Prefect in the context of "Pio Laghi"

A prefecture (from the Latin word praefectura) is an administrative jurisdiction traditionally governed by an appointed prefect. This can be a regional or local government subdivision in various countries, or a subdivision in certain international church structures. During the antiquity, it was the name of a type of Roman district. In the 21st century, the term prefecture is used for the modern first-level subdivisions of the Central African Republic, Japan, and Morocco.

During the Roman Empire, the governor of Roman Egypt (praefectus Aegypti) was a prefect who administered the Roman province of Egypt with the delegated authority (imperium) of the emperor.

Egypt was established as a Roman province in consequence of the Battle of Actium, where Cleopatra as the last independent ruler of Egypt and her Roman ally Mark Antony were defeated by Octavian, the adopted heir of the assassinated Roman dictator Julius Caesar. Octavian then rose to supreme power with the title Augustus, ending the era of the Roman Republic and installing himself as princeps, the so-called "leading citizen" of Rome who in fact acted as an autocratic ruler. Although senators continued to serve as governors of most other provinces (the senatorial provinces), especially those annexed under the Republic, the role of Egypt during the civil war with Antony and its strategic and economic importance prompted Augustus to ensure that no rival could secure Aegyptus as an asset. He thus established Egypt as an imperial province, to be governed by a prefect he appointed from men of the equestrian order.

A steward is an official who is appointed by the legal ruling monarch to represent them in a country and who may have a mandate to govern it in their name; in the latter case, it is synonymous with the position of regent, vicegerent, viceroy, king's lieutenant (for Romance languages), governor, or deputy (the Roman rector, praefectus, or vicarius).

A staff of office is a staff, the carrying of which often denotes an official's position, a social rank or a degree of social prestige.

Apart from the ecclesiastical and ceremonial usages mentioned below, there are less formal usages. A gold- or silver-topped cane can express social standing (or dandyism). Teachers or prefects in schools traditionally carried less elaborate canes which marked their right (and potential threat) to administer canings, and military officers carry a residual threat of physical punishment in their swagger sticks. Orchestral conductors have in their batons symbols of authority as well as tools of their trade.

The administration of Judaea as a province of Rome from 6 to 135 was carried out primarily by a series of Roman prefects, procurators, and legates pro praetore. The first of these administrators coincided or were intertwined with the ostensible rule by the Herodian tetrarchy. The Roman administrators were as follows:

"Hadrian stationed an extra legion in Judaea, renaming it Syria Palaestina." This was following the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135. The Syria-based legion, Legio III Gallica, took part in the quelling of the revolt from 132 to 136, and in the aftermath, the emperor Hadrian renamed the province of Judea and its extra legion Syria Palaestina. The province of Syria Palaestina was divided into Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Salutaris in about 357, and by 409 Palaestina Prima had been further split into a smaller Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda, while Salutaris was named Tertia or Salutaris. Palæstina Prima or Palaestina I existed from the late 4th century until it was temporarily lost to the Sassanid Empire (Persian Empire) in 614, but re-conquered in 628 and finally until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s.

The Pilate stone is a damaged block of carved limestone, with dimensions 82 cm × 65 cm (32 in × 26 in), which bears a partially intact inscription attributed to Pontius Pilate, a prefect of the Roman province of Judaea in the 1st century AD. It was discovered at the archaeological site of Caesarea Maritima in 1961.

Tiberius Julius Alexander (fl. 1st century) was an equestrian governor and general in the Roman Empire. Born into a wealthy Egyptian Jewish family of Alexandria but abandoning or neglecting the Jewish religion, he rose to become the 2nd procurator of Judea (c. 46 – 48) under Claudius. While Prefect of Egypt (66–69), he employed his legions against the Alexandrian Jews in a brutal response to ethnic violence, and was instrumental in the Emperor Vespasian's rise to power. In 70, he participated in the Siege of Jerusalem as Titus' second-in-command. He became the most powerful Jew of his age, and is ranked as one of the most prominent Jews in military history.