In some places the use of water-buckets was organized. Juvenal alludes to the instructions of the opulent Licinus, who bade his "servants watch by night, the water-buckets being set ready"; the wealthy man fearing "for his amber, and his statues, and his Phrygian column, and his ivory and broad tortoise-shell."
Then Pliny and Juvenal use a term--_hama_--which signifies an appliance for extinguishing fires; but the true rendering seems to be in dispute, some translators being content to describe it simply as a water-vessel. Pliny the Younger refers to _siphones_, or pipes, being employed to extinguish fires; but we do not know how they were used, or whether they resembled Hero's siphon.
In fact, the earliest references to fire-engines by Roman writers are regarded by some as being merely allusions to aqueduct-pipes for bringing water to houses, rather than to a special appliance. And from Seneca's remark, "that owing to the height of the houses in Rome it was impossible to save them when they took fire," we may gather that any appliances that may have been in use were very inefficient.
A curious primitive contrivance is described by Apollodorus, who was architect to Trajan. It consisted of leathern bags or bottles, having pipes attached; and when the bottles were squeezed, the water gushed through the pipes to extinguish the flames. Augustus was so enterprising as to organize seven bands of firemen, each of which protected two districts of Rome. Each band was in charge of a _tribunus_, or captain, and the whole force was under a _præfectum vigilum_, or prefect of the watch; though what apparatus they employed--whether buckets or pipe-bags, syringes or Hero's siphon--we do not know.
But these appliances, or some of them, were no doubt in use at the Great Fire of Rome in A.D. 66. In July of that year--the tenth of the reign of the infamous Emperor Nero--two-thirds of the city was destroyed. The fire broke out at a number of wooden shops built against the side of the great Circus, and near to the low-lying ground between the Palatine and the Cælian Hills. The east wind blew the flames onward to the corner of the Palatine Hill, and there the fire blazed in two directions. It gained such enormous power, that stonework split and fell before it like glass, and building after building succumbed, until at one point it was only stopped by the river, and at another by frowning cliffs.