, corruption, extortion, abuse of public office) or when your presence in Rome was threatful. Usually an exiled citzen is condemned to confiscation of properties.
Death penality was rare, and used to repress more dangerous crimes. Beheading was only for roman citzens. Crucifixion was for rebel slaves. There was a strange tradition: if you kill your father, they close you in a bag with a monkey, a dog and a snake, and they let you drown. All those animals were treacherous according to roman tradition.
Sometimes you could obtain a conversion to "ad bestias". It means that you can escape death penality and fight against animals or gladiators in the Colosseum, and if you survive you are free.
Sometimes a death penality was converted to an order to suicide to avoid scandals.

During the Republic, if you were to bring someone to court, you had make sure they got there one way or another. Some even followed the perpetrator around, wearing a sign and preaching about all the wrongs they did to them. (To amplify the social impact, the victim wouldn't shave or bath to make themselves look like more of a victim.)

Or if they caught someone in the act they had legality to kill them.

If a rich person committed a crime against a poor citizen, would there be any way for the poor person to bring the rich person to justice?

Good post. Any information on whether women and men were treated differently under the law? If a woman was caught stealing, could you also force her to suck your dick?

the short answer: extremely shittily

Their judicial system was a bloated, incomprehensible pay-to-play mess.

>slaves armed with bows acting as police force
>salves armed
>slaves doing the policing

How can a people be this retarded ?

Depends on the rich guy.
The romans were extremely weird with their moral standards as well as their way how they saw things as unlawful.
Remember, the romans had this client/ patron relationship.
Let's look at an example:
Imagine if Crassus walked to the forum, as a private citizen, and he shanks one guy who was in his way, witnesses could go to a judge and accuse crassus of murder.
Or, like said, just do the justice themselves.
The problem was: Crassus is a rich guy. He would never walk alone and let the shanking be done by another guy. A bodyguard or what have you. Even if you got Crassus infront of a court, most of the people in the jury would have aquitted Crassus because they were his client one way or another. His guards would prevent you from harming Crassus.

So the roman law system served two purposes:
Punish crimes they upset the social order (petty crime, murder, felonies like theft and assault) by ordinary not too rich citizens and as a tool for the elite to go after other rich guys that did uncool things like: Beeing too succesful, squeezing too much money from a province and so on.
The only real exception to the whole law thing was when you held public office and commaned imperium. If you were serving as a magistrate, you were immune to any judicial inquest until the end of your term.
Caesar was pretty infamous for extending his terms of office so all his enemies could not drag him through the law courts.

I hope my ansqer helps.

Look up the patron/client system. A poor man could appeal to his patron for help in legal situations, his patron would be honor-bound to represent him.

That said, it seems likely most crime prevention or punishment would have been handled informally in the community.

According to the sources, you can rape a woman or a boy until he grows a beard. You can't rape a man in the ass, so you should force your dick in his mouth and cum on his face.

It was hard, but not impossible. People often found an agreement for a refund outside the tribunal, it was easier and cheaper than a trial.
To answer your question, there was a wide range of effects. In many periods people didn't trust the legal system, while in other periods there were magistrates who didn't care if they had to condamn a rich person.
Roman legal system was jurisprudencial. More similar to common law system than civil law. It means that there weren't many laws (the praetor's edict of civil actions and remedies could change every year after the political elections), and judges should base their decisions on previous cases solutions, solutions given by famous jurists, solutions given by lawyers.
Cicero, the most famour rhetorician of the republic, became famous when he accused a rich and powerful man of abuse, corruption and a lot of other crimes he committed when he was governator of Sicily. Proconsol Verre chose voluntary exile and only part of his properties confiscated, Cicero won against all odds, sicilian people obtained justice.

rome was basically a mob state, except that clientelism was seen as a natural state of affairs rather than a moral abberation.

>rome was the first banana republic
>imperator is equivalent to general
>viva el presidente, general octavio cesar, el padre de sos pueblos

What if I commit a small crime against a woman, who would have raped me?

Man and woman weren't treated equally. I mean, only a person in each family had legal personality. The pater familias was responsible for everything happens in the family, so you must trial him.
When a woman marry a man, she passed under her husband's hand (in latin, the "manus"), all the children were under the father's manus and they become free (sui iuris, a legal person) if the father dies or emancipate them. A married man can remain under his pater familias' power.
A woman can have properties, write a death will, buy and sell slaves, and trial someone if she is a legal person. It happened rarely in the republic, more often in the empire. She could marry without "manus" and be emancipated by her father, but if she has children they born under her husband's power.

All of this isn't valid under the private justice, if you caught a thief who isn't a legal person you can legally fuck him/her. And if he is a legal person you can fuck or beat him.

JUST LIKE MY DOUJINS

Veeky Forums - history and humanities

If you're caught, her family can fuck you. Her husband, and/or her father and her brothers. Romans like to party hard

Damn
Who said history was a boring subject

could she have raped you if you were a boy without a beard? or did she have no legal right and the right only existed in the men of the house

>"penal law" comes from the latin word "penis"
'penal' comes from 'poenalis' which is pain/penalty you fucking retard.

Either you're lying or your teacher is a retard/feminist/american/all three.

It worked didn't it?

"Hey buddy we captured you and bought you. It's thousands of miles to get back home. You won't get sent to the mines but instead we're going to give you a weapon and let you push people around"

Ex-Slaves were often sought in executive roles overlooking other slaves because they were so used to brutality and such power over slaves that they had less scruples than a freeman.

Not him, but not particularly.

Not for the reasons you might expect, the Scythians didn't try to escape or mug people or anything. But they had a tendency to react to crimes by just shooting anyone involved with those bows, which caused an uproar about their indiscriminate use of force.

Yeah, it sounds like stuff kinda pulled out of the teacher's arse.
Any sources? Citations? Books?

She could force you to have sex by using some aphrodisiac, or maybe facefuck you. There are options if you get creative.

Athens Lives Matter

Soldiers were the police force, user.

Wasn't eating pussy seen as equivalent to sucking dick in ancient Rome? I don't know if they'd be allowed to force you to do that, though, if they even could.

Eating pussy was 10x more gay

>Soldiers are the police force
>In a society that predates the notion of a standing army.

You're special, aren't you?

>except that clientelism was seen as a natural state of affairs rather than a moral abberation.

that was all the ancient world

>devotio iberica

>My teacher said that "penal law" comes from the latin word "penis" because it was the eldest mean of punishment
I call bullshit and stopped reading there.

>How did the Romans handle petty crime

Personally

My university textbook (in italian): Private law in ancient Rome, by Massimo Brutti
Secondary textbook: institutions of roman law, by Vincenzo Arangio Ruiz

I found interesting informations in comments and prefactions to translations:
Actio in Verrem - pro Murena - actio in Catilinam - pro Archia by Cicero
Epigrammata by Martialis
Carmina priapea by anonymous
De Catilinae coniuratione by Sallustius

Eating pussy was the most emasculating thing imaginable to Romans. Sucking dick and taking it up the ass was way more manly.

Giving a man aphrodisiac to force-fuck him would be punished under lex cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis. Also producing and buying poison, practicing magic, or having abortion was punished by death or exile.

Why is everyone forgetting the city guards? Were they not used as a general deterrent? I bet if you looked at a Rome city guard the wrong way he could beat you up or slice your arm off and there was no recourse.

Wtf I thought rome was a just and civilized country.

This may come as a surprise but swords were not allowed inside Rome during the Republic. There were no city guards. This kind of changed during the Empire though, depending on who was emperor at the time.

Until Augustus any city guards would have been private goons who would have been more focused on providing security for their employers more than anything.

Ancient Rome would have been a very dangerous city after dark

Cum loquor, una mihi peccatur littera; nam te
pe-dico semper blaesaque lingua mihi est.
>Oft in my speech one letter is lost; for Predicate always
>Pedicate I pronounce. Reason--a trip of the tongue!
>Whenever I speak, one word slips me; for, talking with a lisp, I always say instead of praedico, paedico![2]
>2. Instead of saying 'praedico', meaning 'I warn you not to trespass', he lisps and says 'paedico', meaning 'I am sodomising you'.
wew

It was compared to everyone else in that era.

The Roman system was bloated, repressive, and horrendously unfair, but people preferred it to living in places where neighbors still raided each other, or in the despotic regimes of the orient which didn't even pretend to care about rule of law and were dominated by ruthless, amoral strongmen.