Praetorian Guard

The Praetorian Guard (Latin: cohortes praetoriae) 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 (senators and procurators) 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.

The Praetorian Guard originated as bodyguards for Roman generals in the period of the Roman Republic (509–27 BC). 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 (command authority of an army) 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 (134–133 BC), 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,^{[citation needed]} 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. Later, as Augustus, the first Roman emperor (27 BC–AD 14), Octavian retained the Praetorians as his imperial bodyguard.

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 (such as that of Messalina against Claudius in AD 48 or Piso against Nero in AD 65). 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 (payment) 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.