The Elite Troops
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The Cohortes Praetoriae
were the regular military
bodyguard of the Emperor, their mission to act as the guarantors of his security --
though all too frequently, the Guard proved fickle in the loyalty of their commanders and soldiers.
While prone to violently unmake as well as make
emperors based on personal considerations such as service benefits and monetary
recompense, the Guard linked their fortunes to the survival of the imperial
office. As for the Emperor himself, the Praetorians were loyal as long as
he did not threaten their interests.
Ultimately, the partisan tendency of the
Guard proved to be their downfall. In 306 CE, the Praetorians threw their weight behind
Maxentius, acclaiming him Emperor despite the marginally more legitimate claim
of the previous Emperor's son, Constantine. A civil war followed that was finally
decided in 312 CE at the Milvian Bridge outside the city of Rome, where
Maxentius drowned while fleeing after his Praetorian troops broke in
battle. The victor Constantine, who became the first Christian emperor,
exacted revenge on the Praetorians for their loyalty to his enemy by disbanding
the Guard entirely. In their place as the Emperor's bodyguard, Constantine
established the Scholae Palatinae, composed of his own trustworthy
troops, mostly of Germanic origin.
The legacy of the Praetorian Guard, as elite
but unscrupulous guardians of an imperial regime, survives into our own modern
age as a paragon of military amorality. Not bound by ethics, the Guard and
their commanders, the Praetorian Prefects, regularly abused their power and access
to the emperor in order to extort concessions, to murder with impunity, and to
repress dissent. For more than three hundred years, the corps of
Praetorians protected even the most venal of rulers without question, so long as
their greed and ambition were served.
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about the Praetorian Guard ...
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(text to follow)
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about the Equites Singulares ...
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(text to follow)
Click here to read more
about foreign bodyguards ...
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(text to follow)
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about the Scholae Palatinae ...
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Bishop, M. C. and Coulston, J.C.N. Roman
Military Equipment. London: Batsford, 1993. |
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Campbell, J. Brian. The Roman Army,
31 BC - AD 337: a Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 1996. |
| Connolly, Peter. Greece and Rome
at War. London: Macdonald, 1988. |
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Durry, Marcel. Les
cohortes praetoriennes. Paris, 1938. |
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Howe, L. The
Praetorian Prefecture from Commodus to Diocletian. Chicago, 1942. |
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Kennedy, David.
"Some observations on the Praetorian Guard," Ancient Society 9
(1978), pp 275-301. |
| Keppie, Lawrence. The Making of
the Roman Army. London: Batsford, 1984. |
| Passerini, Alfredo. Le coorti
pretorie. Rome, 1939. |
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Rankov, Boris. The
Praetorian Guard. Osprey Elite Series, No. 50, editor Lee
Johnson. London: Osprey, 1994. |
| Robinson, H. Russell. The Armour
of Imperial Rome. New York: Scribner, 1975. |
| Speidel, Michael. Riding for
Caesar: the Roman Emperors' Horse Guards. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1994. |
| Syme, R. "Guard prefects of
Trajan and Hadrian," Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980), pp 64-80. |
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