Praetorian Guard
The Praetorian Guard was the imperial guard of the Imperial Roman army that served various roles for the Roman emperor including being a bodyguard unit, counterintelligence, crowd control and gathering military intelligence.
During the Roman Republic, the Praetorian Guards were escorts for high-ranking political officials and were bodyguards for the senior officers of the Roman legions. In 27 BC, after Rome's transition from republic to empire, the first emperor of Rome, Augustus, designated the Praetorians as his personal security escort. For three centuries, the guards of the Roman emperor were also known for their palace intrigues, by whose influence upon imperial politics the Praetorians could overthrow an emperor and then proclaim his successor as the new caesar of Rome. In AD 312, Constantine the Great disbanded the cohortes praetoriae and destroyed their barracks at the Castra Praetoria.
In the Roman Republic
The Praetorian Guard originated as bodyguards for Roman generals in the period of the Roman Republic. During the longer campaigns of the Roman army of the late Republic, the personal bodyguard unit was the norm for a commander in the field. At camp, the cohors praetoria, a cohort of praetorians guarding the commander, was posted near the praetorium, the tent of the commander.The first historical record of the praetorians is as bodyguards for the Scipio family, ca. 275 BC. Generals with imperium also held public office, either as a magistrate or as a promagistrate; each was provided with lictors to protect the person of the office-holder. In practice, the offices of Roman consul and of proconsul each had twelve lictors, whilst the offices of praetor and of propraetor each had six lictors. In the absence of an assigned, permanent personal bodyguard, senior field officers safeguarded themselves with temporary bodyguard units of selected soldiers. In Hispania Citerior, during the Siege of Numantia, General Scipio Aemilianus safeguarded himself with a troop of 500 soldiers against the sorties of siege warfare aimed at killing Roman field commanders.
At the end of 40 BC, two of the three co-rulers who were the Second Triumvirate, Octavian and Mark Antony, had Praetorian Guards. Octavian installed his praetorians within the pomerium, the religious and legal boundary of Rome; this was the first occasion when troops were permanently garrisoned in Rome proper. In the Orient, Antony commanded three cohorts; in 32 BC, Antony issued coins honouring his Praetorian Guard. According to the historian Orosius, Octavian commanded five cohorts at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; in the aftermath of Roman civil war, the victorious Octavian then merged his forces with the forces of Antony as symbolic of their political reunification. At this point the force numbered at most 5 400 men organised into nine cohorts. Later, as Augustus, the first Roman emperor, Octavian retained the Praetorians as his imperial bodyguard.
Under the empire
The legionaries known as the Praetorian Guard were first hand-picked veterans of the Roman army who served as bodyguards to the emperor. First established by Augustus, members of the Guard accompanied him on active campaign, protecting the civic administrations and rule of law imposed by the Senate and the emperor. The Praetorian Guard was ultimately dissolved by Emperor Constantine I in the early 4th century. They were distinct from the Imperial German Bodyguard which provided close personal protection for the early Roman emperors. They benefited from several advantages via their close proximity with the emperor: the Praetorians were the only ones admitted while bearing arms in the center of sacred Rome, the Pomerium.Their mandatory service was shorter in duration, for instance: 12 years with the Praetorians instead of 16 years in the legions starting year 13 BC, then carried to, respectively, 16 to 20 years in year 5 BC according to Tacitus. Their pay was higher than that of a legionary. Under Nero, the pay of a Praetorian was three and a half times that of a legionary, augmented by prime additions of donativum, granted by each new emperor. This additional pay was the equivalent of several years of pay and was often repeated at important events of the empire or events that touched the imperial family: birthdays, births and marriages. Major monetary distributions or food subsidies renewed and compensated the fidelity of the Praetorians following each failed particular attempted plot. The Praetorians received substantially higher pay than other Roman soldiers in any of the legions, on a system known as sesquiplex stipendum, or by pay-and-a-half. So if the legionaries received 250 denarii, the guards received 375 per annum. Domitian and Septimius Severus increased the stipendum to 1,500 denarii per year, distributed in January, May and September.
Feared and dreaded by the population and by the Roman Senate, the Praetorians received no sympathy from the Roman people. A famous poem by Juvenal recalls the nail left in his foot by the sandal of a Praetorian rushing by him. "Praetorian" has a pejorative sense in French, recalling the often troubling role of the Praetorian of antiquity.
History
In ancient Rome, praetors were either civic or military leaders. The praetorians were initially elite guards for military praetors, under the republic. The early Praetorian Guard was very different from what it became later, as a vital force in the power politics of Rome. While Augustus understood the need to have a protector in the maelstrom of Rome, he was careful to uphold the Republican veneer of his regime. Thus, he allowed only nine cohorts to be formed, each originally consisting of 500 men. He then increased them to 1,000 men each, allowing three units to be on duty at any given time in the capital. A small number of detached cavalry units of 30 men each were also organized. While they patrolled inconspicuously in the palace and major buildings, the others were stationed in the towns surrounding Rome. This system was not radically changed with the appointment by Augustus in 2 BC of two Praetorian prefects, Quintus Ostorius Scapula and Publius Salvius Aper, although organization and command were enhanced. Tacitus reports that the number of cohorts was increased to twelve from nine in AD 47. In AD 69 it was briefly increased to sixteen cohorts by Vitellius, but Vespasian quickly reduced it again to nine.Under the Julio-Claudian dynasty
In Rome, the guards' principal duty was to mount the Guard at the house of Augustus on the Palatine, where the centuries and the turmae of the cohort in service mounted the guard outside the emperor's palace. Every afternoon, the tribunus cohortis would receive the password from the emperor personally. The command of this cohort was assumed directly by the emperor and not by the Praetorian prefect. After the construction of the Praetorian camp in 23 BC, another similar serving tribune was placed in the Praetorian camp. The guards' functions included, among many, escorting the emperor and the members of the imperial family and, if necessary, to act as a sort of riot police. Certain Empresses exclusively commanded their own Praetorian Guard.According to Tacitus, in the year 23 BC, there were nine Praetorian cohorts to maintain peace in Italy; three were stationed in Rome, and the others nearby.
According to Boris Rankov in 1994, an inscription recently discovered suggested that, towards the end of the reign of Augustus, the number of cohorts increased to 12 during a brief period. This inscription referred to one man who was the tribune of two successive cohorts: the eleventh cohort, apparently at the end of the reign of Augustus, and the fourth at the beginning of the reign of Tiberius. According to Tacitus, there were only nine cohorts in 23 AD. The three urban cohorts, which were numbered consecutively after the Praetorian cohorts, were removed near the end of the reign of Augustus; it seemed probable that the last three Praetorian cohorts were simply renamed as urban cohorts.
The Praetorians first intervened on a battlefield since the wars of the end of the Republic during the mutinies of Pannonia and the mutinies of Germania. On the death of Augustus in AD 14, his successor Tiberius was confronted by mutinies in the two armies of the Rhine and Pannonia, who were protesting about their conditions of service being worse than the Praetorians. The forces of Pannonia were dealt with by Drusus Julius Caesar, son of Tiberius, accompanied by two Praetorian cohorts, the Praetorian Cavalry, and Imperial German Bodyguards. The mutiny in Germania was repressed by the nephew and designated heir of Tiberius, Germanicus, who later led legions and detachments of the Guard in a two-year campaign in Germania, and succeeded in recovering two of the three legionary eagles which had been lost at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
Sejanus rose in power under Tiberius, and was among the first prefects to exploit his position to pursue his own ambitions. He concentrated under his command all the Praetorian cohorts in the new camp. Sejanus held the title of prefect jointly with his father, under Augustus, but became sole prefect in AD 15, and used the position to render himself essential to the new emperor Tiberius, who was unable to persuade the Senate to share the responsibility of governing the Empire. Sejanus, however, alienated Drusus, son of Tiberius, and when Germanicus, the heir to the throne, died in AD 19 he was worried that Drusus would become the new emperor. Accordingly, he poisoned Drusus with the help of the latter's wife, and immediately launched a ruthless elimination program against all competitors, persuading Tiberius to make him his heir apparent. He almost succeeded, but his plot was discovered and revealed in AD 31, and Tiberius had him killed by the Cohortes urbanae, who were not under Sejanus's control.
In AD 37 Caligula became emperor with the support of Naevius Sutorius Macro, Sejanus' successor as prefect of the Praetorian Guard. Under Caligula, whose reign lasted until AD 41, the overall strength of the Guard increased from 9 to 12 Praetorian cohorts.
In year 41, disgust and hostility of a praetorian tribune, named Cassius Chaerea – whom Caligula teased without mercy due to his squeaky voice – led to the assassination of the emperor by officers of the guard. While the Imperial German Bodyguard sacked all in a search to apprehend the murderers, the Senate proclaimed the restoration of a Republic. The Praetorians, who were pillaging the Palace, discovered Claudius, uncle of Caligula, hidden behind a curtain. Needing an emperor to justify their own existence, they brought him forth to the Praetorian camp and proclaimed him emperor, the first emperor proclaimed by the Praetorian Guard. He compensated the guard with a prime bonus worth five years their salary. The Praetorians accompanied Emperor Claudius to Britain in 43 AD.
When Claudius was poisoned, the Guard transferred their allegiance to Nero through the influence of his Praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, who exercised a beneficial influence on the new emperor during the first eight years of his reign. Officers of the Guard, including one of the two successors of Burrus as the Praetorian prefect, participated in Piso's conspiracy in year 65. The other Praetorian prefect, Tigellinus, headed the suppression of the conspiracy, and the members of the Guard were paid a bonus of 500 denarii each.