Cubicularii
Cubicularii were slaves who had the care of the sleeping and dwelling rooms. Faithful slaves were always selected for this office, as they had, to a certain extent, the care of their master's person. When Julius Caesar was taken by the pirates, he dismissed all his other slaves and attendants, only retaining with him a physician and two cubicularii. (Suet. Jul. 4.) It was the duty of the cubicularii to introduce visitors to their master (Cic. Att. 6.2, § 5; in Verr. 3.4); for which purpose they appear to have usually remained in an ante-room (Suet. Tib. 21, Dom. 16). They were commonly divided into watches (stationes) for day and night, and also into decuries (Orelli, 4663, 6312; Wilmanns, 178, 179, 314, 406; Suet. Dom. 17). Under the later emperors, the cubicularii belonging to the palace were called praepositi sacro cubiculo, and were persons of high rank. (Cod. 42, tit. 5.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.