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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the Ancients ad free, get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit with the History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary.
- [00:14]
Lindsay Powell
All about Petra and the Nabateans and.
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Tristan Hughes
Enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:25]
Morgan Stanley
Support for this podcast and the following message is brought to you by E Trade from Morgan Stanley. With E Trade you can dive into the market with easy to use tools, $0 commissions and a wide range of investments. And now there's even more to love. Get access to industry leading research and insights from Morgan Stanley to help guide your decisions. Open an account and get up to $1,000 or more with a qualifying deposit. Get started today@etrade.com terms and other fees apply. Investing involves risks. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC Member SIPIC E Trade is a business of Morgan Stanley.
- [00:56]
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- [01:27]
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- [02:12]
Tristan Hughes
They're one of the most recognizable military units of ancient history. The infamous bodyguards of Roman emperors, famous from epic movies such as Gladiator, the Praetorian Guard. But these Praetorians were much more than just imperial bodyguards. Their duties stretched from policing to fighting on the battlefield. And it's the story of their rise that we're going to explore today. It's the Ancients on History hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Our guest is Lindsay Powell, an author of many books on ancient Rome and and an expert on this transition period from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. A period that features larger than life figures like Julius Caesar, Augustus Cleopatra, Tiberius, Mark Antony, but also the rise of the Praetorian Guard and how it came to be the unit associated with emperors. We're going to explore the Guard's origins, its structure, duties and key figures that rose to prominence within this unit, including the fascinating yet horrifying figure of Sejanus, or Sejanus. That and much more is all to come. Now, this episode was very special because we recorded it in person a couple of years ago at Fishbourne Roman palace, this strikingly large Roman villa that was built on England's south coast, not far away from what is today Chichester, the place that I was born. It was the perfect location to talk all things the rise of the Praetorian Guard.
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Lindsay Powell
LINDSAY the Praetorian Guard, it must be one of the most iconic aspects of the Roman imperial period.
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I think you're right. There are certain things that stand out because they, in a sense, typify or embody some of our stereotypes, what we think we know about ancient history. And the word itself, praetorian, somehow hits you in the face as being really powerful and important. And we use the expression Praetorian Guard as if it's somehow like a, I don't know, dare I say, like the Waffen SS standing outside the Reichstag or something. But in a sense, that's what the Praetorian Guard, if we use the modern expression, did in ancient Rome. Except, of course, they were called the Cohortes Praetoria. So they were actually cohorts. Praetorian cohorts. So we, in fact, in our translation, have even changed some of the imaging, if you like. We think of them as being a bit like the Horse Guards. You know, they just stand there looking pretty. But their function was much broader than that. They weren't just a security detail, they did other things. But you're absolutely right. I think that they're one of the very iconic aspects of Roman history, particularly.
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We'Re definitely going to go into those aspects like this, various jobs that they had, etc, etc, as the podcast goes on. One thing actually, to start off with, when we were chatting about this just before we started recording, was when we do look at ancient history and we look at these iconic units like the Praetorians, or these aspects of ancient history that sometimes we think we know a lot about. Actually, when you look closer, when you study on these things, there is so many of those things that we think we know about them that is actually, there should be a lot of debate around them.
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I think you're Right. It's important to understand where we get our information from. So a lot of the time we rely very much on classical sources. And depending on the period you're studying, it might be Appian, for example, talking about the late Roman Republic and into Augustus, or it might be Tacitus, it might be Cassidis Dio, who are writing quite a lot later than some of the events we're going to be describing. And you have to understand that they're writing one, they have an agenda, they're telling the stories to convey a particular narrative that they've structured for their book. And in Tacitus case, it's basically the abuse of power and how powerful men corrupt and corrupt the society which was before them, essentially a good society. And he was trying to get back to a republic. So he's writing about in the 90s A.D. so already Augustus is all a century behind him, and he would not have known people who lived probably in his day. So he was getting his, if you like, anecdotal information from second or third sources. The written sources that he was relying on were going to be things like official documents, Acta diurna, this type of thing, the proceedings of the Senate, or other chronicles that were available. And so we have some of those in the case. As I say, that's Tacitus. So there'd be Cassius Dia writing another hundred years after him. So he's writing about his world, trying to understand it by looking backwards. So you have to be careful when you look at these things, that is he interpreting what he knows now and explaining the time before him in now terms. So what that means is you've got to be careful. And there's a good example of this is that Cassius Dio writes about how the Roman army was in 5 A.D. and his account is different than Tacitus writing in 23 A.D. in terms of numbers and deployments and these types of things. And people agonize over, you know, how could they reconcile some of these things? And that's part of the joy of being a historian. You delve into these things. And then there's another level where you've got things like inscriptions. And there are inscriptions and some very remarkable depictions of praetorians in different parts of Europe. And what you try to do is take all these piece parts and like a detective, make sense of them. And like a detective, there are different ways you can look at things. And you'll read in some books that they're very definitive, emphatic. So based on Cassius die. There were 10,000. And some of us will say, well, there were 10 cohorts. Someone else will say nine. And it's because one is taking Cassius die and the other is taking Tacitus. And they may not actually be in conflict because we don't know what necessarily the period they're talking about. So, as I say, you have to read ancient history, all ancient history, with an open mindset to this extent that you have to be willing to say that it's not the absolute truth, truth in the sense that it can be absolute. It's more a case of that person writing in his time, making sense of what an earlier age was. And maybe he's relying on documents which themselves are flawed and so forth. But to the listeners, I'm just saying that very often it's a surprise when you read one historian's interpretation and find another interpretation based on the same evidence. And the question is, how on earth can that be? And I think it's just, well, that is the state of knowledge that we have, and it's quite possible, as we've seen at Fishbourne, that something else can come out of the ground that can completely change, change knowledge as it stands, and knowing full well that what you're writing about today will in due course be changed. And I think that's part of the fun of studying history of all periods, not just the ancient world. It's a living, changing subject and you can contribute to it in terms of the interpretations of things and some things which are considered to be accepted wisdom can be challenged at some later date.
- [08:41]
Absolutely. Ancient history is very much alive and kicking. I'm glad you mentioned Fishbourne here, because as I said, we are doing our live recording at Fishbourne Roman palace in the Jewel of Britain, West Sussex. Wonderful to be here.
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Well, the last time I was here was with the Yeoman Street Guard, so I was actually a legionary in the first century. And we actually have a local member who lives not very far away from here. And it's always a joy to perform here. We had proper displays and that would have been quite a while ago.
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Well, let's talk about the other guard. Let's go back to the Praetorian Guard, pre Augustus, late Republican period, because what do we know about this unit's republican roots?
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The evidence, again, you have to draw from a number of different strands. It seems to be that the term cohortis praetoria, cohorts was used quite early, so we're talking in 300-300-2200 BC, and it seems to Be that the general idea is that the consuls, who are the two chief magistrates of Roman society, are the people who will lead the legions to war. So they have a personal bodyguard. And it seems very unstructured. It's almost a case of like that they pick the best troops to defend this person who theoretically is not, shall we say a Wellington controlling the troops from a hill at the Battle of Waterloo. No, these people are probably engaged in the fighting, so there's a real risk to the commander and his deputy. So they are going to have some kind of handpicked bodyguard. Beyond that we really don't know much. We know that people, for example, like Scipio Africanus, who was in Hispania, I think it was quiterior fighting where the romans fought for 200 years before they finally conquered the entire Iberian peninsula, had Cohortis Praetori with him. And again, it's very difficult from the sources to work out what exactly the ranks were and the number of men and the terms and conditions which they were employed. But the general sense is that these men were legionaries, they had no particular skill sets as such, they weren't special troops in that way, but they were people that were hand picked, that were presumably willing to put their lives on the line for the commander. And then when you get to, for example, Julius Caesar who's active in Gaul, he actually chooses a particular group of tribesmen in Spain who actually are called Chaetorum I think is the name that probably refers to the tribe that they come from. And he's particularly impressed with them and he has a bunch of those people with him. But he also has Batavians as well. So he sees the value in having non Romans serving as close troops to him and begs the question, well, why would he do that? And you could speculate, well, they have in a sense no vested interest in threatening him. I mean, he's going to pay them, right? He's going to pay them quite handsomely. What's interesting, later in the campaign he dismisses the Gauls and keeps the Germans, the Batavians, seeming to trust them more. And again, it points to the fact that it might have caused and ruffled some feathers amongst the Roman legionaries who might think, well, why are we not special enough that we can be chosen for those roles? I imagine it's a sort of threat mitigation strategy. There are cases in modern history as well as ancient history where one of your own people comes and attacks you. And in fact, during the campaign with the Veriatus in Lusitania, he was finally killed through the treachery of someone who he thought was a friend and actually in the employ of the Romans. So, you know, there is the risk that you have to know who's guarding you. And Caesar then effectively sets up a tradition of having a proper military guard, which his grand nephew Augustus, as we will call him, adopts and formalizes. So there is this tradition of military commanders having a guard. And even beyond that, there's an element of, if you're a rich individual, like Licinius Crassus, for example, you are rich enough to be able to pay for slaves or mercenaries to guard you. And again, there's an optic side to this. Romans of the upper class, the senatorial class, the patrician class, are particularly aware that you need to have a following of clients. And you will go about your morning duties, and these clients will attend to you in the morning through an occasion called the salutatio. And the intention is there that they will present themselves as their patron. The relationship is described as cliens patrona. So the patron is the man with the influence and the wealth, but he relies on his clients to give the optics to people in the city that these are wealthy and they are influential. And I think it's the influence rather than the wealth. So adding a personal bodyguard, in a sense, is another dimension to this following that you have, you know, so not everybody can afford one, right? So if you've got a 300 men who armed, right, you've got that thing. Another dimension to this is that by the time you get to the time of Octavian, so this is after the assassination of Julius Caesar, they pass legislation to prevent people carrying weapons in the city, because they know that there's this period between Julius Caesar and when Octavian becomes Augustus, where it's very violent. And the way you do that is to disarm people. So that that has implications for the Praetorian cohorts, because of course, they by definition, are a bodyguard.
- [13:28]
I mean, so in that regard, it's quite interesting with the violence in Rome, we did a podcast and recently ghosted that villain of the Roman Republic, that very colorful figure, Clodius, and all of that. But going back to the Praetorians today, how does Augustus go about transforming this unit from its republican form into this organized force? Talk me through how he develops the Praetorian Guard, as it were.
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So we're only talking about Ides of March, right? So you go back to 44, and this young nephew, grand nephew of his, is actually on the other side of The Adriatic. He's waiting basically for Julius Caesar to show up with his retinue because the plan is they're going to go and fight a campaign against the Sabartai and other people in the East. Well, of course, news comes on a boat that his grand uncle had been assassinated and they're faced with what are we going to do? So you fast forward by about six months where he has now made the decision to actually go to Italy, against his mother's advice, by the way. And he quickly recognizes that the situation is very delicate. And he's barely 19, he's 18 at the time this happens, and going into his 19th year, which is really remarkable. I mean, you think, what did you do when you were 18? Well, this man was already planning the destiny of the world.
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That's what we all think at university though, right? In our first and second years, you.
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Must have had different than I had. But I think the key thing here is that he understands a couple of things. One, the place is dangerous, that Mark Antony, Marcus Antonius, who seems to think that he's the natural heir of Julius Caesar, and then they discover in the will that actually that isn't the case. In fact, Octavius, his grand nephew, is the one who's designated. So Marcus Antonio puts everything in the way to stop him claiming his inheritance. And what Octavian does, this young 18 going on 19 year old, is to go and appeal to Julius Caesar's veterans, a lot of whom were in Capua, far south of Rome. And these veterans rallied around him, presumably with a chest of money to sort of entice them to come along. And these are effectively his first Praetorians. We have no idea how they're organized. They might just be. They might have naturally divided themselves into cohorts. So we know that between then and 31 BC, which is the Battle of Actium, he had about 10,000 of these. And they seem to be serving something like 16 years, which caused a bit of a problem partly because you've got people who are effectively retired from service. And some of those are going to die through campaigns, obviously, but some of them are just going to be too old and they will withdraw from service. So he has to bring more people in. So there's a certain rotation of people in that. So by the time you get to 31, he's still got this body of what he's calling Praetorian Guard. And at the battle itself, he gives those people to Marcus Agrippa, who is in charge of his fleet, and they are spread across the different vessels. So what you've got is a bodyguard actually in active combat. So go back to the earlier point I made about these not having particular skills. I mean they are trained soldiers and that's how they use the battle of Actium, which of course he wins. So second, going into the 3rd of September 31st, the world changes and the next thing that happens is there's a lot of those troops. Of course there are a great number. I think by then he had half a million troops, all of which have to be paid for. And this is the big problem, just to explain as a footnote that Augustus, he's not Augustus yet, he's Octavian at this point runs very much a deficit campaign. He promises people he'll pay them back when he's won and he uses his sort of influence and the name of Julius Caesar, which of course he's inherited, as the guarantee of that. In the meantime they've been doing these proscriptions where they've actually bumping off their enemies and taking their houses and their wealth. So they've been paying some of the money back. In contrast to Marcus Antonius, who one is shacked up with Cleopatra, from whom he gets a lot of cash to finance his campaigns, but in Greece, and Actium is in Greece, off the coast of Epirus, he's actually raiding the Greek cities and stealing the money to pay for his campaign. So you've got two different ways of funding wars. And the big challenge is I've got 500,000 troops and they're not all mine. Some of these are people I've taken from the other side. And I think at one point he gets like 19 legions from Marcus Antonius just at Actium, who were not engaged in much of the fighting. It was essentially a naval battle. And there had been like a six month run up, there was an Actaeon campaign where Marcus Agrippa was sailing up and down the coast, picking off things, choking off supply lines. So when these people finally surrender, the first mission that he gives to his right hand man, Marcus Agrippa's, take these people, demob them, sort out the problem so that he's able to reduce 60 legions nominally on paper, down to some number like 30, which is kind of roughly where it stays. And what you then have is a situation that fast forwarding into 30, that Octavian captures Egypt. Now he has money to actually pay off his debts. And by the time you get to 27, he then does this deal with the Senate where he's able to strike an interesting balance so up to that point, there's effectively one autocrat whose mission, stated under the Triumvirate, was to restore the Republic. So effectively he has done that. But what he cuts is a deal which effectively gives him control of the provinces on the outer edges of the empire, ones which I think, in Cassius Dio's words, are not pacified but need to be. And then the Senate has its traditional provinces in the center. But cunningly, in the interim, there's a passage, I think, in Casa Stao, where before he sets off from Italy to go to Actium, he has a meeting where he seems to think, where does the army need to be? And it's almost he's playing a mental game of chess. I mean, this is my supposition to some degree, but this is. I think the way that Augustus works is that he's positioning the legions in different places where he will need them. And ultimately, in 27 BC, the accord is struck where he is able to have a province which has Illyricum and the Gaul, for example, and other places where most of the legions are. The Senate basically has one legion, which I think is in Africa, and Egypt is his personal province. The Senate doesn't have anything to do with that. So he has, I think, two legions there, and there are fleets, of course, around the place. And what's intriguing about all of this, of course, is that his position is quite precarious. There is no magistrate called emperor. It doesn't exist and will not exist for quite a long while. What he is effectively is the winner in a long civil war where he's outsmarted his opponents and everybody is basically in fear of what's he going to do next, because he could rule as an autocrat. And he decides that's not the smart thing, because his great uncle, Julius Caesar got assassinated for that very reason. And what he smartly does, he plays this sort of political game, opting to divide his spoils with the Senate and he keeps the bit with the army. And that's what he does all the way through his reign. And that's what his successors will do for a certain point. But then he manipulates the powers that he has. So gradually, over time, he will start accumulating the political powers. So it doesn't matter that he only has part of the empire, he effectively rules it all. And what's happening with the army is that he professionalizes the army so that the legions, which you've got. I think people tend to forget this. Even as the civil war was happening, the commanders were still active on the frontiers. And in my book, Augustus at War, when I was researching that, I was quite surprised that there were actions still on the German frontier and still in Pannonia, because as far as the enemies of Rome, they're not sitting back. They're actually using this as an opportunity to try and nip at the frontiers. So Octavian has to still negotiate what's happening here. And gradually what happens over time. And 27 BC seems to be the moment when this comes together, is that he has a command structure of propraetorian legates, who, legati augusti propraetorius, as they're called, who are direct reports to him. They have control of the armies in each one of these provinces, which leads you to think that there is actually, while there's a professionalized army, there's not actually one Roman army. There are armies of the provinces. There's an army of Gaul, there's an army of Germany, there's an army of Syria and so forth. And the commander is responsible for everything that goes on. Uniquely, none of those legions are allowed in Italy. The only units allowed are the Praetorian cohorts. And what I find fascinating is at this point is there are something like. I think there are nine cohorts and only three of them relied in Rome. So we were talking earlier about the fact that they couldn't carry weapons. So that instantly creates a problem. So what you had here was effectively a military unit which is not allowed to wear military uniforms, so they contrived to wear togas. I think they were allowed to wear their military caligi, their boots, and they have to keep their weapons sort of concealed in the toga. But there are assassination attempts against, by now, Augustus throughout his reign. It's quite surprising that a number of them were recorded. And the praetuans are close, right? So they're available to deal with situations. But the other five or six that remained are actually scattered across Italy. And what that means is there's two functions. One, he travels quite frequently. When his two stepsons, Neoclaudius, Drusus and Tiberius, are campaigning in the north, he often goes to Aquilea or he goes to Tahinum, and you have to imagine that he's going to have troops there. So my supposition is we know that there was probably a cohort unit based in Aquileia, but there are probably other ones too. So the second function they can serve is that if there is an insurrection in Italy, he has personal bodyguard that can deal with it. And that hints at the way the Praetorian Guard will be used in future. So I think what that's very interesting is you start to see these peace parts of the Roman army serving different functions and their pay reflects that. So on the edges you've got the professional citizen soldiers supplemented by professional non Romans called the auxiliaries. And then you have the fleets which are associated with those by and large. And then within Italy, which is supposed to be a non militarized area, don't forget that's what Julius Caesar got into trouble about when he crossed the Rubicon, famously with it and that caused a civil war. So he was always mindful of the need to actually keep the military units out of sight. But yet people seem to coalesce around the idea it's okay for him to have a bodyguard. And they were always there to help him. And nominally what they were doing was guarding his house. Alright, so his house on the palatium, hence we get palace. We're here at Fishbourne Roman Palace. This is the palatium if you like, has a central door and it has, I think there's a couple of, I forget the laurel trees and there's a couple of the decorations which he's been awarded. But you can imagine there's a contingent of troops probably in the street as well. And these people over time begin to control who comes in and out of the building. So now you can see that beyond being a bodyguard, they begin to have this controlling and I mentioned earlier the salutatio. So he would have had a stream of visitors coming in. There will be people that are friends of the family and obviously have access rights. There will be people who are clients of his. He's the patron and effectively he becomes the patron of the Roman state, if you look at it that way. And there are people who want to appeal to him to push a particular case and have him respond to certain legislation and so forth. And over time you can see the Praetorian Guard and whoever's in charge of it can have a very powerful role in the day to day running of the nation.
- [24:17]
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Lindsay Powell
Check it out@lemonade.com pet it does sound like as time goes on, like the Praetorian embraces more policing roles in Rome too. Is that fair to say?
- [26:40]
I think there's a couple of dimensions. So if we see them first and foremost as a personal bodyguard and also by the way for the members of the family and I think what we have to imagine is that when, for example, I guess it would be his adopted son's son, so that would be would his be his adopted nephew Drusus the Younger, when he in AD 14 has to go and deal with the mutiny on the Pannonian river where the troops are mutinying against paying conditions of all things. He has two cohorts of the Praetorians with him and up the Rhine. His brother, who's Germanicus Caesar doesn't. And the reason for that seems to be that because he is the governor of the province, he already has legions, right? He doesn't actually theoretically lead them, but in subsequent years, when he goes on campaign, then they will assign him Praetorian cohorts. So you have to imagine that there's the wider family of the Domus Augusti, there's family guarding, and they will be fighting troops if necessary. Going back earlier to where Augustus was Octavian, one of the things that he had arranged was for his sister Octavia to marry Marcus Antonius. And that was a rather unpleasant affair because he basically got into bed with Cleopatra, and so he was actually doing a double act. And one of the things to try and placate him, he sends his sister over with two units of praetorians. And you can imagine someone saying, right, well, here's your new assignment. You're going to live in Greece. And I wonder how that was met. But it's interesting because people think that moment was also to provoke Anthony, who he knew was having this other affair, Would he basically reject her? But the point is, they could protect her, his sister, very important person in his life. So there's that protective element. There's also an element, I think, of intelligence gathering. So these people are in the city, but they're also in the rest of Italy, and they can feed G2 back to the palatium. What's remarkable about all this is that people think of the Roman Empire as being a bit like a modern state with a big bureaucracy. In fact, what's remarkable is if you look specifically at, he had like a team of five freedmen who dealt with correspondence, and he ran the whole thing through this group of people. It was really, really a tiny thing. And the reason he was able to do that, going back to those Legati Augusti, was that everything could be delegated out to the frontiers. It was a combination of pragmatics that. I mean, you can't email a request for instructions. What he does, he delegates these people his own power, his imperium, to make decisions on the ground, but they have to keep him informed, and they're rotated out every three years. Now, in the case of the Praetorian Cohorts, what he has there is a different structure. So each one of these nine cohorts are headed by a tribune, and every day they are given a watchword personally by him, which begs the question, if there's only three in Rome, how do the others get their watchwords? Are they sending messengers back? Every day or so. But that's a key thing. What I'm saying is that Augustus, at this point, after 27, has direct command through these people that he's handpicked and they're serving like a year. And the other thing to notice is they're equestrians. So they're not a Senate or patrician group of people, they're equestrians. And they become progressively over time, the club, if you like, the society club, from which officers, administrators will be drawn. And significantly, for example, Egypt was actually headed by a praefectus, an equestrian officer, who would then report to him. And indeed, Judea was, and all of the principal guard units in Italy, and we haven't yet covered the, for example, the Guiles and the Cohortes Urbanae, who had other functions. So to set them in context, if you think of the praetorian cohorts as being the bodyguard and intelligence gathering, well, there's a city that needs functioning too. So one of them, in fact, is a police service. And in that regard, this is really where the Urbanai really play their role. And the Vigilis are a fire service. So it became increasingly obvious that you needed to have them as separate functions. And it was partly, somebody actually wrote in a book recently, it was a bit like the way Hitler set up his state. So instead of actually having one or two individuals who could be very strong and powerful, who could actually be in opposition to Augustus, he sets up these different heads who are all vying to get his attention, and they start competing with each other. So it's an interesting game of deflection, if you will. And one of the consequences is that he never had any serious opposition through his reign. There were assassination attempts and there were a couple of challenges, but they were dealt with. And it never came to be anything big. And always he had his praetorians, of course, and even inside the palace, there was this group of German bodyguards, which in a sense goes all the way back to Julius Caesar. And you have to imagine there it was, the foreignness of it. These must have been pretty intimidating Dutch guys, Batavians who guarded him personally. And there was this idea that the Romans are on the outside and these barbarian people are on the inside. But the fact that they were intensely loyal to him, it only changed in 9 AD under Varus, where there was a suspicion that, hold on, these are Germans, aren't they? We have to be careful. So he apparently sends them away and later brings them back. But what you end up with is. It's very interesting. So Italy is very much a special case. So you've got Rome with this triad of forces. You have the praetorians, you have the vigiles, and you also have the urban cohorts who have slightly different functions. And then if we fast forward then to 23 AD, where Sejanus, we're going to come to him, I'm sure one of the things that he does is actually to build the first cap and brings them all together, which is a very important moment. Up to that point there have been these tribunes and again, the pragmatic way that Augustus works, it's very hard for him to have with all of these legati, he's got to control and thinking about this for a second every year he's choosing a vast number of people for particular roles, which hints at him as a man manager. If you think about. He has all the legionary legates that he has to pick on an annual, sometimes it might be three years basis. So there are 28 of those. So he has to know who those people are because he's going to be trusting them. In charge of them are the governors of his province. So there are something like 13 of those, that sort of number, and they will control the armies within their areas. He will choose all the prefects in charge of all the auxiliary units. He'll choose for Judea, for Egypt and for other units. He has important. It's a vast number of people he's got to keep track of, if you think so. One way he deals with this is instead of having nine tribunes is to have two, what he calls praefecti praetorio, and we actually know their names. One is Ostorius Scapular, which British people will know. The person that came to Britain was a relation of his, so that was different. But it's interesting, the story of Scapular and Savius Apper. So we know these and it's very interesting when you can actually see history with names, it makes it much more personal. So I think it's from around about 2 A.D. these people come and they sort of step in between the tribunes and their job is to, I guess, man manage and control this whole thing. But that gives them interesting power. And when you fast forward then, like I said, when you get to 23 and by now Tiberius is the emperor from 14, this camp is built. Sejanus Lucius Aelius Sejanus Sejanus, to our friends at home will remember him. Patrick Stewart in I Claudius, I mean, this is part of the problem. By the way, that series was so well done that George Baker for me is Tiberius and Patrick Stewart is Sejanus. And it's very hard sometimes as an historian to put those artistic impressions aside. But that show pretty well, I think, showed the chemistry between those two individuals. And what it meant was for 17 years, this is what people forget. It might have been just two or three episodes of Nicolette, but it was 17 years that this man, Sejanus, who in fact was a son of a Praetorian prefect, so it was in the family, another equestrian was picked by Tiberius to run the whole guard. And that gave him. He must have realized over time the immense power this gave him. There's a point we're talking Augustus has died of 14, Tiberius takes over in 21, he decides to leave Rome and go to Capri. And he leaves in charge, to all intents and purposes, is Sejanus. And you can imagine, like I said, we talked about the salutatio and the filtering of messages that becomes Sejanus job. So that gives him immense control and he has armed troops as well. Now, significantly, it's not till about 10 years later when there are allegations that he was involved in the poisoning, the killing of Tiberius actual son, Drusus the Younger, who we mentioned earlier in the context of mutiny on the Danube River, a plot is inferred that he's going to try and take over the state. And significantly, it's the office in charge of the urban Cohorts that is picked to try and actually sort of do the ferreting out. And there's the famous scene where Sejanus actually, he goes to the Senate House expecting to be given honours and in fact to be recognized as being the successor. And the statement is read out and then halfway through it becomes clear that this is an indictment. It's not actually a praising, it's not a memorialization, a commemoration of this guy's achievements. And the senators who are listening to this start to sort of leave the chain because they know something's up. And Macro, the famous Macro, who's the head of the Urban Cohorts, is the person who effectively eliminates his man. And in fact, for the family of Sejanus, it's a pretty brutal end. He executed and so were his kids, as it turns out. But that unfortunately hints at the fact that now it's too late, because there's one man in charge of the Praetorian Cohort and he wields immense power at.
- [35:33]
That point I mean, it's good of you to lay out the story of Sejanus. We will go back to that story very soon and go into more depth, for instance, with the Castra Pretoria and Sejanus and his end. But one thing just quickly before we really go into that is one other fact about the structure of the guard. I love that you mentioned this idea of spies, the speculatores and the special role they had with these early imperial figures. But also where were these particular soldiers for the Praetorians? Do we know where they were recruited from?
- [36:01]
The evidence points to Italy in the first instance. So Etruria, Latio and Umbria. So good quality sort of middle and north Italian troops. And it points to at that point about 85% of the Praetorian soldiers were recruited from Italy. But over time they'll become much more widely recruited and by the time you get to later emperors it's much more spread out. But there seems to be the implication of that is that we need Italians to be personal in the sense. And in a way there's another angle. You could look at it. These men will be deployed most of the time in Italy. So they're guardsmen in Italy defending the homeland and the man in charge. So that kind of makes some sense there. It begs the question, were these conscious decisions by Augustus? This is where we don't know. Sometimes these things may have just happened by accident. And that's where his troops came from. Because all the other nationalities, if you will, were actually feeding the legions at this point. And Italy is basically a non military area. But you have young men who are between 15 and 32 who are eligible to enroll with the proper Czechs and all the rest of it to join the Praetorian Guards. But they're Italians, that's the point.
- [37:04]
And so if we get to the end of Augustus's reign and the Praetorians, because we're going to go back to Sejanus now, as you highlighted his story. What does the Praetorian Guard look like when Augustus Breves is last in 14 AD? Can you see it evolving much during Augustus reign? What's the status of it at that time? Is there still much more of it's evolving to do during the reign of Tiberius and Sejanus?
- [37:27]
From what I've read, I don't think so. I think that it involved Julian Claudian. So we're talking about up to the time of Nero. So that reign of five emperors, not a lot of change. The big change is really Sejanus Sejanus who brings them all together. And I think it goes once again to the pragmatic mindset of Augustus as to say that theoretically you're not supposed to have armed troops in Rome, but the precedent had been set when the triumvirs, Lepidus, Marcus Antonius and he, they celebrated their achievements by actually having their troops march in the city. And of course this set the precedent. And the great thing about the republic, or like any republic, is that once you've done it once, you can say, well, it's been done before. So now you have these toga clad men, three cohorts. Sejanus brings the remainder into the city, and in addition, they're also sharing the same space with the vigiles and urbanae. So what you have to imagine that up until Tiberius, these people are very dispersed. And the ratios of people, I saw one estimate where they were saying, just by looking at the numbers, you get one praetorian for, let's say, 500 Roman citizens. So they're not very obvious a lot of the time, and they're going to be parading in their field camps or whatever, and the rest are distributed around Italy. And it's much different when you bring them into a single place and then they become much more obvious from that point on. And you could argue the optics was partly part of maybe Sejanus game, right, that they'll say, well, you know, the palace is here and the army camp's up there. But interesting to the building itself is big enough to occupy a house, about 15,000 troops. But it doesn't have a principia, it doesn't have a headquarters building. And the implication of that is, well, if the headquarters is not there, where else must it be? And the probability is it's actually in the palace in the palatium, where it would be because the office has to be near the commander in chief, right? I mean, the bodyguard has to be able to deal with the crisis right now. So you're relying on runners and horsemen to go back and forth. And to that point, by the way we didn't mention this, is that not only was the Praetorian Cohort an infantry unit, it had cavalry too. So you see some coins where they talk about de Cursio, which is a sort of military riding event, that's where these cavalrymen would have been part of that. So you look at that from the point of view of evolution and change. What we can infer is that Augustus formalized the organization and Tiberius ban Sejanus then took it to the next step and concentrated into one place. And that fundamental change changed the destiny of the God completely. Because in a sense, and nothing just occurred to me is that when these people are dispersed, they don't know their strength. But when you bring them into the same building and you go, gee, where are all this many people? And this was interesting. There was a revolt in Illyricum, the Broiki, one of the tribes, and Daizediades were the other. There were two chieftains who preparing for one of Tiberius campaigns into Pannonia to deal with Marboduus, who was a big threat, or at least in their eyes, he was. He was living in Bohemian Bohemia in that time. So they bring together all of these cohorts of local Lyrican troops and they realize how many there are and that the way that the Roman historians write this is they say, we're defending their stuff, why are we defending ours? There's so many of us. And they rebel. So you can imagine there's an angle you could look at by bringing the Praetorians all into one place because most of them have been spread out around other places. They begin to realize we have power.
- [40:37]
It is so interesting. Isn't it though, if it is at this time, at 20 AD or 23 AD, during the reign of Tiberius and Sejanus, I'm going to say Sejanus from now on. Just so we're going to. We're going to just say the trouble is.
- [40:47]
I keep thinking of Patrick Stewart.
- [40:49]
We'll call him Stuart Sejanus. Yeah, we'll call him of Janus. It is so interesting. It's almost as if this progression, it's almost as now Augustus, his dynasty, maybe it's more secured that they could take that next step of creating this camp within Rome or just outside Rome at that time, bring all of the rest of those Praetorian cohorts into the center of the empire because they can, because their dynasty is more strong, because the imperial period is really now ongoing. It's almost said Augustus is dead, he's got his successor on the throne. It's almost like they can do it because they can, because the imperial period is now almost here to stay.
- [41:28]
Well, I'm going to challenge that a bit.
- [41:29]
You're going to challenge it?
- [41:30]
I am, yes. That's why history is. This is why history is interesting. I think there's a misconception in a sense that I hinted at earlier, that somehow that there's this idea of emperor. Right. Emperor comes from Imperator, which Simply means commander. And it was an old idea going back into the republican days, where the citizen soldiers would acclaim their commander for bringing them victory and they would thump the sky and say Imperator and Ave and so on, and they would take that title and Imperator would be added after the name of the person. So in fact there are coins of Marcus Antonius Imperator. And you're thinking, but he wasn't Emperor. No, that's the different thing. And in fact, what was clever in the case of Augustus, if we keep using his name, is from around about the middle 30s BC, he cunningly takes the name Imperator as his first name. Right? That's not been done before. So what he's cheekily doing, he's actually calling himself Commander Julius Caesar as his official name. That's why when you see inscriptions as imperator, Caesar, Augustus, etc. Because it goes back to when he cheekily took that as his first name. So effectively he chose it to be his and prevented other people from using it. So I want to make that point. So we think of Emperor, they thought of Commander in Chief. So there's a military overtone in that. The other aspect of it is that really this guy is referred to either as princeps, which is say like the first, and that can be the first man in Rome as opposed to the Roman Empire, but it also means the first man in the Senate. And that gives him the ability to convene the meetings and speak first and so on. So this idea really of him being unassailable, I think is flawed because it's very clear all the way, when you actually look at the way that the activities and responses, they point to a sense of precariousness about it. So what you have to also remember is going back to 23 BC, not 80, but BC, where his powers came together were he had already been declared Augustus, which had no any particular significance other than the meaning revered. But what it hinted at to people was that this man had influence. Auctoritas is the latter name, authority. And just by him being there, things could get done. There didn't need to be a necessary power for that basis of activity and action. In 23, the game was up in the sense that the Senate gave him the official title of Tribune of the People, which meant that he could overrule everybody. The tribune was a special role to protect the interests of the plebeian members of society. The bulk of the population was plebeians, with the senator group at the top. And there had been A war centuries before where the plebeians had felt that they were being abused and they wanted something changed. And the way of dealing that was to create these. I think there were seven or nine of them who had the ability to offer veto power. Veto meaning I forbid. So if there was a piece of legislation coming through, they could say veto, and these men actually defended them. The trick was that Augustus wasn't supposed to have that. So what they gave him, without the title were the powers. So he was able to play this game of, I'm Augustus, I have lots of influence, and I can say I really don't like that piece of legislation. And people would go along with it. But in 23, they said, we're now going to actually officially call you Tribune. So you have these very interesting turning points where things that people saw were happening were officially recognized. And there are, like I said earlier, there are assassination attempts against him. So if everything is so secure, I wonder whether that's the case. There are no major problems in terms of someone coming forward with an army and challenging him. And you could argue that that was partly because he had these praetorians there. Right? I mean, who's actually going to do that when there's. There's potentially 3,000 troops on the doorstep and wherever he goes, there's a whole retinue. Oh, and by the way, there were these big burly Germans. By the time you get to Tiberius, what's interesting, again, there is no title Emperor. So what's happening is he is already assuming he's given powers. So by 14, to all intents and purposes, he has the Tribunate power. He has a whole series of consuls that he can clock up into his history. He has military command more than anybody else. So he effectively was emperor even at the time Augustus was dying. It was just that Augustus was alive. So people would have looked at it, I think, differently. And again, there's no magistrate, there's no position where you can vote for emperor. And it evolves. And what's interesting is the Praetorian Cohorts are, in a sense, the catalyst that makes it more and more like that, because they get to choose this guy in the end. And then Imperator becomes more what we think of. So my take on that, which I discussed in one of my books, is really, we have the benefit of hindsight. We can look back and we can try and draw conclusions and patterns, but at that time, things look very different. They look quite precarious. And what we don't have in the Histories, because none of them are really contemporary are the minutes of meeting. So we don't know what issues are discussed. I mean, for example, when Augustus becomes Augustus in 27, before that he was kind of angling to be called Romulus and there was a feeling, well, no, that sounds a bit too close to call for comfort. He was recognized as the second founder of the city, but nobody actually wanted to really give him the full title because that sounded very much like maybe what Julius Caesar was trying to do first as dictator perpetuo and so on. But the guard becomes important in all of this.
- [46:39]
It absolutely does. And then if we therefore, okay, the Castra Pretoria has been constructed, we're still talking about Sejanus at the high water mark period during the reign of Tiberius Lindsay. Do we hear of any particular events during this time or are there several where we hear that the Praetorians are involved in some way or form, showing the variety of jobs that they could perform.
- [47:02]
Interesting enough, funny enough, there's an inscription that comes from Ostia where there was a fire, and it's a Praetorian who is involved in putting the fire out. Now you think, hold on, isn't that the job of the Vigilas? Well, you know, actually this man is in Ostia. The reason we know about this is that the Ostieenses, that the people of Ostia were so grateful they set up a description and they commemorate this sort of thing. So what that tells you is maybe there was a group of those people working and it would make sense because it's a port, right, and there are supplies coming through and you've got to guard the grain supply and all those things that underpin imperatorial power. But you know, I think the significance in terms of significant events. What we also don't know, by the way, again, because the historians don't tell us, is is there may have been events that were suppressed but not recorded. And you get hints of things. So for example, there was actually an attempt to seize the south of Italy. I discovered this reading Tacitus a while ago. I'm actually writing a biography of Tiberius right now. And I was reading a German book and there was this mention of an event I'd never heard of before. And it was basically a slave revolt that happened in Italy and it was a whole series of just chance events. So these people gathered together and they were using their pitchforks and things because they were farm laborers and they were going to cause a revolution. And it was the local, I think, the prefect who's in charge of like agricultural surveys and this type of thing, thinks there's something very odd going on. And the ships coming over from Illyricum into the port of Brindisium, he commandeers those and all of the marines aboard and uses this little army that he's got to go and take on these. And then the message is sent to Rome and Tiberius immediately sends praetorians and other people he's got to disposal to deal with this situation, that they diffuse it completely. And I think what's significant about that is that, okay, that's a minor. It's like one paragraph of 300 words or something in Tacitus that comes to us by chance. He chose that because he wanted to illustrate a point. I think his point was to sort of show that he had power and you could see things all over. I think the other thing it points to me is much as people tend to think of Tiberius as being deeply unpopular and somewhat incompetent and recluse living on his island Capri, he could nevertheless deal with things like this. And he dealt with them very quickly. And the force available to him were Praetorians.
- [49:14]
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- [49:43]
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- [50:28]
Lindsay Powell
And that optics that logistics. You mentioned Tiberius being Capri there. The fact that we can perhaps imagine if Sejanus is still in Rome. If Sejanus is still in Rome, you can imagine speculatores, spies or parts of the Praetorians going back to and fro between Rome and Capri communicating all these Stuff between emperor and at the time, Emperor's right hand man.
- [50:49]
Well, and that's where Sergiens has a particular role because he is the person deciding yes, that can go no, that one will stay here and he'll control the visitors that flow to him. I think what's important to put it in context is that Tiberius leaves Rome in 21 and two years later this Castra Praetoria is built. And you almost wonder whether there's a situation where Sejanus, who's trusted completely to run affairs, can almost make this decision without the need to consult. He just simply needs to, oh, by the way, I've actually arranged for this to happen. And you can almost imagine that Tiberius says, well you're my right hand man, I trust your judgment, do this. And my sense of Tiberius is that he found in Sejanus, who was an equestrian whose father was himself a Praetorian prefect, someone that he recognized as a fellow military man. Significantly, he didn't choose another senator. Right, he chose an equestrian. So this follows very much in Augustus way of looking at things. And what's remarkable, again, it's very easy to fall into the trap of watching I Claudius and think that these things all happen very, very shortly. It was 17 years, that's a long time, you know, that'd be half a Roman's lifetime in a sort of average sense. So something happened and it must have been again, it could have been. I see all these people, I have all this and the seduction of the fact the old man is away, he's going to die, I have to secure my future and there's an opportunity here for me and my family to improve ourselves. The problem was he was an equestrian. Right. And the imperial family sees them as a component of society to be manipulated and used, but not as a place where they're going to find successors.
- [52:18]
And so. Well then talk me through then how Sejanus reign of power comes tumbling down.
- [52:24]
Oh, grief. Well, there are two sorts. One, there's Tacitus and then there's Dio Cassius and they give us slightly different things, but in a nutshell. So we have a situation where Sejanus is able to eliminate not only Tiberius enemies but his own. And this gives him immense power. And of course what he can do by eliminating threats, he can begin to consolidate his own power in this. And what's intriguing is that Antonia, who is the, I think the mother of Claudius, the wife of Nero Claudius Drusus, with the old grand dame of the family, if you will, she's a lady quite old in years, but amongst all the family who it seems to be is suspected by Tiberius. He trusts her. So she is able to gather this evidence. And I wonder whether he was able to use some of the speculatores who had this intelligence gathering function. Who knows? These are the sort of details that get lost. But somehow or other information was collected without Sejanus knowing and this is delivered. She actually is able to get to Capri. We have to imagine that she has to get permission from Sejanus because of course they've got to lay on a security detail. And what are you going there for, ma'am? Oh, I'm going to visit my nephew or something. And that happens. She goes and she presents this dossier. We have to assume, and it's for Tiberius. Devastating. I mean this man, for 17 years he has trusted. But the mindset, from what I've been able to piece together, Tiberius, he is a military man who believes in a mission is given to be completed and you screw up. There's discipline that goes with that. And that's one of the things you read in Suetonius, is that he was a disciplinarian but the troops liked him for that. And to find one of his own hand picked men to betray him like that, he has to deal with it. And a bit of garland cunning and I mentioned earlier where they set up this thing rather than sending a guard detailer to arrest him there. And then there's an element of humiliation and public spectacle that he makes out of this. He calls the head macro of the urban cohorts who is another equestrian. So you can imagine there's this interesting play because you've got these slightly competitive units. The praetorian cohorts are paid a lot more money than all the other units. So you've actually got men in the camp who are paid half of what the praetorians are and their prestige is less. And I know we're going off a little bit of a tangent here, but what's very interesting is we haven't discussed it yet. There's a promotion structure to be one of these praefecti praetorio, and there were two under Augustus One with Sejanus changing, you had to be an equestrian. And one way to do that was if you were a centurion in the legions and you rose up to be the primi pelis, the number one centurion, that made you an equestrian and you had enough wealth as well and you could be eligible to become a Tribune, for example. Of either the Vigilas and then you'd move from there to the urban and then you could actually become a tribune with the Praetorian Cohort. So there's this pecking order as you rose up and what you've got in terms of Macro is you've got a man who hasn't got quite the same prestige as Sejanus, but the relishing of the fact I'm going to bring him down. And again to go back to icloud, this is brilliantly played in that particular scene. And they read out this long, you know, long have I trusted this man and so on and so on. He's been my right hand man and partnering government and so, and so but. And then they start reading out these charges and he is arrested and some are only executed. And it's for Tiberius a profound moment I think of upset because as an individual I find him endlessly fascinating. I think history has done him very, very badly. As a young man, he is a loyal commander. He's a field commander going thither and yon. He actually arranges for the standards to become available under prisoner exchanges and he brings the standards back from Parthia, so that's a big plus. He does service in Spain as a tribune. He fights through Illyricum many times. He goes to Germany, he loses his brother, his young brother, Nero Claudius Drusus, which I think for him is personally devastating. His confidence, if you like. And worse. The lady that he loves, Vipsania Agrippina, who is a daughter of Marcus Agrippa. He's told to divorce her to marry Julia, who was now the widow of Marcus Agrippa. So these seminal events in his early years I think really tear him up and this life of service, I think what he wants is somebody he can look at and rely on. So all those years later when Sejanus betrays him, I mean this is something that for 17 years he'd relied on. He could go to Capri knowing that there was someone who was going to look after his interests. And some people say, well, why Capri? Well, the great thing is actually it's an island and you can get messages and ships and all over the empire from there. So it's not such a dumb position. But by opening himself up to the whims of another man who begins to understand the extent of his own power, it puts him at great risk. So along comes Antonios with this file and they say must be devastating.
- [56:58]
It's so interesting though, when we look at the role of Sejanus Sejanus in the rise of the Praetorian Guard in the early history of the Praetorian Guard, it seems like his reforms and in some ways his continuation of the Guard after Augustus and the roles they perform, this interchanging with the likes the urban cohorts and the vigales. He does seem like one of the most significant figures in the creation of the Guard that we envisage almost to this day of how it was structured, what it was for, all the way down, almost to Septimius Severus, who did.
- [57:34]
Away with them pretty much, yeah. Again, I think you've got a guy that is a military man and understands the pragmatics, and it must have struck him as being silly that they have nine cohorts and most of them are spread around Italy, so getting the watchword out right becomes a problem, keeping control of expenses and so on, and maybe their use in other cities. Because the significant thing is Augustus travels a lot. And I mentioned Nero, Claudius Drusus. He was active in Germany, for example, his brother was active in Lyricum. And what Augustus would do, he'd go to Kino, he'd go to Aquileia, which were closer to those places, without necessarily leaving Italy to get war reports. He was actually getting field reports from his stepsons. And under Tiberius, that stops. He doesn't travel anywhere. That's the great complaint that people level at him. He's decided, after 14 to 21, I'm done with Rome, I want to leave. And he leaves this other guy in charge. So you can see there's pragmatics here. These people don't need to be where the Emperor's going, because the emperor's not there anymore. He's an island. And then Sejanis can look at this again, he can justify this, right? I'm bringing them to one place, you can keep an eye on them. We're putting them all in a place so if necessary, we can seal the gates, even, you know, things like that. Because to get a legion that might have to deal with them is going to take days, right? So you've got to work on the control elements of this he had through his father, you know, because you could trust me, because, you know, I'm from the son of another Praetorian prefect. But again, it's individual ones. The cult was made of centuries and had centurions and there was a cavalry, There were lots of peace parts of these organizations. They're paid extremely well. What's very significant, to go Back to Augustus one of the first things he does in 27 is to double their pay. That's the first thing he does, not anything else. So that recognizes their importance to him personally. And one of the things that he does on his death, he gives everybody in the army a boat, sort of like a donative for work and service. I'm giving this money and the Praetorians get way more than everybody else. And of course there's a pecking order. So the centrona that will get much more money than the average Praetorianus, as they were called. And then the vigilas had more money than the legionary troops did, which is quite remarkable. So the ordinary squadi, the legionary, the miles was getting really quite a low level of payback. And one of the first things that Tiberius, of course does, he then pays a donative to the Purtoans, recognizing exactly what his predecessor had done. And that becomes a tradition.
- [59:42]
It sets a precedent, doesn't it? I'm imagining the coin of Caligula. Now, is it Caligula or Calculus, where it has the coin minted where he's at the Castra Pretoria.
- [59:49]
So I'll interrupt by saying that there's a coin in the meantime. So Caligula, I actually have one. It's a brass sestercius, it's about yea big, about the size of 2P, magnified by 2, a thick, heavy brass coin. And it has a banana toga standing on a rostrum, addressing a group of troops with standards, and his arm is raised. And it's ad locutio is the slogan. And what that means is basically to the call to arms. What I imagine, and I think this is what numismatists believe is that this coin was probably part of the coins that were minted to be given as part of this donative. Right. And what they're basically saying is, I am your Emperor, I call for your support. And of course they're going to say yes, because he's just paid the money. So these Adlocutio coins are very collectible. On the other side, they have a magnificent portrait of a young Caligula. Now the coins of Claudius, who comes after Caligula, you're absolutely right. They have this interesting. They have this crenelated wall and buildings inside. And it's a strange image in a sense, because they're actually highlighting military camp in Rome. But then people will know the story because Tiberius is long dead, Caligula took over his successor, and it was an equestrian prefect, leader Cassius Caria, who led the Conspiracy to kill him, successfully, as it turns out. And now apparently in Rome, they've actually found the corridor that he was assassinated in, which I'm sure is very emotive when you go and see it. The palace is where Claudius, this person who a lot of people think is a fool, turns out he's not quite such a fool after all. He is found initially by the German bodyguard, right, who are running around confused what they're going to do, and they find this man behind a curtain. And the story goes that they present this man, not quite sure what to do, and someone comes in and says, no, this is actually member of the family, you're supposed to protect him. And then the Praetorians take over and they take him to the Praetorian camp. And in the meantime, as Musus is reaching the Senate, the story goes that the Senate says, we will now restore the res publica, the Republic, we'll do away with these Caesars. Except the Praetorians have a view in this and they present their man and say, you're going to take this man, aren't you? And of course what he does, he takes over and he of course pays them, have somebody for the charge. And later in AD 43, some Praetorians come to Britain along with the elephants. And it's quite fascinating to think that Colchester would have seen elephants as well, but also Praetorian cohorts too, because they were a personal bodyguard, they would go wherever he would. So you can imagine an entourage of the Emperor on the move was thousands of people. Can you imagine if you're going by sea, I mean, you've got transports and triumphs, you're mentioning hexarems and so on, moving equipment and horses and all this sort of, of stuff and food if necessary. And this is how you have to imagine a trade run campaign with this large number of people. Or Hadrian, when he goes on his tours. We tend to think, I think these days, you know, like a US President. I'm living in the United States and you constantly see Air Force One arriving and a man comes down and there's these guys with these curly cords in their ears and so on. And the Secret Service is quite small body, at least in public. I'm sure it's hundreds of people, but the Roman optics of that would probably be much bigger. So there would have been an advance messenger saying, we're arriving in the city in 48 hours and literally thousands of people would show up. Praetorians have to have a camp to go to. So they'll probably build one. I don't know how you do that in some parts of the developed empire. And there's all the personal staff and of course these German guards and all the rest of it. So it's quite a production, as you say.
- [63:02]
The logistics behind it, the whole operation must be absolutely extraordinary. Remarkable. We could go on talking about Claudius and Caligula and even Nero. You know, it's quite interesting how many praetorian prefects there are. Tigellinus that you remember, maybe we've even betrayed him with Nerva, with Domitian. All of these prefects, not really the praetorian soldiers themselves remember the prefects because of the actions that they do. Normally the end of a Roman emperor or something along those lines. But just before we wrap up, I mean, if we're focusing back on Augustus to the end of Tiberius's reign, we've chatted about a lot of things. Sejanus, the castrapatoria, the structure, its use alongside the likes of the urban cohorts and the vigales and other. Is there anything else about the Praetorians, the rise of the Praetorians during this early stage of the imperial period that you really like to highlight?
- [63:47]
Well, I mentioned earlier, I think people tend to think of them as being elite and that sort of was because they had special skills. I think the thing to think of is that these were initially predominantly veteran troops, so they were special in the sense that they had war experience and campaign experience, so they understood the rules of fighting. But as they became a formalized organization and they began to be recruited from Italians, they see progressively less and less combat. So in fact the legions which are on the frontier dealing with all sorts of problems, internal and external, are the hard nosed troops. And it's an interesting kind of dichotomy here, which is that you remember the film Gladiator and the implication is the men in black, Lorica segmentata, must be the Praetorians. And they all look very intimidating, but actually from a sort of fighting point of view they didn't have much practice. So in that regard they probably were more of a decorative thing than a really fully fledged professional army dealing with the day to day. That said, the situation where, for example, Germanicus, who in 15 AD 16 was active trying to hunt down Arminius, the man responsible for Varus disaster, what's interesting there is that there are, I think two cohorts of praetorians who are in active service. So there's a scene that. That Tacitus describes where the Roman armies are deployed. And they see these earth ramparts and they're going to go after. And they see there's a forest in the corner. In fact, Germanicus says, we're going to charge over there, so send the troops up against the wall, we're going that way, and the Praetorians go with him. So he takes out his sword and off they go, charging. So you can imagine that they are capable of fighting, but it's all these other things they do which probably makes them special. I think the other thing to think of is that if you think of them as being ordinary soldiers, I mean, there's a couple of people that they wanted to mention. So, for example, there's one that was mentioned by Pliny the Elder, whose name was Vinius Valens, who was a praetorian centurion. And the reason why he came to Pliny the Elder's notice, he famously wrote the Natural History, so he was always on the lookout for a good story and things to write about natural world. In fact, this Valens character was immensely strong, one of the strong men of the Roman world, and that's why he came to his particular attention. So we know a little bit about him. I mentioned that guy who was killed in a fire, so that person actually just acted like a good citizen soldier. And we mentioned also the fact that Claudius brought people, including the elephants and praetorians, to Britain. A guy called Vettius Valens, for example, who was originally with the 14th Legion, he came as a praetorian of the 8th Cohort to Britain, so he was one of that interesting detail. So we actually have names of individuals who, while they're not in the classical sources, we know them and their stories because of the inscriptions. And the great thing is that they find inscriptions all the time. So there are lots more people we're going to find out in the future. And what's striking about them is the ordinariness of those people. I mean, they have the intimidating name of praetorian legionary or whatever it is, or the centurion or something, and they were paid in reward and regarded as highly when the Praetorians were around. Because. Because there's no point in bringing a charge against them, because they're first in the queue to get justice and who's going to believe you against them? And this is something that begins to become more important as they go into the future, because they will become kingmakers effectively, because they control very influential parts of the government.
- [67:02]
Brilliant. Lindsay Powell, this has been an absolutely wonderful chat, fantastic chat about the rise of the Praetorians. Last and certainly not least, you've done a number of books, including a couple books definitely related to this period. Talk us through a couple of them.
- [67:15]
The one that's probably most relevant to this is Augustus at War, which is the Struggle for the Pax Augusta, where I try to sort of present Augustus as a commander in chief. We tend to think the Roman Empire under him as being this wonderful world of peace. The point I make is that actually is not what the history tells us. And in fact, Pax, the Roman idea of Pax peace, in the way that we understand it as being this tranquil world, only comes when you win wars. So there were an awful lot of wars under Augustus. And in fact, because it involves the army, that's how he holds on to power. That's kind of the subtext. The two generals I mentioned, for example, Nero Claudius Drusus was his youngest stepson. The son of his wife Livia, was very important from the point of view of consolidating Gaul, because, interesting enough, when Julius Caesar conquered it, he didn't finish the job, he didn't pacify it. So, in fact, that territory was left to basically fix itself. And he comes in and does send censuses and this stuff, but he also leads campaigns into Germany, which will mean that under him and through Tiberius, the Romans occupy the lands on the other side of the Rhine, which famously get lost after Varus and Germanicus. Caesar. I wrote a book about him because I was just fascinated by his popularity. And now that I'm knowing more about Tiberius, you can see why some of the popularity is manufactured in the history, because they're trying to make Tiberius the villain and they need a guy to have his canvas. And when you put all these people together, it becomes an amazing family. I mean, Augustus created this family out of adoptions and marriages and so on and so forth, and they all had an impact on the story, and I think they're just fascinating people with wonderful stories.
- [68:42]
Lindsay, great to chat to you today. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast.
- [68:45]
Absolutely, My pleasure.
- [68:49]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. There was the brilliant speaker and author Lindsay Powell, talking through the rise of the Praetorian Guard with all of those great details that Lindsay knows and loves so well. I hope you enjoyed today's episode that we originally released more than two years ago. Now, if you want more with Lindsay Powell, then we've got you covered, because we also did very early on in the Ancient Story we did two episodes with Lindsay all about the rise and rain, if you can say rain of Agrippa, the fascinating Agrippa, one of the most important adjutants of the Emperor Augustus, this remarkable figure. And Lindsay is equally good in those interviews too. So do check out our episodes on the Gripper with Lindsay Powell if you want more. Lindsay in the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favourite. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of Historyhit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe. Lastly, if you want more ancient history videos and clips, then be sure to follow me on Instagram ncientstristen that's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.
- [70:14]
Lindsay Powell
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