With everything going on in the US right now and the discussions about the police and its origins I was wondering how policing in ancient Rome would have looked like. Was there anything comparable to a modern "police" within the cities? I'm particularly interested in petty crimes. Where would you go if your house was robbed or you got mugged in the streets at night?
I wrote an answer to a similar question last year - the question was about murder, but the general idea is the same:
I'm living in ancient Rome and I just murdered someone, what are my chances of getting caught?
There weren't really any police, and crimes, anything from petty theft to murder, were considered private matters between citizens.
If you knew who the thief was and you could prove it, you could bring them to the praetor of the city and they might investigate and punish the thief.
But if you didn't know, then the government didn't believe that investigating it was any of their business.