Praetorian Guard under the Julio-Claudian Emperors

The remainder of this discussion ordain first outline the nature of this problem, and some solutions that various farmings realise employed. We testament then examine the risks posed to the Roman state by the Roman troops, and the place of the Praetorian Guard in the response to this risk devised by Augustus Caesar. Finally we will analyse the early evolution of the Guard under the Julio-Claudian emperors, up to the wipeout of Nero.

E very(prenominal) state that possesses an army finds itself confronted with a fundamental governmental challenge: the risk of a military coup. The risk is innate in the nature of an army. Reduced to its essential terms, an army is a body of men (invariably men, save in r atomic number 18 emergencies and very recent years) who are equipped, trained, and organized to fight. An army is therefore at great advantage -- usually overwhelming advantage -- in any armed confrontation with a group that lacks these characteristics, or has them in markedly lesser degree. Put simply, an army coffin nail defeat and either kill or impose its will on a political leadership, a general population, or any faction of either that is not itself organized as an army.

States fall in found, or attempted to find, various means to recognize with this latent threat from their own armed defenders. A few, veneer no substantial foreign thr

eats (or none they had any serious hope of rubbish off in any national) have done without armies. These states are few -- even fewer in practice than in name, since nominally army-less states frequently have some sort of matter paramilitary police who have nearly as a good deal advantage over civilians as a "real" army would have.

It must be remembered that at its beginning the Empire had no "emperor" as such. It could not, because the concept did not exist in the previous Roman political lexicon, and August, who we look back on as the first emperor, was a great pains to stave off instituting it in any overt form. August did indeed have the title of Imperator, from which "emperor" derives, but it was not his chief or most distinctive title. The title self-adopted by Augustus was Princeps, "First Citizen.

" This by choice vague formulation has come down into English as "prince," originally a general term for personal rulership (as in Machiavelli's The Prince), but also for a personal ruler of mistily lower rank than a king, and ultimately applied specifically to a king's sons.

A few other states, who by geography and strategic requirements have to begin with maritime defenses, have been equal to rely on a naval forces as their simple force. Navies, historically, seem far less predisposed to overthrow their governments than do armies; in the words of William H. McNeill, "sailors fresh from long weeks at sea have other things in mind than seizing personnel on behalf of their commanders" (p. 261). For the same reason (and because navies are not primarily equipped to fight on land), a loyalist navy might seem little protection against a rebellious army even if the latter were much smaller, but in practice the protection they offer has been substantial, notably in the case of Rome's eastern continuation or successor, the Byzantine Empire. Rather few states, however, can avail themselves of this option. (The short history of air forces suggests no strong tendency for them to b
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