X-Nico

unusual facts about Praetorian Guard


Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

He describes further how Blackwater (at the time of writing) serves in Iraq and Afghanistan like, in his judgement, a Praetorian Guard, protecting top authority figures and enjoying immunity from the usual constraints and regulations on traditional armies.


Fulvia Plautilla

Her mother was named Hortensia; her father was Gaius Fulvius Plautianus; the Commander of the Praetorian Guard, consul, maternal first cousin and close ally to Roman Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus (the father of Caracalla).

Grivpanvar

One of the first deployments of Sassanian grivpanvar occurred at the Battle of Edessa in 259 AD, where a powerful army of Sassanians led by the emperor Shapur I came under assault from Roman sovereign Valerian's soldiers, including the renowned and elite imperial Praetorian Guard.

Jovians and Herculians

The old-established Praetorian Guard was based at the Castra Praetoria in Rome, and had frequently proved disloyal, making and deposing emperors and even on one occasion in 193 putting the Imperial throne up for auction to the highest bidder (cf: Didius Julianus).

Scholae

Next to the old kind of school, the Scholae Palatinae, established by Constantine the Great as a replacement to the Praetorian Guard, was the training center of the imperial palace guard.


see also

Classis Ravennas

Some of the sailors were based in Rome itself, initially housed in the barracks of the Praetorian Guard, but later given their own barracks, the Castra Ravennatium across the Tiber.

Drusus Julius Caesar

An earlier fight with a praetorian guard (possibly Sejanus as well) earned him the ironic nickname "Castor", after the patron god of the praetorians.

Perennis

Tigidius Perennis (died 185), a prefect of the Roman imperial bodyguard, known as the Praetorian Guard, during the reigns of the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus

Saints Martin and Sebastian of the Swiss

Saint Sebastian was appointed as a captain of the Praetorian Guard of Roman emperors Diocletian and Maximian and was martyred.

Severan dynasty

The eighteen year-old Emperor Elagabalus and his mother were both taken from the palace, dragged through the streets, murdered and thrown in the river Tiber by the Praetorian Guard, who then proclaimed Alexander Severus as Augustus.