and the banishing from the city of all foreign ceremonials; he also assumed the superintendence of the temples, and thus may be said to have destroyed the aedileship by depriving it of its old and original function. The last recorded instance of the splendours of the aedileship is the administration of Agrippa, who volunteered to take the office, and repaired all the public buildings and all the roads at his own expense, without drawing anything from the treasury. The aedileship had, however, lost its true character before this time. Agrippa had already been consul before he accepted the office of aedile, and his munificent expenditure in this nominal office was the close of the splendour of the aedileship. Augustus appointed the curule aediles specially to the office of putting out fires, and placed a body of 600 slaves at their command; but the praefecti vigilum afterwards performed this duty. They retained, under the early emperors, a kind of police, for the purpose of repressing open licentiousness and disorder. The coloniae, and the municipia of the later period, had also their aediles, whose numbers and functions varied in different places. They seem, however, as to their powers and duties, to have resembled the aediles of Rome. They were chosen annually. AEDĬTŬI, AEDĬTŬMI, AEDĬTĬMI (called by the Greeks νεωκόροι, ζάκοροι, and ὑποζάκοροι), were persons who took care of the temples, attended to the cleaning of them, &c. They appear to have lived in the temples, or near them, and to have acted as ciceroni to those persons who wished to see them. Subsequently among the Greeks, the menial services connected with this office were left to slaves, and the persons called _neocori_ became priestly officers of high rank, who had the chief superintendence of temples, their treasures, and the sacred rites observed in them. [Illustration: Aegis worn by Athena. From Torso at Dresden. From Ancient Statues.]