Praetorian Guard: Rome's Bodyguards Who Auctioned the Empire in 193

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The Praetorian Guard began as nothing more than a temporary detail guarding the praetorium, the commander's tent in a Roman camp, used by generals from families like the Scipios and later by Octavian, who had five cohorts at Actium in 31 BC. As Augustus, he made the guard permanent but hid it: nine cohorts of about 500 men, only three on duty in Rome at once, all wearing civilian togas inside the sacred pomerium where no other soldiers could bear arms. Shorter service, pay far above the legions and the donativum, a cash bonus paid on accessions, births, marriages and failed plots, turned them into a privileged caste the satirist Juvenal remembered for the hobnailed sandal driven into his foot.

Under Tiberius, the prefect Sejanus gathered the cohorts into one fortress, the Castra Praetoria, and used it to poison the emperor's son Drusus. In 41 AD guardsmen murdered Caligula, then found his uncle Claudius hiding behind a curtain and made him emperor. They killed Galba for refusing a bribe and Pertinax for cutting their bonuses, then auctioned the throne from their ramparts to Didius Julianus. Septimius Severus tricked them into marching out unarmed and disbanded them, and Constantine finished the institution after the Milvian Bridge in 312.

• Augustus kept the guard dispersed in towns around Rome so it would not look like an occupying army.
• By Domitian's reign a praetorian's base pay had risen to 1,500 denarii, against 250 for a legionary.
• The jurists Papinian and Ulpian both served as praetorian prefect and were killed by the guards they commanded.
• The Speculatores Augusti, about 300 large men in distinctive boots, served as couriers, spies and executioners.
• Constantine had the inner walls of the Castra Praetoria facing the city torn down.