A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

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Provision against Fires 503
have scarcely surveyors enough to inspect those works Leiters, x. 17
which I am carrying on in Rome and the neighborhood;
but persons of integrity and skill in this art may be found
most certainly in every province, if you will make due
inquiry.
To THE Emperor Trajan:
While I was making a journey in a different part of the A fire in the
province, a most destructive fire broke out at Nicomedia,
which consumed not only several private houses, but also 42'
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two pubhc buildings,—the town house and the temple of
Isis, though they stood on opposite sides of the street.
The cause of its spreading thus wide was partly the violence
of the wind, and partly the indolence of the people, who,
it appears, stood fixed and idle spectators of this terrible
calamity. The truth is that the city was not furnished
with engines, buckets, or any single instrument for extinguishing
fires. I have now, however, given directions
to provide this apparatus.
You will consider. Sir, whether it may not be advisable "May we
to form a company of firemen, consisting of only a hundred company?
and fifty members.
I will take care that none but those of
that occupation shall be admitted into it; and that the
privileges granted them shall not be extended to any other
purpose. As this corporate body will be restricted to so
small a number of members, it will be easy to keep them
under proper regulations.
Trajan to Pliny:
You are of the opinion that it would be proper to estab-
^
111
lish a company of firemen in Nicomedia, agreeably to what
" Corporations
are
dangerous."
has been practised in other cities. But remember that belters, x. 43.
societies of this sort have greatly disturbed the peace of the