Quote Originally Posted by Keba

Also, I was under the impression that any semblance of police forces developed only during the principacy.
So, I'm guessing that a pleb who was the victim of a street crime, say a robbery, would have to turn to the system of clientship, and ask his patron to find the criminal and physically bring him to trial, if the pleb didn't have the ability to do it himself?

Overall, I find it a miracle that street crime was held in check at all. I'm tempted to speculate that the institution of slavery, which kept the lowest third of society under thumb at all times, must have gone a long way towards reducing what we think of as modern street crimes.

On the other hand, there surely were a great number of unemployed persons in Rome, particularly in the late Republic, and some of them must have resorted to theft or burglary in order to survive.

I would suppose that most shopkeepers and merchants and such took it upon themselves to hire private security which would protect themselves and their assets.