There are a few other names in Roman topography which may be easily mistaken. One of them is _vicus_. Many years ago, before I had gone to Rome, a gentleman engaged in archaeological studies said to me, that it was utterly impossible to define what _vicus_ meant. If by this he meant to say, that a vast deal had been written about it without making the matter clearer, he was quite right. But the cause of this was the base of a statue belonging to the period of the first emperors.[26] Each region of Augustus was subdivided into _vici_, which means nothing else but a quarter or district under the superintendence of its own police officer. Even at a much earlier time the regions of Servius Tullius had been similarly subdivided, in the city into _vici_, and in the country into _pagi_, and each had its own _magister_. The word _vicus_ may be rendered by the German _Wik_, or _Wich_; in ancient times, many towns in lower Saxony were divided into _Wiks_. Now as it happened by accident that sometimes a single street constituted such a vicus, and as of course the houses on both sides of the street belonged to it, such a street was naturally called a vicus, as, for example, the _vicus Sceleratus_. The _vicus Patricius_ and the _vicus Cornelius_, on the other hand, are obviously larger districts in the regio Collina and Esquilina. I think (I may be mistaken, but I believe I am right) that in the Regionaria every region of Augustus was regularly divided into seven vici. Many a street at Rome is called _vico_ to this day, and a narrow lane is called _vicolo_, which, however, is only a secondary meaning.